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SACD

Fairground Attraction – The First Of A Million Kisses (1988) [Japan 2018] [SACD / Stereo Sound – SSVS005]

adminDecember 16, 2025 117 Views

Title: Fairground Attraction – The First Of A Million Kisses (1988) [Japan 2018]
Genre: Folk Rock
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Fairground Attraction was a British folk and soft rock band, best known for their hit song “Perfect” and the subsequent single “Find My Love”. The band launched the careers of lead vocalist Eddi Reader and songwriter Mark E. Nevin. “The First of a Million Kisses” is their debut album, released in 1988. The album is a characteristic blend of folk, jazz, country, and Cajun elements.

Originally released in 1988, The First Of A Million Kisses launched the career of Fairground Attractions lead vocalist Eddie Reader who went on to receive a MBE in 2006 for her outstanding contribution to the arts which included her album of Robert Burns material with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The album and the #1 single ‘Perfect’ both won best album and single respectively at the 1989 Brit Awards. A refreshing blend of Folk, Jazz, Country and even a bit of Cajun, the album was a runaway success, eventually being certified platinum.

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1 min read

SACD

Formosan Duo – Romantic Album (2013) [SACD / IsoMike – 5605]

adminDecember 16, 2025 133 Views

Title: Formosan Duo – Romantic Album (2013)
Genre: Classical
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Formosan Duo – Romantic Album is another SACD from Kimber Kable & IsoMike label. The duo features Taiwanese violinist Shi-Hwa Wang and female pianist Yu-Jane Yang. The program includes works of Gershwin, Manuel de Falla, Amy Marcy Cheney Beach, and Korngold.

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1 min read

SACD

Fone Jazz Makers – Girl Of My Dreams (2001) [SACD / Fonè – 014 SACD]

adminDecember 16, 2025 137 Views

Title: Fone Jazz Makers – Girl Of My Dreams (2001)
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Girl Of My Dreams is an album of New Orleans Style Jazz featuring the Fone Jazz Makers. With this recording, Giulio Cesare Ricci wanted to give the listener a unique experience. It is as if the listener was sitting on an armchair positioned in the ideal position of the theater listening to this fine live recording of New Orleans Style Jazz. In this position, the depth, width, and height of the sound can be highly appreciated.

It starts with Darktown Strutters’ Ball by Shelton Brooks. A happy song from the early 20th Century. Catchy and easily remembered. It sounds just like the ideal album opener. Girl Of My Dreams, the title track was a popular waltz song of the Twenties and in more recent years had an important role in the movie Angel Heart. The New Orleans style musicians of the Fone Jazz Makers transformed it into a fox-trot. The recording was produced and recorded by Giulio Cesare Ricci at the Teatro Comunale dei Concordi in Campiglia Marittima (LI). He used Neumann U47 and M49 tube microphones, advanced microphone pre-amplifiers Nagra Audio, Nagra 4s Analog Tape Recorders and line, microphone and supply cables designed by Signor Ricci.

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2 min read

SACD

Foghat – Fool For The City (1975) [MFSL 2008] [SACD / Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab – UDSACD 2037]

adminDecember 16, 2025 127 Views

Title: Foghat – Fool For The City (1975) [MFSL 2008]
Genre: Rock, Hard Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Fool for the City is the fifth album released by English rock band Foghat. This was their first platinum album and features, along with the title track, their signature song “Slow Ride”. The album cover shows drummer Roger Earl sitting alone on a soap box fishing down a manhole in the middle of East 11th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenue) in New York City.

After building a solid core audience through relentless touring and a string of hard-rocking albums, Foghat finally hit the big time in 1975 with Fool for the City. It still stands out as the best album in the group’s catalog because it matched their road-tested abilities as hard rockers to a consistent set of tunes that were both well-crafted and ambitious. The tone for the album is set by its title track: This hard-rocking gem not only pairs riff-driven verses with an effective shout-along chorus, but also throws in a few surprising moments where the guitars are taken out of the mix completely and Nick Jameson’s bass is allowed to take the lead in a funky breakdown. Fool for the City also produced an enduring rock radio favorite in “Slow Ride,” a stomping rock tune that transcends the inherent clichés of its “love is like a car ride” lyrics with a furious performance from the band and a clever arrangement that works in well-timed automotive sound effects during the verses and plays up the band’s ability to work an R&B-styled groove into their hard-rocking sound (again, note the thumping bassline from Jameson). Further radio play was earned with “Take It or Leave It,” an acoustic-based ballad that worked synthesizers into its subtle yet carefully layered arrangement to become one of the group’s finest slow numbers. The album’s other songs don’t stand like the aforementioned selections, but they all flow together nicely thanks to a consistently inspired performance from the band and clever little arrangement frills that keep the group’s boogie-oriented rock fresh (example: the witty spoken word bit at the end of “Drive Me Home”). All in all, Fool for the City is both Foghat’s finest achievement in the studio and one of the high points of 1970s hard rock.

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2 min read

SACD

Evgeny Zarafiants – Beethoven & Chopin (2017) [SACD / Esoteric Company – ESSO-10002]

adminDecember 9, 2025 199 Views

Title: Evgeny Zarafiants – Beethoven & Chopin (2017)
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

This recording of piano works is the third title from ESOTERIC label, produced by bringing together the knowhow of ESOTERIC and Octavia Records, with the goal being a high-quality DSD recording primarily targeting audiophiles. The resulting recording promises a new level of excitement by bringing to the listener not only high sound quality, but also the captivating musical power embodied in the original works themselves.

Evgeny Zarafiants was born in Novosibirsk in 1959, to a musical family. His father, an oboist and pianist, was a member of the military band in the Kremlin and his mother is a singer and pianist. Zarafiants began learning the piano with his father when he was six years old and at the age of eight entered the Central Music School in Moscow, although before finishing his studies there he moved to Orsk, eventually completing his studies at the Glinka Conservatory in Gorky. Competition successes include prizes in the 1985 All-Russian Competition and in the Pogorelich Competition in Pasadena, soon after which he was invited to Croatia to teach at a private music school in Mirkovich. Evgeny Zarafiants has taught at the Conservatory in Nizhny Novgorod. His developing international career has brought recitals and broadcasts in various countries of Western Europe.

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2 min read

SACD

Everlast – White Trash Beautiful (2004) [SACD / Island Def Jam Music Group – B0002542-36]

adminDecember 9, 2025 130 Views

Title: Everlast – White Trash Beautiful (2004)
Genre: Folk
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

White Trash Beautiful is Everlast’s third LP since he exited the House of Pain and took up the reigns of conscience-driven, streetwise roots rap. It’s been a long time coming. In music biz terms, 2000’s critically acclaimed Eat at Whitey’s was a dud next to Whitey Ford Sings the Blues’ multi-platinum success. That and the wacko record label commingling of the early 2000s found Everlast label-less and lonely. A survivor, he started recording in his home studio and gravitated to the dusky country of outlaws like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Those sounds inform White Trash in spirit, if not necessarily in direct practice. For from the opening strains of the hard-luck story “Blinded by the Sun,” it’s clear that the former Erik Schrody’s been hearing not only country records but country grammar, too, as well as the organic rappalachia of Bubba Sparxxx. White Trash is a more effective mix of hip-hop trope and bluesy strum because, in the years since Whitey’s, what Everlast helped start has been finished by types like the above artists, Kid Rock, even OutKast. The relative novelty of hip-hop hitting up country and rock has worn away; Everlast can go ahead and kick that chip off his shoulder. Musically, Everlast and longtime producer Dante Ross still get a lot of mileage out of pairing his gruff delivery with spare acoustic guitar, and layering the whole thing over a subdued hip-hop bump (think “What’s It’s Like”). Everlast too still stumbles over the occasional rap cliché, like the street bravado/cynicism verses of “God Wanna” (“I’ll act like Ike Turner/Then treat you like Tina”), or “Sleepin’ Alone”‘s clunky relationship woe. The gritty “2 Pieces of Drama” is better, with its B Real guest shot and referencing of Cypress Hill’s “Hand on the Pump,” but White Trash is best when it’s blending country and blues into Everlast’s finely rendered tales of street-level loneliness. With its rain effects, slide guitar, and Hank Williams interpolation, “This Kind of Lonely” could be Nashville product with just a bit of tweaking, while the gentle pain of first single “Broken” is tinged with cello and theremin. “Lonely Road” opens up into the album’s most hopeful melody, led forth by surging fiddle and a quiet acoustic lead. “My back is strong,” he sings. “I’ll carry the load.” Even if he’s sad for a lot of it, Everlast also has some fun on White Trash Beautiful. “Sad Girl” sports a slight Latin flair in its chords as Everlast describes his latest infatuation. “Sittin’ in a pearl white Eldorado/In a gangsta lean she was revvin’ the throttle,” he relates. “She looked like Selena/The truth couldn’t be plaina.” Overall it’s a welcome return for Everlast – he sounds comfortable and confident, even in his heartbreak.

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3 min read

SACD

Eva Taylor – Live At The Pawnshop (2007) [SACD / Opus 3 – CD 22071]

adminDecember 9, 2025 131 Views

Title: Eva Taylor – Live At The Pawnshop (2007)
Genre: Jazz
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Singer Eva Taylor (1985-1977) was a blues-jazz vocal star in the first half of the twentieth century, and one of the very first African-American voices to be heard on the radio. Taylor sang in bands led or directed by the protean Clarence Williams, songwriter, pianist, and producer (also her husband). Before they became stars, jazz icons Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet also performed on some of her recordings. While she officially retired in the 1940’s, Taylor would perform sporadically. LEGENDARY is a live set recorded in Sweden in 1976 with a group of traditionally oriented (i.e., New Orleans, hot jazz, and ‘20s pop styles) locals. Backed by a band immersed in the era from which she sprang, Taylor’s rough yet resolute performances are a joy-filled link to pre-WWII classic jazz history.

It was certainly a magical night at the Pawnshop in March, 1976 when a young lady of 81 completely captured and entranced the audience with her stage presence and vibrant personality. Her communication with the musicians and audience combined to elevate her artistry beyond the aural level to include that indefinable ingredient…atmosphere. This atmosphere was retrieved from the Opus 3 vaults from 31 years ago and like a good wine has aged well as lovers of jazz from the twenties will appreciate. Eva Taylor is a direct link with the great era of jazz when she was singing with the Clarence Williams Blue Five and also with Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet who were coming to their peak as influential jazz geniuses in the mid twenties. The band which perfectly complements her artistry is Maggie’s Blue Five and includes Tomas Örnberg on clarinet & soprano saxophone and Bent Persson, trumpet from Tomas Örnberg’s Blue Five and later on, The Swedish Jazz Kings.

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2 min read

SACD

European Chamber Soloists, Nicol Matt – Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (2006) [SACD / Brilliant Classics – 8219]

adminDecember 9, 2025 126 Views

Title: European Chamber Soloists, Nicol Matt – Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (2006)
Genre: Classical
Format: MCH SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Gustav Mahler never heard Das Lied von der Erde, his penultimate completed work, nor the Ninth Symphony, which followed it closely. He was probably working on them more or less simultaneously. Despite his state of health, he managed not only to complete the full score of Das Lied, but also to prepare a version with piano accompaniment in place of the orchestra. There is however a third version, started by Arnold Schönberg – who saw Mahler as his mentor – in 1920, and scored for a chamber orchestra. This release features the European Chamber Soloists under Nicol Matt, with soloists Anna Haase (mezzo-soprano) and Daniel Sans (tenor).

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1 min read

SACD

Eugen Jochum, London Symphony Orchestra – Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies (1979) [Japan 2017] [SACD / Tower Records – TDSA-43/48]

adminDecember 9, 2025 146 Views

Title: Eugen Jochum, London Symphony Orchestra – Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies (1979) [Japan 2017]
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The German conductor Eugen Jochum recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies in stereo three times: First on DG in the Fifties with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Bavarian RSO; then in the Sixties on Philips in the set we have here with the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam; and finally in the Seventies on EMI with the London Symphony Orchestra. This LSO cycle may not have as much fire as Jochum’s earlier Beethoven, but it has a fullness and richness of spirit unmatched in his younger efforts, better played and recorded than the previous ones.

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1 min read

SACD

Eugene Ruffolo – In A Different Light (2007) [SACD / Stockfisch Records – SFR 357.4044.2]

adminDecember 9, 2025 125 Views

Title: Eugene Ruffolo – In A Different Light (2007)
Genre: Folk
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

This is the album that many Ruffolo fans have been waiting for. If you like the more acoustic side of things, or are partial to Eugene’s live performances, you’ll want to check out this new CD. It features a selection of songs from Eugene’s prior three Cds, with new arrangments , presented in a more organic and acoustic setting. Produced,recorded and engineered in Germany by Gunter Pauler, owner of the prestigious audiophile label Stockfisch Records, this disc is impeccably recorded and mixed in full 5.1 Surround Sound. It’s encoded on a threelayer “hybrid CD”, which means that one of three different mixes will play, depending upon the listener’s stereo system. The music was recorded during a week-long series of sessions with Eugene and guitarist John Jennings. Gunter later added the finishing touches, utililizing the talents of some of Europe’s finest players. if you’re a fan of high audio quality, you must check out this disc.

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1 min read