“If you gotta kill people, kill them with love, you fuckers!” John Power bellows at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire audience where his post-La’s band Cast are performing as part of their Troubled Times tour in 2012. As analysis of that extraordinary exhortation would require a major thesis*, we’ll just skip over his muddled proselytising and […]
Japanese synthesiser pioneer Isao Tomita died in the first week of May at the age of eight-four. Inspired by Robert Moog’s electronic instruments and the work of Wendy Carlos, Tomita produced a substantial catalogue of studio albums in addition to several live releases and a significant body of soundtrack work. In a previous post, I wrote briefly about […]
A new album by All India Radio was released on April 15th. The band has been around since the year 2000 and has produced more than a dozen albums. Having detected signs of well-crafted retro-electronica, I was pretty sure I’d enjoy The Slow Light, and so it proved. It is an album of two distinct […]
I remember seeing a striking cover on shelves in the mid-70s… a slender wrist rises up, clasping a silver ingot like a futuristic advertising photograph. The skin tones are dull, muted, as the shot is taken against a bright white light, a small bright rising star behind the argent rectangle. Behind, surrounding all, a deep […]
What was it drew me to pick up the blue on blue album with a banking seabird, wingtip to water, blurring the sea to azure glass? Was it the sense of movement as the bird fused air and liquid with breathtaking confidence and grace? Perhaps the sea itself; pale like an ice floe, smooth as […]
Chatting to several Record Store owners in the lead up to this year’s ‘International Record Store Day’ there was a sense the hype has well-and-truly overpowered the original idea. The releases were patchy, the prices exorbitant (and margins reduced); there was a sense of store owners being blackmailed via RSD propaganda into ordering LPs of […]
Decade Diving Number #4 2006 Though I tend not to loiter at the heavier end of the music spectrum here in Vinyl Connection land, there is a goodly chunk of noisy stuff in the collection. Avatar by US West Coast band Comets On Fire is an album I’ve had for a while and really like, despite an aversion […]
Writing a memoir seems to have become a compulsory autumn activity for ageing rock stars. And given the rate at which they are dropping off the twig, a good thing too I reckon. Commit those stories to print before deteriorating faculties and disintegrating memories make it impossible to recall the detail that brings such tomes to life. […]
Just recently, while introducing an album with significant input from Steve Winwood, (Stomu Yamashta’s GO), I wrote about Terry Hounsome’s Rock Record 7. To illustrate both the intricacies of the book and the impressive count of Winwood appearances, I cited an example of an album not worth pursuing. With self-assurance and confidence, it was noted that […]
Here is the Steve Winwood story in his song lyrics. At the time of the first solo album in 1977, the tone is one of quiet desperation. Hold on to me when you’re falling When you’re falling down to the ground Hold on to me when you feel like When you feel like you can’t […]
PREAMBLE If you are a music fan over a certain age who likes to know stuff, chances are you have a few kilograms of rock reference books. There’s the large format, glossy-pictured one given to you on some forgotten birthday by a well-meaning family member that looks great but has not one solitary bit of […]
Continuing a survey of the remarkable career of Steve Winwood PART III Setting up a colourful tent at the English folk-rock fayre, John Barleycorn Must Die, with its linocut sheath of grain picture and earthy brown sleeve, was a heady brew of rock, folk and jazz influences that sounds remarkably fresh to this day. Opening […]
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