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There are many reasons to collect records, and the best and most common reason is for the music. However, if you also care about sound, and you own a high end audio system, the sound can be, as it is to me, just as important. You can also collect LPs like people collect stamps and... Read More »

A portrait of Dean Waters at Pacific Audio Fest 2023 (photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson) In November of 2023 Chandos Records released their seventh album in their Music in Exile series. Each album in this series of recordings focuses on a different composer who was forced to flee their homeland to avoid... Read More »

Craft Recordings has just released a new 25th Anniversary Edition of R.E.M.'s 1998 album Up, which was the iconic group's first outing as a trio in the aftermath of drummer Bill Berry's retirement from the band. My limited exposure to post-Bill Berry R.E.M. wasn't particularly favorable at the time of that string of albums' original... Read More »

As a child of the 60s, I heard some of the greatest rock and roll ever created, and the place I heard much of it was in the back seat of my mom's car. As I lived in Los Angeles, the number of AM radio stations that played rock and roll was vast, and therefore... Read More »

Craft Recordings is offering another exciting line-up of limited-edition LPs for the upcoming November 24th Black Friday celebration of Record Store Day (RSD). Craft's offering of rarities and specialty releases are just a handful among literally hundreds of cool records that will be available online and at your favorite independent record store. For Black Friday,... Read More »

Craft Recordings continues their impressive Original Jazz Classics reboot with a brilliant pair of live album reissues, featuring the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Jazz At Oberlin (1953, Fantasy Records) and the Bill Evans Trio's Sunday At The Village Vanguard (1961, Riverside Records). Dave Brubeck's Jazz At Oberlin showcases an earlier incarnation of the group that would... Read More »

Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition, Fritz Reiner, Chicago Symphony Orchestra. HDTT 1957 2023 (DSD256, DXD "Redux") HERE Just superb - you owe it to yourself to get this! This recording from December 7, 1957, in Orchestra Hall, Chicago, is a world treasure. It is among the earliest stereo recordings released on LP (1958) and it... Read More »

I'm far from being an expert on Hawaiian music, but I'm crazy about it. LPs, both stereo and mono, of Hawaiian music have provided me with decades of pleasure. I also love the way  vintage Hawaiian records sound, because they often sound amazing. I currently own 55 Hawaiian LPs, and I used to have more.... Read More »

Bartók Concertos. Bartók Piano Concertos 1-3, Pascal Rogé, piano; London Symphony/Walter Weller. Violin Concerto 1, Kyung-Wha Chung, violin; Chicago Symphony/Sir Georg Solti. Violin Concerto 2, Iona Brown, violin; Philharmonia Orchestra/Simon Rattle. Two Portraits, Chantal Juillet, violin; Montreal Symphony/Charles Dutoit. Decca Eloquence 480 2320 (2 CDs).  TT: 79.30, 78.13. Downloads: Amazon.com (all except Violin Concerto 2) This compact collection, fitting Bartók's major concerti onto... Read More »

Rhino Entertainment has just released Devo: 50 Years of De-Evolution (1973-2023), a box set that celebrates the legacy of the iconic band and their 50th anniversary as performers. Devo's genre-bending style of rock and roll bounded across a half-century of art punk, new wave, post-punk, and synth pop, and their nine studio albums never failed... Read More »

Van Morrison His Band And The Street Choir (Rhino High Fidelity Series) Released in 1970 on the Warner Bros. label, Van Morrison His Band And The Street Choir was recorded at the infamous A&R Studios in New York City earlier that year. As an interesting aside, the original title for this album was Virgo's Fool,... Read More »

Impex Records is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Jennifer Warnes' 1992 album The Hunter with a limited edition, individually numbered LP pressed on crystal clear, HQ-180 green vinyl. With compact discs ruling the marketplace at the time of its release, Warnes' Grammy-nominated follow-up to her classic Famous Blue Raincoat was never made available as a... Read More »

Rhino Entertainment has just released a 50th Anniversary reissue of David Bowie's beloved Pinups, his 1973 album of cover tunes that paid homage to songs from the 1964 - 67 period that greatly influenced the teenaged David Jones and helped him get his bearings musically. Despite debuting to a very mixed reception from the music... Read More »

I've been scattered about in my listening recently, shifting from classical to jazz to pop. But I've found some gems to share with you in this edition of Recent Finds. Leading off are some exceptional classical music albums released in 2023 and applying some of the best high resolution digital recording technology available. Complementing these... Read More »

As I mentioned in my last review of late-period R.E.M. releases from Craft Recordings, drummer Bill Berry's departure from the band changed the overall dynamic of R.E.M.'s music so much that I no longer found the group's new music as absolutely essential as in years past. I therefore had very little experience with post-Bill Berry... Read More »

Warner and Rhino Entertainment have just released The Darkness, Permission To Land…Again, which is a 5 LP, 20th Anniversary Edition that celebrates the 2003 debut album from UK glam-metal band The Darkness. Permission To Land was a huge commercial success and runaway best seller, taking the band to the number one spot on the UK... Read More »

  Iconic Artists Group is a relatively new venture spearheaded by music industry heavy-hitter Irving Azoff; in what has become the new normal for many recording artists, Linda Ronstadt sold her music catalog to Iconic in 2021. Irv Azoff early on was instrumental in the career of Ronstadt, and was very close to not only... Read More »

I highly prize the excellence of many of the recordings made in the golden era of stereo, recordings from the late 1950s through 1960s. HDTT's reissue of many of the best of these recordings in high definition digital transfers has been a treasure for me as I've gradually rebuilt my music library with high resolution... Read More »

When I joined Positive Feedback to write about albums from my overflowing collection, I decided that it would be best if I wrote about easily obtainable albums. In a short time I realized that I don't own a click-of-the-mouse record collection. The records that I love to play and write about are very simply rare.... Read More »