Sit in front of a dialled-in set of Uno SDs and you simply can’t miss the concentrated energy, solidity and presence they bring to recorded music. Play rock or pop and it’s like hearing the band on their best night on their best tour. Play ‘Jumping Someone Else’s Train from the Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry (Fiction 2442 178) and the propulsive power and urgency of Lol Tolhurst’s drumming, the meaty solidity of the drum sound doesn’t just set your toes tapping, it pins you to the seat, encouraging (daring?) you to advance the volume control. There’s a slashing edge and wilful abandon to Robert Smith’s guitar, a combination of poise and recklessness that reminds me just how under-rated a guitarist he is. (Those in doubt should check out Siouxsie and the Banshee’s live album Nocturne [Polydor 815979-1] with Smith guesting on lead after Siouxsie fired yet another guitarist on the eve of the tour. Shorn of vocal responsibilities, his playing rises to a new level, especially the fractured brilliance of ‘Dear Prudence’.) The more measured beat of ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ emphasises the solid presence of the drum sound, the way it plants the foundation for the sculpted bass and guitar lines. After that, there’s nothing for it – Nocturne just has to get an outing…
This infectious, engaging quality runs through whatever you play. A recently acquired UHQ-CD transfer of the Bernstein/VPO Shostakovich Symphony No.6, (UCCG-90588, originally recorded for DGG) is totally different, yet musically speaking, just as compelling. The jaunty opening to the second movement in this live concert recording is alight with life and vitality, before transitioning to a darker, brooding atmosphere, the building threat and the shattering crescendo that once more clears the air. The lively woodwinds are pipe-ingly impressive, but it’s the substantial textures of the bowed bass and hollow pounding of the drums in the climax that really drive home the full dynamic and emotional range in the music. Art Pepper’s Straight Life (Galaxy 802/98.175) immediately finds its groove, pulling you in so that, by the time you reach ‘September Song’ and the Pepper-penned ‘Make A List’ you track the band’s musical meanderings without ever loosing the trail. Pepper’s alto is breathy and immediate, as expressive as it is intimate, but once again it’s the band’s internal chemistry, the prompts and contrasts from the rhythm section that bind the tracks together: Red Mitchell’s tactile bass smooches through its long, swooping lines or pulsing, repetitive pushes, while Tommy Flanagan’s crisply weighty piano figures flit and dart above them. Whether it’s Pepper or Bernstein, The Cure or The Communards, there’s a holistic coherence to the Uno’s musical output, a sense of substance and purpose.
But there’s more to the Unos than a healthy dose of dynamic enthusiasm and musical meat and potatoes. This is where all that TLC you poured into aligning the speakers comes together. Avantgarde have paid considerable attention to aligning the acoustic centres of the different drivers and, assuming you’ve got that alignment correct with the listening seat, the speakers’ temporal accuracy locks in. So it’s not just energy and substance, it’s all that musical intent arriving at just the right time, while as already described, the speakers’ dynamic coherence ensures the right sense of purpose and direction hitched directly to that rhythmic integrity. It helps explain why the Cure tracks have such a compelling and engaging sense of musical drive (headlong or more measured), an almost metronomic rhythmic intensity, long before drum machines and sequencing became the norm. It also explains just how the sporadic structures and disparate phrases that characterise the Shostakovich hang together in such a holistic fashion.
