Michael Fremer

Album Reviews
A Digital Kind of Blue?
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2011  |  0 comments

More than enough has been written about this album for me to attempt to add anything of value to the mix. It's the best selling jazz album ever and continues to sell the way Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon does in the rock world.

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Album Reviews
Neil Brings LeNoise, Leaves the Funk
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2011  |  0 comments

Neil plays, Daniel "La-noise" manipulates. The result is a solo album—a man and his guitar— that takes on gargantuan proportions as it throbs, undulates, oozes, howls, flows, rattles and hums through a series of reminiscences, philosophical discussions, entreaties and proclamations of faith that only an older man could possibly produce and deliver with such rich and fervent authority.

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Album Reviews
Witmark Demos
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2011  |  1 comments

Bootlegs, outtakes and unreleased material mostly interests completists, scholars and obsessive fans. Usually, the quality and significance declines with each new archival release, but not with Bob Dylan.

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Album Reviews
Sneak Peak: ORG Music's Damn the Torpedoes
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2011  |  2 comments

ORG Music is a new division of ORG, the label that's been reissuing mostly classic jazz titles over the past few years along with the heart of Nirvana's catalog. ORG Music will specialize in classic rock reissues, with an enhanced, extra track edition of this Tom Petty breakthrough album  coming first.

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Album Reviews
Little Boy Lost Takes Himself Even More Seriously in Mono
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2011  |  2 comments

It's easy to understand why some youngsters don't get Dylan. Everybody sings like him now but no one did back then and at first only a few could take the unadorned voice (referencing the Dylan on these old recordings, not the current croaker).

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Album Reviews
Columbus Has Arrived
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2011  |  0 comments

Little Feat was never an "album" band, even though they released many good records. They were low concept and high boogie. The groove was cerebral though, not the mindless "good time" endless fist pump variety mainly because of the playful and smart Lowell George. Lowell was from Baltimore,MD.

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Album Reviews
Rolling Stones Box Sets: Deal or No Deal? Part II
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2011  |  2 comments

Still, some might find the new records too aggressive. I’m not in that group, but it sounds as if Mr. Grossinger mastered the original LPs, manipulating the tonal balance as he saw fit, whereas it sounds as if the GZ folks just took the files they were sent and cut. I’m just surmising that. It could be the ‘soft’ lacquer versus the ‘hard’ copper.

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News
TOM WAITS VINYL RECALL ISSUED BY RHINO!
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 30, 2011  |  1 comments
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News
Elvis Costello Kicks Off Live From the Artist's Den Season Three April 1st
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 28, 2011  |  1 comments
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Cartridge Reviews
Soundsmith Strain Gauge SG-200 phono cartridge system
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 22, 2011  |  1 comments
Strain-gauge phono cartridges are rarely made and seldom heard; for most vinyl fans, they are more myth than fact. Panasonic once made one, as did Sao Win, but those were decades ago. I've heard about those two models for years but have never seen, much less heard one.

As if he's not got enough to do building his extensive lines of moving-iron cartridges, preamplifiers, amplifiers, and speakers, Soundsmith's Peter Ledermann also makes a full line of strain-gauge cartridge systems available with a choice of six user-replaceable stylus profiles. I believe the Soundsmith is the only strain-gauge cartridge currently made anywhere in the world. Ledermann says it takes him a full day to build one.

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