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Clearly better sonics than on the Warner (SHM-)SACD of the same, Ornette Coleman: The Shape of Jazz to Come. Most immediately noticeable in the drums and bass that have much more clarity, definition, impact, and realism, but also evident in some extremely beautiful sounds Ornette and Don Cherry produce, both alone and together. Never sounded like that before, anywhere, and is very appealing and indeed almost hypnotizing (to me, at least, having never heard these tapes presented this well during the, what, 20 years or so that I've been actively listening to them in one format or another).
After hearing this you'll dump whatever other versions you have of it. I'm doing the same.
The best of all: less than half price of what you'll have to pay for the inferior Warner version.
Play it a lot and play it aloud! There is no happier music around.
Those Warner Japan SACDs were transferred onto DSD by local forces using digital files shipped over from the US (kind of a la Esoteric), whereas these ORG Music SACDs are all mastered directly from the original master tapes, by Bernie Grundman. Great music and a best buy, in other words, although not cheapo-cheap by some standards, and spells good for the future releases by the label (I'm certainly getting more of them).
Plus, they are all stereo and not sourced from the parallel-running (clearly inferior, mostly backup) mono setup tapes that Warner used for many if not most of their jazz SACD releases and that weren't really paid attention to even at the time these recordings were made, by either the engineers in the room or the buying audiences.
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Very helpful of you to provide a review of the ORG Music reissue vs. the Warner Japan SACD. I ordered a copy from the distributor and look forward to hearing it. There's an interesting MA thesis on Ornette Coleman's music, for those who want to know about the background of this music:
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/11849/
Edit: The thesis linked above was written in non-technical language and does not rely on academic jargon or obscure analysis. It includes a narrative history of Ornette Coleman's performances and recordings, and interviews with his sidemen, including Charlie Haden and James "Blood" Ulmer.
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Thanks for the link, most interesting given the angle.
There is also a very good Japanese remastered version of this album, WPCR-25109, that I've enjoyed much, but it boosts the low frequencies and pushes Haden & Higgins more to the foreground (not that it's necessarily a bad thing, given the nature of the original recording which leaves them both sounding strangely weak in a fairly distant, flat, and mono-sounding narrow space squeezed strictly in the middle with no left-right spread at all). While it's notably vivid-sounding and has given me more listening pleasure than the Warner SACD, it is not as clean, clear, well-defined, and spatially & acoustically "alive" as the ORG Music SACD's presentation. The latter is really the winner here, and I expect the same to hold for their other titles, too. Compared to this, the Warner SACD sounds flat-out dull and undifferentiated (to exaggerate a bit).
The one loss you suffer with the ORG Music release is the omission of the two bonus tracks that those two alternatives above have: Monk and the Nun and Just for You. But it's a small price to pay for such overall goodness.
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This is back in stock at the US distributor, Elusive Disc. It's a shame they're not a sponsor of this site, because their selection and customer service are very good.
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