Grace Knight - Live at the Basement

This is a series of live performances at 'The Basement' which is a Warnervision collection of live performances by a selection of Australian and international talent.

This time it's Grace Knight who has moved from pop in the 80's to jazz. This is a collection of twelve tracks which includes some classic jazz standards and from the 'Eurogliders' back catalog however they're not the way you've heard them on commercial radio. There's a good selection of simple vocal arrangements with single instruments (ie. piano numbers) to much more densely layered multi-vocal, musically complex numbers. This is a good selection of music that will exercise the musical capabilities of your DVD setup. The 'jazzified' pop numbers are especially excellent reworkings.

This is one of those discs that will stand repeated playback and will tend to make your DVD machine into a glorified CD player.

Here's a track list:

1. Calling You
2. We Will Be Together
3. Take My Hand
4. The Seed
5. Don't Set Me Free
6. Talk To Me
7. Fever
8. Hidden Prize
9. Walkin' Back
10. Johnny
11. Heaven
12. Stand Up

A bit strange here with a non-anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer. I don't think that's all that common with most concert footage being full frame. This is a generally pleasing transfer with good colour, fine sharpness and reasonable black detail. Fitting the name, the 'Basement' is a dark place full of shadows. The stage is lit low level with consistent use of coloured lighting.

It's quite clear that any flaws are the result of the original video source with white balance just a bit hot. You'll notice this on coloured objects; the colour is present but not the detail. There's also isolated video noise and sometimes less than pin sharp focus. There's also occasional bleed, slight aliasing, motion artifacting (both horizontal and vertical crawling) and the ever-popular 'EE' (edge enhance). You do have to look for it and the sound quality would seem to 'distract' you from noticing... read on...

Sound is a single Dolby 5.1 track at 448k/s. Excellent vocal clarity and good instrument clarity. The drums and bass guitar have that characteristic 'kick' of a dynamic and clean recording. You can tell this is a sparse but accurate recording as things such as microphone feedback, off notes and audience coughing etc. are also present.

No LFE and the rears are mainly audience participation although there are isolated incidences of instruments coming from the rears in closeups of the stage. This is to make your feel like you're on the stage as some of the instruments are to the extreme left and right on the stage. The accompanying musicians are talented and reproduction of music tonality is excellent. Every instrument is very cleanly delineated and the stage is wide and natural sounding. Diehard jazz fans will appreciate the exceptionally clear vocals. The soundstage remains focussed on the stage even though the camera pans around and to the audience. Close instruments visually sound close; far instruments are in the background.

I had good results setting my sound processor to one of the artificial surround modes to create a 'jazz' type setting as the recording is so clean, it doesn't impart much of its setting. It isn't strictly necessary let alone accurate. In any case plain 5.1 and stereo mixdown shows excellent results.

There's a twenty minute interview by Sydney radio personality Doug Mulray. This is an interview of the calibre you would expect from Uncle Doug - a bit raw but enthusiastic and full of insight, some of it very personal. There are two bonus live tracks which are live performances during the interview. All in all any extras are welcome in a music format that seems to be devoid of it generally.

The video is generally above average although it has some flaws. Sound quality is excellent and very clean with a very unprocessed even raw quality. There are extras when I expected none. The music performance, vocally, musically and composition are excellent. If you're a fan of Grace or modern jazz in general, this really is a good buy.

This disc is rated M+ because the occasional four letter word and some adult themes are present. Yes, strange but this is a live performance...