FESTIVAL OF SOUND Various Artists

• 1 Lights of Barcelona 06:26
• 2 Il Vecchio Catello 04:24
• 3 Jazz Ensemble 07:09
• 4 Young Person´s Guide to the Orchestra 01:45
• 5 My Funny Valentine 06:45
• 6 Demo Track Percussion 1 05:15
• 7 Demo Track Percussion 2 03:37
• 8 Dance Chinoise 01:16
• 9 Jazz Ensemble 2 02:40
• 10 Drum Track Le temps perdu 01:52
• 11 Promenade Ginomus 04:17
• 12 Toccata Gigout 03:27
• Total Runtime 48:53

Info for FESTIVAL OF SOUND

These true audiophile classical recordings capture the feeling of each performance without adding or subtracting anything. The ambience and the true timbre of each instrument is perfectly preserved. To achieve this, Fidelio has designed its own microphones and its own proprietary power supply system that totally eliminates problems generated by common AC power. The power supply system feeds the entire recording system without any contact with external AC power sources. The recording system uses state-of-the-art gear like Nagra, Sonosax, Verity Audio and interconnect cables by Siltech. The recording technique employs a pair of omnidirectional microphones. Their precise location ensures a natural reproduction of stereophonic effects, good general balance and overall ambience.

I must admit I got excited to see the cover and back photos on this album because the Stax headphones featured led me to believe the recording was binaural. It is not, just stereo, but excellent hi-res stereo at that. This French Canadian audiophile label uses purist micing with mics it has designed itself and a portable Nagra recorder running on batteries to escape any possible effects of AC power on fidelity. They eschew mixers, EQ, all that sort of thing.

The album has a dozen tracks, opening with one from guitarist Marc Vallee’s disc with we also review in this section this month. Tracks 2 and 11 are movements from Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, played by the Orchestra of the Jeunesses Musicales conducted by Pierre Hetu. Other classical selections here are excerpts from Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, the Chinese Dance from The Nutcracker, and the closing track - a smashing version of Gigout’s Toccata for pipe organ on a massive instrument at the Oratory of St. Joseph du Mont-Royal. Some small group jazz selections and reference drum and percussion solos round out the sampler. All are in extremely clean hi-res sonics. (John Sunier, AUDIOPHILE AUDITION)

Produced and recorded by: René Laflamme (Tracks 1, 5, 10)
Jean De La Durantaye (Tracks 2, 4, 8, 11, 12)

Highly recommended for demonstrations of High-End audio equipment.

A compilation dedicated to funk and pre – zouk period, which has never been documented before. It is compilated by specialists of the genre: Julien Achard (Digger's Digest) and Nicolas SKLIRIS (ex-Superfly Records).

After the success of Kouté Jazz, Heavenly Sweetness comes back with a dancefloor but not jazz compilation, enough to move your feet at through the whole summer ! 13 disco, boogie and Zouk tracks recorded in the 80’s in the West Indies.

The advantage of this selection is precisely that it reveals a broader spectrum than the zouk music style that are badly defined. Most of the tracks, were not much broadcasted even if interpreted by some big names in Caribbean music (Pierre-Edouard Decimus / Patrick St. Eloi / Eddy La Viny). They were too fast classified as Zouk. These Tracks reveal this will of singularity, this merger between traditional and other rhythms genres (funk, disco, afro-beat, Latin Brazilian ...), with the addition of new instruments such as synthesizers and drums machine in the creative process.

In many zouk’s albums, this period often included one or even several, tracks that were qualified as "proto-zouk" and "funky-zouk" or the "boogie-zouk" to emphasize the fusion of genres . But these tracks have remained unknown to the general public because only the "hits" were played on the radio, dance floors (the famous "tan" or “zouk”), clubs and bus.

Booklet for FESTIVAL OF SOUND