The sound is sensational. . Create your own sonic checklist and it’s likely you’ll agree. Instrumental textures and timbres are believable, transparency is exceptional, staging is studio deep and wide and if you’ll appreciate the warmth, richness and delicacy where appropriate and the hard transient attack where that should occur. Sound 10/10 Music 10/10 Michael Fremer .analogplanet.

No, it’s not all analog, but the release shows that digital done right and mastered to vinyl can get very close to perfection. Each instrument is well placed in space, surrounded by a sense of air and a breathing quality usually missing from digital recordings. Stage height and depth are here, along with unrestrained dynamics. We also get abundant detail without any suggestion of tipped-up treble. Blue Notes have never sounded better.Sound 5/5 Vinylreviews

At 80 years old, NEA Jazz Master Charles Lloyd remains an intrepid musical pioneer, entering his ninth decade at a creative peak in what now stands as a mountainous and formidable career. With his newest band The Marvels — a guitar-driven group featuring Bill Frisell, Greg Leisz, Reuben Rogers, and Eric Harland — Lloyd released the 2016 album I Long To See You which NPR called "music that evokes an uncommon state of grace."

On Vanished Gardens, the Marvels leave deference in the dustbin. Here, with the assistance of Lucinda Williams, they create a music that draws on the sum total of experience and shared emotion. Lloyd, Frisell, and Leisz have all worked with rockers and country and blues players, while Harland and Rogers are jazz modernists rooted in tradition. The addition of Williams on four of her own tunes and a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Angel" transforms this band into a genre-blurring ensemble whose abilities mine the jazz and Americana traditions to redefine them in the new century.