Liebert, Ottmar + Negra, Luna-Wide-Eyed + Dreaming (1996) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Discography
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	58:14
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Jeb Brien
Studio Distributor	Sony Music	Starring	Ottmar Liebert Luna Negra
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$24.95	Music	Ottmar Liebert

    You could perhaps be forgiven if you have never heard of Ottmar Liebert or Luna Negra before. Usually, the CDs are tucked away in the "Ambient/New Age" section of most music shops, with little or no promotion. If you glance at the album covers, you could perhaps form the impression that the music might be esoteric or avant garde.

    Well, it turned out to be neither. Ottmar plays flamenco guitar as well as electric guitar, and Luna Negra is the band that normally accompanies him. The performances sound like acoustic smooth jazz with world music influences rather than ambient.

    The members of Luna Negra are:

• John Gagan (bass and keyboards)
• Carl Coletti (drums and percussion)
• Ron Wagner (tablas, dumbek and percussion)

    Wide-Eyed and Dreaming consists of excerpts from a live concert held in Calgary, Canada (at the Jack Singer Concert Hall, Calgary Centre for Performing Arts) in 1996. In between songs, we also get monologues from Ottmar where he explains his philosophy about instrumental music, performing, and his adopted hometown on Santa Fe (he was born in Cologne, Germany).

    I found the performances quite easy and pleasant to listen to. Ottmar strikes me as being a bit pretentious both in his performances and in his monologues, but to each his own I suppose.

    A belly dancer (Myra Keen) joins the performers during Alegria Arabe.

    The title of each song in the concert is captioned as part of the video stream at the beginning of each song.

Video

    The transfer is in full frame and in NTSC, which reflects the fact that it was recorded for broadcast TV.

    Detail levels and colour saturation are about average (in other words, a bit soft) for an interlaced video source.

    Surprisingly, I did not notice many aliasing artefacts, even on guitar strings.

    There's a fair amount of Gibb's effect ringing present throughout the transfer, which are more prominent during the interview scenes. This further softens the picture. There is also minor pixelization present.

    There is no subtitle tracks on this single sided single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two audio tracks on the disc: English Linear PCM 48/16 2.0 (1536kb/s), English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448kb/s). I mainly listened to the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track, but occasionally switched across to the PCM audio track.

    The Dolby Digital 5.1 track has a fairly dynamic and full-bodied sound, plus a wide and deep soundstage. The subwoofer is only used lightly to enhance the low frequencies, and the centre channel is used to fill in the space between the front left and right channels. The rear channels are mainly used for ambience and audience clapping. Dialog normalization has been set to +4dB.

    In comparison, the PCM track appears to be mixed at a very low level (about 8dB below a typical CD) and appears to be more bass heavy and treble light than the Dolby Digital mix. However, once volume levels are equalized the PCM track also sounds quite pleasant.

    I did not have any difficulty understanding Ottmar in between songs (he seems to have an American accent rather than German) and I did not detect any audio synchronization issues.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The only extra is a discography. I would have liked to see a biography.

Menu

    The menu is full frame and static.

Discography

    This consists of six stills containing the album cover and highlights from other albums by Ottmar Liebert and Luna Negra.

    The title appears to be identical for both R1 and R4, right down to the NTSC formatting and the FBI warning messages.

    Wide-Eyed and Dreaming consists of Ottmar Liebert and Luna Negra performing a selection of songs taken from a live concert.

    The video transfer is a bit soft and pixelated.

    The audio transfer is good.

    Extras are limited to a discography.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall