Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and a fuzz-effect first... how did an army surplus hut become Columbia Studio B and help country music cross into pop? Steve Sutherland reveals all
Crazy? You want crazy? OK, let’s pop into Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge for a snifter. See that guy over there in the corner, nursing the same warm beer he’s been sipping for the past hour or so? Well, that’s Willie Nelson, a wannabe songwriter who’s been kicking around Nashville of late getting pretty much nowhere beyond a police record for drunk driving without a licence. He’s got a wife and three kids to feed back home and the money ain’t so good.
Before embarking on a decades-long solo career, Gary Numan was the driving force behind New Wave three-piece Tubeway Army, and his electronic fingerprints are all over their sci-fi-tinged 1979 album, which took synth pop to the very top of the charts
When punk arrived in the UK in late 1976 it had its radical aspects, including questioning the relationship between audience and artist, but it was essentially a form of back-to-basics rock ’n’ roll, albeit harder, faster and more aggressive than its predecessors.
The San Francisco power pop band chased perfection on their second album – and broke up a little over a year later. Steve Sutherland checks out the 180g reissue
It’s a crime, that’s what it is! An absolute outrage! Chances are you feel the same way as I do about a favourite album that no one else in the world seems to give a fig for. I’m not talking about the one that reminds you of your first date or some other sentimental attachment. I’m referring to the LP that was released into an uncaring world and inexplicably ignored when, by every measure you employ to judge a record’s artistic worth, it should have been embraced, applauded, lauded and been top of the charts for weeks on end.
Centuries ahead of his time, Kraus was the master of Scandi noir, says Peter Quantrill, in a catalogue of symphonies and theatre pieces crying out for wider recognition
The title is neither original, nor strictly accurate. Born five months after Mozart in June 1756, Kraus grew up in the German town of Buchen im Odenwald. His father was a clerk who (not unreasonably) regarded music as an unstable profession and pressed his son into a law degree. The plan failed, and by the age of 20 Kraus had composed pieces for the church including a Te Deum, a Requiem and a Passion oratorio [see Essential Recordings, opposite].
With visuals inspired by JBL’s hi-fi products from the 1960s, the brand’s ‘Classic’ range of separates are populated by technology familiar to audiophiles some 60 years later...
Think JBL and, not unreasonably, you’ll probably think ‘speakers’. The company has been in the loudspeaker business for getting on 80 years, having been founded in California in 1946 by James B Lansing, from whom it takes its name. Lansing himself took his own life just three years later but left an insurance policy to keep the company going, in which form JBL has become an internationally famous audio company and, since 1969, part of what is now Harman International. In 2017 Harman became an independent subsidiary of South Korea’s technology giant, Samsung.
Clearaudio’s entry-level deck for over a decade, the Concept is refreshed with ‘TSC’ (Tacho Speed Control) and speed selection, plus a selection of arms and cartridges
Thanks to the continued resurgence of the vinyl format, enthusiasts can now choose from a good number of plug-and-play turntable packages. Even better, the quality of these complete solutions – once considered a first step on the vinyl ladder for those wanting ease of use, or for whom the dark arts of turntable setup were a terrifying mystery – has been creeping ever higher.
The ‘ultimate version’ of B&W’s 700 series flagship gets the Signature treatment, including two bespoke colour options
It’s only about two years ago that Bowers & Wilkins introduced the S3 generation of its 700 series. A major overhaul of the venerable British brand’s popular midrange offering, its attention-grabbing improvements included a notably curvier front baffle with protruding drivers (housed in ‘pods’) and an elongated tube for the ‘Tweeter-on-Top’. This was all quite familiar for anyone who saw the earlier revamped 800 D4 series, so B&W isn’t being untruthful when it claims to deploy trickle-down technology.
This Slovakian brand’s premium phono preamp is an all-tube design – with transformer step-up for MCs – and one of the latest to jump aboard the ‘balanced bandwagon’!
Canor Audio has been around for nearly three decades, but it’s only in the past few years the Slovakian company has stepped fully into the limelight. If you asked how the brand would describe itself, Canor’s founders would likely say ‘tube specialists’. This is fair, considering how much effort it puts into validating and testing valves before pressing them into its many tube products – and those it builds for other major brands, too. But if that might ...
This boutique brand from China’s technology hub squeezes a truly high-end DAC and
analogue headphone amp into a bijou, alloy enclosure. It puts the ‘mini’ into minimalism
Okay, so let’s get the ‘death ray’ jokes out of the way right at the start: what we have here is a high-aiming DAC-equipped headphone amp from a Chinese-based company that’s new – to me at least – but has a growing range of digital products, all with slightly odd names. High-aiming? Well, the rather literally-branded Listening M1 might be tiny, but it sells for a punchy £2599 alongside the £399 Pegasus SG1 Bluetooth headphone amp and Prelude DTR1+ portable music player.
EISA, or the Expert Imaging and Sound Association, is an organisation representing 56 of the most respected special interest publications and websites from 27 countries that cover Hi-Fi, Home Theater Video, Home Theater Audio, Photography, Mobile Devices, and In-Car Electronics. Every year EISA's Expert Group members, including editors from this publication, test a very wide range of new products from their field of expertise before comparing results and voting to decide on the cream of every product category.
With visuals inspired by JBL’s hi-fi products from the 1960s, the brand’s ‘Classic’ range of separates are populated by technology familiar to audiophiles some 60 years later...
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