poppop-music.com

The opening screen shot of poppop-music.com

http://poppop-music.com/ is Maggielurva's new venture, designed to retail tasteful music that he likes, and produces. The rather basic website has an audio sampler, called music player which is pretty cool as it requires practically no loading time to access the songs on demo.

Try your luck at the Love's Tapestry CD give away contest.

From now till 28th April 2010, ML is giving away 15 copies of Love's Tapestry CD. Go check it out using the link provided above, to see what you need to do to deserve the freebie.

Please show support for our local talents and recording efforts.

Love's Tapestry, Music Preview Session @ CMY Damansara Utama.

Man of the hour, presenting Maggielurva!

The HiFi-Unlimited team was invited by Maggielurva to attend the music preview session of Love's Tapestry, Pop Pop Music's latest CD, due to be released to the market soon.

The music was sourced from a master CD sent to Maggielurva by Doug Sax, ready to be pressed. The hifi reproduction system used to demo the music is non-other than the famed CMY Damansara Utama flagship demo system, comprising of Metronome Technologie CD5 Signature, Jeff Rowland Criterion pre and 312 power amps, and finally the speaker is Dynaudio Consequence Ultimate Edition. Cables are Siltechs except, good ol' Maggielurva brought along his Stage 3 interconnects(the very same pairs used in the recording of Love's Tapestry) so that we could get closer to the actual recorded sound.

Star vocal of Love's Tapestry, Gina Pinazales.

There were about 30 odd audiophiles, including some industry people and Gina, the star of the CD! I just wished, Gina could have sing along to minus one tape "live" before the demo started, for an actual comparison. That would've really wowed me. Gina was really friendly to us whom managed brief chats. Audiophile extraordinaire and recording project consultant Jo Ki was also present to lend a hand. Chan, the Branch Manager of CMY deserve a pat in the back for treating us.

Gina, Maggielurva and Yodee(master audiophile guru par excellence!, I learnt many hifi tips from this fella)

It was a nice friendly atmosphere, with no selling pressure and most of all, an event of sharing amongst like minded folks. Well done Maggielurva, and may Love's Tapestry scale greater heights then you earlier efforts.

Finally, for those who missed the event, with Maggielurva's permission we've uploaded the 6 preview songs on demo that day. Do check out the Pop Pop Music play list on the right hand side column of this blog page. It sounds pretty good on my PC speakers too.

Pop Pop Music, CMY Audio & Visual, And HiFi-Unlimited Presents! Love's Tapestry Master Tape Preview.

HiFi-Unlimited is proud to be associated with the preview event Love's Tapestry, a Pop Pop Music production and the enthusiastic participation of CMY Audio & Visual.

This is a reminder post for the Love's Tapestry preview event.

That Maggielurva(A&R Director of Pop Pop Music) is a real gem of a guy. He has invited us all readers of HiFi-Unlimited to check out his latest audiophile recording, called Love's Tapestry. The source used for the preview is "the" Master CD sent to him by mastering guru non other than Doug Sax.

CMY Audio & Visual has ever so kindly agreed to host the event at their flagship Damansara Utama Branch in Petaling Jaya. Let's hope they will use that awesome Metronome Technologie digital source and the Dynaudio Consequence Ultimate speaker system that I heard a few days ago.

Seats are truly limited and there will be only 2 preview sessions held on Sunday, 6th December 2009. The first preview session is 2pm followed by a 3pm session. Light refreshment and finger treats will be served, courtesy of CMY Audio & Visual.

All whom are interested to attend, please call Chan, tel no:012-2873551 for R.S.V.P.

If you've not reserved a place by now, please do so now as it is only 3 days before the event.

I can't wait already!

Love On Parade

This is unprecedented!

Maggielurva has just informed me and Big E that he would like to organize a listening party for his new album "Love's Tapestry" featuring Roger Wang and Gina Panizales, at CMY Damansara Utama! The time line would be the first week of December.

He said he needs to work out the details and logistics with CMY, but basically guests (and readers here) would get a chance to listen, first hand, to the "master" tape mastered by Doug Sax! Gee, how often do we audiophiles get to experience this in the local context? Kudos to Maggie for his generosity!

Stay tuned for more updates in this blog!

Love is All Around (Part 1)

Gina Panizales - Audiophile Diva In The Making

Guitar Maestro, Mr. Roger Wang

Audiophile Guru, Mr. Joseph Ki, as the Honorary Advisor to this project

Gina Panizales with her sensuous voice caressing the AKG gold mic

Cellist Jonathan supplying beautiful sound to the guitar-vocal duo

The air was pregnant with anticipation as we waited for the recording to commence at Tutti Studio at 2pm on last Sunday. They were more than 10 of us, including the production crew and video crew gathered together to witness this momentous event. According to the Boss and Executive Producer, Maggielurva, this has the making of the best ever audiophile recording from Malaysia.

Maggie enlisted the help of highly respected audiophile guru, Mr Joseph Ki, to be the Honorary Advisor to this project. The name alone carries so much weights as we all know that Jo Ki is a critical listener with very little compromise. So when two audiophile big names get together for a project, can we expect anything less?

I was introduced to Roger Wang and Gina Panizales, what nice people they are. Roger brought along his new toy, the harp guitar, which looks really classy for a locally made guitar. It happened that the day before was Gina's birthday and she was delighted that the boss bought her a cake. So she could really have her cake and eat it too :-)

The Tutti studio is very basic and utilitarian in its design but it oozes simplicity and class. The all grey and white interior enhances the space in the studio and office area. I listened attentively to the sound coming from the Genelec active monitors and it was an unusual sound. Most studio monitors have a artificial sound full of digital artifacts but this one, this one is full and rich and have ample details and nuances. Now I know what Maggie meant when he said he expected the highest level of sound from this recording. Careful study showed that the Recording Engineer, Mr. Vong, has plugged all the expensive Stage III ASP Gryphon interconnects at the "last mile" of every equipment. This concept is not unlike the "last mile" theory audiophiles adopt in power cords. Very smart indeed. With 5 pairs of Stage III interconnects in store, essentially 10 pieces of equipment can be connected (note: Most microphones are mono, and not stereo).

The first song that kicked start the session is Commodores' "Still". It is a trio setup, with Roger on Guitar, Gina on vocals and Jonathan on cello. The cello sound is a gem as it provided a musical dialogue with Roger's guitar. The sound is warm and woody. Needless to say, Gina's vocals is perfect for this song. I would not elaborate much here as everything was captured on the video. Maggie promised me that he would pass me the video after he finishes editing it.

It only took the trio 4 takes to nail the song. That was impressive. Even Jo Ki was impressed at the speed.

The second song is Art Garfunkel's "Bright Eyes" and this was where Maggie and Jo gave the most feedback to Roger and Gina, as both of these men had a certain opinion of how this song should be sung. Gina sang in a dreamy way befitting the song and the rendition was spot-on. Again, it only took 5 takes to nail the song.

The session ended almost one hour ahead of time. Everyone was happy. Some audiophiles also came visiting. I was introduced to Yodee and Michael Ng of Audio Creations.

From what I heard, this album has the potential to challenge the likes of Emi Fujita and Susan Wong. Recording wise, this is the most analogue sound I have heard from a local studio. Let's hope that Maggie and Jo do a good job with mixing and mastering at a later stage.

From the list of songs, there are many more great songs in the album, I hope I could catch them all. According to Roger Wang, also the Co-Producer , he would add a drummer and a percussionist for some of the songs.

It has been a great experience for a newbie like me to witness the making of an audiophile album and rub shoulders with some of these maestros.

I was hoping that I could meet 2V1G's Regine Tai but she is nowhere to be found :-(


Note: Photos courtesy of Horng Yih, the appointed photographer for Love's Tapestry and JZ8 project, also a big fan of Roger Wang.

Anticpating "Love's Tapestry"

I caught up with Maggielurva of the Desirable Audio fame yesterday. The man seems to have disappeared from the radar for a while now. What's he up to exactly? Maggie told me that he is taking a sabbatical from Hi-Fi and is now producing a couple of long-overdue audiophile albums.

Maggie invited me to the first practice session for the "Love's Tapestry" album featuring Roger Wang on guitar (Maggie seems to love his guitar!) and Philipino singer Gina Panizales on vocals. Maggie's house seemed to have changed a lot since the last time I visited; it is more spacious now and more classy too. But his main Hi-Fi system remains the same, taking centre spot in the living hall.

I asked Maggie what inspired him to do this album of English classic love songs. He revealed that it is a recent romance that left an indelible mark in his life and the girl involved is someone who loves 70s & 80s pop music just like Maggielurva. So the album is actually inspired by and dedicated to this girl. Wow, how romantic for an audiophile! Maggie is very ambitious with this project as this is his own label's, Pop Pop music, first audiophile album. To make it even more delicious for audiophile music lovers, he and his partner have invested substantially in the studio by the name of Tutti Studio. Apart from the state-of-the-art Neve console board that cost a whopping Rm200K, Maggie has wired the key links thoroughly with Stage III Concepts cables, his all-time-favourite cables. Readers of Desirable Audio would know how crazy Maggie is with Stage III cables. In his mind, nothing beats Stage III cables in the areas of high frequencies and transparency.

When I reached Maggie's house, Roger and Gina has already started. Roger is playing with his spanking new Harp Guitar (which is built by a luthier in Kepong!), an odd shaped guitar that has extra 6 bass strings! Roger explained that he needs more bottom/lows in his music hence the birth of the idea to build a Harp Guitar. Gina Panizales may be a foreign name to many of you but I can tell you how great her voice is. She has a great tone and a very seductive bassy voice. I have never doubted Maggie's talent scouting abilities. Any singer who can pass his test must be of a certain calibre. The duo did a couple of songs which are familiar to me - "Still" by the Commodores, "Persistent Rain" by Aiza Seguerra. All I could say is this duo is even better than 2V1G! Roger is English educated and certainly adept in Western pop music and Gina seems so at ease with this kind of classic love songs. I was greatly entertained by them!


Maggie told me that recording should start end of next month. Some of the songs will be just a guitar and voice and some will be with a trio. I really can't wait for its release! Maggie said it would be ready for Valentine's Day next year. Gee, this die-hard romantic :-)

I would be covering more on the progress of "Love's Tapestry" here. One thing for sure, this will be the most-anticipated local audiophile album in 2010!