About 23 pages into “Revolución to Roxy”, you’ll find eight-year-old Phil Manzanera carrying a small tray of cake and Cuban coffee to a man across the road standing watch over an empty house. By way of thanks the guard gives him a “broad smile” and then, as a sort of improvised firecracker, sets off a pinch of gun powder from an empty .303 shell. That’s just one charming glimpse into the life of the Roxy Music guitarist at a time that was otherwise lit up by the... Read More

Great titles, oft-released, first time on UHQR. What else is there to say? At least until we get to hear it. Read More

BINGHAMTON, NY – July 1, 2024 – McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., the premier name in audio excellence, proudly announces the release of SESSIONS Volume 1, a jazz album featuring eight original compositions by The Peter Erskine Quartet. Produced with iconic mastering studio Sterling Sound, this unique collaboration results in an album worthy of the world’s most discerning listeners – McIntosh customers – with the goal of creating the best sounding record possible, while... Read More

The plan was an on-stage interview with Patrick Leonard, whose new double LP album "It's All Comes Down To Mood" is due end of July. Patrick produced all of Madonna's early Warner Brothers Records, Amused to Death for Roger Waters, two of the final three Leonard Cohen records (he wrote or co-wrote songs on all three), as well as Elton John's Songs From the West Coast. There's more but that's enough! I wrote an essay published in the... Read More

Would you like to attend a recording session at Rudy Van Gelder's legendary Englewood Cliffs studio featuring saxophone great Joe Lovano? Of course you would! I was lucky enough to attend one—the only invited journalist—last May 19th, four days after returning from Switzerland following High End 2024. Here's the story. The old audiophile riddle "How do you make $1,000,000 in the audio business? Answer: "start with $2,000,000" didn't... Read More

The sum - it’s said - is always greater than the parts. Rockpile may have only released one album, but 1980’s Seconds of Pleasure stands as a prime example of that adage. Nick Lowe (guitar, vocals) and Dave Edmunds (guitar, vocals) were the band's star power, but they brought more than just their entertainment acumen to the table; with them came their longtime musical cohorts Billy Bremner (vocals, guitar) and Terry Williams on “drums, drums, drums” (as the liner... Read More

Below is the press release for a new and some might think surprising "One-Step" audiophile vinyl release for three classic Linkin Park releases, under the "Because Sound Matters" banner relaunched by Warner Records, which now has an online store using that name. "Because Sound Matters" was a vinyl series originally created almost twenty years ago by Tom "Grover" Biery when he was working at Warner Brothers Records. The vinyl... Read More

Countless pieces of music written by 20th-century (and later) composers are very accessible, listenable, and rewarding. Here are a few.

Hi-Fi has long been very good to Duke Ellington, beginning in 1950 when long playing records and tape recording allowed him to finally deliver Masterpieces by Ellington an album of previously impossible to release to the home listening public, live concert length arrangements of his most popular and enduring compositions. Until then only attendees of his live concerts got to hear them.Finally Ellington was freed from the constraints of the three minute 78rpm... Read More

Nesconset, NY, June 25, 2024 -- EAT (European Audio Team), the company whose high-performance products are designed to bring listeners as close as possible to the meaning and spirit of the original performance, offers the flagship Fortissimo S turntable in North America via VANA Ltd., its NY-based distribution partner. The Fortissimo S (SRP: $8,000, minus tonearm) is a significant step up from the company’s popular Forte S turntable, with a massive 50 lb., 15.75”... Read More

(This feature originally appeared in Issue 7, Spring 1996.)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 the... Read More

The mystery is why this 1959 Riverside recording wasn't released until 1964, and even then, according to Craft Recordings, only in the U.K. True, Riverside was essentially a jazz label, but then why record Hooker in the first place unadorned if not to release it? Hooker had been recording electric blues for Vee-Jay but Riverside wanted acoustic and in fact released in 1960 The Country Blues of John Lee Hooker recorded at the same sessions that produced this... Read More

For the initiated this project has mostly existed as a collection of poorly bootlegged video clips on YouTube. That is, unless, you ponied up for the 2010 archive release of Band On The Run, which included a polished DVD version of this 1974 documentary. But now Macca, ready to embark on yet another age-defying batch of live dates, has made these sessions official.So across two LPs (or two CDs), One Hand Clapping finally comes out of the bootleg protection program... Read More

125,000 views of Steely Dan's "Gaucho" played back on Wilson-Benesch's GMT One turntable made clear that people enjoy listening to top quality vinyl playback, even degraded as it is by YouTube's meh bit rate audio. So here's another one: David Bowie's "Fashion" from his 1980 album Scary Monsters, Super Creeps from an original U.K. Townhouse mastered pressing. The record is not a "minty" copy but it still sounds... Read More

Some things were "meant" to be. Following High End Munich i spent a few days in Switzerland that included a visit to Micha Huber's HiFiction factory in Turbenthal. The video tour includes the launch of the new Thales Magnifier phono preamp/preamp. Early in the afternoon, following the tour, I overheard two of HiFiction's distributors talk about driving to Schlieren to visit HSE Swiss, manufacturer of, among other products, the Masterline 7 phono... Read More