Randall Roberts

1 week ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

The first lines of Jonathan Ward’s new writing on early recordings from East Africa zoom from general to specific in a few brief words: “The year 1930 was an extremely active one for multinational record companies. The situation in East Africa was no exception.”The Los Angeles-based Ward is one of the most authoritative writers and researchers on early African records.

1 week ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

“You must have one of these better-class units which has ultra-linear output stages. The distortion factor on it is very, very low indeed. Somewhere in the region of 0.11% at 10 watt output,” explains one of the high-fidelity faithful in Hi-Fi-Fo-Fum, a 1959 BBC short that drills into the psyche of the early audiophile. Recently uploaded by the BBC Archive, the film profiles men who turned their living rooms into tangled shrines of walnut, wire and snootiness in pursuit of the perfect sound.

2 weeks ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

In 1975, music didn’t just hang around in the air. It owned the room. People built their lives around stereo systems the way they once built them around fireplaces or dinner tables. In most homes, the television had already taken over as the main attraction, but for a growing middle class with disposable income and a little space to spare, a stereo was something worth building a room around. A good hi-fi wasn’t decoration. It was an altar. Music wasn’t portable.

3 weeks ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

One new collection draws from Wolfgang Seidel’s counter-history of the German underground, Krautrock Eruption. The other, Ambientale, is compiled by Charles Bals and explores ambient obscurities and digital mirages. Two new compilations from Bureau B trace very different lines through the electronic underground. Krautrock: Bureau B Edition, released alongside Wolfgang Seidel’s book Krautrock Eruption, turns its ear back toward postwar West Germany.

1 month ago | insheepsclothinghifi.com | Randall Roberts

It’s hard to foment a scene. It usually comes down to a few driven people who unite vision with persistence, who keep showing up even when the room’s half full and the sound guy’s late. In Columbia, Missouri — a college town of 130,000 tucked between St. Louis and Kansas City — that kind of work requires a special kind of delusion. It’s politically blue, culturally curious, and just isolated enough to make the improbable feel necessary. Touring traffic is rare. If you want it here, you build it.