Category GENRE SPECIFIC
2016 — THE FIELD OF JAZZ
…Being Part 2 of the Vinyl Connection end-of-year round-up Could this be the 10 days of Jazz Christmas? Not really, just highlights selected from those jazz discs arriving at VC this year, presented in chronological order. * Solar system huge, supernova-hyped. To these ears, pretty disappointing. As someone 1537 times wittier than me observed, those vocals just evoke Star Trek every time. Visit […]
2016 REPORT FROM THE FIELD — PART 1
Top Five Secondhand Record Purchases It is revealing that there was more than enough material in the acquisitions book to produce a Top 50 list of secondhand records entering the Vinyl Connection domain during the past twelve months. We are talking fifty highlights, by-the-by, not gap-fillers, pass-markers and also-rans. So much good music and such […]
DARK SIDE OF THE VALLEY
When you think about the world-straddling colossus they became in the latter half of the 70s, it is easy to forget that Pink Floyd started life as just one spray of colour in the kaleidoscope of Swinging London. Like many bands of the 60s, Pink Floyd embraced side projects and commissions. After all, it was […]
JACK JOHNSON — SAY IT LOUD
Racism, discrimination, a rock manifesto, sex, sport, violence and audio editing. Buy a ticket, this album has it all. Oh, and it’s a soundtrack too. Coming off the recording sessions that produced In A Silent Way (released July, 1969) and Bitches Brew (April, 1970), it was clear that Miles Davis was determined to move his music-making […]
LIGHT FINGERED
They are one of my favourite groups. The VC collection holds over forty of their albums. Their catalogue holds some two dozen soundtrack albums, recorded between 1977 and 1999. All good reasons for a Film [Soundtrack] Festival piece on Tangerine Dream. Although I might wish to crow about having all the TD OST albums, in fact I have […]
BARRON PLANET
What links Shakespeare, composer John Cage and actor Leslie Nielsen? What, for that matter, do robots, tape loops, and the invention of the micro dress have in common? Still scratching the old cranium? How about this: A connection between electric tonalities, Anne Francis, and monsters from the unconscious mind. Loosely based on The Tempest, Shakespeare’s […]
SPACEMILLS OF YOUR MIND
It is late. The television is the only light in the room. You slouch, alone, on the couch. The movie you’ve been determinedly watching through to the endless final credits has been disappointing. What were people raving about? Unfulfilled, you surf a few channels, hoping for…what? Something to prod you out of this torpor; a […]
SPACE TRUCKIN’
Well into the second decade of the 21st Century, it is wonderfully anachronistic that bands are still twisting the kaleidoscope of psychedelia. One such is Toronto’s Comet Control. Based around the songwriting partnership of guitarists Chad Ross and Andrew Moszynski (whose relationship pre-existed musically in the psych-metal band Quest For Fire), Comet Control released their […]
RETURN TO MIDDLE EARTH
Perhaps it was the screening of the Hobbit films on TV this week, but for some reason I found myself wanting to revisit Middle Earth to wrap up of the Lord Of The Rings series from a few months ago. It returns us to where we began, with John Sangster and Hobbits. Sangster has written a […]
HIGH CONTRAST
With a morning to myself and a pile of chores, I sat with the start-me-up coffee and pondered what to spin. What would get me going for a few hours of productive office work? How was I feeling today? Pretty heavy, actually. A chesty cough and a bit distracted by a knotty work issue. Something […]
PERFECTION OF CIRCUMLOCUTION
What do we make of a new release by a rock veteran? As stars drop from the sky with numbing regularity, do we celebrate the simple act of survival inherent in creating new music? Perhaps triumph is tempered by a niggling disquiet. What if, Bowie-like, this is a last hurrah; a pre-planned final chapter for […]
THE BOURNE SYNTHESIS
Pianist / composer Matthew Bourne has been working in the area of improvised jazz for a number of years, but on acquiring an original Lintronics Advanced Memory Moog he became enamoured with the possibilities offered by this vintage analogue synthesiser. After having the device painstakingly restored, Bourne used the Memory Moog in performance and later […]
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