Brooklyn- based quartet Big Thief formed after all four of its members— Adrianne Lenker (guitar, vocals), Buck Meek (guitar, backing vocals), Max Oleartchik (bass), and James Krivchenia (drums)— had graduated from the Berklee College Of Music.

If you're saying Monk's creative juices had begun to dry up by the time he signed with Columbia Records and released this 1963 label debut album you'll get no argument from me. But Monk, all of 46 when this was recorded, had a secret weapon: his rock'n'roll band of the hard-blowing Charlie Rouse on tenor sax, John Ore on bass and Frankie Dunlop on drums.

ELAC Alchemy designer Peter Madnick is well-known to veteran audiophiles as the man behind, among other companies, Audio Alchemy, the “high end” brand that during the 1990s made high performance affordable. With Madnick designing and the business side run by Mark Shifter—a guy who could sell ham to a Hasid—Audio Alchemy had a formidable, decade long run before it folded.

Parasound’s $595 ZPhono XRM is a compact, versatile MM/MC phono preamplifier that offers flexibility and features not usually found at this price point including gold-plated balanced XLR outputs (and gold-plated single-ended RCA outputs), a mono switch, an 18dB/octave rumble filter and for its MC input, continuously variable loading from 50ohms to 1050ohms.

The recently reviewed StylusTimer, not quite ready for purchase then, is now available for sale at the StylusTimer website.

Grado Labs just announced a new "Timbre" series of cartridges that consolidates under one "roof" the previously separate mid-range "Reference" and "Statement" wooden bodied phono cartridges. Grado also introduced a new $275 OPUS3 cartridge. All, including the budget Prestige series, now incorporate techniques developed and incorporated into the top of the line Lineage series.

You never know what to expect when you call up someone to conduct an interview. In the case of Charles Lloyd, all I knew was what I heard on record over his 60 or so year vinyl and CD recorded output. That told me Lloyd was adventurous, eclectic, at one time idealistic, spiritual, and you might say over-optimistic, and someone willing and eager to mix it up within various musical genres. He's played with some of the world's greatest musicians both as a band member and as a leader. The latest release, the deluxe box 8 recorded two years ago, celebrated in concert his 80th birthday. Were it not for the Coronavirus outbreak he'd either now be on tour, or preparing to tour and too busy to talk, so getting this interview was kind of a lucky break.

Last year (April 8th 2019) while visiting contributing editor Malachi Lui in Portland, we paid a visit to Cascade Record Pressing in nearly Milwaukie, Oregon. For one reason or another the tour video never posted, until now.

These two releases, one culled from a 2006 Rhino Tony Joe White compilation and the other a new one from APO (an Analogue Productions label) are naturals for a linked review.

This July will mark my 25th anniversary at Stereophile and my 300th Analog Corner column. Whew! Over the years readers (and viewers) from all over the world have come up to me and requested more "selfies" than I ever imagined anyone might want from an audio reviewer.