Album Reviews

If you want to know what the early 1960’s felt like, listen to this lushly and dramatically orchestrated Sinatra, bathed in opulent, moonlit reverb and surrounded by cushiony strings spread out on an impossibly huge, wide and deep soundstage.

Back in the 1940s the legendary concert promoter, record producer and record company head Norman Granz conceived of jazz performances in a classical music style concert setting.

These loose, swinging 50+ year old sessions recorded in the summer of 1958 and winter of 1959 and sounding incredibly life-like tonally, offer Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn on piano fronting small combos of legendary horn players, some not normally associated with Ellington, Joe Jones on drums and a few added musicians to spice up the mix.

This slab of red vinyl got plopped on the turntable and listened to before the unnoticed press blurb stuffed into the gatefold jacket made returning it from where it came impossible.

The indie rocker Sufjan Stevens brings a surprising and delightful buoyancy and sense of wonderment to his orchestral suite commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its “Next Wave” Music Festival. The original debut performances were in November of 2007.

Icy cold vistas, shards of broken electronic glass, relentless thumping disco beats and possible mysteriously encrypted bits of dialogue may not sound like something that would be particularly inviting on a full range audio system, but somehow Fuck Buttons makes it so on this album of artificial mayhem and just plain noise.