Nephila - Live Sweden Rock 2025

 Nephila - Live Sweden Rock 2025 - Part 1

 

Nephila - Live Sweden Rock 2025 - Part 2

 

Nephila is a Swedish psychedelic rock band consisting of seven young musicians, five of whom appear to like being masked most of the time – and I don’t mean surgical face masks, these are the full-on “Plague Doctor” variety – without any clue why this be so! The band are collectively inspired by ’60s and ’70s rock, with hints of folk and a twist of theatrical expressionism. Nephila won the nationwide Swedish music competition LiveKarusellen in 2019 and made an impact on everyone who attended. And I can see why, the seven tracks on the album provide a mix of heavy prog, retro rock, sweet guitar solos and duelling vocal harmonies provided by the band’s dual lead singers, with elements of mysticism, folklore, and storytelling. 
The lead singers were previously with another Swedish retro band called Children of the Sün, who are distinctly hippy-ish so if you like the more psychedelic music of the late 60’s, early 70’s you’ll love this! Touches of heavy blues rock add to the retro feel, according to the band, guitars act as the basis on which hard rock rests as the heart of it all. Add to it that sense of mysticism and theatre, and that captures their ‘vision’. “Nephila’s strength definitely lies in our performance”, says one of the lead singers Stina. “The mystique is important. We all have strong personalities and our masks create yet another dimension. No matter what happens to any of us, the mask always lives on.”  From: https://www.velvetthunder.co.uk/nephila-nephila-the-sign-records/

 

The Bombay Royale - You Me Bullets Love

“You Me Bullets Love” is a new album by the Australian band The Bombay Royale from Melbourne, who specialise in bringing to life - and to the live stage - versions of many of the classics of India’s Bollywood film industry. The album (on Hope Street Recordings) is a 10 track CD/DL/Vinyl that showcases old songs such as the 1965 chestnut “Jaan Pehechan Ho” (from the film "Gumnaam") as well as entirely new pieces. The ‘golden years’ for Bollywood films are often cited as the 60s and 70s and The Bombay Royale mix these old songs (in Hindi and Bengali) with newer material they have written themselves (including some with English lyrics) inspired by these classic masterpieces.  In fact “You Me Bullets Love” features eight original numbers and two re-workings of almost forgotten Bollywood production numbers (the other is "Sote Sote Adhi Raat").
There’s a heavy retro vibe to the album that - bizarrely - makes it sound very fresh and bang-up-to-date! (obviously some weird tear in the time-space fabric…). For instance the opening track “Monkey Fight Snake” features massed brass, swirling organs, siren-like vocals and sarangi in the background, sub-Spaghetti Western blaring trumpet (Spaghetti Eastern anyone?) and wouldn’t sound out of place in some kind of drug-induced, trippy dream-sequence scene from The Avengers (the 1960s British series with the bowler-hatted, brolly-wielding Steed, not the Hollywood Marvel heroes one!). Conversely the title track is drenched in surf music, sort of 'Tarantino goes to Mumbai' (or is it India comes to South Melbourne Beach?).
At times the whole album sounds as if someone’s taken a giant cocktail shaker and thrown in some vintage 50s, 60s and 70s Bombay kitsch, a shot of James Bond, a gaggle of Go-Go girls, two slices of Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, a pinch of Massive Attack, the serried ranks of saxophones, trumpets and trombones, a veritable forest of violins and yards and yards of orange, pink and turquoise silk, and then recorded the whole lot via the audio-equivalent of a Kodak Instamatic shot through a Dub filter.
Someone with more knowledge of Hindi music would probably be able to pick up on the Bollywood strands better than me, but that’s about as near as I can get to it at the moment! One of the Australian papers described it as being “where A R Rahman and Ennio Morricone converge, where Slumdog Millionaire meets Goldfinger head on, with Quentin Tarantino and Indiana Jones lurking in the corner”. “You Me Bullets Love” is a whole lot of fun. A lot of it is, I’m sure, very tongue-in-cheek, but then again so is much of Bollywood, and it plays with all those elements of East meets West meets East again (and in the case of Australia, meets South).  From: https://www.worldmusic.co.uk/the_bombay_royale_you_me_bullets_love_cd_review

The Byrds - Lady Friend / Renaissance Fair

 The Byrds - Lady Friend

 

 The Byrds - Renaissance Fair

 

Arguably the greatest song that David Crosby has ever written on his own, the majestic “Lady Friend” is kind of the “Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadow?” of The Byrds catalog: a fantastic non-album A-side that was sabotaged by questionable production.  Because it was considered a failure, it wasn’t released on either of their Greatest Hits albums.
I first heard it on a 1987 odds-and-sods compilation album called Never Before (an album that also featured a beautiful banner-shaped Byrds poster that hung on my wall in various apartments for years) where “Lady Friend” stuck out, but had these terrible overdubbed drums. 
It wasn’t until the 1990 box set where I heard “Lady Friend” the proper way, and I immediately realized that it’s one of those songs that should be more widely known: featuring gorgeous interlocking guitars, a rollicking drum beat (that didn’t need an overdub) and an utterly anthemic chorus.
It’s one of the more sophisticated arrangements they’d done, clearly influenced by what The Beatles and The Beach Boys were doing, but the sound that Gary Usher got in the studio just wasn’t up to par with what George Martin or Brian Wilson had done. And so it was a huge flop that has only over time revealed itself to be a secret success on the Rabin scale.  From: https://medialoper.com/certain-songs-163-the-byrds-lady-friend/

"Renaissance Fair" is a psychedelic/folk-rock song penned by David Crosby & Roger McGuinn and recorded December 6, 1966, for the Byrds' 1967 Younger Than Yesterday album. "Renaissance Fair" was inspired by an actual mock renaissance fair, entitled Renaissance Pleasure Faire and May Market, staged at the Paramount Ranch, Agoura, near Los Angeles in the spring of 1966. It was attended by the Byrds and a throng of 8,000 who, accompanied by a little imagination, were whisked back to the Elizabethan era, when King Arthur was monarch and Robin Hood was the cause celebre of the day. Demonstrating their sundry skills at the Faire were adventurous alchemists, magicians of every stripe, craftsmen and weavers, while English plays abounded. Games included archery, darts, executing dragons and punishing witches.
But this musical piece was about much more than that; it was an homage to, and yearning for, the sensuous hippie dream. The song's 12-string Rickenbacker electric guitar plucking, courtesy of McGuinn, is evocative of ringing church bells and Byrds' bassist Chris Hillman's ariose playing has a soft, undulating pattern, purveying a running jazz line. The opus moves along, image by image; the meter signatures varying, kept pace by Michael Clarke's dogged drumming.  From: https://www.furious.com/perfect/davidcrosby.html

 

Sheila Chandra & Monsoon – Shakti (The Meaning of Within)

Sheila Chandra has engineered a career that has consistently defied expectations — from producing lyric-less drone-based soundscapes, to forging a new global vocal vision out of a re-imagining of myriad vocal traditions. Hers is a living, breathing music that manages to reflect the context of its making, as well as creating a timeless reflection of the inimitable power of the human voice.  
That pursuit of radical vocal expression has been a lifelong process. It began when she made history at only 17 in 1982 as the first South Asian woman to appear on the UK’s flagship chart show ‘Top of the Pops’ with her band Monsoon’s global hit ‘Ever So Lonely’. In a sea of then-fashionable synth-pop, Monsoon’s fresh raga-based acoustic sound, topped by trendy crash beats over sensuous tabla cross-rhythms, nevertheless insinuated its way into public consciousness.
It was a watershed moment for the South Asian diaspora in the UK. Clad in a purple silk sari and teardrop tilak, this was the first positive representation of Asians from a mainstream media that had played on racist tropes in comedy and whose documentary makers had unfairly and persistently portrayed the community as a ‘social problem’ for 20 years. Monsoon’s ‘Ever So Lonely’ was simply too innovative and catchy a record to be ignored, and a mere two years on from the Southall riots, suddenly an Asian diaspora sound was fashionable for the first time.
The 70s had featured anti-racist protesting across the nation, aiming to combat the popularity of fascist organisations like The National Front. Chandra’s appearance in traditional Indian dress, as well as her very existence as a South Asian female artist, and one utilising traditional sounds, became a radical act of representation, five years before the term ‘World Music’ was coined to represent such a free-flowing mix of cultures. It was the first of many boundary-breaking moves that she made throughout the following 40 years of her career. Those decades saw her ignoring trends and pursuing her own musical interests, regardless of the pleas of industry marketing executives. For her, breaking musical ground and moving music itself on, always seemed more important than making a commercial record and selling as many copies as possible.  From: https://realworldrecords.com/features/long-reads/sheila-chandra-the-pursuit-of-radical-vocal-expression/

 

Rare Earth - I Just Want to Celebrate - Live 1973

Rare Earth had a knack for improvisation, and could jam on a song for, literally, hours. “We hardly ever recorded anything under seven minutes long,” Bridges laughs. “We were a jam band, a street band. Some of the songs on our albums are absolute jams, we created them in the studio on the fly. We took the same approach when we played live.” Rare Earth soon caught the ear of Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records.
“There were other white bands that signed to Motown prior to us,” says Bridges, “but they didn’t go anywhere because Motown had no promotion in the white market. That’s why when they approached us they told us they were starting a whole new division, one that catered exclusively to white acts. They were also planning on bringing on some British bands as well. They didn’t have a name for this new division yet. Jokingly I said: ‘How about Rare Earth?’ And they said okay. That’s when we signed, because we knew they’d be behind us 100 per cent.”
The band got to work on their first album for Motown at the legendary Hitsville USA studios. The result was 1969’s Get Ready, a masterpiece of gritty, bluesy dance music that included covers of Traffic’s Feelin’ Alright and the Nashville Teens’ stomper Tobacco Road, and was anchored by the ecstatic title-track, a 21-minute, ode-to-joy jam on Smokey Robinson’s Motown classic that took up the whole of side two.
“We used to do Get Ready as the finale in our live sets,” says Bridges. “So it already was 21 minutes long. And we figured that since Iron Butterfly’s Inna Gadda Da Vida took up one whole side of an album, why couldn’t we? Motown freaked when we told them our plans. It was very much against their nature, but they let us do it. And it worked out great.”
Initially, much like the band’s first album, Get Ready stalled at the gate. “The record didn’t do anything for the first six months, and we thought, ‘Uh-oh, we’ve got a dud on our hands.’ And then all of a sudden a black DJ in Washington DC spun the record. At that time, ‘album-oriented radio’ was just coming out; it wasn’t just three-minute singles any more, the DJs could play longer songs and they had the choice of what they wanted to play. 
"The DJs really liked our song because they could take a coffee break or go to the bathroom or whatever, because they had 20 minutes on their hands. People went wild for it in Washington and it just spread out from there. The record broke in the black market first, and the first concerts we played were to black crowds; they were all shocked and surprised when a bunch of white guys got on stage.” Eventually Get Ready caught on with white audiences as well, and the band struggled to keep their sound as open-ended as possible. Not an easy task when you’re signed to Motown.
“Motown always had writers and producers that they wanted you to work with,” Bridges explains. “At one point they set us up with Stevie Wonder as a producer. He was 17 at the time, and they wanted to try him out. He really wanted to produce us, and it was his first attempt. The problem was that our singer at the time, Pete Rivera, could emulate anybody, and Stevie was making him sound just like him. I didn’t think that was good. Neither did Motown, so they shelved the project.”
The band settled in with producer Norman Whitfield, a pioneer of ‘psychedelic soul’, and together they scored another US hit in 1970 with (I Know I’m) Losing You, which had already been a hit for Motown royalty the Temptations. But Rare Earth’s most enduring triumph occurred a year later – although it almost didn’t happen at all.
“I Just Want To Celebrate was written by these two Greek white writers, Dino Fekaris and Nick Zesses, who worked for Motown,” Bridges explains. “They had staff writers and writing rooms, with a piano in each room, and these guys were going all day long, every day. They were writing material for all of Motown’s acts. And we happened to walk into the studio one night and they played …Celebrate for us. We were there to record something else, but we scrapped it right there and did …Celebrate instead. We recorded the whole song, vocals and everything, in one day.”
Perhaps the ultimate party anthem, I Just Want To Celebrate encapsulated everything that was great about Rare Earth. It had groove, energy, a wicked hook, and it lasted for days. It remains a near-constant presence in television, films, and parties the world over. It was also the high-water mark for a band that had achieved little real fame; they had, however gained some notoriety for being put down in the lyrics to Gil ScottHeron’s poem The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, which included the line: ‘The theme song [to the revolution] will not be written by Jim Webb, Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Engelbert Humperdinck or the Rare Earth…’. From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/cult-heroes-rare-earth-motowns-funkiest-white-band

Luscious Jackson - Naked Eye

Luscious Jackson lead singer Jill Cunniff wrote this song. It seems to be about reaching a moment of clarity in a relationship, finally seeing it with the "naked eye," and not through a filter.

Luscious Jackson is an all-female alternative funk band that made four albums in the 1990s. "Naked Eye" was the most successful of the songs they produced. It's best remembered for its stylish video, in which all four members of the band (Jill Cunniff, Gabrielle Glaser, Kate Schellenbach and Vivian Trimble) portray the same character, a woman being escorted to a departing airplane by her boyfriend. Though the video looks like it takes place at an airport, it was actually filmed at the World Trade Center. According to frontwoman Jill Cunniff, the video for this song was inspired by the Luis Buniel film That Obscure Object of Desire, which featured two actresses playing the same role. 

This was recorded at Daniel Lanois' Kingsway Studios in New Orleans, where the band lived while they were making the album. Lanois, known for his work with U2, also produced the track along with Jill Cunniff and Tony Mangurian.
"Naked Eye" was the only Hot 100 entry for Luscious Jackson, the first band signed to the Beastie Boys' label, Grand Royal (their drummer, Kate Schellenbach, was an early member of the Beastie Boys). Their band name is a play on Lucious Jackson, a basketball player who played for the Philadelphia 76ers in the '60s and '70s.
After Beastie Boys moved from Def Jam Records to Capitol, they set up Grand Royal as an imprint for their own music so it would seem like they were on an indie label, not a corporate behemoth. It was purely symbolic until they heard from their old friends Jill Cunniff and Gabby Glaser, who sent them a demo of Luscious Jackson material and asked for advice. They loved the demo, so in 1992 they decided to make Grand Royal a real label and make the first Luscious Jackson EP, In Search of Manny, the first release. They promoted the band as best they could, including a feature in the first issue of a magazine they started called Grand Royal in 1993. The first full-length Luscious Jackson album was Natural Ingredients in 1994; that was followed by Fever In Fever Out in 1996, which includes "Naked Eye." The group called it quits in 2000 but reunited for a few years starting in 2011.
A corollary to this story: Beastie Boys kicked Kate Schellenbach out of their group in 1984 when they took on Rick Rubin as a producer. She found out after returning from a month in Europe and spotting the guys at a club, where they were dressed in matching Fila suits Rubin bought for them. The Beastie's knew they did her dirty and were happy to help make amends by helping out Lucious Jackson. Another corollary: Beastie Boys started degrading women in their music and presentation starting with their first album, Licensed To Ill, in 1986. They essentially became the characters they portrayed in their hit "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)." By 1992 they were trying to shed this image and show due respect for women. Championing Luscious Jackson helped them to that end. From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/luscious-jackson/naked-eye


Cosmic Rough Riders - Baby, You’re So Free

A Chat with Daniel Wylie of Cosmic Rough Riders

Who or what most influenced you musically as a youth? Did you come from a musical family? 

DANIEL: David Bowie. He was my hero. I obsessed on him. I also loved bands like Roxy Music, Queen, Genesis, Yes, Steely Dan, Joe Walsh, Stevie Wonder, lots of sixties and seventies bands like the Kinks, Beatles, Beach Boys, Who, Byrds, and lots of Motown and seventies soul like the Chi-Lites, Detroit Spinners, Chairmen of the Board… so much. I was like a sponge soaking it all up…drawn to melody…then punk happened and I got into Elvis Costello, The Clash, and so many others. I also loved Disco music and electronic pop like Kraftwerk. My dad played a little bit of guitar, but there were no real musicians in my family. Both my parents were massive music fans, and I heard lots of great music through them: Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, lots of fifties, sixties and seventies country music like Glen Campbell, Skeeter Davis, John Denver, and Bobbie Gentry…some great folk music like Hamish Imlach, The Dubliners, and Alex Campbell. My dad had a record stall in Glasgow’s Barrowlands market, and when I was 14/15/16 years old, I would work on it at weekends. I would take records as wages. 

Can you tell us about some of the past groups you’ve played or worked with?

DANIEL: I can tell you the names of some of them…Transaction, Pioneers West, The Thieves (there have been lots of bands with this name), Rise (again, there are so many bands have used this name). The Thieves came close to getting signed as did Rise. EMI decided not to sign Rise because they’d just signed a band they thought sounded like us…that was Radiohead. :) The Thieves released four singles/eps and then disbanded. They were also the first band I appeared on TV with and had a large local following.

For the uninitiated, how would you describe your music?

DANIEL: Ultra melodic sums it up quite well. Generally, it’s either jingle jangle, chiming, guitar pop with harmonies and hooks, or it’s melodic, acoustic, melancholia with harmonies. My main focus is on writing super tuneful vocal melodies that you can sing in the shower.

Were you part of the Postcard era scene, or just a fan of the music that came out of that scene?

DANIEL: I was a fan of that label. I was in a band called Pioneers West around that time who might have fitted in well with that scene, but we were only together for about a year. I’m a massive fan of Orange Juice and Aztec Camera. Those bands were so great and set the bar high for Scottish music.

Please tell us a little about the early formation of the Cosmic Rough Riders, and how you met Alan McGee through Poptones Records.

DANIEL: Having been in bands for years, in 1996, I finally decided to become a solo artist. I was sick of always having a cynic dragging good bands down…kids…never be in a band with a cynic…they’re already beaten before you get started. A community studio called C# Sharp had opened in my area, and over the next three years I recorded some demos there. These formed the biggest part of the first Cosmic Rough Riders album Deliverance. Some of the album was recorded at Riverside Studios in Glasgow, with the aid of an arts grant. I had originally decided to release my music under the name Dylan Wylie, and in fact, one of the songs made it out on a magazine compilation under that name. However, I’d read a Gram Parsons quote about wanting to make Cosmic American Music and I thought that sounded great. Then, one day I noticed a poster in a jeans store…it was a girl wearing cut off shorts and they were called Rough Riders. I put that together with Cosmic from the GP quote and that’s how I got the name. CRR was a solo project and only became a band by accident. I needed to play a showcase for Alan McGee, who was interested in signing me to Pop tones. So we (CRR was a duo by this stage of myself and Stephen Fleming, who I’d brought in because he was a studio engineer and played some nice guitar), brought in some other guys to play live. McGee offered a deal on the SPOT, but he’d seen the band and wanted to sign us as a band. I’d been trying for a deal for years and was 41 by this time, so I opted to take a chance. So I ended up in a band with guys who hadn’t even played on my songs/records. It didn’t work out as I didn’t get on with a couple of them. When they started to bring in songs they’d written (that I didn’t rate or even like) and wanted them on the next album, I knew it was time to leave my own band. Shit happens. It got very complicated around this time, and I’d rather not go over old wounds again…it wasn’t the end of the world.

From: https://bigtakeover.com/interviews/a-chat-with-daniel-wylie-of-cosmic-rough-riders 

Black Mountain - Mothers of the Sun

Drawing on blues, psychedelia, acid rock, Led Zeppelin, and the Velvet Underground, Black Mountain's sound is a cross between the darkness and grit of the Warlocks and Brian Jonestown Massacre's trippiness, with a folky undertow weaving through it all. Black Mountain leader Stephen McBean previously fronted the semi-acoustic cowpunk band Jerk with a Bomb, but after releasing two albums, he reshaped the Vancouver-area band into a group called Black Mountain. After debuting in October 2004 on Jagjaguwar with the 12" Druganaut, Black Mountain stayed with the label for an eponymous full-length, issued the following January. Joining McBean for the album were local players Matthew Camirand, Jeremy Schmidt, Joshua Wells, and Amber Webber, listed collectively to preserve the band's communal ethic. (Black Mountain ran concurrent to and intermingled with McBean's other band, lo-fi classic rockers Pink Mountaintops.) The debut album earned enthusiastic reviews in the music press, and Coldplay tapped Black Mountain to open for them on an arena tour. In January 2008, Black Mountain released their sophomore album, In the Future, and showed off their willingness to explore proggy (and druggy) territory with the 17-minute opus "Bright Lights." The group's third full-length album, Wilderness Heart, arrived in 2010, and earned the group the Polaris Prize, one of the highest honors in Canadian music. In 2012, Black Mountain released their soundtrack to the film Year Zero, an ambitious documentary about surfing set against a dystopian, post-apocalyptic backdrop.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/black-mountain-mn0000950037#biography

Frank Zappa & The Mothers - Live At The Fillmore East, June 6, 1971

Sorry, Frank!  Though the title of Zappa and The Mothers' 1971 album was Just Another Band from L.A., listeners knew what the maverick bandleader was alluding to: his latest group was anything but.  Vocalists Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (a.k.a. Flo and Eddie) and bassist Jim Pons - all freshly recruited from The Turtles - were now happy together with Zappa, drummer Aynsley Dunbar, keyboardists Bob Harris and Don Preston, and multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood in one of the most outrageous and potent line-ups of The Mothers ever.  Though Just Another Band has its fans, this brief era of Mothers history was best captured on Fillmore East - June 1971.  Underneath its plain, white bootleg-esque cover, Zappa unleashed a live concept album linked thematically to his motion picture 200 Motels and its life-on-the-road theme.  With 200 Motels just having received the deluxe treatment last year from Zappa Records and UMe, the labels have turned their attention to Fillmore East.  While the original album has been expanded as a 3-LP vinyl set, the original concerts are premiering in full as part of a bigger set: The Mothers 1971.  This comprehensive 8-CD set follows the smaller, 4-CD box The Mothers 1970 which introduced Flo and Eddie into the band alongside Dunbar, Underwood, George Duke, and Jeff Simmons.
The 100-track, nearly 10-hour The Mothers 1971, produced by Ahmet Zappa and "Vaultmeister" Joe Travers, presents each and every note of all four shows played at NYC's late, lamented Fillmore East on June 5-6, 1971 from which the original album's dozen tracks were drawn.  (The concerts were among the closing acts at the historic venue; it closed permanently on June 27.  Today, a bank sits in its place.)  It marks the very first time the complete Fillmore East concerts, including the subsequently-released jam session with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, have been released in unedited form.  They're also newly mixed from the original tapes by Craig Parker Adams and mastered by John Polito.
But the Fillmore shows are far from everything on this comprehensive set.  To paint a fuller picture of the Mothers' 1971 - one which began in triumph and ended in tragedy - the box recreates a composite concert from the June 1 and June 3 performances in Scranton and Harrisburg, PA (respectively), and concludes with the full Rainbow Theatre concert in London, England on December 10, 1971 when a "fan" attacked Zappa following the band's performance of The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand," leaving him with serious injuries.  The band had been playing that night with rented equipment, due to the shocking fire that engulfed the Montreux Casino on December 4 (and their instruments with it).  Thankfully, Zappa and the Mothers emerged relatively unscathed, not knowing that the fire would be mere prelude to more horror.
The premiere of the Rainbow show could threaten to cast a pall over the higher spirits displayed at the Fillmore East shows, but happily that's not the case here.  The complete Fillmore shows (which occupy the first five-and-a-half discs of the box) are very much a delight for fans of this still-controversial period of Mothers history in which Flo and Eddie steered the group in a more overtly comical direction.  Though the duo dominates the proceedings, whether with raunchy humor or distinctive harmonizing (and frequently with both!), the musicianship for which Zappa was known is still very much in evidence.
The box set makes the case that all of the strengths of this iteration of the band, individually and collectively, were in fact showcased at the Fillmore.  The epic "Billy the Mountain" was performed at every show, ranging roughly from 30-36 minutes in length.  Zappa's parody of a rock opera, about a talking mountain named Billy (with "two big caves for eyes") and his wife Ethel ("a tree growing off his shoulder") allowed for city-specific references, absurdist comedy, satirical jabs at the American right wing, and plenty of Frank's tasty guitar.  For the first two shows, the band arguably topped "Billy" with full-throttle renditions of "King Kong."  Flo and Eddie mostly sat out the lengthy and intricate jazz-rock instrumental which premiered on 1969's Uncle Meat and allowed for ample, impressive soloing on the Fillmore stage. So did an intense reading of "Chunga's Revenge" which closed the first show of June 6 in ferocious fashion with Zappa's searing guitar, Dunbar's forceful drums, and Pons' hypnotic bass all intuitively linked.  If the musicality of the Fillmore stand took a back seat to the comedy on the released album, balance is restored on the box set.
Other highlights of the Fillmore sets include the grooving, twisty, mostly-instrumental "Little House I Used to Live In" and numerous, eclectic selections excised from the original LP including the mordant one-two punch of "Concentration Moon" and "Mom and Dad" from We're Only in It for the Money (1968) and the early, high school-themed Zappa composition "Status Back Baby" from the abortive I Was a Teenage Maltshop project with Captain Beefheart.  From: https://theseconddisc.com/2022/04/27/review-frank-zappa-the-mothers-1971/

Black Sabbath - Sabotage - Side 1

01 - Hole in the Sky
02 - Don’t Start (Too Late)
03 - Symptom of the Universe
04 - Megalomania 

Sabotage is definitely a bit of an outlier in Black Sabbath’s catalogue. There’s an impressive commitment to keep pushing at rock’s boundaries, and for the most part it still sounds great. But it’s a much more inward-looking album than its predecessors, the urge to address the world’s ills now diminished by both the circumstances of its creation and the band’s personal demons (fuelled by various drug and alcohol addictions). Instead, we get recurrent themes of mental dissolution, impotent rage and fantasies of escape, slowly going crazy in search of peace of mind. While I’m often wary of placing too much emphasis on an album’s external context – because ultimately, that’s not what I’m listening to – Sabbath were clearly not in the happiest frame of mind when they recorded Sabotage.
For a start, the band had to contend with months of soul-sapping legal proceedings before they even got round to making it, with their original manager Jim Simpson suing them for wrongful dismissal. Not only did this effectively stop them from playing live for eight months, but the court settled in Simpson’s favour, with Sabbath forced to pay compensation to him. On top of this, they discovered that their current manager Patrick Meehan had been funnelling most of their royalties into his own bank account. Geezer Butler has said, “We were literally in the studio, trying to record, and we’d be signing all these affidavits and everything. That’s why it’s called Sabotage – because we felt that the whole process was just being totally sabotaged by all these people ripping us off.” (Another reason for the title was because part of the album had to be recorded again after the master tapes were accidentally wiped.)
It was also almost inevitable that at some point the band would reach a creative crossroads. Iommi wanted to keep experimenting in the studio and investigate new directions, while Ozzy hankered after the early years of knocking it out in a few days and then hitting the road. The spectre of the emerging American FM radio sound also looms over Sabotage as the band’s popularity in the US continued to mushroom (my favourite example of the apparent disconnect between Sabbath’s proto-doom metal and the stadium rock culture they were increasingly living inside is their performance at the California Jam show in 1974 – Ozzy implores the audience, “C’mon, let’s have a party!” while Iommi stands in front of a giant rainbow grinding out the opening chords to ‘Children of the Grave’). All of which makes for an album that’s reaching out to more mainstream rock tastes (without fatally over-balancing yet) while also trying to pull new rabbits out of the hat – the fact that it’s as enjoyable, and at times genre-defining, as it is shows how imaginative and resilient Sabbath were even under considerable duress.  From: https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/at-breaking-point-black-sabbaths-sabotage-revisited/

The Tea Club - Say Yes

The Tea Club is a band about feeling. Their music is earnest and impassioned, combining elements of art-rock, folk, electronica, and romanticism to create a distinctive sound that’s all their own. The band is fronted by the songwriting team of brothers Patrick and Dan McGowan whose unorthodox guitar playing and fervent singing form the core of the group’s unique style. Bassist Jamie Wolff, keyboardist Joe Dorsey, and drummer Dan Monda complete the ensemble.
The band has recorded four albums with renowned producer Tim Gilles at Big Blue Meenie Studios in Jersey City, NJ. They’ve performed hundreds of shows, supported Haken, Bent Knee, and Thank You Scientist, and have done multiple U.S. national tours and parts of Canada.
If/When, their fifth and latest record, is daringly personal, exploring themes of death, failure, new life, and hope. Complex and cerebral, unguarded and intimate, If/When is a thoroughly heart-felt addition to the band’s immersive catalog. Heralded by Prog magazine as “Challenging, modern, and frequently scintillating…” The Tea Club continue to explore new ways of communicating deep feeling through their art.  From: https://www.progstock.com/2021/artists-schedule/2021-artists/the-tea-club/

Sally Rogers - Lady Margaret

Sally Rogers began her career as a full-time touring musician in 1979, after encouragement from Stan Rogers, the legendary Canadian singer-songwriter.  That was followed by an invitation from Garrison Keillor to appear on A Prairie Home Companion.  She appeared more than a dozen times on that show, which launched her performing career.  Her travels have since taken her to Europe, China, Hungary and Poland, England and Scotland, and across the United States. Sally has released thirteen albums, not including several collaborative projects with other artists. Her first album, The Unclaimed Pint, has stood the test of time and continues to be a big seller. Her songs are included in the Unitarian Hymnal, the Quaker songbook, Rise Up Singing, Rise Again and both national music textbook series. Several of her songs are considered to be folk music classics. Although much of Rogers’ time is spent teaching music in the public schools and being an artist-in-residence these days, she continues to perform in concerts as opportunities arise.  Her gorgeous singing voice, boundless energy and good humor are welcomed from coast to coast.  From: https://ctartsalliance.org/2020/03/09/meet-our-members-sally-rogers/

Thumpermonkey - I Don't Know If This Is A Matter For Wardrobe Or Hairdressing

Thumpermonkey Lives! - We Bake Our Bread Beneath Her Holy Fire (Genin/Tooting Bizarre) - In which an unnoticed Sarf London band, twinkling away doing their good and frankly slightly odd stuff down there in the badlands explodes into an outrageous supernova, outshining half the sky. This album, these six epic songs, have ideas way beyond their station: huge depth, big sound, immaculate arrangements, and a big, big voice. It's a lot of things, and greater than the sum of its parts: unashamed proper prog, lifted, by an avant sensibility, out of cheesy traps, yet swapping the harsher elements of experimental and avant rock for something more melodic, for refined guitars and real singing. Main man Michael Woodman's downright classy voice is like a polished Peter Hammill, all power and in tune and spot-on vibrato. That fine voice is delivering twisted, complex melodies and equally twisted, happily ambiguous lyrics, the combination is thrilling. 
There's nothing quite like Thumpermonkey Lives! but I can guess where they're coming from: they're the English Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, a more experimental Van Der Graaf Generator, they've got some of the headbending melodies of Time Of Orchids. They've been threatening this for a while, with a great debut album and much time spent hothousing their talents in their Immersion Composition Society lodge (you what? Go on, Google it, I dare you) - but We Bake Our Bread Beneath Her Holy Fire is still a surprise - a classic, even. Stuffed to the gills with possibly unconscious references to good things - hints of Yes, moments of Cardiacs-like odd sounds, loads of Gentle Giant - crikey. Throw in some Alex Harvey and Bowie and The Associates and Bobby Conn, a touch of Melvins if you like. It's challenging only in that the melodies are thick on the ground and take you off in many directions, but that the complex mathyness underlying much of the songs is made easier on the ear by Woodman's voice and the warm, clarity of the arrangements. I can see both followers of hard-boiled avant-rock and fans of more traditional prog bands like Porcupine Tree getting this, and if Thumpermonkey Lives! ahem, live a bit longer, the big prog festival organisers could well be beating a path to their door.  From: https://thumpermonkey.bandcamp.com/album/we-bake-our-bread-beneath-her-holy-fire 

Royal Thunder - Blue

The almost 10-minute "Blue", which comes with an opening that may remind you of "Cherub Rock", is one of the more impressively vast tracks on Royal Thunder's debut LP, CVI, out now on Relapse. The Atlanta, Ga., band's fronted by Miny Parsonz, a singer and bassist who really sings: the quartet's Southern hard rock riffs are there, as is a deep, doomy atmosphere (they tap into post-punk and schizo psychedelia on this one), but time again she's the one who brings it all together-- and over-the-top-- with her sun-cracked, Robert Plant-style howl.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/13723-royal-thunder-blue/ 

Old & In The Way - Midnight Moonlight

When not playing with The Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia liked to dabble in side projects including stints with his own Jerry Garcia Band, The New Riders Of The Purple Sage, gigging with Merle Saunders, recording with John Wales and guesting on albums by the likes of Ornette Coleman, David Bromberg, Brewer And Shipley, Bob Dylan, CSN&Y, Jefferson Airplane and many others. But Garcia was also a member of a bona-fide “supergroup.” When most people hear the term “supergroup,” bands like Cream, Blind Faith, Derek & The Dominos, CSN&Y and The Traveling Wilbury’s come to mind.
Garcia’s supergroup was Old & In The Way, a bluegrass collective of great pedigree featuring Jerry Garcia on banjo and vocals, David Grisman on mandolin, Peter Rowan on guitar, Vassar Clements on fiddle and John Kahn on bass. (John Hartford sat in with the band before Clements came on board.) Rowan and Grisman played together with ex-Byrd Clarence White in the bluegrass group Muleskinner, and also in the group Earth Opera.  Grisman also played with The Even Dozen Jug Band and guested on The Grateful Dead’s American Beauty album. Rowan and Clements were members of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys, and John Kahn played with Muleskinner, Howard Wales and Garcia.
Garcia formed Old & In The Way in 1973 as a vehicle to play bluegrass banjo. The group grew out of living room jams between Garcia, Grisman and Rowan who all lived near each other in Marin County, California. Together they would gig around locally with John Kahn in tow and John Hartford on fiddle. After Hartford could not commit to a tour, the group called on Vassar Clements to take his place. They were together for a total of nine months, and the Old & In The Way album was recorded in October of 1973 in front of an audience at The Boarding House in San Francisco, where most of the group’s discography was recorded.
Their one-off eponymously titled album was subsequently released on The Grateful Dead’s Round record label in 1975 featuring today’s song of the day, “Midnight Moonlight,” which was penned by Peter Rowan. The album also included their bluegrass cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” a version of the Peter Rowan-penned New Riders’ tune “Panama Red,” and traditional tunes like the Delmore Brothers’ “Pig In A Pen” and Carter Stanley’s “White Dove.”
With great harmonies and instrumental interplay, Old & In The Way’s old timey, good-feeling vibe struck a chord with Grateful Dead heads, making it one of the best selling bluegrass albums of all time. And indeed, several songs from the album have gone on to become standards of the Bluegrass repertoire including “Midnight Moonlight,” “Wild Horses” and the album’s title track, “Old & In The Way.”  From: https://internetfm.com/song-of-the-day-midnight-moonlight-by-old-in-the-way/

Raze The Maze - Letters From The Parking Lot

With their second album as Raze The Maze, former MoeTar musical part­ners Moorea Dickason and Tarik Ragab raise their game on all fronts. 7am Dream squeezes 10 songs into 31 minutes. The duo plant their feet in pro­gress­ive pop land; the mood is upbeat, the sound is snappy, yet the catchy hooks are car­ried on odd time sig­na­tures. The pro­duc­tion is a notice­able advance­ment from their self-titled 2019 release, feel­ing warmer and more cohes­ive, with rich multi-layered har­mon­ies. Dickason’s vocal scoops in the title track and By Design recall the style of Kate Bush or XTC’s Andy Part­ridge, while Let­ters From The Park­ing Lot spits out frantic gui­tar licks that sug­gest the influ­ence of Zappa. Per­sist­ence is all tum­bling melodic runs, played by Paul Han­son on bas­soon, and stut­ter­ing syn­co­pated beats from drum­mer Terry Branam that inter­twine to cre­ate a poly­rhythmic puzzle. It’s densely packed stuff, where there’s always a lot hap­pen­ing in the arrange­ments even when Ragab’s melod­ies could fit in a pop song. The brisk run­ning time is decept­ive: 7am Dream is full to the brim with ideas to tickle the cerebrum.  From: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/prog/20221125/283107073013057?srsltid=AfmBOooCpWoWfV1wR00asZlUzbOcQvkhHKr3DuN1WqcpRPfm6ndSHlbe

Nil Lara - How Was I To Know

Nil Lara is a Cuban-American songwriter with Venezuelan roots who has just blown me away. I read about him recently on Matt Nathanson’s celebrity playlist (of all places), sought him out, and immediately loved what I heard. Lara is soulful and passionate and sings like his heart is burning. Add in heavy doses of warm & layered Latin percussion, traditional Cuban and Venezuelan string instruments, and his soaring chants and vocals (in a combination of Spanish and English) – and I was hooked. It’s been named by some “Number 2 on my list of Best Albums By People That 99.5% of the World Has Never Heard Of.” His 1996 self-titled album was critically acclaimed, but never received the popular attention it deserves. I would completely go see him live, and surely dance myself sore, but he seems to be on indefinite hiatus. Download these, and buy the album, though – sheer fabulousness.  From: http://www.fuelfriendsblog.com/2006/07/19/world-music-wednesday-nil-lara/ 

Melissa Auf Der Maur - Followed The Waves

You probably know her as the bassist from Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins, but Melissa Auf der Maur’s career has extended far beyond the rock songs of the 1990s. Luckily, in Courtney Love and Billy Corgan she had two dedicated role models. “Courtney and Billy were both very different,” she told BP. “But I have so much respect for both of them. My time with Hole was more character definition, creating me as a person, and then my crash course in music, one on one, was with the Pumpkins, who refined and defined my musicianship.
“Billy in particular: his level of efficiency and musicianship and his commitment to art was pretty remarkable. He was a real mentor in that way. With Courtney it’s a different female bond, simply because there aren’t that many women in the rock landscape, so we have a real unspoken loyalty to each other based on that fact alone. We’re on a similar mission to put a female perspective out there. With Courtney it enhanced my commitment as a woman to keep on rocking!” Interestingly, Auf der Maur never wrote songs or riffs on the bass. Instead she'd pick up a Gibson SG, run it through a Fender Blues Deluxe, and write using a clean, slightly effected sound. “It's a disgrace to the bass player in me, but it's just hard to write on the bass. Playing power chords on a guitar is much easier.”
Auf der Maur spent five years with Hole, but it wasn't all wild parties and arena tours. In fact, two and a half of those years were spent in the studio, writing and recording the band's swansong; Celebrity Skin. It was a vastly ambitious – and vastly expensive – album. “I was there for every minute of every day. It was a very demanding process. We ended up spending millions of dollars.” The album emerged, eventually, to modest success, and there was the inevitable tour to accompany it. But by that time, it was clear to everyone that the whole thing was running out of steam. “It sort of felt like the time to go. Courtney was getting into films and I didn't really know what the future was gonna be.”
Within a week of leaving Hole Auf der Maur received a phone call from Billy Corgan, telling her that his bassist D'arcy Wretzky had quit the Pumpkins and he needed a replacement. “It was just a very dramatic coincidence. Billy said, ‘You're gonna be in my band!’ And I couldn't say no, because it was a dream come true. It was fulfilling a teenage fantasy, but it was also the best music lesson of my life. I knew it was only for one year, because they told me they were splitting up. And knowing I was going to be taught their back catalogue was incredible.”
When describing her own music, and specifically her use of chorus and reverb effects, Auf der Maur likens it to “a beautiful liquid poured over a thorny, rough-edged base.” She thinks of her bass playing in similarly imaginative terms. The bass, she suggests, is an intrinsically feminine instrument, since it performs a nurturing role at the heart of every band: “I call it the mother of all instruments, because it has to be sensitive to everything else. It has to respond to everything equally – the drums, the vocal melody, the guitar part. It has to be the glue. Females play that role in families, so it's natural for them to do the same in bands. It's about being sensitive, putting your ego aside, and picking up on the subtleties. Women are good at that. Do I play bass better because I'm a woman? No. But I think I honour the role of the bass player more naturally.”  From: https://www.guitarworld.com/features/melissa-auf-der-maur-looks-back-on-a-life-in-rock 

Love - August / I'm With You / Good Times / Nothing

A while ago, I came across a description of the quandary Arthur Lee found himself in after releasing his undisputed masterwork, 1967’s “Forever Changes.” Although I can’t recall the source, it’s since come to stand as my lasting image of the man. In 1968, Lee walked out the door, stepped onto the lawn, and turned to wave goodbye. Many years after shutting the door, we took a peek outside and there he was, still on the lawn, still waving good-bye.
“Forever Changes” is a curious case. Above and beyond the truly remarkable music, it came to represent the dangers inherent in an artist creating a definitive statement. Lee was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he was going to die after he completed the record, so he made sure he said everything he needed to say, and communicated it all with striking urgency. To top it all off, he somehow found a way to sum up everything and its mother with the brilliant closer, “You Set The Scene.”
But Lee didn’t die. (Not for a while, anyway). So, instead, he killed the band, erecting in its place a new version of Love. The new band had more testicles than the older, more classic incarnation, keeping Lee’s unmistakably skewed poetic perversity intact but opting to follow the Cream/Hendrix template (Lee was old buds with Jimi, having been behind the boards the first time he set foot in a recording studio). Gone was the orchestrated, almost show tune-like influence of Bryan Maclean’s songwriting, which leant a mesmerizing tension to the greatness of those first three records. Without Maclean around to keep things freakishly diverse, Love progressively became a progressive concern.
This may be the very reason the Love story with their fan base ended here. Along with the death of the classic line-up came the disappearance from their music of so many of the unique signifiers their fans had come to love. The baroque, jazzy arrangements, delicate Spanish accents, and touches of MOR sensibility that brought out the depth in their approach — all of it, gone. Instead, along with old friends and previous bandmates Jay Donnellan (lead guitar), Frank Fayad (bass), and George Suranovich (drums, with Drachen Theaker guest-whacking on three tracks), the subtlety of their previous sound is smashed to smithereens with a powerhouse, virtuoso approach that greets the idea of space and restraint with utter contempt, cramming solos and drum fills into every last inch of tape. Suranovich, especially, is all over the damn place, sounding every bit like a musician with everything to prove.
So conclusive was “Forever Changes” in the Lee canon that most see it as the last stop on the Love train. That’s simply not the case. Although it is indisputably their best record, and their days as a great band were certainly numbered, the flashes of inspiration to come were enough to see them through to the end of the decade. However, “Four Sail” is the last time it all came together full-throttle for Arthur. This thoroughly overlooked gem stands as their final release before the magic of their early days had been fully shaken off.
After Lee had assembled the new band, they entered a makeshift studio in a Los Angeles warehouse and recorded three LPs worth of material. Elektra Records were owed one more record before the expiration of their contract, and “Four Sail” contains the ten tracks that Elektra hand-picked. (The remainder came out on the Blue Thumb label four months later as the intermittently brilliant double-LP “Out Here.”) The album’s title is a cynical double entendre, referring both to their jumping ship from Elektra and the product-minded mentality of the music industry.
There are many words one could use to describe Lee’s new direction, but “product” definitely isn’t one of them. There isn’t a bad song here. Kicking off the proceedings with sledgehammer ferocity is lead-off track “August,” which in a way is a kitchen-sink template for everything late-era Love had to offer. A mysterious Spanish-style guitar intro leads in to an almost laughably bombastic power-trio assault; delicate, folk-style verses; and a crazy jam-out middle section that features drumming so busily fill-intensive that Neil Peart himself would beg for it to be taken down a notch. “August” is one of Love’s best songs, and proof positive that they hadn’t said it all with “Forever Changes.” If anything, they now had an entirely new vocabulary in which to articulate their life and times and overdriven Marshall stacks were certainly more era-appropriate by this point than flutes, horns, and strings.  From: https://irom.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/on-second-thought-love-four-sail-1969/

Deap Vally - Julian

A rock & roll duo from California, Deap Vally deliver a primal mix of hard rock stomp, glam rock swagger, and greasy blues riffs, like the White Stripes colliding with the Black Keys after time traveling to the 1970s and back. With just guitar, vocals, and drums, the group manage to sound full-bodied while possessing a deadly sense of cool, a healthy degree of sonic punch, and a deadpan sense of humor in their braggadocious lyrics. Deap Vally made a fiery debut with 2013's Sistrionix, upped their game on 2016's Femejism, and after looking for the right label for their music, they returned in 2021 with the polished but muscular Marriage. 
Deap Vally formed in Los Angeles after guitarist/howler Lindsey Troy, who had been performing as a solo singer and songwriter, took a crocheting class taught in a San Fernando shop by drummer Julie Edwards, who had been in a group called the Pity Party. The two swapped CDs from their respective projects and soon decided to jam together, blocking out plans for a heavy rock band with strong rhythmic grooves. They began rehearsing as a three-piece, but when their bassist started spending too much time with her other projects, they decided to try working as a duo.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/deap-vally-mn0002961957#biography 

 

Jumping Jack - All in the Sky

An album like this really puts things in perspective. When listening to mid-late(r) era Metallica, like the black album, it's hard not to hear something targeted for nothing but cheap, mass radio play. Now we have Jumping Jack, who take a lot of aspects from that Metallica period but pair it up with a stoner rock type of sound, and it sounds pretty damn solid.
This isn't a Metallica tribute album or anything, the influences are just quite obvious. Along with that, it takes some more mainstream grunge a la Pearl Jam, and puts it through a Black Label Society type filter. The mix creates this comfortable zone of radio rock with mainstream appeal meets dirty heavy metal. The riffs are equal parts catchy and heavy, while the songs drive hard, yet have an incredibly accessible sound. This is really comparable to Queens Of The Stone Age, certainly not in sound, but in the appeal it has; easily digestible and radio friendly, yet with a good amount of integrity.  From: https://metalstorm.net/pub/review.php?review_id=10521&page=1 

22 Brides - Time Stands Still

Libby and Carrie Johnson started singing together when they were children. They went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston before moving to New York City in 1983. In 1992, the sisters formed the indie folk duo 22 Brides, and in 1993 they put out the self-released eight-song CD Selling Fruit in Cairo. The band name 22 Brides comes from an Indian folk tale they heard when they were younger. After being spotted during one of their monthly gigs at CBGB's Gallery in New York, the duo signed with indie label Zero Hour Records in 1994. On June 22, 1994, they released their self-titled debut, consisting of remixed songs from their self-released effort plus four new songs. 
On the year-long tour for 22 Brides, and in advance of their second album, Beaker, 22 Brides expanded into a four-member band with John Skehan (guitar, bass) and Ned Stroh (drums) joining Libby Johnson (bass, keyboards, vocals) and Carrie Johnson (guitar, vocals). Produced by Adam Lasus, the album had a more highly produced feel than the folk influences of the band's debut. Following a Zero Hour distribution deal with Universal Records, Beaker was released on Zero Hour / Universal. In 1997, Zero Hour released the 22 Brides EP Blazes of Light, which was a sampler of sorts, with songs from their first two albums, "Purified" from their upcoming third album, and a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".
The band's third LP, Demolition Day, was released in 1998, with a return to the more intimate sound of 22 Brides. In an effort to get back to their folk-pop harmonizing roots, the band worked again with Daniel Wise and recorded their vocal tracks live and switched to a trio formation, with Libby Johnson on bass and vocals, Carrie Johnson on guitar and vocals, and Bill Dobrow on drums. The first single from the album "Another Distant Light" debuted on WNNX (99X) out of Atlanta.  
In 1996, Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti introduced characters based on Libby and Carrie Johnson in their comic book series Ash. They then created a four-book miniseries, 22 Brides, published by Event Comics, revolving around the characters based on the sisters, with the first issue published on February 7, 1996. Palmiotti later created a spinoff series, Painkiller Jane.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Johnson 

Chris Isaak – There She Goes

In last weeks Top Ten list I made the assertion that Chris Isaak’s 1995 album, Forever Blue, is one of the most underrated albums of the 90’s.  Known best for 1989 smash hit “Wicked Games”, Isaak has had a surprisingly enduring career in making quality music, even if he is less and less recognized.  It is certainly time for Chris Isaak to get more recognition of LxL, rather than just a passing reference in a Top Ten list.
I think if one quality could be pinpointed that sets Forever Blue apart from most of the rest of 90’s music is the sheer timelessness of the sound Isaak was able to achieve.  If you just throw on Forever Blue for someone not acquainted with Isaak’s work and ask them what era the album is from, they might answer anywhere from the 50’s to present day.  His electric guitar work hearkens back to many of the country rock noodlers of decades long past, and Forever Blue seems to be the album he attained perfection on in that regard.  The tonal qualities different artists get out of the same instrument is astounding, and Chris Isaak is one of those artists that defies logic when you hear him go to work.  The atmospheric electric work on “Graduation Day” and “There She Goes” are prime examples of this mastery.
Another factor setting Forever Blue apart from the rest of Isaak’s very strong catalog is the thematic cohesiveness of bitterness, lost love and a general attitude of eff you.  When researching this review, I actually came across something interesting I didn’t know before.  In the liner notes for Forever Blue, Isaak included a letter to an anonymous former love interest who apparently left him.  This is not a rare spark for a musician’s best work, but it doesn’t make this experience any less effective in lighting a fire in Isaak.  You can hear the anger in more rambunctious tunes like “Goin’ Nowhere” and “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing”.  But, you can also feel the pain in the quieter moments of songs like “Changed Your Mind”.
Forever Blue is the personification of the five stages of grief, leaving out only “acceptance”.  Isaak does legitimately emote his feeling that he will not be able to let this betrayal go.  In 40 minutes Chris Isaak describes the end of a relationship to perfection.  If you don’t “get” the album now, wait until you go through a rough end to a relationship and you may find a little more appreciation.  I love this album, and hope it finds a new audience someday soon by way of some late-career gem from Isaac.  From: https://littlebylisten.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/retro-review-chris-isaak-forever-blue/

Igorrr - Live BetiZFest 2018

 Igorrr - Live BetiZFest 2018 - Part 1

 

 Igorrr - Live BetiZFest 2018 - Part 2

 

Ben Serna-Grey: You incorporate a lot of different styles into your compositions but your personal sound stays cohesive and authentic. How do you approach your songwriting when it comes to combining all these stylistic elements? 

Gautier Serre: Combining all those elements is natural for me as it is basically the way I want to hear the music. Some styles of music are awesome to combine with their opposite, like for example Baroque and Death Metal, those are very opposite styles and they work together a bit like the Yin and the Yang. One is light and easy and the other one is dark and brutal, they articulate each other very well and can be used together if you find the good balance. Combining genres is not the main goal, combining genres is the result of the main thing, which is to use contrast in music. The contrast in music is very helpful to underline the message, you can contrast a genre of music with its opposite and it will make it feel stronger, like with noise, the noise will never feel so noisy when you contrast it with silence, and on the other way around, the silence will never feel so silent when you contrast it with noise. You can check the track Parpaing on the album Spirituality and Distortion, Parpaing is a very heavy track with no concessions at all. Full brutality. George Fisher delivered extremely brutal and heavy vocals, Sylvain Bouvier did a impressive performance at the drums. It is indisputably loud and powerful. Martyn Clément as well brought a absolute killing guitar riffing on it. Here comes the contrasts to articulate the music.
With Parpaing, and its ridiculously heavy vibes, the perfect contrast that can be given to that is the lightest music possible, a 8-bits Chiptune music, that’s why I set up this track in 3 parts, it starts with simple and almost normal death metal, as heavy as it might be, then I contrast the music with its opposite, the 8-bits Chiptune, and then the death metal comes back, slapping and killing the 8-bits Chiptune music. It has been pretty clear in my mind of how this track should be from the beginning, but one day, I tried, just for fun, to let go another George Fisher verse, not on the death metal this time but on the Chiptune, I felt like this was it, this was the perfect music I was searching for, the perfect link, the absolute combination of sounds. Death metal has no wish to sound like 8-bits Chiptune music at all, and 8-bits Chiptune music has no intention to sound like death metal at all, that’s why each genre has plenty of space to fit with each other.

You also use a lot of micro-rhythmic and microtonal shifting within a line. Is this something you began doing deliberately or did it come more organically for you?

As you said, it’s something which comes like organically, I would even say instinctively. Music is a matter of emotion, when you create music, you express what you feel, or what you want to feel. The best example which comes into my mind now is on Downgrade Desert, at the end of the track, on the last part of it, there is a bend on one note of the guitar floating on the blast beat, a bend from down to up, which passes through all the micro possible tones from one note to another, this makes you feel like your heart is going up and down and your whole body is following it, it’s almost a physical sensation, it’s made in purpose, at some points, those musical effects brings you out of the usual musical rules where all the notes has a precise name and should sounds in tune with the A 440Hz. Microtonal helps to feel a bit out of this for a moment, while micro-rhythmic, specially with the breakcore parts helps to reach a very detailed work and vision on the sound,  so for those who are interested in details in music, there is a insane amount of work on this over all the Igorrr albums. Some things I’m sure to be the only one to hear, but makes me smile.

What are some of your influences—musicians, books, art, etc? 

I have many musical influences, coming from Bach, Cannibal Corpse, Chopin, Meshuggah, Beethoven, Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Mr.Bungle, Taraf de Haïdouks, Aphex Twin, Sepultura, Mayhem, Domenico Scarlatti or Gabi Lunca, again extremely various and different artists, all beyond amazing, but this is just a very small part of my influences, I’m listening tons of very different music since my childhood so I have a heavy and diverse musical background. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about books, I got a kind of hyper activity disorder, so I’m not able to focus long enough to read a book or at least having enough patience to get into a book, this sucks, because books looks awesome and it’s frustrating not to be able to really read one. 
Except music and video, I’m not really much going further into art, I’m more a nature man, I live in the countryside with my girlfriend and I’m fascinated by wild nature and the Mediterranean fauna and flora, this is what I do during the short moments when I’m out of music, learning the infinite complexity and speechless creativity of nature, which can be seen as the finest Art ever. 

What kind of music did you grow up with? 

I grew up with parents which are listening to a music which I dislike very very much : Chanson Française (French Chanson). I’m not interested in lyrics in music, and Chanson Française is like 90% of lyrics and a musical support just to help the lyrics, plus the music is usually made there  in a manner that I find demagogic and fake. I’m not sure that helped me very much to develop Igorrr, but on my personal parcours, I grew up with Korn, Nirvana, Pantera, Metallica and Morbid Angel for the metal/rock part, also with Apex Twin, Squarepusher, Venetian Snares or Bogdan Raczynski for the electronic part, and Bach, Chopin and Mozart for the classical part, plus some really popular bands which I like pretty much after all like Dire Straits, Jean Michel Jarre or Muse. I didn’t grow up in one single kind of music, I have always been hungry of something else, curious of something else because I always had this feeling that something is missing, something which I’m creating in Igorrr now, like to finally hear the music I’ve always been searching for. 

Is there anyone in particular you’d like to collaborate with that you haven’t yet? 

My personal hero in the death metal world is George Fisher, so the collaboration with him on Spirituality and Distortion feels like a kind of accomplishment already, so I feel pretty much satisfied about collaborations at the moment. They are still many people I would be happy to collaborate with, but Igorrr is not about that, Igorrr is a musical project that I created to express the music which makes sense to me, whatever what people might think or whatever if the label will be able to sell it or not, it’s a honest music, made with no compromise at all, there is no aim to collaborate with this or that person, it’s working on the other way around, if the music needs it, then I’m happy to collaborate, in the case of George Fisher, the music definitely needed him, but I’m not thinking about doing any collaboration since I don’t have the music which really needs it. I would say I’m doing anything in order to serve the music, the rest is out of the process.

From: https://toiletovhell.com/review-and-interview-igorrr-spirituality-and-distortion/