Carpenters - A Kind Of Hush

A Kind Of Hush (1976) was the Carpenters seventh studio album, serving up more of the same pop/soft rock fare they had been noted for - though critics wished for more diversity and the US chart peak of no.33 was disappointing (although it reached no.3 in the UK). Richard Carpenter wrote about the album here. For all the issues mentioned by Richard, the hallmarks of the duo's craft are there for all to hear from Richard's consummate arrangements and Karen's remarkable voice.

For my video I've chosen the whole of side 1 and thought it would be good to show some "behind the scenes" shots of filming, record cleaning, cover scanning, and (briefly) video editing. The second camera betrays its handheld nature (I must get a second unit cameraman with a steady-cam next time!) It also shows Panasonic's neat iPad app that controls a lot of the Lumix camera's functions. The main video is shot with a Lumix GX8 with a wide angle Olympus 9-18mm zoom. The label photography is done with a Lumix GX7 fitted with a Lumix 14-140mm zoom, and the "2nd unit" camera is a Lumix TZ70 compact. The ultrasonic cleaning was shot with the GX8 and Lumix 14-42mm zoom.

The cover scans were done on an HP printer/scanner - and needed four files per "shot" because of the size of the scanning area. These were stitched together in Affinity Photo software, and the video edited in Apple's Final Cut Pro X.

Lastly, the audio is taken direct from the variable output of the Graham Slee Accession phono amp to a Lexicon I-O22 USB audio interface into a Mac Mini running the Twisted Wave audio editor. The fixed output on the Accesson runs to a Graham Slee Majestic DAC/Pre-amp and on to the Harbeth Xpression! DPM-1 Pro active speakers you see either side of the monitor. All cabling is Graham Slee - CuSat50 RCA-RCA, Lautus USB, and Libran balanced to the speakers.

I hope you find the video interesting and the music appealing.

Cartridge: Nagaoka MP-300

Phono amp: Graham Slee Accession

Turntable: Yamaha PX-3

Click to enlarge