Strata-East continues its acclaimed audiophile reissue series with three essential titles: Shamek Farrah’s First Impressions (Deluxe Edition), Cecil Payne’s Zodiac and Charles Brackeen’s Rhythm X. Each release has been remastered by Kevin Gray directly from the original analog tapes, pressed at RTI on 180-gram vinyl, and presented with new liner notes in the deluxe gatefold packaging collectors have come to know and love.Shamek Farrah’s First Impressions (Deluxe... Read More

They arrived in Salina by commercial and private plane, by Ferrari and pick-up truck—customers, vendors and musicians from as close as Kansas and as far away as overseas, a few hundred of them, all for the love of vinyl records and as the weekend proceedings made clear, for the love of Chad Kassem and for what he's accomplished during his first forty years in business as Acoustic Sounds, Analogue Productions and Quality Record Pressings. All concerns that Chad... Read More

TORONTO, CANADA, October 2026 – Reliable Corporation is pleased to introduce the second generation of UberLight™ Flex, the purpose-built task light that has become a favorite among vinyl enthusiasts, audiophiles, record stores and audio retailers.Following the success of the first-generation UberLight™ Flex, Reliable listened closely to feedback from customers and the audio community. Rather than reinventing a product people already loved, the second generation... Read More

“. . . less lack of fancy than ever before.”Almost every work of Beethoven’s late or third period looks toward the past and the future, usually at the same time. Reaching for models and inspiration as far back as Palestrina, Bach, and Handel and adumbrating the future beyond Mahler, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, they are works of consolidation and innovation, of summation and inception, nowhere more so than in the last five (of sixteen) string quartets, which, but for a... Read More

The music scene in New York reached a cataclysmic crossroad by 1976. Studio 54 was one year shy of being the destination spot for disco and decadence, while white flight left many areas in urban decay. There was a strong urge to reel back rock ‘n’ roll to its simplistic roots, as progressive rock was also reaching its self-indulgent breaking point. Coming out of the dingy walls of CBGB were the Ramones, four Forest Hills outcasts churning out 3-chord songs in under 2... Read More

Wansford, an idyllic village located about an hour north of London in Cambridgeshire, was the site this past weekend of a high-end audio show called “The Happening.” The contrast between the venerable surroundings—the stone bridge connecting the two sides of the town was constructed in 1577—and the cutting-edge technology could hardly have been starker. Inside the elegant Haycock Manor Hotel, where the event itself was held, a portrait of young Queen Victoria, who... Read More

As much as you may try and fail to forget the horror that was “Almost Famous,” the version of Tony Fletcher that stalks the pages of “Pow! When UK Punk Went Pop, 1980-84” (Trouser Press Books) is far closer to whatever that film failed to capture. There he is in the summer of1980, riding a speeding train from London to Nottingham and trying to work out which member of Madness was which. It was his first big assignment for The Face, a slick culture and fashion magazine... Read More

Tom Wilson, the figure at the center of Steven E. Jones’ book Everything Is Everything: Tom Wilson and Pop Music in 1966, is little remembered today but he was probably the most important U.S. pop/rock record producer of the 1960s. His list of credits includes three Bob Dylan albums, The Times They Are A- Changin’, Another Side, Bringing It All Back Home plus part of Freewheelin’, and the song “Like A Rolling Stone,” three Mothers of Invention albums, Freak Out,... Read More

(Press release) LOS ANGELES – Two brother bands share center stage today as Rhino High Fidelity (Rhino Hi-Fi) welcomes new audiophile vinyl editions of Devo’s New Traditionalists and Sparks’ A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing.Both albums were cut from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Optimal in Germany. Each comes in a glossy gatefold sleeve with new liner notes. The albums are limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies and... Read More

VNYL, Inc. picked up the pieces of VMP (Vinyl Me, Please) and I'm not interested in getting into the politics of it, but am interested to alert you to this Fela box originally scheduled for VMP 2024 release, that's now available through VNYL, Inc. Fela, who was 58 when he died in 1997, came from a prominent family. His father was an Anglican priest. His brothers became doctors but he was the wild child who was sent to London to study classical music but... Read More

I'm flying out to Chad Kassem's "Vinyl Summit" as I write this from 30,000 feet. I can't see much below but I'm enjoying the ride. Ken Micallef's book "Vinyl" is a similar ride taken at a height where you can see everything but not with much detail. That was the intent and how it had to be when you're trying to give readers an all encompassing vinyl overview in 124 booklet-sized pages. Vinyl" makes for an... Read More

First thought upon seeing the original album cover in 1977: "If his aim is so true why would this guy adopt such a bogus name and dress in that get-up?". Turn over the jacket and he too looks as if he's not convinced. It's almost apologetic. It didn't help for this observer that another Brit named Graham Parker had already released Howlin' Wind, which had a superficially similar vibe (unknown at the time that Nick Lowe produced both). But... Read More

ARLINGTON, Texas - Oct. 12, 2026 — The Sound Organisation is excited to announce Rega Research’s newest offering Replay, an entirely new turntable designed to bring the company's celebrated approach to analog playback to a broader audience. Priced at just $395 MSRP, Replay represents a new entry point into Rega’s award-winning turntable range, offering the performance and engineering principles that have defined the British manufacturer's turntables for... Read More

The short story told here, (a longer one in the accompanying booklet is almost as good as the recording) is that in 1979 the free jazz, avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor's group performed at Albuquerque's KiMo Theater Tuesday evening November 20th. Taylor's gig there came between one by Anthony Braxton and another by Sam Rivers also recorded. the New Mexico Jazz Workshop also brought the Sun Ra Arkestra and the Art Ensemble of Chicago to town during this... Read More

For the past 27 years, Warsaw's Audio Video Show has been steadily growing in popularity and size. Last year, I started hearing reports from Michael Fremer as well as veteran European distributor Ricardo Franassovici, the founder and managing director of Absolute Sounds, about an unusual product that they had heard in several rooms at the 2025 Warsaw show. It was called Zikra and consisted of a preamplifier and low-powered amplifiers mated to custom horn... Read More

When I was a 20-year-old student at the Manhattan School of Music, I played in a production of Offenbach’s comic opera Orpheus in the Underworld. In order to fit in the small black box theater, the orchestra for this production was greatly reduced and featured a small, chamber-sized string section. What I remember most, aside from how funny the libretto was (an opera worth exploring if you think the art form is full of dour tragedies and stoic myths), was just how... Read More

The band Dungen (pronounced “doon-yen”, and Swedish for “The Grove”) have not yet received the credit they deserve for helping advance the vocabulary of 21st-century popular music. Dungen has effortlessly and authentically absorbed disparate influences, much of it taken from largely forgotten "popular" music of their homeland and combined it with a more contemporary sense of production, songwriting and zeitgeist. Kevin Parker of Tame Impala fame has... Read More

The mid-70s were a victory lap for Alice Cooper. After fronting the band of the same name with his high school buddies for years and delving into audience-taunting theatrics, the shock-rock king took the daring risk of striking out on his own for better or worse. Welcome to My Nightmare would surprisingly sell a million copies on the strength of the Top 20 hit, “Only Women Bleed.” Its supporting tour and its elaborate Broadway-scale production–featuring skeleton... Read More

I thought by now fans of this record and especially those who purchased the Vinylphyle reissue, supposedly of the "Closet Mix", knew what happened but emails keep coming. What happened and the fix has been posted on the udiscovermusic website. The fix is a most honorable solution.Here's what it says:AN IMPORTANT UPDATE REGARDING THE VELVET UNDERGROUND — THE VELVET UNDERGROUND VINYLPHYLE EDITIONDuring the production of the Vinylphyle edition of The... Read More