Category Progressive
BOXING DAY [PART 2]
More CD boxed sets that somehow found their way into Vinyl Connection headquarters during 2022. * This beautifully curated set has facsimile album covers, including the gatefolds. Several albums have bonus tracks, mostly live, and the booklet is high quality too. All in all, a set I was delighted to have as I’ve never owned […]
BOXING DAY
Let’s get the bleeding obvious out of the way from the start. I love vinyl and have acquired more than a couple of discs this past year. But it sure is an expensive obsession. One of the features of my 2022 purchasing has been the discovery of how many excellent CD boxed sets are out […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: #2
2 YES — CLOSE TO THE EDGE Some facts: Close to the Edge was released on 13th September 1972 as Atlantic Records SD7244. It was the band’s fifth album and was a critical and popular success, reaching the Top 5 of album charts in both the UK and USA. There are three pieces on the album: the […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: #4 — #3
4 NEU! — NEU! ‘Hallogallo’ fades in with a repeated guitar dot over a strange percussive clack. It insinuates itself into the room and your consciousness, an hypnotic groove, repetitive yet captivating. Welcome to the strange and wonderful world of Neu! The beginning of the Neu! story is part of the early Kraftwerk story. Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: #7 — #5
7 WISHBONE ASH — ARGUS On this, their 3rd album, British guitar band Wishbone Ash managed to fuse contemporary rock sensibilities with both British mythology and progressive arrangements. The twin guitars of Andy Powell and Ted Turner, interweaving and harmonising, add a glistening melodic flow to songs that hint at medieval sketches without ever crossing […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: #10 — #8
10 DEEP PURPLE — MACHINE HEAD 1970’s Deep Purple In Rock and 1971’s Fireball set the bar high for British heavy rock. Yet Deep Purple managed to top those two fine records with their seventh long-player, Machine Head. Prosaically named after the metal gear arrangement that adjusts the tension on guitar strings, the music is […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: RECAP
72 FROM ’72 is reaching a climax. The top of the mountain, the pick of the bunch, the pinnacle of all things musical in 1972. The Top 10. As we launch into the final few posts, here is a list of all the albums covered in the countdown so far, with links to the original […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: #15 — 11
15 BIG STAR — #1 RECORD Antecedents: Beatles, Byrds. Contemporaries: Badfinger, Raspberries. Descendants: R.E.M., Marshall Crenshaw, Teenage Fanclub. Definition: Jangly chord-rich guitar rock with tight harmonies, off-beat lyrics, sing-along choruses and a middle eight to die for. Highlights: “The Ballad Of El Goodo”; “Feel”. Further Reading on Power Pop: Here Is A Sunrise [Released April […]
1972 COUNTDOWN: #20 — 16
20 ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND — EAT A PEACH Simultaneously a tribute and a stop-gap after the untimely death of Duane Allman, Eat A Peach is slightly schizoid. A big double album, it includes three unreleased studio tracks featuring Duane, three live tracks from the Fillmore concerts, and three new studio songs without Duane. Yet the […]
BARKING AND BEAUTIFUL
For a brief article to do justice to Kate Bush’s 1985 magnum opus Hounds Of Love it would need to be written in colour. It would have washes of luminous chalk, splashes of oil pastel, shafts of vivid acrylics and tendrils of lava lamp pink. Shapes would pulsate with passion, creep along midnight forest trails […]
SOFT MACHINE 1975 – 1978
There is so much change and restless creativity in the Soft Machine catalogue it can take quite a while to get one’s head around it. Took me years. The first two albums explode with Sixties eccentricity, mischief, and brain-pinging energy. But then there is an apparent u-turn into the sprawling, magnificent Third; an album demanding […]
MAN FROM THE EAST
Classically trained percussionist Stomu Yamashta recorded for Island Records between 1972 and 1976, releasing seven albums of extraordinarily creative and enjoyable progressive music. With elements of formal composition, jazz-rock, electronica and progressive rock, Yamashta’s ability to fuse East and West into an intriguing and entertaining whole was remarkable. Although I have most of the Island […]
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