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Loudspeakers
Wilson Audio Alexia (£49500)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Oct 16, 2014
Customer and retailer reactions have suggested the need for a new Wilson speaker closer in performance to the universally-acclaimed Alexandria XLF [HFN Nov ’12], but one that swallowed no more real estate than a Sasha. With a footprint close to the Sasha’s, the Alexia hosts only a slight increase in height, due mainly to the necessarily larger woofer enclosure. To provide a goodly portion of the XLF’s adaptability, precision and coherence, the smaller Alexia had to offer adjustability of the midrange and tweeter positioning with to-the-millimetre accuracy, according to room specifics and the location of the owner’s ‘hot seat’. That meant a head section with movable segments, but with a volume akin to that of the original WATT.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Alexander Chapman Campbell : Sketches Of Light
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Oct 01, 2014
Campbell (26) fell in love with the sound of the piano as a child. Rather than training formally he decided to shut himself away with an instrument, playing and writing his own music. The 12 tracks selected for recording – some dating back to his teens – have titles, ‘Light on the River’, etc, which he says are not meant to be taken literally. But he sees Sketches as an integral work.
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This Wild Life : Clouded
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Oct 01, 2014
This debut album outing from California’s This Wild Life sees the duo Kevin Jordan and Anthony Del Grosso recording with Aaron Marsh of Florida-based indie rock band Copeland, performing a collection of heartfelt and melodic ‘acoustic punk-rock’ songs described as a melding of punk and folk. Indeed the band describes itself as being able to successfully perform softer music while touring with heavier bands that play the sort of hardcore punk and metal they spent the formative years exploring. The sound quality throughout is slightly hard-edged and in-your-face, the production ‘crowded’ and subjectively forward. Lacking air and space between instruments and voices, it soon becomes fatiguing.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Robin Ticciati, Joseph Swensen & Sir Charles Mackerras/scottish Chamber Orchestra : Sco 40th: Special Anniversary Edition
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Oct 01, 2014
192kHz/24-bit FLAC/ALAC*, Linn Records CKD 540 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) Linn has worked with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra for a decade and marks its 40th anniversary with a new Usher Hall recording of Wagner'sSiegfried idyll and two reissues (Sibelius' The Tempest and Mozart's Symphony 41 'Jupiter'), upsampled from 88. 2kHz/24-bit (Mozart: producer James Mallinson) and 96kHz/24-bit (Sibelius: Andrew Keener) masters.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Keith Jarrett & Charlie Haden : Last Dance
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Oct 01, 2014
Previously featured in our jazz reviews [here], Last Dance is now available as a 96kHz/24-bit download as well as CD. To recap, back in 2007 pianist Keith Jarret invited bassist Charlie Haden to his Cavelight Studio where they spent four days recording. They’d met up during the making of a film about Haden and these intimate sessions were their first collaborations for 30 years. The result was the 2010 album Jasmine, the ECM label issuing a further collection of tracks for this year’s Last Dance which features the duo’s delightful interpretations of standards such as Monk’s ‘’Round Midnight’ and Cole Porter’s ballad ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye’.
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Kremerata Baltica & Gidon Kremer : Mieczyslaw Weinberg Sonatas
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Oct 01, 2014
The 2CD set was released in February '14 while Kremer and his strings group were touring the States with music by Weinberg in their programmes. (ECM made the recordings at Lockenhaus and Neuhardenberg in Nov '12/Dec '13, the Sonatina for violin/piano at lower resolution, as noted on HRA’s web page. ) Music by the Polish composer – who went to Moscow but did not prosper – was admired by Shostakovich, and Kremer sees an affinity, especially in the 1968 symphony here, commissioned by Rudolf Barshai. This is a tough work, with brief respite found in (iii), Canzona.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Deep Purple : Made In Japan: Deluxe Edition
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Oct 01, 2014
For baby boomers the world over whose teenage years were spent living on a diet of what’s now termed ‘classic’ rock, Deep Purple’s Made In Japan represents one of the world’s most visceral and energetic rock bands captured at their pinnacle performance-wise. The 2LP set issued in 1972 contained tracks recorded across three nights in Tokyo and Osaka a few months after the band had released Machine Head. When the applause dies down following ‘Smoke On The Water’, singer Ian Gillan asks his engineer to adjust the foldback monitors to make ‘everything louder than everything else’. This remains one of rock’s immortal moments, as does the band’s virtuosity in this timeless memento.
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From Spain To Eternity : Ensemble Plus Ultra
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Oct 01, 2014
Subtitled ‘The Sacred Polyphony of El Greco’s Toledo’ this 70m selection of a mass by Alonso Lobo and motets, etc, by various composers, celebrates devotional music associated with Toledo Cathedral, and links to the painter who came to the city in 1557. Ensemble Plus Ultra comprises a small consort of singers, formed in 2001, who specialise in early Spanish music: their 10CD Archiv set of sacred works by Victoria was a runaway success. The unaccompanied voices, close-set in a reverberant acoustic have a strong presence. The music, of course, is by no means ‘easy listening’ (surprisingly, it was a Classic FM mid-May album choice), although the ‘et incarnatus est’ section in the Lobo Credo is strikingly lovely.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Doug Macleod : There's A Time
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Oct 01, 2014
If you’ve got a system capable of suspending disbelief and you’re a fan of the blues, recordings don’t come much better than this. Dim the lights, turn up the wick and you’ll swear bluesman Doug MacLeod is sitting at the end of your room. Reference Recordings’ technical director ‘Prof’ Keith O Johnson has been a darling of the US high-end scene for more than 30 years, renowned for his audiophile recordings. This was his first blues project.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Diana Panton : To Brazil With Love
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Oct 01, 2014
Singing variously in English and French, Canadian-born jazz singer/composer Diana Ariadne Panton has an enchanting voice, To Brazil With Love being her fourth album, released in 2011. It’s a meticulously manicured collection of Brazilian-infused MOR material with which you might want to chill out late at night: a curiously eclectic mix including compositions from Panton, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Paul McCartney. Panton’s moving interpretation of ‘And I Love Her’ (here it’s ‘And I Love Him’, of course) is a notable highlight – if you’re not offended by classic Beatles numbers being sprinkled with a heavy helping of saccharine – featuring a delightful piano accompaniment by veteran multi-instrumentalist Don Thompson. This is a lovely, if artificially intimate recording with a sound balance that’ll sound great on any good hi-fi system.
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