Audiophilepure

https://www.stereophile.com/content/gramophone-dreams-81-feliks-envy-headphone-amplifier

I’ve worshipped at the altar of David Lindley, singer-songwriter and master of all stringed instruments. His 1981 debut album with his band El Rayo-X (Asylum LP 5E-524) is spectacular on black disc, but the digital streaming version (16/44.1 FLAC Electra Asylum/Qobuz) has never grabbed me; I never listened all the way through until I listened with the ZMF Verité–Feliks Envy combo. With that, “Mercury Blues” came all the way alive, and my feet weren’t tapping the floor; they were pounding it. My head was bouncing, and I was cruising on down the road. Plus! I can’t mention this album of full-tilt rhythms without a shout-out declaring Ian Wallace, once a member of King Crimson, the alpha dog of funky drummers. On “Mercury Blues,” Wallace was so good and having so much fun, he made me laugh out loud in the middle of a song.

After parking my new Mercury, I entered a seaside tango bar, and there she was: the beautiful Argentinian chanteuse Susana Natividad Rinaldi, sounding like Edith Piaf and looking like a singer in a David Lynch film. The seductive tones of Rinaldi’s voice forced me to adore her. The dense reverb that framed her voice and made the band’s instruments vibrant did not fog the recording’s transparency or soften its focus. The album that supplied that vision is called A Homero Manzi (16/44.1 FLAC RP Music/Qobuz), and I swear that every instrument and player in her small orchestra was delineated clearly enough to watch and follow what they were doing on the stage.

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