With frenzied, wailing, guitar lines that sound more like squealing subway cars careening around sharply curved rusty tracks than what you think of as a “guitar part” in any known genre of music, and a car alarm voiced lead singer who’ll convince you Yoko Ono was on to something, Melt-Banana’s noise littered music is a neon-lit sci-fi fun house assault that at first sounds more like the sonic embodiment of a video game than an electronic re-invention of punk.

This article originally appeared in the final edition of Art Dudley’s Listener magazine, before the Rolling Stones catalog had been reissued, but after the promo sampler had been distributed. The SACD catalog has been out now for some time and it's been a phenomenal success.

Now of course we have the Stones LPs cut from the DSD masters and judging by website visitor’s emails, those who have bought some of these LPs agree that they sound great. Not as good as original DECCAs, but damn good. I just borrowed a Mo-Fi Stones box and will do the obligatory comparison ASAP.

How the material made it from original analog tape to DSD master is included in the Listener article.

Right to the point: no, the 11 new ABKCO limited edition 180g vinyl Rolling Stones reissues ( already available in Europe) do not quite measure up to UK DECCA originals, but who expected that? The tapes are between 35 and 40 years old and the superlative DECCA playback/cutting/plating/pressing chain is long gone. If you have the DECCA originals you’re not shopping for these anyway.

Sure, in an ideal world we’d prefer to have had albums like Beggar’s Banquet, Let It Bleed and Aftermath cut to lacquer directly from the original tapes, but they weren’t. Instead, the final DSD masters created by Bob Ludwig referencing original UK Decca, and US London LPs were used.

A year after Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and world's apart from it, Eno released what many consider to be his most innovative and evocative album, Another Green World. It took two months to produce-twice as long as each of the previous two albums. Though synthesizer based, the album sounds organic and almost leafy. The set of mostly short, prehistoric and tropical sounding instrumental collages marked a distinct turning point for Eno, a change that would eventually come to dominate his solo recorded efforts and profoundly affect his collaborations with other.

Before recording began, Eno and artist Peter Schmidt created a deck of cards that they called "Oblique Strategies". The cards, each of which contained a specific instruction, were like a more sophisticated version of the old "Magic Eight Ball,” which only answered "yes" or "no". The cards were more about exploring possibilities and choosing directions. Eno used them to help guide him in the production of the record.

He didn't play an instrument and he didn't sing, but Brian Eno was in the band, and the band was Roxy Music. So what exactly did Eno (full name Brian Peter George St. John de Baptiste de la Salle Eno-wouldn't you shorten it?) do for Roxy Music, which he co-founded in London with Bryan Ferry back in 1972? Listen to Stranded the first Eno-free Roxy album and you'll hear something missing. Or, listen to pre-Eno U2 albums, and then to The Unforgettable Fire the first Eno produced U2 album, and you'll hear something added.

Born in 1997, this ensemble of Silk Road artists entered a series of albums for Shanachie Records over three subsequent years that merged Persian and Hindustani concert music ideas into a new stream of classical balladry and improvisation. As satisfying as the studio recordings proved, none of these equal the pinnacle of beauty or concentrated metaphysic disclosed in The Rain, a live recital from May 28, 2001 in Bern, Switzerland. Released by ECM Records, international watchdog for established top-end performers breaking from tradition, it was perhaps only a matter of time before Ghazal received the opportunity to have their experimental sound captured in palatial acoustic splendor.