Music Disc Reviews

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Music Disc Reviews
Duffy: Endlessly
Brett Milano  |  Mar 02, 2011  |  0 comments
 
Mercury
Music ••1/2 Sound ••

 

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Music Disc Reviews
Eagles: Hotel California - 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Feb 28, 2018  |  0 comments
Performance
Sound
Ah, the ’70s—the literal age of excess, as documented by the “everything, all the time” lifestyle credo personified by pop-music superstars like the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. And yet, amidst all that glamour, glitz, and high drama also resided some damn fine music, too. Listen closely, and you’ll clue into a good bit of prescient social commentating by artists very much aware of the pitfalls of their experimentations, even while they basked in the afterglow.
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Music Disc Reviews
ELP Reissue Series: Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Tarkus; Pictures at an Exhibition
Mike Mettler  |  Dec 14, 2016  |  1 comments
Welcome back, my friends… well, you know the rest. That opening line—made famous in “Karn Evil 9 – 1st Impression, Part 2” from 1973’s Brain Salad Surgery—certainly applies to the re-emergence of the remastered catalog for Emerson, Lake & Palmer, the groundbreaking British progressive trio that defined adventurous recording and outrageous live performance during their 1970s heyday. Actually, ELP vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Greg Lake prefers using the word original instead of progressive to describe the band’s signature sound—and the man does have a point.
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Music Disc Reviews
Elton John: Madman Across the Water - 50th Anniversary Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Jul 27, 2022  |  0 comments
Performances
Sound
Elton John could do no wrong as the calendar came to the close of 1971. Madman Across the Water, his third album in that calendar year alone, came out in November, and it was considered to be the best entry in his Trident Studios orchestral trilogy, featuring production by Gus Dudgeon and arrangements by Paul Buckmaster. (The previous two releases in said trilogy were April 1970's self-titled Elton John and October 1970's Tumbleweed Connection.)
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Music Disc Reviews
Eric Clapton: Give Me Strength: The ’ 74/ ’ 75 Recordings
Mike Mettler  |  Mar 19, 2014  |  0 comments
Performance
Sound
Eric Clapton was at the crossroads of Personal Hell Avenue and Professional Conundrum Street as the calendar turned to 1974. His crippling heroin addiction derailed the creative momentum he achieved with Derek and the Dominos and Layla in 1970, and it took him a few long, painful years to emerge from the haze and return to chasing down his one true muse with guitar (and not needle) in hand. The jam-packed Give Me Strength: The ’74/’75 Recordings box set charts his sonic recovery.
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Music Disc ReviewsOther Tech
Exclusive Interview: Tom Petty on Recording 'Mojo'
Mike Mettler  |  May 31, 2010  |  0 comments

Here's the thing about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' stunning new album, Mojo: While you've never quite heard the band play this way before on record, the songs sound like you've known them all your life.

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Music Disc Reviews
Feed Your Vinyl Fetish: Record Store Day 2012 Picks From S+V
Mark Smotroff  |  Apr 18, 2012  |  0 comments

Record Store Day can be an exhilarating - and, depending on where you shop, occasionally exasperating - experience. Always a lot of fun, you can raise your odds of getting the good stuff you want on RSD by doing a little planning ahead and preparing a shopping/wish list. Really.  

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Blu-ray Movie ReviewsMusic Disc Reviews
First Look: Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project
Michael Berk  |  Jun 08, 2012  |  0 comments

Last night we dropped by the 7.1-equipped 3D theater in Dolby's midtown offices for a sneak peek at Francois and Pierre Lamoureux's Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project, the forthcoming theatrical 3D film of jazz legened Pat Metheny's latest "solo" outing with his mechanical orchestra.

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Music Disc Reviews
Fleetwood Mac: Tusk Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Mar 29, 2016  |  1 comments
Performance
Sound
Revisionist history is just as much a part of rock & roll as guitars, cars, and odes to love and lust are. Some albums initially looked upon as noble but failed experiments more often than not semi-mysteriously improve with age and hindsight when viewed through the prism of time, wherein listeners finally catch up to the scope of the artists’ originally over-their-heads intentions.
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Music Disc Reviews
Franz Ferdinand: Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
Parke Puterbaugh  |  Feb 26, 2009  |  0 comments
Domino/Epic
Music •½ Sound •••
Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against dance music, party tunes, or any other escapist entertainment.
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Music Disc Reviews
Get Back to Mono
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 15, 2014  |  3 comments
“Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.” John Lennon was referencing a theme from the Tibetan Book of the Dead by way of Timothy Leary’s book The Psychedelic Experience, but there really was no other way to start “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the pivotal track that ends Side 2 of The Beatles’ groundbreaking August 1966 album release, Revolver. And “Tomorrow”—originally identified on the recording sheet for “Job No. 3009” in Abbey Road Studio Three as “Mark I” when sessions commenced on April 6, 1966—is rife with studio innovations and flourishes only The Beatles and their revolutionary team of Abbey Road engineers could inaugurate as the methodology so many future artists would embrace: Inventing Artificial Double Tracking, a.k.a. ADT, to simulate the natural double-tracking of instruments and vocals (thank you, Ken Townsend).
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Music Disc Reviews
Giveaway: Pat Metheny's The Orchestrion Project on Blu-ray
Michael Berk  |  Oct 19, 2012  |  0 comments

Back in June we got to check out the premiere of guitar legend Pat Metheny's unique new concert film, The Orchestrion Project, featuring Pat performing "solo" - with an orchestra of robots, captured in glorious 7.1 (and 3D) by director/producer brothers Pierre and François Lamoreux. 

Well, the film's come to Blu-ray - and not just in Dolby TrueHD 7.1, but with the company's new Advanced 96k Upsampling feature, to deliver lossless audio - no extra hardware required - of the highest possible quality along with the pristine visuals. And we've got a couple of copies to give away.

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Music Disc Reviews
Green Day: 21st Century Breakdown
Jaan Uhelszki  |  May 28, 2009  |  0 comments
Review
Reprise
Music ••• Sound ••••½
It's been 5 years since Green Day sounded the alarm wit
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Music Disc Reviews
Guns N' Roses: Chinese Democracy
Brett Milano  |  Nov 24, 2008  |  0 comments
Black Frog/Geffen
Music •••½ Sound •••½
It's a pretty decent album.
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Blu-ray Movie ReviewsMusic Disc Reviews
Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll
Mike Mettler  |  May 15, 2020  |  1 comments
Picture
Sound
Extras
It would be easy to characterize Chuck Berry, who passed away at age 90 in 2017, as one cantankerously acrimonious fellow, but after revisiting Taylor Hackford's astute 1987 documentary Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll, now available on Blu-ray for the first time via Shout Select, I'm reminded of how captivating, creative, and downright business-savvy the pioneering, guitar-playing singer/ songwriter actually was.
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