Pure Reason Revolution return with their new album Above Cirrus, two years after their impressive 2020 return Eupnea, which came 10 years after their initial break-up. Eupnea was their ‘re-birth’ album, borne out of the emotional turmoil Jon Courtney went…
View More Pure Reason Revolution – Above Cirrus
Imagine a collaboration between Enya and Enigma, and Leprous and Liquid Tension Experiment. Now don’t, because that still won’t work as those bands all have quite Western sounds. So imagine that collaboration by similar artists with a more Eastern sound.…
View More OU – One
Impressive and thought-provoking sixth album release from the eloquent and eclectic UK prog rock band, Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate. Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate (HOGIA) are a London-based progressive rock band fronted by Malcolm Galloway (on vocals, lead guitar,…
View More Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate – The Confidence Trick
Reviewing this album honestly feels like cheating. Most albums we humble scribblers have to review require us to take a leap into the unknown to something between the latest sensation and an abysmal waste of time. Scheherazade and Other Stories,…
View More Renaissance – Scheherazade and Other Stories [Remastered & Expanded 3-disc Box Set]
Kingdom Two Crowns is in some ways quite a surprising sophomore album from Norwegian “pop” band Kalandra – and in others not surprising at all. I said of the opening track to their debut, The Line, that Borders was “an…
View More Kalandra – Kingdom Two Crowns: Norse Lands Soundtrack (Extended)
By the late ’60s and early ’70s, the blues influences that had inspired the likes of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page were maturing into new genres of rock music, each developing their own identities with progressive rock…
View More Wishbone Ash – Argus (with Martin Turner)
There is always a sense of anticipation when news arrives of a new album from Finland’s wonderful Von Hertzen Brothers. Since they began making inroads into the consciousness of music lovers outside their homeland, they have gone from strength to…
View More Von Hertzen Brothers – Red Alert in the Blue Forest
Just over a decade ago I discovered a band called From.uz who, perhaps unsurprisingly given their name, hail from Uzbekistan. They had just released an album called Quartus Artifactus, which I imagine is probably Latin for fourth artefact. Regardless, this…
View More Fromuz – The Asymmetric Rules
Drongo are a band that hail from Kristiansand, Norway. There is an air of mystery about them as not much information is readily available, except that they refer to themselves as providing ‘space disco’. Maybe that mystery is not a…
View More Drongo – Drongo 2
“This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.” Quite possibly the most famous and most quoted words from T S Eliot, ending his poem The Hollow Men. Hungary’s Ghost Toast, however, have chosen to…
View More Ghost Toast – Shade Without Color