John Scott looks at the classic album The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society by The Kinks as part of the ongoing Classic Album series. “The Kinks was chosen as a name by the band’s manager Larry Page because it was slightly outrageous in the pre-swinging Sixties.”
Music has power. The power to stir emotions and paint pictures in our imagination. When Pink Floyd released their high-concept double album The Wall in 1979 its listeners were left to flesh out the storyline that the music and lyrics provided with whatever visual concepts their own brains provided. Like no album before it though, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
A man of few words – a phrase that has almost definitely never been used in relation to Elvis Costello. Although he is every bit as much a tunesmith as a lyricist, it is his way with words that has made him one of rock music’s most respected songwriters. Now Costello has written his memoirs, […]
Mention Mike Valentine or Chasing the Dragon, and you should (if you visit the UK hifi shows) think of the dragonesque firey orange and red colours of the clothes and an equally flamboyant bright personality that goes with it. His Chasing the Dragon and Vivaldi Four Seasons LP/CDs are part of my reference review sources. […]
Janine Elliot takes a listen to the Album “A Swingin’ Safari” which was recorded in the Polydor Studio, Hamburg in 1961/62. The original analogue recordings from 1961/62 form the basis of Christoph Stickel’s unobtrusive “refurbishing” which aims to avoid any artistic intervention and here it is released on Reel to Reel tape from Horch House.
Back in the murky mists of time, when I was around eight years old, I read a couple of children’s fantasy books by Alan Garner – The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. Filled with wizards, witches and evil magical creatures, they were terrific; I read them over and over back then. I […]
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.
Back in the 1980s, Yes vocalist Jon Anderson first mooted the idea of working with violinist Jean Luc Ponty but it has taken until now to make that reality.
This is not a new record having being released in 2009, but it is new to me and so I thought worthy of sharing it as I really enjoyed it. William Orbit will not be a new name to many with my first exposure to his music being back in a dim and distant 90s […]
Out now on Esoteric Antenna Ostinato is described as “a labour of love, built on forty years’ vision’ with Tayler commenting “I had so many ideas for music and sound running around inside my head as a teenager, and now, more than forty years on, technology has evolved to the point where I can realise […]
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 […]
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, […]