Music Disc Reviews

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Mike Mettler  |  Apr 24, 2020  |  1 comments
Yes may have hit the roundabout motherlode with November 1971's Fragile, but their true zenith came with the following album, September 1972's Close to the Edge. Edge was the perfect intersection of envelope-pushing, multi-movement compositions and beyond-heady lyrical mysticism, permanently cementing Yes' status as top-tier progressive rock progenitors.
Michael Berk  |  Aug 25, 2011  |  0 comments

To celebrate Buddy Holly's 75th birthday (coming up September 7th), online music creation marketplace Indaba Music has launched - oddly enough, though it is the business Indaba is in - a remix contest, inviting contestants to take on Jenny O's version of Holly's "I'm Gonna Love You Too."

Grant Clauser  |  Jun 18, 2010  |  0 comments

Logitech's latest addition to its Squeezebox family of network music players is the Touch, a small LCD touchpad that taps into your wired Ethernet or 802.11b/g Wi-Fi network and connects to your audio receiver. It resembles the company's Harmony 1100 remote and, like the remote, brings multiple systems, or in this case multiple services, easily under your control. 

Robert Ripps  |  Feb 15, 2012  |  0 comments

After becoming music director of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2003 Osmo Vänskä began recording an excellent multi-channel SACD set of Beethoven symphonies with his new group. The Finnish conductor has since returned to the work of his countryman Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), recording this multi-channel SACD of the composer's most popular symphonies, Nos. 2 & 5.

Ken Richardson  |  Nov 03, 2009  |  0 comments
Key Features
THE BEATLES IN MONO 13 discs, $300 • Includes every remastered CD from Please Please Me to The White A
Ken Richardson  |  Jul 15, 2008  |  0 comments
Ringo Starr: 5.1 - The Surround Sound Collection

Koch

Billy Altman  |  Jul 22, 2008  |  0 comments
Yep Roc
Music •••½ Sound •••½

If you know who Robert Forster is, you no doubt were a fan of Australia's Go-Betweens, the vastl

Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 04, 2005  |  0 comments
Even people who know nothing about Brazilian music recognize the urbane Latin syncopation of the bossa nova beat. The language, of course, is Portuguese, not Spanish. The key names in Brazilian pop music are Jobim and Gilberto; in orchestral and chamber music, Villa-Lobos. Arguably, the most alluring voice in Brazilian music today belongs to Rosa Passos, who partners with jazz bassist Ron Carter on this audiophile release.
Michael Berk  |  Apr 11, 2012  |  0 comments

Rush fans...the moment you've all been waiting for has arrived. Not quite like clockwork, but Clockwork Angels is finally and definitely headed your way.

Michael Berk  |  Aug 31, 2011  |  0 comments

In a sign of the times for the changing music industry (and an interesting twist in the lengthy tale of the most popular band - 40 million albums sold worldwide and 11 Stateside top tens - to only make it into Rolling Stone magazine once), Canadian prog superheroes Rush have signed with U.S. metal indie Roadrunner (they'll be staying with Anthem/Universal in Canada only).

Mike Mettler  |  Dec 02, 2015  |  0 comments
Performance
Sound
“Be cool or be cast out.” So goes one of the pivotal lines in “Subdivisions,” the indelible lead track from Rush’s transitional 1982 album Signals, and it’s also a statement that aptly describes the band’s own fortunes as it navigated a hard-won ascendance from perennial cult favorite to mass acceptance over the course

of its five-decades-and-counting career. The band recently completed a triumphant 40th anniversary tour dubbed R40, celebrating its genuine Rock & Roll Hall of Fame legacy by performing a 23-song set in reverse chronology. (Actually, “Reverse Chronology” sounds like a lost track from the band’s mid-’80s synth-centric period.) I saw Rush’s late-June stop at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, and marveled at the ever-present breadth of the band’s sound and how bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer Neil Peart were able to modernize decades-old material like “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Lakeside Park” without compromising each track’s initial, individual compositional integrity and charm.

Mike Mettler  |  Apr 09, 2019  |  0 comments
Performance
Sound
Rush was on a roll. After the celebrated Canadian trio had finally broken through the FM ether with 1976's dystopian statement piece 2112, they took the next evolutionary sonic turn with 1977's expansively majestic A Farewell to Kings. The following year, Rush rotated the screws once again by taking their proto-prog metal to the headiest of limits on 1978's Hemispheres, their final mind-altering statement of the Me-So-Introspective Decade before shedding their muso-skins yet again with 1980's forward-thinking Permanent Waves.
Mike Mettler  |  Apr 04, 2011  |  0 comments

In anticipation of the 30th anniversary reissue of Rush’s truly seminal Moving Pictures as both CD+DVD (April 5) and CD+BD (May 3) deluxe editions, with PCM 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround-sound mixes by Richard Chycki, I’m dipping into my personal Rush interview archive to present a truly exclusive, incremental look at how the band’s attitude toward bringing its vaunted studio material into the surround-sound arena has literally changed from “no” to “go” over the last decade.

Mike Mettler  |  Apr 04, 2011  |  0 comments

In anticipation of the 30th anniversary reissue of Rush's truly seminal Moving Pictures as both CD+DVD (April 5) and CD+BD (May 3) deluxe editions, with PCM 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround-sound mixes by Richard Chycki, I'm dipping into my personal Rush interview archive to present a truly exclusive, incremental look at how the band's attitude toward bringing its vaunted studio material into the surround-sound arena has literally changed from "no" to "go" over the last decade.

Mike Mettler  |  Apr 05, 2011  |  0 comments

“It’s a timeless record with so much detail,” says surround-sound remix guru Richard Chycki about Rush’s 1981 masterpiece, Moving Pictures. “I’m glad you’ve clued into all of the nuances.” Chycki is referring to what I said to him last week about the PCM 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes he did for MP’s 30th anniversary reissue. Today marks the release of the CD+DVD version, something certainly worth getting if you’re not equipped for Blu-ray — but the much preferred Holy Grail CD+BD version won’t be out until May 3.

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