We pick labels that we feel really care about the music, from the recording to the mastering and the packaging. Previous labels featured have included, cool UK indy Full Time Hobby and classical guitar label BGS Records but few can match the care with which the Numero Group treat their releases.

An archival label since 2003, they are “devoted to dragging brilliant recordings, films and photography out of unwarranted obscurity.”

They have over 60 titles in their catalogue of LPs, cassettes, 12″s and 45s. Their most well known series are the Eccentric Soul recordings which document rare soul US labels, they also reissue Folk (Wayfaring Strangers series), Gospel (Good God!), World (Cult Cargo) and, perhaps most interesting of all, home-recordings (Local Customs).

If you’ve ever seen one of their releases in a shop, you’ll know the care they take. the packaging is always lavish, the vinyl 180gram and the booklets exhaustive and accurate.

Have a listen and let us know what you think. Hopefully they’ll end up on one of your playlists.

Three Black Feathers

LP

By Paul Rigby

Although he was a member of two folk groups: Halliard during the 60s and Bandoggs during the late-70s, it was as an intermediary solo artist that Jones found fame and garnered acclaim and respect. In essence, Jones was part of the British folk revival movement that included artists like the Oyster Band and Pete Morton, finding his influences in the works of Martin Carthy and being immediately noticed for his prowess with the guitar and fiddle.

The highlight if his career was this album, released in 1982 and declared the Folk Album of the Year by the Melody Maker. Traditional in flavour it, nevertheless, imbues emotion and a certain freshness while his vocal delivery brings his reading of the folk genre right up to date. Some observers have declared it the best folk album ever created - such is the regard that music fans hold this album. The tragedy is that Jones never delivered a follow-up due to a bad car accident which forced his retirement.

Now reissued by a new UK vinyl outfit, Three Black Feathers (www.threeblackfeathers.co.uk), from a Topic Records original, the creation of the LP was an involved process. In fact, label owner, Chris Heard, had to approach the British Library to access the masters: the album is currently viewed as an artefact and is stored ‘for the nation’. In fact, Heard was not allowed to even hold the tapes, they were taxied directly to Abbey Road for mastering. Once there, Abbey Road mastered the tapes on the same console that Pink Floyd used to record Dark Side Of The Moon utilising one of the engineers that worked on the recently reissued Beatles CD box sets.

Listening tests for this LP were interesting. The standard analogue process reduces groove distortion, which on standard vinyl bends the groove wall into the next groove causing that all-too-familiar ‘pre-echo’  - there was none of that here and that, alone, is a sign of a carefully mastered album. It’s possible the Abbey Road engineer used spare master tape, stuck in between each track, to prevent this effect.

The battle against distortion and noise is a familiar task for speaker designers but it’s all too often seen as a low priority for reissue labels. It’s good to see it is fully addressed here, however. This LP was silent during those necessary ‘quiet’ periods that allowed the full dynamic range of the performance to be heard.

Other signs of a quality master derive from the overall balance of the sound and whether it is tonally accurate. Here, the top end was remarkably controlled and sibilance was noticeable by its absence. In fact, such was the expansive nature of this recording that the mastering will allow you to hear the true potential of your turntable.

Beautifully produced, carefully mastered and well packaged, this is not only one of the best folk albums in existence, it’s also beautifully mastered and will prove a credit to anyone’s HiFi.

Tracklisting

Canadee-I-O

The Drowned Lovers

The Humpback Whale

The Little Pot Stove

Courting Is a Pleasure

Barrack Street

Planxty Davis

The Flandyke Shore

Farewell to the Gold

Stand-out track: The Little Pot Stove

It’s a tough call but this track has everything and the show is stolen, not by Jones’ own clear and expressive performance, nor the emotive backing group that encourages you to join in but the beautifully simple acoustic guitar which trudges through its own simple lament and tugs at the heart.

Ennio Morricone 50 Years of Music cover

Bowers & Wilkins is pleased to announce a very special album launch for its Society of Sound Music download service. An exclusive 10-track Ennio Morricone collection The Best of 50 Years of Music. Featuring two tracks from each decade of the Italian maestro’s breathtaking musical journey, this ten-track compilation will not be available to buy anywhere else.

This exclusive compilation includes music from some of Morricone’s most famous work, including The Good The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s available for full members to download in a choice of two super-high-quality lossless formats, 16bit FLAC and Apple Lossless.

The tracks are hand-picked from a stunning new five-disc anthology of Morrincone’s body of work, due for release in early 2010. Ennio Morricone: 50 Years of Music features re-recordings of his most famous work, and provides an amazing insight into a musical genius at work.

Ennio Morricone

Since it’s launch in May 2008, Society of Sound Music has brought members a wide variety of different musical styles, all from exceptional artists: Gwyneth Herbert; Dub Colossus; former Suede frontman Brett Anderson; guitarist Tom Kerstens; Dave Stewart; 16-year old piano prodigy Benjamin Grosvenor and many more.

Bowers & Wilkins offers free trial memberships via its website, where users can download a six-track seasonal sampler, and a track a month for three months. Full membership of Society of Sound Music allows you to download the full album each month, much of which is available in super high-resolution 24-bit FLAC, and costs £23.95 for six months or £33.95 for a year, as well as providing access to an ever-growing back catalogue.

THE WHO - Live At The Isle Of Wight Festival 1970

Lillith - LP

By Paul Rigby

Arguably the world’s best rock band, The Who oozed energy. Even when they were not destroying their instruments in a fit of on-stage rage, the band radiated a sense of simmering power. It is no surprise, therefore, that the recorded live outings of the outfit, in their prime, are highly prized, including this example.

Pressed by the Russian label, Lillith, this is the first time that the concert has been available on vinyl since the 2004 Earmark release: a combination of the Sanctuary label’s masters and Italian-based Get Back label’s mastering/pressings.

Both presented as 3-disk sets and featuring the same tracklisting - although the Lillith pressing correctly lists the medley, Shakin’ All Over/Spoonful/Twist And Shout - the immediate differences between the two are noticeable and obvious. The Earmark pressing arrives in a heavy gauge, plastic cover, with the black disks, sitting in individual plastic inner sleeves, present in a multi-fold-out gatefold. The new Lillith release, however, features no outer cover but retains all three LPs within a single, slip-cover, container. Each disk sits in a plastic and card inner sleeves. In addition, the Lillith version presents each disk as a single colour. One LP is offered in red, another in white and the final disk in blue. Both Earmark and Lillith feature the same artwork and liner notes.

Finally, while the Earmark version was pressed on 180gm vinyl it appears, after examination, that the Lillith package has been pressed on 140gm vinyl. This is not necessarily a ‘bad thing’, however. Firstly, because the jury is still out on whether 180gm adds any sonic value (it can help prevent warping, though) and, if your turntable features a built in clamp - as my Avid Acutus does - a thinner vinyl disc is actually moulded to the platter more easily.

Onto the sound quality. Both collections derive from the same remastered master tapes, completed in 1996 by John Astley and Andy MacPherson. Any subsequent sound differences will lie in the transfer of those masters and the final pressing.

Listening to the Earmark pressing first, the perils of recording any live outing raises its ugly head. A balanced recording is difficult at the best of times but it’s particularly tough here with Keith Moon’s drums sounding rather veiled and lacking in detail during the Tommy rendition. The cover of Mose Allison’s Young Man Blues conveyed Roger Daltrey’s emotion and passion well, however, while Pete Townshend’s guitar licks were effective, if a little muted, in their impact.

Switching to the Lillith pressing and the Moon drums, while still suffering from a lack of bass definition within the Tommy sequence, did enjoy a new found life, were more incisive with a greater degree of clarity. Similarly, during Young Man Blues, both the vocals and guitar parts benefitted from a lifting of both the upper midrange and treble frequencies adding extra impetus to the performance.

Also, due to the lack of carbon black that makes all black vinyl ‘black’, the Lillith pressings lost the subtle magnetic influence that carbon black imposes on the sensitive cartridge, adding a touch more focus to the presentation.

All in all, this Lillith pressing is the best available vinyl version of the Isle of Wight gig currently on offer.

Stand-out track: Young Man Blues:

One of the few covers featured on the set, this Mose Alison song plugged into the band’s rebellious nature and their struggle with life in general. Daltrey gives a powerful vocal performance, backed by grammatical percussive thumps from Keith Moon while Townshend’s sweeping guitar epitomises the blasé, dismissive nature of the ‘young man’ in question.

Tracklisting

Heaven and Hell

I Can’t Explain

Young Man Blues

I Don’t Even Know Myself

Water

Overture

It’s A Boy

1921

Amazing Journey

Sparks

Eyesight to the Blind (The Hawker)

Christmas

The Acid Queen

Pinball Wizard

Do You Think It’s Alright

Fiddle About

Tommy, Can You Here Me?

There’s a Doctor

Go To The Mirror!

Smash The Mirror

Miracle Cure

I’m Free

Tommy’s Holiday Camp

We’re Not Gonna Take It

Summertime Blues

Shakin’ All Over/Spoonful/Twist and Shout

Substitute

My Generation

Naked Eye

Magic Bus

Let us know what sounds great on your speakers here.

The band’s album ‘The Sleeper’ has been named a Rough Trade Album of the Year

Their label, Full Time Hobby Records, who’ve always introduced our members to consistently innovative and excellent artists have now started supplying some FLAC downloads in the online shop as well as CD’s and MP3s  which is excellent.

You can check the band’s website for live dates and news.

7th December     Royal Northern College of Music, MANCHESTER

8th December      Warwick Arts Centre, COVENTRY

9th December      The Sage, Gateshead, NEWCASTLE

11th December     The Queen Elizabeth Hall,  South Bank Centre, LONDON

12th December     The Queen Elizabeth Hall,  South Bank Centre, LONDON

13th December     The Queen Elizabeth Hall,  South Bank Centre, LONDON

14th December     St George’s Hall, BRISTOL

Here’s a sneak preview of the Soul Noel rehearsal earlier this month:

And for more of Ola’s stunning voice, you can check him out here on the main stage of Montreal Jazz Festival back in July:

The Choir came over to the Edinburgh Festival this year, won the Festival Editors Award. They received rave reviews and The Scotsman described them as being “unlike any other Caribbean music show to cross the ocean. The only links to the likes of the Buena Vista Social Club is in virtuosity, fidelity to tradition and the sheer privilege of hearing musicians who could easily have remained Cuba’s best kept secret had they not been given this break.”

Vibrant dancing and spectacular harmonies and undiscovered music of the Caribbean performed by a vocal and percussion ensemble little known outside of Cuba. The Creole Choir of Cuba have preserved musical treasures from Haiti, Dominica and Cuba within their rich descendant communities in Cuba.

Founded in 1994 during the ‘Special Period’ when the Cuban economy fell into a black hole following the end of the USSR and of Soviet support for the revolution. Food was short while homes and work places often went dark due to lack of electricity. It was at this difficult time that members of the Professional Choir of Camagüey who were descendents of Haitians, decided to re-forge the resistance songs and laments of their forebears. Lead by their Choir Director Emilia Díaz Chávez, Grupo Vocal Desandann, as they are called in Cuba, revived the songs of their ancestors for modern times. Desandann literally means ‘descendents’ and as the choir say: “For us music is like food, it feeds the spirit and is a major inspiration for everyday life”.

The Creole Choir describe each of their songs as being ‘like a small film’ filled with vitality, humour and compassion. They tell stories of survival despite abject poverty, of heroes who defied colonial masters, of ghosts at the crossroads, of enduring love, of homesickness for family, of abandonment but never loss of hope, mother’s laments and prayers, of the desire for freedom. With irresistible melodies driven by richly textured harmonies, shifting Caribbean rhythms with a very original root bass sound, this is impassioned singing by a unique group.

Both exhilarating and moving, this album demands dedicated listening. Available in three formats including super high-quality 24-bit FLAC, please do let us know what you think

The deadline for submissions for the Award is Friday 8th January 2010 and the prize is £50,000which will be presented to the winner in September.

Syriana - Ten Days in Bilad Al Sham

Much more than an ‘East meets West’ musical fusion project, Syriana are three friends who came together in creative protest pre-President Obama.

Nick Page (Real World regular, Trans Global Underground member and Dub Colossus mastermind), Abdullah Chhadeh (Syrian qanun virtuoso and musical innovator) and Irish born Bernard O’Neill (another Real World regular and in demand musician) are the three distinctive artists behind Syriana.

“We thought a new Cold War was being foisted upon the world,” says Page, “the Cold War and its iconography had divided East and West. We wanted to bridge it.”

Recorded at Chaddeh’s London base in Walthamstow and at Real World Studios in Box, the music was already a genre-defying mixture of Americana via Dick Dale and the traditional sonorous sound of the ancient 81 srting Arabic dulcimer, the qanun, but it was a 10 trip to Damascus that sealed its unique sound.

Ten Days in Bilad Al Sham is the stunning album for this months Society of  Sound members. Available in all three formats including, 24bit FLAC, it really is unlike anything else we’ve heard and would very much like to hear what you think.

Leisure Society

We’re big fans of the innovative and very cool UK label Full Time Hobby . We had an exclusive label sampler from them earlier in the year and we’re very excited to be offering an exclusive four track EP of new signings The Leisure Society to Society of Sound members next month.

The band won an Ivor Novello award nomination for their sublime debut single ‘The Last of the Melting Snow’ and Mojo describes them as creating ” a sound steeped in the finest folk-pop traditions while retaining a very British streak of humour and individuality”.

The band are also playing three UK dates in November:

22nd Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
23rd Birmingham, The Glee Club
25th London, St Giles In The Fields Church
http://www.seetickets.com/?a=the+leisure+society&filler3=id1gmaps