Hi-Res Downloads

Mathias Eick, et al
Lullaby (96kHz/24-bit, WAV)
www.ecmrecords.com; ECM 2825

A new quartet and eight new compositions on this ECM release from trumpeter Mathias Eick. Here he’s joined by Kristjan Randalu on piano, bassist Ole Morten Vågan and drummer Hans Hulbækmo. And it’s Hulbækmo who lays down the opening of the album, setting up a groove that Vågan and Randalu join before Eick’s trumpet makes its gentle entrance. It sets the tone for music that’s both reflective and at times introspective, often seeming like a series of vignettes, with Eick also contributing keyboards and vocals along the way against the close-knit backdrop of the ensemble. There’s no sign of the newness of the band – instead it’s confident, tight-knit and integrated, with tracks like the melodic ‘May’ and the tender ‘Hope’ giving Randalu space to breathe while the drumming of Hulbækmo is impressively restrained. One for a quiet evening, perhaps, but still quite lovely. AE

Sound Quality: 90%

Lab Report

This set was recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio but only the opener [red/blue] is free of the spuriae at 34kHz [black], the latter associated with the trumpet feed. Otherwise, peaks never exceed –2.5dB and dynamic range is above average. PM

Neil Cowley Trio
Built On Bach (48kHz/24-bit, WAV)
www.neilcowleymusic.com; Bandcamp download

Once on the Naim Label [HFN Oct ’12] – he played at the company’s big birthday bash way back when – Neil Cowley and his trio (Rex Horan on bass, and drummer Evan Jenkins) are back together, after a series of Cowley solo projects, with a Bach-inspired album. Cowley explains that it all started ‘One summer’s afternoon in 2023 while dawdling about Leipzig in Germany, [when] I found myself in St Thomas’s Church, where Bach spent a large part of his working life’. Inspired by finding Bach’s burial place, and memories of his own piano lessons, Cowley’s own compositions are rooted here in Bach’s styles. Typically, the pieces are punchy and driving, with the piano as percussive as the tight drums and bass. It benefits from an open, clean recording, and as is always the case, is both inventive and huge fun – it’s one to bring a smile to the face on several levels. AE

Sound Quality: 85%

Lab Report

Cowley’s piano and Horan’s bass fit very comfortably within the bandwidth of this 48kHz rendering even if the brighter percussion is slightly curtailed. Overall dynamic range is about ‘average’ while most tracks peak at a high-ish –0.4dB. PM

Third Angle New Music/P. Glass
1000 Airplanes On The Roof (48kHz/24-bit, WAV)
www.thirdangle.org; OMM, n/a cat. no.

This is far from the first foray into science fiction for venerable composer Philip Glass – his opera based on Doris Lessing’s The Making Of The Representative For Planet 8 made its debut in Houston in 1988, and then at the Coliseum with the ENO, the latter to what one could just about call mixed reviews. 1000 Airplanes On The Roof premiered in a hangar at Vienna Airport in the same year, but this is its first complete recording – in it, the central spoken character, M, recalls encounters with extraterrestrial life over the music, which is also presented in this two-part set in an instrumental version. I’m still not sure whether it makes much sense, let alone lives up to its grand ambitions, but there’s no denying that Glass’s music is recorded powerfully by his own Orange Mountain Music label, and for Glass fans will be worth the price of admission alone. AE

Sound Quality: 80%

Lab Report

Two versions are included in this live set but both the instrumental [black, RMS] and narrated tracks [red/blue] have very similar peak levels (between –2.4dB and –0.2dB). The set with a vocal mix has the slightly higher dynamic range. PM

Geir Sundstøl
Sakte Film (96kHz/24-bit, WAV)*
www.hubromusic.bandcamp.com; HUBRO CD2662

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Sundstøl excels himself on this album, the title of which alludes to slow motion photography – if I haven’t lost count, he plays at least 28 guitars, drums and keyboards here, as he builds up his complex soundscapes. But that isn’t the abiding character of this album: that comes from the string quartet of Erik Sollid, Sunniva Shaw, Håkon Brunborg and Mari Persen, who add a shimmering richness of texture to the proceedings. The album opens with ‘Mats’, named in honour of bassist Mats Eilertsen, combining a bass riff with big drums, those strings and a selection of the composer’s many instruments. Like much of the other music here, it sounds cinematic, if perhaps rather disjointed due to Sundstøl’s technique of cutting and pasting snippets of analogue recordings. Give it a try – it’s quite impressive, if unusual. AE

Sound Quality: 80%

Lab Report

This album will light the 96kHz LED on your outboard DAC but it’s really a 48kHz file in a 96kHz envelope, occupying twice the data rate than needs be. Peaks are normalised at –0.5dB and dynamic range is well below average. PM

Kramies
Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour (48kHz/24-bit, WAV)*
www.kramies.bandcamp.com; Self released, n/a cat. no.

Well, never say Cleveland-based musician Kramies Windt isn’t brave; he opens this set with a track called ‘Perfectly Dreadful’! The title of the album comes from a Billboard description at the time of his 2022 self-titled album, and this release, Windt says, was the result of his ‘exhaustion, disillusionment, and the slow rediscovery of purpose’. In a way, this seems to be his ‘killing off Ziggy Stardust’ moment: ‘the sound of an artist dismantling his own myth to find the human underneath’, as he puts it. Yes, you can feel the mood changing as the album progresses, from that dark opening track to the more open and brightly-coloured ‘Hollywood Signs’, with its great musical sweep. However, I really do wish he’d also found some clarity and dynamic range on this great spiritual journey of reinvention, for the sound here is dense, and often distorted. AE

Sound Quality: 75%

Lab Report

This is a mixed selection – trks 1, 3, 4, 6 & 7 are at 48kHz, normalised to a (too) high –0.1dB and offering below average dynamic range. Trks 2 & 5 are upsampled to 96kHz but with distortion >24kHz and very poor dynamic range [black]. PM