Four years on from their tumultuous self-titled debut album, multi-national combo Mumpbeak reappear with this album of shifting moods and confounded expectations. Unlike on that first album, there is no impressive list of guest players this time round, as the…
View More Mumpbeak – Tooth
Starting with a bizarre spoken word last will and testament where Mr Ramsay leaves his appreciation of art, sanity, and competence to the Government, because “by God they need it”, and ending with a fractured recitation of a script from…
View More Robert Ramsay – Confound And Disturb
Stately and processional, this captivating soundtrack, written for the oldest surviving animated film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, is a difficult one to review, as the live experience with the film as a backdrop is the proper way to fully…
View More Dungen – Häxan
The best way to cover an iconic artist’s repertoire, a canon that is so well known that a considerable number of folk can play the songs in their head end to end, note perfect, is to approach it in such…
View More Machine Mass – Plays Hendrix
Nearly six years on from their breakthrough and fifth studio album Deep Politics finds Portland, Oregon instrumental electronica crossover project Grails having refined their sound further on Chalice Hymnal. If I may deploy an over-used reviewers staple, this album is…
View More Grails – Chalice Hymnal
The fizzing French confection Aquaserge, makers of highly individual left-field pop-prog that explodes on your tongue like sherbert dip (Google it, non-Brits!), released their second album earlier this year. It is a joyous and celebratory affair, and a welcome tonic…
View More Aquaserge – Laisse ça être
Based in Washington DC, Janel Leppin-Pirog already has one album and a couple of EPs to her name, and an earlier album as a duo with Anthony Pirog, now her husband. Confusingly, her one previous album is called Mellow Diamond,…
View More Mellow Diamond – American God
Like most “underground” bands of the turn of the ’60s into the ’70s, Patto emerged butterfly-like from the chrysalis of an earlier pop group. Timebox were a band who specialised in dance-orientated Motown and R&B covers, and even had a…
View More Patto – Patto/Hold Your Fire
This Italian band, from Genoa, play a hectic mix containing all the correct prog influences, that on the frantic opening mini-epic Athletics sounds like Yes on a potent mix of uppers and Viagra. With its manic twists and turns and…
View More Promenade – Noi al dir di Noi
In my long experience of modern prog I have come to the conclusion that there are three variants that apply in the vast majority of cases when one is presented with the long form piece. “What are they, then?”, you…
View More Pat Mastelotto & Markus Reuter – FACE