Tag Archives: Prog
UNCANNY MASTERPIECE
IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING A reflection in two parts by a grateful subject I Has there been a more spine tingling opening to an album than the beginning of In The Court Of The Crimson King? An interstellar wind approaches from the depths of nowhere, fades, then explodes into one of the […]
DRIFTING DOWN THE ENDLESS RIVER
SIDE ONE – NEEDLE DROP It’s the first week of summer but you wouldn’t know it. Skies are sullen and there is a sneering, chilly breeze. More like late Autumn, really. I’m sitting in front of the stereo, having just dropped the stylus on the first side of the final Pink Floyd album. On the […]
MELBOURINE DREAM
Amongst fans of electronic music, you can well imagine the flutter of excitement when it was announced that German pioneers Tangerine Dream were coming to Melbourne as part of the annual Music Week. Their first visit this century. With the venerable Edgar Froese now in his 70s and a recent CD entitled Phaedra Farewell Tour […]
STRANGE FANTASTIC DREAM
The legendary Australian progressive band Spectrum went into cryogenic storage in mid-1973. When you think of the departure of a band – especially a well-regarded one with a series of albums to its credit – you tend to think of record company neglect or audience indifference. That image doesn’t quite fit the last year in Spectrum’s […]
PLEASURE SPLINTERS
When an artist wears their influences on their sleeve, your response is likely to depend on what side of the shirt you are looking at. If it is front on: fresh new patterns and design, then delight will erupt and you won’t give a rat’s arse about what went before. Contrariwise, in the view from behind […]
HELLO HALLOGALLO! [PART 1]
I cannot remember the date, but I recall the exact location where I took delivery of Julian Cope’s slim but influential paperback Krautrocksampler in Autumn 1996. There was a palpable thrill in opening the mail box near the front door at Langentalstraße 6 and finding a small parcel addressed to me. Not to Herr Schmidt […]
ERIC & THE VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR
I The High School I attended was pretty large for the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. The area had been a ‘growth corridor’ for some years and its previous life as a market garden area must have lingered in air and soil as children were plentiful. There were five classes of 25 wide-eyed primary school graduates […]
HALF MAN HALF MACHINE
After Melbourne University and I parted company – not on speaking terms – I needed to plug the gap left by going to uni and not studying (more on my favourite diversion, the Rowden White Library, here). The record store where I worked 6 hours a week offered me a full-time position. At that time […]
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