The Gresham Centre, St. Anne & St. Agnes, Gresham Street, London Sunday, 26th November 2017 I was in a church the other day, St. Anne and St. Agnes, Gresham Street, in the City of London, near The Barbican. I was…
Union Chapel, Islington, London Saturday, 17th October 2015 I have never attended one of the ‘Daylight Music’ concerts held at the Union Chapel before, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from these rather unique Saturday performances, held between…
Take a swathe of eccentricity of the Very English kind, a keening sense of melody, mix in a wide spread of acoustic instrumentation with wielders who know how to get the best out of them, add pinches of folk, Cardiacs,…
The George Tavern, Stepney, London Friday, 29th August 2025 Down at the Crayola Lectern show at the George Tavern — a stout, notched tooth of a building set into the bony drag of Commercial Road — there’s been a bit…
Treasure is always good, but the treasure map sometimes has much to offer on its own. If you’re only a little bit familiar with the swirl of projects surrounding Cardiacs, then the unearthing of these four old songs will give…
The Old Library Bar, New Cross, London Friday, 13th September 2024 Sitting on the swerve of New Cross Road (just as the latter prepares to commit itself to the Old Kent Road rat-run), The Old Library is an Edwardian survivor…
How do you compare and rank albums as diverse as those released into the ‘Prog Zone’ in the last decade? It’s a tricky challenge that requires the use of generalisations, but also specific factoring. In this case, having assembled a…
Quite a while ago, I noticed that the quite wonderful London based chamber rock group North Sea Radio Orchestra plus guests were performing a live version of Rock Bottom, the 1974 first post-accident solo album from the now British National…
Acapela Studio, Pentyrch Saturday, 24th September 2017 Well, that was just magical. In the beautiful setting of Acapela Studio, in Pentyrch, north of the M4 outside Cardiff, the North Sea Radio Orchestra beguiled an audience that couldn’t have numbered many…
2016 has been another very good year for music at the progressive end of the spectrum, a bumper crop of new releases to digest, and assimilate. On the down side, the genre has lost way too many of its heroes…