Album Reviews

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Album Reviews
The Original Al Kooper-Led Blood Sweat & Tears
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 01, 2010  |  0 comments

The first Blood, Sweat and Tears group led by Al Kooper and including his former Blues Project bandmate Steve Katz, was the sophisticated assemblage that produced but one album. This one.

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Album Reviews
The Oscar Peterson Trio’s 180g 1LP We Get Requests Impresses, Featuring an Unstoppable Three-Piece Band at Its Creative Peak on a Stunning New Edition From Verve & Acoustic Sounds
Mark Smotroff  |  Aug 05, 2022  |  9 comments

The Oscar Peterson Trio’s seminal 1964 release We Get Requests features his classic trio at a creative peak. This fine recording is an especially fantastic listen in a pristine new Verve Records/Acoustic Sounds Series 180g 1LP presentation that’s coming out August 19 via UMe. This reissue delivers on so many levels, and is in every way better than my original 1960s-era vinyl pressing. Read on to learn why this new edition is worth pre-ordering right now. . .

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Album Reviews
The Police's Greatest Hits Package remixed for 5.1 SACD
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 17, 2003  |  0 comments

The Police have always been a well-produced, superbly recorded group. The first album, Outlandos D’amour, was an explosive, starkly recorded document. Issued as the punk movement ascended, the band chose to emphasize a propulsive, reggae infused rhythmic thrust rather than its considerable instrumental virtuosity. Stewart Copeland kept his pounding beats relatively simple, jazz virtuoso guitarist Andy Summers made do with slashing rhythmic attacks, and Sting shot his impossibly high-pitched rasp seemingly out of a cannon. Engineers Nigel and Chris Gray complied by keeping the miking close and the production simple, yet dramatically immediate and natural sounding. The first album was “in your face” big.

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Album Reviews
The Post-Modern Psychedelic/Progressive Sound Is Alive and Well on Dungen’s Stunning En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog LP
Mark Smotroff  |  Jan 27, 2023  |  3 comments
If you’ve found yourself aching to hear some rich, vintage-sounding, progressive-leaning, post-psychedelic independently made music with authentic roots — but are tired of playing your well-worn copies Pink Floyd’s Meddle, Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything?, and The Pretty Things’ Parachute — then you might want to check out Sweden’s Dungen (pronounced Doon-yen). Mark Smotroff gets his Moog ‘N’ Mellotron on to explore the band from the land of the ice and snow and midnight sun’s latest, late-2022 LP En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog (which translates to One Is Too Many And A Thousand Never Enough). Read on to get his take on this adventurous post-modern LP release. . .

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Album Reviews
The Quintet plus J.J. Johnson Explore Samba Plus
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 01, 2009  |  0 comments

If you choose to linger on the external contours and often predictable constructive conventions of these tunes, instead of on how the musicians fill the spaces, this Horace Silver set can sound conventional, overly familiar and even mundane to 21st century ears.

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Album Reviews
The Raconteurs Return With New 7" Single!
Malachi Lui  |  Jan 02, 2019  |  5 comments
On August 11 of last year, I had the amazing opportunity to meet Jack White and his band at their Portland, Oregon concert after the publication of my Boarding House Reach review. White read my review, loved it, and through his tour manager and a few other connections, invited my family backstage. We got to stand right behind the sound engineers and lighting controllers, and I even got to view the show from the side of the stage next to White’s guitar technician. Needless to say, I’m a fan; we purchased concert tickets prior to his invitation (and in February 2016, we even made the trek from New Jersey to his Third Man Records headquarters in Nashville).

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Album Reviews
The Rear View Mirror: Alexander “Skip” Spence’s Oar
Malachi Lui  |  Nov 24, 2021  |  3 comments
In June 1968, to record their second album Wow/Grape Jam, San Francisco psych rock band Moby Grape traveled to Columbia Records’ New York studios. Towards these sessions’ end, guitarist Alexander “Skip” Spence vanished with an acid mystic known only as “Johanna.” Her LSD induced a three-day trip, during which a paranoid Spence turned against his bandmates. Two days later, Spence reappeared at the band’s hotel with a fire axe; when he didn’t find them there, he hailed a cab to the studio, ready to attack. “His eyes were like one-arm bandits,” producer David Rubinson recounted in 2009. Police arrested Spence, who then spent five months in Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward.

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Album Reviews
The Rear View Mirror: Yen Records’ We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Malachi Lui  |  Dec 13, 2021  |  9 comments
Uniquely deviating from the overplayed standard holiday music fare, Yen Records’ We Wish You A Merry Christmas is a Christmas LP actually worth your time, energy, and money. With exclusive material from Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi, Miharu Koshi, Taeko Ohnuki, Moonriders, and others, it creatively rounds up the YMO orbit in a cohesive holiday listen.

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Album Reviews
The Rear View Mirror: Yoko Ono’s Genre-Bending Fly, 50 Years Later
Malachi Lui  |  Sep 21, 2021  |  12 comments
This month, AnalogPlanet launches The Rear View Mirror, an ongoing series extensively reviewing notable albums from the past. Entries, which will be posted at least once a month, are limited to one album per artist per year. And what better way to launch it than with a 50th anniversary review of Yoko Ono’s Fly?

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
The Right Rite?
Michael Leser Johnson  |  May 16, 2021  |  23 comments
In May of 1913, just one year before the start of the first World War, Igor Stravinsky premiered his third ballet with the Ballets Russes in Paris: Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring). The premiere would go down in history for a number of reasons, primarily due to the unruly Parisian audience that descended into what could be referred to as a riot. What was so scandalous about the Rite? Stravinsky, along with choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, wanted to evoke a picture of Russia from the distant, pagan past. A story of an ancient pagan rite where a young maiden would be chosen to dance herself to death to appease the ancestors and secure a bountiful harvest. The music, while stylistically not a huge departure from Stravinsky’s two previous and successful Parisian ballets, was dissonant, brutal, and rhythmically disorienting. Likewise, Nijinsky’s choreography was rigid, and was meant to mimic the flat, two-dimensional style of prehistoric paintings. The audience that night was not having it, but their uproar helped launch the Rite into infamy, helping it to become one of the most talked about and often performed works of the 20th century.

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Album Reviews
The Searchers Have Been Found! And Now on 180g Vinyl!!!!!!
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2006  |  0 comments

Note: The SACD review appeared here May of 2004. A new LP, mastered by Steve Hoffman has just been issued. Hoffman used the original 15ips Pye stereo master mixes played back on a vintage (1964)vacuum tubed Ampex MX-35. Enjoy!

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Album Reviews
The Shins Wince. Do We Blink?
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 01, 2008  |  0 comments

Head Shin James Mercer is one of those artists like James Taylor who arrived whole and utterly original, though you can occasionally hear Morrissey channeling through his high-pitched vocals and more significantly, his melodic constructs.

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Album Reviews
The Stooges Live At Goose Lake  Is An Interesting Albeit Inessential Historical Document
Malachi Lui  |  Oct 30, 2020  |  4 comments
Shortly after their 1970 sophomore album Fun House’s release, Detroit proto-punk legends the Stooges played the Goose Lake Festival in Jackson, Michigan, 80 miles west of Detroit. Intended to be a Midwest Woodstock of sorts, with acts like the Small Faces, Jethro Tull, and Chicago (among many more) the 3-day festival drew 200,000 attendees over a stifling weekend. The environment became tense; in this LP’s liner notes, Jaan Uhelszki writes of 500 people attending the Open City LSD bad trip rescue tent, with countless others also being stoned on PCP masquerading as cocaine. Still, the festival itself was well-organized. Bands played on a rotating stage, were limited to 45-minute sets without exception, and a six-foot fence and trench blocked performer/crowd interaction.

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Album Reviews
The Tuneful Spoonful's Best on 180 Gram Vinyl
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 01, 2003  |  1 comments

One of the most underrated of all ‘60s bands, the puppy-dog earnest The Lovin’ Spoonful sounds better and better as the 20th Century fades from view. This was their 3rd album, issued late in 1966 and the first containing all originals, many of which are stamped indelibly into the brains of Baby Boomers. The band combined folk, rock, jugband, country and of course, the influence of The Beatles.

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Album Reviews
The Turtles 45rpm Box Set: "Happy Un-Together"?
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 03, 2014  |  7 comments
Either you get The Turtles (originally a dance band called The Crossfires) or you don't. Either you think of them as pop schlockmeisters or you see them as they really were: an adventurous, eclectic and sometimes deep post-Beatles psych/rock band.
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