Listening to Now (In Surround) - Volume 2

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B. B. King, Live in Japan (1971), from an excellent quad reel conversion. Who says the thrill is gone? Wonderfully discrete--one of the best live quads out there?

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Carole King, Fantasy (1973), from an excellent CD-4 decode. (Those A&M mixers have a rep for being unadventurous, but there's more going on here than you might think, initially.) Always loved the cover of this album; the contents, not so much. Hard not to hear this as a misbegotten concept album, even though it has a few moments, musically. The dry vocals bring out the flat-footedness of the lyrics, though, and the ethnic impersonations were cringeworthy even 50 years ago. "Corazón" is a high point, in spite of everything.

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/king-carole-fantasy-cd-4-q8.10637/
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Lee Konitz, Parallels (2002). I think @4-earredwonder might have alerted to me to this SACD when Konitz died last year? Solid quartet/quintet date with Peter Bernstein on guitar and--on half the tracks--a young-ish Mark Turner filling the Warne Marsh role on tenor. Chesky's omnidirectional one-mic technique is clean, spacious, and pleasantly, though not dramatically, surroundy.

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Kraftwerk, Autobahn, in a very good conversion from the 1975 Q8. Like most people who've heard it, I was blown away by Fritz Hilpert's Atmos mixes on The Catalog. But I'd never tracked down the OG--er, OQ--till now.

I sometimes think there's more panning than mixing going on here. Still a lot of fun, though.

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Day-drinkin': four afternoon shots of Kris Kristofferson. The Silver Tongued Devil and I, Border Lord, Jesus Was a Capricorn, and Spooky Lady's Sideshow. The first two in SQ LP conversions (although I've also heard a discrete version of Silver Tongued Devil), the other two in Q8 conversions. Four strong mixes by three different mixers. Really interesting to track the evolution of Kris's sound over the years that these albums cover (1971-1974). On Devil you can hear him--or the record company--fighting between pop country and trad country. But by Border Lord he's committed to his own "Outlaw" aesthetic, with Jesus he sounds more and more louche, and by Spooky he's channeling John Prine.

Discussion here:
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/kris-kristofferson-q8-collection.22580/
I can't find a poll for Border Lord. No votes, or next to none, for the other three.
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...s-the-silver-tongued-devil-and-i-sq-q8.22661/https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...erson-kris-jesus-was-a-capricorn-sq-q8.22660/https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...erson-kris-spooky-ladys-sideshow-sq-q8.14971/
 
Robb Kunkel, Abyss (Tumbleweed Records, 1973). SurroundMaster conversion of a QS LP. No idea how to categorize this one--vaguely folk-rock, vaguely singer-songwriter, but with jazz, rock, "Latin," Western Swing, and proto-New Age inflections. (Dangerous Minds sez it "resembles the piano-driven, singer/songwriter pop/rock of Elton John, but with left turns you don’t see coming.") Kind of delightful, actually. Features guitarist Howard Roberts, plus jazz/session heavies Victor Feldman, Bud Shank, and Plas Johnson. Most likely a Baker Bigsby mix. Is Robb any relation drummer to Russ Kunkel? The interwebs ain't sayin'.
https://lightintheattic.net/artists/2336-robb-kunkel
 
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humprof said:
Carole King, Fantasy (1973), from an excellent CD-4 decode. (Those A&M mixers have a rep for being unadventurous, but there's more going on here than you might think, initially.) Always loved the cover of this album; the contents, not so much. Hard not to hear this as a misbegotten concept album, even though it has a few moments, musically. The dry vocals bring out the flat-footedness of the lyrics, though, and the ethnic impersonations were cringeworthy even 50 years ago. "Corazón" is a high point, in spite of everything.

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/king-carole-fantasy-cd-4-q8.10637/
Click to expand...

I agree with you about both the mix and songwriting on this one. I think the Carole King quad mixes are subtle, but actually quite good, and something of an anomaly for early ('71-'73) quad in that they don't feature any ping-pong swirly mixing effects. The problem is that the subtlety and "goodness" in these mixes is often obscured by the crappy delivery formats, be it the high noise floor of non-Dolby Q8's (so much of the piano is the harmonics, and half of them are lost) or the poor separation of matrix LPs, which a lot of times turn what is a subtle mix in discrete form into a 'big mono' experience in decoded form.

There's a great cover of Corazon - maybe better than the original - available in quad on the album Migration by Creative Source, who are sort of in the Fifth Dimension/Friends of Distinction two female/two male vocalist soul groups, though decidedly more gritty and funky than either of those. There are some great players on the album too, including Skip Scarborough (who wrote some of Earth, Wind & Fire's hits, and Lovely Day for Bill Withers amongst others) and guitarists Wah Wah Watson and Ray Parker Jr. who were both in Herbie Hancock's band at the same time about a year after this.

More importantly, there's a poll for the album with only two votes!

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/creative-source-migration-q8-qr.17664/
 
Another one--artist and album--new to me: jazz-funk guitarist O'Donel Levy, Simba (Groove Merchant, 1973). Super-clean conversion of a super-discrete quad reel. Hot set. And not to take anything away from Levy, who's a real talent--but how could you go wrong with sidemen like Jon Faddis & Lew Soloff on trumpet, Bill Watrous on trombone, Tony Levin on bass, and Steve Gadd on drums? This is a find.

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I've had Mahler playing in the background all morning while I work (if I'm reading or writing and there's music on, it has to be instrumental)--the first two symphonies in Osmo Vänskä's cycle with the Minnesota Orchestra on BIS. The 4th, 7th, and 10th are next up in the queue. Standard hall ambience, which means there's not much going on in the rears, except during loud passages. (For many classical listeners--not me--that's as it should be.) But these are all beautifully recorded, and the performances, many of them highly acclaimed, are uniformly excellent. All available in FLAC 5.0 from eClassical:
https://www.eclassical.com/orchestras/minnesota-orchestra/mahler-symphony-no1.html
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steelydave said:
I agree with you about both the mix and songwriting on this one. I think the Carole King quad mixes are subtle, but actually quite good, and something of an anomaly for early ('71-'73) quad in that they don't feature any ping-pong swirly mixing effects. The problem is that the subtlety and "goodness" in these mixes is often obscured by the crappy delivery formats, be it the high noise floor of non-Dolby Q8's (so much of the piano is the harmonics, and half of them are lost) or the poor separation of matrix LPs, which a lot of times turn what is a subtle mix in discrete form into a 'big mono' experience in decoded form.

There's a great cover of Corazon - maybe better than the original - available in quad on the album Migration by Creative Source, who are sort of in the Fifth Dimension/Friends of Distinction two female/two male vocalist soul groups, though decidedly more gritty and funky than either of those. There are some great players on the album too, including Skip Scarborough (who wrote some of Earth, Wind & Fire's hits, and Lovely Day for Bill Withers amongst others) and guitarists Wah Wah Watson and Ray Parker Jr. who were both in Herbie Hancock's band at the same time about a year after this.

More importantly, there's a poll for the album with only two votes!

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/creative-source-migration-q8-qr.17664/
Click to expand...

not played it since i recorded in the tape however many years ago (not usually a good sign! 😂 anyhoo will give it a go in a mo 👌
 
sjcorne said:
What's your take on the 5.1 mix?
Click to expand...
haven't had a fair listen yet, just a quick run-thru on the computer, but here's what one looks like in Audacity.

1st song
- Fronts have some bass, drums, keyboards, vox room reverb, violin, some violin reverb from the rears
- Center has main Vocals (prominently), Violin, Drums, Sitar (maybe?)
- LFE had Bass & Drum
- Rears have Sitar, Violin, Vox room reverb, Electric Guitar, Synth maybe Dulcimer?

I suppose they could have made some of the instruments stand out more discretely in the rears, but I believe they're going for a more atmospheric sound. I sampled another song also, and the mix seemed a little different to this one, so it probably varies some song to song.
sounded fairly clean and adequately surroundy tho!

all souls night.jpg
 
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