It’s been four years since the last album of new music from Phi Yaan-Zek, 2018’s seminal Reality is My Plaything, which was a cosmic stew of complex and avant garde absurdity, and amazing guitar playing. I’m pleased to report that…
View More Phi Yaan-Zek – Interdimensional Garden Party
This album from Canadian band Versa, A Voyage / A Destination, is their third (and first for a decade) but the first I have heard, and I suspect I’m not alone in being new to them. Approaching the album with…
View More Versa – A Voyage / A Destination
New music from Djam Karet is always a cause for celebration, and given the numerous other projects Gayle Ellett has on the go at the moment, (The Electromags, Kelp Dwellers, etc.), they perhaps aren’t as frequent as they once were.…
View More Djam Karet – Island in the Red Night Sky
An erupting bubble of synths, an assertive nimble keyboard riff with a touch of funk, some power chords, some more layered keys as we romp away… yes, it’s the latest Derek Sherinian album, Vortex. His style is instantly familiar, as…
View More Derek Sherinian – Vortex
Babe Ruth began life in 1972 as Shacklock, named after Alan Shacklock, the creative driving force behind the band. He was a gifted guitarist, composer and arranger who trained at the Royal Academy no less, and a young talent which…
View More Babe Ruth – Darker Than Blue: The Harvest Years 1972-1975
The Canadian experimental noise merchants return with a soundtrack to the classic 1926 silent film Faust directed by F.W. Murnau. It tells the legendary tale of temptation, corruption and redemption, and Mahogany Frog certainly succeed in producing a soundtrack which…
View More Mahogany Frog – Faust
Ryo Okumoto, keyboard wizard in Spock’s Beard, appears to have got bored with the hiatus that his main band seem to be on, and so has decided to form his own version of the band and record an album. Well,…
View More Ryo Okumoto – The Myth of the Mostrophus
The Tiktaalik, discovered in the Canadian Arctic in 2004 by fossil hunters, was a freshwater fish living around 375 million years ago in the Devonian period, but bearing many characteristics found in four-legged land animals that would follow. It is…
View More Charlie Griffiths – Tiktaalika
Fréderic L’Épée, the sole composer for Yang, seems like an interesting chap. He has an interest in minimalism, Chinese language and culture, the guitar (Robert Fripp is his guru) and his favourite composer is Johann Sebastian Bach. Stick those influences…
View More Yang – Designed for Disaster
A chance exchange online about a year or so ago with Gayle Ellett revealed an excited guitarist mentioning his latest project, Gayle Ellett and The Electromags. It instantly sounded, from the name of the band, like a guitar album, and…
View More Gayle Ellett & The Electromags – Shiny Side Up