Video: "Sweet Dreams" by Angel Olsen
Her voice aches like a memory.
In her video for "Sweet Dreams", Angel Olsen pays tribute to the mournful passages of psychedelia, with colors and sounds swimming upwards and sideways like technicolor beads of oils, reds, blues, and purples, across a projection screen. Flashing colors and photographs in this video make you yearn for something more, a girl, the lake, or an angel. Something old, something new, something you do no not have, maybe something only attainable through the malleability of perception.
While the initial bass line steers the song dangerously close to The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army", a re-harmonization through different guitar chords gives it some leeway, and the high-note stretch in the chorus is eerily reminiscent of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game", but again, the superimposed chord-progression which redefines the melody differentiates the song from any other. Maybe Olsen is derivative in her composition choices, but everybody steals.
The strength in this song lies within her confident yet subtle and melodically driven vocal variations and the seductively vague bridge that howls, "The time will come for everyone, for everyone to go!" The modern musical references disappear in the larger context of her song, which places you laying on your back beneath the California redwoods leaves swaying in the wind. Your mind grasps and slips eternally clutching at the hands of time then dripping away like colored oils on a sheet of wax.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
In the News: Oswaldsmill Audio & Audioarts
Jonathan Weiss’ fabulous Oswaldsmill Audio Dumbo showroom was featured in a recent episode of “The Blueprint” on Jay-Z’s Life+Times.
Art Dudley visited the showroom back in May 2012, and I hope to visit sometime this year.
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A second NYC boutique audio salon, Gideon Schwartz's Audioarts, was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal. Read "Money's No Object for His Stereo Types" here. It's a good piece.
You may notice interesting similarities between OMA and Audioarts: Both companies seem devoted to the highest possible quality of sound reproduction, without regard to cost; both place strong emphasis on design; and both seem interested in promoting an image and lifestyle of absolute luxury.
Art Dudley and I visited the original Audioarts location, down on Astor Place, prior to Art's review of the Voxativ Ampeggio loudspeaker. I hope to visit the new Audioarts showroom sometime this year.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Listening Party: The Capital Audiofest and DCAudioDIY
DIYers are invited to bring their own amplifiers for a shoot-out against “the big boys,” and, for an entirely different kind of shoot-out, all attendees are asked to bring their favorite microbrew pale ale or IPA. Gary Gill will provide additional food and beverage, but attendees should also feel free to bring snacks.
The event is free and space is extremely limited. For more info and to RSVP, contact Gary Gill at capitalaudiofest@gmail.com.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Aperion Verus Grand Bookshelf loudspeaker
Design
The Verus Grand Bookshelf is a stand-mounted descendent of Aperion's flagship model, the Verus Grand Tower ($1798/pair). The two-way, bass-reflex Bookshelf features Aperion's Axially Stabilized Radiator (ASR) silk-dome tweeter (patent pending), which has a small plate in front of the dome that appears to support a secondary suspension at the apex of the dome. The woofer uses a black, woven-Kevlar cone. The Grand Bookshelf also shares with the Tower its curved sidewalls and internal bracing. The gloss piano-black finish of the review samples was gorgeous and suggested a much higher price (a gloss cherrywood veneer is also available).
I was quite taken with the ease of installation of the magnetically secured cloth grille with metal frame. I listened to the Verus Grands with the grilles on and off, and heard little difference in the sound, though I ultimately preferred to leave the grilles on: the presentation was then slightly more coherent, and the highs and midrange were better integrated with each other; the only downside was a very slight loss of detail. I placed the speakers on Celestion Si stands with their center pillars loaded with sand and lead shot.
Though there's no substitute for a knowledgeable, trustworthy, full-service audio retailer, you can't beat the terms of Aperion's direct-sale offer: a 30-day, money-back guarantee with free shipping both ways; a 10-year warranty; and trade-in at the full purchase price should you decide within a year to upgrade to one of their more expensive models.
Sound
The Verus Grand Bookshelf's open, vibrant, uncolored midrange gave me a sense of real musicians playing in real spaces with such well-recorded jazz as the title track of Charles Mingus's Pithecanthropus Erectus (CD, Atlantic AMCY-1036). As the Aperions let loose the full, boisterous bloom of Jackie McLean's alto sax and J.R. Montrose's tenor, they sounded like much larger speakers. However, although the Verus quite naturally reproduced the midrange timbres of all the male and female voices I listened to, it also ruthlessly revealed the subtle textures of recording techniques. For example, Col. Bruce Hampton's prominent tenor voice in "Hendon," from the Hampton Grease Band's Music to Eat (LP, Columbia 30581), has a forward, in-your-face quality through a good system. The Aperion revealed that Hampton's voice was a bit too high in the mix, somewhat out of balance with the instruments.
I particularly liked female voices through this speaker: Soprano Elizabeth Suderburg sounded angelic and pure in George Crumb's Madrigals (LP, Turnabout TV-1 34523), and her upper register had an airy, haunting quality. This was largely due to the speaker's clean, extended, uncolored highs, which worked as well with Fender Stratocasters as with classical sopranos. For many years, Jeff Beck has been my favorite rock guitarist, and my favorite of his guitar solos is the tersely concise one in the title track of Stanley Clarke's Journey to Love (LP, Nemperor NE 43). Beck uses a lot of delicately chiming upper-register harmonics, articulated with some tremolo-bar embellishments, before bursting forth with soaring, bending licks throughout the instrument's entire register, Ö la keyboardist Jan Hammer. The Aperion gave every note an airy shimmer that captivated me. A similar quality was evident in Roger Woodward's performance on prepared piano of Toru Takemitsu's Corona (UK LP, Decca Head 4). The upper registers sparkled—every minute transient was intact, with a sweeping and natural decay. However, I did note that, in the highly modulated passages of Chick Corea's solo in Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti," from Corea, Barry Altschul, and Dave Holland's A.R.C. (LP, ECM 1009), the upper register of his piano did seem a bit forward.
The Verus Grand's articulation of transients made it a natural match for recordings of acoustic guitar. Larry Coryell and John McLaughlin's burning, rapid-fire duels in the Django Reinhardt–influenced "Rene's Theme," from Coryell's Spaces (LP, Vanguard VSD 79435), were reproduced with speed, clarity, and nary a touch of smearing. Not only did both guitars sound natural and resonant throughout their range, whether during solos or comping, but with Coryell in one channel and McLaughlin in the other, the Aperions made it very easy to distinguish each virtuoso's unique picking technique.
One of my favorite Kraftwerk recordings is the early Kraftwerk 2, from 1971 (German LP, Philips 8305117), which predated founders Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider's use of synthesizers. The introduction of "KlingKlang" features a panoply of delicate percussion instruments played by Hütter and Schneider. Through the Verus Grand, the percussion was delicate and detailed, airy and shimmering. All transients were appropriately fast, with no trace of unnatural sharpness, and each percussion thwack had a long decay with a sense of spaciousness.
At the lower end of the audioband, midbass timbres were especially natural, with an amazing amount of weight for a modest bookshelf speaker, but with no sense of overhang or loss of definition. I listened to many jazz recordings that spotlit the double bass. After focusing on Mingus's opening bass figure in "Jump, Monk," from Mingus at the Bohemian (LP, Debut 123), I scribbled these notes: "woody, earthy, clean, and clear."
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Source : stereophile[dot]com
David Manley, Tube-Amplifier Pioneer, Has Died
Even David's record label, ViTaL survives in Italy under another name. Now called Fone, it continues under the guidance of Giulio Cesare Ricci, who took ownership of ViTaL's masters and cutting lathe. A young EveAnna Manley plays baritone sax on two of these recordings.
Assembling all of the pieces of the puzzle that was David Manley is an undertaking best left to a dedicated biographer. Born David St. John Manley in Capetown, South Africa on August 26, 1939, he reportedly built his first tube amplifier at the age of 7. While the oldest of his three children, Luke Manley, points to an online biography, the accuracy of the information, which may have been penned by David Manley himself, is open to question.
Described by his son as a "hard-living, swashbuckling, work-oriented kind of a guy who didn't have much of a relationship with his three kids or his first wife, my mother Susan," David Manley began dancing hard with the twin demons of alcohol and cigarettes back in his studio at days EMI/Abbey Road. There, he claims to have recorded or helped record several "favorite audiophile classics," including Massenet's Le Cid.
Upon his return to South Africa, David reportedly partnered with the late Ernest Fleischmann, former executive director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and eventually took over the Manley-VanNeikerk recording studios. In Johannesburg, he eventually ran a successful audio retail store in a house, and wrote a weekly column for a newspaper.
When Luke Manley was 19, he began to work with his father during summer vacations, building speakers in their basement. "He came across some Leak-Williamson amplifiers, stripped them down to all but their chassis and ultra-linear output transformers, and redid the circuits, using designs mainly based on the RCA manual," says Luke. This was the start of VTL.
Eventually, David Manley left South Africa and his fourth wife behind. Sailing up the Cypress, he sold one of his two boats, and used the proceeds to found VTL in the UK. In the summer of 1986, when he encountered difficulties exporting VTL to other countries, he journeyed to the US to display his products at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. "Conscripting" as his assistant his son Luke, who was by that time living in Rhode Island, David journeyed to the Midwest with Quad ESL-63s, a Kenwood CD player, and VTL 100 amplifiers in tow.
The two Manleys, outfitted in matching Union Jack T-shirts, put on quite a show. "People heard the system, and were stunned at how natural the sound was and how much bass punch the amps had," says Luke. "I couldn't believe it. The word spread like wild fire, VTL hit the scene with a big splash [mixed metaphors notwithstanding]."
Unable to find a distributor, David enlisted Luke as importer and distributor. Although Luke knew nothing about the audio business other than how to solder, he came on board. With a huge order from Taiwan to fill, David flew to Southern California and founded a factory in Montclair.
"He wanted to make an amplifier that everyone could afford," says Luke. "I don't think that was a good idea, because it's very difficult to make a product you can be proud of when you cut so many corners. So the stuff sounded good, and was very punchy and powerful, but it didn't have high resolution or detailed voicing."
Disagreements over distribution channels eventually led to a split between father and son. David and his fifth wife, EveAnna Manley, moved into the current Manley Laboratories building in Chino with half the crew, inventory, and the ViTaL record label and home studio, and Luke retained the rest of the operation as VTL. David then did what is often termed in AA circles as "a geographic," and split to Spain. Eventually, after a three-year partnership with EveAnna, he left for France, where he lived with his sixth wife, Veronique.
Former Stereophile Senior Editor Jonathan Scull caught up with David Manley in France in 2004, and published an updated interview in Positive Feedback Online. David was reportedly trying to start another company when, in July 2010, he suffered a stomach rupture. After a year of intensive care in the hospital, during which time Luke made multiple trips to France, he was released in September 2011, and continued to battle health problems until his death.
"The picture I have of him is a guy with a non-filtered cigarette his mouth," says Luke. "My dad was so full of bravado that I once heard him say, 'It's not when I die, it's if I die.' His recurrent bouts with alcohol were complicated by bipolar disease. Sometimes he would get painfully up, and when he became manic he'd make poor financial decisions. As a result, he didn't achieve what he should have achieved."
For industry members unable to attend the January 4 memorial in France, Luke and Bea will hold a gathering in David's memory at CES in Las Vegas, probably after show hours on Wednesday, January 9. Exact time and location will be posted in the comments section below, and information will also be available in room 29-103 of the Venetian Hotel.
"Please bring your memories," says Luke. "We'll have a book in which you can record them, and we'll send them to his wife, Veronique. She would love to hear from the industry here."
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Timothy Wins a Sonos for Christmas!
The Ultimate Gift of Music package includes a Sonos Bridge and PLAY:3 system (MSRP $348).
Timothy Brown couldn't look jollier to get this major gift. Brown's acquisition of the PLAY:3 serves as an upgrade to his already existing Sonos system thus expanding the reach of his playback from the bedroom as an alarm clock radio and into the kitchen as a cooking companion. Per Sonos system specs, he now has a PLAY:5! Brown primarily listens to MOG streaming services on his system. Play on, playa.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
The Beach Boys Remasters 12 CD Box Set and Merchandise Sweepstakes
According to EMI Music:
The 12 Beach Boys studio albums have been digitally remastered by Mark Linett and will be released on CD and digitally, most featuring mono and stereo mixes. The albums are: Surfin’ U.S.A.; Surfer Girl; Little Deuce Coupe; Shut Down, Volume 2; All Summer Long; The Beach Boys Today!; Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!); Beach Boys Party!; Pet Sounds; Smiley Smile; Sunflower (stereo mix only); and Surf’s Up (stereo mix only).These releases mark the stereo debut of Smiley Smile and Beach Boys Party!, while The Beach Boys Today! and Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) are being released in stereo for the first time in their entirety. The new releases include the first-ever stereo mixes of several key Beach Boys classics, including “Good Vibrations,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” “I Get Around,” and “409,” among others.
To enter the sweepstakes, all you need is an account on this website. If you don't already have one, click on the link labeled "register" at the bottom of this announcement or "Create new account" in the right column (under the ads). Then, enter a username and a valid e-mail address, and click on the "Create new account" button. A message will be automatically sent to the e-mail address you specified, which will include a link to activate the account.
The final step (and only step for those who already have an account) is to log in and leave a comment right here on this announcement—any comment will do, as long as it's not profane or spam. Then, when the sweepstakes closes, a lucky commenter will be chosen at random to receive the prize. So post a comment, and good luck!
For complete sweepstakes rules, click here.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
