[vinylconnection.com.au] STILL BLOOMING GOOD

One of the holy grails of rock music is the making of an album that defies time. The Stone Roses achieved this with their 1989 self-titled debut, a … STILL BLOOMING GOOD The excellent blog Vinyl Connection reminisces about how impactful the debut album of the Stone Roses actually was.

Marc Almond – Heart On Snow

20 years ago, Marc Almond collaborated with musicians in St. Petersburg and recorded a magnificent album of Russian chanson.  It’s as good as you would expect.  The gems of the album include the title track and Gosudaryunia, penned by Russian rock legend Boris Grebenshchikov. A fine reissue, and I thank Continue Reading

O Yuki Conjugate – A Tension of Opposites Vols 3 & 4

O Yuki Conjugate are among the top-tier post-Industrial/experimental projects of the past 40 years, and it’s been an amazing experience going over their catalog over the past few weeks in my personal collection.  This is archival material and a complement to A Tension of Opposites Vols 1 & 2.  From Continue Reading

Cabaret Voltaire – Dekadrone

With the passing of Richard H. Kirk last year and Stephen Mallinder keeping himself busy with his own projects, Cabaret Voltaire will be no more.  This final album, basically with Kirk alone programming the music, is a fifty-minute track that has much more in common with it’s early Industrial past Continue Reading

The Hilliard Ensemble – Codex Speciálník

Your browser does not support iframes.    According to Wikipedia, “…the Speciálník Codex (CZ-HKm MS II.A.7) is a 15th-century speciálník (i.e. special songbook) originating from a monastery in the region of Prague.”  It is considered something of a ‘missing link’ between medieval and Renaissance music and it features several rather unknown Czech composers.  The Hilliard Continue Reading

Richard Dawson – The Ruby Cord

Richard Dawson’s latest album is a fascinating listen.  It mixes vocals that could fit in well with English folk, psychedelic rock, prog and AOR music, while being musically underpinned by something that could almost pass for freak folk at times, while falling back now and again on progressive rock structures.  Continue Reading

Cecil Taylor & Tony Oxley – Being Astral And All Registers – Power Of Two

I’m not sure if one can rightly call this a free-improv classic, but it’s hard to find two musicians who gel together as well as Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley do.  The piano playing is fierce and powerful, matched stroke-for-stroke by Oxley’s percussion and drumming.  A fine live disc.