#^d 2015-07-27 #^h Music Week

Music: Current count 25190 [25154] rated (+36), 453 [457] unrated (-4).

Bumper crop of A-list records this week: if I kept this up I'd have 400 for the year, which would blow my credibility all to bits. (Actually, I have 58 new and 7 old so far this year, so that's, if anything, below last year's pace.) First two records I graded last week were A- (both jazz but very different: Harry Allen and OZO), then nothing much happened until Saturday when I hit a streak of three (Ashley Monroe, Chico Freeman, Omar Souleyman). In between I went to check out the new Four Tet and found a couple I hadn't heard before, including Pink -- on Christgau's 2013 Dean's List but never reviewed in Expert Witness. Also surprised that I gave Satoko Fujii's Berlin big band the edge over the Tobira quartet -- I usually prefer the small groups, not least because her piano is more prominent. Veruca Salt was a tip from Michael Tatum (a solid A-, he said). I originally had it a notch lower, but a recheck (actually, a couple) convinced me. Among the high B+, Johannes Wallmann most tempted me -- terrific solos by Russ Johnson and Gilad Hekselman, and the piano never quits. I must admit that I ran out of patience with Wilco, but there could be more there.

One thing that changed the week around was that I got my crashed "media" computer back up and running. I put a new hard disk drive in ($50 buys one terrabyte these days) and did a fresh install of Xubuntu 14.04.2 (Desktop). I haven't mounted the old disk yet, so I haven't recovered the missing data (mostly downloads), but it was a treat to listen to Rhapsody through decent speakers. (I had been using the Chromebook's built-in speakers, since the Bose Mini-Link had proven unusable.) Veruca Salt especially benefitted.

For "old music" I'm still picking at the Spin 1985-2014 list, but losing interest as I'm going along. The unheard records are down to 31, so about 10%. That number will drop a bit in future weeks, but I don't know how much or how fast. I was more interested in finding those missing Four Tet albums. (Kieran Hebden, by the way, is producer on the Omar Souleyman album.)

Expect a Rhapsody Streamnotes before the end of the month. It's been more than a month, but I lost those three weeks on the road, so the draft is only average-sized at present (105 records). But that should be big enough for any month.

New records rated this week:

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

Old records rated this week:

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week: