Since then, I see the going rate has doubled to $200. * I paid $99USD for my copy, which felt like a lot. I hate how expensive Music Matters pressings are (new and used)*, but this will be worth it for a lot of people. The King, by contrast, is muddy and muffled.
The natural tone and lifelike decay of Bobby Hutcherson’s vibes on “Hat and Beard” are absolutely breathtaking. On my current system, the differences between the Music Matters and King pressings are night and day. In my more resolving current system, the sheer excellence of this pressing stands out even more: it is up there with The Cry! and some Three Blind Mice records as my best-sounding jazz disc. I did, however, appreciate the Music Matters pressing a little more. Verdict *RevisitedĪfter putting together my much superior loudspeaker-based Sillys Place system, I returned to this shootout - and the verdict didn’t change.
My digital comparator is a 24/192 MQA Tidal Master. As much as I like all that, I’d rather not have a gatefold if I don’t need it - they take up too much shelf space. The Music Matters has the gatefold with the nice photos inside. The King cardboard is thick with good colours. A King wrapped up in a Music Matters.īoth pressings come in nice jackets. It went straight from the sealed package onto the turntable. I haven’t heard the 45rpm discs, but I hear those sound worse, and I am decidedly not a fan of having to switch sides every ten minutes.įor the record, I had literally never played this record before doing this test. Good haul.) These two are the only Music Matters records I own. (I also got some “Blue Note Classics” Jackie McLean sessions for $10 each, and a Tone Poet copy of Wayne Shorter’s Etcetera. On the same order, for $70, I also got an MM33 copy of Point of Departure. Sort of an ideal situation, because while this copy was pretty expensive ($90) it was ridiculously cheap by out-of-print MM33 standards. Which is to say: who only sells to Canadians. I ordered it brand-new on Discogs from a Canadian seller who only accepts money orders or electronic transfers from Canadian banks. I picked up this 2015 Music Matters 33rpm copy very recently. Although I personally like Eric Dolphy a tiny bit better on Hill’s Point of Departure, Mal Waldron’s The Quest, and his own Out There and Iron Man, I totally get why everyone else thinks this is Dolphy’s career highlight. Of course, musically it’s an undisputed masterpiece. This despite the fact that Out to Lunch is reputed to be one of Rudy Van Gelder’s audiophile masterpieces, due to its sparse instrumentation and the fact that it didn’t have any piano, his sonic kryptonite (as a fan of Andrew Hill and Herbie Hancock, I totally agree with this assessment: piano does not sound good on their classic records). It sounded amazing right off the bat - though I couldn’t help thinking it didn’t sound quite as amazing as the Ornette record. I picked up my 1977 King pressing of Out to Lunch on the same day that I bought my copy of Ornette Coleman’s Live at the Golden Circle, Volume 1 at Cosmos Records here in Toronto. I revisited this shootout, and though my findings didn’t change, they deepened. It’s a battle of the Blue Note reissue titans.
They’re expensive as hell, they’re hard to get into Canada - but no less an authority than London Jazz Collector says they sound close to as good as first pressing originals. Now it’s time to bring in another of the vaunted “best reissues” series: the recent Music Matters pressings. Japanese pressings in general, and King Records pressings in particular, have been faring very well so far in my Brest Pressing Shootouts.
Best Pressing Shootout *Revisited: Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch - 1977 King Japan vs.