Category e) Naughts [2000 – 2009]
ZAP YOUR MIND!!
Acid Mothers Temple. Just one of many names linked to Kawabata Makoto, the Japanese guitarist who founded the collective back in the mid-1990s. His aim was to play improvised psychedelic rock around the world and document the explorations on his own record label. With a catalogue of hundreds of albums featuring almost as many players, […]
KID REMEMBERS
Sonically daring and lyrically challenging, Radiohead’s follow-up to the hugely successful OK Computer was the result of much suffering. Thom Yorke endured a psycho-emotional crisis during the extensive world tour following OK Computer’s success while the whole band agonised about their ‘direction’. Yet somehow they managed to both renew their sound and create an album […]
DESTINATION: PARIS
Saint Germain. A Parisian boulevard where Jean-Paul Satre strolled, or a football team from the same city. Perhaps the French liqueur made with elderflowers. Those of a theosophical persuasion will want to bend your ear with tales of Saint Germain, an eighteenth century mystic, philosopher and ascended master. Whatever that is. While all the above […]
THE NATURE OF DAN
It was no secret. Steely Dan fans knew the 1980 LP Gaucho was the last offering from studio perfectionists Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. They’d reached a pinnacle of consummate musicianship with their penultimate album Aja and were done with Dan. In fact, they were done with each other. So the buzz of excitement around […]
REALITY BITES
For many music fans around the globe, the death of David Bowie in January 2016 left a gaping chasm in the rock world. No more new studio albums from one of popular music’s most restless creative spirits; no more tours, no more shifts of direction, no more jump-cut personas. David—and all his identities—were gone, leaving […]
MORE SONGS ABOUT SEX AND BOOZE
What do you get if you mix the diamond grit of Dinah Washington, the heartbreak of Billie Holiday, the brash charm of Janis Joplin and the sass of The Ronettes? It’s a heady and potent cocktail, and one that resulted in soaring peaks and desperate troughs during the short life of Amy Jade Winehouse. In […]
AERIAL VIEW
From the time she topped the charts with her swooping, swooning debut single “Wuthering Heights”, Kate Bush has been a unique—and uniquely talented—voice. When her first album came out in 1978, Kate was just 19 years old, inexperienced in the music industry but possessed of both confidence and determination. It was the young singer/composer who […]
RAINBOW VINYL — PURPLE
“There’s gold at the end of them there vinyls” * Hope you’ve enjoyed this rainbow vinyl trip. * I recall being quite excited when I heard the first Tame Impala album back in 2010. Kevin Parker seemed to have reinvented—or at least re-invigorated—psychedelic rock for the 21st century and it was good. The follow-up album […]
RAINBOW VINYL — BLUE
Coloured vinyl. Guaranteed to lift the wintertime/summertime blues. * This excellent LP from female quartet Beaches has appeared in these pages before. In fact, it was one of Vinyl Connection’s more gushing reviews. Playing it today, I was again mightily impressed with this excellent debut. * Sydney’s Sunnyboys were also on the end of a […]
NOW HE SINGS
If I delay writing, I’ll stall for sure. Too much information will kill the personal resonance. What do I do with this Chick-shaped hole? Attempting to cover a sixty year career is daunting. … a few of the thoughts tumbling through the Vinyl Connection brain box as the news of Chick Corea’s death hits home. […]
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