Post by Beagle September 18, 2007 (1 of 11)
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The audiophile label Water Lily has produced collectors' item after collectors' item. Ry Cooder is not only a consummate musician but an international force for getting wonderful music on disc (and on film in the case of Buena Vista Social Club).
This recording was made about 3 in the morning in a church, with Cooder on guitar/bottleneck guitar, his son on tabla -- and a jet-lagged guy from India named Vishwa Bhatt, who had re-invented the guitar as something new called the mohan víná. Cooder and Bhatt met, started jamming, and played till dawn. The two string players toss themes back and forth at each other and one must listen very intently to discern East from West --And Cooder Jr plays a mean tabla. Most importantly, Water Lily was also there with their amazing hand-built equipment and immortalised the long moment.
This is a disc for (just about) everyone: rocker, klassiker, toker and midnight joker. I have had the RBCD for more than a decade and everyone who hears it rushes out to buy their own personal copy. So I think you will need a good excuse to NOT buy this disc.
PS: If you procrastinate, I predict it will soon be very difficult to find a copy (cf the Akbar Khan disc).
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Post by Paul September 18, 2007 (2 of 11)
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I have had the RBCD for years, and it is wonderful. Is the SACD much better, soncially?
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Post by raffells September 19, 2007 (3 of 11)
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Beagle said:
The audiophile label Water Lily has produced collectors' item after collectors' item. Ry Cooder is not only a consummate musician but an international force for getting wonderful music on disc (and on film in the case of Buena Vista Social Club).
This recording was made about 3 in the morning in a church, with Cooder on guitar/bottleneck guitar, his son on tabla -- and a jet-lagged guy from India named Vishwa Bhatt, who had re-invented the guitar as something new called the mohan víná. Cooder and Bhatt met, started jamming, and played till dawn. The two string players toss themes back and forth at each other and one must listen very intently to discern East from West --And Cooder Jr plays a mean tabla. Most importantly, Water Lily was also there with their amazing hand-built equipment and immortalised the long moment.
This is a disc for (just about) everyone: rocker, klassiker, toker and midnight joker. I have had the RBCD for more than a decade and everyone who hears it rushes out to buy their own personal copy. So I think you will need a good excuse to NOT buy this disc.
PS: If you procrastinate, I predict it will soon be very difficult to find a copy (cf the Akbar Khan disc).
I wonder if they will add anything to this 38 minutes of music magic to really make it worthwhile?...I Just hope the other label realize Rys other items would sell well...I Doubt it? Jazz and Paris Texas Knockout...
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Post by Beagle September 19, 2007 (4 of 11)
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Paul said: Is the SACD much better, soncially?
I won't have the answer to that until the disc arrives, but I will predict that it is YES.
I am basing that prediction on another wonderful analogue-to-SACD collectors' item, Harmonia mundi's La Folia de la Spagna - Gregorio Paniagua . The original RBCD of La Folia is mind-boggling, and the SACD is exquisitely mind-boggling. I don't have the RBCD original to another analogue-to-SACD title from Water Lily, Ali Akbar Khan: Indian Architexture but I do have the 2-disc SACD and it is, in a word: perfection! Ry Cooder: A Meeting by the River was recorded with hand-built analogue gear by technicians who are obsessive-compulsive, to put it politely. I expect that the transfer to SACD will reveal a whole new dimension of beauty. Yes, I'm gushing*, but some discs are "eleven-out-of-ten".
*To be a bit critical: I find the Water Lily SACD Bela Fleck & Vishwa Mohan Bhatt: Tabula Rasa good enough but uninspiring.
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Post by Beagle September 19, 2007 (5 of 11)
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Minor correction to first post:
I said Cooder Jr on tabla... Oops: "Sukhvindar Singh on tabla and Ry's 14-year-old son Joachim on dumbek". Dumbek or dombalak is a goblet-shaped double-pitched hand-drum; the Indian tabla is double-membraned.
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Post by ramesh September 19, 2007 (6 of 11)
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This is a welcome Water Lily release. They hadn't released SACDs for a while, and I was fearing they had abandoned the format.
By the way, the Songlines label has some interesting world music. I'm currently listening to 'Safa', which is hybrid Persian music. I hope to place a review of it shortly, but am hampered by a lack of Persian music discs downunder to compare it to.
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Post by 51surr September 22, 2007 (7 of 11)
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Will this be stereo or multichannel? I haven't seen any mutichannel releases from Analogue Productions previously.
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Post by Beagle September 22, 2007 (8 of 11)
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Post by Beagle January 24, 2008 (9 of 11)
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At last! A release-date for this famous recording: March 1 (mine has been on order since September).
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Post by Beagle May 12, 2008 (10 of 11)
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This SACD is now available: http://store.acousticsounds.com/browse_detail.cfm?Title_ID=41715
AcousticSounds now lists it as "hybrid stereo", not "multi-channel", but to quote Jeff Dorgay (Tone Audio, No. 15, 2008), "this is the ultimate stereo test record", likewise Michael Fremer (Music Angle) "this is among the most spacious, convincing three-dimensional recordings you will ever hear".
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