The Bombay Royale - Live Music at RN 2014 / Millennium Stage 2014

 The Bombay Royale - Live Music at RN 2014

 

 The Bombay Royale - Millennium Stage 2014 - Part 1

 

 The Bombay Royale - Millennium Stage 2014 - Part 2

 

The Bombay Royale has been impressing festival goers in Europe over the summer with their extravagant show. After a triumphant set at Glastonbury last month, Stage 2 at the 49th Cambridge Folk Festival became home for the Spaghetti-Bollywood disco dancers. I sat down with three members of the Australian 11-piece to find out their past, present, and future. So, without further ado: Under the costumes with Parvyn Kaur Singh, Andy Williamson, and Shourov Bhattacharya.

Music Review Database: So first I want to know who came up with the name The Bombay Royale?

Andy: I did.

MRD: What does it represent?

Andy: I was playing around with names and initially I was going to call it The Mumbai Royale or something, but pretty quickly actually found out half of India still calls it Bombay. But more than that, it was actually that music we were kind of inspired by and the music we were playing was all definitely from Bombay. It was from the 70s and 60s and that period. The royale part, perhaps it was from Casino Royale, well every second street in India has a royale, between all of that it just seemed like a, you know.

MRD: We think you sound like Kill Bill meets The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, is that a good representation of your music?

Andy: Tarantino is awesome, but he's fairly derivative I guess, he's taking those styles and all those old films and kind of having a play with them, which is sort of what we're doing as well. If you listen to the old Bollywood films, watch and listen to old stuff from India in the 60s and 70s, there’s that sound that he really loved, Ennio Morricone, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and they dug all that kind of stuff but then they also fused it with their own folk music and classical music and came out with something different, so it’s definitely not a style we've made up, dreamt up all by ourselves.

MRD: Is Ennio Morricone one of your musical influences?

Andy: Yes, definitely yeah, but it was also the influence that he had on Indian cinema too. Like the Indian film writers in the 60s and 70s. They loved surf guitar and they loved those kind of Sergio Leone type westerns. You watch half the movies, those films, half of them have cowboy type characters, gunfights on trains and galloping horses all that kind of stuff.

Shourov: Gunfights on trains are very common, it's a real staple. There’s a bunch of influences we have, that’s one of them. The directors themselves in India that time are household names. People like R.D. Burman, everyone in India knows those musical directors because they created so much great music, and so the songs and the sounds we started with was from those guys, that was a starting point, so there an inspiration too.

MRD: Has blending rock and Bollywood been hard? You have an 11-piece band, has it been hard merging it all together as one sound?

Andy: The hard thing was to make it that small. Taking something like a film score, it was not typically music that was ever performed live. It was done by studio orchestras, so they have string sections and brass sections. The hardest job for me originally when I put the band together was trying to figure out how I could even do half the justice to that sound.

MRD: Do you get a better reception in Australia or in Europe? Is this your first European tour?

Shourov: Yeah it is.

Andy: We've had a really good reception here; we've had a really good reception in Australia too. I think we’ve got novelty value on our side here a bit more. The same as you would if the same came back in the other direction, that thing where it's not from home.

Andy: It's probably been quicker [in Europe] because we’ve came straight into good festivals and all that kind of thing, whereas at  home we've had to work from the ground up doing clubs and building up an audience, so it's a different relationship you have. We have a lot more loyal fans [in Australia] that come to lots of gigs that are really solid, whereas here you just suddenly get the festival line-up and the day before you’ve played half the people here wouldn’t have known who you were and then hopefully you’ve hit them and you win people over. They might not get to see us play for another year or two, whereas our fans back home would come and see us a few times a year in Melbourne.

MRD: So what was it like playing Glastonbury?

Shourov: It was pretty epic yeah, it was huge. It was one of the biggest crowds we’ve played.

MRD: What's your biggest crowd?

Parvyn: We played at a show called White Night Melbourne, and I think there was about 30, 40 thousand people that time.

Shourov: It was a big stage in the middle of the city.

Parvyn: Yeah, on the streets of the steps of Flinders Street Station, which is the main train station in Melbourne. And then we have Federation Square and the Yarra river, so that whole area.

Shourov: So there was just a river of people up all the streets. If you look on our Facebook page about three months ago, you’ll find this pretty amazing photograph of the stage and the crowd; that was a buzz.

MRD: What are your plans for the future?

Shourov: World domination?

Andy: Private island.

Shourov: Private island yeah, or at least a private jet.

Parvyn: Yeah, the skipper wants a yacht.

MRD: Private island and a yacht would go well together yeah.

Shourov: We've got another album in the works, we're always writing and yeah, excited about that.

From: https://www.discoveryrecords.co.uk/2013/07/interview-bombay-royale.html

 

 

Galley Beggar - Moon & Tide

“We’ve always been compared to folk rock bands, but we haven’t always fitted into the genre exactly,” says Galley Beggar vocalist Maria O’Donnell. “We’ve gone to folk festivals, but because we’re electric we don’t fit in there. People like to put us in boxes, and I suppose folk rock is the closest thing. We’re quite happy being different!”
To reduce Galley Beggar’s allure down to a simple matter of folk rock revivalism would be foolish. With a sound that incorporates all manner of unexpected elements while always celebrating the mischievous spirit of folk music across the centuries, these Kentish chameleons have been steadily earning a formidable reputation since forming back in 2009. Over the course of three acclaimed albums – Reformation House (2010), Galley Beggar (2012) and Silence & Tears (2014), the band’s first for Rise Above Records – Galley Beggar have pulled off the neat trick of simultaneously honouring and upgrading the psychedelic folk rock template, both reveling in the simple magic of acoustic instrumentation and joyfully harnessing the lysergic power of the electric too. And now they are poised to release their fourth and finest album, Heathen Hymns. A dizzying blend of the traditional and the untried, it’s a record full of absorbing musical stories that showcase a newfound lust for experimentation.
“Silence & Tears was quite a laid back and chilled out album for the most part, and although it wasn’t deliberate, this album just feels a little bit heavier and more proggy,” Maria explains. “It’s still got some acoustic tracks on there, of course. There’s at least one song with just a guitar, a sitar and a cello! But overall it just feels a lot darker than the previous album and more adventurous, too. When we wrote Silence & Tears, and it was the first album we’d done with a label, and we worked with [producer] Liam Watson and he taught us a new way of thinking about and looking at things, about giving things space and trying different ideas. When we were writing Heathen Hymns, we just naturally wanted to try new things.”
For all its many detours down psychedelic rabbit warrens and shadowy, fog-shrouded footpaths, Heathen Hymns is still an album with melody and humanity at its core. Fresh originals like the hypnotic Four Birds and the woozy raga rock of Moon & Tide wield an insidious charisma, but it’s the way Galley Beggar’s collective ingenuity collides with the sacrosanct likes of traditional standards Let No Man Steal Your Thyme [here featuring a guest vocal from Celia Drummond of UK acid folk legends Trees] and The Girl I Left Behind Me that confirms this album as both an unequivocal triumph for creativity and a platinum-plated treasure trove for aficionados everywhere.  From: https://riseaboverecords.com/artists/riseaboveartists/galley-beggar/

 

Tyrannosaurus Rex - Elemental Child

Tyrannosaurus Rex's fourth album, A Beard of Stars, was the turning point where Marc Bolan began evolving from an unrepentant hippie into the full-on swaggering rock star he would be within a couple of years, though for those not familiar with his previous work, it still sounds like the work of a man with his mind plugged into the age of lysergic enchantment. "A Daye Laye," "Pavilions of Sun," and the title tune sure sound like the writings of an agreeably addled flower child, and Bolan's vocals are playfully mannered in a manner that suits his loopy poetry. However, after shunning the corrupting influences of electric guitars on Tyrannosaurus Rex's early recordings, A Beard of Stars finds Bolan plugging in as he turns on, and he sounds like he's clearly enjoying it; the wah-wah solo that closes "Pavilions of Sun" demonstrates how just a little electricity gave this music a new lease on life, as do the guitar and bass overdubs on "Fist Heart Mighty Dawn Dart," and the lo-fi raunch that dominates "Elemental Child" was the first manifestation of the amped-up proto-boogie that defined Electric Warrior and The Slider. A Beard of Stars was also the first Tyrannosaurus Rex album after Mickey Finn took over as percussionist from Steve Peregrine-Took, and his more straightforward approach (as well as his occasional basslines) gave this music a far more solid foundation than Peregrine-Took's expressive but frequently unpredictable rhythms, further setting the stage for the group's Grand Transformation. A Beard of Stars holds on to the charm of Tyrannosaurus Rex's early work while letting Bolan's natural charisma and rock moves finally take hold, and it's a unique and very pleasing entry in their catalog.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/a-beard-of-stars-mw0000471037#review 

Dust Moth - Lift

It wouldn’t feel quite right to call Dust Moth’s new full length, Scale, heavy. Heaviness often implies weight, or a sense of the music bearing down on its listener. There’s an emphasis on the music being tactile, physical and molded into a solid object. You can even see it in the names of genres: rock, metal, sludge, etc. Scale, as loud and aggressive as it occasionally is, doesn’t really fit that description. Instead, it feels like an incredibly dense gas, impossible to hold, but heavy enough to crush their air out of your lungs nonetheless.
Much like guitarist Ryan Frederiksen’s previous band, These Arms Are Snakes, listening to Dust Moth can evoke the sight of a never-ending guitar pedalboard. Frederiksen, bassist Steve Becker, and keyboardist Irene Barber all disguise their instruments behind a fog of delay, reverb, and phasers. Instead of muddling up their sound, this approach only gives them more flexibility. Melodies can come from anywhere at anytime in any form. The quivering synth that leads the outro of “A Veil In Between” feels just as natural for the band as the mournful clean guitars at the start of “Night Wave.”
Of course, Dust Moth can get right and heavy when they want to (“Lift” is the banger of the bunch) but their real strength is how even those more physical moments still work in service to Barber’s vocals. Imagine a less phoned-in Chino Moreno on the last few Deftones records and you’ll have a rough idea of how Barber interacts with the rest of the band. Barber feels simultaneously part of the smoke and mirrors surrounding her and like a lantern guiding the listener through to the other side.  From: https://www.invisibleoranges.com/dust-moth-scale-album-premier/

King Black Acid - Tomorrow Never Knows (Beatles cover) - Live

Daniel John Riddle is an American musician best known by his pseudonym King Black Acid. Riddle began recording music under the name King Black Acid as a high school student in the late 1980s while also bassist for Portland industrial rock band Hitting Birth. Since then Riddle has worked with an ever-changing collective of musicians, referred to as the Electric Chair Band (1993), the Womb Star Orchestra (1993-1997), the Starseed Transmission (1997-2001), the 144,000 Piece Acid Army (2002-2003), and the Sacred Heart (2006-2009). All King Black Acid material is written and produced by Riddle, who sings and plays guitar during live shows, and who plays a variety of other instruments in the recording studio. Riddle also operates a recording studio, Mazinga Studio, where he produces records under the name King Black Acid. In addition to several studio releases, King Black Acid has recorded music for several film and TV soundtracks.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Black_Acid

Erutan - Tarts

My mother was a private Classical violin teacher and taught lessons in our home. There was never a moment where I wasn't listening to the music of her students or vinyl records of classical, ancient/medieval, world, and many other types of music on our old turntable.   
I was presented with and started playing my first violin at age one and a half. It was a 1/32 size, which is the smallest practical size of violin available. I broke it within the day, ha, but that was to be expected. What was not expected was my taking to the instrument for real, and learning very fast. I mimicked my mother's students and learned the pieces that they played while still in diapers. We have a few precious videos of this, which I will have to bring out one day to share.  
Though my childhood and teen years I practiced a lot - often 5 or 6 hours daily. This sounds excessive, but in the world of competitive classical violin, it is absolutely necessary. I went on to win several competitions, played solos in front of several orchestras, and gave many performances. Between practice sessions, I loved everything about being outside. The plants, the dirt, and the animals. Even though we lived in a small apartment in the city, I was still able to find small pockets of nature to explore and experience.  Even though there are no forests near my home, and most of the fields have been developed, I still try to indulge my love of the natural world by growing pot herbs and keeping the local birds fed.  
When I was 15, I started playing Celtic and medieval music with a small group called the Donnybrook Legacy/Sonus. I joined them when they were winding down from major label recording and were doing more laid back local performances. I learned so so much from these 4 amazing musicians. The music I was exposed to during the four years I worked with them created a love for celtic and ancient music that you can plainly see in my own music style today. From there, I started to pick up many new instruments to learn.  
Around the same time I joined them, I began composing music, being very inspired by the beautiful soundtracks of rpg video games like Final Fantasy and Chrono Cross/Trigger. I wrote hundreds of little melodies during this time, with the chief intention of someday becoming a composer of video game scores. I also started writing lyrics, and with the support and urging of those around me, I began to sing.  From: https://www.erutanmusic.com/drinks  


Alcest - L'Envol

Noisey: How did they convince you to do that whole record in its entirety?


Neige: For every band that played the festival they asked them to do a special show—either a full record, acoustic, or with some special musicians. For us we didn’t really have the time to do a full acoustic thing so we decided to play this record. It sounded like a good idea and it was a good location to try these songs.

It’s been awhile since you’ve played those songs; how hard was it to prepare for this?


Neige: It’s been six years! We had to practice and rehearse a lot to find the guitar parts again, so it was a bit of work, but I think the show was good.

Winterhalter: The cave is amazing; when you’re on stage and you see all these people in a cave, it’s very strange actually.

Neige: And it actually fits with the theme of the album, because it’s actually about the abyss, and the ocean, and the depths of the ocean, and it was almost like being inside a cave in the ocean. It was cool. On the new record, the drums were recorded in a big mansion; we’re rehearsing there in the attic, and it’s huge—it’s like three hundred square meters, and we used natural reverb because it has a very deep sound.

How are you going to get that big sound when you play those songs live?


Winterhalter: [Laughs] We really don’t know. It’ll be kind of a challenge, but we’re confident!

This record is different conceptually, too—it still follows the Alcest tradition of channeling otherwordly spirits, but this time, it’s got a pronounced Japanese influence. Where did that come from?


Neige: It’s an album about the confrontation of the natural world and the human world. The concept of the album came after I watched Hayao Miyazaki’s anime film Princess Mononoke; in the film it’s exactly that idea, of the two different worlds that try to live together. They struggle, and I think we are really busy taking care of our little programs that we forget there is another world around us that is being neglected. Nature always inspires us, and also it has kind of an urban side because I’m living in the city; it’s like a mix of very mortal things and very spiritual things.

What made you want to go back to this heavier sound? You guys veered into more melodic prog over the last couple of records but this one sounds like it’ll be a bit darker, a bit closer to your roots. Why now?


Neige: I think we couldn’t have gone even softer then we went, because Shelter was the softest record we have done. We wanted to go back to something a bit more punchy, because at the time we felt this need, in a very natural way, because after such a mellow record, you want to make something a bit more punchy.

It’s going to be interesting seeing the reaction to this record, because when your first few records came out, nobody really sounded like you, and now at this point so many bands have ripped you off, or been inspired by you.


Neige: That’s true; when we started there were not many bands doing this thing, and now, for me the first band that I really liked in this genre was Deafheaven, because I think they made it really good—this black metal shoegaze thing— but lots of bands are not so good at it. There’s effects and things, but a good song is not based on guitar pedals—it’s all about how to build a song, and how to make catchy melodies and stuff.

Is that a title that makes sense to you? Blackgaze?


We had all kinds of names; it’s labels that people try to give to this music, but if they choose blackgaze, it’s okay. I guess they have to find a name for this genre. In the beginning, we were labeled as “gay,” because the melodies are very fragile and the imagery we have is very different from metal imagery; we stand behind this, though, it’s a part of our universe. In the beginning, when people tried to ask me what was the link between Alcest and black metal, I would say that we share the same taste for spirituality because I think black metal is a very spiritual music, but Alcest is on the bright side—it’s very uplifting, and black metal is darker, but actually we share the same taste for things that are beyond this world.

Are you spiritual people?


Neige: Me, yes, I think Winterhalter, too; we have a strong connection with nature.

How does that translate into the Japanese spirits that you’re talking about on this record?


Neige: First, I love Japanese culture; I’ve loved everything about Japan since I was a little kid, because in France, we’ve got a lot of Japanese animation and we grew up with that, so in a way, it left something with people in my generation, like a kind of connection. When we came to Japan to play, it was really something special; we did acoustic shows in temples. So this and the fact that I think that some of the Asian countries—especially Japan—they keep a very strong connection to spirituality, and it’s quite interesting to see how they mix their modern life with the traditional and the spiritual, as opposed to what we see in Christian countries. I don’t like that type of spirituality; I feel more of a connection to the Asian culture. For me, it’s more true and normal than Europe. I don’t think a lot of people in France have a strong connection with nature. But the album is not really about nature, it’s about this feeling that I’ve had and been trying to express in the lyrics where I feel like I don’t belong to this place—the feeling of being a stranger. There is a song called “Je Suis D’Ailleurs” which means “I’m from somewhere else,” and a lot of lyrics on there are about this, where I feel like I’m here but I don’t feel like home here, I have my home somewhere else.

Does creating this music make you feel like you’re getting closer to finding that home?


Neige: Yeah, sure, that’s the main goal. It’s what I’m doing since I’m fourteen. In the beginning, I was alone, then Winterhalter joined me, and that’s the whole concept of the band—this idea that this is not the only place for us. The point with nature and why we spoke about nature is that when you’re in nature, you kind of have to find a connection with this alien side; I’m sure a lot of people are very old souls and when you are in nature, it helps you connect with part of your soul that you don’t necessarily know or feel very close to in an urban context.

Winterhalter: It’s also about the fact that, okay, I’m talking about nature, but do I do the right things for nature? I’m just like everyone, so it’s also speaking about our weaknesses and how it’s hard to act.


Neige: It’s funny, because if I spend too much time in the city, I’m a little bit crazy and I want to be in nature, and if I spend too much time in nature I miss the city, so that is the duality, these two worlds that you try to live in together and it’s very hard. That’s the connection where Princess Mononoke came in. [Neither of the characters ] is the evil one, they both have flaws; it’s just trying to live together.

From: https://www.vice.com/en/article/alcest-kodama-interview-premiere/

Death Valley Girls - Abre Camino

Interview with Death Valley Girls’ Bonnie Bloomgarden

What initially drew you to the world of rock music and how did those early influences inspired your sound?

When I was five, I heard Billie Holiday singing, and it blew my mind. I didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl; I just thought it was so cool that someone sang like that, and everyone loved it. I became obsessed with her, and that was the beginning. They told me she was an alcoholic who had to sing to live, to earn money for alcohol, and I thought that sounded so romantic—just having to sing every day to live your life. I was obsessed with it.

Can you recall the defining moment that solidified your decision to form Death Valley Girls?

I was in a very low place, I had just moved across the country, and I had given up music. There was just a huge hole in my life. I didn’t know that it was music, I just felt so empty and lonely. Then once I started playing, I realized that I need music, I need to be part of it, I need to be obsessed, surrounded by all these things to fill the hole. I realized why I needed it after I came back to it.

How did growing up in Los Angeles influence the band’s formation and the creative direction?

Los Angeles is huge and filled with tiny mysteries and magical places, but you almost have to be shown them. It’s exciting with so many little areas and pockets. There’s a million worlds here, and you can pop from one to the other. It’s very artistic—everyone is trying to make art in their own way, even if it seems silly, like working out or whatever. Everyone here is on a mission, and it’s a neat energy to be around.

What were some of the challenges you faced while recording your debut album, Street Venom?

We couldn’t get any shows. No one would let us play any shows for like a year. So we decided that the only way we could get shows is if we had a record. So we made that as fast as possible. We just played for a year, just trying to get shows and then made a record as fast as possible. And it actually did work. It’s very helpful to be able to send people music, rather than an email, just explaining why you want to play their concert hall.

The lineup has changed over the years. How have these changes influenced your creative dynamic?

That’s super interesting. We see this as a spiritual journey and the music as spiritual, like a religion and a healing journey. As we go from record to record, we capture the growth we’ve had. Each new person who joins either teaches us a lesson or brings us sounds we didn’t know existed. It’s cool to be in a band focused on evolving and growing spiritually rather than just knocking out hits.

From: https://retrofuturista.com/death-valley-girls-interview/

Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

The monster psychedelic hit of 1968 and possibly the entire 60's decade, the long version of this song became far more famous than the radio edit single version. Recorded in May 1968, both the album and the single were released in June. Although not recorded until that year, the band was already playing the song live in 1967. Despite the fact that the song's title is an obvious mistransliteration of "in the Garden of Eden," few have pursued a visual interpretation of the Adamic story, possibly because they may have thought it a bit sparse an account to spread over a period of over 17 minutes. But there is a lot there and it is all to be found in the music rather than the lyrics.  From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqIJfGQI5us

Seryn - Stage On Sixth 2011

Tori: You guys recently relocated from Denton, Texas to Nashville. What’s the biggest difference you’ve noticed between the two music scenes?

Trenton Wheeler: The Nashville scene is much more professional-focused, as you would suspect. Denton is more free-formed. There’s a jazz school there. The ideology behind the music is more about the art and there’s a lot of business involved with the music scene in Nashville. I find for myself – the one thing that I’m wrestling with now – is not getting too swept up within the business of music, but still remembering that it’s a form of art, and remembering that it’s the way I express myself and not just a way to make money.

Tori: That makes sense. With the four-year gap between This Is Where We Are and Shadow Shows along with a new sound, were you nervous about how fans would respond to the newer sound?

TW: Honestly, not really. Not that we were worried that some people would dislike it, but more so we just knew that’s where our music had taken us and that’s where we were supposed to be, and if people didn’t like it, then that was their own prerogative. The thing we don’t want to do is only write music to please what people expect out of you. Part of the whole thing is making something that’s honest to yourself, and if we’re no longer in a place where we make that same exact sound that we did on the first record, then I would be lying to you if the music did not reflect that.

Tori: What I’ve taken from your music over the years is it’s like a sonic tapestry with the way everything weaves together. Since there are multi-instrumentalists in the band, how do you decide which instruments to use for which songs, or do you just go with whatever sounds good to you?


TW: I think it’s a very organic process of just figuring out. This song, maybe we’re looking for this timbre to communicate this emotion, so sometimes that banjo is appropriate to get that brittle high end. For us, it’s more about timbre than it is genre. We don’t pick a banjo to be anything folk or otherwise. It’s just we love the way it sounded. Same with me picking to play ukulele. When I first picked it up, it gave me an alternative, and I tune it all funky, too. So I made it sound the way I wanted it to sound before I played it. It had nothing to do with any association with the kind of music that it’s made before people started picking it up all the time.

Tori: You worked with producer McKenzie Smith on Shadow Shows. What was that like?

TW: It was very fun. He has a brilliant mind when it comes to drums. He’s been doing that for a lot of his career, so it was really fun to see how he could influence and give his input as far as the drums and bass sounds.

Tori: What I’ve taken from Shadow Shows over repeated listens are themes of embracing life, wanting more out of life, and re-evaluating your place in the world. For you, what is the album about?

TW: For me, personally, the record is very much so a stamp of what that time looked like for me while we were writing and recording it. It was a lot about personal struggle within this world and reconciling our relationship with death, and also reconciling relationships in this life, and how even in this life, sometimes life comes through death, like giving yourself for a relationship. By giving a piece of yourself to someone and laying down a piece of your own heart, sometimes the reward that you get back is far more rewarding than if you were to keep it to yourself.

From: https://betweenthenotes.blog/2015/09/19/interview-with-trenton-wheeler-of-seryn/

Jerry Garcia - Garcia - Side 1

01 Deal
02 Bird Song
03 Sugaree
04 Loser

As a precocious youth, Jerry Garcia found escape through painting, studying the Bay Area figurative style of abstract art. Late in life, it was scuba diving, acquainting himself with the ocean floors of Hawaii, petting octopuses and eels, setting a world record for the longest time spent underwater. But when he was turning 30, all Jerry wanted to do was play pedal steel. You can hear the fruits of his exploration between the years of 1969 and 1974 all over live recordings from the Grateful Dead, on guest appearances on classics by friends like Jefferson Starship and CSNY, and throughout the early catalog of New Riders of the Purple Sage, a band started with the express purpose of honing his skill in collaboration.
But if you really want to hear what Jerry Garcia could do with the pedal steel, listen to “The Wheel.” It’s the closing track of 1972’s Garcia, among the most beautiful four minutes of music in his vast catalog. Bursting to life from a discordant jam, the cyclical folk song feels like adjusting to new visibility under the sea. Seesawing between buoyant major chords, with Garcia’s vocals layered in tight coils of harmony, his pedal steel guides the way, untrained but masterful, exuding a joy that radiates from the speakers, even 50-plus years later.
At the time of its release, Jerry distinguished his debut solo album from his previous work by being “completely self-indulgent.” Think about this for a second. This is an artist who made fine art of self-indulgence. He reshaped the modern rock concert in his own sprawling, unhurried image; he played guitar solos like nobody has, before or since, largely based on lyrical motifs that felt designed to drift effortlessly forever; he admitted to viewing studio albums—those old-school totems of discipline and meaning—as a “necessary evil” to function within an industry he loathed; he led a band who would develop a setlist staple composed entirely of drum solos and prolonged ambience.
So, what was different this time? For one thing, it happened in a flash. The bulk of the music—developed through improvisations between Garcia on acoustic guitar and his Dead bandmate Bill Kreutzmann on drums, with lyricist Robert Hunter scribbling away in a corner—happened in roughly the span of a week. After just 21 days, the whole record was sequenced, mixed, and handed over to the label. Soon, he’d be back on the road with the Dead, playing the legendary shows that would be documented on the extraordinary live album Europe ’72. Coming after the band’s twin peaks of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, both released in 1970 and both succeeding in pushing the group beyond cult fame into wider acceptance, Jerry’s solo music did little to embellish the winning streak he was already on.
If this makes Garcia sound like a blip—an itch he had to scratch, one small twinkling star in an ever-expanding galaxy—then it kind of was. “I don’t want anyone to think it’s me being serious or anything like that—it’s really me goofing around,” he told Rolling Stone. “I’m not trying to have my own career or anything like that.” And yet, Garcia goofing around for a week in the studio in 1972, among this company, also stands as one of the most captivating cosmic Americana records of all time—an album whose consistency, energy, and vision helped introduce some of the most enduring songs to the Dead’s live set for decades to come.
If Garcia was only a document of those great songs—the loping singalong “Sugaree,” the pulsing Janis Joplin elegy “Bird Song,” the spiritual ballad “To Lay Me Down”—it would simply be a critical moment in the bandmembers’ catalogs alongside Bob Weir’s Ace, released that same year. But where Ace was a solo album in name alone, Garcia was decidedly a showcase for Jerry himself, exhibiting things he could not and would not do in the Dead. Exploring the limits of a 16-track recorder, he played nearly every instrument himself. There’s the pedal steel, of course, but also bass, piano, organ, and, in the most novel moments, a sampler that he orchestrates to create a kind of avant-garde musique concrète he would never return to again.
Where the best Dead studio records feel like cozy, reined-in presentations of their best songs, Garcia is in its own class entirely. For one thing, Jerry clearly approached the record without thinking how it would hang together in a live set. Instead, each song is ornamented as its own set piece, building to a larger, heavenly atmosphere that owes more to art-rock than to the era’s post-hippie glow. Harkening back to the Dead’s playful beginnings as the house band at Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests in San Francisco, he incorporates sound collage and tape manipulation. There are false starts, recurring motifs, songs that segue into one another without pause. As it turns out, Garcia goofing around in the studio felt a lot like most other artists trying to craft their masterpiece.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jerry-garcia-garcia/

Irfan - Salome

Irfan is a Bulgarian band founded in 2001 in Sofia. The band's name is taken from the Arabic/Persian word "Irfan", meaning "gnosis", "mystic knowledge" or "revelation". Though similar in style to established bands such as Dead Can Dance, Love Is Colder Than Death, Sarband, and Vas, Irfan is known for its extensive use of a choir of male singers in addition to the female vocals of Vladislava Todorova, and in in combination with an assortment of traditional mediaeval percussion, stringed, and wind instruments, including the darbouka, daf, bendir, oud, saz, santoor, ghaida, duduk ,and bass viol. Irfan's music and reliance on traditional instruments is based on a blend of the musical influences common to Bulgaria, and thus represents a blend of European medieval music, Balkan folk and Middle Eastern styles. The band was first signed by the French label Prikosnovénie and made its first appearance on their "Fairy World" compilation of various bands in 2003. Their first album "Irfan" was released in Europe that same year by Prikosnovénie, and released in North America by Noir Records.  From: https://www.last.fm/music/Irfan

Silly Wizard - The Parish of Dunkeld / The Curlew

There have already been thousands of words written about Silly Wizard during, and after, their remarkable 18-year career together (1970-1988). I was fortunate to see them perform several times during their heyday in the 1970’s and 1980’s and that was worth more to me than several volumes of narrative. Those nights still echo round my head, and in my mind’s eye, I can still see the fiendish, fluid, sometimes frantic, but always measured, fiddle playing of the boy genius that was Johnny Cunningham (fiddle, viola, mandolin), who was later joined by his equally talented brother Phil Cunningham, a brilliant accordion player. The solid foundation that “kept the ship on course” was provided by Gordon Jones, the rhythm engine room on guitar. His vocals and bodhran playing were also a major contribution to the band’s overall sound. His great friend, who was also there at the beginning, Bob Thomas, one of the finest acoustic guitarists of his generation, wove intricate patterns around Gordon’s solid rhythms, and had a lovely touch, and a great feel for the music. When Bob left the band (1978), Gordon‘s, “signature, percussive guitar playing” (brother Brian’s description), took on even more significance, although his bodhran playing continued to excel, and drive the band’s tune sets. Over the years, Gordon became one of the best exponents of this surprisingly difficult percussion instrument, and his playing, as with his guitar, certainly helped to drive the band along in many of their memorable instrumentals.
A heady mixture, with those already mentioned above, the final piece of the jigsaw came with their talismanic lead singer, Andy M. Stewart. Surely, one of the finest vocalists on the Scottish traditional music scene, Andy also turned out to be one of the best songwriters of his generation too. He had the incredible ability to write a new song and make it sound traditional. Who could ever forget, “Golden, Golden”, “The Ramblin ‘Rover”, “The Queen of Argyll” and “Lovers Heart”, among the many Stewart originals. In praising his writing talents, we must also not forget that he was an exceptional tenor banjo player, who also added tin whistles to the band’s already full sound, when required.
After all that build up, the song seems almost immaterial, but for those song and tune collectors among you, “The Parish of Dunkeld”, was first published in 1824 by James Maidment, and the tune that follows, “The Curlew”, was written by piper Donald McPherson, a former Boys Brigade musician, who died at the grand old age of 89 in 2012. In this instance, it is typical of, the band’s mischievous, tongue-in-cheek humour. “The Parish of Dunkeld” does not sound the most reverent of places but, like many of their songs, it provides the launch pad for those brilliant instrumental breaks.  From: https://openhousefolk.com/the-parish-of-dunkeld/

The Jellyman's Daughter - Wake-Up Call

The Jellyman’s Daughter are a unique duo from Edinburgh. Their interweaving vocal harmonies are complimented by an interesting mix of cello and acoustic guitar. One of the distinguishing features of The Jellyman’s Daughter is the innovative rhythmic style of cello playing providing a catchy percussive backbeat to some of their songs, contrasted by the intimacy of others. Emily and Graham started 2020 in front of a sold-out Celtic Connections crowd and had just set out on their most ambitious tour yet to promote their 2020 EP, Wake-Up Call which had them booked at festivals and shows across the world with dates in the UK, Australia, Europe and America before the pandemic pulled the plug. They were due to play such prestigious festivals as The National and Blue Mountains Music Festival but thankfully managed to squeeze in Port Fairy Folk Festival days before they had to return home. All was not lost for the year though as they were delighted to be made patrons of Music Venue Trust and worked to help raise money for struggling venues as well as working on songs for the next album.  From: https://www.widedays.com/the-jellymans-daughter

Cleopatrick - Family Van

Meet cleopatrick, the heavy alt-rock duo that’s changing the game (yup, the ‘c’ is lower case). Here’s a bit about them in their own, lower case, words. I assume that caps lock keys are hard to come by in the wilds of Ontario…

Simple things first – where are you guys from?

we are from the very small town of Cobourg, ON, Canada.

How did you meet?

we met on our first day of kindergarten at st. michael’s elementary school.

How long have you been playing as a band?

we have been playing music together for about 12 years total, and in this band for 3 years now.

Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?

when we were initially brainstorming ideas, luke kind of just came up with it. i didn’t really like it at first but over time it grew on me.

What are your influences?

i believe that everything we experience influences us. we try to take the world as it is and depict it in our own words and views through our music. music wise, our biggest influences would be highly suspect, ready the prince, and brockhampton.

Describe your music. What makes you unique?

our music is honest. a lot of rock music (like all genres of music) these days tend to glorify and exaggerate lifestyle. we write about how or what we feel. we like our music to be heavy and have weight, whether that is referring to the instrumentation or not.

Do you have any particular lyrical themes?

we have both had relatively “normal” lives – growing up no matter where you are or what your circumstances may be, you feel things. so we just make honest music about things we’ve lived through or seen.

What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?

we like to keep the live show as high energy as possible. if we are having fun, then the crowd is having fun and if the crowd is having fun we have an even better time. we’ve played at least 150 shows.

What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?

luke has crowd surfed while playing guitar and successfully made it down for the last chorus of “city kids” twice now. i don’t think it gets much better than that honestly.

From: https://www.moshville.co.uk/feature/botd/2018/05/band-of-the-day-cleopatrick/

Saint Agnes - Diablo, Take Me Home

East London-based rage-propelled quartet Saint Agnes have just unleashed Bloodsuckers, their ferociously therapeutic Spinefarm debut. A largely self-produced record, it combines metal fury with punk attitude, industrial intensity and raw emotion – in particular This Is Not The End, an extraordinarily powerful piece recorded in the wake of the sudden, unexpected passing of vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Kitty A Austen’s mother. We caught up with Austen and Jon James Tufnell (guitar, vocals, bass) recently to discuss the on-going passion of Saint Agnes. A matter of life and death? It’s way more important than that.
Saint Agnes’s creative core came together as a direct reaction to the sonic complacency of the prevailing rock scene. “We were two lost souls,” says Tufnell. “In different bands, looking for a musical match. We got chatting and discovered a shared passion for bands with real intensity.”
“It was ten years ago now,” Austen adds. “It was all psychedelia and shoegaze back then, and while there’s a place for that, we both wanted to be in a bombastic, balls-out rock band.”
“It felt really rebellious to do that in London back then,” Tufnell says, smiling. “We had to tell people we were a psychedelic band to get gigs.”
Austen has no doubt what feeds her scream: “A lot of anger. I’m an angry person, and there’s a lot in the world to be angry about. I’ve had a difficult time, particularly over the last couple of years. I’ve had some mental health problems, and my mum passed away unexpectedly. All that stuff channels into a rage that’s all over the new album.” While Bloodsuckers is a very angry record, it’s also very joyous. “When you’re facing the worst times,” Austen continues, “you enter a headspace where you’re also experiencing strange euphoric highs. So while the record is really, really angry it’s also full of hope.”
Austen the performer and Austen the interviewee might appear to be polar opposites, but the transformation that takes place at the microphone is more instinctive than deliberate. “I never adopt a persona, that’s just the part of me that comes to the fore when I perform. As soon as I hit the stage, the cocky, arrogant, angry and powerful part of me comes out. I’m always the best version of myself in that kind of do-or-die situation.”
“I see this happen up-close,” says Tufnell, “And it’s an instinctual part of entering the mind-set necessary to delivering this music. The music and the band matters so much to us that it is do-or-die. You simply have no choice but to run in all guns blazing.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/saint-agnes-six-things

Queen (Brian May) - Long Away / She Makes Me / Some Day One Day

Maybe the most famous piece of trivia about Queen guitarist Brian May is that he built the electric guitar he has used for most of his musical career. It's called the Red Special, and it was constructed with his father when May was 16. So, it's ironic that the only Queen single in which May sang lead vocals, "Long Away," he mainly plays a Burns 12-string guitar. This choice, as much as the song itself, serves as a reminder of May's and the band's relentless creativity.
"Long Away" is the third track on the band's fifth album, A Day at the Races, which was the follow-up to their 1975 masterpiece A Night at the Opera. That album had catapulted Queen to international superstardom on the back of the single "Bohemian Rhapsody." With A Day at the Races, the band opted for a pure more-of-the-same approach, making the album almost an extension as much as a sequel. Both featured the same style of artwork (one in black, the other in white), both took their names from Marx Brothers movies and the pairing of day and night in the titles suggested an almost cyclical link between them.
This linkage extends through May's songwriting and lead-vocal contributions to the albums. His folk-influenced song "'39" appeared as the fifth track on A Night at the Opera, serving as a kind of palate cleanser between the more aggressive, high-concept and baroque compositions that make up much of the rest of that record. May's "Long Away" serves much the same purpose on A Day at the Races.
Opening with a shimmering 12-string riff on one stereo channel, the song sounds far different than the others that precede it on the album. After several bars, May lays down another 12-string track and the rest of the band comes in behind him, operating not in their more traditional, early metal or glam/prog mode, but almost like a holdover from the heyday of the '60s Laurel Canyon sound.
May's 12-string playing has echoes of Roger McGuinn's work with the Byrds, and the vocals that the band develops over this bring to mind the harmonies of the Beach Boys and the melodic sensitivity of the Beatles. May sings the lead, with Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor backing him on the high end, and the whole thing dances along as effortlessly as dandelion pips in the wind.  From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/queen-long-away/

Erykah Badu - Booty

Track 7 on Mama’s Gun, “Booty” deals with infidelity. In the song, Erykah addresses another woman, reminding her of all the ways she could take her man with relative ease – but she doesn’t want to, because she’s not interested in a man who would cheat on his partner. She hopes the other woman would have the same respect for Erykah’s relationship if put in her position – seemingly implying that the reverse situation has already occured, and the woman didn’t have the same regard for Erykah. Questlove on drums and J Dilla on bass contribute a funky rhythm section to the song, which interpolates elements from Johnny Hammond’s “Gambler’s Life”.  From: https://genius.com/Erykah-badu-booty-lyrics

Leon Russell - Delta Lady

The "Delta Lady" is Rita Coolidge, who was born in Tennessee and moved to Memphis in 1967, where she met Leon Russell. They started dating, and in 1969 Russell wrote this song about her. He was doing arrangements and playing keyboards on Joe Cocker's second album at the time, so he contributed this song, which Cocker released as the first single from the set. Russell included the song on his first solo album the following year.
This song's muse Rita Coolidge is one of the backing vocalists on the track. In her autobiography, she recalls Cocker recording the song at Russell's studio on Skyhill Drive in Los Angeles, where she served tea to the musicians and crew. She didn't know at the time that the song would become her calling card: She named that autobiography Delta Lady.
Leon Russell and Rita Coolidge joined Joe Cocker on his Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, where she would sing "Superstar," a song written by Russell and Bonnie Bramlett. "Here she is, our own Delta Lady," Cocker would announce when introducing her, imprinting that appellation.
Russell wrote another song about Rita Coolidge, "A Song For You," which also appeared on his debut album. The couple split soon after, just as their careers started taking off.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/joe-cocker/delta-lady

Colouring Rainbows - Theorem

Started as modern metal, nowadays genre-bending somewhere between jazz, prog, electro, art pop and post-rock. Composed, arranged, played, sung, mixed and mastered by Jessica Müller a.k.a. Colouring Rainbows.  From: https://colouringrainbows.bandcamp.com/community