Nothing beats a little good music along with my Peet's coffee on a Saturday morning, and this morning with the sun breaking through the Pacific Northwest rain clouds I'm almost giddy about the music I'm listening to right now, the Miles Davis Quintet - Great Prestige Recordings 45 RPM box set that Chad Kassem did for his Analogue Productions label.

I've been eyeballing this box set for a while now, as the music is some of my favorite in all of jazz, and my experience with Chad's 45 RPM series has been uniformly stellar. I finally saw enough daylight in my budget to order the box set ($300 US - gasp!) and it arrived yesterday by FedEx.

To quote from the Acoustic Sounds web site:"The Miles Davis Quintet recorded five immortal albums for Prestige: Miles, Relaxin', Workin', Cookin' and Steamin', with what is likely Miles' best-ever group, featuring Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Philly Joe Jones, Paul Chambers and Red Garland. All of those albums are included in this limited edition box set. The albums are pressed on 180-gram vinyl and mastered from the original analog tapes by Kevin Gray and Steve Hoffman at AcousTech Mastering. They are packaged in a deluxe box with original album covers and liner notes, plus an essay by Bob Blumenthal and photos of the band by William Claxton, Sy Johnson and Bengt H. Malmqvist."

The music is, of course, superb. The sonics of this 45 RPM box set is beyond reproach. The moment the stylus hit the groove on the 'A' side of Miles I almost fell off my listening couch - wow! There is a relaxed clarity that is positively intoxicating. I couldn't be happier with my purchase, and if you consider that each album consists of two 45 RPM LPs - 10 LPs total in the box set - well, I guess $30 per LP isn't too bad after all.

Highly recommended for Miles fans everywhere!