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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

How do you file the soundtrack albums in your collection? The Vinyl Connection library has them alphabetically under ‘Soundtrack’, a nice little section sitting snugly between Sonic Youth and The Soup Dragons (the CDs) and a bigger vinyl section sandwiched comfortably twixt The Someloves and Joe South. If you browse any collection of soundtrack albums […]

When the boy was little we took an afternoon drive around the ring road to Altona, home of Victoria’s Railway museum. To me it seemed, on that Autumn afternoon, a windswept mausoleum, but the youngster enjoyed clambering up, through, and around the old steam engines. Despite their size (big to enormous), it seemed to make sense […]

Tomorrow I’m playing a third match in the Watsonia Tennis Club Championships. Lots of members enter multiple events; Open Singles and Doubles, A Grade Men’s, Parent and Child Doubles, Mixed. Given my level of fitness, I decided to enter just one event, especially as the boy was decidedly cool on the idea of playing competition tennis […]

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 […]

It may be anti-social these days, but not long ago a cigarette was considered a cool accessory to casually include in your album cover portrait. This selection ranges from the ultra hip to (attempts at) confrontation. Yet remember, however good the artwork, it’s still very bad for your health, kids. * * * * * * * […]

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 […]

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 […]