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Reviews of Attainable Hi-Fi & Home-Theater Equipment

Most Popular Featured Releases

Details: Written by: Hans Wetzel; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 November 2012

Dr. Chesky's . . . Chesky Records JD355
Format: CD

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The name Chesky should be familiar to audiophiles. Not only is David Chesky an accomplished musician and Grammy-nominated composer, he is also a record producer, and the cofounder of Chesky Records and the online high-resolution music store HDtracks.com.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 November 2012

Father's Children Vocalion CDSML 8488
Format: CD

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British fans of soul music are determinedly devoted to music that American record labels often let go out of print, and dogged in their rediscoveries of obscure musicians whom even Americans didn't support the first time around. And subgenres of British soul fandom abound. The rare groove scene began in the early 1980s with British DJ Norman Jay, and soon spread to the US. Soul fans in both countries championed and searched for records by little-known '70s funk bands that got chewed up in the major-label grinder. The operative word is rare -- the more obscure the band or singer, the better.

Details: Written by: Hans Wetzel; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 October 2012

Coexist XL/Young Turks YT 080CD
Format: CD

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Preferring to download singles in lieu of full albums, the digital generation’s greatest shortcoming may be its lack of patience, a characteristic born of the instantaneous gratification afforded by broadband Internet. This has led to a great deal of popular modern music being terrible: abject garbage that relies on a tried-and-true formula of Pro Tools software, a particular BPM tool, and a catchy harmony. And the word lyrics hardly seems an appropriate description for much of the verbal drivel that blasts from pop and hip-hop radio stations.

Read more: The xx: "Coexist"

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 October 2012

Look Out Now! Racecarlotta RACE 003
Format: CD

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Steve Gadd’s formidable chops and unerring sense of time have made him a first-call session drummer since the 1970s. For his new band, the Gaddabouts, he enlisted the services of three other musicians with impressive credentials. Andy Fairweather Low has played with Eric Clapton and Roger Waters, among others, and Pino Palladino, who also toured with Clapton (as did Gadd), was Pete Townshend and Roger Daltry’s first choice for the Who’s bass spot when John Entwistle died.

Details: Written by: Shannon Holliday; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 September 2012

Easy Star All-Stars Easy Star ES-1034
Format: CD

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For nearly a decade, the Easy Star All-Stars have been carving a creative niche for themselves, revisioning classic albums by Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and the Beatles into dubbed-out tributes redone with reggae flair. Taking on the daunting task of paying proper respect to some of the greatest albums of all time, the group’s past work includes Dub Side of the Moon (2003), Radiodread (2006), and Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band (2009). With their latest effort, Easy Star’s Thrillah, the group tackles the best-selling album of all time: Michael Jackson’s masterpiece, Thriller.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 August 2012

The Mothership Returns Eagle ER202572
Format: CD, DVD

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Return to Forever, the jazz-rock fusion group Chick Corea established in 1972, has been through several personnel changes over the last 40 years, but its most popular lineup featured Corea on various keyboards, Al Di Meola on guitar, Stanley Clarke on bass, and Lenny White on drums. That group folded in 1976, but reunited in 2008 for a tour and a live two-CD set, Returns. In 2011, Corea, Clarke, and White formed what they’re calling Return to Forever IV, with guitarist Frank Gambale and the venerable French jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. The Mothership Returns is a three-disc set (two CDs, one DVD) culled from the group’s 2011 tour.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 July 2012

Mike Stern Heads Up HUI-33186-02
Format: CD

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Jazz guitarist Mike Stern is probably known best for his stints with Miles Davis in the 1980s, but he’s also played with Blood, Sweat & Tears, Billy Cobham, Jaco Pastorius, and Michael Brecker. That’s a typical résumé for a musician who didn’t immediately jump into leadership or stardom, and it’s the sort of background that breeds versatility. Stern’s new disc, All Over the Place, is his 15th, and the title might be a nod to the variety of compositions and settings Stern has given himself to stretch out in. He’s brought in a broad spectrum of jazz musicians to help develop the 11 compositions here, all by Stern, and each brings a key element to one or more of the tunes. The surprise is that a disc made up of so many combinations of musicians and styles hangs together so consistently.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 June 2012

The Best of Sam Cooke Sony Music/Analogue Productions CAPP 2625 SA
Format: Hybrid SACD

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Sam Cooke is a significant figure in American culture and music: a singer whose effortlessly smooth and beautiful voice had just enough edge in it to help introduce soul music to white American kids in the late 1950s and on into the ’60s. His posthumously released single "A Change Is Gonna Come," which hit No.31 in 1965, was an early anthem of the civil rights movement, and Cooke himself came to embody the hopes, aspirations, and tragedies of African-American life. He had a profound influence on such later soul singers as Solomon Burke and Otis Redding, as well as on rock singers. Van Morrison, Rod Stewart, Cat Stevens, and the Band covered his songs, and Bruce Springsteen’s "Mary’s Place" is an homage to Cooke’s "Meet Me at Mary’s Place."

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 May 2012

Radio Music Society Heads Up HUI 33626-00
Format: CD

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Esperanza Spalding’s command of multiple musical idioms is evident in "Radio Song," the first track of her new disc, Radio Music Society. She injects a hint of jazz vocalise after a couple of verses of nicely developed funk inspired by Earth, Wind & Fire. It’s not only that she’s brash enough to throw jazz into the mix, it’s also the ease with which she makes the transition -- you hardly notice until it’s there. Radio Music Society is more groove-heavy than Spalding’s three previous discs, and jazz purists will probably see it as a bid for commercial success. But her inspirations are the sophisticated soul of Stevie Wonder and EW&F, and jazz fans should find her harmonic flights beautiful and daring.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 April 2012

Ahmad Jamal Jazz Village SP9570001
Format: CD

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I lost count of the number of albums listed in the discography on Ahmad Jamal’s website, but his newest, Blue Moon: The New York Session, brings his recordings as leader to over 50. Jamal will be 82 in July, and he’s still bursting with ideas. Early in his career he was unfairly accused of commercialism, a charge that Miles Davis, for one, dismissed out of hand. Jamal’s use of space and economy of notes was a strong influence on Davis, who encouraged Red Garland, the pianist in his 1950s quintet, to play like Jamal.