What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol. XIII)
Posted by: Richard Dane on 01 January 2017
2017 has arrived today, so time to start this thread afresh.
Last year's thread can be found here;
Ken Boothe - Inna de Yard.
Roots reggae and lovers rock from 69 year old Ken.
As above, Tidalising another Mojo recommendation, and it's quite sublime .......... let's hear it for the old guys! 
Thought I'd look in a box of a few LPs my dad owned - for some reason I've never sorted them in to my run notwithstanding he died many years back. Having played a re-release of another DSB album on CD a while back, I wasn't sure what to expect. Just a bit of fun and I must confess a liking for DSB due to the power and energy in her voice.
The CD was over-bright and horrid to my ears - even though it's supposed to have been remastered and wasn't an el-cheapo re-issue. Dame Shirley was screaming from the speakers - literally. Could an elderly original issue vinyl pressing on the UA label from c.1975 be better (i.e. not the MfP version!), albeit of a different set of songs to the CD I played - oh yes! Much better. The vocal is so much better mixed in, retains its power but isn't over-powering or sibilant.
Another case of legacy vinyl being so much better from a presentational perspective. Needs a clean though - and is in surprisingly good fettle having been played originally on an Ultra stereo of similar vintage which, I suspect, had a stylus akin to a cold chisel.
There appears to be a DSB vinyl re-release in the works (inc. Nelson Riddle arrangements) and I'm now wondering what this might be like.
naim_nymph posted:
Many times, this is the backing band for James Taylor. A great ensemble.
Some sublime jazz piano to brighten up a dull day.
Jimi Hendrix - Blues.
Returning to yesterday's Hendrix fest with this one, which I've always believed shows the true heart and soul of the man.
The album title says it all.
Sadly missed, still. 
Starting the morning with Arrau on vinyl. I had to yell at the LP-12 to make it start spinning.
Majestic playing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE6JnL35MYY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU02oX7W-Io
Hungryhalibut posted:ewemon posted:Hungryhalibut posted:Blues is not really my thing, but we saw this guy recently and loved it. He played in a house in Emsworth, and there were only 40 tickets available. We ended up sitting right in front of him, literally four feet from him. It was certainly involving.
One of my favourite acoustic blues players. SQ of his albums are usually excellent.
So he is well known on the blues circuit then. The guy who booked him suggested I’d like the music. Doug is a really nice man - you can’t not have a chat when your feet are virtually touching his while he’s playing.
He's been on the go since the early 80's. Try some of his Audioquest discs especially You Can't Take My Blues
Hungryhalibut posted:ewemon posted:Hungryhalibut posted:Blues is not really my thing, but we saw this guy recently and loved it. He played in a house in Emsworth, and there were only 40 tickets available. We ended up sitting right in front of him, literally four feet from him. It was certainly involving.
One of my favourite acoustic blues players. SQ of his albums are usually excellent.
So he is well known on the blues circuit then. The guy who booked him suggested I’d like the music. Doug is a really nice man - you can’t not have a chat when your feet are virtually touching his while he’s playing.
He's been on the go since the early 80's. Try some of his Audioquest discs especially You Can't Take My Blues
Now Playing.........
Jakob Bro - Balladering
Jakob Bro (guitar), Bill Frisell (guitar), Lee Konitz (alto saxophone), Ben Street (bass), and Paul Motian (drums)
This is one fantastic album!
Streaming from NAS......
Review by Jakob Backgard from All About Jazz found here:
More than anything, Bro could be termed "a listening musician." He creates his poetic compositions as open structures that invite interpretation. It is Bro's special gift that he is able to make music both melodically enchanting and not locked in predefined patterns.
The opener, "Weightless," is an example of how a simple melodic guitar figure is expanded and transcended into a translucent texture of sounds, with drummer
1931 - 2011
drums
b.1951
guitar
On "Evening Song," legendary saxophonist
b.1927
sax, alto
bass
Balladeering is a true artwork, which brings out the best in the Participants; Konitz has not played better in some time. The album, however, is not about individual brilliance, but rather a proof of jazz as a listening art form that invites the unexpected and transcends egos. Such beauty is only possible if the compositions do not limit the potential of the music. Here, all possibilities are kept open and the result is a music that is infinitely rich in its democratic beauty.
A note: Balladeering is available both as a single CD release and as a deluxe box, which features the album in both CD and vinyl versions and adds Blicher's fascinating documentary about the making of the album, Weightless: A Recording Session with Jakob Bro.
What could be better on an autumnal afternoon than the debut album from rock's First Lady of Leather? UK first press vinyl.
(2001)
On 2017 reissue vinyl. First play for this rather sterile live album. I have the original CD and vinyl, and it has been rarely played over the past 29 years, with good reason - this is an awful period in the band's history. Can't see this reissue - which was purchased for completeness' sake - changing that. Good version of One Of These Days, though.
(2008)
I like to drag British Sea Power out now and again. This another of their alternative style indie rock that albums comes together very well. They were a good band to see live but I never managed to make it.
Thomas Demenga - "Cello Works" ECM New Series, music of Bach and Zimmerman, along with the cello pieces there is also a violin sonata.
Kevin-W posted:On 2017 reissue vinyl. First play for this rather sterile live album. I have the original CD and vinyl, and it has been rarely played over the past 29 years, with good reason - this is an awful period in the band's history. Can't see this reissue - which was purchased for completeness' sake - changing that. Good version of One Of These Days, though.
Great cover though K 
(1973)
I felt the urge for a Curved Air / Sonja Kristina fix, their fourth album will do but apart from the first two tracks it's not up to the quality of their earlier albums.
Time to let the Led out. Starting with a favourite, Houses of the Holy.
Ours is windy and cold, 2 C degrees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXv32tJzou4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7GP90vzl6k
(1971)
This is much more like it, unfortunately not much after this and their third album hit the spot.
Beethoven - Liszt: Evgenia Rubinova (piano)
An Die Ferne Geliebte (To the distant beloved)
This is a wonderful disc that has not left my CD player very often this week. It is pianists album by one of my many favourite pianists. By this I mean that Evgenia Rubinova is not a 'commercial' recording artist but a musician who really only cares about the music. The first sign of this comes from her program which consists of mostly of rarely heard / recorded works of Beethoven. Secondly, you will never hear an ugly note come out of her hands. Her musicality, imagination, voicing and nuance is really incredible.
An Die Ferne Geliebte is really the precursor to romanticism (Schubert, Schumann, Brahms etc. ?). It is a song cycle of six short pieces each interwoven to the next and where the ending basically quotes the very start. The music reflects the very title which is full of yearning and longing.
One cannot understand the Classical Period without having a desire to engage in variations. The 12 Variations on a Russian Dance from Wranitsky's Ballet "Das Waldmädchen" in A Major WoO 71 is a rarely heard set that forms a good example under the fingers of Rubinova. The same theme was similarly used by Haydn, Cimarosa, Glinka, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.
