London 3-5 May 2019 Friday: Gary The May bank holiday is normally a time for the revival of pagan customs in Britain. These can be found from local village morris dancers to the crowning of the May Queen in Glastonbury. For a few days, Britain takes on the stance of people being an extra in The Wicker Man while also drowning their innards in vast quantities of booze.
Gary Parsons
259 posts
Interchill It’s incredible to think that Suns Of Arqa have been making music for forty years now. I first came across them at the start of the 1990s when they were being lumped in with other ambient dance artists such as The Orb, Future Sound of London and Banco de Gaia as that scene exploded in 1991. So here is Heart Of The Suns, a thirteen-track celebration
London 12 April 2019 Ah, an evening of pure Detroit electronica some thirty-five years or more after it first happened is a must-see. The atmosphere of The Barbican’s post apocalyptic Logan’s Run architectural design just added to the palpable excitement as I made my way towards the venue. This is Juan Atkins and Rik Davis’s Cybotron, not to be confused with the seventies Australian Berlin School artists with […]
Kscope I apparently first saw Ozric Tentacles perform at the Stonehenge Free Festival in 1984, and although my memory of the whole occasion is rather hazy, to say the least, their music has remained with me ever since that long summer many years ago. Even though over the years band leader Ed Wynne has done various side projects, mainly the wonderful kosmiche sounds of Nodens Ictus, this is […]
London 2 April 2019 Italian producer and songwriter Giorgio Moroder is basically a legend. After discovering a certain sound in the mid-seventies, he reinvented disco music overnight. The sound was full of synthesizers pulsing to a pounding beat, but also never forgetting that key ingredient, melody. Moroder then won three Oscars for his soundtrack work and during the 1980s, he was pretty much everywhere working with many top […]
London 2 March 2019 PFM (Premiata Forneria Marconi) were one of the earliest progressive rock bands to emerge from Italy in the early 1970s. They were certainly one of the best known Italian bands of that era, mainly thanks to being signed by Greg Lake to Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s then fledgling Manticore label in the UK and USA, giving the band a much wider profile than they […]
London 26 January 2019 It’s a wet and cold January night as I edge my way past the throngs that inhabit the high street in Brixton to make my way towards the venue. The weather seems rather apt to witness two of doom’s finest bands, as well as Rise Above records stablemates.
Beggars Arkive OK, let’s start with the fact that this is a beautiful vinyl issue of an album that was only ever available on CD. Its gatefold packaging is wonderfully done and the 180-gramme vinyl mastering in gorgeous ruby red plastic makes this a collector’s item if you’re a fan of the band. Compilation albums are always difficult to review
Stolen Body Doom now covers so many differing styles of heavy music that it encompasses a multitude of different bands. There are those who faithfully tread the path of Sabbath, those that make monolithic noise and those that take more of their ideas from the sounds of bands from the sixties. This split release is by two bands both trying to outdo each other on an epic scale, […]
New Heavy Sounds BlackLab are a Japanese duo that use the mighty fuzz pedal to create some epic doom and Under The Strawberry Moon 2.0 is their début album. A wall of crushing fuzz snarls in “Black Moon” as it crashes its way into its big chord sequence. Echoed vocals cry from beyond the void into the darkest night.
Bureau B From its pounding opening track “Gizmo”, Emotional Detox seems like a new statement of intent for Camera. Rather than relying on the more traditional Krautrock tropes that were present on their previous releases, this opener has a sense of early eighties electronica mixed with a fifties sci-fi style synth lead. This makes it sound a little like a weird hybrid of The Buggles doing the soundtrack of […]
Beggars Arkive In the early eighties, Bauhaus were a bit of an odd phenomenon; musically, they changed with each album, and, like their contemporaries Japan, it was difficult to pigeon hole them. Eventually they were lumbered in with a lot of diffused other artists under the gothic rock tag, something that their music, apart from a couple of numbers, didn’t really adhere to.
London 22 October 2018 In the last few years, an underground music scene has been steadily growing in strength. Taking its ideas from mostly horror and science fiction soundtracks of the 1980s and mainly using vintage synthesizers, the scene dubbed itself synthwave. Using a mismatch of John Carpenter, Giorgio Moroder and more recent bands like Zombi, synthwave has grown in stature
London 24 September 2018 There is a buzz about tonight’s concert, a certain energy filling the air; it’s a good vibe, full of excitement and patchouli oil goodness. It was 1966 when The Pink Floyd (as they were known then) last played The Roundhouse (on the back of a truck) and it seems that some of the people who attended that benefit show for the International Times (the […]
Pompeii 19 July 2018 Pompeii, the city frozen in time, its people caught like statues in their death throes as the volcano erupted around them. The place is as stunningly beautiful as it is tragic; it is awe-inspiring as you feel transported back in time. The place has also become synonymous with progressive rock
SFE / Cherry Red Claudia Brücken was the vocalist of 1980s electronic wonders Propaganda, her vocals soaring over such songs as “Jewel” and “P Machinery” that still sound wonderful today. Jerome Froese is the son of Edgar and one time member of Tangerine Dream during the 1980s and 1990s. On paper this seems quite an odd collaboration, but sometimes these things just work
Dur Et Doux Piniol are a French band consisting of two bassists, two drummers, two guitarists and a single keyboard player to make their unearthly music. Live, I would imagine that this is a very formidable experience, and certainly one to hammer home their barrage of sound.
Sulatron Any album that has the words Space Soundtrax in the title is always going to catch my (mind’s) eye, but the fact that this is Sun Dial and released by the fabulous Sulatron Records; well, I knew I couldn’t go wrong. Multi-instrumentalist Gary Ramon always manages to put out some interesting music, so let the space portals open as I delve into a cornucopia of music for interplanetary travel.