Musical Release – January, February, 2018

I love gear, music and people.

I don’t like the prospect of growing old. I know it is an inevitability, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept it without reservation. Over the years I have attended many a hi-fi show as both attendee and journalist and participated in more hi-fi related online groups than I’m even going to make an effort at counting.

Common threads running across the two:

1. ‘They don’t music like they used to’
2. ‘What are these kids on? How can they…’

These two threads inevitably lead to more online and face to face whining than is necessary in one’s life, and the rise of what I refer to as audiophile music. I italicize the term because am of the mind that preceding adjective might very well reduce the noun it modifies to a soulless term. Granted, exhibitors demonstrating their gear at show are going to want to play tried and true music to show off their wares. These tracks are familiar to most if not all show attendees, but again it doesn’t mean I have to fall in line. This is why I bring my own music to shows on a USB storage device and proceed to put demonstration gear through a rigorous listening session.

Let’s get something straight once and for all. When systems/gear are selected as best in show, it can only be relative to other gear on display in other rooms because I have yet to experience a show where the rooms do not resemble an acoustical minefield, with some seriously looking the part. So, if I’m going to have suffer the … why not do so with music which I am so familiar, but not so overwhelmingly that I am lulled into a dream state, thus losing the plot, the reason for being.

At the age of 54, I’m still one of the younger fellows at hi-fi shows and get-togethers. I don’t want to be Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace who yells at the neighborhood kids for making noise and trampling his flower beds, so I have embarked on this project to listen to as much music across a wide array of genres released in calendar year 2018 and aggregate/compile those albums which not only intrigued me but whose sonic quality made me appreciate my stereo systems all over again.

Below are the monthlies for January and February 2018. I want for you all to enjoy the experience and not just the music – as a matter of fact I’d like for you all to perform some surgery and excise the phrase enjoy the music from your collective conscious. The three words taken together represent coded language, short-hand for some grander concept.

January 2018

• Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Wrong Creatures
• Moon Taxi – Let the Record Play
• Riccardo Muti & Wiener Philharmoniker – 2018 Neujahrs Konzert (New Year’s Concert)
• John Surman, Nelson Ayres, Rob Waring – Invisible Threads,
• Sarah Lancman – A Contretemps
• Lilly Martin – Minetta
• Venetian Snares (Aaron Funk) – She Began To Cry Tears of-Blood Which Became Little
Brick Houses When They Hit the Ground,
• Django Django – Marble Skies
• Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa – Black Coffee
• Jamison Ross – All for One
• Nils Frahm – All Melody
• Mimicking Birds – Layers of Us
• Tinsley Ellis – Winning Hand
• Glen Hansard – Between Two Shores
• First Aid Kit – Ruins
• Bahamas – Earthtones
• Typhoon – Offerings
• Ty Segall – Freedom’s Goblin
• Mamozets – Knowing What You Know Now
• тпсб – Sekundenschlaf
• John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble – All Can Work
• Tune-Yards, I Can Feel You Creep into My Private Life
• Nightmares on Wax – Shape the Future

February 2018

• Wayne Escoffery – Vortex
• Bernard Allison – Let It Go
• Julian Lage- Modern Lore
• Sophie Alour – Time for Love
• Smokefish – Doomed City
• Johann Johansson – Mercy
• No Age – Snares Like a Haircut
• Curtis Salgado & Alan Hager – Rough Cut
• Rhye – Blood
• Rae Morris – Someone Out There
• Pearl Charles – Sleepless Dreamer
• Kyle Craft – Full Circle Nightmare
• Hookworms – Microshift
• Peter Karp – Blue Flame
• Thomas Stronen & Time Is A Blind Guide – Lucus
• Lisa Batiashvili – Visions of Prokofiev
• Till Bronner & Dieter Ilg – Nightfall
• Television Personalities – Beautiful Despair
• Melody Gardot – Live in Europe
• Jerusalem Quartet – Dvorak: String Quintet; String Sextet
• Brandi Carlile – By the Way, I Forgive You
• Belle & Sebastian – How to Solve Our Human Problems