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Alister Spence, Whirlpool | The Vinyl Anachronist

  I just finished up my review of the Joseph Audio Pulsar2 Graphene loudspeakers yesterday, which will appear in early August, and Australian jazz composer Alister Spence and his new solo piano work Whirlpool figured heavily into it. I mention my friend Bob Clarke, a high-end audio distributor, who once told me that he uses the grand piano, not the female voice, to judge an audio system’s strengths. “A great grand piano will tell you everything you need to know,” he said. I thought of that wise statement as soon as the first track began. Alister Spence sounds like a man who has spent a huge chunk of his life sitting on a piano bench, exploring every sound he could make. As I mention in the Pulsar2 review, Spence is a man who seems more fond of the left side of his instrument than the right. I’ve changed my mind–he’s fascinated with the relationship between the two ends. After repeated listens to Whirlpool, which consists of 23 improvisations using both traditional and prepared pianos, you’ll hear an incredible range of sounds, high and low. These might sound like a piano, which they do most of the time, and they might […]

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