The audio industry may have lost a legend and a prolific innovator in Henry Kloss a few years back, but it still has another affable, creative eccentric in Peter Ledermann. In the mid-1970s, Ledermann was director of engineering at Bozak, where, with Rudy Bozak, he helped develop a miniature bookshelf speaker and a miniature powered subwoofer. Before that, Ledermann was a design engineer at RAM Audio Systems, working with Richard Majestic on the designs of everything from high-power, minimal-feedback power amplifiers and preamplifiers to phono cartridge systems. He was also an award-winning senior research engineer at IBM, and the primary inventor of 11 IBM patents.
Like West Meets East (Angel/EMI 36418 LP) the famous Ravi Shankar/Yehudi Menuhin collaboration from 1966, this 1992 get together between the guitarist/musicologist Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, a classically trained Indian musician you may have unknowingly seen playing the Mohan Viña (an instrument he devised) in the DVD “A Concert For George,” attempts to mesh Eastern and Western musical sensibilities.
This lovely set of intimately arranged and meticulously recorded covers, originally issued in 2000, is precisely the kind of semi-obscure album in need of a quality all-analog reissue.
Lovers of chamber music in general and Heifetz in particular, will find this “Living Stereo” oddity from 1961 a sonic and musical treasure. “Oddity” because it’s an album pieced together from two studio recordings made at either side of “the pond.”
At a time when the shortsighted have all but declared the album form either dead or dying, Suzanne Vega's latest one (issued on CD July, 2007 and more recently on vinyl by Classic Records) is a cool reminder that putting together a coherent program of well-produced (and carefully recorded) tunes remains a most satisfying musical art form. The album won a well-deserved Grammy, this past February (2008), for "Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical."
This 1962 release is a pick-up session plain and simple, made interesting by the presence of the adventurous multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk and the always-tasteful pianist Tommy Flanagan—not that the snare-popping Haynes isn’t a superb and exciting drummer and Henry Grimes doesn’t acquit himself well on bass.
Never mind the much-vilified Marine and ex-Obama pastor Reverend Wright, if you want to hear the unvarnished, angry, hurtful truth of an era not so long past, listen to this stark, musical reminder of race relations in early ‘60s America.
MP3s spread “virally.” Large corporate interests didn’t push them. Vinyl is resurgent for the same reason. It’s a ground up movement. Construct that way and you have a strong foundation for a long-lasting building. That’s what gives hope for vinyl’s long term growth and sustainability.
Like a musical Old Faithful, Richard Thompson dependably spews an album’s worth of inspired material at regular intervals. He’s been doing this since 1972’s Henry the Human Fly (Island ILPS 9197), which is so deserving of a high quality all-analog reissue.
Head Shin James Mercer is one of those artists like James Taylor who arrived whole and utterly original, though you can occasionally hear Morrissey channeling through his high-pitched vocals and more significantly, his melodic constructs.