Multipak report

Last weekend we had a fantastic time in Croatia. Our distributor Slobodan from BM made us feel real welcome to the well renowned boutique hifi show Multipak in sunny Pakrac.

It was really good as our room felt more like a living room rather than a show. We had this great setup:

Coltrane Tenor

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Supreme Sessions

We have been working on a great project for the last year that we’re presenting here at CES 2014. We call it ‘Supreme Sessions’. This is our own record label. The main thing here is that we want the recordings to be as real as possible and therefore we’re only using two channels and two microphones.

We will release the album this spring. It’s all completely live and made with as little mastering as possible to recreate the ‘magic’ that happens when the music being performed. That’s what high-fidelity is all about isn’t it?

We have a whole lot of different artists being recorded in several different styles but mainly jazz. Peter Axelsson is our very talented musical director and recording engineer and of course musician.

This is ‘Sjöströmska Kvartetten‘, a fantastic string quartet playing a selection of classical tunes.

Matti Ollikainen playing the Blüthner grand piano & Peter Axelsson on double bass.

Peter Axelsson again with british singer song writer Mitch Hiller.

We loved the sound from the huge Blüthner grand.

Watch this space for more soon.

Electric blues boy

One evening not long ago we went to see wonder child James Blake at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London. A wonderful experience of sound, light and music. There have been a lot of superlatives mentioned about this guy before but we thought it wouldn’t hurt to add some to the collection.

He has an incredible talent of making his recorded electronic Dubstep inspired music sound extremely warm and fuzzy. When he performs this live it has an even more warm and personable. He has an incredible control over his voice and records the imaginative backing vocals on spot until it reaches some kind of nirvana of unusual harmonies. Even though the control of the voice it only sounds as if just happens, that it’s just the way he sings and always did without any training. During the concert you become embedded into his world of warm, and beautifully moody sounds and even the dadaism-ish sampled lyrics become sort of meaningful and poetic: Look I found her red coat, look I found her, DAMN!

Well done Mr Blake, we will make an effort to see you again.

Photo by Siamak Amini

Sjöströmska kvartetten

This weekend we had four very talented ladies here. Sjöströmska Kvartetten is a string quartet based in Gothenburg that has been around since 2007. They were very thorough and professional which suited our special project perfectly. We will tell you more about this in a while. It’s exciting stuff.

You can find out more about them here: Facebook, website, Myspace

TAVES – Toronto Audio Video Entertainment Show

Our great distributor ‘The Gramophone‘ in Canada will be participating in the TAVES show at the King Edward Hotel on November 1, 2 and 3rd, 2013 – downtown Toronto.

Brian Taylor at ‘The Gramophone’ tells us:
“We will be showing the Marten Django XL along with Luxman amplification and their new DSD DAC along with Esoteric CD/SACD player, the AMG Turntable and Tonearm, Benz Cartridge, Musical Surroundings Nova Phono Stage and Audiodesk Systeme Vinyl cleaners. It is our room but Garth Leerer of Musical Surroundings will be helping as he has done dozens of shows over the past 25 years and he is the distributor of the AMG table for the world outside of Europe.”

Please come for a listen if you are around. It looks like it will sound awesome.

The Ice Queen

A few days ago we had the opportunity to go to one of the concerts of the year. The Icelandic icon Björk put on a spectacular show at London’s Alexandra Palace. The venue has a bit of a reputation for bad sound quality but we didn’t need to worry as Björk evidently has a rather high quality control.

No photography or filming was allowed but people didn’t seem to care much. We would never disobey Björk though so we didn’t take more than one photo before it started but we can tell you that it sounded and looked great.

The stage was placed in the middle of the hall and had lots of massive wooden machine like things that sometimes started moving when the music went particularly industrial. And it often did, extremely heavy stuff that blew you away. In contrast to this she had the Icelandic women’s choir ‘Graduale Nobili‘ that juxtaposed the bassy beats brilliantly. The favourite was ‘Isobel‘ where the choir mimicked the intricate string section, originally arranged by Brazilian composer Eumir Deodato.

They also filmed the whole show for a dvd release (or maybe TV, we don’t know) so after some of the songs, Björk kindly asked if they could do a repeat, and no one complained of course. At the end of it she said: ‘God, I’ve never chatted this much at a show’ which makes us wonder how quiet she would be if the filming wouldn’t have been going on. We guess she’s all about performing and not entertaining. And that she does brilliantly.

We ♥ you Björk

Today’s Favourite

‘Isobel‘ is hereby named today’s favourite. Johannesson, Schultz & Berglund’s mellow Björk cover Sounds lush on the Django Ls.

Didgeridoo?

Not really, it’s a German wooden horn instrument called Alphorn. Very special sound not dissimilar to a Didgeridoo. They have had a good few live acts at the first floor atrium. We’ll tell you all about it in a bit.

Live at the MOC

Yesterday was a busy day as usual here at the High End Show so it was real nice to hear some chilled tunes from solo bassist Dean Peer having our daily Weißwurst & pretzel. The beats was very soft sounding and the percussionist made use of one of those cool brazilian cube drums, Cajón. The setting might not have been the most inspiring but they didn’t seem to care, it sounded great anyway.

A little more…

from CES. Even though it’s a while ago, we thought we might just write one lats post about it. We’re almost in a bit o sentimental mood now when it’s so far to the next one:)

There were a lot of interest in this recorder from Nagra. A proper geeky collectors item in our room.

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