Another band helping to define the New Canterbury sound, and actually hailing from the Kent cathedral city, Lapis lazuli burst upon an unsuspecting world in 2012 with their double-debut, the “un” rather than “in” famous Bungalow Sessions, released as two…
View More Lapis Lazuli – Alien
When I heard that Esoteric Recordings, those wonderful curators of Rock’s Rich Tapestry, were re-releasing the self-titled album by Leicester band Spring, an obscure bunch of very early prog rockers, conversely well known in the world of record collecting, my…
View More Spring – Spring
Argentina is a vast country, in fact the eighth largest in the world. Consequently, with a population of only 41.5 million it is somewhat sparsely populated, especially given the fact that nearly 13 million of the total live within the…
View More Various Artists – ¡Salgan Al Sol!
Founded in St. Petersburg in 2001 by keyboard player Ivan Rozmainsky as a one man project, Roz Vitalis has evolved through many stages, and since their sixth album, 2011’s Revelator which was released on the well-known Russian imprint MALS Records,…
View More Roz Vitalis – Lavoro D’Amore
Dramatic, bleak, impish, bold, epic, flirtatious, lost, surprising, operatic, thrilling, adventurous…are some of the adjectives that could, and indeed do apply to the second album from Boston based Bent Knee, a band who defy categorisation. Those last two words are…
View More Bent Knee – Shiny Eyed Babies
Continuing my current delving into the world of modern jazz-influenced progressive music, and following on from my review of the rather tasty Akku Quintet album, here we have another slice of European exotica. Taking up the saxophone at the age…
View More Julian Julien – Terre II
Akku Quintet are a Swiss band based in Berne, from where they dispense a minimalistic jazz groove to great effect. Dreamy piano sequences snuggle up with soft sax, juxtaposed with sci-fi guitar effects as the invisible bonds joining elemental particles…
View More AKKU Quintet – Molecules
Now up to their fifth album, New Jersey art-rock band 3RDegree are a collective that take on heavy concepts without batting an eyelid. Their previous breakthrough album The Long Division, released in 2012, failed to properly connect with me, mostly…
View More 3RDegree – Ones & Zeros: Vol. 1
Some four years after his first solo album, the highly listenable Defence Mechanisms, nimble-fingered bass player Louis De Mieulle returns with his second offering stars, plants & bugs. Louis is an ex-pat Frenchman living in New York, and from the…
View More Louis De Mieulle – stars, plants & bugs
Birmingham Symphony Hall 14th September 2015 “King Crimson” is not so much a band, but more of an idea or even an ideology, the tenets of which are intermittently given form by its guardian Robert Fripp. Legend has it that…
View More King Crimson