Hifi Pig

Geoff Downes and Chris Braide released “ Pictures Of You”, their debut album as The Downes Braide Association, in 2012 after meeting at a Buggles reunion show in 2010.  Downes was already familiar to me from his work with The Buggles – I’m a big fan of their Age Of Plastic album – Yes and Asia.  Chris Braide was a new name to me but he has written and produced songs for Beyoncé, Lana del Ray, Paloma Faith, Christina Aguilera and Marc Almond amongst others so his pop pedigree is beyond doubt. More »

Let’s get this straight from the outset… the él record label is absolutely nuts!!! And I love its quirkiness and bottle for putting out albums of music that otherwise would be unlikely to see the light of day. Regular readers will have read other reviews I’ve done of the label’s output and it is nothing if not varied and eclectic. And this album is a continuation on that devil may care, plucky stance, for here on Escape In Time we have a collection of 24 popular British television themes of the 1960s and some incidental music from The Prisoner tacked on the end.  More »

Now I don’t often buy music on spec but when I heard this album playing in the local supermarket (of all places) I had to enquire what it was…I assumed given the track that was playing that it was something new from Neil Young that I’d not heard about. More »

Eloquence, The Complete Works’ is a compilation of ex-Kraftwerk percussionist Wolfgang Flür’s “pop” tunes from 2002 to today.

“I selected the tracks on ELOQUENCE to show the width of my artistic possibilities from lyric writing, melody development, working with my voice and my being involved in collaborations with interesting international artists” says Flür, continuing “With Kraftwerk, I was a drummer and device inventor. I only detected my own more melodic musicality after I left my former group. If Kraftwerk played minimal electro, then I now play ‘maximal electro’; for example, I have nothing against the sound of a trumpet in a song if it fits well, as in my track “Best Friend’s Birthday”. In this respect, ELOQUENCE charts my development from a drummer-boy to a melody inventor and story–telling man and it’s been a great journey for me which makes me happy.” More »

Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series of records has been going now for over ten years but still shows no signs of becoming tired or struggling for new and relevant material and artists. More »

Hawkwind have a loyal following and you only need to look at the bust up between Nik Turner and Dave Brock and the camps fans have aligned themselves to understand that passions’ run high when it comes to this iconic space rock band.

Love In Space was originally recorded in 1995 whilst the band were on tour promoting the Alien 4 Album and was then released a year later. The line-up is Ron Tree on vocals, Dave Brock, Alan Davey and Richard Chadwick and to be fair to Ron Tree he does a great job in bringing a good deal of the feel of the original Bob Calvert to proceedings. Alan Davey is without a doubt my most favorite of bass players and he doesn’t disappoint here. More »

As the daughter of The Band’s Levon Helm, Amy Helm has spent her life surrounded by music.  The Band took a mix of rock and roll and traditional American music and invented the Americana genre, decades before the term became popular.  A particularly impressive feat considering that 4 out of the 5 members were Canadian, with Arkansas native Levon being the sole American.   More »

I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of this CD when it landed on my doormat.  The band’s name together with the cover art – kind of a cross between The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine and Pink Floyd’s Relics – made me wonder if this was some sort of arch parody in the manner of XTC’s Dukes Of Stratosphere albums.  More »

Producer/Engineers Jared Sacks and Daan van Aalst have pooled their expertise in music production and recording in very high resolution audio. Their goal is to put together the best system for recording and reproducing music at the highest quality with recordings in the new DSD 256fs (quad rate DSD) format, although 8 Ensembles is available in DSD 256, 128 and 64. It’s the 128 format we’re playing with here. More »

In 2014 Andy Bell, for it is he of Erasure fame, made an unexpected, and some would say brave career move when he launched his electro-acoustic cabaret show ‘Torsten The Bareback Saint’.

Before Bell started to write the next installation of his cabaret (Torsten The Beautiful Libertine) he and songwriters Barney Ashton-Bullock and Christopher Frost and producer Michael J Allison started remixing, resinging and rewriting some of their tracks and this is where Variance was born. More »

Punkers of a certain age will be well aware of Penetration (for it is they) and their classic debut single “Don’t Dictate”. The band hail from the North East of England and played with most of the big names of the heyday of punk and so it is with a good deal of relish that this album of new material, their first studio album in 36 years, was greeted when it landed on my desk. It’s released this Friday 9^th October on Polestar and was instigated in early 2015 with crowdfunding platform PledgeMusic.   More »

Having recorded his first solo album Fish Rising while still a member of Gong, Steve Hillage wasted little time in recording a follow up after his departure from the band in 1976.  Decamping with partner Miquette Giraudy to Todd Rundgren’s studio near Woodstock in New York State, the resulting album, L, was something of a masterpiece, showcasing Hillage’s soaring, melodic guitar with sympathetic backing from Rundgren’s band Utopia and a cameo from jazz trumpeter Don Cherry. Hillage then formed a touring band comprising former Jethro Tull drummer Clive Bunker, aptly-named bassist, Colin Bass, Phil Hodge and Miquette on keyboards, Basil Brooks on additional keyboards and flute,and Christian Boule on rhythm and glissando guitars. More »

I remember the 2 Tone explosion well and The Bodysnatchers’ Let’s Do Rocksteady is very much a part of that memory.

Rhoda Dakar joined The Bodysnatchers in 1979 after Shane McGowan introduced her to bassist Nicky Summers and after their second gig the band signed to UK record label 2 Tone. Gigs alongside Madness, The Selecter, The Specials, The Go-Gos and Toots & The Maytals followed, as did the hits; Let’s Do Rocksteady b/w Ruder Than You in March 1980 and Easy Life b/w Too Experienced in July of the same year. These were The Bodysnatchers only commercial releases. More »