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Jerome Sabbagh & Greg Tuohey’s No Filter | The Vinyl Anachronist

by Marc Phillips in Music

Jerome Sabbagh & Greg Tuohey’s new album, No Filter, possesses one heck of an audiophile pedigree. It was recorded live to 1/2″ two-track analog tape at 30 ips, it was mastered by Bernie Grundman at his Hollywood studio, and the “master lacquer was cut directly from the analog tape using an all-tube system.” If that’s not impressive enough, how about this: “There are no edits or overdubs on this recording.” Tenor saxophone player Jerome Sabbagh [...]

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Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Tutankhamun | The Vinyl Anachronist

April 30, 2019 // 0 Comments

The Art Ensemble of Chicago‘s classic avant-garde recording of Tutankhamun is inscrutable, so it makes sense that the liner notes are equally perplexing. Jazz critic John B. Litweiler, who wrote for Jazz Monthly, reaches deep into an abyss of feelings and struggles to make that sometimes electric connection between jazz and Ancient Egypt, that strange and almost humorous hybrid of sound that worked so well for Sun Ra and his contemporaries. Reading Litweiler is not unlike reading Pynchon, [...]
Monthly Spins: April 2019

April 15, 2019 // 0 Comments

Finally winter leaves us. I did enjoy one epic day of shoveling and I stayed up late one night to watch when a storm began coming down. I like the way snow obliterates and alters the landscape, a little different each time. Now it’s peepers and blooming [...]
Jazz Wires, Land of Giants | The Vinyl Anachronist

April 2, 2019 // 2 Comments

Jazz Wires, a group led by Cuban-born Raul E. Blanco, creates such a huge impact on their new CD Land of Giants that you might not believe there are only six “wires.” The title track, which starts off this potent album, sounds like it’s performed by a big band who secretly wishes it was a rock band. You feel the pulsing beat, delivered with powerful sonic exclamation marks, and you think “Wow, this is some big music. It’s almost arena jazz.” While Blanco does [...]
Jeanne Lee & Ran Blake, The Newest Sound You Never Heard | The Vinyl Anachronist

March 31, 2019 // 1 Comment

Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake released their first album, The Newest Sound Around, in 1961. They released their second album together, You Stepped Out of a Dream, in 1989. That’s a lot of space, especially for a duo so in tune with each other, so daring in their approach. Vocalist Lee and pianist Blake occasionally toured together over the years, much to the delight of their devoted fans. That ended in 2000, when Lee passed away. That’s pretty much it for this duo’s jazz legacy, a [...]
Cecil Taylor, Silent Tongues | The Vinyl Anachronist

March 30, 2019 // 2 Comments

This recent LP shipment I’ve received from ORG Music came at just the right time–we’re getting ready to put out the Spring Issue of The Occasional and I’ve included my tour of the new Furnace Records pressing plant. While I was walking past the assembly line, two women were working on the packaging materials for Cecil Taylor’s Silent Tongues (Amazon). Little did I know that Silent Tongues, a live recording of Taylor at Montreux ’74, would wind up at my [...]
Gregg Belisle-Chi, Book of Hours | The Vinyl Anachronist

March 28, 2019 // 1 Comment

I’ll give you a glimpse behind the curtain of the Vinyl Anachronist operation: I get music from jazz labels, and I get music from indie rock labels. The two worlds rarely collide. When I received Gregg Belisle-Chi’s Book of Hours in the mail, I wasn’t sure which world was being represented. Gregg Belisle-Chi, a guitarist based in Brooklyn, has a sound on Book of Hours that sort of bridges the gap but in a way that leans heavily toward indie rock with its heavy doses of [...]
Gregor Huebner, Los Sonadores | The Vinyl Anachronist

March 27, 2019 // 0 Comments

My first listen of violinist Gregor Huebner Los Sonadores was a special sonic treat, if only for the reason that I had just set up the EgglestonWorks Emma EVO loudspeakers and the Luxman LX-380 integrated amplifier and this was one of the first CDs I played. The Emma EVOs and the LX-380, which will both be featured in an upcoming issue of The Occasional, are a particularly gorgeous combo and I wound up falling in love with the sound–something I consider remarkable because both products [...]
Sotto Voce’s Safety | The Vinyl Anachronist

March 26, 2019 // 2 Comments

Sotto Voce takes me back thirty years, even longer, to a time where a rock band could create a unique identity for themselves with just bass, drums and a couple of guitars–not to mention an intriguing singer. Sotto Voce’s Safety stands apart from so much of today’s indie rock scene simply because the music itself doesn’t prompt me to make comparisons to a host of other bands, both old and new. The thirteen tracks here occupy a space defined by multiple layers of [...]
Thin White Rope LP Remasters

March 24, 2019 // 1 Comment

Thin White Rope As an expatriate of the People’s Republic of Davis, CA [1984-1993], I must first acknowledge the appearance, at least, of a conflict of interest in reviewing these albums. Full disclosure: I saw Thin White Rope play live dozens of times: in Davis, Sacramento, San Francisco, and LA. I shot handheld VHS tapes of at least two shows (that I can remember), and Lisa Fancher at Frontier Records once promised (threatened?) to make me sign waivers for the footage… even [...]
Linette Tobin, Pangaea | The Vinyl Anachronist

March 24, 2019 // 1 Comment

Linette Tobin is a successful immigration lawyer based in Washington DC, and she’s very passionate about, uh…wait a minute. What does this have to do with music? Immigration law? Really? Well, that’s what is so special about Linette Tobin and her new album with Pangaea, The New Shape of the World. She is an immigration lawyer, but she’s also a conga player. She’s the kind of conga player who travels to places such as Cuba and Africa in order to hone her craft and [...]
Monthly Spins: March 2019

March 23, 2019 // 1 Comment

The in-between month with a steady bunch of tasty releases. I’m hearing all these Trout Mask Replica influences and this is a welcome development. Perhaps we’ll agree, or maybe you’ll find no sense to any of these offerings. Music transcends any sort of detachment from reality. Some of these albums take a bit of time to suss out and blossom. Orgue Agnès: A Une Gorge File Under: swiss savants create swinging grooves I have know way of knowing if they are actually singing in any known [...]
Nick Sanders Trio, Playtime 2050 | The Vinyl Anachronist

March 22, 2019 // 1 Comment

Jazz and humor usually don’t go hand in hand, even though the stereotype of a jazz club is one where everyone is laughing and enjoying themselves and having a great time. The Nick Sanders Trio goes against that generalization on Playtime 2050, their new album. Humor is often difficult to convey if no one is singing funny words, so the listener is going to have to be savvy to “get” the purely musical jokes here. In order to discover the humor in Playtime 2050, you need to know [...]
Joris Teepe, In the Spirit of Rashied Ali | The Vinyl Anachronist

March 21, 2019 // 1 Comment

Just a few days after writing my first book review ever–for Brian Jabas Smith’s moving Tucson Salvage–here comes the second: Joris Teepe‘s In the Spirit of Rashied Ali. Well, this isn’t exactly a book as much as an extended set of liner notes, covering bassist Joris Teepe’s years with legendary jazz drummer Ali just before he passed away suddenly of a heart attack in 2009 at the age of 76. But these recollections and interviews of Ali’s bandmates and [...]
Ruth Palmer, Johann Sebastian Bach | The Vinyl Anachronist

March 13, 2019 // 1 Comment

Whenever you set up a new analog rig, what do you play first? Do you trot out one of your reference LPs, the type that really tells you what’s going on with a specific component, or do you throw on something expendable in case you screwed everything up? I veer toward the latter, but I really had to give this new direct-to-disc recording from Berliner Meisterschallplatten a spin because I had been waiting to pick up a couple of turntables for review–the Technics SL-1200G and the Dr. [...]
Meat Puppets, Dusty Notes | The Vinyl Anachronist

March 11, 2019 // 0 Comments

Hearing the Meat Puppets’ brand new CD, Dusty Notes, is an unexpected pleasure on a cold and wet Sunday afternoon–possibly because this Phoenix-based group has always reminded me of deserts as well as desert rats, a notion currently worlds away. I’ve combed through much of my writing about music over the last few years and I’ve discovered that I’ve never really talked about one of my favorite albums of all time, the Puppet’s 1985 LP Up on the Sun, which was [...]
Wadada Leo Smith, Rosa Parks: Pure Love

March 9, 2019 // 1 Comment

Wadada Leo Smith’s new composition, Rosa Parks: Pure Love, was inspired by the civil rights movement and performed for the first time in September 2016 at the New School in NYC as part of the Festival of New Trumpet Music. Smith describes these seven oratorios as a pure and emotional tribute to Parks, and how she was a “person of exceptional courage and wisdom, who made the right move of resistance at the right time.” There’s no doubt that Parks’ actions were [...]
Pikefruit, Sprig | The Vinyl Anachronist

March 8, 2019 // 2 Comments

Welcome! You’ve made the transition from The Vinyl Anachronist blog, which I’ve been writing since 2010, to the new Vinyl Anachronist section of the Part-Time Audiophile website. I’ve been contemplating my first music review in this format, and I’ve decided on this, Pikefruit’s Sprig, because I listened to this EP yesterday for the first time on a newly-assembled review system featuring the EgglestonWorks Emma EVO loudspeakers and a Luxman LX-380 integrated [...]
Monthly Spins: February 2019

February 24, 2019 // 1 Comment

Lots of late December and January stuff and some from Feb. The reissues are especially noteworthy this month. I hope you discover something that moves you. Please leave comments if you like [...]
Monthly Spins: January 2019

January 28, 2019 // 0 Comments

Another year dissolves and we find ourselves delving deep into late November and December releases, as well as a few I just discovered. New Year’s resolutions include possibly finishing the book I’m writing, and joining a gym and cutting out the sweets. What always astounds me at the beginning of the year is knowing that I will no doubt discover 20 or 30 albums that will move, inspire and shape my year to come, because generally I can put something on that I wore out ten years ago and [...]
The Haruomi Hosono Archival Series | The Deep End

January 18, 2019 // 1 Comment

“You’ve never heard of Haruomi Hosono?” With every music review I write, I try to learn something new. It can be anything–something about the artist, something that happened in history during the recording or even the sound of a musical instrument I’ve never heard until that moment. I learned something quite spectacular while tackling these five remastered releases from Japanese pop/rock/electronica pioneer Haruomi “Harry” Hosono. That little morsel of trivia was buried [...]

Jerome Sabbagh & Greg Tuohey’s No Filter | The Vinyl Anachronist

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