Music

Dali Speaker A/S presents GinmanBlachmanDahl “The Velvet Blues” as CD, Hi-res Download and Vinyl

“The Velvet Blues” is the name of the new album by Lennart Ginman, Thomas Blachman and Carsten Dahl and it is the latest audiophile recording of the Dali reference albums. Once again the Danish loudspeaker specialist is breaking new ground with its demo CDs, as this recording was made especially for the record series at audiophile level.


They have been around for years, those sound carriers that are produced by hi-fi manufacturers and are often used as a reference to get the best out of their systems, for example during demonstrations at trade fairs and in specialist shops. Some manufacturers prove to be so skilful in the selection of music titles that their demo CDs or even demo vinyls are regarded as sought-after collector’s items and thus find their way into the collections of hifi and music enthusiasts.

One of these companies is certainly the Danish loudspeaker specialist Dali Speaker A/S, because the so-called Dali CD Series includes from the very beginning albums that are highly sought-after and meanwhile already contains five titles.

Such demo CDs usually contain music titles from various genres, so that an album offers a colourful cross-section, as Dali Speaker A/S thought, but only for the titles Dali CD Vol. 1 to Dali CD Vol. 4. The album Dali CD Vol. 5 was already an exception, because for the 35th anniversary in 2018 Dali Speaker A/S presented a very special recording as reference CD, LP and a few weeks ago also as hi-res download, namely “Thirtyfive years”. On this album you will find recordings that are not available anywhere else in this form, neither on CD, LP nor as a download, as its 17 tracks were recorded especially for this album. It unites exclusively Danish artists who have recorded their works across all genres especially for this album with enormous effort, so that every detail of the music is presented in its purest form.

Now Dali Speaker A/S goes one step further and presents with the already sixth Dali CD a recording that has once again been produced especially for this album. Dali Speaker A/S is clearly committed to the genre of jazz, even if the title is “The Velvet Blues”.

“The Velvet Blues” presents three Danish musicians who, according to Dali Speaker A/S, have been playing together since the early 1990s: Lennart Ginman, Thomas Blachman, and Carsten Dahl, here simply summarized as GinmanBlachmanDahl.

The trio GinmanBlachmanDahl is considered an exceptional representative of the Scandinavian jazz scene and is the first Danish band whose albums have been released by Verve Records, a record company that is by no means unknown in hi-fi circles.

Lennart Ginman, born in 1960, is a Danish-Finnish bassist, composer and producer. He has contributed to more than 130 albums as bassist for projects of other artists as well as his own, mainly electronic compositions. Today Ginman is one of Denmark’s most respected bassists and in his solo concerts he takes the audience into a unique electronic world of processed basses, drum computers, filters and effects.

The Danish jazz musician, composer and producer Thomas Blachman, born in 1963, started playing drums at a young age, drummed with the band Page One, to which Lennart Ginman also belonged, from the mid-1980s onwards, and won the Danish Grammy several times with his formations for the jazz album of the year. Already in 1995 Blachman recorded experimental interpretations of jazz standards together with Ginman, Dahl and a rap group.

Carsten Dahl, born 1967, is a Danish painter, composer and pianist. He has also been a professor at the conservatories in Esbjerg and for rhythmic music in Copenhagen. Dahl’s piano playing thrives on improvisation, and his two solo albums have each been awarded the Danish Music Award Jazz. The exceptional artist can be heard on more than 250 albums, including Bach’s Goldberg Variations arranged for prepared piano and his own work for symphony orchestra “The Fifth Dimension”.

For the new album “The Velvet Blues”, which has now been produced in cooperation with Dali Speaker A/S, a very special atmosphere has been captured, achieved by the deliberately close arrangement of the musicians in the studio, so that they could interact in the best possible way, and a unique intimate setting for exciting improvisations was guaranteed. The recording took five days, with more than 45 tracks recorded. From these, a selection had to be made, with 13 of them eventually ending up on “The Velvet Blues”. This is a mixture of jazz evergreens by well-known artists such as Cole Porter and Miles Davis, but also original compositions by the trio GinmanBlachmanDahl.

The album was recorded at the Village Studios in Copenhagen by Thomas Vang. The mastering was done in Stockholm, and was in The Cutting Room. Björn Engelman is responsible for this, and of course separate masters were made for CD, high-resolution download and vinyl.

So “The Velvet Blues” is now available as CD, LP and hi-res download, especially from Dali Speaker A/S directly in their online store. In the near future, authorized Dali dealers will be able to offer the album for sale, both as CD and vinyl.

Getting to the point

“The Velvet Blues” presents three Danish musicians who have been playing together since the early 1990s: Lennart Ginman, Thomas Blachmal, and Carsten Dahl, here simply called the GinmanBlachmanDahl Trio. Dali Speaker A/S is once again treading the path of producing not just a sampler for outstanding reference recordings, but actually producing their own albums.

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Michael Holzinger

Michael Holzinger, founder and editor-in-chief of HiFi BLOG and sempre-audio.at, has been working for years as a journalist in the fields of IT, photography, telecommunications and consumer electronics.

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