Known predominantly for his easy listening, smooth jazz output back in the late 80's and through the 90's, Drεαming Of Trαins is a whole different kettle of fish entirely for jazz guitarist Ken N. Technical, lush and full of beautiful, ethereal arrangements not unlike some of the best records of the Pat Metheny Group, these are some really gorgeous jams that do much good for contemporary jazz's credibility!
Classy deep ambient record straight outta the synthesized, fantastical side of the mid 80's. Budd treads some interesting ground here, as if trying to one up both Brian Eno and David Sylvian simultaneously in a single fell swoop of the keyboard.
In other words, not a bad soundtrack to someone's hypothetical alternative take on Blade Runner. Makes for a helluva sleeping aid too!
Bloody excellent documentary detailing the golden years of Progressive Rock in the U.K. from the late 60's through the late 70's. 'Tis a bit lengthy I admit, but nevertheless a fascinating journey into a much-maligned genre.
The last stone cold Westcoast classic in a five-string album run going all the way back to 1975's Storm At Sunup, this is a remarkable recording from the Canadian captain of all things strange and passionate, Giиo Vαииεlli.
Listening to these awesome songs is strangely comparable to a line in the opening title track: "dreaming at night is like chasing a madman's rainbow": the journey is a nonsensical mess you'll wake up from later, but while caught within it...there's nothing else that matters.
"Bizarrely beautiful" is one phrase that occurred to me after listening through this wonderful, wonderful debut after purchasing it a week or so ago. "Somebody really wanted to do a Coheed & Cambria/Mr. Bungle cover band" was another.
In reality though, there is no simple summation to an album as genuinely progressive as Maps Of Non-Existent Places. It isn't afraid to blend anthems with atonal sax noodling, accessibility with the antiquated and uncommercially viable, or an emotionally charged chorus with violin/horn section brawlouts ('A Salesman's Guide To Non-Existence').
Thank You Scientist sound very, very very fresh in an era where its nigh impossible to stand out even when you do excel in your particular style. I do not have enough accolades for what these guys are doing, but don't take my word for it: check out their Bandcamp below!
Acid-infused progressive folk rock (the Californian sort) from the decade where such things were almost fashionable. The space rock and jazz influences that work their insidious magic through these arrangements make this something of a cult classic in my eyes, but let the cards fall where they will.
One of the best pop albums of the 1990's by a hefty margin and a textbook example of how good power pop should sound without getting stuck into typical album pacing issues. Lots to love here, including the cool as cool strut of 'New Mistake", minor FM classics like 'Bye, Bye, Bye' and 'The Ghost Of Number One' and the plucky acoustics of 'Russian Hill' that blooms like a flower into vintage, glorious Brian Wilson territory.
In other words, an absolute classic from two decades back, and essential listening if you have any interest in alternative rock. Or, hell, if you have any interest in music at all.
Classic L.A. New Wave pop from the early part of the 80's. The more studious among you should recognize 'Only The Lonely', 'Take The L' and 'Apocalypso', but this whole set comes as keytastic and ear-catching as you could ask for from the time and place, so rejoice!
One of the best progressive rock bands on the planet today happen to be Australian, led by the charismatic, Gabrielesque tone of Mark Trueack, eclectic soundscaping (think the pop sensibility of The Alan Parsons Project colliding headlong with Rush) and, in the context of this particular album, a surprisingly literal take on the concept of an overly-artificed world that has alienated your average person due to excessive technological and multimedia innovations and associated baggage.
Fans of modern progressive rock with big ideas, assloads of sax and a surprisingly immersive sense of songwriting, the line starts here!
Few bands in the progressive metal spectrum showed as much promise as Suspyre did when they stormed the world with 2005's The Silvery Image. That particular debut was a brilliant monstrosity, off kilter whilst remaining nigh-classical in its curious contortions and motifs. They drew favorable comparisons with everyone from Dream Theater to Meshuggah, and have since continued to refine and reinvent themselves as an entity beyond that crop of colleagues.
Thus, we come to their self-titled here in 2012, and in doing so have not only shattered expectations, but have gone far, far beyond their peers into places mostly unexplored in a metal subtext, bringing in everything from bossa nova elements to beach pop...hell, even smooth jazz. The riffs dazzle, the keyboards accentuate the instrumental crossfires, and vocalist Clay Barton has evolved into a real wonder over the last seven years, a soaring talent capable of handling everything from radio-friendly melodic material ('Divided Son', the beach-metal 'Cancun') to more challenging blitzkriegs that harken back to the over-technical velocity that turned these boys into a household name in the first place ('Tranquility And Stress', 'The Man Made Of Stone').
All in all, these songs prove to be some of the coolest and catchiest Suspyre have put to posterity as of the present, and the whole album thrills the senses even at its strangest, unmetallish moments. I honestly can't recommend it enough!
Primordial, filthy and sounding like something fresh out of an archeological dig for some kind of badass Californian pharaoh, Single Mothers are an L.A. act (led by singer-songwriter Harry Cloud) who are pioneering new, whacky ways to grind your brain to mush with their bizarre, yet beautiful take on buzzed out, modern day psychedelia.
Sonically, there's a billion comparisons but no true parallel within these seven cuts. There's a haziness throughout that brings back fond memories of everyone from Sleepy Sun a few years back to Kyuss, the Melvins... and even some of the more bizarre collectives out in Japan such as Acid Mothers Temple and Ghost. Unlike some of these aforementioned acts however, Cloud and co. never repeat themselves, and demonstrate diversity without fail: 'Tae's Watch' is comes across as gloriously pastoral despite some spaced out vocal madness early on, culminating in a blissful guitar solo in the second half of the piece, while instrumental 'Drowning' oscillates waves and waves of distortion that slowly gives way to soaring, choral serenity that soars above the noise.
My favorite cut, however, is the anthemic, chest-thumping 'Helicopter', a song that sounds straight out of the mid 90's in the best way possible. It's marijuana-laced pond scum with a pop sensibility, and I can think of a thousand bands out there who'd have killed to write something this good.
While I'm sorry to say I've never been to L.A., bands like Single Mothers keep giving me reasons to go and stay for a show, and that's not something I can say for just anyone.
Around the time that psychedelia was falling out of sorts across the world, there was an emergent force out of the deep bayous of Louisiana who traveled north and west, perplexing the world wherever they went and leaving only mystery and awe upon disembarking from the latest wharfside gig. If The Beatles had changed the way the world saw music from the outside in only a few years before Flower Power met its demise, then this band was shifting new terrain from the inside out...crawling out and about dimensions alien to all but a receptive, whimsical minority.
Since 1969 and counting, an anonymous eyeball-donning outfit known as The Residents have been and still remain the greatest enigma in today's musical world, the godfathers of all that's strange and outside convention in the world of rock n' roll. Sixty-something albums, countless live recordings and many a world-tour later, we are living in the second decade of a new century, and these strange beings from a time before most of us were born continue to dazzle new generations unabated by changes in sonic fashion or whatever major labels decide is worth trending.
It stands to reason, then, that last year's Coochie Brake (the titular marshland where this band supposedly spent their youth) may be the first time any relatively normal music-faring individual has encountered this esoteric ensemble...and they couldn't have found a better starting point.
To elaborate, The Residents only create (basically) two kinds of albums: those which are satirical in nature and/or those which tell some kind of bizarre, sometimes unfathomable tale. Enthusiasts of this bunch will regale you with praise upon their 70's period, the decade where some of this group's unquestionable classic additions to the canons of avant-garde rock were unveiled and released (the ambient histrionics of Eskimo, the unsettling Not Available, the synth-haunted Fingerprince), all of which were concept albums. Coochie Brake continues that tradition via an untypically semi-autobiographical account of the band's beginnings in their swampy homeland.
And it's a hell of a trip, like a dream you were thoroughly immersed within before the waking world reeled you back into the open air of day-to-day sense & logic. Sludgy guitars straight out of the fevered murk, horns, glittering electronic landscapes that juxtapose and enhance the production, topped by menacing monologues echoing above the dim, rich mixture in...Spanish? Guttural mantras reverberate like flesh-formed didgeridoos, and it's all so deliciously voodoo and indifferent to anything the group has done before, much less what anyone else is doing musically at the moment.
It's weird to the point of obsession, and richer than anything this one-of-a-kind act has done in decades. You could die happy with just this on repeat, cycling unto eternity as vague aspirations disintegrate with dawn's untimely arrival at your windowsill.
41 years ago, at the dawn of the age of all things progressive and weird in underground music, there was a band out of Kent called Comus who recorded & released a strange little record, titled First Utterance, to a lackluster market despite enthusiasm from people such as a then-coming-into-prominence David Bowie. It was an arcane, mad, even frightening album at times: the roars and blistering raw lyricism of Roger Wooten, in contrast to the strange, off-kilter acoustics and ethereal woodwinds, made for the kind of legendary release that only comes around in a genre once in a blue moon, and all you need to do is punch in the album at a site like RateYourMusic to see just how many people appreciate it's disturbing brand of acid folk in the realms of all things rootsy and stripped down.
Around the same time as First Utterance hit shelves (few as they were), singer/songwriter Scott Walker had begun to gain something of a cult audience thanks to his increasingly haunting take on baroque folk & pop with albums such as Scott 3 and Scott 4. The man has continued his decent into musical madness over the last few decades, has legions of fans across the world, and was even the subject of a documentary back in 2006!
Why is it, then, that when two individuals as prominent as Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) and Mikael Akerfeldt (Opeth) come together to make a wonderful, wonderful album that stands just as tall as the classic stuff I just mentioned, they get slapped around with negative reviews across the blog and review sphere by the very same type who are just as quick to praise the ghostly tuneage of the distant past?
In an age where music has become so pathetically disposable in the mind of your average listener and attention spans have waned to the point of oblivion en-masse, this record serves as 2012's ideal musical litmus test for the initiated and uninitiated alike: the people who get it will be in for a treat beyond treats, and the rest will simply shake their heads in bemused, even disappointed confusion.
From my perspective, Storm Corrosion is a modern day encapsulation of that part of the 70's that a lot of people don't appreciate like they should, the kind of esoteric, pitch-black self indulgence that either alienates your sensibilities...or sets them on fire in a way few LPs can. These six cuts, orchestrated and led by Akerfeldt's ever immersive guitar work, emanate a black forest from your speakers that lets in only a sliver of sunshine at the best of times: you won't see much unless you give yourself time to let your eyes adjust.
As the old idiom goes, there is nothing new under the sun: all that has been done has already been done. There will always be evil-sounding baroque folk that seems aimless to someone more accustomed to listening to Blink-182 or whatever Pitchfork is currently on board about. But when people lack knowledge and cannot contextualize or step back, you can bet that gems like this will get swept under the rug and given a poorly-labeled reputation that scares away new audiences who might very well love the music at first stream.
Unplug from the media machine and let this sucker spin without preconceptions, because Storm Corrosion defies the temporary and boils like a dream come true. Your mileage may vary, but this is a sonic experience that was built to last.
I won't be the first to say this, but the good voodoo doctor has proven to be a fine musical cure to many a folk's musical malaise over the decades: got a taste for some jazzy Happy Hour blues? 1978's City Lights cleans your clock all nice and spiffy-like. Feeling strange and swamped? '71's The Sun, Moon & Herbs will haunt you long after the thunder stops a'rollin'.
That being said, The Night Tripper really outdid himself here. A fresh, young ensemble cast brings the spookier elements out into the open against a plethora of bone-tight grooves and plenty of other meaty embellishments that, if nothing else, will take you out of your head and deep into the bayou where you belong. Monstrously good!
After singlehandedly redefining the violin for all jazz-fusion heads everywhere back in the 70's as part of Mahavishnu Orchestra and via some classic solo records of his own, Monsieur Ponτy steered his ship to new waters in the advent of the 80's, pushing the boundaries of just how far one could take experimental synth-violin in an era where, surprisingly....nobody had really tried yet.
The title track on this late-80's gem of his should be indicative enough at just how monstrously successful some of these experiments were, but I digress: if you be a'lookin' for smooth jazz that bores you out of your skull and doesn't hypnotize and amaze in equal measure, you are looking in the wrong freakin' place.
Vintage dub from a different time and place than today. John Peel was pretty nuts about this record, which doesn't surprise much: the beats and samples are chosen and contextualized to a peerless degree, unrivaled in the realms of 90's synthesisia until the arrival DJ Shadow and his ilk nearly half a decade down the line, with some of the downtempo cuts such as the sublime 'Out Of Heaven' and the cooly skitterish 'Cave Of Angels' coming off as downright prophetic in retrospect.
Mixed and partly produced by the legendary Alan Parsons, this glorious sun-dazed West Coast progressive pop debut is not only one of the best albums of the 1970's, but remains one of the best art rock crossover records in the entirety of recorded music history.
Intriguingly, although outfits like The Alan Parsons Project and Toto would be influenced by this album's sound to a substantial degree in the second half of the 70's, nothing sounds quite like it before or since. 'Nice, Nice, Very Nice' sports an addictive groove and some Kurt Vonnegut derived lyrical content, resulting in one helluva good idea, but it's on fine-tuned cuts like 'Holdin' On To Yesterday' and strange sprawlers along the lines of 'Drink Of Water' and 'Mama Frog' where this band's uncanny talent at blending killer melodies with proggy pathos is unveiled to a glorious maximum.
Many albums come great, yet will not last long in the grand scheme of things. An album this perfect, thankfully, doesn't seem to have that kind of problem. It's a tried and true American progressive rock classic, and still just as distinct and wonderful sounding today as it was nearly forty years ago.
Instrumental jazz-funk concept album that follows the story of the cult classic children's book by Neverending Story artist Ul De Rico, complete with English narration and robotically vocoded backing vocals!
And yes, this may indeed be the greatest album ever recorded in the history of mankind.
