Patricia Barber Cafe Blue 1STEP Low Numbered Limited Edition 180g 45rpm 2LP

Out Of Print! Warehouse Find!

Low Serial Numbers #61-70!

TAS Super LP List! Special Merit: Informal

18th Annual Positive Feedback Writers' Choice Award Winner!

TONE's 2020 Product Of The Year - Recording!

Michael Fremer Rated 10/11 Music, 10/11 Sonics!

TAS Rated 4.5/5 Music, 5/5 Sonics in the April 2021 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Patricia Barber has always been an artist's artist, harnessing a restless imagination and an intellectualized curiosity to create visionary jazz that breaks boundaries and reorders perceptions. She serves the chase: the unexpected musical note. The irreplaceable word. The irregular beating heart of jazz.

And Café Blue is the album that best personifies her genius. Spare, turbulent, quirky, and slyly humorous, there is no other jazz masterwork quite like it.

For the first collaboration with this musical vanguard, Impex's 1STEP is exclusively cut from original analog work masters and cut by Kevin Gray at CoHearent Audio. The stunning fidelity, breathtaking dynamics and startling spacial realism surpass every other edition of this breakthrough album.

The 1STEP Process:
The Impex 1STEP process relies on short, tightly-controlled runs that require a new lacquer after each 500 pressings. This unforgiving format has the lacquer skipping the regular father-mother process, going right to a single convert and then pressing. Though this dramatically increases mastering and production costs, it also assures each run is more consistent from disc to disc, with less noise, clearer details and deeper bass.

Reducing production complexity to just a single "convert" disc between the lacquer and the press greatly improves groove integrity, diminishes non-fill anomalies and increases signal integrity from the master tape to your system.

Two 180-gram 45-rpm LPs, pressed on VR900-SUPREME VINYL, and a deluxe booklet are packaged in a heavy-duty 3-sleeve jacket. The jacket is then placed in a linen-wrapped slip case that protects your investment and brings a cool retro-modern look to your shelves. Strictly limited to 5,000 numbered pressings!