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
As we approach the end of the year we start to look back at stand out albums of the year, and wonder if our initial thoughts about a newly released album will stand up to scrutiny after a significant period…
View More Cosmograf – The Unreasonable Silence
The marvellous cross-genre Leicester band Family had a U.K. hit earlier in the same year Looking On was released called Strange Band, which certainly applied to them, but could also have been just as easily a theme tune for The…
View More The Move – Looking On
IZZ, that quirky New York band that makes some very fine progressive rock music, is off on another pop-oriented compilation. Ampersand: Volume 2 is a collection of songs that explore the different strengths of their sound beyond traditional progressive themes.…
View More IZZ – Ampersand: Volume 2