LATEST ADDITIONS

I’ve been reading Matthew Crawford’s <i>Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work</i>, which argues that an intimacy with manual trades may revitalize a connection to the material world lost to those who spend their lives in offices or cubicles, staring at computer screens for eight to twelve hours a day, unable to quantify exactly what it is that they <i>do</i>. I’m digging it. It aligns, in many ways, with a philosophy John Atkinson has shared with me: <i>Do doingfully.</i>

Oh, crap. This is good. Recently signed to <a href="http://www.4ad.com/ariel-pinks-haunted-graffiti/">4AD</a&gt;, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti are poised to release <i>Before Today</i>, their first full-length album for the acclaimed indie label, on June 8th. Whee!

I’ve been infatuated with Damien Jurado’s new album, <i>Saint Bartlett</i>, due to be released on May 25th from <a href="http://www.secretlycanadian.com/onesheet.php?cat=SC192">Secretly Canadian</a>. Its twelve songs take us on an emotionally powerful trip, from the drunken sway of “Arkansas” to the jaunty swagger of “Wallingford” to the heavyhearted confessions of “Kansas City.” Altogether, <i>Saint Bartlett</i> is deep and beautiful and addictive.

Sometimes wandering the streets of New York I hear whining about how “far from nature’ someone is; or how there’s too much concrete; or how the exhaust&#150;filled air is hurting their lungs. Well, boo hoo. If it’s purple mountains majesties you seek, NYC ain’t the place. You come here for the human culture not the natural beauty&#151;although now that I think of it, there are other, very compelling forms of natural beauty in NYC, if you catch my drift, wink, wink, nod, nod, say no more, but I digress.

It was late last year, when the leaves and the temperatures started to fall, that I first became interested in Effi Briest, the hypnotic and alluring all-female band performing out of Brooklyn, NY. Their video for “Mirror Eye” was <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/effi_briests_mirror_rim/">a dizzying, hallucinogenic trip</a> that matched their sound and their sense of style.

Every audiophile is born sometime, somewhere. My audio birth happened on a family visit to my Uncle John's house, when he played Information Society's "What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy)" through his brand-new Klipsch Heresy IIs. Uncle John did three things at this listening session that turned 12-year-old me into the audiophile I am today: he played music I liked, he played it really loud, and afterward, he took the time to explain how his system worked and why it sounded so good. His Klipsches were powered by Nelson Pass&#150;influenced Nakamichi gear&#151;I'd never before heard speakers play music with such ease or such startling dynamics. I was immediately hooked. In many ways, nothing I've heard since that day has impressed me as much, or been as revelatory of what home audio can do. That single experience set me on a path of caring about re-creating musical performances in my own home.

JBL was founded 60 years ago, by Jim Lansing. Its history has been amply detailed in the book <I>The JBL Story: 60 Years of Audio Innovation</I>, by the late <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/052107eargle">John Eargle</A>'s (JBL Professional, 2006). Although it is primarily known for its pro-audio loudspeakers, the Californian company has offered a steady stream of high-performance domestic loudspeakers to the home market, including the 1971 Paragon, the L100 bookshelf speaker, and the JBL 250Ti floorstander, all of which remained in JBL's catalog for 20 years. In 1990, JBL produced the Project K2 S9500 flagship speaker for the Japanese high-end market. The K2 Project culminated in the $60,000/pair <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2007/010907mikeyjbl">DD55000 Everest system</A>, with its cross-firing asymmetric horns, and the subject of this review, the Synthesis 1400 Array BG, was a spin-off from the K2 project. It features horn-loaded midrange and tweeters to attain a flat response out to a claimed 48kHz.