Grey Eye Glances - If I Was

The fact that this CD was even released shows Grey Eye Glances' relentless drive and energy. They started their professional musical careers with their own self-released CDs, recording under the name Sojourn. Later, they had to change their name; their final choice, Grey Eye Glances, is derived from an Edgar Allan Poe poem. A major label signed them; they released two discs with them, but wound up having to raise the funds to buy back their own material. Fans came to their aid, and later, fans also assisted them so that they could release new material once again, this time on an independent label.
You might think that their music would suffer from all of these upheavals. But perhaps the turmoil only added to their need to write and record music, for A Little Voodoo sees them in fine form. Two new permanent band members, guitarist/vocalist Brett Kull and drummer Paul Ramsey, join original members Dwayne Keith (keyboards and vocals), Eric O'Dell (bass and vocals) and Jennifer Noble (lead vocals).
Noble herself is in good voice on this album. There's always been a Sarah McLachlan-type quality to her vocals, but the opening track, "Close Your Eyes," really brings out that quality. By no means is she derivative of McLachlan, but there's a certain feel to her vocal twists that brings the Canadian singer to mind. In general, Noble sounds both completely natural and seductive on "Close Your Eyes," and she adds to that sound on "If I Was," the third track, a sexy-sounding rock number in itself.
A lot of the songs on this do seem more rock-driven than previous tryouts. This Philadelphia-area based group always had a folk-rock feel. While the folk feel hasn't disappeared, there definitely is more of a rockier edge to this new album. Luckily, however, the contemplative lyrics and music remain, regardless of acoustic or electrical instruments. "The One," "Keep On" and "He and She" may appeal to AAA-style radio station formats; they're more rock-oriented overall, but they retain the Grey Eye Glances stamp. Long-time fans might need to give the album a couple of listens in order to appreciate the band's current direction; but no matter which member of the group has worked on the music, they generally write thoughtful lyrics to match intelligent-sounding, yet catchy melodies. There's something to be said about a band that knows its sound that well yet is able to make slight changes in order to evolve.  From: https://www.rambles.net/geg_lilvoodoo02.html

Lighthouse - What Gives You The Right / You And Me / I Just Wanna Be Your Friend

"Thoughts of moving on" was the first album I bought by Lighthouse, way back in the early 1970's. It quickly became a personal favourite, the strong harmonies and exciting use of a full brass section of this Canadian outfit offering a unique alternative to the music then being made by British bands. The album neatly spits in two halves, with side one generally containing the upbeat numbers, and side two the ballads and powerful slower songs.
The opening "Take it slow" was released as a reasonably successful single in the US and Canada, the strong hook making it the obvious choice. "Fly my aeroplane", "Rockin' chair" and "What gives you the right" continue the upbeat radio friendly pop rock sound the band had adopted for the previous album ("One fine morning"). "I just wanna be your friend" was also released as a single, the Three Dog Night like harmonic arrangement making for an instantly appealing, if largely unchallenging song.
"Walk me down" sees the pace drop for this delicate ballad with lush mellotron orchestration. The late Bob McBride's vocal here is one of the finest he recorded during his time with the band. The track sets the mood for much of the second side, which has the longer, generally slower songs. "You and me" is another reflective ballad with good keyboard work and a CSNY sound. The track plays out with some nice flute.
If side was primarily upbeat, with one ballad, side two's softer atmosphere is interrupted by the Russ Ballard like "Insane". "I'd be so happy" is a wonderful power ballad which the aforementioned Three Dog Night truncated and included on their "Hard Labor" album. The strong song writing here is complemented by a superb arrangement. The album closes with "I'm gonna try to make it", another reflective piece featuring a strong brass arrangement and melodic harmonies.
"Thoughts of moving on" does exactly what it says on the tin. It finds Lighthouse moving in a more commercial direction while retaining their emphasis on strong arrangements and tight performances. While the album does not offer anything particularly challenging it does represent a highly enjoyable experience.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=15992

Renaissance - Black Flame / I Think Of You / Running Hard

Renaissance took half a decade and several line-up shifts to figure themselves out, evolving from the flowery prog-rock of their early days through the classical-flavored symphonic approach that bloomed under the guidance of guitarist Michael Dunford, lyricist Betty Thatcher and operatic vocalist Annie Haslam. The band’s fifth album, Turn of the Cards, is really the second recording from this definitive lineup—and like most of their material from the early to mid ‘70s, it’s full of ornate piano motifs, lush orchestrations, the melodic bass of unsung hero Jon Camp and more soaring, theatrical melodies than a standard Broadway musical. Despite the seamless fusion of classical and rock styles, Renaissance were still indebted to the past, borrowing some of their loveliest arrangements from older works (including John Tout’s jaw-dropping piano fanfare that opens the epic “Running Hard,” which he adapted from a piece by French composer Jehan Alain). The band would claim full ownership of their material starting with 1975’s Scheherazade and Other Stories—a confidence boost aligning with a creative leap. But Turn of the Cards is still staggering in its elegance.  From: https://relix.com/reviews/detail/renaissance-turn-of-the-cards-remastered-expanded/ 

 

Bubblegum Octopus - Soft Sun Spots

Bubblegum Octopus is the New Jersey based "synthpop grindcore rave" solo project of vocalist, composer, sequencer, and instrumentalist Matthew "m@ the c@" Morden.
The project began in 2005 after the release of the c@ album copy as an attempt to recreate the synth-punk sound of the late 70s. As writing progressed, the original intention was supplanted by the development of a melodic hybrid of cutesy picopop/shibuya-kei style pop, "extreme" metal and punk, Eurobeat and Bemani type dance music, early 00s style digigrind, and predominantly 90s, 16-bit video game music style electronics with elements of breakcore, noise, IDM, synth-funk, 8-bit, uplifting trance, and electro-punk.
Because the project is so often inaccurately pigeonholed into various sub and quasi-genres of electronic music, m@ and his fans have seriocomically adopted the terms spazzpop and tweegrind to describe the project.
A number of other, less used terms (cat-wave, picothrash, blackened disco, sugar doom, and pizzacore, for example) have also been used, as well as "fey-pop," coming from an early magazine review of the project.
The songs were initially rooted in MIDI sequenced synthesis, vocals, and occasional guitar or electronic noise, but have evolved to incorporate circuit-bent toys, effect pedal chains, hardware sequencers, drum machines, synths, theremin, mandolin, horns, percussion instruments, SNES and Gameboy soundchips, a host of different programs, the manipulation of self-made samples, and a variety of other hardware.
Ideologically, the project is rooted firmly in an absurdist outlook on life and art, combating the Peter Pan complex, and rejecting the type of fandom culture-centric lifestyles that so many video game influenced music projects thrive on. The love of cats is also promoted heavily.
The project is often thought to include samples of video games or other things and pitch altered vocals, but nothing of the sort has ever been used in a Bubblegum Octopus song.
Since it's inception, the project has been promoted almost exclusively through the word of mouth of supportive fans, bringing in enough attention to bring the project to #99 in the list of the top 100 unsigned myspace artists over all in 2006 and 2007.
Shows in the past were extremely rare (twice a year or so, and only locally,) and, according to m@, not even a very important part of BgO's existence, until 2009, when touring and regular, more exciting shows became commonplace.
After a semester in school for music performance and composition, and a semester in school for audio engineering, Matthew decided to continue his musical and artistic education on the road, touring the United States.
With his personal endeavors, Matthew has a prolific catalog of released and recorded music, starting as far back as age 15, covering a wide variety of sounds, but most commonly in melodic and/or chaotic, often experimental electronic contexts.
Matthew is best known for his work with his primary solo project, Bubblegum Octopus, wherein his loves of Japanese pop, extreme metal, video game soundtracks, and avant-garde electronic music are explored, usually all at once, a sound which garnered a cult following for the project, online.  From: https://www.last.fm/music/Bubblegum+Octopus/+wiki 

Edie Brickell & New Bohemians - What I Am / The Wheel / Now

Perhaps I’m in the minority here, but I’m of the opinion that the clichéd phrase “one-hit wonder” is an overused and easily abused phrase, one far too often assigned to artists who are undeserving of such a dubious qualifier. It’s also emblematic of the average music consumer’s (and more than a few journalists’) lazy complacency in seeking out the fuller breadth of artists’ discographies, beyond what they’ve been force-fed, spin after spin after spin, on the radio or, at least back in the day, MTV.
Unfortunately, too many artists’ recording careers haven’t received the recognition and appreciation they arguably deserve because of this one-hit-wonder engendered myopia. A prime example is Edie Brickell, who, with her Dallas-bred band New Bohemians, struck gold back in late 1988 with their lyrically and sonically unconventional debut single “What I Am.” The album from which it came, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, received plenty of critical applause on its way to reaching double-platinum commercial heights, largely as a result of its ubiquitous single’s warm reception.
However, three-and-a-half decades later, Brickell and her bandmates (drummer Brandon Aly, percussionist John Bush, bass guitarist Brad Houser—who passed away last month at the age of 62—and guitarist Kenny Withrow) are still rigidly associated with that one song by far too many folks. But for those of us who weren’t merely satisfied with “What I Am” and instead used it as fodder to dig deeper into the group’s debut album—and subsequent recordings including 1990’s excellent Ghost of a Dog and  2006’s Stranger Things, as well as Brickell’s solo fare (1994’s Picture Perfect Morning, 2003’s Volcano, and 2011’s eponymous Edie Brickell)—the rewards have been plentiful.
Originally formed in the early ‘80s, New Bohemians cut their performing chops primarily in the clubs of Dallas’ famed Deep Ellum neighborhood during the middle of the decade. Signed to Geffen Records within a few years’ time, the band recorded their debut long player at the famed Rockfield Studios in Wales with the guidance of the late Pat Moran, who counted albums for rock luminaries such as Iggy Pop, Queen, Robert Plant, and Rush among his production and sound engineering credentials. In describing the recording sessions’ organic stimuli, Brickell told the New York Times in November 1988, “A lot of the time, we don't have any ideas at all and start with a really silly image, like biscuits or paper plates, to see how it goes. When we come up with a melody we all like, we blend it all together and somehow a song naturally arrives.”  From: https://albumism.com/features/edie-brickell-and-new-bohemians-shooting-rubberbands-at-the-stars-album-anniversary 

Argos - I Carry Light

A.R. How was Argos formed?

Thomas: It started 2005 when I recorded and arranged some of my musical ideas at home that didn´t seem to fit in the repertoire of the other bands that i collaborated with at that time. Then I asked Robert Gozon to join my project, we recorded some more songs and put the demos on “myspace” a prominent internet platform for musicians at that time. Through myspace our drummer Ulf Jacobs contacted and joined us and the French label Musea signed us for our first album. We did the first album as a three man band. Rico Florzcak our guitarist joined us in time for our second album: Circles. This lineup has remained constant since then .

Argos was initially regarded as a studio band. When did it become a live band?

Thomas: When we released our third album “Cruel Symmetry” on PPR Records in late 2012 our Label manager Oliver Wenzler asked us to play at the Progressive Promotion Festival he organizes every year in “Das Rind” Rüsselsheim. We agreed and after 4 days of intensive rehearsals we managed to play a one hour live set. You can watch us performing our first live gig on youtube keywords: (Argos, Rind). Last year we were invited to play at summers end festival in Great Britain along with bands like Lifesigns, Curved Air and New Trolls. It was a nice experience and great fun for us to meet Argos-fans from Great Britain. This year we will perform in Heidelberg “prog the castle” 09.05. and in July at a festival in Poland.

What do you consider as the essential elements of your music?

Thomas: To me its the special combination of vintage and contemporary sounds and playing styles. Mixing classic prog, jazz, folk, artpop and a bit of avant-garde we get a very diverse palette to draw from. The Argos vocals are special too. Not the standard “rock or neoprog” type of performance.

Who can you cite as your main musical influences?

Thomas: We all have different musical backgrounds but classic prog rock from the 70`s is our main common influence. Apart from Prog Artists and Bands its the late Beatles, Steely Dan, The Canterbury Scene, ECM Jazz and Artists like Joni Mitchel,David Crosby or Jeff Beck and Herbie Hancock.

Tell us about your first recordings and your musical evolution.

Thomas: Argos music evolved gradually from Robert and me doing all the instruments and vocals plus drum programming for the demos of our album into a democratic four man unit for “a seasonal affair” ,were everyone of us can brought in his individual ideas and playing style. Living 800 kms apart from each other Ulf and Rico (in Greifswald) and Robert and myself (in Mainz) is a challenge and the main reason why we need a lot of time to complete the Argos songs with everyone fully involved.

You are a German band, but on your latest album A Seasonal Affair you have a very British progressive sound. What British bands do you admire the most?

Thomas: Speaking for myself its surely the whole Canterbury scene with Dave Stewart, Richard Sinclair and Robert Wyatt as my main influences and favorite musicians. I also like Gentle Giant, Fruupp, England, Stackridge and of course The Tangent.

What’s the theme behind A Seasonal Affair?

Thomas: Most of the songs are about how we as individual human beings deal with loss and other subjects we cannot control or influence in our otherwise well organized and digitally connected modern society.

How did you connect with guests musicians Andy Tillison (The Tangent), Marek Arnold (United Progressive Fraternity) and Thila Brauss?

Thomas: Andy Tillison discovered our band trough our last album “Cruel Symmetry” . He liked the music a lot and kindly offered his talents for this new album.I heard Marek Arnold play soprano sax live and thought his lyrical style would perfectly fit for the solo on “Silent Corner”. Marek is involved in many bands that also release albums trough PPR Records, so its “a family affair”.

Thilo Brauss, Robert and myself play together in Superdrama and Thilo is also part of the Argos live band.

A Seasonal Affair has fascinating artwork by Bernd Webler. How did you hook up with him?

Thomas: We both studied graphic design in Mainz and Bernd now works like myself for a big German TV broadcasting station.So i knew him and his fine artistic skills for a long time. I’m really proud of what he contributed to visualize our music on “a seasonal affair”.

Most of what we hear from Germany is hard rock and heavy metal. How’s the current progressive rock scene in Germany?

Thomas: If there would be more people in Germany that come to watch prog bands doing original songs live I´m sure there would be much more prog bands on the German scene. For now its mostly prog-cover bands doing Pink Floyd or Genesis material . They and the more metal related bands have a much bigger live audience then bands like ourselves here in Germany.

What musical instruments do you use?

Thomas: We use acoustic and electric guitars, fretted and frettless bass guitars,acoustic drums and percussion and flute.
The keyboards are sampled vintage instruments (Native Instruments/Logic/MOTU) like: Steinway and Fender Rhodes Piano, Hammond Organ, Moog and Mellotron. We also use electronic sounds to create percussion loops and soundscapes.

If you could gather any musicians or musical groups to collaborate with whom would that be?

Thomas: personally i would like to collaborate among others with: surprise, surprise  Steven Wilson, Richard Sinclair, Dave Stewart, Herbie Hancock, Magnus Ostrom (ex E.S.T.), Steve Winwood and Donald Fagen.

From: https://progressiverockcentral.com/2015/04/21/interview-with-progressive-rock-band-argos/ 

Niyaz - Live Festival International 2018

 Niyaz - Live Festival International 2018 - Part 1

 

 Niyaz - Live Festival International 2018 - Part 2

 

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.

So wrote eighth-century mystic Rabia Al Basri, mother of Sufism and dedicatee of The Fourth Light. Such words practice what they preach, offering a twinkle of starlight that only hints at the spiritual fissions required to produce it. It’s an ethos of which a fortunate audience partook through the filter of Niyaz’s fractal soundscapes in their multimedia performance at New York City's Schimmel Center.
At the core of Niyaz are vocalist Azam Ali and multi-instrumentalist Loga Ramin Torkian on oud and kamaan (a custom viol-like instrument). They were joined by Sinan Cem Eroglu on kaval and komuz (Turkish flute and three-stringed lute), Gabriel Ethier on keyboards and programming, Ravi Naimpally on tabla, and whirling dervish Tanya Evanson, whom Ali credits as the genesis of this project. Live motion tracking was provided by Jérôme Delapierre, whose projections graced a series of vertical panels with ghostly echoes of the performers in real time.
To be sure, Ali was the focal point of the evening. Despite having heard her on record for nearly two decades since her days as one half of Vas, I became aware of terrains in her voice that only a live setting could map. It was a feeling akin to rebirth, as each syllable became a seed for new life. These supernatural overtones were only emphasized by Ali’s comportment on stage. Her dancing was a tribute to the music flowing through her, and her hand often moved in birdlike fashion, kissing sky and earth by way of the heart, as if to trace the paths of her creative impulses from and back to their source.
There was, too, an unmistakable vibration of growth in the air. Hers was a voice that could only have emanated from one who’d unlocked her maternity (as confirmed when she introduced her son at curtain call), if only because she made us listeners feel like her own children for that brief while in which we shared oxygen. That voice was cradle for an all-consuming love, and gave only the same return for the honor of being heard.
That said, over time she and her collaborators—much like the program itself—blended into a grander whole. It was impossible to think this was anything other than a desired effect, given the sentiments of open inclusion with which she left us in her post-concert comments. Her heartfelt message of art as an ecumenical realm of possibility, a space where rituals of historical redress serve as our only hope for recoverable futures, resonated as deeply as the music that preceded it.
There were, of course, highlights to be held like talismans of remembrance. Of those, the linguistic beauties of “Tam e Eshq” (The Taste of Love) continue to ring in my head like a gong of truth even as I write this, thus painting a line of interpretation to the verses with which I opened this review, as no level of description may never recreate the profile of love for those unknowing of its flavor: it must be held on the tongue to be known. Such sensory philosophies abounded in the groove of “Eyvallah Shahim” (Truth), as also in “Sabza Ba Naz” (The Triumph of Love). The latter’s call-and-response structure, made possible by prerecorded bits into which Ali threaded immediate counterparts, indicated a splitting of self as the first step toward restoring it.
Yet perhaps nowhere did the spirit of Rabia Al Basri come alive more than in Evanson’s dancing. In addition to the rare opportunity of witnessing dervishing in person, her direct line of communication from flesh to firmament served to visualize the music’s intentions in ways no computer-generated imagery ever could. She was a full embodiment of the concept of soul as animating force. When she appeared onstage dressed in black, only to reveal a crimson undercoat after shedding that layer of darkness, she expressed the inexhaustible need for life to write scripture in the very blood that flows through our collective veins. Last appearing in white, she further expressed an understanding that birth and death are two expressions of the same divine wish. (See video below)
As indicated by the title of The Fourth Light, its profound combination of melody, image, and dance depended on the governing power of sacred geometries. In the same way that a square’s enclosure couldn’t exist without a fourth side, neither could our minds express themselves without a fourth axis of light to give them shape in individual bodies. The resonances of this esotery were bright and uplifting. Like the silhouetted image of Ali holding up the sun that at one point froze on a rear screen, it gave us a void of outer space to fill with inner conclusions. In the end, I could only feel that we’d been left with a beginning, when first breaths defined every syllable around which we would eventually come to wrap our conscious decisions. More than ever, love has become the only emotion worth singing about, and I am grateful to Ali and her band of travelers that our paths crossed close enough to be reminded of its potency.  From: https://www.rootsworld.com/reviews/niyaz-18.shtml

 

 

Black Moth - Moonbow

“It is an ode and an offering to the moon herself, in the hope that she will shine her silver blessings on Mothic ventures to follow,” says vocalist Harriet Hyde. “Ben Foley’s directorial work with us has gone from ‘Looner’ to ‘lunar.’ His deft creative touch on ‘Moonbow’ drags the viewer with us through a psychedelic neon dreamscape – an intoxicating experience of lunar worship.”
With Anatomical Venus, Black Moth are seeking to forge their own path, both musically and conceptually. The album’s name and central theme, arrived at when Hyde was introduced to the eighteenth century wax models of the female form employed by male surgeons to learn their craft, provides a strong platform for both the artwork and the lyrics, allowing the singer to take command and truly find her voice.
“The ‘Anatomical Venus’ spoke volumes to me,” she reflects. “She embodies the male gaze, a history of men dissecting women in an attempt to understand her, reveal her magic, snuff out her unruly flame, while all the time needing her to be beautiful and aesthetically pleasing to their taste. These models are not simply practical medical models for education – they are fetish objects, women stripped back as far as you can go. But there is a look of defiance in their eyes as if to say, ‘Keep looking if you like. I dare you. Peel back my skin and peep behind my ribcage, you won’t find anything unless I choose to tell you.'”  From: https://hardbeat.co.uk/2017/11/08/black-moth-release-video-for-moonbow/

Mr. Bison - I'm the Storm

Mr. Bison has been active for a few years now, releasing quite a few great albums. Would you like to talk a bit about your background? When and how did you all originally meet?

Matteo Barsacchi: In 2008 I wrote some songs and decided to play with a couple of friends from the city. We started as a side project and immediately understood that we have a good feeling and the songs were born very easily. We started playing rock and roll contaminated by stoner rock. Although in Italy at that time stoner music was almost completely unknown, during our live show, the audience was very excited! This surprised us a lot and we therefore decided to abandon our musical projects to dedicate ourselves to Mr. Bison. After an EP and the first album ‘We’ll be brief’, there was a line up change due to different views. From the second album, ‘Asteroid’ on, Matteo Sciocchetto on guitar and vocals and Matteo D’Ignazi on drums and sound effects joined the band. Unlike the musicians of the first line up, who were more influenced by stoner music and 90’s, the two Matteo’s, excellent musicians, have a more 70’s background. I too have a passion for 70s music. The band started to evolve, adding many 70s influences. The album ‘Holy Oak’ was the first step between stoner and new influences. Curious to explore the world of progressive, and the vocal harmonic solutions of the Golden Era like The Beatles, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, we decided to forg ‘Seaward’. That was truly the culmination of a full year’s hard labor. It was released in October 2020 via Subsound and Ripple Music. ‘Seaward’ is arguably the most blazing, powerful and eclectic album yet by us.

How did you decide to name your band Mr. Bison?

The name was born by chance one evening when me and Francesco – the bassist (the first months we also had the bass) played in the 80’s Street Fighters, thought about the name for the band. We liked the name of Mr. Bison, the last character to fight in the game and his role as a boss of a criminal organization named Shadaloo with an amazing insignia of a winged skull with a lightning bolt on the hat.

‘Seaward’ is your latest album. What’s the story behind it?

We live in front of the Tuscan archipelago. We love the sea, … walk and listen to the sound of the waves, especially in Winter. The sea is the greatest source of inspiration for us and the perfect place to write music. We’ve done a lot of research to identify this theme. When we found this legend we immediately realized that it would be perfect to represent the music and our ideas. ‘Seaward’ is a concept album and it draws inspiration from the sea and from the legend of the 7 pearls of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The legend tells that Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, leaving the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea proceeding towards the mainland to meet Eros, trying to adjust the necklace donated by Paris, broke the necklace, letting 7 pearls slide into the water, where they magically, remained on the surface and began to be populated by flora and fauna, giving life to the 7 wonderful islands of the Tuscan archipelago. Another research about the number 7 also inspired us. There are many meanings and archetypes related to number 7 like Aphrodite’s pearls and the number of days in each moon phase, which affects the tides and the mood of each individual who, during magical moments of solitude and reflection, finds refuge in the horizon and in the wonderful echo of the vibrations of this majestic expanse of water, looking “towards the sea”.

Would it be possible to make a comparison to ‘Holy Oak’ or even to ‘Asteroid’?

As I explained, after the change of line up the influences of the 70s are deeply rooted in our song writing. ‘Asteroid’ is a stoner heavy rock album. I wrote this album in my recording studio, during the passage from the second line up. It is a monolithic album, … during that period I was influenced by bands like Clutch, Fu Manchu et cetera. ‘Holy Oak’ is the gateway between our stoner roots and the actual heavy psych prog influence. I love ‘Holy Oak’ so much! Songs like ‘Sacred Deal’, the title track, and ‘Heavy Rain’ are an interesting mix through heavy rock and psych music. Talking about ‘Seaward’, we used the progressive structure, using a lot of dynamics and tempo changes … We decided to develop the album as a concept, linking each song. It was a hard job.

How would you describe your sound?

We consider ourselves a heavy psych prog band, because we have no frame or scheme in music. We are a band with a lot of musical culture and we are not radical musicians. We love quality music of all genres, so we try to combine all our influences in our way using a heavy psych prog writing key. We have a particularity, we don’t have a bass player. In this music scene the presence of the bass line is very important for composing songs. We are a strange trio, though Mr. Bison‘s two guitars together build a massive wall of sound through which listeners will likely never notice the absence of the bass guitar. It’s hard to explain quickly, but in a nutshell each guitar has 2 channels. The second channel of our pedal boards is connected to an octaver and the bass amp, and one of us always plays like a bass player … this solution is very interesting because the band seems to play like a band of 4/5 members… for example sometimes during a song, you can listen 2 fuzzy harmonized guitars, one clean bass and at the same time Hammond, all played live. Often the audience is surprised, because they see a trio but they listen to 4-5 instruments and at the end of the gigs often a lot of fans ask us about our tech solutions.

Can you share some further details on how your latest album was recorded?

We start with the writing of the preproductions in my recording studio. These are the basis for the official drum tracks, which will arise from free improvisation of Matteo, the drummer. From the new drum tracks we record the guitars, jamming a lot, and finally the voices. This process is a sort of decomposed jam that can lead to the upheaval of the initial song. Usually we avoid to edit a lot of the tracks leaving small mistakes and imperfections, and that’s the reason why we decided to mix and master the album at the Audio Design Recordings in San Diego, where Jordan Andreen (producer of Earthless, Sacri Monti) adopted a very old school approach.

How do you usually approach music making?

I started writing the song by doing a lot of sound experimentation, recording drone guitar riffs and playing the keyboard or synth. For example on ‘Seaward’, I tried to create drones by imagining the sea, the sirens and some sea details like the title track’s intro. It is very helpful to have a clear idea of the image that you want to instill with your music.

Are any of you involved in any other bands or do you have any active side-projects going on at this point?

Yes, each member of the band has or had a side project. I think it’s very important to develop all our music ideas together.

How are you coping with the current world situation? What are some future plans?

It is a terrible time for the entire world population and for all professionals. I am of the opinion that difficult times always help to create good music for an artist. We musicians at this time having much more time can devote ourselves to listening and writing in a more concentrated way. Being an artist in Italy is difficult even in normal times, but during the pandemic our work was considered more “expendable” than others and for this reason the government blocked everything. Cinemas, theaters and concert halls are closed and we try to reinvent ourselves as much as we can with music lessons, streaming concerts and other initiatives… The future plans for Mr. Bison will be to play live a lot, and write a new album as soon as possible.

Let’s end this interview with some of your favorite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?

I absolutely recommend ‘The All Is One’ by Motorpsycho. The new album by the Italians The Pilgrim, ‘…From The Earth To The Sky And Back’, The French group Slift and their album ‘Ummon’… then also Elder’s ‘The Gold & Silver Sessions’, Sacri Monti latest release et cetera.

From: https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2022/05/mr-bison-interview-the-sea-is-the-greatest-source-of-inspiration.html 

Loving the Alien - Sparks

Hats off—what the young Upper Austrian band Loving.the.Alien delivers musically on their debut, The Blinded You (Bleeding Star Records), is truly top-notch. Were one not aware that this is a debut effort, one would be inclined to say that this is a group at work that has already put years of development behind them; such is the maturity of the sound on display. Free from stylistic constraints and palpably unburdened, the quintet cultivates the field of indie-pop with musical finesse, inventiveness, and a palpable knack for compelling songwriting, crafting songs that haven't lost their spark even after multiple listens. The Blinded You is set for release on February 22nd. Loving.the.Alien consists of Lea Föger (vocals/keyboards), Niklas Pichler (guitar/vocals), Patrick Pillichshammer (drums), Melanie Aspöck (violin), and Lukas Staudinger (accordion/bass). The Upper Austrian band positions its musical language in a territory far removed from the bland mainstream. Steering clear of the standard verse-chorus format typically practiced in indie-pop and indie-rock, the five-piece outfit scores points primarily through a greater degree of variety and complexity—both in song structure and in overall sound. Stylistically, the group's tracks defy easy categorization, as they resonate with too many influences drawn from disparate directions. At times, the music veers toward a folkier aesthetic; at others, it takes a rockier turn; elsewhere, it is a chamber-style violin, a gently played piano, or dominant synth textures that provide the defining accents. Another aspect that contributes significantly to the refreshingly multifaceted overall impression is the vocal interplay—constantly shifting between Niklas Apfel and Lea Föger—which lends a wealth of character and depth to the songs. These tracks span a wide emotional spectrum, ranging from highly dramatic to melancholic or slightly psychedelic, and from spirited and laid-back to—in the most beautiful sense—truly moving. With their debut release, The Blinded You, Loving.the.Alien certainly delivers far more than just a mere showcase of talent. It is evident that there is something deeper at work here—that this quintet from Upper Austria has found its own path, successfully translating its musical concepts and visions—which lean distinctly toward the artistic—into truly compelling songs. This is an album that deserves a listen from far more than just dedicated aficionados of sophisticated indie sounds.  Translated from: https://www.musicaustria.at/loving-the-alien-the-blinded-you/ 

Cocanha - Dempuèi Auriac

Occitan, mother tongue of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Richard the Lionheart, had a literary golden age in the 12th century and produced the great singer-songwriters of the Middle Ages, the troubadours and trobarises. It was still widely spoken in southern France in 1904 when the Occitan poet Frédéric Mistral won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but the 20th century was hard on the storied Romance language (nearest relative: Catalan). Though commonly heard today in some villages, ask residents of Toulouse, historic Occitania’s capital, if they speak Occitan and a recurrent response is, “No, but my grandparents do.” Nonetheless, an Occitan music scene emerged in the “Pink City” in the 1980s, just as bilingual French-Occitan schools began opening in the region. Cocanha, three women who sing polyphonic songs—alternately rousing and mesmerizing—represents an innovative revival stage, dedicated to Occitan tradition but ready to tap into rock and hip-hop for stylistic tips, Brazil and Africa for percussion touches. i es ? (Are You There?), their first full-length album, is a collection of Pyrenean, Gascon and Languedoc songs, crafted with generous vocals, string tambourine and caxixi, to engage the ears, feet and heart. The trio has feminist flair, evident in editing male-centered traditional lyrics and on their album’s photomontage cover showing a sculpted clitoris. Feminine agency appears in Dempuèi Auriac (From Aurillac to Marseilles), the ballad of an itinerant laborer and (surprise!) faithful husband, and in M’an dit Martin (Martin Told Me), with bourrée dancers offering added percussion to a song about what women want. Progress and its cultural toll drive La Valsa d’Emiliana, while Se sabiatz/Que son aüros (If You Only Knew) is a short primer on the curse of marriage. Language revival is a challenge, but Cocanha may just have the formula—not only to inspire but also to edit the answer to that pregnant question: “No, but my children do.”  From: https://worldlisteningpost.com/2018/07/17/cocanha-i-es/  

The Zombies - She's Not There / Tell Her No

 The Zombies - She's Not There

 

 The Zombies - Tell Her No

 

The Zombies first hit single, "She's Not There," was written in just two weeks by Rod Argent, the band's keyboardist. The money to record it, 250 English Pounds, was a prize for winning a local band competition when Argent was just a teenager. Little did he know it would top the charts in many places around the world, including Great Britain and America. Here, Argent tells the unique story of that tune. Following are edited excerpts from a longer conversation.

Jim Clash: How did The Zombies go from being a semi-professional group to the professional level?

Rod Argent: We had been semi-professional for three years, and having a ball. It got to where we were all about to leave secondary school at the age of 17. Some were going on to university, but I desperately wanted to turn The Zombies into a professional band. We'd had a lot of success locally. Our very first gig - Colin [Blunstone] got it for us because he played a lot of rugby - was as support to another band at a rugby cup dance. There were about 15 people there. But our little spot in the middle went down so well that they asked us back by ourselves three weeks later. When we came back, there were 30 to 40 people there. So we got a regular slot there, and eventually they had to build a marquee out front because we were playing to more than 400 people. It really grew. But we never played anywhere else, and that gig was coming to an end.

Clash: How did you get your first record deal?

Argent: We entered this contest, and the prize was 250 Pounds, which was a fair amount of money in those days. We won the semifinal, and went along to the final. To our amazement, there were busloads of people coming to see us with Zombies banners. We were really excited. We won the competition, and, on the night we won it, there was a knock on the dressing room door afterwards. It was Dick Rowe, head of Decca Records. He was the guy who turned down The Beatles [laughs]. He had a contract in his hands. He said that none of us were old enough to sign, but he wanted us to take it back to show to our parents, that he would like to make a record for us.
Originally, we were to record Summertime, the Gershwin song, one of several we had done in the final. But Chris' [White] father knew someone in the music business, Ken Jones, a colleague. Ken went through the contract and said it wasn't bad, but didn't like this and that clause. He recommended we use his production company to make the record, then lease it to Decca. That's what we did.

Clash: How did, "She's Not There," get on the first single?

Argent: We were to have the recording session in two weeks, and while Ken liked our version of Summertime, he suggested we write something ourselves. Both Chris and I went away each to write a song. It was only the second I'd ever written. Chris wrote, "You Make Me Feel Good," which I've always thought should have been the A side. Anyway, I went home, knowing I only had a couple of weeks, with the naivety and arrogance of youth and not seeing any pitfalls at all. I thought I could write a song as good as The Beatles, and Colin would sound great singing lead vocals, and it would all come out sounding terrific. I had absolutely no knowledge of the millions of things that could go wrong.
So I sat down to make a start, and began playing old blues records. One was a John Lee Hooker album. There was a song on it called, "No One Told Me." Now I hasten to add that there's nothing in my song other than those first four words, and nothing in it to do with any Hooker melody. I just liked the way the words tripped off the tongue. I started to construct a fictional story around them. I wanted a verse that was quite moody based around a blues scale, which I did. I also wanted to introduce three-part harmony, which we had been doing ever since we had gotten together. Not many bands other than The Beatles did it at the time. Then I wanted the verse to end on a climactic note - a major chord - and then sink back down to the moody minor bluesy thing for the next verse. That was all that was in my mind, really. I wrote the song and we rehearsed it.

Clash: Any idea at the time how good it was?

Argent: Well, everybody liked it, so we did the recording, and it became Number 1 on Cash Box, and in many places around the world! We got the phone call that, "She's Not There,” was Number 1 in America when we were recording, "Tell Her No." So we were off and running. We were all very excited, of course, but also thought that was just what was supposed to happen, you know [laughs]?

Clash: Who was “she?”

Argent: She wasn’t anybody, just a fictional character. It was just me weaving a story, basically. I’ll always remember Bob Dylan was asked what a particular song was about. He said, “About three minutes.”

From: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2020/06/10/who-was-she-in-the-zombies-hit-shes-not-there/

 

 

Daughters - Guest House

Daughters have premiered a new music video for their song “Guest House”, coming from their acclaimed new LP “You Won’t Get What You Want“. Directed by A.F. Cortes. The band commented:
"It is always exciting to see our work interpreted by talented artists," Daughters commented on the video in a joint statement. "We first became familiar with Andres through his wonderful photographic work. His ability to capture unique moments, often missed by other photographers, is uncanny and we trusted him to be able to bring the same abilities as a director." 
The A.F.Cortes directed video for “Guest House” continues Daughters’ exploration into the world of black and white photography and film. Both of the band’s previously released videos from You Won’t Get What You Want, “City Song” and “Less Sex”, used the color-free palette to create stunning, thought-provoking pieces that played on darkness and light, shadows and shading, to impart a variety of emotions, from the magic of a flickering candle to the beauty of the human form, and with “Guest House,” the exploration of psychological tension.  From: https://idioteq.com/daughters-premiere-new-video-for-guest-house/ 

Bat For Lashes - Lilies

The lilies of the field, they have a rep for not toiling. Natasha Khan is rather the opposite. Bat for Lashes’ art-pop mastermind is nothing if not ambitious, as her extravagantly rewarding third album, last year’s The Haunted Man, demonstrated from its very first track, the high-concept “Lilies.” The ornate, delicately passionate song covers a lot of ground, including premodern English mysticism, lusty femininity, and most of all, a joie de vivre worthy of an ancient fertility goddess. “Thank God I’m alive,” Khan sings amid orchestration that doesn’t rule out the macabre.
The song’s new video, directed by Peter Sluszka (Björk, Devendra Banhart, Regina Spektor), brings “Lilies” wonderfully down to earth. That underlying euphoria seeps through the moment Khan starts to dance with animated beasties worthy of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. If the song risks becoming a thing to admire rather than enjoy, the video helps ensure it’s both.
Way back in 2009, Khan told me that for what would become The Haunted Man she was excited about “really getting into the countryside and the folklore and the mythology of England in a contemporary way. And how the hell am I gonna do that without sounding like some weird pagan, Wicker Man, cheesy ’70s prog-rock band?” Just like this: By not being afraid to be a little playful sometimes. Think of the lilies.  From: https://www.spin.com/2013/02/bat-for-lashes-lilies-video-wild-things-haunted-man/

Genesis - Dancing with the Moonlit Knight - Live 1973

This is easily my favourite Genesis song, and one of the few favourite prog-rock tunes of all time. It's been selected as object for analysis here mainly because, as I believe, its message/meaning can be decoded rather easily compared to multiple other 'philosophic' tunes of Genesis. On the other hand, it also presents a lot of interesting arrangement, lyrical and musical details that easily escape the eye, and is structured in an exceptionally intelligent and smooth way, so these are all further arguments for a detailed analysis.
0:00-0:20. The near accappella introduction. "Can you tell me where my country lies?" This, from the very very beginning, sets up a medieval mood - we get analogies with all those Celtic/Anglo-Saxon, etc., ballads beginning with 'can you tell me...' or 'let me tell you...', however, right after the fourth word Gabriel breaks up the analogy and transforms the typical narrative beginning into a 'philosophic' question. This is what characterizes the entire song - an intricate and subtle mixture of the Medieval and the Modern.
"Said the unifaun to his true love's eyes..." Here Peter gets especially sad and tragic (and it's only the beginning of the song!). 'Unifaun' is supposed to be a pun, a cross between 'uniform' and 'faun' - the 'faun' brings in the mythological element, while the 'uniform' brings in certain military associations. Patriotic lament over the fate of one's country? Whatever it might be, the subject of the song is evident from the beginning line: a tragic statement of Britain's current state, a lamentation over the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the romantic past and the corrupt present...
"It lies with me, cried the Queen of Maybe..." Peter changes to near-falsetto (right, to impersonate the Queen), while Mike (or Steve?) enters with gentle folksy guitar chords. Of course! The "country" is now with the 'Queen of Maybe' - the 'Queen of Possibilities', an allegory for commercial success; note that this is, of course, a pun on 'Queen of May', another mythological figure that is vastly commercialized at the present time.
"For her merchandise, he traded in his prize..." No need for explanation. The 'prize' is England, of course. Or the glory and honor of England. The 'merchandise' is evident, and as Peter brings the introduction to conclusion, we really get the feeling this is gonna be one painfully desperate song.
0:20-0:50. First verse of intro. Some of the most gorgeous sonic moments in Genesis' history are captured throughout the song. Here, a strong, yet gentle medieval acoustic rhythm carries the song, while Mr Banks adds a few soothing vibe sounds in the background, just to make the whole experience "deeper" - a bare acoustic strum certainly wouldn't carry the magical-mystical atmosphere so well. Think Jethro Tull or something like that.
"Paper late!.. cried a voice in the crowd". Gotta love how Peter is able to quickly effectuate the theatric transition - from the scream of the delivery boy to the 'explaining' vocal. Funny that, according to Genesis discography, nobody actually cries 'paper late!' in England: the most suitable solution is that this is just 'cut out' from 'late paper, late paper late paper...'. You'll have to consult Peter himself on that.
"Old man dies, the note he left was signed old Father Thames..." It certainly had to take Peter a lot of takes to practice these phrases, because he sings this stuff with the utmost care and masters all the gentleness and reverence he can.
"It seems he's drowned, selling England by the pound...". Simply a lyrical gem. Here, we assist at the tragic passing of Father Thames - another mythological symbol of England. Well, looks like Father Thames simply couldn't stand the process of 'selling England by the pound', in which he himself, whether of or against his will, had to take part, and "drowned" - perished within the limits of his own sphere, which is even more pathetic.
0:50-1.20. Second verse of intro. My favourite. Probably. Same melody as before, but Tony joins in on piano - nice and powerful crescendo element. Ah, if only Tony played piano more often... The piano somewhat detracts from the medieval nature of the song, as it's more Bach, or even Chopin, than Celtic ballad, but by now we're so immersed in Gabriel's poetic world that we don't even notice. Phil adds some power, too, by chugging out a few light rhythms.
"Citizens of Hope and Glory, time goes by, it's the time of your life..." With 'citizens of Hope and Glory' (cf. 'Land of Hope and Glory') we start to get ironic, but there's no real irony in Gabriel's voice - it's more like a desperate cry-to-arms. 'Time goes by! It's THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE!...'
"Easy now, sit you down..." Who's that speaking? What's the change in Gabriel's intonation? Is it the Demon of Temptation who drags the citizens of Hope and Glory away from their glorious past and ushers them into the quiet, problemless, commercialized lifestyle? Maybe so, for...
"chewing through your Wimpey dreams, they eat without a sound, digesting England by the pound..." 'Wimpey' is a British fast food chain, as far as I know (or was, at least), and not a very respectable one. Anyway, what the 'citizens' are doing is simple - all their dreams are of 'Wimpey', and they spend their lives away, never giving a damn about the sense of their very lives, as Ye Olde England slowly gets digested. Note the way Gabriel pronounces the last line - his voice raises to a powerful scream on 'digesting', symbolizing a culminative moment in his pessimistic desperation, and extends 'by-y-y-y the po-o-o-und' in a particularly majestic and solemn way, yet leaving a sense of something unfinished, just waiting to be resumed and expanded. The first part of the song thus ends like a proper introduction to an epic ballad is supposed to end.
1.20-1.31. Short interlude. A cute little electric riff, almost jazzy in its own way, enters, creating a rhythm of its own; each riff ends with a single 'concluding' bass note. This will be our main melody for some time, but here we're given a few seconds to enjoy it on its own, without Gabriel entering. Beautiful and romantic. Note also those 'vibrating' guitar chords that set the background from now on. Almost unnoticeable, but, again, this background is absolutely necessary to achieve the "glorious" and "ethereal" effect of the song.
1.31-1.58. Main part, first verse. This one's a bit tough, but I'll try nonetheless. "Young man says 'you are what you eat, eat well', old man says 'you are what you wear, wear well." Irony enters once again - one of the troubles in modern-day Britain seems to be the gap between generations, but to Peter it's all the same whether our attitude is that of modern hedonism ('eat well') or of yesterday's conservatism ('wear well'). Note the difference in pitch and intonation in the two lines - again, Peter can't resist "impersonating" a little, and the 'old man's whining' is very well done here.
"You know what you are, you don't give a damn..." Don't give a damn about the fate of your country, no doubt. The 'you know what you are' part is pronounced with an air of negligence, almost contempt; the vibrating effect on the word 'da-a-a-a-a-mn' is haunting, although maybe not quite appropriate from a rational point of view. Background vocals enter here, cleverly and intricately mixed in with the 'vibrating guitars' - this is one of the most effective tricks for making the sound 'ethereal' I've ever heard. We had been concentrating on Pete all the time and have barely noticed how the song has rapidly progressed from those bare guitar chords of the first ten seconds to a full-fledged musical background.
"Bursting your belt that is your homemade sham..." You 'burst your belt', taking in all the pleasures of life, and in this way hide away from the problems surrounding you and your personal world in your 'homemade sham'. Thus ends the first verse - obviously the most vicious attack that Peter ever addressed to his fellow countrymen, cleverly masked by untrivial allegories. With all due respect, Ray Davies would be never capable of such subtlety. A gruff low guitar chord now announces the first climactic section...
1.59-2.23. First chorus. With the chorus, we plunge fully into the 'mystical' part of the song - a sudden and total transition from the grim prospects of modern English life to the world of pagan ritual thrill. If the music was somewhat 'inobtrusive' up to this point, here, at a single drumfill from Phil, all the ethereal guitars and equally ethereal background vocals suddenly come out to life. Brilliant musical solution: the 'medieval' 'mystical' elements were kept in the background as long as Pete's lyrics were concentrated on today's situation, but now, all of a sudden, they 'leap' out at you as soon as you're ready to give yourself in to reminiscences of the past. The vocals overwhelm you, and Phil finally kicks in with all his might...
"The Captain leads his dance right on through the night..." Who's the Captain? I'm not sure. I'm not even sure if the 'Captain' is the spirit-leader of the ritual or he's a real person (a druid? a mage?), but probably there should be no direct association. Peter pronounces the first part of the phrase in a hurry before the main melody, since it does not fit into the rhythm: '...dance right on through the night!' is what we hear primarily, like a command for us to take part in the (no doubt) purifying ritual, and it's immediately confirmed further:
"Join the dance! Follow on! Till the Grail sun sets in the mould..." The Grail reference by no means hints at our being transferred into a Christian-dominated world - remember, if it's Arthurian times we're speaking about, pagan practices and Christianity elements were joined in an odd synthesis back then. On the other hand, the Grail certainly is a direct Arthurian reference, as if we yet had any doubts about the particular epoch Gabriel was drawing comparisons with. Another important thing happens here - after Gabriel shouts 'follow on!', Tony joins in with a few major key cheerful synth notes, which somehow change the atmosphere from 'pure mystics' to 'ritual joy'. You're really supposed to enjoy your spiritual wholeness and nature's wonders in the dance.
"Follow on till the gold is cold..." Not quite clear. Is the 'gold' another sun reference here? In this case, 'the gold is cold' means 'till sunset'; consequently, this would mean that our ritual dance lasts all through the day and into the night... on the other hand, it was clearly said that 'the Captain leads his dance through the night', not 'towards the night'. Maybe Pete got a little messed up with his times of day here, or maybe I'm just wrong in my analysis.
"Dancing out with the Moonlit Knight, Knights of the Green Shield stamp and shout..." Again, the exact decyphering of 'Moonlit Knight' escapes me, but surely we must be speaking of an obscure, or invented, pagan deity, a symbolic one, of course. The last line is very confusing; on one hand, 'Knights of the Green Shield' again evoke Arthurian connotations, on the other hand, Genesis discography mentions 'Green Shield Stamps' - some kind of modern-day trickstery related to commercial prize winning. This could be a coincidence, but you can never tell with Peter; on the other hand, here we should suppose that even if it is not a coincidence, it is just a funny pun that Peter couldn't resist, because otherwise the connection isn't clear. A nicely placed red herring, that is.
In other words, what do we get once the main vocal part is over? Two juxtaposed pictures, one of the depressing and decaying life of today, and the other of the joyful and spiritual pagan ritual of days long gone by. Which is the biggest difference, by the way, between Gabriel's and Ray Davies' picture of Britain: if, for Ray, 'salvation' from today's corrupt life can be found by embracing the conservative ideals of the quiet and becalmed XIXth century life (Victorian ideal!), Peter condemns both of these lifestyles and seeks his ideal even back further in time. The music is supposed to illustrate that as well.  From: https://starlingdb.org/music/song1.htm

Bab L' Bluz - Iwaiwa Funk

French-Moroccan power quartet Bab L' Bluz, have released the third track from their forthcoming album Swaken. This new track, entitled 'Iwaiwa Funk' is played on the electric mandole, sung in the higher-pitched vocal style found in Morocco's High Atlas Mountains and themed to remind us that life is short, resentment is futile and dance — whirling, hair-whipping dance — is a conduit to the soul.
Condemning those who cause suffering to others or are blinded by those harmful actions and their inevitable consequences, ‘Iwaiwa Funk’ underscores the importance of listening to distress calls and never underestimating others, whilst advocating for kindness, reflection on our actions and compassion. Life is fleeting…
Recorded at Real World Studios in Wiltshire, England, written partly in Morocco – the birthplace of frontwoman Yousra Mansour — and mostly across a world tour that took the band from Adelaide, Barcelona and New York to Essaouira in Morocco, Lomé in Togo and Dougga in Tunisia. Mansour’s melismatic voice has never sounded so forceful, or the riffage from her electric awisha lute so mighty. Her bandmates Brice Bottin, Ibrahim Terkemani, Jérôme Bartolome (on everything from keyboards, flutes and electric guembri to drums, backing vocals and qraqeb castanets) interact with what might be telepathy, their playing skilled and tight.  From: https://realworldrecords.com/features/blogs/track-of-the-day-iwaiwa-funk-by-bab-l-bluz/

David Wax Museum - Uncover the Gold

David Wax Museum are the kind of band that confuses record store clerks. Are they filed under D, for David? Or M, for Museum? Even they weren’t quite sure—until this interview, when David himself finally settled it: “Straight from the horse’s mouth,” he said. “It’s going under D.”
Clarity achieved, they moved on to more pressing matters: playing Louisville’s WFPK Winter Wednesday, closing the night after Daniel Martin Moore’s golden-age album celebration. “And we’ve got a Louisville native in the band now,” David noted. “Our new electric guitarist, Charles Rivera—he’s from here. Lives in Brooklyn now. We gave him a pass tonight to see his family, but he’ll be onstage.”
It’s that kind of thoughtful, road-tested energy that runs through their 2015 album Guesthouse. The band had just played a stripped-down, kinetic version of the title track, which David calls “the most fun song we’ve ever played as a band.” The track mixes spiritual pondering (“The soul is a guest in the body / You gotta treat it right”) with lemon trees, corner stores, and the quiet desperation of asking for a place to crash.
But don’t call it “Mexican Americana,” or at least don’t lead with it. “I think you’ve been trying to get away from that a little bit,” I suggested.
David laughed. “Well, I don’t think it started out as, like, a conscious thing,” he said. “But yeah, that sound came from when I was living in Mexico in 2006–2007 studying folk music. And that was the freshest part when I came back. But now we’re five records in. I’m present in the American music scene. That Mexican influence is still there, just not as front-and-center.”
Which isn’t to say they’ve abandoned it—it’s still baked into the DNA of the live show, and they recorded more songs for Guesthouse than they actually released, including tracks in Spanish that didn’t make the cut. But, as David puts it, “This felt like a time to put out the strongest record—not the most ‘on-brand’ one.”
That desire to grow and not calcify into a single identity shows up in the songwriting, too. Take the back-to-back tracks “Young Man” and “Time Will Not Track Us Down,” both laced with a kind of hopeful weariness. “You okay?” I asked, mostly joking.
“We'eve never been better,” Suz Slezak laughed. But then she got serious. “We have a little girl now. We bring her on the road with us. So it has to be sustainable. It’s not just about doing something cool. It’s about: can we make this life work for the whole family?”
Parenthood didn’t make them ditch their ambitions, but it did recalibrate them. “I’ve always had this drive, this ambition. So has Suz [Slezak, his bandmate and wife]. But that ambition has to take a backseat to family.”
And still, the touring continues. “We love it,” they said. “We’ve toured with Old 97’s, Avett Brothers, Buena Vista Social Club—so we’re finding our audience. It’s a slow burn. We’re not commercial music. But stations like this, and listeners who really care… that’s who we’re making music for.”
It’s an honest reflection for a band that often finds itself re-introducing who they are with each new release. “Yeah, we’re five albums in,” David said. “But we still feel like the new guys in town sometimes. You just have to keep connecting.”
And when connection happens? Well, they sing it like they mean it. During “Singing To Me,” another track from the record, the whole performance felt like an act of personal reassurance—to themselves, to each other, to the crowd. “Hundreds of people in the crowd,” David sang, “but it don’t matter. I know this is rock and roll.”  From: https://www.lpm.org/music/2015-11-13/david-wax-museum-can-we-make-this-life-work-for-the-whole-family 

Crystal Jacqueline - Siren / The Edge of My Garden

 Crystal Jacqueline - Siren

 Crystal Jacqueline - The Edge of My Garden

 

Crystal Jacqueline was born in Wiltshire, England. From an early age she developed a love and a talent for music. She would busk in Bath and played various events and shows around the region gaining praise and much valuable experience. She later moved further south and played in various bands full time in the UK and abroad. In 2010 she recorded her first album, an album of all originals save "Circle In The Sand". The style is more mainstream than her current work, bringing to mind Stevie Nicks and Bonnie Rait, but there were some signs to the future path; "Lying In The Rain" and "Circle In The Sand" are both pointers to a more ethereal sound.
Crystal Jacqueline was a founder member of The Honey Pot when they recorded their first album "To The Edge Of The World" in 2012. One of the major highlights of the disc, and live concerts, is her performance of"Paper Garden", a drone like contemplation of horticulture in the sky. Her vocals are a major part of the band and her keyboard work live, especially on "White Rabbit", is an integral and much enjoyed feature.
Crystal recorded "Cousin Jane " in November2012 and it was selected as her initial release on Fruits de Mer records. An albums worth of material followed which was released on Megadodo and  features original songs as well as covers. Her distinctive voice has mixed with the dense music to form an original, heady, utopian concoction.
Away from music Crystal Jacqueline tends her gardens which are full of flowers, vegetables, fruit, geese, cats and a pig named Pru. She loves to travel and names Oman as her favourite destination. She reads, writes and wanders...  From: https://blueberryjacqui.wixsite.com/crystaljacqueline/biography

 

The Moody Blues - In Search of the Lost Chord - Side 2

1 - Voices in the Sky
2 - The Best Way To Travel
3 - Visions of Paradise
4 - The Actor
5 - The Word
6 - Om

Side Two

“Voices in the Sky” (Hayward): Aah! That’s nice! The road to self-discovery opens with the gentle sounds of Ray’s flute and Justin’s voice, a combination I find utterly delightful and positively therapeutic. After a complete shutout on side one, Justin offers up three compositions on side two, all reflective pieces brimming with emotional impact. Sorry, Mr. Spock, but life is illogical, and the only way you know you’re on the road to self-discovery is if you feel it.
The composition is divided into three distinct groups: paired verses devoted to natural wonders, paired verses devoted to human activity and two renditions of the bridge containing the Eureka moment appearing after each set of paired verses.
Justin made a wise choice in choosing two of the most beautiful songbirds to represent the wonders of nature: the bluebird and the nightingale. His choice turned out to be quite prescient: “Researchers from Kings College London published a study in 2018 testing the effects of exposure to nature on mental health. Using an app to track people’s interactions with nature, they showed that birdsong (among other things) improved people’s mental well-being. Birdsong was not only relaxing, but made people more deliberate—it reduced what psychologists call impulsivity.” (Source: Gulo In Nature). Though Justin wishes he could understand the meaning embedded in the bluebird’s song offerings, he’s happy to take a moment and listen to the nightingale “harmonize the wind.”
The music shifts from pastoral to intense in the bridge as Justin wonders about the origins of his newfound interest in nature and finds the answers in the setting where life first emerged:

Just what is happening to me
 I lie awake with the sound of the sea 
Calling to me

The second set of verses is equally compelling, but for different reasons. In the age of the Generation Gap, Justin wants to hear the songs of the old and the young:

Old man, passing by 
Tell me what you sing
 Though your voice be faint
 I am listening
 Voices in the sky

Children with a skipping rope
 Tell me what you sing
 Play time is nearly gone
 The bell’s about to ring
 Voices in the sky

In short, he chooses to engage with the world instead of limiting his experience to a single social clique. Though the events he describes are hardly mind-blowing, I think that’s the point—as we go about our busy lives, we tend to pay scant attention to everyday experiences and miss out on the simple joys they can provide.

“The Best Way to Travel” (Pinder): I’ve always liked this song for its brief trips into the blues scale and its key-defying resolution: the verses are in D major, but the resolution chord is B, which resolves to the secondary key of E major, punctuated by the E-G-A-E closing guitar riff. In addition to that break from the norm, I also approve of the underlying message: “Hey, humans! You were blessed with brains and imagination, so why not use them for a change?” I would have appended the phrase, “you dumb fucks,” but that would be quite un-Moodie-ish.

And you can fly 
High as a kite, if you want to
 Faster than light, if you want to
 Speeding through the universe 
Thinking is the best way to travel

The basic arrangement in the verse segments is mid-tempo rock, combining muscular acoustic guitar (played by Pinder), electric guitar (Hayward) and emphatic bass and skip-beat drums from the rhythm section of Lodge and Edge. Pinder’s vocals are calm and steady, strengthened in the closing couplet with harmonies from Mr. Thomas. The centerpiece of the song is the magic created by the mellotron in concert with stereophonic sound.

“Visions of Paradise” (Hayward, Thomas): The combination of Justin’s marvelous voice and Ray’s sensitive flute is a match made in musical heaven, and the arrangement creates a sonic environment suitable for reflection. The opening passage features a warm, downward figure on the flute from C to E minor that turns out to be a bit of musical foreshadowing. The verses are unique in that the lovely melody is set to a single chord (C major), but though a sitar enters the soundscape about a third of the way through the song, Justin and Ray avoided the temptation to turn the piece into a drone song, employing the sitar to provide counterpoint arpeggios in sync with Justin’s acoustic guitar.
Continuing the theme of imagination, “Visions of Paradise” validates the fundamental truth that you’ll never go anywhere if you don’t have a clear idea of where you’re going. You have to envision paradise if you want to create paradise. The main obstacle to “Paradise on Earth” is that human beings cannot agree on what constitutes paradise and are unlikely to do so in the near or distant future, so your only option at present is to create your own version of Eden and maybe find others who share your vision. The narrator’s visions are two-fold, with one involving the personal and the other the universal. The personal vision has already come true in the form of unconditional love between romantic partners:

The sounds in my mind just come to me
 Come see, come see
 And the call of her eyes makes waterfalls
 Of me, of me 
In the garden of her love I’ll stay awhile
 To be, to be

Though relationships can go sour, this path to enlightenment represents his best shot. At this point, Ray repeats the downward run from C to E minor, where we will remain during the brief bridge. Here the narrator presents his universal vision... to which you might respond, “Good luck with that.”

Visions of paradise, cloudless skies I see
 Rainbows on the hill, blue onyx on the sea

As it is more than highly unlikely that he will love long enough to experience a pristine earthly environment, you may ask, “Why waste your energy on something that ain’t gonna happen?” Because giving up guarantees that your vision will never come to fruition—and living in hope is better than living in misery.

“The Actor” (Hayward): Sticking to the theme of relationship-as-refuge presented in “Visions of Paradise,” Justin’s romantic side is at its best in this wonderful love song enhanced by Pinder’s “orchestration.” What I enjoy most about Justin’s love songs is his penchant for placing the relationship in the larger context of daily life instead of presenting a series of trite love song clichés:
I hope I don’t have to answer the question, “What does a love song have to do with enlightenment?” but I will anyway. Forming a deep, lasting bond with another human being is the enlightenment experience par excellence. When two people fully commit to unconditional love for one another, they don’t need acid to banish the ego because they know that one will care for the other and vice versa.

“Om” (Pinder, Thomas): The sacred word has many meanings and is employed in several Asian religions; for purposes of this analysis, the definition I found in a Harvard dissertation will work best: “OM serves as a sonic realization of the divine.” From a practical standpoint, its use in meditation serves to remove distractions and open the door to inner peace.
While I’m sure most rock critics of the day would have labeled the piece sacrilegious, only a few even bothered to mention it in their reviews, except in passing. I find the song rather calming and would firmly resist any accusations of pretentiousness. The basic arrangement has an earthy, rural feel with its light touches of flute, sitar and tabla, evoking images of pilgrims heading down dusty paths to the temple. Ray and Mike take turns singing the verse lines, and both of them sound cool, calm and collected. Other than a tempo change midstream and the powerful sound of voices raised in unison, there isn’t a whole lot of drama for the moribund to complain about. In my opinion, “Om” proves that the Moodies were serious about their interest in Eastern philosophy, making it the perfect closer for an album concerned with the search for enlightenment.

Rolling Stone rarely let up on the Moodies; in the Rolling Stone Album Guide, they spewed this bit of vitriol: “No major band has so relentlessly purveyed nonsense as have the Moodies... Were it not for their titanic success, in fact, they might easily be dismissed as an odd and overlong joke.”
I guess by “nonsense,” they meant “peace, love, and happiness.” Since we continue to live in a world filled with war, hate and misery, I would argue that the Moody Blues are more relevant than ever. In Search of the Lost Chord was one of many works of the era that suggested ways out of our never-ending troubles, and it ranks as one of the best. Revisiting their oeuvre has heightened my awareness of the value of their contributions.

From: https://altrockchick.com/2025/08/31/the-moody-blues-in-search-of-the-lost-chord-classic-music-review/ 

Wilson Pickett - Live Germany 1968 / Live Montreux 1972

 Wilson Pickett - Live Germany 1968 - Part 1

 

 Wilson Pickett - Live Germany 1968 - Part 2

 

Wilson Pickett - Live Montreux 1972 - Part 1

 

 Wilson Pickett - Live Montreux 1972 - Part 2

 

I’d had this short, German TV documentary of Wilson Pickett and his band touring Germany circa 1968 for years on VHS tape. I just noticed some clips from it on Youtube and decided to post ’em since it’s some of the best classic soul footage I’ve ever seen.
Wilson Pickett, born March 14, 1941, in Pratville, Alabama, to an abusive mother, was sent north to live with his father in Detroit at a young age. He began singing in church and was influenced mostly by the Sensational Nightingales’ screaming lead singer Rev. Julius Cheeks.
Pickett joined the Violianaires as a teenager and hit the gospel highway. He eventually left and went R&B, replacing Joe Stubbs in the Falcons, an early Detroit super group, best known at the time for You’re So Fine, the group included at various times Sir Mack Rice and Eddie Floyd. He sang lead on their biggest hit- I Found A Love, one of the greatest soul records ever made, Pickett would re-record it several times over the years, but never matched the original version on the Lupine label. 
Striking out on his own in the wake of I Found A Love, he signed with Lloyd Price and Harold Logan’s Double L label (Logan would be murdered at his Turntable club in 1970) where he charted with a couple of minor hits including If You Need Me (which the Stones covered in ’65).
He signed to Atlantic in 1966 and was sent to Memphis to record with the Stax crew including Booker T. & the MGs, kicking off an incredible string of hits- Midnight Hour, Mustang Sally, his killer re-working of Land of 1000 Dances, Funky Broadway, etc. When Atlantic and Stax split he recorded at Muscle Shoals and in Miami with the Dixie Flyers, but Pickett seemed to run out of material and his later Atlantic records were usually covers of recent pop hits– Hey Jude, Sugar Sugar, Born To Be Wild, good versions, but songs are rarely hits twice in a row, and Pickett’s career suffered. Despite selling millions of records, his royalty statement showed him owing Atlantic money. Atlantic, for all their self-serving re-writing of history, took the money they made in R&B and re-invested it in white, English rock groups like Led Zepplin, Yes, the Rolling Stones, etc. and left the soul and R&B stars who built the company out in the cold. Pickett was dropped from Atlantic and never had a big hit again, although he had a few minor R&B chart showings as late as 1987.  From: https://thehoundnyc.com/2010/04/22/wilson-pickett/

 

Wilson Pickett & Duane Allman