Concert Percussion For Orchestra - Conducted by John Cage & Paul Price

weird but wonderful! startling sound

The DXD sound here is nothing short of startling. The degree of low level detail; soundstage (almost absurdly huge: high, deep and wide); dynamics; and noiselessness is truly exceptional. The sound is immediately so striking that I found it difficult to stop listening... I was hypnotized by it. But then there's the question: is this music? I mean, it's just percussion, a couple of guys banging sticks and pieces of metal. No melodies, harmonies. Almost nothing of what we usually call music. It's a good question, one that the pro-John Cage and anti-John Cage factions will debate as long as they have air in their lungs. I for one find this kind of music has several uses: 1-as John Cage suggests, it startles us out of our usual listening habits, which have been corrupted by the omnipresence of "music" in modern society, and sharpens our hearing so that we can regain the capacity to listen to music with fresh ears again. Specifically: I recommend you listen attentively to five or ten minutes of this album as a prelude to your usual music listening, the way you might do yoga for a while before meditation. I find this really helps my listening experience . You could say, with some justification I think, that preparing yourself to listen with the aid of this kind of album is the most bang-for-the-buck tweak out there. In other words, instead of improving your , you improve the <listener