I have spent the majority of my working life in higher education. For the best part of 35 years I have grappled – and have been a guiding companion in helping others to grapple – with the ways in which it may be possible to make sense of the bewildering diversity of artistic cruelty human [&am […]

Let’s not beat around the bush – when Hand. Cannot. Erase. was originally released in 2015, it immediately became one of the finest progressive rock albums released in the 21st Century, and must rank amongst the truly great albums of any era… no ‘ifs’, no ‘buts’, no ‘maybes’. Some things are just undoubtable and irrefutable [&am […]

In my previous review (HERE), I covered the first three CDs of this six-CD box set of the complete works of Simon Phillips’ Protocol project. This review will conclude that set with my reviews of disc four – Protocol 4 – and discs five and six, which feature demo versions of tracks that appeared on [&am […]

Simon Phillips is a legendary drummer in modern music, his résumé features a staggering list of greats, including Jeff Beck, Judas Priest, Michael Schenker and many others, but his 30-plus years as the drummer for Toto (after the gardening accident heart-attack death of Jeff Porcaro in 1992). Simon ended his stint with Toto in 2014 [&am […]

Quite a while ago, I noticed that the quite wonderful London based chamber rock group North Sea Radio Orchestra plus guests were performing a live version of Rock Bottom, the 1974 first post-accident solo album from the now British National Treasure otherwise known as Robert Wyatt, for Italian and French audiences. This seemed like a [&am […]

The Norwegian powerhouse trio Elephant9, after releasing five studio albums, take the opportunity to document their live experience, with not just one but two special releases. The act of releasing live albums often instigates debate about the purpose, with comments that it never captures the true excitement and it’s just a money-making exercise, etc. There [&am […]

Music tightly bound to the term Progressive Rock often shows the tendency of sounding generic. The same old Mellotron thickening curvy harmonies, a syncopated 7/8 meter driving down the same old lanes toward a dramatic chorus or a complex hook performed in unison by guitar and keyboard breaking out into thick canonic layers are only [&am […]

Since the dawning of the new millennium, Christian Vander has been quite content to rest on his laurels, only re-entering the studio to re-record pieces that never made it to the studio back in the ’70s (and even some that were; see 2014’s re-imagining of Rïah Sahïltaahk). Not counting Rïah Sahïltaahk or 2015’s Slaǧ Tanƶ, [&am […]

Flying Colors are back! Their third album is getting released in October and here’s the full press release. Flying Colors will be releasing their brand new album ‘Third Degree’ on 4th October via Music Theories Recordings. You can pre-order it … Continue reading &rarr […]

It’s been a long long time, hasn’t it? A good couple of years, which saw Emma Brewin-Caddy working with Cantor Semper in the hiatus. A close harmony group with musical accompaniment, in my view, and very nice it is too. Daniel Zambas has been accumulating keyboards and taking on work, leading to him now being [&am […]