What is this and where did it come from? Landing here with its Beefheartian swagger via a long stay on Planet Speed Metal and with a math-jazz calculator set to stun, this shit is weird and it’s curdled my custard.…
View More Czar – Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal
In what seems to have become a relentless, burgeoning and ever diversifying musical climate it is so easy to lose sight of what first attracted you, so with the release of The Last Of England the opportunity to reflect, rekindle…
View More Gordon Giltrap & Paul Ward – The Last Of England
From the first sonar-like ping to the last note, Third Quadrant’s 2016 album re:generator holds your attention, with a vocal style not dissimilar to Paul McCartney (at his best), and the modern prog interpretation of Dave Kerzner (with or without…
View More Third Quadrant – re:generator
Atomic Rooster. Trojan Horse. Henry Cow. Er, Canned Goat? I may just have made that last one up but farmyard-related band names appear surprisingly thin on the ground. Bucking that trend (ahem…), please trot forward, in a genteel and decorous…
View More A Formal Horse – Made In Chelsea [EP]
Two years after their first album, Inflamed Rides, this rather thrilling gathering of enquiring musical like-minds return with Soul Of An Octopus, their first for the always interesting Rare Noise label, and it seems that no little development of their…
View More O.R.k. – Soul of an Octopus
I forget now where I read about the Once and Future Band, but I was very interested in reviewing their self-titled album, released in January this year. The author made comparisons in the article, to Queen and ELO. OK, I…
View More Once and Future Band – Once and Future Band
This new remaster of Illusions Dimension, Matheus Manente’s first solo release from 2014, has the dramatic feel of a film soundtrack. Some songs clearly stand on their own, while others seem to be intended as auditory backgrounds to theatrical developments.…
View More Matheus Manente – Illusions Dimension [2017 remaster]
Beatrix Players are a London-based female trio, comprising Amanda Alvarez, Jess Kennedy and Amy Birks. They have been described as combining elements of Folk, Jazz, Progressive and Classical music, citing influences as diverse as Michael Nyman and Regina Spector whilst…
View More Beatrix Players – Magnified
It has been over four years since the relentlessly foreboding Decline and Fall, and Colorado state’s favourite avant rock collective, the marvellously uncompromising Thinking Plague, are back, this time dredging optimism from the depths of black despair at the perverse…
View More Thinking Plague – Hoping Against Hope
“Alfred J. Prufrock would be proud of me”, declared Welsh Indie rockers Manic Street Preachers in 2001 on their song My Guernica. Musical adaptations or references to the works of T.S. Eliot in modern music have an interesting and sometimes…
View More Heresy – Prufrock: A Musical Adaptation of the Poem by T.S. Eliot