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Mandala – Midnight Twilight

Mandala is a Sanskrit word describing a spiritual and ritual symbol used in Hinduism and Buddhism, representing the Universe. They place themselves in the genre of Folk-noir / Eastern-influenced progressive rock. But then, who doesn’t these days! Mandala initially seemed,…

Neil Campbell – eMErgence

With the dust barely settled on Neil Campbell’s previous release, Tabula Rasa Suite appearing in November 2014, then the news of another release appearing in March 2015, may cause the cynically inclined to ponder whether this may be a case of quantity over quality. Well there are few more cynical than I, however one thing I have discovered over the last decade is that not only does Neil Campbell constantly surprise, but also – seldom repeats himself. eMErgence is another such album and although in many respects a companion release to Tabula Rasa Suite, it treads a different path.

Änglagård / The Gift

[Photos by Leo Trimming] The Boston Music Rooms at The Dome, Tufnell Park, London 11th April 2015 As we are all well aware, Facebook has many negative aspects but these are outweighed by the positives, otherwise why would anyone bother…

Bill Nelson – After The Satellite Sings

The latest in Esoteric’s series of reissues from the massive back catalogue of singular Yorkshire artist Bill Nelson is this 1995 album, After The Satellite Sings. By 1995 I had largely, if not forgotten about Mr Nelson, drifted away from…

Yesterdays – Holdfénykert

Holdfénykert, originally issued in 2006 and recently re-released by Seacrest Oy Records, is the first album by Yesterdays, a Romanian based but ethnically Hungarian progressive rock band. They started out playing Yes covers so it is no coincidence that their…

The Samurai of Prog – The Imperial Hotel

This review is a little overdue after the 2014 release of this third album from the extravagantly named The Samurai of Prog, but it is certainly well worth investigating. Whereas the multinational collective that make up The Samurai have concentrated…

We Are Kin – Pandora

This is a mature and well realised album. Pandora is awash with melodic and varied compositions that are multi-layered and complex, plus there is an underlying narrative describing a potential future. You can get lost in it all. Not really…

Zauss – Diafonia Leitmotiv Waves

“It’s a really challenging music, and untrained ears could mistake it for an interference or diaphony. But maybe that is exactly what Zauss wants; giving life to disturbed signals, cascades of harmonic waves, alien noises and atonal distortion where sound…

Stearica – Fertile

Stearica, from Torino, Italy, have been around for about 10 years. This is only their second album so even though I have actually been living in a box for the last decade could I be blamed for never having heard…

Synaesthesia – Synaesthesia

I’ve been aware of this album for some time now. It keeps popping up in some of the Facebook groups I frequent and yet I’d just never got around to listening to it so it seems a little late in…