(Review Explosion is a recurring AnalogPlanet feature covering recent releases for which we either don’t have sufficient time to fully explore, or that are not worthy of it. Curated by AnalogPlanet contributing editor Malachi Lui, Review Explosion will focus on the previous few months’ new releases as well as archival titles and reissues.)
The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is severe and hits the vinyl industry hard with a decreasing demand, closed stores, limited production, and transport bans. However, a quick survey amongst Vinyl Alliance members shows the commitment and resilience of the industry.
Charles Lloyd pointed me towards the Chico Hamilton album A Different Journey (Reprise RS R9-6078) on which he plays, is musical director and wrote all of the tunes. I'd never heard of it or even seen it, so I went on DISCOGS and found a copy.
The Coronavirus got singer-songwriter and Fountains of Wayne co-founder Adam Schlesinger on Wednesday. He was 52. That wasn't supposed to happen to someone so young. He had "All Kinds of Time". Though that FOW song from the album Welcome Interstate Managers is about a football quarterback standing in the pocket, it was the first song I played after learning the virus had gotten to Schlesinger. it's a stop-action suspended animation song with an oddly downcast mood that fits the news.
Though AnalogPlanet reviewed the low output $750 Hana SL cartridge back in 2017 in
a “shootout” with the $999 Ortofon Quintet Black S, we’re kind of “late to the fair” on these two newer Hana models, in part because they’ve been reviewed by others in Stereophile (and of course elsewhere), where I mostly (but not exclusively!) cover the top end of the high performance market.
Brooklyn- based quartet Big Thief formed after all four of its members— Adrianne Lenker (guitar, vocals), Buck Meek (guitar, backing vocals), Max Oleartchik (bass), and James Krivchenia (drums)— had graduated from the Berklee College Of Music.
If you're saying Monk's creative juices had begun to dry up by the time he signed with Columbia Records and released this 1963 label debut album you'll get no argument from me. But Monk, all of 46 when this was recorded, had a secret weapon: his rock'n'roll band of the hard-blowing Charlie Rouse on tenor sax, John Ore on bass and Frankie Dunlop on drums.
ELAC Alchemy designer Peter Madnick is well-known to veteran audiophiles as the man behind, among other companies, Audio Alchemy, the “high end” brand that during the 1990s made high performance affordable. With Madnick designing and the business side run by Mark Shifter—a guy who could sell ham to a Hasid—Audio Alchemy had a formidable, decade long run before it folded.
Parasound’s $595 ZPhono XRM is a compact, versatile MM/MC phono preamplifier that offers flexibility and features not usually found at this price point including gold-plated balanced XLR outputs (and gold-plated single-ended RCA outputs), a mono switch, an 18dB/octave rumble filter and for its MC input, continuously variable loading from 50ohms to 1050ohms.