(Hard Bop) [LP][24/96] John Coltrane - Giant Steps [Rhino 45rpm 2 LP-Set 180g (RI 512581)] - 1960, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

"...[Coltrane] has managed to combine all the swing of Pres with the virility of Hawkins and added to it a highly individual, personal sound as well as a complex and logical, and therefore fascinating, mind...tag this LP as one of the important ones..."
Down Beat (1960) - 5 Stars - Excellent
Giant Steps is a 1960 album by jazz musician John Coltrane, released on Atlantic Records.
Giant Steps was his second album to be recorded by the Atlantic label, and marked the first time that all of the pieces on a recording had been composed by him. The recording exemplifies Coltrane's melodic phrasing that came to be known as sheets of sound, and features the use of a new harmonic concept now referred to as Coltrane changes. Jazz musicians continue to use the Giant Steps chord progression as a practice piece and as a gateway into modern jazz improvisation. The ability to play over the Giant Steps/Coltrane cycle remains to this day one of the benchmark standards by which a jazz musician's improvising skill is measured.
The album is also considered to be Coltrane's farewell to bebop. He ventured into the territory of modal jazz shortly afterwards.
Several pieces on this album went on to become jazz standards, such as "Naima", "Giant Steps", "Cousin Mary", "Countdown", and "Mr. P.C."
In 2003, the album was ranked number 102 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2004, it was one of fifty recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.

Hannl"limited" Record Cleaning Machine
Music Hall MMF 5.1 Turntable
Goldring 1042GX reference Cartridge
Belari VP-129 Tube Phono PreAmp with Sylvania 12AX7WA
Tascam US-144 external USB 2.0 Audiointerface
Interconnections by "Goldkabel"
Wavelab 5 recording software
ClickRepair 3.0.1 (not used)
Vacuum Cleaning > TT > Belari > Laptop > Wavelab 5.01 (24/96) > manual click removal
analyze (no clipping, no DC Bias offset) > split into individual Tracks > FLAC encoded (Vers. 1.21)
No silence been removed, please burn gapless to match original tracklayout.

Allmusic.com rating 5 out 5 Stars. Album Pick!
History will undoubtedly enshrine this disc as a watershed the likes of which may never truly be appreciated. Giant Steps bore the double-edged sword of furthering the cause of the music as well as delivering it to an increasingly mainstream audience. Although this was John Coltrane's debut for Atlantic, he was concurrently performing and recording with Miles Davis. Within the space of less than three weeks, Coltrane would complete his work with Davis and company on another genre-defining disc, Kind of Blue, before commencing his efforts on this one. Coltrane (tenor sax) is flanked by essentially two different trios. Recording commenced in early May of 1959 with a pair of sessions that featured Tommy Flanagan (piano) and Art Taylor (drums), as well as Paul Chambers -- who was the only band member other than Coltrane to have performed on every date. When recording resumed in December of that year, Wynton Kelly (piano) and Jimmy Cobb (drums) were instated -- replicating the lineup featured on Kind of Blue, sans Miles Davis of course. At the heart of these recordings, however, is the laser-beam focus of Coltrane's tenor solos. All seven pieces issued on the original Giant Steps are likewise Coltrane compositions. He was, in essence, beginning to rewrite the jazz canon with material that would be centered on solos -- the 180-degree antithesis of the art form up to that point. These arrangements would create a place for the solo to become infinitely more compelling. This would culminate in a frenetic performance style that noted jazz journalist Ira Gitler accurately dubbed "sheets of sound." Coltrane's polytonal torrents extricate the amicable and otherwise cordial solos that had begun decaying the very exigency of the genre -- turning it into the equivalent of easy listening. He wastes no time as the disc's title track immediately indicates a progression from which there would be no looking back. Line upon line of highly cerebral improvisation snake between the melody and solos, practically fusing the two. The resolute intensity of "Countdown" does more to modernize jazz in 141 seconds than many artists do in their entire careers. Tellingly, the contrasting and ultimately pastoral "Naima" was the last tune to be recorded, and is the only track on the original long-player to feature the Kind of Blue quartet. What is lost in tempo is more than recouped in intrinsic melodic beauty. Both Giant Steps [Deluxe Edition] and the seven-disc Heavyweight Champion: The Complete Atlantic Recordings offer more comprehensive presentations of these sessions.