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The Chord Company ChordMusic Cables

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 22:09:42 +0200

As anybody who has put together a music system of separates will tell you, cabling is not just important, its vital. Cables are the arteries of the system, carrying anything from potentially deadly voltages to the smallest and most fragile, complex signals, between the components. They do a lot of work, far more than is often thought and need to be right. Speak to any cable designer and they will tell you just how many issues there are to overcome and a look at the market will show that there are a huge number of designs available claiming to have …

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Astell&Kern KANN portable, streaming high-resolution digital audio player

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 20:18:49 +0200

Astell&Kern KANN portable, streaming high-resolution digital audio player:

Reflecting back on the development of personal products over the past six years, it might be fair to say that the firm Astell&Kern almost single-handedly invented the portable, high-resolution digital audio player (DAP) product category. First came the January 2013 release of the company’s AK100 player, followed about eight months later by the even more sophisticated AK120 player, with a slew of ever more ambitious DAPs arriving over the years that followed. Each new AK model, it seemed, offered higher performance and more elaborate features than the last, but with ever-escalating prices that appeared headed straight toward the stratosphere. A …

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Linn Products Lingo 4 power supply for the LP12

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 18:28:16 +0200

Linn Products Lingo 4 power supply for the LP12:

Linn’s evergreen classic Sondek LP12 turns 45 this year, and the latest version of the Lingo power supply is one big part of its birthday present. The other big part of the celebration – the Urika II phono stage – is the subject of next month’s test. For those new Lingo or Urika II buyers, the company is also reissuing a classic, limited edition fluted version of its plinth. Although the afromosia plinth is gone, the new fluted plinths are available in black ash, cherry, oak, rosenut, and walnut. Regardless of product, Linn’s lines are neatly sub-divided into Majik, Akurate, …

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Review: Appetite for Destruction: Super Deluxe Edition [Box Set] by Guns N' Roses

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 16:37:17 +0200

Review: Appetite for Destruction: Super Deluxe Edition [Box Set] by Guns N' Roses:

The five-disc box set features the remaster of hard rock band’s 1987 debut album, a disc of B-sides, the 1986 demo session at Sound City Studios, two previously unreleased tracks from sessions with Mike Clink, and a blu-ray disc which includes music videos. A 96-page hardcover book and six lithographs, three replicas of concert tickets, a copy of a video shoot flyer, a wall poster, and temporary band tattoos are also included.
Label: Geffen

Release Date: Jun 29, 2018

read “Appetite for Destruction: Super Deluxe Edition [Box Set] by Guns N’ Roses” on Latest Music Metascores on Metacritic

Review: Collagically Speaking by R+R=Now

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 14:46:44 +0200

Review: Collagically Speaking by R+R=Now:

The debut full-length release inspired by Nina Simone for the group formed by Robert Glasper includes Derrick Hodge, Terrace Martin, Taylor McFerrin, Christian Scott, and Justin Tyson with guest appearances from Goapele, Omari Hardwick, and DJ Jahi Sundance.
Label: Blue Note

Release Date: Jun 22, 2018

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Review: Passwords by Dawes

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 12:56:07 +0200

Review: Passwords by Dawes:

The sixth full-length release for the folk rock band led by Taylor Goldsmith was produced by Jonathan Wilson.
Label: Hub Records

Release Date: Jun 22, 2018

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Review: The Now Now by Gorillaz

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 11:05:06 +0200

Review: The Now Now by Gorillaz:

The third full-length studio release for the Damon Albarn’s animated band features guest appearances from George Benson, Jamie Principle and Snoop Dogg.
Label: Parlophone

Release Date: Jun 29, 2018

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Review: I'm All Ears by Let's Eat Grandma

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 09:14:24 +0200

Review: I'm All Ears by Let's Eat Grandma:

The second full-length release for the British duo of Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton features production from Faris Badwan, SOPHIE, and David Wrench.
Label: PIAS

Release Date: Jun 29, 2018

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Blawan’s Wet Will Always Dry Is Modern Techno at Its Sharpest

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 07:23:30 +0200

Blawan’s Wet Will Always Dry Is Modern Techno at Its Sharpest:

If you’re not a dance-club habitué, you’ll be forgiven for taking Blawan’s Wet Will Always Dry for regulation late-2010s techno. From its maker’s background (a British DJ in Berlin, how novel) to the no-shit-Sherlock title to the six-and-a-half-minute (on average) tracks with single-word titles (so serious) to a sinister scrim as indebted to…

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Review: Expectations by Bebe Rexha

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 05:32:55 +0200

Review: Expectations by Bebe Rexha:

The debut full-length release for the singer-songwriter who wrote songs such as Eminem and Rihanna’s “The Monster,” and Florida Georgia Line’s “Meant to Be,” features guest appearances from Migos’ Quavo, Tory Lanez and Florida Georgia Line.
Label: Parlophone

Release Date: Jun 22, 2018

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Flasher Are Redefining DC Punk

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 03:42:01 +0200

Flasher Are Redefining DC Punk:

Flasher’s debut ends with a repeated recitation of the question, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” It’s an ominous way to close a record that’s as perky and bright as Constant Image, at least on the outside. Once you peel apart the layers of pulsating bass lines, colorful synths, jagged guitar leads, ping-ponging harmonies, and shy hooks that become more extroverted with every listen, the DC three-piece reveal themselves to be exceptionally thoughtful, self-aware creatives.

In one sense, Flasher are a punk band who wrote an entire album in a month’s time and polished it off in a breathlessly intense string of studio sessions. That facet of the band’s process is imbued in Constant Image’s verve, its danceworthy spirit. But Flasher are also a band who wrote a self-professed manifesto for their record’s title, derived from their inability to describe how they wanted it to sound. Here’s an abbreviated version:

The guitar doesn’t just sit next to the snare as they “play together,” the guitar is pushed and pulled and infiltrated by each snare hit. Just as the guitar can hide within the snare, camouflaged as resonance or chain rattle, or ensnare each transient in a cloak of noise…these images are images without thought but images all the same. A constant image asks us to consider not what the image “is” but “who” is the image for and what can the image “do”?

While speaking with the band’s three members—guitarist Taylor Mulitz, bassist Daniel Saperstein, and drummer Emma Baker—in early June, it became apparent to me that Flasher are the types to seriously consider what effect their “image”—as three white folks with an artistic platform, specifically—has on their surroundings. They seem like “weirdos who just [want] to make freaky art-punk and party,” as Mulitz says in reference to the current culture of DC punk, but also the kind of people who’d spend the night discussing the political minutia of partying itself. That space between spontaneous joy and critical examination is where Constant Image exists.

“It’s not, like, a protest album,” Mulitz says. “Depending on the way you look at it, maybe you could read it that way. It wasn’t a concept overtly about the political state of world affairs. But obviously everything is political at a certain point. Down to the socks that you’re wearing.”

“We don’t really wanna tell people what their politics should be. We wanna tell them that they should reconsider how everything in their personal life is already political.” — Daniel Saperstein

Until last fall, Mulitz was a member of the DC punk outfit Priests, a distinctly political band who, along with Mulitz, own and operate the fiercely DIY label Sister Polygon Records. Associatively, and considering their political outspokenness, it’s easy to bill Flasher as the same. Saperstein explains his hesitation to accept that tag. “We don’t really wanna tell people what their politics should be,” he says. “We wanna tell them that they should reconsider how everything in their personal life is already political.”

This isn’t to say that Flasher and the tight-knit community they’re participating in, and in some ways driving, aren’t making changes happen. According to them, the city’s historically hardcore-minded scene has become a lot more sonically—and therefore socially—diverse in recent years. Although their humble characters prevent them from explicitly taking credit, it seems that Sister Polygon and the Flasher-adjacent bands have been the major catalysts for a new, progressive wave of punk rock.

“I think part of it is Sister Polygon being under the flag of this powerful, political punk band,” Saperstein says. “Taylor and Priests are, like, curating and putting under the same tent lots of different music genres. From Snail Mail to us to Post Pink to Coup Sauvage & the Snips. Being helmed by [Priests] has allowed everyone to see punk in DC as available to build a community out of, that’s a lot more heterogeneous than the hardcore scene traditionally was… It really speaks to the multidimensional experience of the music here and what punk means.”

Mulitz, who does most of the design work and mail order for Sister Polygon when he’s not on tour, has had a direct hand in that artistic curation. He’s thrilled to see the scene in its current state, one where hardcore bands and disco acts can exist on the same bill, and one where Flasher, which cruises the gulf between the two, fits logically.

“The scene is that everyone sounds like an outsider,” he says. “They all sound like each other and not like each other at all. The thread between is that it’s all kind of weird.” FL

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Review: Review: Guns N' Roses' Epic, Excessive 'Appetite for Destruction: Super Deluxe Edition'

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 01:51:26 +0200

Review: Review: Guns N' Roses' Epic, Excessive 'Appetite for Destruction: Super Deluxe Edition':

When Guns N’ Roses exploded from the Sunset Strip with lyrics like, “West Coast struttin’, one bad mutha, got a rattlesnake suitcase under my arm,” they were a vision of piss n’ vinegar at a time when Steve Winwood was topping the charts. Apart from Axl Rose’s mile-high coiffure, Appetite for Destruction was the opposite of everything going on in the mainstream: it sounded raw, nasty

This article originally appeared on www.rollingstone.com: Review: Guns N’ Roses’ Epic, Excessive ‘Appetite for Destruction: Super Deluxe Edition’

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On Liberation Christina Aguilera Sounds as Powerful as Ever

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 22:09:49 +0200

On Liberation Christina Aguilera Sounds as Powerful as Ever:

It’s tempting to root for Christina Aguilera—she has at least a half-dozen pop classics under her belt and possessed the best pure voice of the Y2K teenpop crop. But as any contestant on her former chair-swiveling grounds The Voice can tell you, talent is only half the story; you need, to borrow another singing competition’s…

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Review: Kamasi Washington, “Heaven and Earth”

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:18:55 +0200

Review: Kamasi Washington, “Heaven and Earth”:

Kamasi Washington
Heaven and Earth
YOUNG TURKS
8/10

Everything Kamasi Washington does is big. The saxophonist’s breakthrough release as a band leader was called The Epic, and it lived up to its title by offering a triple-sized serving of gloriously sprawling jazz. He followed that with Harmony of Difference, an “EP” that was longer than any of this summer’s G.O.O.D. Music “albums,” ideologically deep and complex. Now comes Heaven and Earth—not exactly a modest title—which feels hefty even at a mere (!) two discs, many of its sixteen songs nearing or surpassing the ten-minute mark, nothing about it feeling throwaway or slight.

There’s probably an argument to be made against Washington’s relentless focus on pure sonic ballast; you might contend that Heaven and Earth is too cumbersome to enjoy in a single sitting, and perhaps even slightly exhausting. That’s true enough, but look: Some fiction writers can only produce novels while others focus on short stories, and the two skill sets aren’t necessarily transferable. So it is with composers. Washington’s never claimed to be a miniaturist, and on Heaven and Earth he takes full advantage of his big canvas; he asks us to indulge him as he spreads out across luxuriously long run times, and he generally rewards our faith by offering transcendent beauty, earthy improvisation, and compositional sophistication throughout. The sheer audacity of his music simply wouldn’t fit into smaller packages.

That’s because he’s not just painting with the colors of the orchestra, though he’s certainly a superb arranger; he’s painting with history and tradition itself. As on The Epic, he shows a particular fondness for the soul-jazz spiritualism of the 1970s. More than anything he’s done in the past, though, Heaven and Earth feels omnivorous. “Fists of Fury,” the blazing album opener, borrows the tight, in-the-pocket grooves of socially-conscious funk and R&B—think Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye—and even includes lyrics that invite social action. “Vi Lua Vi Sol” breaks up its jazzy jubilance with smooth, Stevie-esque choruses. “Journey” winks at black gospel traditions via its wailing organ, then “The Psalmist” connects it back to jazz, A Love Supreme–style outpourings atop a clenched funk pace.

There are choirs and strings, rumbling low-end and even some dissonant synthesizer; and there are songs of jubilee and liberation, born equally of church traditions and civil rights marches. Everything’s writ large; it is music that contains multitudes, and it’s teeming with joy and power.

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Review: Review: Teyana Taylor's Kanye-Produced 'K.T.S.E.' Is An R&B Album Without Constraints

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 16:37:23 +0200

Review: Review: Teyana Taylor's Kanye-Produced 'K.T.S.E.' Is An R&B Album Without Constraints:

At a party celebrating the release of Teyana Taylor’s VII album in 2014, Kanye West gave a short speech praising the R&B singer, who is signed to his G.O.O.D. Music label. “Teyana provides something that’s so R&B, so black, so ‘hood, so missing, so necessary in the marketplace,” West

This article originally appeared on www.rollingstone.com: Review: Teyana Taylor’s Kanye-Produced 'K.T.S.E.’ Is An R&B Album Without Constraints

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News: New track appears, collaboration between Underworld and Iggy Pop

Sun, 24 Jun 2018 14:46:49 +0200

News: New track appears, collaboration between Underworld and Iggy Pop:

A new track “I’ll See Big” has surfaced, one of a new joint EP of tracks done in collaboration between Iggy Pop and Underworld. The EP, named “Teatime Dub Encounters” is believed to have been inspired by the “T2 Trainspotting” soundtrack, on which they both contributed. You may remember they also famously contributed the tracks […]

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EXOGAL ditches MQA

Sat, 23 Jun 2018 09:14:18 +0200

EXOGAL ditches MQA:

NEWS: All the hype surrounding MQA doesn’t justify further exploration, says EXOGAL head, as there’s just no market demand for the technology.

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Review: Review: Marshmello Can't Escape Monotony on 'Joytime II'

Sat, 23 Jun 2018 07:23:20 +0200

Review: Review: Marshmello Can't Escape Monotony on 'Joytime II':

The ascent of Marshmello, a young electronic producer known as much for his goofy helmet (white, cylindrical, two X’s for the eyes) as his chart success (four Top 40 hits in the past seven months, upward of 2 billion total streams), shows the enduring importance of arena-scale dance music in the pop landscape.

EDM’s fortunes have waned, it’s true. But as producers who ruled the charts in

This article originally appeared on www.rollingstone.com: Review: Marshmello Can’t Escape Monotony on ‘Joytime II’

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Review: Review: Marshmello Can't Escape Monotony on 'Joyride II'

Sat, 23 Jun 2018 05:32:50 +0200

Review: Review: Marshmello Can't Escape Monotony on 'Joyride II':

The ascent of Marshmello, a young electronic producer known as much for his goofy helmet (white, cylindrical, two X’s for the eyes) as his chart success (four Top 40 hits in the past seven months, upward of 2 billion total streams), shows the enduring importance of arena-scale dance music in the pop landscape.

EDM’s fortunes have waned, it’s true. But as producers who ruled the charts in

This article originally appeared on www.rollingstone.com: Review: Marshmello Can’t Escape Monotony on ‘Joyride II’

read “Review: Marshmello Can’t Escape Monotony on 'Joyride II’ ” on Rolling Stone Latest Album Reviews News

Review: Uniform Distortion by Jim James

Sat, 23 Jun 2018 03:41:52 +0200

Review: Uniform Distortion by Jim James:

The third full-length solo release for the My Morning Jacket frontman was self-produced and was inspired by a photo in the 1970s magazine, The Last Whole Earth Catalog.
Label: ATO

Release Date: Jun 29, 2018

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