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 – MoleculesAuthor: Roger Trenwith
3RDegree – Ones & Zeros: Vol. 1
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. 1Louis De Mieulle – stars, plants & bugs
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 & bugsKing Crimson
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 CrimsonGuapo
The Lexington, Islington, London 3rd September, 2015 [Photo by Ashley Jones, a still from his film of the event, which is used with many thanks.] Conveniently located a mere ten minutes walk from Euston, The Lexington is a pub not…
View More GuapoI Will Kill Chita – Evil Bear Boris
Hailing from Moscow and formed by Nikita and Nick Samarin, I Will Kill Chita are so named after a fraternal spat within the band’s ranks. Maybe The Kinks should have been called I Will Kill Dave? This Russian collective play…
View More I Will Kill Chita – Evil Bear BorisTim Bowness
The Boston Music Room, Tufnell Park, London 26th August, 2015 As the tube station nearest to the venue was closed, we alighted five minutes up the road at Archway. Had we not, a rather fine Italian eaterie would have not…
View More Tim BownessParadox One – This Fragile Peace
Starting out as long ago as the start of the century, Paradox One was initially a solo project by Scottish keyboard player and spacerocker Phil Jackson, who over the intervening years became friends with Tim Jones of Census Of Hallucinations…
View More Paradox One – This Fragile PeaceAudience – Audience / Friend’s Friend’s Friend
Audience – Audience Esoteric Recordings, go to label of choice for the rock history connoisseur, continue mining the rich seam of underground music from the end of the 60s and the early 70s with these two fine albums from the…
View More Audience – Audience / Friend’s Friend’s FriendBig Big Train
Kings Place, London 14th August 2015 [No photos of the band in action, by request of both band and venue, so many thanks to Tony “Quick Draw” Colvill for his on-the-hoof sketch, and thanks to BBT for signing it! Band…
View More Big Big Train