Close to You
Carpenters · 1970
Close to You is a studio-crafted pop record defined by Karen Carpenter’s voice, Richard Carpenter’s arrangements, and familial oversight — not myth, not rebellion, not accident.
Craft
Skill accumulated by hand, and the economics that keep removing it.
- 5
- in music
- 11:48
- average
- 59 min
- in total
- 116
- across the network
All briefs
The Complete Recordings
Robert Johnson · 1990
The Complete Recordings (1990) compiles all 29 master recordings and 12 alternate takes Robert Johnson made for ARC in San Antonio (November 1936) and Dallas (June 1937). He performed solo on acoustic guitar and vocals. Don Law produced. Vincent Liebler engineered. The sound is dry, immediate, and unvarnished — captured on portable equipment in improvised spaces. It excludes only one alternate take of 'Traveling Riverside Blues', later added in 2011. This edition remains the foundational, unembellished document of his studio work.
Giant Steps
John Coltrane · 1960
John Coltrane's first album as leader for Atlantic gathers sessions from three dates in 1959, built around a rapid, major-third chord movement that has since become a standard saxophone exercise. Alongside the title track's difficulty sit gentler pieces named for his family, including the ballad Naima, showing the same harmonic ideas turned toward tenderness.
Tapestry
Carole King · 1971
Recorded at A&M's Hollywood studios with James Taylor and a small circle of session players, Tapestry lets Carole King sing her own catalogue for the first time, trading polish for conviction across twelve mostly piano-led songs.
Time Out
The Dave Brubeck Quartet · 1959
Recorded in 1959 at Columbia's 30th Street Studio, Time Out grew out of Dave Brubeck's overseas tours for the State Department, where he heard rhythms outside the usual pulse of American jazz. The Dave Brubeck Quartet built seven tracks around metres like nine-eight and five-four, including Take Five, composed by saxophonist Paul Desmond almost as an afterthought, which went on to outsell every jazz single before it.