- This vintage pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in years) boasts INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
- Both of these sides are rich and full with plenty of space around all of the instruments, and exceptionally breathy and present vocals
- Here’s the Midrange Magic that’s missing from the reissues and whatever 180g pressing has been made from the tapes (or, to be clear, a modern digital master copied from who-knows-what-tapes)
- Engineering by Phil Ramone, who went on to win the Grammy the following year for Still Crazy After All These Years
- “Her graceful and affecting versions of Jimmy Webb’s ‘The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress’ and Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Send in the Clowns’ (as well as her own ‘Houses’) are lovely and inspired…”
TAS List Good
Herrmann – The Mysterious Film World of Bernard Herrmann
More of the Music of Bernard Herrmann
- This vintage pressing of the National Phil’s performance of selections from three of Herrmann’s classic “phantasmagorical” film scores boasts solid Double Plus (A++) grades from first note to last
- A superb recording with a huge three-dimensional stage, open, clear, extended up top and down low — the sound on this pressing is nothing short of amazing
- 4 stars: “The sound glitters, some of the brightest and richest audio of its period (attested to by the album’s being part of Decca/London Phase 4 Stereo), and the performances have a dignity and intensity that makes the music — drawn from the key parts of Herrmann’s scores for the Ray Harryhausen-created fantasy films The Three Worlds of Gulliver, Mysterious Island, and Jason and the Argonauts — seem even more serious and profound than it originally did.”
- If like us you’re a fan of blockbuster orchestral recordings, this is a killer album from 1975 that belongs in your collection.
Side one boasts some wonderful material from Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts. Who else but Herrmann could have orchestrated such phantasmagorical goings on?
The Three Worlds Of Gulliver Suite takes up all of side two. The complete score from which the suite is taken can be found on the original Herrmann album The Three Worlds of Gulliver, a long-time and extremely rare member of the TAS Super Disc List.
This vintage London Phase 4 Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for —this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds. (more…)
Bloomfield-Kooper-Stills – Super Session (on 360)
More of the Music of Al Kooper
More of the Music of Stephen Stills
- With solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from top to bottom, this 360 Label pressing will be very hard to beat
- Engineered by Roy Halee, the man behind one of the best sounding rock records of all time (the self-titled Blood, Sweat and Tears album), the oh-so-analog sonics here are especially dynamic and spacious (particularly on side one)
- Our most recent shootout was a tough one: we had six clean 360 pressings, but only two copies earned White Hot grades and one of them was too noisy to sell
- Even worse, none of our Supers earned even two pluses on both sides, so those of you looking for anything better than what we’re offering here are going to be as disappointed as we are
- When we talk about some records being hard to find with top quality sound and audiophile playing surfaces, this is the kind of record we have in mind!
- For fans of BS&T’s first album (and everybody else), Super Session is a Must Own
- “Season of the Witch” is quite good here on this original Stereo 360 pressing
- 4 1/2 stars: “This is one of those albums that seems to get better with age… This is a super session indeed.”
- If you’re a fan of any or all of these guys, this vintage pressing of their 1968 classic belongs in your collection
Various Artists – Paris 1917-1938 / Dorati
More Music Conducted by Antal Dorati
- Boasting two INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this original Maroon Label pressing of these delightful orchestral works is certainly as good a copy as we have ever heard
- 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, and the crazy thing is we bought this one sealed, unplayed, so don’t expect to find one quieter than this, they didn’t know how to make them any quieter
- The sound is big and open, and like so many Mercury recordings with the London Symphony, it’s rich and full-bodied, not thin and nasally as is so often the case with their domestically recorded releases
- In many ways this album would certainly serve quite well as an audiophile Demo Disc – the timbre of the wide array of instruments used is right on the money
- For those who haven’t been to our Skeptical Audiophile blog, this is a good example of a record which has the same stampers on every copy we played, but only one sounded the way this one does
- The good stampers and the bad stampers are the same stampers, more evidence that the only way to find a pressing this good is to have a pile of cleaned copies and play them one at a time
- This record was previously on the TAS Super Disc list but has since been dropped, which is only fitting since the current crop of nitwits running the show there has been watering the list down with one crappy title after another — many on Heavy Vinyl — since HP passed in 2014
Blondie – Parallel Lines
More of the Music of Blondie
- With KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other version of Blondie’s One True Masterpiece you’ve heard – fairly quiet vinyl too
- The powerful sound of this Power Pop Classic really comes through here – and that’s not a claim you can make about very many copies
- There’s not a bad song to be found on the album, and lots of great ones: “One Way Or Another,” “Heart Of Glass (here in an extended version),” “Hanging On The Telephone,” etc.
- 5 stars: “Blondie’s best album,” which is actually a bit of an understatement – it’s by far their best album
- More reviews and commentaries for Blondie’s brilliant Parallel Lines
- If you’re a Blondie fan, this breakthrough album from 1978 is a Must Own
All the Blondie magic you could ever want is in these grooves. The truly powerful sound of this Power Pop Classic really comes through on this bad boy — and that’s simply not a claim you could make about too many copies out there in record land, which tend to be flat, opaque and compressed. Not so here. This one just plain rocks.
Can this kind of music get any better? This album is a Masterpiece of Pure Pop, ranking right up there with The Cars’ first album. I can’t think of many albums from the era with the perfect blend of writing, production and musicianship under the guidance of producer Mike Chapman (The Knack) Blondie achieved with Parallel Lines.
As expected, if you clean and play enough copies of a standard domestic major label album such as Parallel Lines eventually you will stumble upon The One, and boy did we ever. The very best copies in our recent shootout were off the charts with presence, breathy vocals, and punchy drums. On top of that they were positively swimming in studio ambience, with every instrument occupying its own space in the mix and surrounded by air.
Falla – Three Cornered Hat / Ansermet
More of the Music of Manuel de Falla
- An early London pressing of Falla’s orchestral spectacular with stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from start to finish, just shy of our Shootout Winner – this copy is a true Demo Disc in the world of vintage classical vinyl
- 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
- When you play the best pressings of this title it’s almost hard to believe how well recorded it is – even Billboard in 1961 noted the brilliant sound jumped from their speakers
- “Anyone interested in theatrical music will know that within a few months the work had earned the category of a ‘classic’ and since then has been placed in the annals of great ballets such as Petrushka and Schéhérazade.”
- If you’re a fan of delightful orchestral showpieces such as these, Decca’s wonderful recording from 1961 belongs in your collection
- There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.
This is High Fidelity Audiophile Gold, with bells, drums, voices, trumpets, strings, woodwinds and more, all sounding so real it will take your breath away. The Golden Age tapes have clearly been mastered brilliantly onto this vintage London vinyl.
No doubt you have run into something like this in our classical listings:
This London is energetic, dynamic, spacious, transparent, rich and sweet. James Walker was the producer, Roy Wallace the engineer for these sessions from 1961 in Geneva’s glorious Victoria Hall. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording.
We were impressed with the fact that this pressing excelled in so many areas of reproduction. The illusion of disappearing speakers is one of the more attractive aspects of the sound here, allowing the listener to inhabit the space of the concert hall in an especially engrossing way.
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Frank Zappa – Waka/Jawaka
More of the Music of Frank Zappa
- This vintage copy was doing just about everything right, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both of these TAS-approved sides – fairly QUIET vinyl too
- It took whomever is running the TAS Super Disc list about twenty years to catch up to us, but we’re glad they did – this is one of the most amazing sounding records we have the privilege to play, even if it does take us three years to get a shootout going
- A Top 100 title, and deservedly so – the sound is big, rich, punchy, lively, clear and above all, analog (particularly on side one)
- This copy will show you the size and power of a big band, Frank Zappa style (also particularly on side one) – there is (almost*) nothing like it
- Rolling Stone raved that this Jazz Rock Fusion album contains “…some of the best material he’s done in years” and we could not agree more
(*Other than The Grand Wazoo, which can have sound every bit as good but is not the equal of Waka/Jawaka musically.)
What an incredible album. I know of no other like it. It’s not big band, it’s not rock, it’s not jazz, it’s a unique amalgamation of all three with an overlay of some of Zappa’s idiosyncratic compositional predilections (say that three times fast) thrown in for good measure.
In our opinion it’s nothing less than Zappa’s masterpiece, the summation of his talents, and a record that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection. (We say that about a lot of records audiophiles don’t know well, but we’ve been doing it for most of our 30+ years in this business and don’t see much reason to stop now.)
Most copies, especially the WB brown label reissues, are dull and smeary with little in the way of top end extension, failing pretty miserably at getting this music to come to life.
Not long ago we discovered the secret to separating the men from the boys on side one. On the lively, punchy, dynamic copies — which are of course the best ones — you can follow the drumming at the beginning of “Big Swifty” note for note: every beat, every kick of the kick drum, every fill, every roll — it’s all there to be heard and appreciated. If that track on this copy doesn’t make you a huge fan of Aynsley Dunbar, I can’t imagine what would. The guy had a gift.
Miles Davis – Miles In The Sky
More of the Music of Miles Davis
- Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, this original Stereo 360 pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Miles In The Sky you’ve heard
- Superb sound courtesy of Arthur Kendy’s and Frank Laico’s engineering at the famed Columbia Studio B in NYC
- Miles here is backed by his classic 60s All Star crew – Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter & Tony Williams
- “…Miles Davis explicitly pushed his second great quintet away from conventional jazz, pushing them toward the jazz-rock hybrid that would later become known as fusion… intriguing music…”
We just finished a big shootout for this superb Miles Davis album and this copy was dramatically better sounding than most others we played. Both sides have excellent bass, correct sounding brass, wonderful transparency and loads of Tubey Magic.
Many copies didn’t have the kind of transparency or openness that we heard here, which made it harder to appreciate the contributions of the different players. This one puts plenty of separation between the various instruments, so you can make sense of what each of these heavy-hitters adds to the mix. You will have a very hard time finding a copy out in the bins that sounds as good as this one!
David Bowie – Let’s Dance
More of the Music of David Bowie
- With two excellent Double Plus (A++) sides, this vintage pressing can rock with the best of them – fairly quiet vinyl too
- It’s all here: huge amounts of solid bass, clear guitar transients, breathy, natural vocals, and jump out of the speakers presence and energy
- A real Demo Disc on the right system – “Modern Love,” “China Girl” and the title track are knockouts when you play them good and loud
- On a Hot Stamper pressing that sounds as good as this one does, Omar Hakim’s drumming will rock your world like nothing you have heard
- Top 100, of course – Let’s Dance is one of the best sounding Bowie albums ever recorded – this superb pressing is proof
- One of the best releases of 1983, although that may not be saying much, since by 1983 popular music was definitely headed downhill — Bowie himself would never again release an album as good as Let’s Dance
Bowie is without question one of the all time great frontmen and producers. This is his last good album and a Must Own for audiophiles, especially if you have big dynamic speakers. Like we say, with this one you are in for a treat.
Hearing a top copy of Let’s Dance is truly a special experience; the damn thing is amazingly well recorded, especially considering it came along well after the Golden Age of Rock Recording (the ’60s and ’70s, don’t you know). The sound is analog at its best; rich, full and super-punchy.
I have never heard a CD in my life with this kind of Tubey Magical richness and sweetness. That medium never does justice to the sound of recordings like this one, in my experience anyway. People who exclusively play CDs have forgotten what that sound is; that’s why they can happily live without it. I sure can’t. At present, this sound is exclusively the domain of analog and likely to remain so well into the future.
In addition, the musicianship is Top Notch and then some. Omar Hakim’s drumming is powerful, energetic, and performed with military precision. The guy is out of his mind on this album.
The combination of Nile Rodgers and the Legendary Stevie Ray Vaughn on guitar makes for a tasty, intricate mix of subtle rhythm work and searing leads. Or is that soaring leads? Hey, on this album it’s both.
If you’re a fan of big drums in a big room, this is the album for you.
Kenny Burrell – Midnight Blue (2024)
More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar
- Midnight Blue is back on the site for the first time in years, here with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides of this vintage 60s pressing – just shy of our Shootout Winner
- One of our All Time Favorite Blue Note albums for music and sound – is there a better bluesy jazz guitar album?
- 5 stars on AMG – if there were a Top 100 Jazz List on our site, Midnight Blue would be right up at the top of it
- It’s taken us at least five years to get this shootout going, and none of the top copies we managed to get hold of did not have condition issues of some kind, so good luck finding one of these on your own, you are going to need it
- Jazz Improv Magazine puts the album among its Top Five recommended recordings for Burrell, indicating that “[i]f you need to know ‘the Blue Note sound,’ here it is.”
- Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how excellent sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting swooshes and just be swept away by the music
Midnight Blue is our favorite Kenny Burrell album of all time, at least in part because it’s one of the All Time Best Sounding Blue Notes.
If you already own a copy of Midnight Blue and you don’t consider it one of the best sounding jazz guitar records in your collection, then you surely don’t have a copy that sounds the way this one does! In other words, you don’t know what you’re missing. (And if you own the Classic Records release, or any other Heavy Vinyl pressing from the modern era, then you really don’t know what you are missing.)
Top 100 Jazz?
Don’t think this is just another 60s jazz guitar album. With Stanley Turrentine on sax and Ray Baretto on congas, this music will move you like practically no other. When Turrentine (a shockingly underrated player) rips into his first big solo, you’ll swear he’s right there in the room with you.
And if you do have one of our better Hot Stamper copies and it still isn’t the best sounding jazz guitar album in your collection, then you have one helluva jazz collection. Drop us a line and tell us what record you like the sound of better than Midnight Blue. We’re at a loss to think of what it could possibly be.