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.
Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique was one of my first classical purchases way back in the early 1980s. I was initially attracted by the album’s sleeve notes, which alluded to febrile opium-induced nightmares. Also, the instrumentation featured something called an ophicleide, which I hadn’t encountered before and I’m not sure that I have since.
The last time I saw Richard Thomson in concert, a member of the audience shouted: “Where’s Linda tonight Richard?” Thompson replied that she was in hospital giving birth. Linda gave birth to a daughter, Kami, who as one half of The Rails is opening tonight’s show. The other half of The Rails is Kami’s husband, […]
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.
King Crimson gigs are, it would seem, like buses – you wait 35 years for one and then 2 come along at once. I’m happy to say that I was able to attend both of their recent Edinburgh shows.
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, […]
Is it really almost eighteen months since we last attended one of the Association Jazz Edge events? Let me put you in the picture dear reader.
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 […]
If you are a hifi enthusiast, you may well think that there would be no better way to spend a couple of hours than listening to a system from one of the world’s most respected hifi companies. You would, however, be wrong.
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 […]
Not new by any stretch of the imagination and an album that will be familiar to many I’m sure, but this version on Naxos and downloaded in 128FS DSD… all 7.8 Gig of it … zipped!… is really rather worth talking about.
John Scott delves into his collection and pulls out The Yes Album, the bands third album. “The Yes Album was not their biggest selling album and it may not be their best – quite often though, I think it is – but it represents a time when they were still defining their style and before […]