All,
One of my highlights of the RMAF2018 was meeting a long-time customer, Jim Laurel, who a few years ago began a journey to start a record company (
Muxía Music) with a couple of friends. I personally was taken back how alive, energetic and intimate their new recording of “Lo Que Dice Mi Cantar” by
Trios Palabras sounds! You'll have a chance to pick up the LP Spring 2019, distributed by Elusive Disc (
http://elusivedisc.com), or via high-res download at Blue Coast Music (
https://bluecoastmusic.com) and I know you'll be glad that you did.
Here is some information that Jim provided about playing a few tracks off their upcoming record at our room in RMAF2018:
"We felt so privileged to demo some cuts from our new Cuban record, “Lo Que Dice Mi Cantar” (What my singing says) in Vinnie’s room at RMAF this year [Vinnie Rossi/Harbeth/Triode Wire Labs]. The album is our first release on the new Muxia Music label, and will be available in the Spring of 2019 on 180 gram vinyl at Elusive Disc and in high res digital form at Blue Coast Music.
As we are a new label, we were keen to find the best possible sound at RMAF to demo our first title, and I knew Vinnie’s room would sound great, as always. The new L2 Signature Peamplifier and L2 Signature Monoblocks sounded beautiful playing through the Harbeth 40.2 speakers and our mastering engineer, Chris Bellman (Bernie Grundman mastering: https://www.berniegrundmanmastering.com/chris-bellman.php) agreed. I am a longtime customer of Vinnie's, going back to the Red Wine Audio days, and I still use his Isabella preamplifier and Liliana monoblocks every day in my home. The L2 series seems to take the house sound that I have always loved with my Red Wine gear and takes it to a new place: immediate, textured, large in scale and detailed, and completely non-fatiguing.
I used the Harbeth Compact 7ES-3 and P3ESR as my reference monitors during production of our new album, and it really struck me that Harbeth still achieves the original BBC design goal of consistent sound across speakers of varying sizes. Mix decisions made on the little P3ESR and Compact 7ES-3 translate very well to the big 40.2, or any other Harbeth model in the line. Together with Vinnie’s new L2 Signature components, they made for a dream pairing that allowed our recording to reach its full potential.
“Lo Que Dice Mi Cantar” was recorded in December 2017 in a small studio in central Cuba. It is the result of a 2-year effort by the Muxia Music team to realize a high resolution recording of traditional Cuban Trova, a seldom-heard genre, treasured for its ability to express universal human emotions and feelings. It is a pure acoustic recording, with the whole band playing in a single room, with no overdubs, no click tracks, no editing, and only very minimal post processing. This is something we very rarely hear today in commercial recordings. We do everything possible to honor the music and the culture behind it and to bring it to listeners as it is meant to be heard. We used Ravenna interfaces from Switzerland’s Merging Technologies, ribbon mics from AEA and Royer Labs and condensers from Neumann Josephson Microtek Gefell and Sennheiser Interesting note: the room mic we used was the legendary Neumann KU-100 binaural head While this is not a binaural recording, we feel that the KU-100 gives that extra touch of visceral realism that brings the artists right into your room.
Thanks again to Vinnie Rossi and his team for inviting us to demo our record on his lovely system at RMAF!
Jim Laurel
Muxía Music
Link to the album page:
https://www.muxiamusic.com/albums
Link to the artist page:
https://www.muxiamusic.com/artists/
Photo above: Jim Laurel presenting a few new tracks and some of the stories behind them (which will be in the LP's liner notes and I can tell are not something you are going to want to miss!) to a group of listeners from the industry, consisting of:
- Chris Bellman (Bernie Grundman Mastering)
- Bob Bantz (President and CEO of Elusive Disc)
- Cookie Marenco (Blue Coast Music)
- Jeff Dorgay (Tone Audio)
- Eric Neff (HiFi Plus)
- Danny Kaey (Positive-Feedback and ComputerAudiophile.com)
It was an honor for me to have them all in our room for this fantastic demo, and I wish Jim and everyone at Muxia Music (along with all the musicians that they will be working with) much success and continued passion & happiness in all that they do.
Vinnie
Link to Vinnie Rossi Show Coverage thread:
https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=160099.0
