Mal Waldron Sextet Mal/2 (Original Jazz Classics Series) 180g LP

Analog Planet Rated 10/10 Music, 9/10 Sound!

Originally released in 1957, Mal Waldron's Mal/2 album features some of jazz music's biggest names. Joining Mal Waldron (piano) are John Coltrane (tenor sax), Idrees Sulieman (trumpet) and Ed Thigpen (drums) amongst others. This new edition of the album is released as part of the Original Jazz Classics Series and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI with all-analog mastering from the original tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and presented in a Tip-On Jacket.

Since its inception in 1982, Fantasy's Original Jazz Classics® (OJC) series quickly established a reputation as the go-to imprint for collectible jazz reissues. OJC served as a home for the label's impressive jazz catalog – which had grown to include thousands of celebrated titles from Prestige, Galaxy, Milestone, Riverside, Debut, Contemporary, Jazzland, and Pablo. Drawing on this vast wealth of material, Original Jazz Classics released over 850 titles.

Its goal was simple: to reissue influential jazz albums with the utmost care and reverence for the originals — from the cover art and liner notes to the audio recordings themselves. Given Craft Recordings' shared passion for meticulous preservation and quality, it is a natural step to relaunch Original Jazz Classics as part of the Craft family.

2023 sees the continuation of this influential jazz series on audiophile-quality vinyl, through the ongoing release of several of the most coveted (and long out-of-print) albums in this vast collection.

Everyone plays with restraint and cool, helping to set a tone best suited for last call strolls or late night contemplation.

Save for obtaining that rare unicorn of a sealed and/or unplayed original, the pressing quality on this new OJC edition of Mal/2 is likely better than you could get with an original, even if you could find one. For a new pressing cut off a 66-year-old analog tape, it sounds quite remarkable, with a minimum of tape hiss and other issues that might arise from magnetic tape that deteriorates a bit with every play. (Given the scarcity of the original vinyl pressings of this album, I suspect this master tape wasn't played very much.)... If you love Mal Waldron and John Coltrane's playing, this new Craft OJC edition of Mal Waldron Sextet's Mal/2 is an important and fine-sounding release well worth picking up and adding to your collection. 'Nuff said.