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SACD

Genesis – Calling All Stations (1997) [Remastered Reissue 2007] [SACD / Virgin – 5099950383528]

adminJanuary 15, 2026 94 Views

Title: Genesis – Calling All Stations (1997) [Remastered Reissue 2007]
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Phil Collins left Genesis following the We Can’t Dance tour and many observers expected Tony Banks and Michael Rutherford to finally call it a day. They decided to persevere instead, hiring former Stiltskin vocalist Ray Wilson to replace Collins. Given that Stiltskin was a European neo-prog band, it isn’t a total surprise that Genesis returned to their art rock roots on Calling All Stations, their first album with Wilson. The music on Calling All Stations is long, dense, and lugubrious, but it’s given the same immaculate, pristine production that was the hallmark of their adult contemporary work with Collins. It wants to be an art rock album, but not at the expense of losing the pop audience – which makes it all the stranger that the group doesn’t really write pop songs on Calling All Stations. That may be because Wilson’s voice isn’t suited for pop, but works well with languid, synthesized prog settings. But even ponderous prog rock has to have musical themes worth exploring, and on that level, Genesis come up dry on Calling All Stations.

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1 min read

SACD

Genesis – A Trick Of The Tail (1976) [Remastered Reissue 2007] [SACD / Virgin – 0946 385964 2 4]

adminJanuary 15, 2026 93 Views

Title: Genesis – A Trick Of The Tail (1976) [Remastered Reissue 2007]
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

After Peter Gabriel departed for a solo career, Genesis embarked on a long journey to find a replacement, only to wind back around to their drummer, Phil Collins, as a replacement. With Collins as their new frontman, the band decided not to pursue the stylish, jagged postmodernism of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway – a move that Gabriel would do in his solo career – and instead returned to the English eccentricity of Selling England by the Pound for its next effort, A Trick of the Tail. In almost every respect, this feels like a truer sequel to Selling England by the Pound than Lamb; after all, that double album was obsessed with modernity and nightmare, whereas this album returns the group to the fanciful fairy tale nature of its earlier records. Also, Genesis were moving away from the barbed pop of the first LP and returning to elastic numbers that showcased their instrumental prowess, and they sounded more forceful and unified as a band than they had since Foxtrot. Not that this album is quite as memorable as Foxtrot or Selling England, largely because its songs aren’t as immediate or memorable: apart from “Dance on a Volcano,” this is about the sound of the band playing, not individual songs, and it succeeds on that level quite wildly – to the extent that it proved to longtime fans that Genesis could possibly thrive without its former leader in tow.

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2 min read

SACD

Genesis – And Then There Were Three (1978) [Remastered Reissue 2007] [SACD / Virgin – 0946 385050 2 0]

adminJanuary 15, 2026 94 Views

Title: Genesis – And Then There Were Three (1978) [Remastered Reissue 2007]
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

And Then There Were Three, more than either of its immediate predecessors, feels like the beginning of the second phase of Genesis – in large part because the lineup had indeed dwindled down to Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, and Phil Collins, a situation alluded to in the title. But it wasn’t just a whittling of the lineup; the group’s aesthetic was also shifting, moving away from the fantastical, literary landscapes that marked both the early Genesis LPs and the two transitional post-Gabriel outings, as the bandmembers turned their lyrical references to contemporary concerns and slowly worked pop into the mix, as heard on the closing “Follow You Follow Me,” the band’s first genuine pop hit. Its calm, insistent melody, layered with harmonies, is a perfect soft rock hook, although there’s a glassy, almost eerie quality to the production that is also heard throughout the rest of the record. These chilly surfaces are an indication that Genesis don’t quite want to abandon prog at this point, but the increasing emphasis on melody and tight song structures points the way toward the group’s ’80s work.

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2 min read

SACD

Genesis – Abacab (1981) [Remastered Reissue 2007] [SACD / Virgin – 0946 385183 2 7]

adminJanuary 15, 2026 97 Views

Title: Genesis – Abacab (1981) [Remastered Reissue 2007]
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Duke showcased a new Genesis – a sleek, hard, stylish trio that truly sounded like a different band from its first incarnation – but Abacab was where this new incarnation of the band came into its own. Working once again with producer Hugh Padgham, the group escalated the innovations of Duke, increasing the pop hooks, working them seamlessly into the artiest rock here. And even if the brash, glorious pop of “No Reply at All” – powered by the percolating horns of Earth, Wind & Fire, yet polished into a precise piece of nearly new wave pop by Padgham – suggests otherwise, this is still art rock at its core, or at least album-oriented rock, as the band works serious syncopations and instrumental forays into a sound that’s as bright, bold, and jagged as the modernist artwork on the cover. They dabble in other genres, lacing “Me and Sarah Jane” with a reggae beat, for instance, which often adds dimension to their sound, as when “Dodo” rides a hard funk beat and greasy organ synths yet doesn’t become obvious; it turns inward, requiring active listening. Truly, only “No Reply at All,” the rampaging title track (possibly their hardest-rocking song to date), and the sleek and spooky “Man on the Corner” (which hides a real melancholy heart underneath its glistening surface) are immediate and accessible – although the Mockney jokes of “Who Dunnit?” could count, it’s too much of a geeky novelty to be pop. The rest of Abacab is truly modern art rock, their last album that could bear that tag comfortably.

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2 min read

SACD

Gene Clark – White Light (1971) [Reissue 2018] [SACD / Intervention Records – IR-SCD9]

adminJanuary 12, 2026 123 Views

Title: Gene Clark – White Light (1971) [Reissue 2018]
Genre: Folk Rock, Country Rock
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Gene Clark’s 1971 classic “White Light” is a bittersweet and knowing statement from a singer/songwriter at the peak at his creative powers. Having fronted The Byrds, Clark on his own here is stripped down in guitarist Jesse Ed Davis’ stark production. The lyrics, singing and guitar playing are so powerful that less production here is immeasurably more musically. The album art is beautifully restored by IR’s Tom Vadakan.

Gene Clark’s 1971 platter, with its stark black cover featuring his silhouette illuminated by the sun, was dubbed White Light – though the words never appear on the cover – and if ever a title fit a record, it’s this one. Over its nine original tracks, it has established itself as one of the greatest singer/songwriter albums ever made. After leaving the Byrds in 1966, recording with the Gosdin Brothers, and breaking up the Dillard & Clark group that was a pioneering country-rock outfit, Clark took time to hone his songwriting to its barest essentials. The focus on these tracks is intense, they are taut and reflect his growing obsession with country music. Produced by the late guitarist Jesse Ed Davis (who also worked with Taj Mahal, Leon Russell, Link Wray, and poet John Trudell, among others), Clark took his songs to his new label with confidence and they supported him. The band is comprised of Flying Burrito Brothers’ bassist Chris Ethridge, the then-Steve Miller Band-pianist (and future jazz great) Ben Sidran, organist Michael Utley, and drummer Gary Mallaber. Clark’s writing, as evidenced on “The Virgin,” the title cut, “For a Spanish Guitar,” “One in a Hundred,” and “With Tomorrow,” reveals a stark kind of simplicity in his lines. Using melodies mutated out of country, and revealing that he was the original poet and architect of the Byrds’ sound on White Light, Clark created a wide open set of tracks that are at once full of space, a rugged gentility, and are harrowingly intimate in places. His reading of Bob Dylan’s “Tears of Rage,” towards the end of the record rivals, if not eclipses, the Band’s. Less wrecked and ravaged, Clark’s song is more a bewildered tome of resignation to a present and future in the abyss. Now this is classic rock.

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2 min read

SACD

Gene Clark – No Other (1974) [Deluxe Box Set 2019] [SACD / 4AD – 4AD 0071 MXX]

adminJanuary 12, 2026 114 Views

Title: Gene Clark – No Other (1974) [Deluxe Box Set 2019]
Genre: Folk Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Pop Rock, Country Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Gene Clarks 1974 masterpiece gets the reappraisal its long overdue. One of the greatest albums ever made. Initially celebrated for its obscurity, No Other is now celebrated for its magnificence. It was in every way a magnum opus: epic, sprawling, poetic, choral, rococo. 45 years on and recently remastered at Abbey Road, 4AD are giving No Other the reappraisal it deserves. As stated on 4AD’s website, the original tapes were remastered at Abbey Road Studios, featuring a 5.1 surround mix of the album created for the first time. All the studio tapes were forensically worked on and mixed by the duo of Gene Clark aficionado Sid Griffin and producer John Wood; the extra tracks have not been edited or composited in any way, “allowing for everything to be heard exactly as it went down in the studio and before any overdubbing took place”.

Upon its 1974 release, Gene Clark’s No Other was rejected by most critics as an exercise in bloated studio excess. It was also ignored by Asylum, that had invested $100,000 in recording it. A considerable sum at the time, it was intended as a double album, but the label refused to release it as such. Ultimately, it proved a commercial failure that literally devastated Clark; he never recovered. Though Clark didn’t live to see it, No Other has attained cult status as a visionary recording that employs every available studio means to illustrate the power in Clark’s mercurial songwriting. He and producer Thomas Jefferson Kaye entered Village Recorders in L.A. with an elite cast that included Michael Utley and Jesse Ed Davis, Butch Trucks, Lee Sklar, Russ Kunkel, Joe Lala, Chris Hillman, Danny “Kooch” Kortchmar, Howard Buzzy Feiten, and Stephen Bruton. Clark’s vocalists included: Clydie King, Venetta Fields, Shirley Matthews, the Eagles’ Timothy B. Schmidt, and Claudia Lennear among them. These musicians all brought their best to the material. As a whole, No Other is a sprawling, ambitious work that seamlessly melds country, folk, jazz-inflected-gospel, urban blues, and breezy L.A. rock in a song cycle that reflects the mid-’70s better than anything from the time, yet continues to haunt the present with its relevance. There are no edges on the set, even in the labyrinthine, multi-tracked title track that juxtaposes guitar-driven psychedelia and out jazz saxophones and flutes with lush vocal harmonies. Even its tougher tracks, such as “Strength of Strings,” that echoes Neil Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand,” melodically, delivers an alluring, modal, Eastern-tinged bridge adorned by slide guitar wizardry. In the textured darkness of “Silver Raven,” Clark’s falsetto vocal is framed by an alluring synth, and muted bassline and is embraced by a chorus that rivals CSNY’s, making for a heartbreaking, yet blissed-out country-folk song. “From a Silver Phial,” as haunting and beautiful as it is, is one of the strangest songs Clark ever penned. Its anti-drug references are especially odd as this is one of the more coked-out recordings to come from L.A. during the era. The final two cuts, “The True One” and “Lady of the North” (the latter co-written with Doug Dillard), are the only two pieces on the disc that mirror where Clark had come from musically, but as they wind around the listener, even these are far bigger than mere country-rock tunes, offering glissando passages of pedal steel and piano ostinatos that actually create narrative movement for the lyrics to turn on. No Other’s songs lend themselves to open-ended performances in the studio. Because of his spacious, yet always beautifully centered compositional style, they are well-suited to Kaye’s use of the multi-tracked instruments and vocals, ambient sonic echoes, and textures that surround them. Clark’s unlikely classic, No Other is continually continued rediscovered by succeeding generations.

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4 min read

SACD

Gene Bertoncini – Concerti (2008) [SACD / Ambient Records – CD-007]

adminJanuary 12, 2026 124 Views

Title: Gene Bertoncini – Concerti (2008)
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Of the many projects the great guitarist Gene Bertoncini has been involved in, the centerpiece of his style has always been focused on thoughtful discourse and romance. And nobody — nobody — plays the acoustic six-string nylon instrument better than Bertoncini within a jazz context. What brings Concerti into a different light is not just the addition of a string quartet with the very fine bassist David Finck and conductor Michael Patterson. The bonds these players enjoy are the wonderful charts by various arrangers from the Eastman School of Music, where Bertoncini is an instructor. Far from mere accompanists, the strings and their carefully crafted scores are interactive, channel elegantly between the lines of the guitarist and bassist, and produce an organic whole that charmingly blend and sing together. “East of the Sun” kicks off the program in typical fashion with Bertoncini and Finck up front and the strings laying back, but then the roles change on “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” as the strings play counterpointed lines encompassed by guitar solos, then they merge. A bossa nova version of “Eleanor Rigby” with strings playing insistent sharp bowed or plucked phrases under Bertoncini’s energetic quick lines verifies a really good idea in changing up this stoic Beatles tune. A strident take of “Every Time We Say Goodbye” has the violins, viola, and cello burst blooming, then clamped down ritarded, and a great take of the well-worn “Invitation” has new life from the bouncy string intro, leading to the calmed, familiar melody with Bertoncini in the background. There are two combo tunes; the solo guitar to bossa excerpt from Fryderyk Chopin’s “Prelude-Opus 28, #4” into Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “How Inensitive” with the strings as an afterthought, and the similarly rendered intro of Rodrigo’s “Conceirto De Aranjuez” melting into Chick Corea’s bright and happy “Spain.” At 13 minutes “Conceirto/Spain” encompasses the most ambitious and conservative selection, easily recognizable and populist, cool and flowing, slow then sped up, interactive and stretched so the musicians can let some improvisation come to the forefront. There’s also a waltz of regret “For Chet,” an original of Bertoncini assumedly in tribute to Chet Baker, with the strings wafting alongside Finck’s bowed bass. A truly exquisite, professionally executed, and solid musical effort, this album should not be dismissed on any level as simply old hat. Instead it should be embraced for the simple and true organ of beauty it is proud to be.

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3 min read

SACD

Gene Bertoncini – Body And Soul (1999) [Reissue 2004] [SACD / Ambient Records – CD-001]

adminJanuary 12, 2026 141 Views

Title: Gene Bertoncini – Body And Soul (1999) [Reissue 2004]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Gene Bertoncini is one of the pre-eminent jazz guitarists active today. His fluid technique have won him international praise and such accolades as the “Segovia of jazz”. An eloquent and versatile improviser, has been heard with an extraordinary range of jazz greats, including performances and recordings with Benny Goodman, Buddy Rich, Wayne Shorter, Hubert Laws and Paul Desmond, among others, as well as with such distinguished vocalists as Tony Bennett, Carmen McRae and Lena Horne, Vic Damone and Edye Gorme. “Body and Soul” is Bertoncini’s first unaccompanied solo recording and his first recording for Ambient Records. This album represents the Jazz guitarist at his acoustic best. His playing works a tune from the inside, fully exploring its harmonic, melodic, and textural implications much like a classical composer develops an idea on paper. While most of the material here is exceedingly familiar (“The Shadow of Your Smile,” “Edelweiss,” “Greensleeves”) Bertoncini’s treatments transform each tune into a unique statement that is constantly changing.

There aren’t a great many exponents of nylon-string acoustic jazz guitar, but Gene Bertoncini, one of the true masters, belongs near the top of the list. On this exquisite solo album, the veteran guitarist is recorded via a technology called Direct Stream Digital. Without going into cumbersome details, what this means is unparalleled sound quality, giving a glass-like sheen to Bertoncini’s musical thoughts. It must be said, however, that Bertoncini would sound great recorded in far less ideal circumstances. His arrangements combine the unlimited possibilities of jazz reharmonization with the rigors of legit classical guitar technique, resulting in highly individual reworkings of great standards. The title track becomes a landscape of dark clusters and dissonance, while in parts of “My Funny Valentine” and “Greensleeves,” the melody occurs in the low register, framed by high-register chords and patterns – not something you’re likely to hear from even the best electric jazz guitarist. Bertoncini even makes lesser showtunes like “Edelweiss” and “How Are Things in Glocca Morra” sound like mini-symphonies.

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2 min read

SACD

Gene Ammons – Boss Tenor (1960) [Analogue Productions 2017] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CPRJ 7180 SA]

adminJanuary 12, 2026 126 Views

Title: Gene Ammons – Boss Tenor (1960) [Analogue Productions 2017]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Tenor sax great Gene Ammons was called The Boss years before Bruce Springsteen came along. This album from 1960 features Ammons as the only horn player, accompanied by a quartet including the incomparable Tommy Flanagan on piano and Art Taylor on drums. Not to be confused with Ammons’ 1961 album Boss Tenors which featured guest Sonny Stitt.

The great tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons was of the generation of swing-era players that easily adapted to bop. But though he was a modernist, Ammons maintained that breathy, old-school romantic approach to the tenor. Boss Tenor, a quintet session from 1960, is one of Ammons’ very best albums. Ray Barretto’s congas subtly add a bit of Latin spice, but otherwise this is a collection of standards rendered with a gorgeous late-night bluesy feel. Accompaniment by Tommy Flanagan, one of the best mainstream pianists ever, certainly doesn’t hurt, either. A gem.

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1 min read

SACD

George Wallington Quintet – Jazz For The Carriage Trade (1956) [Analogue Productions 2014] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CPRJ 7032 SA]

adminJanuary 12, 2026 130 Views

Title: George Wallington Quintet – Jazz For The Carriage Trade (1956) [Analogue Productions 2014]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Besides his importance as one of the first bop pianists, a major jazz composer, and a prototypical trio player (as heard on The George Wallington Trios), for a time pianist George Wallington was also a New York combo leader and talent scout on the order of Art Blakey and Miles Davis. This 1956 session comes from the period when Wallington was musical director at the Cafe Bohemia in Greenwich Village, where the present quintet introduced then-young lions trumpeter Donald Byrd and alto saxophonist Phil Woods to jazz’s major leagues.

During 1956-57 trumpeter Donald Byrd and altoist Phil Woods (both important up-and-coming players) were regular members of pianist George Wallington’s quintet. For this CD reissue, bassist Teddy Kotick and drummer Art Taylor complete the group on a program that includes three standards (“Our Delight,” “Our Love Is Here to Stay” and “What’s New”), a pair of Woods originals (“Together We Wail” and “But George”) and Frank Foster’s “Foster Dulles.” The music falls between bebop and hard bop with Woods sounding quite strong while Byrd comes across as a promising (but not yet mature) youngster. A fine example of this somewhat forgotten but talented group, easily recommended to bop collectors.

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2 min read