Stian Westerhus is a Norwegian guitarist and sound manipulator with a long and varied CV in esoteric avant jazz and electronica circles, and amongst many others has worked with Jaga Jazzist, Supersilent, and Motorpsycho. Stian has released many critically acclaimed…
View More Stian Westerhus – Amputation
Old Fire is the project of Texas based musician and programmer John Mark Lapham, once of The Earlies and 4AD band The Late Cord. Admittedly, neither name mean anything to me so I approach this album with no preconceptions. I…
View More Old Fire – Songs From The Haunted South
I recently reviewed Edensong’s latest release, Years in the Garden of Years, and would like to recommend the album that started the critical acclaim for this band, The Fallen Fruit. I would suggest picking both of them up at the…
View More Edensong – The Fruit Fallen
I’m sure that, like me, you often sit there wondering what traditional Chinese instruments would sound like in a rock band setting, particularly the venerable guqin of course. Well wonder no longer as Zhaoze take us on a beguiling, largely…
View More Zhaoze – Intoxicatingly Lost
A name almost as unknown in their Louisville, Kentucky backyard as over here in Blighty, Mike Sary’s French TV have been ploughing their own furrow, making albums and occasionally gigging since 1983. Ambassadors of Good Health and Clean Living is…
View More French TV – Ambassadors of Good Health and Clean Living
Is it really more than 5 years since this came out? The Fierce & The Dead have built a very loyal following in the intervening period and continue to go from strength to strength, being due to embark on their…
View More The Fierce And The Dead – If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe (2016 Remaster)
From the moment you hear the opening chords of From the Undertow there is a reassuring and comforting sense that you are in familiar waters. Both the style and the tone signal not only clear connections with And Then There…
View More Tony Banks – A Curious Feeling (Deluxe 2 Disc Expanded Edition)
St.Helens band Gravy Train were one of hundreds on the undercard of the nascent progressive rock scene at the turn of the ’60s into the ’70s, and they made their first two LPs for Philips’ underground subsidiary Vertigo. Their first…
View More Gravy Train – Second Birth & Staircase To The Day
As far as I am concerned Peter Gabriel is a musical God so one would expect this to be a project, including as it does former members of Gabriel’s touring band and an ex-member of progressive luminaries King Crimson, which…
View More The Security Project – Live 1 & Live 2
I receive a lot of albums to review and it is often a daunting task to wade through reams of, shall we say, disappointing music before hitting gold. In the case of Holon, I wasn’t familiar with the name –…
View More Holon – The Time Is Always Now