Complex, evocative, challenging but ultimately satisfying, such is the summarised description I would impart on the new release by Snarky Puppy, entitled Sylva, just released globally on the GroundUP Music/Ropeadope Records label. To those unfamiliar with the band, Snarky Puppy…
View More Snarky Puppy with The Metropole Orkest – Sylva
King for a Day is the latest impressive release from Norwegian Symphonic/Progressive Rock band Magic Pie following on from 2011’s well-received The Suffering Joy. This new album develops their usual style and themes with powerful flourishes, flamboyant passages and elements…
View More Magic Pie – King For A Day
It is an impressive fact that Tennessee’s Glass Hammer are now on seemingly their 17th studio album since their debut in 1993, the core duo of Steve Babb and Fred Schendel still at the heart of it all. With vocalist…
View More Glass Hammer – The Breaking of the World
We Were Here is the first solo album from US composer and guitarist Malcolm Smith, a name perhaps not too familiar to many, so where he comes from may be of interest. He emerged towards the end of the 90s…
View More Malcolm Smith – We Were Here
With their debut album being one of my favourites of 2013, the arrival of the highly anticipated new album from Italian eclectic progressive rock band Not A Good Sign was always going to be greeted with a cheer chez moi.…
View More Not A Good Sign – From A Distance
When I first heard of Tammy Slater I thought: “Hmmm”. For most of her day Tammy is high on a cocktail of Baby Bio and diet pills from the 1950s. At night she drags herself by her tentacles through the…
View More Tom Slatter – Fit The Fourth
For ten years or so from the mid 1990s I was consumed by a deeply entrenched record collecting bug. Many hours were spent trawling Record Collector sale lists, mail order catalogues and latterly eBay for ever more obscure vinyl delights.…
View More Fields – Contrasts: Urban Roar to Country Peace
Once again I come to this review with little more knowledge of the band than hearing their name and no knowledge or their previous albums. The album has been out long enough for you to find other reviews so I…
View More …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – IX
From the Hieronymus Bosch cover art you know that the contents is likely to be something unusual, and so it is as Mike Judge takes us on another journey into some strange but very satisfying musical coves. A Kansas City…
View More The Nerve Institute – Fictions
Cross have been described as a ‘neo-prog’ band from Sweden, headed by multi-instrumentalist, Hansi Cross, which have been going since 1988, although this is the first time I have heard the band. The working title for their latest album was…
View More Cross – Da Capo