It’s been a while since I ventured into the experimental deep end of the pool, it’s been a struggle getting there past the wary learners and the middle distance swimmers, such is their ever growing number. An album by Killing…
View More Hypnopazūzu – Create Christ, Sailor Boy
Turning back the clock some ten years or more – around that period there seemed to be a steady influx of great music arriving from Japan. The wonderful KBB, along with notable side projects from violinist Akihisa Tsuboy. Asturias, especially their…
View More Lite – Cubic
Disciples of the riff. That is the core element, the engine that drives UK-based Heavy Prog outfit Kylver and their latest instrumental concept album The Island. Most Prog-leaning bands tend toward adornment, artfully layering as many elements as possible into…
View More Kylver – The Island
Following on from the recent release of the Hawkwind Charisma Years box set we are now presented with the RCA Active Years set, this one covering the three albums that the band released on the RCA label in 1981 and…
View More Hawkwind – The RCA Active Years 1981-1982
Hawkwind continue to have a long and interesting career, recently releasing their latest The Machine Stops album that proves their ability to provide consistent song writing. Here we have a box set re-release of four of their albums which were…
View More Hawkwind – The Charisma Years 1976-1979
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