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SACD

Emilia Amper – Trollfageln: The Magic Bird (2012) [SACD / BIS – BIS-2013 SACD]

adminNovember 20, 2025 243 Views

Title: Emilia Amper – Trollfageln: The Magic Bird (2012)
Genre: Classical, Folk
Format: MCH SACD ISO

Emilia Amper, one of Swedens most exciting young folk musicians, is also one of the finest nyckelharpa players in the world today. (Winner of the nyckelharpa World Championships in 2010.) In Trollfågeln, Emilia has devised a programme which demonstrates the numerous facets of her own musical personality, and of her instrument. The nyckelharpa almost died out in the middle of the twentieth century, but has made a remarkable comeback and is attracting an increasing number of performers in Sweden and around the world.

‘Avian fiddle wizardry from Swedish virtuoso…From the earthy stamping of ‘Kapad’ to the fleet and supple melodic invention in ‘Galatea Creek’, there is an individual voice at work here, deeply rooted in Swedish folk forms but untrammelled by them.’ –Songlines, June 2013

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1 min read

SACD

Emil Gilels, Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell – Beethoven: 5 Piano Concertos (1968) [Japan 2015] [SACD / Tower Records – TDSA-8/10]

adminNovember 20, 2025 252 Views

Title: Emil Gilels, Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell – Beethoven: 5 Piano Concertos (1968) [Japan 2015]
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

“Emil Gilels stands out as giant among giants”, wrote Gramophone when the Odessa-born pianist died in 1985. “In terms of virtuosity he was second to none, yet his leonine power was tempered by a delicacy and poetry that few have matched and none has surpassed”. Ludwig van Beethoven was at the heart of Gilels’ repertoire and in 1968 he recorded this complete cycle of the composer’s piano concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra and its long-standing maestro, another musical titan of the era, George Szell.

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1 min read

SACD

Emi Fujita – Camomile: Best Audio (2007) [SACD / Ponycanyon Korea – PCKD-00193]

adminNovember 20, 2025 285 Views

Title: Emi Fujita – Camomile: Best Audio (2007)
Genre: J-Pop
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Emi Fujita (藤田恵美) is a Japanese singer. She debuted as a singer with her husband Ryuji Fujita as the duo Le Couple. Their 1st album was released in 1994. Fujita made her solo debut in 2001. Her series of “Camomile” albums are covers of popular western songs. Several of her solo albums have charted in Japan, including Camomile Best Audio, which reached #27 on the Oricon chart and is a ‘best of’ her Camomile series. She has also found some success in Southeast Asia.

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1 min read

SACD

Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Brain Salad Surgery (1973) [Reissue 2008] [SACD / Sanctuary – 5308195]

adminNovember 20, 2025 184 Views

Title: Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Brain Salad Surgery (1973) [Reissue 2008]
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s most successful and well-realized album (after their first), and their most ambitious as a group, as well as their loudest, Brain Salad Surgery was also the most steeped in electronic sounds of any of their records. The main focus, thanks to the three-part “Karn Evil 9,” is sci-fi rock, approached with a volume and vengeance that stretched the art rock audience’s tolerance to its outer limit, but also managed to appeal to the metal audience in ways that little of Trilogy did. Indeed, “Karn Evil 9” is the piece and the place where Keith Emerson and his keyboards finally matched in both music and flamboyance the larger-than-life guitar sound of Jimi Hendrix. This also marked the point in the group’s history in which they brought in their first outside creative hand, in the guise of ex-King Crimson lyricist Pete Sinfield. He’d been shopping around his first solo album and was invited onto the trio’s new Manticore label, and also asked in to this project as Lake’s abilities as a lyricist didn’t seem quite up to the 20-minute “Karn Evil 9” epic that Emerson had created as an instrumental. Sinfield’s resulting lyrics for “Karn Evil 9: First Impression” and “Karn Evil 9: Third Impression,” while not up to the standard of his best Crimson work, were better than anything the group had to work with previously — he was also responsible for Emerson’s choice of title, persuading the keyboardist that the music he’d come up with was more evocative of a carnival and fantasy than the pure science fiction concept that Emerson had started with. And Greg Lake pulled out all the stops with his heaviest singing voice in handling them, coming off a bit like Peter Gabriel in the process. And amid Carl Palmer’s prodigious drumming, it was all a showcase for Emerson, who employed more keyboards and more sounds here — including electronic voices — than had previously been heard on one of their records. The songs (except for the light-hearted throwaway “Benny the Bouncer”) are also among their best work — the group’s arrangement of Sir Charles Hubert Parry’s setting of William Blake’s “Jerusalem” manages to be reverent yet rocking (a combination that got it banned by the BBC for potential “blasphemy”), while Emerson’s adaptation of Alberto Ginastera’s music in “Tocatta” outstrips even “The Barbarian” and “Knife Edge” from the first album as a distinctive and rewarding reinterpretation of a piece of serious music. Lake’s “Still…You Turn Me On,” the album’s obligatory acoustic number, was his last great ballad with the group, possessing a melody and arrangement sufficiently pretty to forgive the presence of the rhyming triplet “everyday a little sadder/a little madder/someone get me a ladder.” And the sound quality was stunning, and the whole album represented a high point that the trio would never again achieve, or even aspire to — after this, each member started to go his own way in terms of creativity and music.

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3 min read

SACD

Elvis Presley – Essential Elvis Volume 2: Stereo ’57 (1988) [Analogue Productions Remaster 2013] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CAPP 057 SA]

adminNovember 20, 2025 256 Views

Title: Elvis Presley – Essential Elvis Volume 2: Stereo ’57 (1988) [Analogue Productions Remaster 2013]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The second volume of Essential Elvis offers Elvis in binaural stereo from the January 1957 sessions that produced several hits. (RCA Victor generously filled the disc out with mono masters of the remaining songs to give the consumer a complete version of the sessions.) This is a lot of fun; the gaffes are numerous, obvious, and hilarious, and for ears raised on multi-track recording, it must be amazing to hear an entire record recorded live in the studio!

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1 min read

SACD

Elvis Presley – 24 Karat Hits! (1997) [Analogue Productions’ Remaster 2012] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CAPP 2040 SA]

adminNovember 20, 2025 262 Views

Title: Elvis Presley – 24 Karat Hits! (1997) [Analogue Productions’ Remaster 2012]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Had Elvis Presley done nothing else but record “That’s Alright, Mama,” his place in pop music history would be secure. With his first regional hit, Presley fused rhythm and blues with country, put a handsome white face out front for audiences to see, and in so doing legitimized beat music for white audiences. It is no understatement to call Presley the chief catalyst of the rock-and-roll era. During the 1950s, Presley’s records spent a collective 53 weeks in the number one chart position. Only the Beatles can boast similar sales success. spectacular television special and several great albums. During the last decade of his career, Presley’s live show was the hottest ticket in America. A great singer first and last, Presley was equally adept at raunchy blues, lilting boogie, operatic pop, and country tear-jerkers.

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1 min read

SACD

Elvis Presley – Elvis Is Back (1960) [Analogue Productions Remaster 2012] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CAPP 2231 SA]

adminNovember 20, 2025 222 Views

Title: Elvis Presley – Elvis Is Back (1960) [Analogue Productions Remaster 2012]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

“Elvis Is Back” was Presley’s first album to be released in true stereo. It peaked at number two on the Top Pop Albums chart and is listed, along with his debut and From Elvis in Memphis, in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. It was certified Gold on July 15, 1999, by the RIAA.

Although they have common recording origins, two of the three singles, “It’s Now or Never” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” were very quirky by the standards of Elvis songs at the time — the former inspired by Elvis’s admiration for Tony Martin’s 1949 hit “There’s No Tomorrow,” while the latter was recorded at the request of Col. Parker as a favor to his wife. They add to the diversity of sounds on this record, which shows a mature Elvis Presley. “Dirty, Dirty Feeling” and “It Feels So Right” showed he could still rock out and challenge authority and propriety, while “Reconsider Baby” and “Like a Baby” offer some of his best blues performances; but “The Thrill of Your Love” (a very gospel-tinged number), “Soldier Boy,” “Girl of My Best Friend,” and “Girl Next Door Went a’ Walking,” also displayed the rich, deep vocalizing that would challenge critics’ expectations of Elvis Presley playing rhythm guitar throughout. He also comes off better than on any of his other albums since arriving at RCA, as a musician as much as a “star” (he’d always had a lot more to say about running his sessions than the critics who loathed his RCA years indicated). [The 1999 remastering of this classic album features the complete contents of the March 20, 1960, RCA Hollywood session plus the dawn-to-dusk April 2 Nashville session that rounded out the album, for a total of 18 songs, including the three singles and their B-sides from those sessions. The sound is extraordinarily close yet natural, giving the listener full value for the presence of Scotty Moore, Hank Garland (who also plays bass on a few tracks), D.J. Fontana, Boots Randolph, and Floyd Cramer.]

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2 min read

SACD

Elvis Costello – North (2003) [SACD / Deutsche Grammophon – B0001580-36]

adminNovember 20, 2025 247 Views

Title: Elvis Costello – North (2003)
Genre: Jazz, Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

North, Elvis Costello’s 20th album of new material, follows the deliberately classicist When I Was Cruel by a mere year, but it feels more the sequel to 1998’s Burt Bacharach collaboration, Painted From Memory, or even 1993’s roundly ignored classical pop experiment, The Juliet Letters. Costello has abandoned clanging guitars and drums of Cruel — abandoned rock & roll, really — to return to a set of classically influenced songs, all “composed, arranged and conducted” by the man himself (on The Juliet Letters, he was merely the composer and voice). The songs on North are pitched halfway between traditional torch ballads and arty contemporary Broadway writers such as Stephen Sondheim. This isn’t so much a shift in direction after When I Was Cruel as much as it is an extension of the Bacharach album (in this context, Cruel seems like the aberration), but it’s also a reflection of Costello’s new love for Canadian jazz singer Diana Krall. It’s not just that North is somewhat of a song cycle, starting with the despair of a failed relationship and ending with the hope of a new love, but that it’s somewhat written in the style of Krall’s music: self-consciously sophisticated and slightly jazzy. Ultimately, North is not jazz-pop; it’s classical pop, with Costello more interested in the structure, arrangement, and words of the song rather than mere catchiness. It’s a very writerly album, in regards to both the music and lyrics. Consequently, it takes a bit of effort to get into the album, since it purposefully lacks hooks and songs as immediate or tuneful as those on Painted From Memory or “Jacksons, Monk and Rowe” from The Juliet Letters. This is not a flaw, per se — it’s simply what the album is, a collection of subtle songs performed with an elegant understatement. Unlike The Juliet Letters, North never feels like an exercise, nor does it feel like Costello has something to prove. It’s a specific, personal album with serious ambitions that it fulfills. If the album ultimately winds up being something to listen to on occasion rather than a record to spin repeatedly, that doesn’t make Costello’s achievement with this song cycle any less admirable.

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3 min read

SACD

Elvis Costello – My Aim Is True (1977) [Japanese Limited SHM-SACD 2011] [SACD / Hip-O Records – UIGY-9065]

adminNovember 20, 2025 212 Views

Title: Elvis Costello – My Aim Is True (1977) [Japanese Limited SHM-SACD 2011]
Genre: Jazz, Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Uses the 2011 DSD master based on Japanese original analog tape. Reissue features the high-fidelity SHM-SACD format (fully compatible with standard SACD player, but it does not play on standard CD players). DSD Transferred by Manabu Matsumura. Elvis Costello was as much a pub rocker as he was a punk rocker and nowhere is that more evident than on his debut, My Aim Is True. It’s not just that Clover, a San Franciscan rock outfit led by Huey Lewis (absent here), back him here, not the Attractions; it’s that his sensibility is borrowed from the pile-driving rock & roll and folksy introspection of pub rockers like Brinsley Schwarz, adding touches of cult singer/songwriters like Randy Newman and David Ackles. Then, there’s the infusion of pure nastiness and cynical humor, which is pure Costello. That blend of classicist sensibilities and cleverness make this collection of shiny roots rock a punk record — it informs his nervy performances and his prickly songs. Of all classic punk debuts, this remains perhaps the most idiosyncratic because it’s not cathartic in sound, only in spirit. Which, of course, meant that it could play to a broader audience, and Linda Ronstadt did indeed cover the standout ballad “Alison.” Still, there’s no mistaking this for anything other than a punk record, and it’s a terrific one at that, since even if he buries his singer/songwriter inclinations, they shine through as brightly as his cheerfully mean humor and immense musical skill; he sounds as comfortable with a ’50s knockoff like “No Dancing” as he does on the reggae-inflected “Less Than Zero.” Costello went on to more ambitious territory fairly quickly, but My Aim Is True is a phenomenal debut, capturing a songwriter and musician whose words were as rich and clever as his music.

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2 min read

SACD

Elvin Jones – Dear John C. (1965) [Analogue Productions 2011] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CIPJ 88 SA]

adminNovember 20, 2025 206 Views

Title: Elvin Jones – Dear John C. (1965) [Analogue Productions 2011]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Drummer Elvin Jones may have been breaking down new rhythmic boundaries at the time with John Coltrane’s Quartet but his own sessions as a leader were not all that innovative. This quartet set with altoist Charlie Mariano, bassist Richard Davis and either Roland Hanna or Hank Jones on piano is an example of how the avant-garde of the era was starting to influence the more mainstream players. The music is in general safe but enjoyable with the virtuosic bassist Richard Davis often taking solo honors on what was in reality a modern bop date.

The second album by Elvin Jones as sole title rights leader (excluding the co-op ensemble that recorded the stunning and essential progressive jazz icon Illumination!) has the drummer sounding more like a backup musician, as he claims no compositional duties or noticeable solo space. In fact, this is one of the very best albums in the career of alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano, who occupies the bulk of lead lines and improvising responsibilities. He’s so up-front, and on an instrument that is not John Coltrane’s main instrument – the tenor sax – that the title is also a bit of a misnomer. The value of Jones as a bandleader lies in his concept of using fellow Detroiter Sir Roland Hanna or brother Hank Jones on selected tracks, or in the case of three tracks, no pianist. Bassist Richard Davis rounds out this truly brilliant ensemble of burgeoning mid-’60s jazz stars, who play an enticing collection of standards, bop, compositions of Bob Hammer, and originals from several modern sources. A stone cold bebopper and Charlie Parker devotee at the time of this recording. Mariano is the standout performer. He swings easily but mightily on the title track paralleling Coltrane’s “Milestones,” stretches the Charles Mingus evergreen “Reincarnation of a Lovebird” (titled here as “Love Bird”), and pulls out all the stops with Hank Jones during an only slightly flawed (they miss two notes) version of the tricky “Anthropology.” They tack a calypso beat onto Duke Ellington’s “Fantazm” in a playful, modern dress, and stroll on the quirky Hammer composition “That Five-Four Bag” as an offshoot retort to Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five.” The three tracks sans piano include a walking version of “Everything Happens to Me”; the ballad “Smoke Rings,” where the band excepting Mariano is relaxed; and Frank Sinatra’s “This Love of Mine,” where the emotive saxophonist dips into humor, even a bit ribald. The variety from cut to cut is engaging, and there’s nothing over the top, even the drumming of Elvin Jones. With the musicality at a high level, Dear John C. needs revisiting by drumming students and jazz fans to note how teamwork, shared values, and held-in-check dynamics benefit the overall quality of music. It seems this recording is underrated when over time it should never be. Dear John C. is deserving of an excellent rating.

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3 min read