The 2024 12 - Part 2: Audiophile Adventures
In 2023 I bought about 175 records. Come 2024, with storage space tight, a growing one-year-old, and a cross-country move on the horizon, a radical shift was in order. This is the second in a series of posts about my “2024 12”, the only twelve records I permitted myself to buy this year in radical departure from my excesses of 2023.
Today’s albums are my first foray into the world of “audiophilia”, the perfectionistic, hyper obsessive, and supremely snobby space for those who can go on endlessly about the the “top-end”, “separation”, and “clarity” of recordings in ways that bring to mind a wine connoisseur pulling words and flavors out of his butt. Yes, contrary to what many might expect of this Snob, while audio quality is important to me, I never previously thought to go down the audiophile rabbit hole. There are lots of reasons why not: my hearing is pretty jank from loud concerts, I rarely get to fully focus on purely listening to music, my audio equipment is solid but far from high fidelity, researching the definitive releases for albums can be tedious, and these kinds of records tend to be priced at a high premium.
Then what made me pick up the two albums in this post? Read on…
Jazz Game Changers
Filles De Kilimanjaro by Miles Davis (1968), reissued by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (2023). Enter the dark mystery of Miles Davis’s genius. Constantly inventing and re-inventing and with dozens of album credits, Davis’s career can feel like a daunting body to make entry into. The most obvious starting point, Kind Of Blue, is for good reason the greatest selling jazz album of all time; its comforting, velvety, rich warmth, its laid back sophistication, and its meticulous production is well worth an audiophile-grade listen. Swinging in the opposite direction to chaos, dissonance, and maximalism are the iconic electrified jazz of Bitches Brew and the confrontational jazz-funk of On The Corner. Or, beautifully harmonious but somewhat leftfield stands Sketches Of Spain with its orchestral arrangements. All worthy ways to begin one’s Miles journey with and to seek in peak audio purity.
But over the past year I grew increasingly enchanted by an album that lives somewhere between all those worlds - 1968’s Filles De Kilimanjaro. Something not quite Bop, not quite Modal, not quite Free or Fusion… something honestly kind of indescribable and in the least, wonderfully enigmatic. Why are the song titles in French? The cover photo kaleidoscopic? The music is warm and inviting, crisp but somehow hazy, full of melody but also of meandering musings. Notes, crashes, rolls, and more flow from the four musicians who seem to dance together and apart. Going the extra mile on an audiophile pressing has proven so worth it. When I spin this it feels like opening a portal to another dimension and the well defined sepeartion of the instruments across the speakers is nothing short of enveloping.
Opening with a gentle skip, Frelon Brun has the listener waltzing in the moonlight within a matter of bars. Soon solos roll into solos until washing the melodies away and setting the stage for the more abstract Tout De Suit, “Right Away”, an ironic title for the album’s most zig-zagging and hard to pin down affair. The following two tracks continue delighting in similar veins before the album closes with the romantic, sultry lullabye Mademoiselle Mabry.
Aja by Steely Dan (1977), reissued by Analogue Productions (2023). Fast forward now to the 1970’s, Mile’s greatest works were behind him, and jazz had become less a main attraction and more an ingredient in popular music. Surely no one did jazz its due in that world like the Dan, New York’s sardonic snob duo extraordinaire. Masters of the studio, in contrast to Filles where the simplicity of four bare musicians playing offers a naked beauty, Steely Dan’s Aja is a marvel of meticulous multi-tracking and cherry picking of the perfect players nailing perfect takes. The attention to detail is impossible to overstate with the band weilding the full sonic spectrum to make every moment shine with titilation.* No wonder the album remains a mainstay of producers and sound engineers looking to benchmark their audio systems and leveling.
Honoring the genius of this sonic cornucopia, Analogue Productions took zero shortcuts in faithfully recommitting this to vinyl in its purest manner. The album’s reputation as a North Star for sound quality, glowing online reviews, and my love for its Dad Rock vibes were reason enough to pony up the otherwise startling $150 cost of admission. Easily the greatest sounding thing in my collection by miles, I’ve got no regrets and cherish every spin.
*If any of this interests you, check out the making of documentary from Classic Albums which features the band showing isolated tracks and breaking down some of the album’s best nuances.
Still More To Come
That’s four records down now, and eight to go… Next up are two video game soundtracks well worthy of mass appeal.
