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News
Celebrate the Great Charles Lloyd's 80th Birthday With Feb. 14th Multi-Format Box Set
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 13, 2020  |  11 comments
Multi-talented saxophonist Charles Lloyd celebrated his 80th birthday last March at Santa Barbara's Lobero Theater in concert with musical friends including guitarist Juian Lage, pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Reuben Rogers, and dummer Eric Harland plus special guests Booker T. Jones and bassist and Blue Note President Don Was joining in halfway through the show. Lloyd's new album 8 Kindrid Spirits (Live From The Lobero) documents the show in a limited edition Blue Note Records box that includes the full performance on 3 LPs, 2 CDs and a DVD along with a 96 page hardcover book and 2 photo prints. There will also be a standard LP/DVD, DC/DVD edition containing just the first set.

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News
Innovative Launches in New York City Wilson Audio Specialties Chronosonic XVX
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 13, 2020  |  6 comments
Unless you are official press, you are not invited to the XVX noon press preview lunch Friday January 17th, but feel free to reserve a seat during one of the hourly "Happy Hour Listening Sessions" from 4PM through 8PM at Innovative Audio by rsvp-ing before limited space is all booked. The website says 5PM-9PM....so better check with Innovative!

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InterviewsRMAF 2019
Cynthia The Audio Belle Interviews AnalogPlanet's Michael Fremer
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 09, 2020  |  29 comments
At the 2019 Rocky Mountain Audio Show, "Cynthia, the Audio Belle" asked if she could interview me. Of course I said "yes" and that turned into 47 minutes worth that she's edited and split into two parts. I'm posting before watching so I hope it's okay!

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Features
The 25 Best Music Projects Of 2019
Malachi Lui  |  Jan 07, 2020  |  34 comments
I honestly suck at keeping up on new music. Sure, I’m shoving out another mostly negative Review Explosion every three weeks when some artist past their prime pushes out another hour of dreck (or when Earl releases a stupidly annoying, half-baked 15 minute “album”) but I still don’t feel that I spend enough time covering what actually matters. As in, what’s actually good and worth talking about. Unfortunately, one music critic with their own taste and near-daily spins of IGOR can only do so much; no matter how hard I work, there are always a dozen supposedly great albums that I’ve fallen behind on even hearing.

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
Craft Recordings' 5 LP Chet Baker Box Sure to Please Fans
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 05, 2020  |  10 comments
For every reason, from mastering to pressing to packaging and annotation—and pricing, Craft’s 5 LP Chet Baker Riverside box scores the highest marks.

The recent RSD mono release of It Could Happen to You—Chet Baker Sings signaled what this set might and turned out to be. For those fans who might have some of these albums on original or OJC reissues, you can be sure the audio here soundly beats those.

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Features
Tour The Archive of Contemporary Music's 3 Million Record Collection
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 03, 2020  |  10 comments
Bob George The Archive of Contemporary Music's founder and director was scheduled to participate in a "Making Vinyl Hollywood" panel discussion I moderated last fall, so to prep for it I called Mr. George and proposed a visit to the Archive during which we'd discuss his participation. As you'll see in the video, by the time I visited last September I'd forgotten the reason for the visit!

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Record Cleaning Machine Reviews
The Recently Introduced Record Doctor VI Vacuum Record Cleaning Machine
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 02, 2020  |  6 comments
Six years have passed since the original review here of the Record Doctor V a $199.95 manual-turn vacuum based record cleaning machine (RCM). At some point since then it went out of production but it's back now at $199.95 and there's a new upgraded 20th anniversary Model VI priced at $299.95.

priced at $299.95

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Features
The Year-End Garbage Can: 2019’s Top 10 Worst Albums
Malachi Lui  |  Dec 30, 2019  |  22 comments
(This year, contributing editor Malachi Lui launches an annual segment covering the year’s 10 worst albums. And boy, are there some bad ones this year. Now let’s dive into The Year-End Garbage Can…)

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News
Neil Innes Gone Too Soon at 75
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 30, 2019  |  6 comments
Neil Innes, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band co-founder, Rutles member and writer of all of that group's hilarious Beatles parodies and Monty Python member/contributor died suddenly and unexpectedly Sunday night, December 29th. According to his family, he'd not been sick and the cause of his passing has of yet not been determined.

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CES 2015
Optimal Media Factory Tour
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 29, 2019  |  7 comments
This is the final video from AnalogPlanet's Spring 2019 European "factory tour" trip that began after "Making Vinyl" Berlin. It began in Geneva, Switzerland with the CH Precision tour, followed by darTZeel and Hi Fiction (Thales) and then it was on to GZ Media in the Czech Republic, followed by this Optimal tour, which took place the day before the beginning of Munich Hi-End 2019. Thanks to Optimal Media Sales Manager Andreas Kohl who picked me up in Berlin and drove me the two plus hours to Optimal and then back to Berlin.

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