Ryo Okumoto, keyboard wizard in Spock’s Beard, appears to have got bored with the hiatus that his main band seem to be on, and so has decided to form his own version of the band and record an album. Well,…
View More Ryo Okumoto – The Myth of the Mostrophus
mobiUS are a new band which came together in the summer of 2021, formed by a group of session players led by the ‘creative architect’ Tim Newcombe. Their debut album, Make the Promise, is released by White Knight Records, which…
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Don’t be put off by the title of Disco Lasers, folks! Ebony Buckle has produced one of the most beautiful, evocative and thoughtful debut albums I have come across by a female vocalist in any genre. Ebony has a truly…
View More Ebony Buckle – Disco Lasers
The old proverb that ‘Good things come to those who wait’ couldn’t be more appropriate for You Have It All, the superb second album from Adam Sears and his Lobate Scarp symphonic prog project. 10 years since the band’s debut,…
View More Lobate Scarp – You Have It All
Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía’s innovative Friday Night in San Francisco was recorded at the Warfield Theater, with the exception of one track, on 5th December 1980. Released in April the following year, the album has…
View More Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Paco De Lucía – Saturday Night in San Francisco
The Tiktaalik, discovered in the Canadian Arctic in 2004 by fossil hunters, was a freshwater fish living around 375 million years ago in the Devonian period, but bearing many characteristics found in four-legged land animals that would follow. It is…
View More Charlie Griffiths – Tiktaalika
How this group has not gotten my attention before this release is a confounding mystery. After all, I love atmospheric, broody, melody-laden, superbly sung tunes, and this packs all of that in. For transparency (and for those who do not…
View More Returned To The Earth – Fall of the Watcher
O2 Forum, Kentish Town, London Wednesday, 27th July 2022 I felt a bit Transatlantic myself this time: flying via Schiphol airport in Amsterdam to the United Kingdom over the North Sea, a tributary of the Atlantic Ocean. I took the…
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This is Schnauser’s first release since their highly praised Irritant album, which I reviewed for TPA in 2017. The band first came to my attention when I saw them supporting Knifeworld in a Bristol pub and I was impressed with…
View More Schnauser – Altra Seccatura
An Englishman, an Irishman and a Frenchman walk into a pub… Englishers are famously a reserved lot. Some learn to play musical instruments but hide themselves away, worried that someone might hear them before they become competent and smash their…
View More CKRAFT – Epic Discordant Vision