Comparisons can be trite, but in striving for ever more convoluted, or conversely concise ways of describing low profile bands to potential listeners it is always well to remember that “a dichotomy of complicated note flurries mixed with simple yet…
View More Thieves’ Kitchen – The Clockwork Universe
It flutters past the like the butterfly it seems to be. Sensing something, it turns on its fragile wingspan and returns to the vibrantly gaudy flower. There, hovering above the anther, hums a large bumblebee going about its business. The…
View More O.R.k. – Inflamed Rides
As far as I know there is not a jacked-up hot-rodded Ford van* out there by the name of The Pneumatic Transit, but there is a bunch of fellas from Chicago who chose that odd name for their band. Actually,…
View More The Pneumatic Transit – Concerto For Double Moon
I have had this short album – or long EP, whatever – in my “to do” pile for quite a while, and a recent discussion on a Facebook thread with those fine Bad Elephant chaps about cover versions prompted me…
View More Jack O’The Clock – Outsider Songs
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