I must admit, it has been a few years since I last came across an album by Cattle Decapitation, and to say I was surprised when I played this is something of an understatement. This is their eighth studio album, their second with the five-piece line-up of Travis Ryan...

This 2022 release was the third album from this Finnish surf rock band who comprise Mika Jämsä (lead guitar), Rasmus Tammik (rhythm guitar), Mauri Haapamäki (bass guitar) and Janne Torvikoski (drums). This is music which really takes me back to my youth, as while...

Anyone who follows my writing will know I am a long-time fan of Dave Brenner and his Gridfailure project, and from time to time he works with other like-minded individuals. These collaborations are not always as effective as his solo works, which is down to my own...

It is strange to think this band have been around for more than 30 years now, with guitarists Mats Hallstensson and Anders Lundström there since the very beginning, and while this is the fifth album since Andreas Novak (vocals) and Martin Larsson (drums) joined there...

After producing over 50 albums for other artists in Puerto Rico, Colombia and the U.S., participating as pianist-arranger in more than 100 recordings and writing music for feature films, theatre and television, as well as jingles and video games, Israel Tanenbaum...

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) was an Indian spiritual leader who became famous for teaching meditation in the West after moving to New York in 1964. He was a prolific author, poet and musician who played flute and wrote thousands of songs. Among his followers at various...

This quartet was put together by vibraphonist Eldad Tarmu along with alto saxophonist Adam Hutcheson, bassist Sam Bevan, and drummer Cengiz Baysal, and in his tenth album as band leader or co-leader Tarmu shows why he is one of the most highly regarded players in his...

Five of the six songs on this album are improvisations from the trio of Dave Anderson (bass), Tom Chute (drums and percussion) and Dave Easley (pedal steel guitar, guitar, vocals), with the last being a song by Easley where Kass Krebs joins on additional vocals....

Here we have a deluxe reissue of Behemoth’s second album, 1996’s ‘Grom’. Following on from a series of demo tapes, with 1994’s ‘...From the Pagan Vastlands’ being widely acclaimed, they released their debut, ‘Sventevith (Storming Near the Baltic)’ in 1995, with a...

In 1971 Emmett Finley released his only album. Possibly it would have had a greater fanfare if his old mate Jimi Hendrix had joined the sessions as he had promised, but Jimi went to London, and Emmett soon decided this was not the path for him. The following year he...

Much music is designed to simply entertain, some to get across a message of some type, while some albums are designed to make us think, and this very much falls into the last territory. Fella Cederbaum, the daughter of holocaust survivors, is a poet, musician,...

Here we have the ninth album from Maria Jacobs, an American jazz vocalist, Christian singer songwriter and author, born of Syrian, Lebanese and Armenian descent. She is the Adjunct Professor of Applied Vocal Jazz at Kent State University, and this was recorded mostly...

It was through a happy accident that I came across Volts last year, as that night I was supposed to be at another gig altogether which had been cancelled, so as I had planned to be out anyway decided to go out and see this band from Christchurch who were playing a...

Throughout his career, guitarist Doug MacDonald has recorded as a leader in settings ranging from a duo, trios, quartets, quintets, an octet, and a ten-piece with six brass players, to the 13-piece Jazz Winds/Brass Coalition which on one project also included strings....

Here we have the third Hollentor album, which is a vehicle for Glen Poland to get his songs out to a wider audience. On this one he has been joined by Glen Drover (Megadeth), Shawn Drover (Megadeth), Tim Ripper Owens (Judas Priest), Henning Basse, (Firewind), Rudy...

Formed in Mumbai by American guitarist /composer D. Wood and Indian bassist/composer Storms, here we have one of the more unusual styles of jazz fusion I have come across. The Indica Project combines the classical and folk traditions of India together with sounds...

Bassoon is not an instrument normally associate with jazz, and while Rabinowitz is not the first to play bassoon within the genre (Garvin Bushell and Frank Trumbauer took some recorded solos in the 1920s and Illinois Jacquet and Yusef Lateef were among those who...

McGrath is a saxophonist who grew up in Puerto Rico, and although he is now in America he has kept very close to the musical traditions he grew up with. For some years he has been involved with Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Centre in Chicago, and when in 2017 they...