#44: Eternal, Universal & Individual
Are Modern Vinyl Reissues a Waste of Resources? | Free Jazz Heaven
Welcome back to the Ambient Audiophile, where how music feels is more important than how machinery measures.
I hope all is well with you. Since we’ve last spoken, the temperatures around here have rarely crept above freezing but there’s been a lot of moon and blue sky so vibes are good.
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This week’s episode of The Trailhead got back to the usual business of dropping new music. This time around we got fresh transmissions from the worlds of ambient electronics and rural folk experimentation. We heard lovely new age work from Sun Swept on the Aural Canyon label and from Joseph Sannicandro & Jordan Christoff’s new effort for Global Pattern. From there we hit the woods with Mike Gangloff and his droning fiddle from his forthcoming VHF Records LP, Kelby Clark’s psychedelic banjo work on Tentative Power and Liam Grant’s progressive fingerstyle, also forthcoming via Virginia’s VHF. The first set wrapped up with a jam off the excellent debut LP from Rhode Island’s Paper Jays via the ESP-Disk’ label.
Set two eschewed the usual jammy rock for more electronics, including something off the stellar new Quiet Details release from artist Wil Bolton, vaporwave from the deepspace project on Projekt, downtempo from long-running UK unit Seahawks on Peak Oil, guitar and synth searching from Norway’s Erik Wøllo, a revisit to Jan Jelinek’s 2005 breakout Kosmischer Pitch and a look 50 years back to some absolutely scorching live Harmonia.
The Trailhead 160 / LISTEN HERE
1. Sun Swept - Threads of Air - Germinations (Aural Canyon, 2024) 00:00
2. Joseph Sannicandro & Jordan Christoff - Pink - Surreal Transit (Global Pattern, 2024) 05:34
3. Mike Gangloff - September Air - April Is Passing (VHF, 2025) 18:14
4. Kelby Clark - Tennessee Raag Pt. 3 - Language of the Torch (Tentative Power, 2025) 26:34
5. Liam Grant - Insult to Injury - Prodigal Son (VHF, 2025) 37:03
6. Paper Jays - Tending to the Host - Paper Jays (ESP-Disk', 2024) 50:22
7. Wil Bolton - The Forest Awakens - South of the Lake (Quiet Details, 2025) 1:07:38
8. deepspace - Entering Aquarium Prefecture - Neon Blue Utopia (Projekt, 2025) 1:16:45
9. Seahawks - Messengers - Time Enough For Love (Cascine, 2024) 1:23:15
10. Erik Wøllo - Prayer for Rain - Solastalgia (Projekt, 2024) 1:29:33
11. Jan Jelinek - Morphing Leadgitarre Rückwärts - Kosmischer Pitch (~scape/Faitiche, 2005/2025) 1:37:25
12. Harmonia - Live At Fabrik In Hamburg - Documents 1975 (Grönland Records, 2015) 1:45:20
Pressing Matters
As you probably heard, Universal Music had a blowout, 50 percent off sale for a couple weeks via their webstore. Strangely more limited in artistic scope than you would think for a huge company that holds the rights to so many catalogs, Universal does still offer something for everyone when it comes to physical media. I hemmed, hawed, labored, added, subtracted, sweated and much more over my cart wondering if I really needed any of this shit.
I’ve made no secret of my general indifference to most modern vinyl pressings. At best, they are acceptable, at worst they make me want to draw the blinds, make a handle over at the Hoffman forums and make it my life’s mission to scold anyone daring to celebrate a new piece of vinyl. I can unscientifically say about 33 percent of new vinyl I’ve gotten (purchased or promo) has some kind of glaring and hearable defect. It’s depressing and it goes largely unnoticed, perhaps lending creed to the very wild assertion that half of all record purchasers don’t have a turntable*.
Good experiences the last couple of years with titles from Acoustic Sounds, Craft Recordings, Rhino High Fidelity and Mobile Fidelity have lowered my guard a bit so I figured I’d pick a few things up from Universal. Despite all the ranting and raving over Blue Note’s Classic and Tone Poet series, my experience has been not great with either so far but I never learn so I got a trio of them, along with some classic rock staples and a much needed Alice Coltrane.
I gotta say, these got to me quickly and undamaged. So that’s a good start. My plan was to open, clean, and play, rather than gorge myself and gouge my stylus. I started with the Bobby Hutcherson/Harold Land collab San Francisco (1971). This one is part of the Classic Vinyl series—a continuing collection of all analog recorded, mastered and cut albums without fancy jackets like the Tone Poet series. So I get it open and check out the vinyl and sure enough there’s a nasty, feelable mark on side two. I cleaned it anyway and put it on and it sounded good until the mark (although there was a lot of “shavings” around the edge of the record). Half price or not, I’m not accepting any damaged new product so I write to UMe and they got back to me quickly and resolved the issue very fast. So kudos to them for that. It’s a great, funky session but the recording isn’t nearly as good as the other two Blue Notes I picked up. Still, it’s one that makes you want to move so you might not notice.
Larry Young’s Unity (1966) and Wayne Shorter’s Schizophrenia (1967) deliver what all the boys on the internet have been drooling over in terms of sound quality and presentation from the modern world of Blue Note. The former is a Classic with the latter being a fancier Tone Poet, but both deliver holographic witness to geniuses plying their craft. I’m less familiar with Young but the sidemen had me clicking buy and I’m sorry it took this long to get into this one. I’m a big fan of the three albums that followed Shorter’s Schizophrenia, so that paired with the line up sold me. Not nearly as avant as a lot of hard boppers would lead you to believe, it’s a real good record that I’m sure will grow on me. No complaints on the vinyl of either of these.
It’s funny to me to see a big Steely Dan wave/reappraisal every couple of years. I guess I just assumed everybody is in their mid-40s, had parents with the mid-80s greatest hits on tape playing constantly in their family Hyundai sedan and, later, CDs in their late-90s dorm room.
That’s how Steely Dan got into my DNA anyway. Besides a relatively recent pick up of a really nice and clean first US pressing of Aja (1977), I never had any of the Dan on LP. The records were cheap and everywhere so I always put it off and if I got the urge to hear, my iPod did the trick. Then the pandemic hit and boomers decided they wanted all their records again and it became a lot harder to find clean copies. I heard a lot about the UHQR pressings, but I’m in no position to lay out that kind of cash so I took a chance on the recent “standard” pressings of Countdown to Ecstasy (1973) and Gaucho (1980). Discogs says they were pressed at GZ but the shrinkwrap says Precision (Made in Canada). So that’s great news right there. There’s online discussion of some distortion on Countdown but I’m not picking it up. But then again, I haven’t listened to these albums in full for decades. On my systems, these records sound fucking fantastic. Bernie Grundman cuts from digital files, they are both very open, with every instrument nicely separated. The vocals come through strong and centered with no sibilance. I can easily recommend these as good additions to your collection. Maybe I’ll find cheap originals and compare but I don’t feel a real need—and that’s rare for me with reissues.
My only experience with the Verve By Request series is their 2023 version of The Ahmad Jamal Trio’s The Awakening from 1970. While defect free, its sonics feel kinda cloudy and veiled, making it hard to get into. I’ll put it on, gaze at the very poorly reproduced cover and take it off the turntable halfway. Happens every time. As I write, I’m listening to it losslessly via Apple Music and finding myself wanting to shut the computer and drift. Then I heard about the butchering of John Scofield’s A Go Go (1998) so Verve reissues not handled by Acoustic Sounds (their versions of Journey In Satchidananda and Pharoah Sanders’ Karma are revelatory in their beauty, get them ASAP) went even lower on the wantlist.
But, it’s fifty percent off time and Ptah, The El Daoud — the 1970 Alice Coltrane set with Pharoah and Joe Henderson — is there and calling. So I answer and I’m happy to report that it sounds pretty good. Weirdly, this is the Alice LP I’ve listened to the least so I don’t have a real reference for it, good or bad. The vinyl was flat and quiet and scar-free and the music feels together and cohesive. Not a hi-fi recording by any means, it’s an album of great spirit and energy and I’m happy to have a copy. But I have to say, like many reissues these days, the reproduced images/colors for the jacket are dreadful. This kind of stuff kills me as making the cover look good has got to be the easiest, least costly thing to do in the process. I have access to friends with originals so maybe we’ll shoot them out one day but I fear depression may follow that.
Lastly, we’ll talk Zappa and my first ever vinyl copy of Hot Rats (1969). My first run in with FRank was with a borrowed vinyl copy of Waka/Jawaka (1972) played on a very basic setup. A truly mind-blowing experience for a kid in High School. I went and got Freak Out! (1969) on CD next and was less impressed. And then I got into Phish and heard their version of “Peaches En Regalia” and went and got the Rykodisc CD of HR. I played that disc a lot but barely went past “Willie the Pimp”. Maybe the rest of the album was too jazzy for me at the time. But when I played this new copy on Zappa Records, I let everything flow and felt like there was so much more beautiful space for this music in this edition. As I listened I thought about how much the great Swedish band Träd, Gräs & Stenar learned from FZ as well as the Canterbury prog scene of the late 60s and early 70s. This is important music, man!
Again, I’m comparing today’s sober listening with a nice setup to a far distant past with shitty car stereos and boomboxes and drugs but I hear what I hear and it’s truly astounding. I’d wager the newest CD version would be just as sweet and encompassing as this vinyl but the nice big jacket is a plus of course. Originals aren’t super pricey so I’m still hunting for a nice and clean one but this copy will do for a while and could keep anyone satisfied for the long run, I would think.
Did you get anything in the big UMe sale? Let me know about your haul in the comments so we can all make some notes for the next one!
If you haven’t seen it, yet, I want to share this incredible video new to circulation that features an astounding amount of free jazz talent from the UK and Europe. Uploaded by musician Jay Korber, Baden-Baden Free Jazz Meeting 1970 is a monumental document of the German festival that features Don Cherry, Dave Holland, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink, Peter Brötzmann, Barre Phillips, Steve Lacy and a ton of other cats performing in various configurations. Much of the video is dedicated to Cherry shepherding a large ensemble through a couple of his enormous musical ideas but there are smaller group features as well—most notably a great musical conversation between Derek Bailey (guitar) and Dave Holland (bass) and a fascinating piece guided by Gunter Hampel. Elsewhere, a discussion on the creative limitations inherent in accepted musical structure leads to a free improv piece from drummer John Stevens, Holland and legendary vocalists Norma Winstone and Karin Krog. It’s truly exhilarating stuff and a great window to an earlier (and easier) time for art and music.
Amazing music as always, many thanks
great edition - thanks for including qd28 wil bolton 🙏❤️