The late ’70s and early ’80s has been a fertile era for Cherry Red Records, with releases covering the heydays of various genres of music that rode the wave of the commercial and creative booms for popular music at that…
View More Various Artists – New Guitars in Town: Power Pop 1978 – 1982 [3CD Boxset]Category: Album Reviews
Melanie Mau & Martin Schnella – The Rainbow Tree
My first experience with the German acoustic duo of Melanie Mau and Martin Schnella was at New Jersey’s Progstock festival. Mau (vocals) and Schnella (acoustic guitar & vocals) are typically abetted onstage by percussionist Simon Schroder, performing on various hand…
View More Melanie Mau & Martin Schnella – The Rainbow TreeThe Aristocrats – DUCK
The Aristocrats… is there really anything left to be said about this obscenely talented band? Guthrie Govan, Marco Minnemann and Bryan Beller have spent more than a decade releasing albums of mind-bending – but always with a point – content…
View More The Aristocrats – DUCKMariusz Duda – AFR AI D
Riverside’s frontman Mariusz Duda is a man brimming with ideas and creativity. Since 2008 his main side-project has been the rather different sonic worlds of Lunatic Soul, characterised by widescreen soundscapes infused with either folk or more electronic inflections, and…
View More Mariusz Duda – AFR AI DSBB – Live Cuts Katowice 2012
At the end of the 1970s, progressive rock music, or symphonic rock as it was also known at the time, found itself in a difficult period. Partly due to their own fault (arrogance, delusions of grandeur) and partly due to…
View More SBB – Live Cuts Katowice 2012Midas Fall – Cold Waves Divide Us
Midas Fall have released their fifth album, the ethereal Cold Waves Divide Us, six years after their well-received Evaporate won the PROG magazine ‘Limelight’ award in 2018. Some may not be familiar with the atmospheric soundscapes of this post rock…
View More Midas Fall – Cold Waves Divide UsNektar – Recycled [5CD Remastered Boxset]
In the past, I’ve been critical of Nektar’s merits and made anything I actually liked by the group seem like some sort of a guilty pleasure. The snide remarks stop here. Loosely hanging my expectations on the albums’ ProgArchives ranking,…
View More Nektar – Recycled [5CD Remastered Boxset]PAKT – No Steps Left to Trace
The ‘P’ in PAKT is Mrs Jones’s lad Percy, the virtuoso fretless bass player on all the Brand X albums from Unorthodox Behaviour in 1976 to Manifest Destiny 21 years later. On one of those albums – I think 1982’s…
View More PAKT – No Steps Left to TraceLind – A 3rd Ear Conversation
Well, this is a fascinating little nugget I’ve been playing a lot since it arrived, and I’m still discovering parts I seem to be noticing for the first time. A 3rd Ear Conversation, sub-titled The Justification of Reality, Part II,…
View More Lind – A 3rd Ear ConversationThe Pineapple Thief – It Leads to This
The Pineapple Thief have been beguiling listeners since its roots as a Bruce Soord solo project in 1999. Bruce is clearly a busy man; aside from his burgeoning career in producing and remixing, he also released the diaphanously fragile solo…
View More The Pineapple Thief – It Leads to This