The Very Tall Band on FIM UltraHD

I'm not sure what to make of this disc. If you've been keeping up with this blog over the last few months, you may have noticed that I've fallen in love with the digital releases--mostly redbook CDs mastered from hi-rez files--from First Impression Music. So last month, I made a casual commitment to order one FIM CD per month. I had found the FIM website and had noted on this blog entry that the whole ordering process from FIM went smoothly and I had my order delivered in about four days.

So this is Month Two, and I settled this time on FIM's remastering of the Telarc recording of The Very Tall Band. The Very Tall Band, of course, consists of Oscar Peterson on piano, Ray Brown on bass and Milt Jackson on vibes. That's three very good reasons right there to buy this CD. (Oh yeah, Karriem Riggins plays on drums, but for some reason he isn't credited on the front cover with the other three. Maybe he was too short? I don't know.) Anyway, this sounded like a slam-dunk--great performers getting together in their golden years. This recording captured a live performance at the Blue Note in 1998, and it's sad to think that all three of the principles had passed away within eight years or so afterward.

When I slipped this CD into the Unico CDE and pressed play, however, things didn't sound quite right at first. The opening track, "Ja-da," sounded indistinct and muffled, with a definite midrange suckout. (Celestion SL-600 owners will know what I mean by that term.) At first I thought it was the system--I've been swapping so many speakers in and out of the system over the last few weeks that I assumed I had found a match that wasn't quite, well, a match. But no, it sounded the same on a couple of different systems.

So I kicked back and listened to the rest of this album and found that the sound slowly comes into focus as the album progresses. I came up with a few theories, such as my ears had adjusted to the sound after 20 or 30 minutes--something that can definitely happen while listening. Then I started thinking about the size and shape of the soundstage. It was somewhat irregular, which made me start thinking about the recording venue--which, of course, is a very famous place. The next theory: maybe they placed the mikes in weird locations, because there's this sense that you're sitting toward the back of the room and there are a multitude of sonic obstacles in the way--columns, corners or maybe even the three NFL linebackers who just walked into the Blue Note and have sat down right in front of you.

I'd like to hear from some knowledgeable jazz people who know the circumstances surrounding this recording, and why it might sound so...irregular. It's not necessarily a bad thing, since the recording does eventually balance out and sound magnificent just like all of the other FIM and Telarc recordings I have. Perhaps--and here's the next theory--the sound guys had some technical issues pop up as the performance started, and they had to tweak the knobs a bit to control the room acoustics. Anyone? Anyone?

Tsuyoshi Yamamoto's Autumn in Seattle on FIM UltraHD

One day last week, I suddenly had a hankering for a new CD from First Impression Music (FIM). I've purchased three or four of Winston Ma's discs over the last year or so--usually while I'm exhibiting at trade shows and I need something cool and different to play for the show attendees--and the sound quality is always phenomenal. I look at some of these audiophile discs I've been listening to lately--Blu-ray audio from 2L Recordings, CD/SACD hybrids from Analogue Productions and these hi-rez redbook CDs from FIM--and I realize I've been listening to these more than I've been listening to vinyl. So I wanted more.

I went straight to the First Impression Music website and found that nearly everything was available online, including a few titles I thought were no longer available. I placed an order for Tsuyushi Yamamoto's Autumn in Seattle on UltraHD and within four days the disc was in my mailbox! Not bad. I could easily make a habit of ordering, I don't know, one per month this way. These discs just sound so wonderful--I've never heard the upper frequencies of a digitally-reproduced recording sound so pleasing and effortless.

So I picked Autumn in Seattle because it's Tsuyushi Yamamoto, and my Three Blind Mice LP of his Midnight Sugar is the best-sounding jazz recording I own--maybe even the very best-sounding recording I own, period. (For the record, the Tsuyushi Yamamoto Trio's Misty is also pretty spectacular, and I own that on LP as well.) On the other hand, I checked out the tracks and this is a collection of standards--and not the type of standards I really enjoy. We're talking "The Way We Were," "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" and "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing," which all have the potential to sound incredibly cheesy in this day and age. Then again, the idea of Yamamoto-san doing an album of Bacharach sounds mighty cool as well.

Truth is, the results are better than I had imagined. I did have to grit my teeth a little during the more fanciful parts of "Raindrops," but the rest of this album's full of strong, solid jazz performances that just sound gorgeous. I do think Midnight Sugar is a much stronger recording, which is strange because Autumn in Seattle is a far more modern recording--originally recorded and released in 2001, it was remastered and reissued in FIM's UltraHD format in 2011. On the other hand, the fact that Midnight Sugar and Misty originally came out in the mid-'70s might also explain why it's the better recording, especially according to us analog troglodytes. But that certainly doesn't mean that Autumn in Seattle doesn't sound absolutely stupendous--because it does--those two older albums are just that special.

I'm kind of hooked now. It was so easy to order through the website, and I think shipping may have been free--or at least really cheap. The CD was $41, and a little over $43 was charged to my credit card. I think $41 may be the top of the line--there's plenty of selection in the $20 to $35 range.

By the way, I listed to this CD with a great pair of mini-monitors, the MAD 1920S. I've been listening to so many BIG speakers every since we moved to Colorado because we have such a big room now. We have so many quality mini-monitors such as the MADs, the Trenner & Friedl ARTs, even a pair of Rega RS1s that I've only used a couple of times. Over the next few weeks I'll be "getting back to my roots" and listening through mini-monitors.