The Slaughtered Lamb, Clerkenwell, London Friday, 8th February 2019 Time portals, sausages in the air, and heads leading independent lives to bodies are just three things one goes to gigs like these for, oh yeah, baby! A tempestuous and bursting…
View More Lost Crowns / Ham Legion / Wryneck
The problem with most biographies is that ultimately any insight they give is mere speculation. Unless the biographer is or was particularly close to their subject, that speculation is just another opinion to be taken no more or less seriously…
View More Chris Salewicz – Jimmy Page: The Definitive Biography
A theology of sound, gliding serenely in the upper atmosphere, then? I know I’m not allowed to say “sonic cathedrals in the sky”, obviously! It might seem remiss of me to open a review of an album that appears to…
View More Stephan Thelen – Fractal Guitar
The first time I dropped out, turned on, and tuned in to this broadcast sent from a pile of weird synapses left behind in lysergic abandon by visitors from an alternate Pagan universe where peyote in the water supply is…
View More Lost Crowns – Every Night Something Happens
The Garage, Islington, London Friday, 21st December 2018 After a splendid day as a tourist in the company of my trusty TPA colleague Mr Phil Lively, during which we visited the Post Office museum and took a trip on their…
View More Spratleys Japs / Knifeworld / ZOFFF
I first discovered The Bevis Frond around the time of their second album, the still wonderful Inner Marshlands. That was 31 years ago and since then the Frond, aka Walthamstow’s psychedelic elder statesman Nick Saloman and his trusty crew, have…
View More The Bevis Frond – We’re Your Friends, Man
The Vortex Jazz Club, Dalston, London Saturday, 1st December 2018 If ever an area was best suited as a prime example of modern London’s cosmopolitan buzz, then Dalston, a part of the London Borough of Hackney, is that area. Teeming…
View More Sonar + David Torn
I remember, long, long ago, being curious as to the purpose of the happy looking chap in the top hat on the inside cover of Foxtrot, the very first Genesis album I bought, probably around 1974 or ’75. Named Richard…
View More Richard Macphail – My Book Of Genesis
Symphony Hall, Birmingham Tuesday, 6th November 2018 This will only be a short piece, as my esteemed colleague Jez Rowden has already said all there is to say on the emotional and musical impact of this revered combo in his…
View More King Crimson
Musical definitions – who needs ’em? Actually a lot more folk than you’d think. So, this Sterbus thing, what is it? Clever pop is what it is. Starting with the wordplay of the title; “estate” is Italian for summer, and…
View More Sterbus– Real Estate/Fake Inverno