5 Links to Consider | February 12, 2024
A round-up of this week's compelling and considered clicks, compiled from The Absolute Sound's veteran staff of experts and reviewers.
Adults can learn absolute pitch: New research challenges long-held musical belief
It's been a long-held belief that absolute pitch—the ability to identify musical notes without reference—is a rare gift reserved for a select few with special genetic gifts or those who began musical training in early childhood. However, new research from the University of Surrey challenges this, demonstrating that adults can acquire this skill through rigorous training.
The ZMF Caldera Headphones The Paradox of Music Discovery, the Spotify Way
In Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, a new book from the journalist Liz Pelly, the playlist is the locus for many of Spotify’s troubling practices. Pelly began her project after a music-industry contact suggested that she investigate how the company’s official playlists were shaped by the major labels.
The book’s title suggests a critical corporate biography, but it’s more like a siege campaign, with Pelly pounding away at nearly every aspect of Spotify’s business: its rosy origin story, its entanglements with the big recording companies, the power dynamic of its relationship with independent artists. Her biggest swings are aimed at Spotify’s recommendation framework: the back-end machinations that silently power the playlists available to its 600 million users.
You may not agree with Mood Machine that Spotify’s mixes are an existential threat to the way people discover music, but you may marvel at how much effort goes into recommending a song that sounds like a different song you liked three months ago.
Continue reading at the Atlantic…
Illustration by Panayiotis Terzis John Coltrane's Love Is Still Supreme at Age 60
“But when he wasn’t recording, Coltrane was gigging. And when he wasn’t gigging he was practicing. If I can believe the anecdotes, he practiced more than anybody not suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Fans sometimes even heard Trane practicing backstage before a performance—as if his exhausting high energy gigs weren’t enough to sate his thirst for music.
A few weeks before Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme, a surprised worker at Boston’s Jazz Workshop nightclub got to hear the main melodic motif from the opening track—because the saxophonist was practicing it in the men’s room.”
“He was a jazz star operating at a frantic pace. But the public had no idea how frantic.”
4. Four Tape Machines and a Cutting Lathe - Mahler's Sixth Symphony
Recutting and remixing Mahler's Sixth symphony by Emil Berliner Studios from the original 8-track tapes, providing a breathtaking listening experience of the highest analogue sound quality…
Bill Fay's Time of the Last Persecution was released in 1971 as his second album, but like his debut, it went largely unnoticed at the time. After its commercial failure, Fay retreated from the music industry and spent decades living a quiet, working-class life in England before being rediscovered in the 2000s, gaining a devoted cult following. Qobuz link here.
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