J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)

This debut album outing from California’s This Wild Life sees the duo Kevin Jordan and Anthony Del Grosso recording with Aaron Marsh of Florida-based indie rock band Copeland, performing a collection of heartfelt and melodic ‘acoustic punk-rock’ songs described as a melding of punk and folk. Indeed the band describes itself as being able to successfully perform softer music while touring with heavier bands that play the sort of hardcore punk and metal they spent the formative years exploring. The sound quality throughout is slightly hard-edged and in-your-face, the production ‘crowded’ and subjectively forward. Lacking air and space between instruments and voices, it soon becomes fatiguing.

Story has it that for her album of Dusty Springfield covers, American singer/songwriter Shelby Lynne insisted on having the legendary Phil Ramone produce Just A Little Lovin’, with recording engineer Al Schmitt at the controls in Capitol’s Studio A in Hollywood. This is an analogue recording made on 2in tape that LPs fans might want to own on Analogue Productions’ 200g vinyl [AAPP 041], while this recently-available 96kHz/24-bit download is perceptibly more dynamic and refined-sounding than the (already very good) Doug Sax-mastered CD issue that’s been an audiophile favourite since its 2008 release. In her interpretations of classics made famous by Dusty, Shelby Lynne makes the songs her own, with intimate vocals and refreshingly sparse arrangements. The title track you’ll find particularly revealing of system performance.

Pirouet’s studio complex in Munich is responsible for many fine audiophile recordings, this eclectic experimental jazz outing being no exception. The sound is intimate and beautifully balanced. Ronny Graupe’s Spoom is in fact the name of a working jazz trio founded a decade ago, comprising composer Ronny Graupe on electric guitar, Jonas Westergaard on bass and Christian Lillinger on drums. Graupe plays a seven-string guitar and his compositions are – how should I put this? – er, ‘difficult’.

Not to be confused with the German DJ who founded Top Dog Records, this Tobias Becker is a young musician who recently completed studies in classical and jazz piano at Stuttgart’s University of Music and Performing Arts. Centred on his self-penned Life Stream Suite, a composition in four parts for 17-piece ensemble, the album is an impressive outing for Becker who has already garnered an impressive CV for his talent as a musical arranger. It’s vibrant and exhilarating big band jazz, redolent of Count Basie at his swingin’ best, albeit interspersed with a 21st century twist here and there. The album’s excellent sound quality, recorded in Bauer Studios in Ludwigsburg, has captured the vivid colours and textures of the Bigband ensemble most authentically.