Ikarus are based in Zurich and variously describe themselves as “minimal groove”, “Nordic soundscape”, and “prog jazz”, and they are indeed all of these and more. Chief among the self-penned descriptions on their Facebook page is “EVOCATIVE MUSIC”. The uppercase…
View More Ikarus – Echo
Three years on from their first album, Lightships, London avant-folk band Firefly have struck a match and become Firefly Burning for their second album Skeleton Hill. The resulting sulphurous heat produced has warmed their sound with an added urgency and…
View More Firefly Burning – Skeleton Hill
Three years after 2012’s Quickly, Quickly, Quickly, a rather lopsided release dominated by a somewhat disjointed sprawling epic, and an album that seemed to let its sheer ambition get the better of it, these New Jersey nu-proggers by the name…
View More The Tea Club – Grappling
I have had this album at the top of the “to do” pile for a while, but as the Yuletide season of merriment was then upon us, it seemed entirely wrong to disrupt any warm festive glow you may have…
View More Transport Aerian – Darkblue
Hold on to your hat, for you are about to take a thrill-a-minute rollercoaster ride through the untrammelled imagination of Jacopo Costa and friends. Calling at all stations, from doo-wop through pop, Euro-folk, classic RIO moves, and on eighth track…
View More Loomings – Everyday Mythology
As a stop gap between his fourth solo album Hand.Cannot.Erase. and whatever is coming next, The Hardest Working Man In Showbiz is keeping his audience sated with this mini-album. 4½ comprises four tracks recorded at the H.C.E. sessions, one from…
View More Steven Wilson – 4½
I have been meaning to write about this truly visionary piece of work all year, but what with one thing and another have never found the time. As the album became a year old on 1st December, it is now…
View More Peter Hammill – …all that might have been…
Not heard of Gizmo? Well, as I do not wish to spend too much time repeating myself, I suggest you read the long and hopefully not too rambling intro to my review of the Canterbury band’s previous and self-titled album,…
View More Gizmo – Marlowe’s Children
Entering stage left, Rêve Général arrive fully formed with a Euro spring in their step, offering the huddled masses a new take on a surprisingly well populated, if largely unnoticed forest track off the main drag of progressive music –…
View More Rêve Général – Howl
Let’s take a trip backwards through time and space with those rather groovy veteran American spacerockers Djam Karet. Trawling the floating cosmic debris and detritus keyboard player Gayle Ellett has caught some real gems in his net…was that a sample…
View More Djam Karet – Swamp of Dreams