SAHB - Rock Drill Reviewed

Rock Drill was the last proper SAHB album (SAHB did record another album Fourplay between Stories and this one, although bizarrely without Harvey who was equally bizarrely otherwise engaged working on a Loch Ness monster documentary!).Although often considered a bit of a non event and largely disowned by the band who were slowly disintegrating at the time (keyboardist Hugh McKenna had already left ...

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Can's Sacrilege? - Eddy reviews the remixes

As the title suggests this album of Can remixes was a risky project but it actually works pretty well and there are some exciting reworkings here which have, on the whole, been praised by the band… except Damo Suzuki that is:It’s not my tea.As befits the era Sacrilege (1997) consists mostly of remixed instrumentals of original tracks in the drum and bass style. Therein lies the issue. As ...

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John Martyn / Well Kept Secret

Released in 1982 just one year after the excellent Glorious Fool is it fair to ask if Well Kept Secret was the beginning of John Martyn's long decline? Sure Martyn wholeheartedly embraces the production values of the day and the tracks are submerged in keyboards and easy listening bass and saxophone. However to be fair the songs are passable retaining some hints of the immediately preceding albums, ...

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Bonnie 'Prince' Billy at Peace? Master and Everyone

The voices in Will Oldham's head that speak to us via his Bonnie 'Prince' Billy incarnation are not peaceful ones. This is an album of universal questions, asked on a personal level. What role does traditional love hold in the modern world? How does one reconcile the undeniable evil in us all? Heavy stuff - but all these questions relate to Oldham alone. The outsider looking in. It's a long decade ...

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Can's Spanner In The Sky Album Reviewed

Of all Can's latter period albums Can aka Inner Space, the band's last proper album released in 1979, before the short lived reunion a decade later that was Ritetime, is patchy but good. The album presented another shift in sound; a bit more gutsy, jazzy, rhythmic and very unusual. It has more the character of Landed from 1975 than its immediate predecessors; the world music flavoured albums ...

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The Sensational Alex Harvey's New Band

This album represents quite a departure from Alex Harvey’s rock and blues roots. The vocals are still there of course and are stronger than ever making it unmistakably Harvey but the musical arrangements are more involved displaying a wide range of dynamics both across and within songs resulting in moments of power and beauty. An approach that was perhaps attempted with less success on the preceding ...

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First Narrows by Loscil - A Subtly Beautiful Listen

Electronica is by nature ephemeral. It didn't take long for the Future Sound of London to sound like the Retro Sound of Nowhere In Particular, for example. So while it might be the case that today's cutting edge laptop constructions will sound anachronistic in a few years time, it's nice to know that some music being made at the moment won't have that problem. Which is where this album comes in. ...

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And It's Goodbye From Ulrich Schnauss

Ulrich Schnauss presents the final part in his trilogy of electronically ethereal albums. As their names – Far Away Trains Passing By, A Strangely Isolated Place and now Goodbye - suggest, his productions invoke the idea of a bleak, but worthwhile, journey. His music could be for an outing that involves the body physically moving (the ideal tape for a long car ride), or a static body allowing the ...

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Album Review - The Simmer Dim by John Martyn

The Simmer Dim is both great and poor. In the first place the playing and the repertoire is superb making it potentially one of John Martyn’s greatest live albums, however secondly it loses a significant number of brownie points on account of the poor sound which is of barely bootleg quality. First the songs. The Simmer Dim (the name refers to the summer twilight in the most northerly ...

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Up Close And Personal - David Sylvian's Most Compelling Incarnation Yet

David Sylvian / Blemish It's been a trying time for the former Mr David Batt. Following protracted wranglings with a major label he's finally emerged from the legal jungle with head held high and bearing this, the first of his creative trophies from a plethora of ongoing projects. Described as 'an impromptu suite of songs for guitar, electronics and voice', Blemish is initially only available ...

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Never Say Die! Eddy Reassesses Black Sabbath's Much Maligned Breakup Album From 1978

Come on Sabbath lovers. Never Say Die!, Ozzy Osbourne's final album with Black Sabbath (before the 2013 reunion) is actually a cracking good album! Like Technical Ecstasy before it, it only suffers relatively from comparison with the earlier albums, that were even better, but as a standalone rock album from 1978 it knocks the spots off most competitors. Granted the sound is different from what ...

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2019 Review Of The Year

Another year, another poll. This year's review covers logs #119 to #170 - that's 52 weeks from 6th January to 29th December 2019. Unlike most annual lists entries are not limited to releases that actually came out in 2019. In fact most of my listening is from the rock archives and you won't find many brand new releases here. Some categories below are based on gut feelings, some on actual ...

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John Martyn with Danny Thompson - Live Germany 1986

The late-sixties London music community gave birth to a wealth of beautiful and diverse hybrids. The combination of a jazz scene surrounding venues such as Ronnie Scott's, and a folky, singer-songwriter enclave supported by clubs such as Bunjy's was never the most likely of fusions but, as this album testifies, the music made by such a pairing still pulses as strongly today as it did over four ...

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Black Purple - The Inspiration Behind Spinal Tap

Black Sabbath's Born Again appeared in 1983 with a disturbing cover that reminded me of the final fade out scene from the terrifying Rosemary’s Baby film. Departed vocalist Ronnie James Dio was replaced with ex-Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan. Unfortunately despite the anticipation this latest dream team didn’t really mesh, with Gillan’s high pitched frenetic screaming not best suited to the Sabbath ...

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Genesis: Selling England By The Pound (1973)

Genesis are one of my latest 70's rock discoveries; of course I knew the band and sometimes heard post A Lamb Lies Down On Broadway hits on the radio, but I was far from realising that Genesis were amongst Kings of early 70's progressive music. Not only the band's gem but also one of the best prog albums ever made. It is clear that Genesis has two phases: a Peter Gabriel one and a second phase ...

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Saint Julian Cope - A National Treasure

Having spent time as a brief threat to Duran Duran with his psychedelic pop outfit The Teardrop Explodes, Julian Cope was considered a relatively outsider artist when he struck out alone in the early 80s. His first two solo records – World Shut Your Mouth and Fried, both issued in 1984 – saw him heading into Syd Barrett territory, tortoise shell on his back, while the pop firmament was trying ...

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Neil Young with Daniel Le Noise

Neil Young now belongs to that rare stratum of artists whose work is no longer judged purely on its merits but on the basis of its status within their catalogue. As with Dylan and Bowie, interest lies not only in whether the latest record stands up to repeated listening, but what it says about them within the context of their career. So when Le Noise was announced, most stories focussed on the ...

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