LATEST ADDITIONS

U.K. audio specialist Cambridge Audio has announced that its network audio streamers now support the high-resolution music streaming/download service Qobuz.

The year is 1962. You are working at Decca Records and your job is to listen to audition tapes and pass along your evaluation. The next demo tape on your endlessly replenishing stack is from some unsigned band calling themselves The Beatles. You mount the tape on your machine and listen for a few minutes. Then you rewind it and put it back in its box. Pass.

Jethro Tull made a bold move with their fourth album, March 1971's Aqualung, by amping up the intensity that informed the eclectic, prog-folk acoustic/electric hybrid the British band had firmly established on their first three LPs. That move effectively catapulted Tull headlong into the slipstream of the first wave of FM radio-favored artists. In fact, one could even argue the opening six-note pattern of the iconic title track is as instantly recognizable as the recurring four-note riff that defines Deep Purple's seminal "Smoke on the Water" (sorry, just wond'ring aloud here).

Aubrey Powell, Hipgnosis co-founder and the creative director for Pink Floyd's massive The Later Years: 1987-2019 box set, tells us why having a personal bond with the artist helps with the creative process and why the intended visual message must connect with the music itself.