Album Reviews

Going from Soft Lights & Sweet Music is like going from the merely excellent to the spectacularly suave and sublime, both musically and especially sonically. Though not as “clean,” and not nearly as detailed and revealing as the newer recording, there’s a liquidity, transparency and timbral rightness about the older one that just puts your mind and emotional state in a different world. Nonetheless, the piano has that boxy ‘50s sound and the bass is a bit muffled. There’s something to be said for the newer recording in terms of reality but for magic, it’s the older one. Sort of like old movies versus new ones.

Produced by Bay area bluesman Roy Rogers (Hooker had moved there and opened a nightclub in 1997), this Grammy Award winning set of collaborations between the then 72 year old John Lee Hooker and Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, “Canned Heat,” Los Lobos, George Thorogood and Charlie Musselwhite, plus two stirring Hooker solos and one backed by drums and bass, brought the blues great to a new audience.

Foné records’ Giulio Cesare Ricci is easily one of the most charming, entertaining and eccentric people I have ever encountered in an industry packed with such people. I spent some quality time with him and his lovely wife Paola Maria, who works in the fashion industry in Milan, during last fall’s Top Audio show there.

So closely does the cover vibe provided by Ted Croner’s iconic cover photo “Taxi, New York at Night” mirror the music on the album, you have wonder if the cover choice was inspired by the music, or vice-versa.

Forget the Van Gogh-like cover. There’s nothing crazy going on here, or perhaps these four guys just wanted to subliminally suggest that you lend an ear. I’m glad I did.

For my money, the greatest YES album, musically and sonically was 1971’s The Yes Album (Atlantic SD 8283), recorded Autumn of 1970, and if you can find an original, thick “1841 Broadway” pressing, get one. An audiophile-quality reissue generated from the master tape would be nice, but unfortunately, Rhino took it upon itself to reissue it recently in their first, undistinguished entry into vinyl, and it wasn’t very good.

Based on this uneven, less than memorable effort by Jean-Benoit Dunckel (who calls himself Darkel here), the whole is greater than the sum of the parts of the French minimalist electronica duo known as Air. With his partner Nicolas Godin, Mr. Dunckel produces some of the most arresting, three -dimensional, self contained electronic and acoustic soundscapes you’re likely to experience.