Mike Silverton

Editor Mike Silverton contributed to the print bi-monthly Fanfare first as a columnist and later as a reviewer for about a dozen years before he proposed to Madrigal Audio Laboratories that they sponsor an Internet music review. Thus La Folia. (The sponsorship ended with Madrigal Labs’ demise. La Folia has since operated absent sponsorship or ads.) In addition to having contributed articles to Stereo Review, The Absolute Sound, and most recently, StereoTimes.com, Silverton produced poetry readings for Pacifica Radio (WBAI, KPFA, KPFK), WNYC and the New School for Social Research dogs’ lifetimes ago. His own poetry has appeared in anthologies compiled by the late William Cole, poetry mags, Harper’s and The Nation. More recently Silverton has shown his art at Aarhus Gallery, Belfast, Maine, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. A two-CD set, Analogue Smoque, Pogus 21029-2, features Silverton reading his texts to musical accompaniments by Tom Hamilton and Al Margolis. Silvertonresides with his wife Lee, an artist, in an 1842 town house on the coast of Maine (in which Jefferson Davis spent a night in 1854).

Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern

Helmut Lachenmann’s Opera on The Little Match Girl

Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern

Helmut Lachenmann’s Opera on The Little Match Girl

Random Noise 7: To Be Listenin’ or Not to Be Listenin’

I’m holding a CD (I type with my toes) I recommend to the callow as a glimpse of What Was and, to those as long in the tooth as I, a souvenir of the Great Foolishness.

Random Noise 7: To Be Listenin’ or Not to Be Listenin’

I’m holding a CD (I type with my toes) I recommend to the callow as a glimpse of What Was and, to those as long in the tooth as I, a souvenir of the Great Foolishness.

Random Noise 6: Super OTW Lives!

Back when hi-fi’s included AM-FM tuners, I would listen now and again to a New-York-area DJ who played music of the Baroque, for the most part Italian.

Random Noise 6: Super OTW Lives!

Back when hi-fi’s included AM-FM tuners, I would listen now and again to a New-York-area DJ who played music of the Baroque, for the most part Italian.

Random Noise 5: Successful Trespass

The utterly charming sound-world of Tom Hamilton’s London Fix, Music Changing with the Price of Gold traces its impetus to a neighbor’s computer with its “colorful stock charts,” specifically “the contours of the spot gold market as defined by the twice-daily London Fix.

Random Noise 5: Successful Trespass

The utterly charming sound-world of Tom Hamilton’s London Fix, Music Changing with the Price of Gold traces its impetus to a neighbor’s computer with its “colorful stock charts,” specifically “the contours of the spot gold market as defined by the twice-daily London Fix.

Random Noise 4: Picking Nits and Winners

Expanded capabilities notwithstanding, we can safely predict for the SACD / DVD-A era, should it ever fully supplant the reviled CD, that a badly produced recording will continue to sound like…

Random Noise 4: Picking Nits and Winners

Expanded capabilities notwithstanding, we can safely predict for the SACD / DVD-A era, should it ever fully supplant the reviled CD, that a badly produced recording will continue to sound like…

Through a Format Darkly

I propose to discuss how the compact disc’s (perhaps) successor, the Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD), sounds not at its full-fledged best but rather in terms of its compatibility via a two-channel, CD-only system.

Through a Format Darkly

I propose to discuss how the compact disc’s (perhaps) successor, the Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD), sounds not at its full-fledged best but rather in terms of its compatibility via a two-channel, CD-only system.

Random Noise 3: The Bittersweet Spot

If you cohabit with a lower-case stereophile, you are accustomed to said specimen slouching about the premises with a pinched and earnest look. One never knows, he might even be you.

Random Noise 3: The Bittersweet Spot

If you cohabit with a lower-case stereophile, you are accustomed to said specimen slouching about the premises with a pinched and earnest look. One never knows, he might even be you.

Random Noise 2

Russia and the USA, Shostakovich and Feldman

Random Noise 2

Russia and the USA, Shostakovich and Feldman

Random Noise 1: Anouar Brahem on ECM

…when people ask me what I do, I tell them that I write about music nobody wants to listen to.

Random Noise 1: Anouar Brahem on ECM

…when people ask me what I do, I tell them that I write about music nobody wants to listen to.

Musicians Dissing Musicians

“Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don’t like, it’s always by Villa-Lobos?” — Igor Stravinsky

Musicians Dissing Musicians

“Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don’t like, it’s always by Villa-Lobos?” — Igor Stravinsky

Helmut Lachenmann on Kairos

Once again, for the first time in this cozy, sunlit nook, the listener ponders his place.

Helmut Lachenmann on Kairos

Once again, for the first time in this cozy, sunlit nook, the listener ponders his place.

Mark Levinson No. 390S CD Processor

Not long ago, an audio hardware reviewer noted an irony: As the vinyl medium wanders yet farther into its dusk, its playback hardware improves.

Mark Levinson No. 390S CD Processor

Not long ago, an audio hardware reviewer noted an irony: As the vinyl medium wanders yet farther into its dusk, its playback hardware improves.