Ojai Sam
Staff member
Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session (1988)
Marshall McLuhan would have loved this record. 'Twas he who said "The medium is the message", and The Trinity Session may be the best example of an album that could not have been made before the digital era.
Artistically, TTS is without peer. The voice of Margo Timmins makes editorial comment superfluous, so I want to focus on the technology. Wiki tells us the album was recorded digitally in one continuous six hour session with the musicians clustered around a single Calrec Ambisonic Microphone. The venue was The Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto. The acoustic benefits of recording in a church had been well known for years. Notably, RCA Victor had used the similarly named Trinity Baptist Church in Camden, New Jersey for many of its formative years:
ricgrass.blogspot.com
Why is all of this geekery important?
Because in 1987 when this album was recorded, the compact disc was in its retail infancy. Persuading non-audiophile consumers to pop for a new player and pay a premium for the "same" recordings was an uphill struggle, as this chart shows. The Trinity Session wasn't the first digital album I ever purchased but I did buy it at "CD Banzai", a hip music boutique near West Hollywood. The store had the forbidden ambiance of a head shop, with smoking accessories nestling in glass cases next to exotic bootleg CD's from around the world, including the legendary Kiss The Stone label from Italy.
Staff recommended this album to me highly (so to speak). After taking it home and giving it a spin, I could see why. The intimate ambiance of the church coupled with Margo's ethereal voice would have been unlistenable on LP. Today we enjoy 180 gram virgin vinyl, but by the mid-70's albums were being produced from recycled rubber tires pressed so thin that they warped before the first play. Background hiss and rumble were ubiquitous because the major labels figured the only alternatives were cassettes and 8-tracks.
The Trinity Session became my demo disc for friends unfamiliar with CD's. It also went a long way to persuading me and a lot of other folks that the new format was here to stay. Irrespective of technology, it’s still a damn fine listen today.
Marshall McLuhan would have loved this record. 'Twas he who said "The medium is the message", and The Trinity Session may be the best example of an album that could not have been made before the digital era.
Artistically, TTS is without peer. The voice of Margo Timmins makes editorial comment superfluous, so I want to focus on the technology. Wiki tells us the album was recorded digitally in one continuous six hour session with the musicians clustered around a single Calrec Ambisonic Microphone. The venue was The Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto. The acoustic benefits of recording in a church had been well known for years. Notably, RCA Victor had used the similarly named Trinity Baptist Church in Camden, New Jersey for many of its formative years:
Victor's Trinity Church Recording Studio, Camden, NJ 1918-1935
Any discussion of American recorded music is incomplete without mention of Victor and the Trinity Church. In 1896, Eldridge R John...
ricgrass.blogspot.com
Why is all of this geekery important?
Because in 1987 when this album was recorded, the compact disc was in its retail infancy. Persuading non-audiophile consumers to pop for a new player and pay a premium for the "same" recordings was an uphill struggle, as this chart shows. The Trinity Session wasn't the first digital album I ever purchased but I did buy it at "CD Banzai", a hip music boutique near West Hollywood. The store had the forbidden ambiance of a head shop, with smoking accessories nestling in glass cases next to exotic bootleg CD's from around the world, including the legendary Kiss The Stone label from Italy.
Staff recommended this album to me highly (so to speak). After taking it home and giving it a spin, I could see why. The intimate ambiance of the church coupled with Margo's ethereal voice would have been unlistenable on LP. Today we enjoy 180 gram virgin vinyl, but by the mid-70's albums were being produced from recycled rubber tires pressed so thin that they warped before the first play. Background hiss and rumble were ubiquitous because the major labels figured the only alternatives were cassettes and 8-tracks.
The Trinity Session became my demo disc for friends unfamiliar with CD's. It also went a long way to persuading me and a lot of other folks that the new format was here to stay. Irrespective of technology, it’s still a damn fine listen today.
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