It's Memorial Day here in the States, which is about remembering soldiers who have died during military service, and was enacted after the American Civil War (1861-1865).

This morning I've been working on my review for Positive Feedback Online of the Acoustic Revive speaker cables, RCA interconnects, and RCI-3 cable insulators. Coincidentally, I just ordered a copy of the Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms LP from Acoustic Sounds, and had it playing while working on the Acoustic Revive review.

Here's what I wrote as part of the review:

'Take the 180-gram Dire Straits Brothers In Arms LP that was half-speed mastered by Stan Ricker at R.T.I. as an example: With Single Core cables in place the beauty of the musical overtones were allowed to fully develop, which resulted in stunning tone color, and a very high degree of timbral realism for the instruments on the recording. The Single Core cables also gave a strong tactile sense for what the musicians were doing, the dynamic touch of Knopfler’s picks and fingers on strings, the smack of Williams’ sticks on drumheads or cymbals, fingers caressing keyboards, all of which lends a lot of excitement and emotive impact to the music.

The result of having the Single Core cables in my system was that it yielded a very live, yet non- ‘electronic’ presentation of sound for the Brothers in Arms album. The upside of that was that I didn’t think about the superb sonics coming through the loudspeakers per se, rather I was pulled into the music’s emotive essence because the presentation was so captivatingly dramatic. On the song Brothers in Arms the drama astonished me, portrayed with a brooding dark intensity like rolling thunder, the tension of waiting in darkness, the guitar riffs evocative of gunfire in their intensity. It put me in quite a reflective mood, on this day, the USA’s Memorial Day. I was really struck with emotion as the lyrics closed out the song with “Let me bid you farewell, every man has to die, but it’s written in the starlight, and every line on your palm, that we’re fools to make war, on our brothers in arms,” being reminded of family and friends who were cut to the bone, both in body and soul, through the tribulations of war. I can’t think of any higher praise for a product than the fact that it allows you to immerse yourself in the meaning of the music, and that the Single Core cables accomplished in spades."

I was so affected by listening to Brothers In Arms that I thought I should take a moment to reflect on and honor the lives of the soldiers of all countries who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their countries. My Grandfather was in the Marines, as was his little brother Erv, and later my Father and Uncle. Erv was at the Battle of Iwo Jima where horrific casualties were inflicted on soldiers of the USA and Japan. Erv was one of the few at Iwo Jima that survived the battle, but he would bear the scars of his service, body and soul, for the rest of his life. It forever changed the way my family thought about that earthly hell that is called war. If you've got a copy of Brothers In Arms I'd say it's a good time to get it out and give it a thoughtful listen, and as another of the dead had said, give peace a chance.