I’ve been listening to LTJ Bukem's Planet Earth CD+dvd-video album the last week and here’s what I found................
Music
Except for two tracks, I really like the music. This is a compilation album and contains several different styles of music & as can be heard on Bukem’s other albums, they can feature drum & bass, ambient, electronica, trip-hop or pretty much traditional jazz sounds.......and songs with a mixture of these different genres. So it’s a little difficult to describe but here goes anyway. Several of the tracks would sound at home on a James Bond soundtrack, i.e. cool-n-slick sounding. Some of the tracks that feature vocals, like the jazzy “You’re Divine” made me think of a dark/smokey downtown lounge with the singer dressed in a slinky black dress with expensively-dressed clientele nearby sipping martinis. “Stranded” took me a while to figure out because of the unexpected way the lines are sung relative to the music but it is now one of my favorite tracks. She sort of speaks & sings at the same time; she has an excellent voice. The music is (here’s where my lack of music technical knowledge shows up!) has a heavy bass beat to it--it sort of has a hip-hop feel to it but with a little bit of jazz mixed in. Whatever, it’s one of those types of tracks you automatically want to turn up as soon as it starts. And the tracks done by K-Scope, especially 2 and 5, I also like a lot. Track 9, “Above and Beyond” might unnerve some people at first with its frenetic solo drumming at the beginning, but at the 23 second mark, mellow synthesizer notes suddenly appear to provide a sonic & tempo(?) counterbalance so that the track “evens out” musically-speaking. The only track I consistently skipped was the first one. It is dangerously close to being smooth jazz, a class of music that for me causes my hand to involuntarily and very quickly reach for the skip or station preset button.
And lastly, there are several tracks that are great to mellow out with after a long day at work.
Surround Mix
Fully immersive, with occasional aggressive movement like the swirling shaker on “The Setup”, but nothing gimmicky IMO. The mixes are usually a nice combination of discrete and atmospheric/airy effects. FYI: the surround channels usually contain powerful low bass frequencies (I operate my system full-range on all channels as per most surround mixers recommendations). The center channel is always active, sometimes featuring fully discrete instruments/vocals and at other times functioning more as a fill-in channel but is still fully utilized (i.e. not at all like that ghostly fill effect on DTS’ own Moody Blues’ Seventh Sojourn 5.1 DTS-CD or Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly dvd-audio). One cool effect using this channel occurs on “Above and Beyond”: the previously-mentioned drum solo is heard only through this channel for twenty-three seconds.......then those synthesizers swell up all around you resulting in a very cool musical transition effect. There is also some interesting sidewall imaging but due to my mutt of a speaker system (three different brands) I’m sure this will be heard more clearly on a properly matched one. I don’t own a DTS-ES capable system so didn’t get to hear the six channel mix.
The surround format fits together really well with this type of music, definitely helping to add to its emotional impact.
Sound
As usual for this label, the sound is very good IMO on all the included formats. It has a very clear and clean sound with lots of "punch" (but is not grainy or harsh) which fits the (mostly) energetic mood of the music on this album. And I didn't notice any overt compression, so I was able to turn up this album to ridiculous volume levels without irritating my hearing. In comparison, all the formats on DTS’ dvd-audio version of Uninvisible by Medeski, Martin and Wood had a very mellow sound, almost like the music was recorded in a room with heavy velvet drapes on all the walls. But then again, that music has a darker and much moodier feel to it than Bukem’s album does and so probably needed a sound to match it.
Packaging Format
* This CD+dvd package uses a regular-sized jewelbox, with an inner plastic flip-out panel where the discs are held on opposite sides.
* Back cover includes audio format chart.
* It cost $19.99 at a local independent music store.
Technical details
* Though the chart has a listing for “DVD 5.1 SURROUND” and seems to indicate this is a dvd-audio disc, I could not find any such format on the disc. That listing is followed by sampling rate and bit depth (48kHz/24bit) but using my Pioneer DV-656A I could find no such track and the disc’s menu didn’t list it either. But as of this writing, this disc is correctly listed as a “dvd-video” on DTS Entertainment’s site--a last minute change of mind perhaps?
The rest of the chart is correct though. There is a DTS surround track and a 48/24 “regular” (i.e. non-MLP) PCM stereo track which any dvd player can play. The surround track is the default playback mode.
* The disc operates just like a dvd movie disc, with quick “track” changes just like a CD. Each track is accompanied by an attractive still image, usually something nature-related. And a subtle but slick transition effect occurs during track changes. When the last song finally ends, DTS’ ten second “countdown timer” appears: if you don’t select an on-screen icon to go back to the main menu the disc finally & truly stops when it hits “00“. I.e. it doesn’t have that irritating habit many dvds have of going back to the main menu with an endless repeated loop of music (R.E.M.'s Automatic For The People dvd-audio does this and to make it even worse, the menu music is much louder than the actual songs themselves. Arrgh!).
Whether you push play or the “close tray” button, the disc loads then the on-screen audio menu appears and “PCM STEREO” is highlighted for about five seconds........then “DTS-ES” is highlighted next. Then around twenty seconds later the disc starts playing by itself (unless of course you choose another option from the menu).
Extras
In addition to the typical artist biographies and one remixed track not on the CD version, the really interesting bonus feature--at least to us surround techie nerds --is the mix breakdown. When this option is chosen, a black screen appears with six symbols representing an overhead view of a 6.0 surround set-up (no symbol for a sub though). An broken down version of “You’re Divine” begins playing and as each instrument is brought into the mix, a written listing for that instrument appears (or disappears whatever the case may be) in the physical place that a seated listener would actually hear it in. This might sound like just a gee-wiz feature thrown in with no real use but I actually think its very informative & I’ve watched it several times so far. And it’s also interesting to hear the song being put together piece by piece, starting with the drums first, then eventually at the finale all eighteen(!) instruments including the vocalist are playing. Neat!
I very much like this package, especially the music of course (I choose surround titles just like CD titles. i.e. is the music good?) but also enjoyed the inclusion of the separate CD, so this was definitely worth the trouble of having to order it.
Music
Except for two tracks, I really like the music. This is a compilation album and contains several different styles of music & as can be heard on Bukem’s other albums, they can feature drum & bass, ambient, electronica, trip-hop or pretty much traditional jazz sounds.......and songs with a mixture of these different genres. So it’s a little difficult to describe but here goes anyway. Several of the tracks would sound at home on a James Bond soundtrack, i.e. cool-n-slick sounding. Some of the tracks that feature vocals, like the jazzy “You’re Divine” made me think of a dark/smokey downtown lounge with the singer dressed in a slinky black dress with expensively-dressed clientele nearby sipping martinis. “Stranded” took me a while to figure out because of the unexpected way the lines are sung relative to the music but it is now one of my favorite tracks. She sort of speaks & sings at the same time; she has an excellent voice. The music is (here’s where my lack of music technical knowledge shows up!) has a heavy bass beat to it--it sort of has a hip-hop feel to it but with a little bit of jazz mixed in. Whatever, it’s one of those types of tracks you automatically want to turn up as soon as it starts. And the tracks done by K-Scope, especially 2 and 5, I also like a lot. Track 9, “Above and Beyond” might unnerve some people at first with its frenetic solo drumming at the beginning, but at the 23 second mark, mellow synthesizer notes suddenly appear to provide a sonic & tempo(?) counterbalance so that the track “evens out” musically-speaking. The only track I consistently skipped was the first one. It is dangerously close to being smooth jazz, a class of music that for me causes my hand to involuntarily and very quickly reach for the skip or station preset button.
And lastly, there are several tracks that are great to mellow out with after a long day at work.Surround Mix
Fully immersive, with occasional aggressive movement like the swirling shaker on “The Setup”, but nothing gimmicky IMO. The mixes are usually a nice combination of discrete and atmospheric/airy effects. FYI: the surround channels usually contain powerful low bass frequencies (I operate my system full-range on all channels as per most surround mixers recommendations). The center channel is always active, sometimes featuring fully discrete instruments/vocals and at other times functioning more as a fill-in channel but is still fully utilized (i.e. not at all like that ghostly fill effect on DTS’ own Moody Blues’ Seventh Sojourn 5.1 DTS-CD or Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly dvd-audio). One cool effect using this channel occurs on “Above and Beyond”: the previously-mentioned drum solo is heard only through this channel for twenty-three seconds.......then those synthesizers swell up all around you resulting in a very cool musical transition effect.
There is also some interesting sidewall imaging but due to my mutt of a speaker system (three different brands) I’m sure this will be heard more clearly on a properly matched one. I don’t own a DTS-ES capable system so didn’t get to hear the six channel mix. The surround format fits together really well with this type of music, definitely helping to add to its emotional impact.
Sound
As usual for this label, the sound is very good IMO on all the included formats. It has a very clear and clean sound with lots of "punch" (but is not grainy or harsh) which fits the (mostly) energetic mood of the music on this album. And I didn't notice any overt compression, so I was able to turn up this album to ridiculous volume levels without irritating my hearing.
In comparison, all the formats on DTS’ dvd-audio version of Uninvisible by Medeski, Martin and Wood had a very mellow sound, almost like the music was recorded in a room with heavy velvet drapes on all the walls. But then again, that music has a darker and much moodier feel to it than Bukem’s album does and so probably needed a sound to match it.Packaging Format
* This CD+dvd package uses a regular-sized jewelbox, with an inner plastic flip-out panel where the discs are held on opposite sides.
* Back cover includes audio format chart.
* It cost $19.99 at a local independent music store.
Technical details
* Though the chart has a listing for “DVD 5.1 SURROUND” and seems to indicate this is a dvd-audio disc, I could not find any such format on the disc. That listing is followed by sampling rate and bit depth (48kHz/24bit) but using my Pioneer DV-656A I could find no such track and the disc’s menu didn’t list it either. But as of this writing, this disc is correctly listed as a “dvd-video” on DTS Entertainment’s site--a last minute change of mind perhaps?
The rest of the chart is correct though. There is a DTS surround track and a 48/24 “regular” (i.e. non-MLP) PCM stereo track which any dvd player can play. The surround track is the default playback mode.
* The disc operates just like a dvd movie disc, with quick “track” changes just like a CD. Each track is accompanied by an attractive still image, usually something nature-related. And a subtle but slick transition effect occurs during track changes. When the last song finally ends, DTS’ ten second “countdown timer” appears: if you don’t select an on-screen icon to go back to the main menu the disc finally & truly stops when it hits “00“. I.e. it doesn’t have that irritating habit many dvds have of going back to the main menu with an endless repeated loop of music (R.E.M.'s Automatic For The People dvd-audio does this and to make it even worse, the menu music is much louder than the actual songs themselves. Arrgh!).
Whether you push play or the “close tray” button, the disc loads then the on-screen audio menu appears and “PCM STEREO” is highlighted for about five seconds........then “DTS-ES” is highlighted next. Then around twenty seconds later the disc starts playing by itself (unless of course you choose another option from the menu).
Extras
In addition to the typical artist biographies and one remixed track not on the CD version, the really interesting bonus feature--at least to us surround techie nerds
--is the mix breakdown. When this option is chosen, a black screen appears with six symbols representing an overhead view of a 6.0 surround set-up (no symbol for a sub though). An broken down version of “You’re Divine” begins playing and as each instrument is brought into the mix, a written listing for that instrument appears (or disappears whatever the case may be) in the physical place that a seated listener would actually hear it in. This might sound like just a gee-wiz feature thrown in with no real use but I actually think its very informative & I’ve watched it several times so far. And it’s also interesting to hear the song being put together piece by piece, starting with the drums first, then eventually at the finale all eighteen(!) instruments including the vocalist are playing. Neat!I very much like this package, especially the music of course (I choose surround titles just like CD titles. i.e. is the music good?) but also enjoyed the inclusion of the separate CD, so this was definitely worth the trouble of having to order it.
