Music Reviews

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Music Reviews
Inside the Ultimate Download Experience
Brent Butterworth  |  Jan 24, 2012  | 

What do you want to hear when you listen to music? Do you want a lower-fidelity version of what the artists, engineers, and producers heard in the studio? Or would you prefer to hear exactly what they heard in the studio?

Of course, you'd prefer the latter. But you're probably getting the former - unless, that is, you're listening to high-resolution downloads from HDtracks. If you're listening to CDs, MP3s, or even vinyl records, what you're hearing is not a precise copy of the original digital recording or analog tape. It's downconverted. If it's on CD, the digital resolution has been reduced. If it's on vinyl, the audio has been remastered and the record you're listening to is actually a third-generation mechanical copy.

Sure, it might sound ok. But it's not the best fidelity you can get. HDtracks is. And HDtracks and Sound+Vision have put together an introductory sampler to show you just how good high-resolution listening can be.

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Other TechMusic Reviews
Interview: Carlos Santana
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 29, 2010  | 

To borrow Mick Jagger’s growl from the Rolling Stones’ feisty Tattoo You track “Neighbours”: labels, labels, labels, labels, LABELS! People feel like they have to label just about everything, especially when it comes to music. So whenever I’m asked to describe what Carlos Santana’s music sounds like, my answer is quite simple: “It sounds like Carlos Santana.” In the case of the 63-year-old guitar guru, his name defines his sound. “The majority of the music I play is still African music,” Carlos explains. “I honor that. And it comes through the Delta, and Mississippi.

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Music ReviewsOther Tech
Interview: OK Go on the Rebirth of the Music Video
James K. Willcox  |  Sep 24, 2010  | 

If YouTube page-views were currency, the members of OK Go would be very rich men.

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Music Reviews
Intrique — Steven Wilson Presents: Progressive Sounds in UK Alternative Music 1979-89
Mike Mettler  |  Jun 09, 2023  | 
Performances
Sound
Steven Wilson has long been a man with a mission to push musical boundaries and stretch the limits of our listening expectations with his own music. He also has a passion for championing releases from other artists who have been underexposed or overlooked entirely, so is it really any wonder Wilson is behind a new and quite, well, intriguing import-only box set compilation Intrigue — Steven Wilson Presents: Progressive Sounds in UK Alternative Music 1979-89? All told, Intrigue presents 58 tracks spread across 5-plus listening hours on a 4CD set from Edsel Records.
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Music Reviews
INXS: Kick - 30th Anniversary Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Jun 01, 2018  | 
Performance
Sound
INXS were riding high as the calendar got deeper and deeper into 1987. The alt-rocking Australian sextet had truly come into their own following the wider international penetration of 1985’s Listen Like Thieves. They were also burgeoning MTV darlings, mainly thanks to the magnetic presence of poster-boy frontman Michael Hutchence. That said, the band had enough musical acumen to override their video-centric image, best exemplified by the churning, layered groove of Thieves’ big hit, “What You Need,” itself born of the interlocked songwriting axis of lyricist/vocalist Hutchence and keyboardist/guitarist Andrew Farriss.

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Music Reviews
Jack Bruce: Silver Rails
Mike Mettler  |  May 21, 2014  | 
Performance
Sound
When it comes to delivering the low end, Jack Bruce has been the cream of the crop for six decades and counting. His syncopated approach to playing bass helped shift pop music’s bottom-end emphasis away from just laying down root notes and fifths, in turn opening the door to a more adventurous yet melodically inclined style that laid the foundation for the rock explosion of the ’60s. Turns in both Manfred Mann and John Mayall’s band set the table for Bruce to connect with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker and forge Cream, wherein the super Scotsman set the heavy-blues power-trio standard with epic runs and full-band interplay in songs like “I Feel Free,” “Spoonful,” “Politician,” and “Sunshine of Your Love.”
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Music Reviews
Jackson Browne—Running on Empty (Warner Brothers) [DVD-Audio]
Adrienne Maxwell  |  Apr 05, 2006  | 
This DVD-Audio has been a long time coming. Many a planned release date came and went before this one finally hit the shelves back in November, but I assure you that it was worth the wait. The high-resolution, multichannel audio soundtrack allows an already great album to realize its full potential.
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Music Reviews
Jam Transmissions
Andrew Nash  |  Mar 10, 2003  | 
Click here to view this article (PDF)
Music Reviews
James Taylor: The Warner Bros. Albums -1970-1976
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 11, 2019  | 
Performance
Sound
And lo, there was a new breed of musician who had come to town, and they were duly christened singer/songwriters. In the wake of the burgeoning rock era's focus on volume-dealing power trios and instrumentally propelled multi-member ensembles (whether schooled or otherwise), there soon emerged another genre compelled by a more sensitive, more lyric-driven, and more acoustified approach.
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Music Reviews
Jazz Classics get the High Resolution Treatment from Blue Note and HDtracks
Michael Berk  |  Jul 25, 2012  | 

If you're a fan of Blue Note's classic releases of the '50s and '60s - and frankly, what jazz aficionado isn't? - and you're a discerning digitally inclined audiophile, you're in luck! Blue Note/EMI, through our friends at HDtracks, is releasing six classics of the period in glorious 96kHz/24bit and 192kHz/24bit remasters from the original analog masters. 

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Music Reviews
Jazz trio revamps rock and more
Parke Puterbaugh  |  Feb 25, 2009  | 
Do the Math/Heads Up/Concord
Music •• Sound •••½
The Bad Plus have made their first album that's, well, not so good.
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Music Reviews
Jethro Tull: Songs From the Wood: 40th Anniversary Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 04, 2017  | 
Performance
Sound
Extras
These days, when it comes to surround sound mixing, most in-the-know producers and musicians’ respective collective first thought inevitably turns to the maxim, What would Steven Wilson do? Indeed, the man also known as the once and future king of hi-res and 5.1 production has long staked his claim as the No. 1 go-to guy for any artist interested in obtaining a top-shelf mix that takes full advantage of the vaunted six-channel, 96-kilohertz/24-bit (and sometimes higher!) audio spectrum offered via DVD and/or Blu-ray. (And yes, a hi-res download option is on the master main menu as well.)
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Music Reviews
Jethro Tull: ‘The Broadsword and the Beast’ Box Sets
Mike Mettler  |  Nov 21, 2023  | 
Photo by Martyn Goddard

Performances
Sound

40th Anniversary Monster Edition & Vinyl Edition Box Sets

Like many rock bands that initially emerged from the free-flowing nether-reaches of the 1960s, Jethro Tull had a decision to make upon entering the 1980s — namely, stick with their signature sound, or embrace the emerging technology of the new decade? Tull mastermind Ian Anderson chose the latter, initially going all-in on the electronic-tinged aural front with August 1980’s A. While A was certainly an eclectic and challenging jumping-off point, its follow-up, April 1982’s The Broadsword and the Beast, was a much better marriage of classic neo-Tull with the more modernized electro-Tull. Two new 40th anniversary box set offerings for Broadsword — a 5CD/3DVD smorgasbord subtitled the Monster Edition, and a relatively extensive companion 4LP collection — tell the album’s expanded sonic-swashbuckling tale quite well in their respective ways.

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Music Reviews
Joe Ely & Joel Guzman: Live Cactus!
Billy Altman  |  Jul 30, 2008  | 
Rack 'Em
Music •••• Sound ••••

Rather than wondering what's in the water, it's probably more fitting to wonder what's in the wind that m

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Music Reviews
John Cougar Mellencamp: Scarecrow – Super Deluxe Edition Box Set
Mike Mettler  |  Mar 13, 2023  | 
Performances
Sound
John Mellencamp was making waves. Unfortunately saddled with the stage name “John Cougar” when he came onto the scene in the late-1970s, once he began climbing the singles and sales charts, he asserted his artistic identity much more forcefully by crediting his hit October 1983 LP Uh-Huh to John Cougar Mellencamp. He did so again on his full-artistic breakthrough album, August 1985’s Scarecrow, before dropping the Cougar moniker entirely when the ’90s rolled around.
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