High Altitude Drums 07/08 — Blue Knights and Troopers Drum & Bugle Corps
A drum and bugle corps recorded so far below normal level that it needs the volume control at 11:30 — and then becomes the most startling demonstration disc I have heard.
Multichannel
22 articles.
Writing
Blue Dream — Fiona Joy Hawkins
The first SACD released by an Australian independent artist: new age piano produced by Will Ackerman and mastered by Bob Ludwig, in a mix I wanted to be bolder.
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Dreams and False Alarms — Andy Milne
Solo piano readings of Mitchell, Sting, Marley, Young and Dylan that take their time letting you work out which song you are hearing. Audition before buying.
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Places You Go — Brad Shepik Trio
A trio with a Hammond B-3 where the acoustic bass should be, playing original mid-tempo numbers and ballads. Almost an hour long, and I wanted more.
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Think Like the Waves — Gordon Grdina
ECM-ish contemporary jazz coloured by oud and Middle Eastern lines, with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian completing the trio, in an enveloping 5.0 mix.
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Dahl, Martinů and Husa — Sonolumina Ensemble
A whole disc of works for clarinets and strings, vibrantly played and miked closely enough that the breathing and the bowing come with it.
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Haydn: String Quartets Op. 9 No. 4 and Op. 77 No. 2 — Fry Street Quartet
The sequel to Voices of Modernism, with the same fiery playing: an early quartet that sounds Beethovenish and a late one that sounds Mozartean.
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Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians — GVSU New Music Ensemble
My favourite piece of music in its first multichannel release, where for the first time I could hear the three pianos apart instead of one wall of sound.
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Voices of Modernism and the String Quartet — Fry Street Quartet
Beethoven, Stravinsky, Rorem and Scearce across two IsoMike discs, in gripping performances and one of the best string quartet recordings I have heard.
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Wagner: Götterdämmerung — Asher Fisch and the Adelaide Ring
The final instalment, middle of the road in both performance and sonics, and a closing verdict ranking all four Adelaide Ring titles against one another.
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Ten at 86 — Joe McQueen and friends
An IsoMike four-channel jazz recording made with baffled microphones, at the lowest level I had met on a commercial disc, where the ambience channels matter more than I expected.
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Bach: Goldberg Variations — the Zenph re-performance of Gould’s 1955 recording
Gould’s 1955 mono recording reverse-engineered into note data and replayed on a Disklavier direct to DSD: a stunning piano recording, and a performance that is his and yet subtly not.
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Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 — Australian Youth Orchestra, Anissimov
A well played Tenth from an orchestra not to be dismissed as amateurs, and a faithful capture of the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall's difficult acoustics, warts included.
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Believe in Love — Elizabeth Whitehouse and Richard Bonynge
Soprano arias billed as rare and mostly not, sung with style and flair, with the voice imaged left of centre exactly where a soloist stands in a real hall.
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Wagner: Siegfried — Asher Fisch and the Adelaide Ring
The opera in the cycle I had always liked least, in a performance and recording that changed my mind — the best balanced of the four, and the one to sample multichannel SACD on.
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Wagner: Das Rheingold — Asher Fisch and the Adelaide Ring
The second Adelaide instalment, and the weakest: a faultless recording of a staging whose energy was largely visual, with stage water reading on the microphones as crackle.
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Dark Clouds — Stu Goldberg and Cassius Khan
Piano and tabla, and the rare SACD where I preferred the stereo mix — with an explanation from the producer of why the surround ambience was built the way it was.
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Wagner: Die Walküre — Asher Fisch and the Adelaide Ring
The first instalment of the Adelaide Ring on SACD, reviewed by someone who sat in the hall: an emotional rather than physical Walküre, on a recording that may beat being there.
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Bach: Keyboard Concertos 1 — Angela Hewitt and the Australian Chamber Orchestra
Hewitt plays the piano as a piano, prettily; the unconventional surround mix is the interesting part, with the double bass sitting almost wholly in the 0.1 channel.
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Vivaldi: Concertos for the Emperor — English Concert, Manze
Six reconstructed concertos from the set presented to Charles VI, recorded, edited and mastered in DSD, in a reading I found a shade too languid.
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The Dark Side of the Moon — Pink Floyd
The 30th Anniversary SACD ranked against a Quad LP, two earlier CD masterings and a bootleg DTS disc — seven versions of one album, each with its own sonic character.
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Steppin' — Christy Baron
Chesky's jazz and R&B arrangements of pop tunes, with the rolled-off top end and barely used surround channels typical of the label's multichannel discs.
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