Fernhill Farm, Compton Martin Friday 19th & Saturday 20th August 2022 Returning after a three year absence, and for its eighth incarnation, the ArcTanGent festival has marked itself out as a kind of Glastonbury for the math-, post- and noise-rock…
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Long Distance Calling are a band that has a reputation for almost starting from scratch with each new album. I made the comment in my review for their previous album that the band “seem to take on a different aspect…
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De Boerderij, Zoetermeer Saturday, 20th August 2022 More than a year after the release of their most recent album, Altitude, at last Lifesigns finds itself in the Netherlands for a live show. “Finally” are the first words of founder/songwriter/singer/keyboardist John…
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Abingdon United Football Club, Oxfordshire 1st & 2nd July, 2022 A year ago, the first outing of this wonderful little festival, in aid of Glioblastoma Multiforme Research (for the particular form of brain cancer that ultimately took the life of…
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A Model Life is the excellent fifth album from John Mitchell’s Lonely Robot, and it’s not only his most personal album to date but could well be his most complete one, both musically and lyrically. With wonderful slabs of spritely…
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Back in 2020, Gazpacho inimitably added to the general strangeness of that momentous Covid year with their own particularly peculiar and unmistakably ‘Gazpacho-flavoured’ release, Fireworker, a darkly hypnotic concept album. The pandemic prevented them from presenting it in a live…
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Thank You From the Future is the very enjoyable second album from the Seattle-based quintet, Moon Letters. It is a fascinating amalgam of retro prog and rock influences with symphonic, jazz, blues and psychedelic echoes, but all mixed together in…
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Before I begin this review, I probably need to apologise to Cola de Zorro, as I suspect I have inferred meaning from this instrumental album that was not intended. The album translates as ‘The Desert Advances’, and I can only…
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Crossing a varied spectrum of influences and genres, and featuring nine well conceived tracks, Fearful Symmetry’s debut, Louder Than Words released in 2019, was a late but welcome discovery last year. In the review I commented about looking out for…
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Robin Armstrong’s imminent new Cosmograf album, Heroic Materials, focuses on environmental concerns, which seems particularly timely in a summer in which the UK has seen unprecedented temperatures and drought has been declared. Describing this album in that way may seem…
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