I was asked recently to talk briefly to my coworkers about “three obsessions.” I chose Bill Evans, “analog stuff,” and physics.
“Analog Stuff” is a lazy bit of language, but I wasn’t sure how else to refer to a category that includes listening to music on vinyl versus digital; recording music on tape instead of computers; taking pictures on film rather than using a phone or digital camera; the magic of vacuum tubes, both in listening to and creating music; the allure of writing on paper versus typing on a computer (as I admittedly am doing this very second).
“Non-linearity” is another way to talk about this. In each of the instances above, you open up the process to some element of mystery. Digital seeks to eliminate that mystery and provide a process (and result) where the user has total control of every single variable. Digital offers a shot at precision. Analog can never have that ability, because the tools themselves behave in ways that aren’t entirely predictable. Put another way: as long as it’s not damaged, a CD will sound the same way every time you play it, even if you play it one billion times. A record, on the other hand, might sound different every time you play it. The physical process producing the sound is riddled with potential problems.
So why choose analog?
The short answer is that A) I don’t know, and B) I’d never try to sell anyone else on it because I can’t come up with a persuasive argument. Nor would I care to sell anyone else. I remember an evening in my tiny Seattle apartment, hanging out with one Sean Gillespie, listening to The National and drinking beer. I wanted to listen on vinyl, and he kept pressing me to tell him why we shouldn’t just stream it. I felt myself being drawn into an argument I couldn’t possibly win, but I still tried. I said “Analog sounds better. Records sound better.” So he challenged me to play one side of Alligator on vinyl and then over spotify. He thought the computer sounded better; I thought it was kind of a tie, with some elements of vinyl sounding better (body, presence, energy) and some elements of the streaming version sounding better (no surface noise, no sibilance on vocals; in retrospect, that wasn’t a very good pressing of that record, and my turntable was kind of less than ideal). I remember we argued about a lot of stuff that night. And drank too much beer.
The point, if there is one, is that analog appeals to me on a level that’s too fundamental for easy argument points. Does it sound “better”? I have no idea. As I said above in the case of Brawner v. Gillespie, the closest I can usually come is to say that it sounds both better and worse, depending on your criteria. But I do believe it feels better, both from a sonic standpoint and an experiential one. Part of the equation is this: listening to music is important to me, and the more I can separate it from computers, the better. The rate of technological progress in 2025 mostly has me craving the state of the art circa 1973. Hypocrisy abounds here, and I’m the first to admit it. Here I am, typing on a computer, enjoying all the benefits I long ago started taking for granted. I’m listening to Joe Henderson’s Inner Urge on Apple Music over my laptop speakers while I type. I’m surrounded by the technology I disdain. I don’t deny the benefits, but I still indulge the dream of a more analog way of life. And when listening to music, when the opportunity presents itself, I will light some candles and get the lighting just right and move a comfortable chair into the ideal listening position and play records. I will have a notebook and pen nearby, because thoughts will come to me. I will have the record jackets nearby because I’ll inevitably wonder who is playing this sax solo or which year this record was recorded or whether it was Van Gelder or some other engineer who put it to tape. If I look for those answers on my phone the spell is ruined. I’ll find the answer quickly and effectively, but I’ll take my brain off the track I want it to stay on.
Back to those three obsessions. They all amount to the same thing for me. Bill Evans = music played by humans on analog instruments = physics. Physics (to me, anyway) = how the movement of one thing effects the movement of all other things. How one life effects other lives. How all of us are connected, across time and space, and, while we’re at it, how time and space are far more fluid (non-linear!) than we might be comfortable acknowledging.
Nostalgia viewed through the lens of physics. Listening to trumpets and saxophones creating textures that are blanketed by drums, bass, piano, maybe the stray vibraphone. I reach back through time to connect directly with these textures, these ideas, these feelings, these atmospheres that travel through space to reach my ears. It is physics, and it is physical. This music was recorded on tape, through electronics including vacuum tubes; the Nuemann U47 microphones favored by engineers like Rudy Van Gelder distorted in ways that are pleasing to our ears. They produced harmonics, which is to say they added musical content; what sounds like a clean, single note is actually its own small chord, its own miniature symphony. This sounds like too much science or maybe even poetic madness, but it results in a richness or even (get ready for the word many audio people hate) a “warmth.” There is a fullness because there is literally more content in the sound. One note contains many. (Note the relationship between “harmonic” and “harmony.”) I would posit to you that some digitally rendered music sounds thin because digital tools, particularly in their early days in music, had no way of creating those harmonics. Now there are countless plugins designed to make digital sound analog, just as there are countless filters to make your phone photos look like they were exposed on film.
If the music was recorded to tape, I want to hear it the way it was intended to be heard. That would be vinyl. I recently sold a big pile of records (including those by The National) for reasons involving the inverse logic: it was music made with computers. What’s the point of taking digitally recorded music and transferring it back into the analog realm? I suddenly felt like a sucker for having bought those records at all. I don’t mean this as disrespect to anyone wanting to listen to, say, Alligator on vinyl. I was that person quite recently, and the vinyl experience is still more fun, period. But from a musical standpoint, transferring music back and forth between the computer world and non-computer world on its face* doesn’t make sense to me. And I’ve hit a point where I want to know the provenance of my music on vinyl, just as I want to know where my coffee came from and how it was processed.
A recent trend for record collectors is record pressings “mastered straight from the analog session tapes.” Perhaps I’m just another record collector guy, but this type of language is all-powerful to me. I want to know that what I’m hearing is only one step removed from the actual tape that was rolling in 1959 when Miles and his crew were dreaming up Kind of Blue on the spot (for instance). I’m probably kidding myself to think it’s only one-step, as I don’t truly understand the analog/vinyl mastering process. I don’t know how a multi-track tape recording gets transferred to vinyl, but I do know that when it’s done conscientiously, the audio doesn’t pass through a computer.
Other stuff I like: fire. And I like snow. And I like being far away. Today, in January 2025, I’d like to be at a cabin way up north, somewhere the Chicago gangsters of the 1930s would have escaped to. Northern Wisconsin, north of Highway 8, where no rules apply and time passes differently if at all. I’d like to have a big fireplace with stone and wood and leather all around and a very good hifi system playing nothing but jazz. I’d like to sip whiskey and have people around who also like listening to jazz. Play some cards. Maybe a fire going outside too, if it’s not too cold.
I’d like to test physics and jazz and see how close we can get to the stars on cold nights—the single note stars and the Bill Evans block chord constellations, holding steady among the ride cymbal snowflake pings.
*It does make sense to me in some contexts. When I recorded my own record around 2008, part of my mix process was to send parts of the music out of the computer and into a ¼” reel-to-reel tape deck in order to get the particular analog character of that machine baked into the sound. Once recorded to tape, I’d send the music back into the computer. That music ultimately was released on CD, but it pleased me to know that it had been passed through a tape machine. What wouldn’t have made sense, just to play this out, would have been then taking the digital two-track master and putting it on vinyl. I suspect that would have only degraded the sound. Lots of people do just that, and do it very well; this is strictly about my sensibilities.
THE OWL HEAD SHOE HORN 