Michael Fremer

Recording direct-to-disk is difficult enough. The entire side has to be cut in one long take. Consider a big band vocal album like this, which has four songs per side. The orchestra and singer have to be ready as soon as the cutting stylus hits the lacquer and then they have to perform flawlessly on each track, pausing but a few seconds between songs.

The famous high-tech Swedish Toolex Alpha record presses are again being manufactured as Pheenix Alpha in a Stockholm suburb by former employees of the original company using the original blueprints. This according to a recent article in a Swedish newspaper.

According to the story, the last Toolex Alpha left the factory in 1990 bound for Melodiya in the then Soviet Union, though it was believed to have been manufactured a few years earlier.

You don’t have to be Phil Spector or Brian Wilson to appreciate mono sound, as anyone who’s purchased the recent mono Beatles box can attest. When these records were originally produced, they were meant to be heard in mono both because they were played on the AM radio, which was mono and because the young people buying the music mostly had monophonic record players. Plus that is how The Rolling Stones wanted to be heard, which is the most important reason of all.

This fascinating Record Store Day release last spring probably got lost in a crowd of LPs so you may have missed it. I did. it was recently sent to me for review by Northern Spy Records (NSPY).