CANTERBURY/FUSION:
ROBERT WYATT & FRIENDS; Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Sept 1974 CD
Note that there's a warning on the back of the CD saying that the sound quality of the second set didn't match up to the quality of the first set - since both sets are on here and since I didn't recognise any difference in sound at all, I would suggest that this warning is a little over the top or that I have cloth ears.
Anyway, this is a document of his legendary (and I don't use that term lightly in this context) return to live performance following his accident that left him wheel-chair bound, and also hot on the heels of his much acclaimed debut album for Virgin Records, 'Rock Bottom'. Not only that, but here to help him is an all-star cast that numbers Dave Stewart (Egg, Hatfields., N Health), Hugh Hopper (Soft Machine, Isotope), Mike Oldfield (Kevin Ayers Whole World), Laurie Allan (Gong), Nick Mason (Pink Floyd), Fred Frith (Henry Cow), Mongezi Feza, Gary Windo, Julie Tippetts with Ivor Cutler & John Peel. The seventy plus minute set starts with a typically humorous intro from Peel before Wyatt delivers a typically off-the-wall version of the classic Soft Machine 2 album track 'Dedicated To You But You Weren't Listening', a recitation backed by angular jazzy bursts, that really makes you sit up and take notice before Wyatt and band head off into the smoother waters of the old Hopper track, 'Memories', showing that Wyatt's vocal had lost none of its uniqueness, strength and delicacy. Even moreso in the nine minutes of 'Sea Song' where sung lyrics and wordless vocal improv stand side by side above a slowly swinging, smoothly jazzy, trademark "Canterbury" band performance, leading into the next 'Rock Bottom' track in the form of 'A Last Straw', a track that continues the feel of 'Sea Song' and that then segues directly into nearly seven minutes of 'Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road' as Hopper's thundering bass and Feza's trumpet both whip up a storm on the two minute intro before Wyatt's vocal cruises in on top, the drums and guitar driving it all forward. From thereon, it's a classic set of performances from Wyatt and band, with one track sung solo from Julie Tippetts with just piano backing, and totally gorgeous, mid-way, as tracks originally from the Matching Mole debut, a Hatfield & The North track and in incendiary live version of Rock Bottom's 'Little Red Robin Hood Hit The Road' all make their presence felt. The set ends with a seven minute version of Wyatt's nearly hit I'm A Believer' and they're gone. It is truly one of THE classic live performances of the seventies Canterbury-UK Fusion crew and the stuff of which musical legends are made - essential listening!
EURO-ROCK/CONTEMPORARY:
CIRCLE: Tulikoira CD
Brand new studio album from the contemporary Finns who are now, if the acronym in the booklet is to be believed, labelling themselves as the "new wave of Finnish heavy metal", indicative, I guess, of where they see themselves heading. For a start there are only four tracks in forty three minutes, the last one lasting well over twenty minutes. But then you hear the opening track, like a mix of contemporary Krautrock with thrash metal, and suddenly you see their point. Oddly enough, the seven minutes go by in a flash because - surprise surprise - it works. Don't ask me how or why, but with the guitars blazing, a kind of electronic backdrop filling things out, hell-for-leather rhythm section and vocals so low - both in the mix and the sound - it all makes absolute sense. Which is more than can be said of the somewhat shorter 'Tulilintu' where the vocalist comes right upfront and the band attempt to be the Finnish answer to Iron Maiden - yes, this is heavy metal alright - and it seriously works, with a mid-section guitar solo that takes the roof off, and even though you can't understand a word, it's four minutes of good old fashioned metal. If the eight minute 'Berserk' is anything to go by, the band face a dilemma - they want to be rock gods, but they can't shake off their Krautrock roots - so you have a track that spends the vast majority of its running time as a largely instrumental, brooding slice of atmospheric Krautrock-style shoegazing that builds but never erupts. So, you arrive at the album's epic - a twenty four minute track called 'Puutiikeri' - and if you think this is heavy metal, you've got a problem - no, this is more of their previous trademark heavy Krautrock - starting with the song part and sounding more like a weird version of some lost seventies track by the likes of Can or Faust, and this song part takes you through to the four minute point whereupon the band takes flight and drives through a corking five minutes of searing guitar-led Krautrock style jamming, before a four or five minute more atmospheric section with hushed vocals ensues. Around twelve minutes, the drums and bass take on a distinctly Can-like hue, as they power up with bursts of Karoli-esque electric guitar, those trademark Schmidt-like electronic textures and the rhythm section sounding distinctly like seventies Can. You'd have hoped that this section would have built up for the next twelve minutes, but instead they soon go into another rhythm-free slice of atmospheric textural layering before, finally, around the eighteen minute point, that wonderful rhythm powers up once more and the band drive headlong to the end of the track, which, in hindsight, is just a superb slice of magic, vocals and all. So, here you have the rub - a case of identity - what does this band want to be. From the evidence of this CD it's hard to tell, yet the CD itself, works a treat providing you can accept what they were and what they are trying to become.
KOREKYOJINN: Isotope CD
A trio featuring members of Ruins, Altered States & Bondage Fruit together on one steaming live performance, a veritable instrumental supertrio of explosive proportions. Just electric guitar, electric bass and drums, they inject more notes, angular rhythms polyrhythms, chords and scales per minute than most others do in an album, thus you hear an immaculately recorded concert that sounds more studio based than you'd believe. They play everything at relative speed but cover so much ground at right angles, upside down and with rhythms plus guitar chords and notes splaying out all over the place, so much so that it sounds like Captain Beefheart's Magic Band with John McLaughlin on lead guitar and Billy Coobham on drums playing instrumental Beefheart tracks at twice the speed, or a more fusion-y instrumental Cream on speed!! With the average length track around 5 minutes, more dynamics than you'd credit, moments where the serenity has to appear before the band explode, this is a must for everyone who likes intricately played, constantly developing, powerful, dynamic and positively incendiary guitar work in a trio setting.
NEKROPOLIS 23: Tidal Shift DVD
A near two hour DVD professionally shot of the band live in the studio, so you get perfect sound and vision throughout, on what is effectively a live studio concert without an audience.
What band? I thought you might ask that…………..
This is a stunning line-up of solid electric instrumental Krautrock, led by bassist Peter Frohmader, together with ex-Amon Duul II musician Chris Karrer on guitar and violin, plus Udo Gerhards on keys and synths, Holger Roder on drums and Matthias Friedrich on violin. The music is tight and solid, powerful and passionate with some superb playing from all musicians and the ensemble as a whole. There are 10 tracks .recorded in 2004 plus a bonus track from 1983. If you're a fan of classic, well-played, intricate and driving instrumental Krautrock, then you have to have this DVD - essential listening and fascinating to watch them play it.
GENERAL:
JOE BONAMASSA: Had To Cry Today CD
Now you'd think that the world of quality blues-rock would, like its metal bretheren, be full to overflowing with bands just striving to be the next big thing - maybe it is, and I don't get to hear - but so often it seems that you get one that rises to the top and eclipses all others, then you have to wait an eternity for the next one to come along. Well, we had Stevie Ray Vaughan, we had Jeff Healey, we even had Kenny Wayne Shepherd! But now we have this guy - and he exudes enough electricity and energy to power half of Dakota with a single wave of the guitar. Yes folks, welcome to the current mightiest thing in blues-rock today - and this sensational album.
The opener lets you in strongly but gently, but then 'Travelin' South' comes along with a searing electric slide lead and just tears the roof off. After this, what else could you do but settle back into slow and languid mode - and that's what happens as the beautiful strains of lovingly crafted and excellently played slow blues, 'Reconsider Baby', comes oozing out of the airwaves, a guitar lead that's seemingly been "done" so many times but with feeling and passion like this, sounds just as fresh as if it were the first time you'd heard it. With strong organ backing, a gloriously impassioned gravel-voiced vocal and the tastiest of rhythm sections, this is slow blues at its finest. The full range of the guy is shown off also on the next track, 'Around The Bend', an electro-acoustic shuffling number with plaintive yet strong vocal, ascending guitar chords and deep bass, as the song exudes the atmosphere that the lyrics suggest, and a truly strong and heartfelt slice of country-blues that slowly intensifies and ends up at a huge sounding electric guitar lead of incredibly satisfying proportions as the production expands and the feel of anguish, yearning, expectation and satisfaction, all take hold. After that it's the rolling sprightly electro-acoustic country blues romp that is the instrumental 'Revenge Of The 10 Gallon Hat', three minutes of music to put a smile on your face, before we hear the emotive and emotive five minutes of brooding blues that is 'When She Dances'. Then comes the supercharged and dynamic strains of 'Had To Cry Today', a sort of bluesy American version of Thunder and just superb. The huge-sounding and emotive 'The River' can't fail to remind you of Led Zeppelin's 'When The Levee Breaks' and is every bit as stunning, at five minutes, no way long enough - one you just have to put on again. 'When The Sun Goes Down' continues this feel in an electro-acosutic setting, but still driving and on fire as it builds a head of steam and takes on a roaring almost Rory Gallagher guise as slide guitars, acoustic guitars, red hot electric guitars and a driving rhythm section plus wailing harmonica and impassioned vocals, all deliver this steaming slice of addictive blues - another to play to death. The album ends with the two minute acoustic instrumental that is 'Faux Mantini' and that's it!! One stormer of an album - not a second wasted, not a second out of place and just superb.
ALAN HULL: Pipedream Remaster+Bonus Tracks CD
In terms of studio albums from the seventies, THIS was THE one every Lindisfarne fan should own. His first solo album, it nevertheless featured a set of tracks that were well in the traditions of the great Lindisfarne repertoire of the time, but several ended up being live favourites of the band. Although generally more introspective and with less jaunty, full-sounding arrangements, the standard of lyric writing and song arrangement sums up the guy's talent. You get the single, 'Numbers (Travelling Band)' which was the consummate Lindisfarne song not done by the band but sounding as though it had been, with its slowly addictive good-time chorus. Then there's a typically bawdy slice of English humour in the form of 'Country Gentleman's Wife' while a song like the magnificently slow and lyrically brilliant 'Drug Song' is just superb, beautifully arranged and always a treat. 'Blue Murder' is a more typically rocking number from the band-esque style, while the impassioned rendition of 'Money Game' is as true now as ever. There are six bonus tracks, two being the immortal and dark humour of 'Drinking Song' plus its B-side, then you get four track from a "Sounds Of The Seventies" BBC Bob Harris session, including the previously unreleased and strikingly accurate portrayal of late night life on the London Tube network in 'Down On The Underground' with another homage to drink in the form of the previously unreleased 'Ginandtonix All Round' and 'One More Bottle Of Wine'. With his trademark vocal delivery in fine form throughout a consistent album, this remains to this day one of THE classic singer-songwriter albums of the seventies.
JACK THE LAD: It's Jack The Lad Remastered+Bonus Tracks CD
When Lindisfarne split in 1973, and went on to form Jack The Lad along with old friend and fellow Geordie Billy Mitchell, the new band underwent numerous line-up changes in the course of its existence. Only Billy went the full distance. Before the vital line-up change and the direction that saw them heading more and more into deepest Tyneside, lyically and structurally in music terms, what was essentially Lindisfarne without Alan Hull & Ray Jackson in the form of the original Jack The Lad line-up, made what is probably one of THE best folk-rock albums of the seventies and certainly one of THE most underrated albums of that genre, to this day. First off, the songs overall are just so addictive. Brilliantly written, sounding for all the world like a less Geordie Lindisfarne but with more harmonies and some great vocal performances all round, every track is a joy to hear. It's worth the price of admission alone for the song 'Fast Lane Driver' where the dangers of motorway driving are eloquently illustrated on a slice of smouldering, building, mid-paced folk-rock that is sung to perfection, lyrically perfect and just one of THE great songs of the time, let alone this album, with some great work from the guitar and keyboards plus the impassioned vocal. Then you get the four-part harmonies and catchy tunes of the two singles 'Boilermaker Blues' and 'Why Can't I Be Satisfied', the former so beautiful yet addictive, the latter with a chorus that will be in your head for days. There's a guest appearance from Steeleye Span's Maddy Prior on vocals on 'Song Without A Band' while the original ending track, 'Lying On The Water' is pure Lindisfarne. The album, now sounding just fantastic, is completed with the missing links of three bonus tracks that includes the glorious and gorgeous single 'One More Dance' and its B-side, plus 'Make Me Happy'. Each of the band takes a lead vocal somewhere down the line, but they all have great voices, solo and in harmony, and this album is, for me, better than anything ever put out by Lindisfarne - it's got a warmth, a passion and more vocal and arrangement variation but its consistency and the fact that you can play it forever without tiring of hearing it, makes this one of the seventies "lost" classics - take a tip - discover it now - you won't regret a minute of it.
JACK THE LAD: The Old Straight Track Remaster+Bonus Track CD
JACK THE LAD: Rough Diamonds Remaster+Bonus Track CD
Following Rod Clements departure, things took a strange turn in the camp - in many ways the band went back to their roots, both in terms of habitation and music, for there was an undoubted shift into more "trad" folk territories and songs of a much more obvious "Tyneside" derivation. Thus, on the second album, 'Old Straight Track', we have the links with the previous album in the form of the bonus tracks 'Home Sweet Home' and 'Big Ocean Liner' that are the usual mix of addictive choruses, lyrical yearnings for places close to home and far afield, and just class slices of tune-laden folk-rock. But the main body of the album consisted of much more "trad" oriented and less folk-rock, more overtly folk, oriented tracks, so that songs like 'Weary Whaling Grounds' and 'Peggy (Overseas With A Soldier)' are more predictable yet good folk songs, while the jaunty 'Oakey Strike Evictions' and 'Buy Broom Buzzems' saw the infusion of the Geordie influences by the shedload, admittedly mixed with some neat folk arrangements. But the title track and a song like 'The Wurm' are quite heavy going for yer average folk-rock fan. Overall, a good album, but nowhere near achieving the lofty heights of the debut.
'Rough Diamonds', the third album, saw a walk away from the Geordie intensity of the second album, and tried to combine the addictive writing of the first album with the trad nature of the second, and so you get an out and out classic such as 'Rocking Chair', an infectious number that really builds into a brilliant song with vocals that sound like he really means business. Another single, 'Gentlemen Soldier' ploughs similar addictive and anthemic folk-rock furrows, while 'My Friend The Drink' and 'Smokers Coughin' bring back the humour but allied to some great arrangements, song-writing and vocals. Overall, it's a much more fun, altogether less intense, and wonderfully arranged, played and written album than before, and while not possessing the incredible magic of the debut (what could?), it remains an outstanding slice of English folk-rock.
LINDISFARNE: Live Remaster+Bonus Tracks CD
The studio classics such as 'Nicely Out Of Tune' & 'Fog On The Tyne' were HUGE selling albums back in the seventies that saw the band's reputation and sales soar, so much so that they could do sell-out tours of the UK and, in concert, the spirit was so much greater than on the studio albums, as the band dived headlong into providing great songs well played and a good time for all. But when the inevitable live album came on vinyl - this one - you felt a tinge of disappointment, in that they'd missed a trick here - the short song selection was not a good one and the inclusion of a rather epic version (still not the full thing on vinyl) of 'We Can Swing Together' gave the album an unsatisfactory, unbalanced feel.
NOT ANY MORE!!!!!!
Now, excellently remastered for CD, restored to its full track list and original running order, with no less than six bonus tracks, the balance is now spot on, the song selection making complete sense and the conclusion of the main set with the rousing 'We Can Swing Together' sounding so completely natural. Gems such as 'No Time To Lose', 'Meet Me On The Corner', 'Lady Eleanor' and many more of their best, more spirited early tracks, just convey enthusiasm, passion and excitement from start to finish, the set now ending on a gorgeously anthemic 'Clear White Light'. What was once the album that the committed fan of the early band used to think long and hard about buying, has now become the essential missing link to the classic Lindisfarne collection - and you can't say fairer than that.
LYNYRD SKYNYRD: Poison Whiskey CD
Legit Russian import in digi-pak and only way of getting the first CD of rare tracks that was originally only available in the lavish and expensive box set. Complete with booklet and full colour pics, this CD is a snapshot of demos and previously unreleased tracks from the band line-ups between 1970 and 1974, with three tracks from '70 and '71, five from '73 and one from '74. With mostly shorter tracks, it's a focus on the song-writing strengths of the band but still with high-flying and electrifying guitar work throughout, from the sizzling slide work on the smouldering blues of 'Mr Banker' through the swaggering blues workouts on 'Down South Junkin' to the searing heat of 'Gimme Three Steps (Demo)'. If you're a fan, you've not got the box set and want the unreleased early tracks on a very collectable CD, then this one's for you.
PHIL MANZANERA: 50 Minutes Later CD
They say everything goes full circle, so it will come as no surprise to find that this album features contributions from no less than Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt and fellow Roxys Paul Thompson & Andy Mackay, in addition to a whole stack of other musicians, the result being an album that's like an updated answer to the first couple of Eno albums, in terms of its consistency mixed with its variation and eclecticism. Take the first two tracks - two STUNNING songs - the first a sort of fusion-y AOR power anthem with some steaming electric guitar lead work, soaring harmony vocals, huge sounding production, strong rhythm section and a feel that just takes you onwards and upwards every time you hear it - just sensational. Then comes the aptly titled 'Technicolour UFO', a lyrical homage to the late sixties with its text references to Ayers, Beefheart and the UFO Club, an arrangement that's a mix of Rolling Stones & Roxy Music, a feel that could be some lost sixties anthem given an AOR makeover, and a song that is every bit as addictive as the first. But, just as you think you've got this album sorted, you couldn't be more wrong as 'That's All I know' emerges, beginning as an acoustic ballad with gentle guitar and synth washes before deep bass and solid drums are added, slowly rhythmic, and the song goes into an almost tango-esque rhythm as the Tears For Fears style vocal takes the ballad forward, a complete contrast but another gem. Then it's onto the six minute '50 Minutos Mastrade' beginning with street sound samples, presumably from Spain, before the track takes on a brooding atmosphere with distant effects and strummed guitars, treatments and keyboards, occasional whispered vocal and a gorgeous wordless vocal and lead cornet from Wyatt that transforms the piece into a slowly heady jazzy languid slice of Hispanic magic, once more, totally different from what's come before, but, as you'll see, in the context of what turns out to be a most varied and adventurously structured album, making complete sense. The song 'One Step' hearkens back to things like 'K-Scope' and 'Listen Now' while 'Swimming' is nearer 'Five Miles Out'-era Oldfield style song-writing and exceedingly restful as well as being solid and beautiful. 'Bible Black' begins in song mode, slowly rhythmic with deep booming bass, rattling drums and what sounds like a mellotron but isn't as the slightly echoed vocals soar slowly over the ever expanding instrumental backdrop, again the harmonies seriously excellent, as the song portion leads into the instrumental main body of the five minute track with its mix of Eastern-sounding rhythms and atmospherics in a slowly unfolding, smoothly flowing, melodic musical universe that evolves, a restrained but sizzling mix of lead and rhythm guitars leading the way. The nine minute 'Till The End Of The Line' spends the first five minutes of its life as a slowly building, intensifying song, starting from acoustic roots and strengthening as it goes, before fading to a suitably cosmic instrumental coda, while the end and "bonus" track is an Eno-led treatment called 'Enotonik Bible Black' that's largely instrumental and features 9 musicians, including Manzanera, Mackay, Wyatt, Eno & Thompson plus Quiet Sun's Bill Macormick and is one amazing slice of music that mixes all sorts of things into one huge bubbling melting pot. Overall, then, this is varied - one for people with open minds - but it's rewarding and ultimately a seriously adventurous and
consistently delivered album.
GARY MOORE BAND: Grinding Stone CD
From 1973 - remember that - it's important!!
Before he joined the likes of Thin Lizzy, Colosseum II and beyond, before he achieved world wide recognition as one of the premier heavy rock and fusion guitarists - before all that - this guy led a short-lived trio and they released the one album. It ain't fusion, it ain't metal - it's seventies rock - tasty seventies rock - seventies rock with long tracks, blues influences, loads of red hot guitar leads and excursions, seventies rock that wasn't what you'd call "heavy" but it rocked, for sure - although there's even more to it than that. Take the opener for example, a near ten minutes of the instrumental title track that is a vehicle for some searing and quality electric guitar work from the budding genius as the always dependable rhythm section of Pearse Kelly & John Curtis provides the foundations on top of which Moore's guitar work just shines. This continues on the more bluesy, more song-oriented but no less intense blues-rock that is the six minute 'Time To Heal' with a series of scorching guitar leads as the track races along, quality blues-rock at its finest and original seventies best - you simply can't argue with playing this good! After all this, it's time to rest, and seven glorious minutes of the bluesy and undeniably "seventies" ballad, 'Sail Across The Mountain', unfolds with some chiming guitars, a heartfelt vocal from Moore, lilting piano backdrop and tasty rhythm section work. Very much a song a opposed to a vehicle for any guitar work, it's one that works wonderfully well in the context of the album as a whole. Following a two minute instrumental from synths and piano, it's into the album's epic piece, all seventeen minutes of 'Spirit', a track that starts off at a sprightly pace with urgent vocals, still that bluesy seventies feel, some seriously tasty guitar lead work and a driving piece with organ backdrop to add to the feel, as the guitar solo breaks out with some stunning lead work from Moore, the instrumental break veering off into what sounds like classic early seventies Santana and simply sensational to just under seven minutes when the rhythms drop, and it leaves the Santana-like guitar with organ backing that slowly fades amid lightly rattling percussion. From the silence emerges an echoed, sustained, almost Floyd-like guitar lead that, with a synth and organ cyclical backdrop and crashing cymbals, slowly rises up into a steaming and red hot bluesy guitar lead that takes your breath away as it continues its ascent above the strong backdrop right onto the fifteen minute point where the band suddenly returns to the opening section of the piece, as another few seconds of vocal are heard, before the band launches into the finale with guitar, organ, bass and drums providing a smoking outro to the seventeen and a half minute end. A superb piece that simply never sounds tired, even 32 years later!! The album ends with five and a half minutes of driving electro-acoustic blues in the form of 'Boogie My Way Back Home', a smoking blues that starts slowly then takes on a familiar and seventies styled blues-boogie dimension as it cruises its way to the end of the album, with Moore playing a searing electric lead slide guitar that just rocks. Overall, yet another criminally ignored and highly underrated seventies album that many who simply don't like what Moore later turned his hand to, but those that love great guitar work with a bluesy influence that is undeniably seventies and totally timeless, would all do well to investigate - you'll be pleasantly surprised at what you find!!!
GUITAR MUSIC/GREAT GUITARISTS:
ROBERT FRIPP: Love Cannot Bear - Soundscapes - Live In The USA CD
The whole point about Fripp's soundscapes series of compositions, improvisations and concert recordings is atmosphere - mood - feel. To appreciate this music, you have to give yourself to it, immerse yourself in it, devote your attention to it and lose yourself in it. Then, and only then, will it give back to you, the rewards that you hope will be forthcoming. Sounds positively religious, doesn't it? Well, yeh, actually, and that's just about right, for this is extremely spiritual music. In the past we've had everything from heavenly soundscapes to almost abrasive amorphous drifting. Well, I'm pleased to be able to report that this is choc full of the former - and utterly blissful the whole affair is. Consisting of 8 tracks, the CD features textural and layered expanses of guitar-derived cosmic clouds, that drift, soar, float and flow in sound patterns that range from electronic-sounding multi-synths style space to almost classical sounding grandeur. The fact that there are no actual tunes, melodies or rhythms present in this music and yet it succeeds on every level, is a testament to the small mobile unit producing it - a musician who clearly feels what he is producing, with every fibre of his being - and the gloriously delicious, ever expanding, fluffy white clouds that fill the heart's sunny skies with sunshine, allied to the darkness of a slowly descending sun at the end of a warm summer's day, make this selection of guitarscapes, arguably THE best you've ever heard to date from the master of "Frippertronics" and this is one gorgeously addictive album of mood music that you will enjoy anytime, any place, anywhere - just perfect!
MOGWAI: Government Commissions - BBC Sessions 1996-2003 CD
Introduced by the late incomparable John Peel, this is a nearly completely instrumental set featuring seventy five minutes of truly sensational music. Without any sleeve notes to give you any indication of when the tracks were recorded, you simply have the music to go on and right from the start, become hooked in the natural flow of things. The opening four minute track, 'Hunted By A Freak' is intense, uplifting and open, all to the point of being almost spiritual, as lead guitar melodies rise above a swirl of rhythm guitar and slowly driving rhythm section, with a very distant almost choral backdrop adding to the soundscapes that unfold. If that uplifted you then the next six minutes of 'R U Still In It' will relax you to the point of bliss, as this gorgeously slow flowing river of chiming guitars provides a largely rhythm-free soundscape that is simply beautiful, utterly breathtaking and so full of feeling, you wonder why all guitar music can't sound this good. Three minutes of 'New Paths To Helicon Pt II' continues in a similar vein only this time with a languid rhythm section adding a touch of solidity to the slowly melodic dual guitars, again, just gorgeous. 'Kappa' provides four minute that starts quietly but then picks up a bit of intensity from the guitars which break open briefly before settling back into languid mode as the wonderfully atmospheric, melodic music continues from the band as a whole. The six minute 'Cody', a brilliant slice of shoegazing song-writing with hushed vocal appearing briefly as the blissful guitars, lilting but solid bass and gentle drums all combine to produce something that will melt your heart and make you go weak at the knees - a thing of great beauty, both fragile and strong at the same time. Now by this point, those of you who know this band must be thinking that they'd turned a new corner and dropped the staggering explosive power that they had shown in the past - far from it, as eighteen minutes of Like Herod' amply illustrates. This track spends most of its time - the odd atmospheric bridge appearing briefly - in explosive mode, with the guitars, bass and drums set on stun, intense as hell and roaring like a caged tiger - just one almighty maelstrom that will have your eyes on stalks as you experience the sheer latent electricity that the band conjures, power rather than force, as the whole thing rolls inexorably forward on waves of feedback, searing lead guitars, dirty riffs, heavy disembowelling bass and solid crunching drums - simply jaw-dropping. The four minute 'Secret Pint', another song, sounds more like early Popol Vuh with a hushed male vocal on top, as piano, soaring violin-like guitar and slowly moving rhythmic ice-flow create another positively spiritual slice of magic. Seven minute of Superheroes Of BMX' is both intense and beautiful, then smouldering and sizzling before returning to the melodic river of dreams as the guitars sail into the horizon above deep bass, textural effects to provide a dramatic backdrop, and drum machine - sheer musical eloquence. New Paths To Helicon Pt I' spends the first four of its eight minutes being all languid and blissful before this huge sea of guitars breaks out above crisp and solid bass and drums to create this panoramic sea of guitar soundscaping that's both intense and yet captivating at the same time, ending on a minute and a half of cosmic beauty, melodic, atmospheric and simply wonderful. The album ends with just under five minute of 'Stop Coming To My House, in sound and structure terms, virtually ending as it began with uplifting guitars, slow military styled drums, deep bass rivers and choral sounding backdrops, with a mid section that's incredibly dense yet ethereal, as almost mellotron-like soundscapes merge with the guitar squall before ending on rolling waves of pure guitar heaven. Full of feeling from start to finish, this is undoubtedly a work of great genius - and that's no exaggeration!!
STINKING LIZAVETA: Caught Between Worlds CD
Actually, the title couldn't have been more apt - this is an instrumental trio of electric guitar, bass and drums who play a smoking brand of guitar-led music that inhabits Krautrock, psychedelic and hard rock fusion areas of music with soaring compositions that are generally delivered with a grungy edge and plenty of spiralling leads. Taken at a variety of paces, sometimes within the same song, the music has a ferocity to it that really hits you in the gut while at the same time possessing the sound and dynamics of a kind of psychedelic-Krautrock jamming. Melodic without being tune-laden, heavy without being metal, this is one dirty cauldron of music with a smoking brew that you can't resist, guitar influences many and varied but more like a cross between Guru Guru's Ax Genrich, Mahogany Rush's Frank Marino and Pink Fairies Paul Rudolph, to name but three that crossed my mind.
