It’s the time of year for saving money!
Title: Tim Warfield’s Jazzy Christmas
Genre: Jazz
If you are throwing a Christmas party you
need Christmas music. Tim Warfield’s latest release will fill the bill nicely.
Breezy, smooth, cool, and very urbane, the music is familiar without being too
familiar. Warfield’s impeccable sax timbre combined with the excellent
recording quality makes this Christmas record a year-round treat. The
second-longest cut on the album, “Snowfall,” is so good you could just put it
on repeat and party on…
Rating (0- 10): Overall – 8, Sonically – 8
Title: Lisa Matassa – Somebody’s Baby
Genre: Country, Pop
On this seven song EP you will experience
just how badly a studio recording can sound. The first and title cut, “Somebody’s
Baby,” features icepick treble response between 2 and 4KHz. The other studio
cuts aren’t any better. But a live cover of “I Will Always
Love You” sounds excellent and reveals that
indeed, Matassa’s powerful voice doesn’t need an auto-tune to sound wonderful. Too bad about the rest of the album…
Rating (0- 10): Overall – 6, Sonically – 4
Title: Wave Mechanics Union – Further to Fly
Genre: Jazz, World Music
Formed eight years ago by several jazz
arrangers who wanted to do things their own way, this “band” creates big, lushly
orchestrated musical creations. The material on their second release consists of covers
of pop tunes from the likes of Paul Simon, Fiona Apple, Tom Waits, Thomas
Dolby, and Ben Folds. My favorite cut is a boisterous and unpredictable cover
of Jimi Hendrix’s “Third Stone from The Sun.” Sound quality is also excellent; even
during the boisterous passages the sonics are still suave.
Rating (0- 10): Overall – 8, Sonically – 9
Title: Christmas The Mountain Way
Genre: Bluegrass, Roots
Here’s another Christmas album for you.
This anthology features Bluegrass performers on the Rural Rhythm label. Sixteen
cuts from artists including Dale Ann Bradley, Audie Blaylock, Mike Scott, and
Marty Raybon cover standards such as “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night”
along with more obscure tunes like “In the Garden,” and “Nothing But The
Blood.” Recording quality is good and the performances are more interesting, at
least to me, than your typical jazz-lite Christmas music fare.
Rating (0- 10): Overall – 8, Sonically – 8
Title: Hoff Ensemble – Quiet Winter Night
Genre: Jazz, Acoustic
Recorded and produced by Morton Lindberg,
this superb-sounding recording of interesting music serves as a sonic bromide
to all the sickly sweet holiday stuff that seeps out of tired transducers all over the world. Available in Blu-Ray, LP, high-resolution FLAC (from 2L’s
website) and CD (comes with the vinyl version), this fifteen-track album has a
wonderfully warm yet open sonic quality with enough room ambience to satisfy
anyone who loves a sense of “space” in their recordings.
Rating (0- 10): Overall – 8, Sonically – 9
