Patricia Barber – Modern Cool (180g 2LP)

Label: Premonition Records – 90761-1 – 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl
Patricia Barber’s Modern Cool now available on 180-gram vinyl once again!
Pressed at Quality Record Pressing
AAA 100% Analogue This LP was Remastered using Pure Analogue Components Only from the Master Tapes through to the Cutting Head
Remastered from the Original Analog Mixes by Doug Sax
Stereophile Magazine Record to Die For!
Patricia Barber’s Café Blue (Premonition, 1994; R2D4, 1996) was a kind of inexplicable, out-of-nowhere revelation; had it turned out to be a one-off imaginative pinnacle, few would have been surprised. But the follow-up, Modern Cool, is stronger, and establishes Barber as the most important jazz singer to emerge in the ’90s. Modern Cool has it all: the Barber voice, that chilling near-whisper that speaks directly to your innermost self; original songs (“Company,” “Winter,” “Silent Partner”) that are cautionary tales from the ragged psychic cusp of the new millennium; covers (“Light My Fire,” “She’s a Lady”) that paint every word with haunting new connotations; accompaniment as lethal as razor wire from her brilliant working quartet plus guest trumpeter Dave Douglas; and sonically, Modern Cool is engineer Jim Anderson’s finest hour. Stereophile.com
“Sonically, one of the best recordings ever made by a jazz singer with a small acoustic ensemble.” – Down Beat magazine
“Smart songs about the way we think and live, not just about the way we love. This is the kind of art we need to be on the lookout for everywhere. The 21st century has started. We can’t afford to be left behind.” – The New York Times
This is another in Premonition Records’ recent series of vinyl releases which now includes four Patricia Barber albums and one Von Freeman album. This one was mastered for vinyl by the legendary Doug Sax, pressed by Quality Record Pressings, the new standard in high end audiophile pressing plants and comes in a deluxe, heavy cardboard jacket. Modern Cool earned a coveted 5-star review from DownBeat and was awarded a 2013 Grammy Award for Best Surround Sound Album.
Modern Cool was recorded at Chicago Recording Company in early 1998. For many, Modern Cool is the record that brought Patricia Barber to their attention. Its success with critics and jazz fans led Blue Note Records to enter into a “joint imprint” production deal with Premonition Records, the first time they had ever done such a deal in their storied history. Done on the Sony 3348, a 32-track (16/48) digital tape recorder, and mixed down to 2-track, half-inch tape with Dolby SR, this was Barber’s first album of mostly original material. Engineer Jim Anderson utilized mostly tube microphones (Brauner and Neumann) and John Hardy M-1 preamps, whose signal was patched to the tape bypassing the console.
Barber offers another strong blending of material as on Cafe Blue but heavier on the originals. Modern Cool features the same band as on Cafe Blue with the addition of trumpet star Dave Douglas. Highlights include Barber’s originals “Touch of Trash,” “Company,” and “Winter,” her version of The Doors “Light My Fire” and her setting of an E.E. Cummings poem.
Modern Cool was monumental when it was first released back in 1998. Downbeat gave it 5 stars – saying “Sonically, one of the one of the best recordings ever made by a jazz singer with a small acoustic ensemble.”