Paul Kossoff is mostly known for his guitar work with Free, but his solo output is often missed out, unfortunately cut short due to his untimely death. For me, his guitar work was most distinctive, he felt it was not…
View More Back Street Crawler – Atlantic Years 1975-1976
Con Calma, Mohammed Asraf’s second release of the year in his guise as Pie Are Squared, is well named. A calm sense of detachment and escapism pervades the serene and contemplative sounds of this album. It’s an album to lose…
View More Pie Are Squared – Con Calma
Finally, it’s been a long time coming: the new live Blu-Ray/DVD/double audio CD from Camel saw the light of day earlier this year. Being present on the night, I noticed the presence of an extensive crew of cameramen to record…
View More Camel – Live At The Royal Albert Hall
A squeak, a muffled belch, some scrapings and scrabblings on strings, more guttural grunts, and gradually, very slowly, we ease into something that sounds like ensemble coherence, a tune even! The instruments begin to play a wonky march, at first…
View More Stirrup+6 – The Avondale Addition
For the last decade or so, Steve Hackett has been making a very nice living, thank you very much, by dusting off old Genesis classics in front of appreciative audiences across the world. And why not? He had a hand…
View More Steve Hackett – Selling England By the Pound & Spectral Mornings: Live at Hammersmith
Rebecca Foon is a new name to me, however this Canadian cellist has had a long career as a solo and band performer in her homeland. She has been rightly acclaimed over the last decade or so, and yet this,…
View More Rebecca Foon – Waxing Moon
One of the outstanding releases from 2018 was Deep Energy Orchestra’s Playing With Fire, so with the announcement earlier this year of the follow-up, the succinctly titled The Return, anticipation was high. For those who purchased DEO’s debut album, I…
View More Deep Energy Orchestra – The Return
Commissioned to write the signature work for the 2018 Vossajazz – Norway’s long-running and well respected annual jazzfest, held in the eponymous city – Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen took the opportunity to expand her established trio format to a six-piece, encompassing…
View More Hedvig Mollestad – Ekhidna
Tarry awhile goodly ladies and gents, allow me to regale you with tales of a fine fellow, Marc Atkinson, a musical bard of some little known renown. He peddles his calling among the taverns and the greens of the villages…
View More Marc Atkinson – Black & White
“I had a discussion with my good friend Jackie Morris, a writer of enchanting words and an illustrative artist of exquisite paintings, about where magic happens. She gave me the title and the rest of the song came from wherever…
View More David Longdon and the late Judy Dyble: Between a Breath and a Breath