Masterpieces

Rimsky-Korsakov / The Tale of Tsar Saltan / Ansermet

More of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov

  • This London stereo pressing boasts big, bold, dynamic Tubey Magical Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • No question this is a Demo Disc quality recording – it’s rich and real, with huge WHOMP factor down low, as well as clear, uncolored brass and robust lower strings
  • Here is the kind of depth and three-dimensional soundstaging that the recordings by Ansermet and the Suisse Romande are famous for
  • We would love to be able to find Ansermet’s Scheherazade on London, but as you may have read on the blog, the right stampers of that record are almost impossible to find these days, although that has not stopped us from trying
  • No question this is a Demo Disc recording – it’s rich and real, with huge WHOMP factor down low, as well as clear, uncolored brass and robust lower strings
  • The Speakers Corner pressing of Ansermet’s famous recording is mediocre, with many faults, all discussed here
  • We would love to be able to offer our customers Ansermet’s Scheherazade on London (not Decca!) vinyl, but as you may have read on the blog, the right stampers of that record are almost impossible to find these days, although that has not stopped us from trying

James Walker was the producer, Roy Wallace the engineer for these sessions from 1957 in Geneva’s glorious Victoria Hall. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording.

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Tower of Power – Back To Oakland

More Soul, Blues, and R&B

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Back To Oakland you’ve heard
  • Our Hot Stamper pressings are rich, warm and dynamic, with plenty of analog Tubey Magic
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, presence and energy on this copy than anything else around, and that’s especially true for whatever godawful Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently being foisted on an unsuspecting record buying public
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Back to Oakland had tougher, funkier and better-produced cuts, stronger vocals from Lenny Williams, and included an excellent ballad in ‘Time Will Tell,’ and a rousing tempo in ‘Don’t Change Horses (In the Middle of a Stream).'”

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Airto – Fingers

More Jazz Fusion

  • A Fingers like you’ve never heard, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Incredibly impressive funky Brazilian jazz sound with huge lifelike percussion – thanks, RVG!
  • This is without a doubt the best album Airto ever made, and this copy really has the kind of sound we look for, with an open, fully extended top end that gives all the elements of this complex music room to breathe
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Produced by [Creed] Taylor and recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s famous New Jersey studio, this LP demonstrates just how exciting and creative 1970s fusion could be. When Moreira and his colleagues blend jazz with Brazilian music, rock and funk on such cuts as ‘Wind Chant,’ ‘Tombo in 7/4’ and ‘Romance of Death,’ the results are consistently enriching. Fingers is an album to savor.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Fingers is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but should.

Fingers is one of our all time favorite records, a Desert Island Disc to be sure. I’ve been playing this album for more than thirty years and it just keeps getting better and better. Truthfully it’s the only Airto record I like. I can’t stand Dafos, and most of the other Airto titles leave me cold.

I think a lot of the credit for the brilliance of this album has to go to the Fattoruso brothers, who play keyboards, drums, and take part in the large vocal groupings that sing along with Airto.

At times this record really sounds like what it is: a bunch of guys in a big room beating the hell out of their drums and singing at the the top of their lungs. You gotta give RVG credit for capturing so much of that energy on tape and transferring that energy onto a slab of vinyl. (Of course this assumes that the record in question actually does have the energy of the best copies. It’s also hard to know who or what is to blame when it doesn’t, since even the good stampers sound mediocre most of the time. Bad vinyl, worn out stampers, poor pressing cycle, it could be practically anything.)

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Neil Young – Zuma

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • Boasting two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, this copy of Neil’s amazingly well recorded 1975 masterpiece is guaranteed to floor audiophiles and Neil Young fans alike – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Zuma captures a kind of garage band purity that makes practically any other studio album you own sound processed and desiccated in comparison
  • For a hard-rockin’ Neil Young album with Demo Disc quality sound, you’ll have a hard time finding a better choice than a Hot Stamper pressing of Zuma
  • A Must Own Top 100 Title – just drop the needle on “Danger Bird” or “Cortez the Killer” to have your mind blown!

Can any one artist lay claim to two of the best sounding rock albums ever made? Neil Young can!

After the Gold Rush and Zuma are Demo Discs and super discs of the highest order, right up there with Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat, the other two albums by a single artist that deserve to be placed on that rarified plane.

Part of Zuma’s attraction is that it has exceptionally unprocessed sound that seems to have been recorded “live in the studio.”

The fact that Gold Rush and Zuma both involve Neil Young is doubtless not an accident. I would be very surprised to learn that he was not intimately involved with every aspect of the recording of both Masterpieces, from the miking to the final mix and every step in between.

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Gilbert and Sullivan – Overtures / Ward

More Recordings in Living Stereo

  • You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this vintage Shaded Dog pressing of Gilbert and Sullivan’s music
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Rich and sweet Living Stereo sound from the first note to the last – who can resist these sublime orchestral arrangements?
  • The Overtures are played to perfection – for music and sound, this one is hard to fault, a Top Title in every way and one that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection
  • This pressing is clearly a Demo Disc for orchestral size and space

The hall is HUGE: spacious and open as any you will hear, but not at the expense of richness or fullness. The orchestra is solid and full-bodied, yet the woodwinds and flutes soar above the other sections, so breathy and clear.

How did the Decca (recording) and RCA (mastering) engineers succeed so brilliantly where so many others have failed, failed right up to this very day?

Who knows? It’s still a mystery that has yet to be explained, to our satisfaction anyway.

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Flack / Hathaway – Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway

More of the Music of Roberta Flack

  • Boasting two STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides or close to them, we guarantee you’ve never heard Roberta and Donny’s 1972 collaboration sound remotely as good as it does on this vintage copy
  • There’s Tubey Magic, sweetness and spaciousness all over this recording
  • One of our favorite duet albums, Flack and the woefully underrated Soul Man Donny Hathaway are in top form here
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 stars: “A duet classic, and perhaps the most popular album Roberta Flack made. ‘Where Is the Love’ dominated urban contemporary radio for almost the entire year, while ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ was just as influential…”

These soulful duets sound wonderful. The best sides are big, bold, open and transparent with a huge three-dimensional soundfield, strong presence, good rhythmic energy, and wonderfully dynamic leads and choruses. (more…)

The Pentangle – Self-Titled

More British Folk Rock

  • The Pentangle’s Masterpiece returns to the site for the first time in years, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this early UK Transatlantic pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The unprocessed quality found throughout the album has its audiophile credentials fully in order, especially in the area of guitar harmonics, as well as drums that sound like real drums actually sound
  • The true foundation of the music is provided by two legendary guitar heavyweights, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, with Jacqui McShee’s almost unbearably sweet vocals soaring above them
  • This is one of the Holy Grail titles we have been trying to find on Transatlantic UK vinyl in clean condition for more than a decade, with almost nothing to show for our efforts until now
  • We can find Pentangling — they made a lot of those and for a compilation they sound great on the best pressings
  • But this record is in an entirely different league altogether — I suspect it will be many years before we can do it again
  • “It is one of the best albums one will ever hear, and as the liner notes say, ‘Play this record to those you love.'” – Rolling Stone

This is an honest-to-goodness Demo Disc. When for a (thankfully) brief time back in the 70s I was selling audio equipment, the song “Pentangling” was a favorite demo cut to play in the store. The sound of the string bass and snare drum are amazingly natural; I don’t know of any other pop album from the era that presents the vibrant timbre of those two instruments better.

This record easily qualifies for our Top 100 List, it’s that good (but unfortunately too rare to make the cut).

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The Mahavishnu Orchestra – Birds of Fire

More of the Music of The Mahavishnu Orchestra

  • This original UK import copy boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout – it’s so smooth and natural you can turn up your volume pretty much as loud as you like and really let it blast
  • If you only own one Jazz Fusion album, you could hardly do better than Birds of Fire — It’s hard to think of another record that rocks as hard, and it’s not even a real rock record!
  • These early British pressings are very hard to find with quiet vinyl, and a lot of the ones that come from overseas are not in the condition advertised, making this a title that shows up on the site a great deal less often than we think it should
  • 5 stars on AllMusic and clearly one of the All Time Greats in the world of Jazz/Rock, as well as the band’s Masterpiece

This is the band at the peak of their powers and, no pun intended, on fire. This may be jazz, but it’s jazz that wants to rock. And on this copy, it rocks like you will not believe. The louder you play it the better it sounds.

Birds of Fire is one of the top two or three Jazz/Rock Fusion Albums of All Time. In my experience, few recordings within this genre can begin to compete with the dynamics and energy of the best pressings of the album — if you have the big dynamic system for it.

We find ourselves playing albums like Houses of the Holy and Zep II and Dark Side of the Moon for hour upon hour, with dozens of copies to get through, and we do it on a regular basis. If anybody knows “big rock sound,” it’s us. But can we really say that those albums rock any harder than this one? Birds of Fire is to Jazz what Zep II is to Rock — the ultimate statement by a band at the absolute top of their game.

The Best Copies

The main problem with this record is a lack of midrange presence. If the keyboards, drums, and guitars are not right in front of you,, your copy does not have all the presence it should. On the best copies, the musicians are in the room with you. We know this for a fact because we heard the copies that could present them that way, and we heard it more than once.

Which, of course, gets to the reason shootouts are the only real way to learn about records. The best copies will show you qualities in the sound you had no way of knowing were possible. Without the freakishly good pressings, you run into by chance in a shootout you have no way to know how high is up. On this record up is very high indeed.

Birds of Fire as a recording is not about depth or soundstage or ambience. It’s about immediacy, plain and simple. All the lead instruments positively jump out of the speakers — if you are lucky enough to be playing the right pressing. This is precisely what we want our best Hot Stampers to do. The better they do it, the higher their grade.

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Lee Morgan / The Sidewinder

More of the Music of Lee Morgan

  • Incredible sound throughout this 60s Blue Note pressing, with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • It took us about two years to get this shootout going, but the best copies we played were so impressive that they made all the time and money it took to pull it off worth the effort – what a record!
  • These sides are rich and full, from the extended top end all the way down to the deepest bass — thanks RVG!
  • The trumpet on this album is amazing — tonally correct with wonderful leading edge transients
  • Both musically and sonically, this is Blue Note at its best
  • 5 stars: “Carried by its almost impossibly infectious eponymous opening track, The Sidewinder helped foreshadow the sounds of boogaloo and soul-jazz with its healthy R&B influence and Latin tinge. While the rest of the album retreats to a more conventional hard bop sound, Morgan’s compositions are forward-thinking and universally solid…”

When we dropped the needle on this one, we immediately stopped listening critically and just began enjoying the album. That’s the sign of an exceptional copy — the sound gets out of the way and the music becomes the point.

There’s life and presence on these sides the likes of which you almost never hear on any jazz record.

The lineup here is fantastic, with Joe Henderson on tenor sax, Billy Higgins on drums, Barry Harris on piano and Bob Cranshaw on bass. (more…)

Cannonball Adderley / Somethin’ Else

More of the Music of Cannonball Adderley

  • A triumph for Rudy Van Gelder, a Top Blue Note title, and as much a showcase for Miles Davis as it is for Cannonball Adderley
  • The best sides of this album had as much energy, presence, dynamics and three-dimensional studio space as any jazz recording we have ever played
  • 5 stars: “Both horn players are at their peak of lyrical invention, crafting gorgeous, flowing blues lines.”
  • “…signs of Milesian influence are the calm, conversational delivery of the title track and the newfound lyricism in Adderley’s playing that followed from his nightly experience at the trumpeter’s side.”

The music here is simply amazing, but the good news for us audiophiles is that it’s also one of the Best Sounding Blue Note Albums we know of, if not The Best.

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