A Bit of a Whine, Moan, Rant…
OK – here is a big MOAN!
I found myself sitting comfortably on my couch enjoying a beautiful Impulse records gatefold of a widely acclaimed recording The Comet Is Coming’s ”Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery.” The only problem with the scenario is that Universal seem to have forgotten that Impulse records have traditionally been well recorded, exquisitely presented, and audiophile sounding. I am listening to the 24/96 stream from Qobuz, because the record sounds like it is being played over a dial-up phone – low volume, no bass, no dynamics, bloody awful. In comparison – the digital version is wonderful – it is a great album from the exciting London Jazz Scene (Sons of Kemet, Ezra Collective, SEED Ensemble etc). Shame on you mastering engineer! Apparently the record has two different cuts – the European one (mine) which isn’t great, and an American one that sounds good.
Here is the thing – record companies are making big money in vinyl again, and they are falling back on the old bad habits: lazy mastering, industrial scale pressing on worn out stampers, floppy vinyl. A case in point is the recent Blue Note 80 series. The original master tapes were sent to Kevin Gray who went ahead and did his magic and created wonderful laquers for Universal to cut into vinyl. They were shipped off to Optimal – one of the great pressing plants in the world. So far, I have had to send back 3 of these records because they sounded absolutely awful – as if the stampers wore out and then they pressed a few more. The hipsters who don’t play their records mightn’t notice – but I do [actually in the case of the Horace Silver album at the Village Gate – a friend of mine was extolling the virtues of this wonderful recording – I though it was poor – until I listened to the CD and realised that my pressing was a lemon]. Save me the sanctimonious “they’re cheaper than the Tone Poet records and pressed in larger quantities” argument – for €25 I expect a decent pressing.
A few years ago, I was wandering through Soho, in London, and visited, I think it was Sister Ray records. I marveled at how the guy behind the desk seemed to spend his day cleaning records while talking to virtually every customer in the shop, offering advice on the provenance of records, pressing quality and why the albums were priced so. This seemed to me to be the core role of the record shop – information, community and husbandry of the records. On a recent trip to the US, I picked up a couple of first pressings of Jazz albums from the 1950s. These were not cheap – they are the kind of records that you find displayed up on the walls, that require “assistance” to view. Each one required two cleanings, at home, to remove the gunk (I’m still not sure if they are actually clean). If I had not been in a rush, and asked to listen to the records in store, they would have been rejected – due to surface noise rather than overall apparent condition. Most record shops have how many – 150 or 200 really valuable records, priced at >€$£40 – in store and on sale at any time? How hard would it be for them to clean the fu**ing records? In Sister Ray, it was not first pressing of Beatles albums that the guy was cleaning – it was the usual random 1980s stuff, that had recently come it. Bravo!
Incidentally, a good cleaning – using a proper washer and vacuum style machine (from various companies for less than €400) makes a big difference in the sound of even new records – so a record cleaner is a decent investment if you have the time and space to store it.
Finally, having suffered more than I would like to admit, listening to a bunch of duff pressings, I thought I would take pity on my collection of naively purchased public domain jazz records, the majority of which were bought a decade ago, mostly unopened. So, I sat down for an afternoon and listened to a bunch of LPs pressed by Jazz Train, Jazz Wax, Doxy, DOL and others. And do you know what – there wasn’t a stinker amongst them. Yes, I know I have these listed as “record labels to avoid” because the source is almost certainly a CD – but every record I listened to was presented in pristine silent 180g virgin vinyl with plastic lined inner sleeves, and nicely manufactured outer sleeves. I particularly enjoyed: Jazz in Silhouette by Sun Ra (Doxy 2010), Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane live in Chicago (Jazz Wax 2010), John Coltrane – Art Blakey’s Big Band And Quintet (Doxy 2008), Lee Morgan – Expoobident (Wax Train 2008), Gerry Mulligan & Paul Desmond – Blues In Time (Wax Time 2009) and Art Farmer – Modern Art (Jazz Wax 2008). What these records have in common is that 1. I don’t have an original, high quality all analogue or Japanese pressing, 2. The original pressings are so expensive that you would have to sell a kidney to raise the cash, 3. They actually sound better than a lot of the all analogue pressings from the 1970s and 1980s (this being a particular problem with Blue Note albums). Do they sound better than the CD source? I don’t think so – but the form factor, liner notes, presentabliity etc. is very satisfying nonetheless. I’m not suggesting that you go out an buy these records, but they are not “bad” as some bloggers would have you believe.
I also have a bunch of records from the Spanish Jazz Workshop series. These are reissues of relatively rare albums that would be hard to find on vinyl regardless of price. I have a few of these on CD (from other companies) – and the records do not sound the same as my CD (which is often the case with reissues) – so I don’t know the source. I have been told, in record shops, that they are analogue sourced – and the owner claims so – but what tapes and from where – who knows? And who cares? They mostly sound great. And guess what – they don’t need to be cleaned twice before listening.
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