In 2016, in a church hall in downtown Stroud at Ian Fairholm’s beautifully curated Eppyfest, I had the pleasure of being introduced to the music of the Sirkis/Bialis International Quartet, featuring Israeli drummer Asaf Sirkis and Polish singer Sylwia Bialas.…
View More Sirkis/Bialis IQ – Our New Earth
Throughout the last few years, I’ve found myself listening to more and more jazz from Spain. Bands such as El Tubo Elàstico and On The Raw have thoroughly impressed me, and now add Canarian Juan Belda and his Bit Band.…
View More Juan Belda & The Bit Band – No encuentro la tónica
Released towards the end of last year, this debut album from Liverpool-based, piano-driven progressive trio Exploring Birdsong is one that has been highly awaited by many people, myself included. I first encountered Exploring Birdsong live at HRH Prog in November…
View More Exploring Birdsong – The Thing With Feathers
As the founder, Zio is the project of Karnataka drummer Jimmy Pallagrossi, and I have to admit this made me wary. Karnataka, along with other similar bands playing a mellow prog tinged with Celtic folk, plodded along for years at…
View More Zio – Flower Torania
Latent Avidity is the latest album from Polish progressive rock band Retrospective, who have been releasing music since 2007. I do not know what they feed them on in Poland but it does seem to be producing some impressive bands,…
View More Retrospective – Latent Avidity
There’s a story that says that everyone who saw the Sex Pistols play the Free Trade Hall in Manchester went out the following day, bought guitars and formed punk bands (it may be apocryphal) and the numbers of people who…
View More Dreams to Fill the Vacuum – The Sound of Sheffield 1977-1988
This album is the first by the post-Froese band where no new music was provided by Edgar, even as sketches for new material, as was the case with 2017’s Quantum Gate, the previous and rather good studio album. Released to…
View More Tangerine Dream – Recurring Dreams
There’s a revolution afoot, and you probably didn’t even know it. Coincidentally, I found out about it from two sources almost simultaneously: the album I’m not quite reviewing here, and an article posted by a friend on Facebook. And what…
View More Giorgi Mikadze – Georgian Microjamz
Reflectors of Light is a phrase from the lyrics of A Mead Hall in Winter, the same goes for Merchants of Light. Both phrases suggest the world of Big Big Train (BBT) and are therefore extremely suitable as a title…
View More Big Big Train – Reflectors of Light
Shock! Horror! On Robert Wyatt’s birthday, 28th January 2020, Kellen Mills and Nic Barnes have announced that they have disbanded Alex’s Hand. I feel somewhat shortchanged as I found the band only after what has turned out to be their…
View More Alex’s Hand – Hungarian Spa