Craft Small Batch Recordings—Brilliant Corners: Thelonious Monk 180g vinyl 33RPM reissue
If you’re going to be in the analogue vinyl AAA reissue business these days, you better bring your A game. Chesky Records began in the mid-80s, with Classic Records continuing the great work in the ‘90s producing superb 180g or 200g reissues from the original analogue tapes and now Analogue Productions raising the bar once again bringing us superb all-analogue recreations.
Other small companies have joined the audiophile party and are producing equally superb reissues of all genres such as Impex Records, Rhino High Fidelity and the subject under review, Craft Recordings.
I’m not sure who was first—doesn’t really matter, but one of the gang came up with a new model: super fine analogue pressings on virgin vinyl, unique “luxury” packaging, the finest cutters with original tapes for sources, and most important, fewer steps in the manufacturing process. Usually, there are several manufacturing/plating steps but these new super duper releases from companies have fewer, one. Fewer complications, cleaner, better pressings, improved sound. That’s the idea. $100 to $150 bucks please.
The label and record jacket are perfectly replicated by Craft Recordings.
Analogue Productions calls their upmarket vinyl “UHQR”, Impex “One Step” and Craft Recordings, “Small Batch”. Under review, is Craft’s latest Small Batch release, the seminal Thelonious Monk album, Brilliant Corners, recorded by Orrin Keepnews in 1956 and released in 1957 in mono on the Riverside label.
The Craft Recordings release is a beautifully produced set with a small binder that looks very classy—I love the embossed, embedded jacket cover. Says Craft: Housed in a foil-stamped, linen-wrapped slipcase. The vinyl disc—extractable through a unique frictionless ribbon pull tab—comes in a reproduction of the original album jacket and is protected by an archival-quality, anti-static, non-scratching inner sleeve.
My thanks to Jacob Mask of Craft for shipping the record to the island for review. It arrived in an LP-specific mailer with reinforced corners. As such, it arrived unscathed. The record was flat and the vinyl silent.
This is the number five release, three of the first five are sold out of their 4000 pressing runs. The vinyl “features lacquers cut from the original tapes (AAA) by Bernie Grundman and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI using Neotech’s VR900 compound. This one-step lacquer process (as opposed to the standard three-step process) allows for the utmost level of musical detail, clarity, and dynamics while reducing the amount of surface noise on the record.”
Sound
This Craft record must be considered a great success. I’ve not heard an original for many years but I do have a 1976 clean Japanese pressing which sounds excellent. Bernie Grundman has taken the already excellent mono and made it better in so many ways. This new Craft will be replacing my Japanese copy as pressing of choice on our Audiophilia Dream List ©️ on its next update.
Typical of Grundman is the generous spacing between instruments and their imaging so the particular player’s style shines as well as the varied timbres (young Sonny Rollins in his zeal to get the head of “Brilliant Corners” correct—it took 25 takes—flys out of the speaker with the craziest, guttural sound you’ll ever hear from a tenor virtuoso). And varied dynamics so that drum punches jump out of the speaker intact and with tone. The bass and timpani are also rendered superbly. And to get this spaciousness on a fairly confined mono recording is a gift. I’ve experienced this type of remastering on other Bernie Grundamn cuts such as the large-scale orchestral ORG releases from 2010/11. Simply exceptional and musically very gratifying. The same for this Monk collaboration, here with Rollins on tenor, Ernie Henry on alto with the great Clark Terry (trumpet) and bassist Paul Chambers replacing on the set for for the closing “Bemsha Swing.” Monk goes solo on the only standard, "I Surrender, Dear" (all other compositions are his). Monk substitutes the celeste for piano on "Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-Are" and "Pannonica". The instrument choice makes for an interesting conception. The balance of the quintet on Side 1 including the mightily important title track, “Brilliant Corners” is Ernie Henry, alto, Rollins, bassist Oscar Pettiford, and drummer Max Roach. All leading musicians and in sync with Monk’s angularity.
Thelonious Monk. Photo credit: IMDB.
The entire album is exceptional in musical terms, but if honest, we're all here for “Brilliant Corners”. Almost experimental in its composition for 1956, it’s a 22-bar blues (12 be damned!). The head features odd interjections from most players with free-flowing quarter note triplets surrounded by avant-garde harmonies and odd accented rhythms. Sound weird? It is, but you’ll be a deer in its headlights. But then, genius. Monk doubles the time to swing and everything snaps into focus. It’s a goosebump moment. And though Henry was fearful and complaining, Rollins plowed on with the greatest feel and substituting ghost notes for the slower odd accents now blindingly fast.
Orrin Keepnews cobbled together a performance from the many takes. It sounds seamless.
The album is one of the most important jazz records. And Craft and Bernie Grundman have given us a copy for its musical future. Very highly recommended.
