There is nothing better in life than writing on the sole of a slipper with a biro
Scousers again. Sarky scousers with instruments and lyrics to illustrate the downs and downs of British life no less.
Back Again comes with two of HMHBs popular tracks, Trumpton Riots, All I want for Christmas (Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit) and Dickie Davies Eyes. Listening to the album makes you want to sit in your grotty bedsit and look out at the rain or plod the sodden streets of recession hit Liverpool in the late 1980s trying to find a job.
Good stuff. And I don’t understand football references…
Annie Haslam and her chums get together one more time before the 1980s comes and bites them all on the bum and sends them into a downward spiral of obscurity.
With the exception of Jekyll and Hyde and Winter Tree, much of the original “wow” of early Renaissance seems to be fading like the memory of Quatro before the approaching onslaught of the anti-Prog movement.
Punk has a lot to answer for musically. It did more damage to creativity and expression than dub step and music factories owned by Pete Waterman and his ilk. Talented musicians were forced to cut short their masterpieces and musical wankery to fit in with the growing hunger for 3 minute pop songs. A bit like how Facebook and Twitter have massacred the blogosphere by reducing the media consumers attention to 140 character text bites.
We talked about Ayreon back at the start of this project. Ayreon is one of those European rock stars that wouldn’t be out of place in one of those Euro Rock bands of the late 1980’s like Poison or Europe.
Except he’s far too good for that.
This album acts as a kind of “I can do better than what I did before” Best of compilation album. A Betterer Of, for want of a better phrase.
If the chugga chugga guitar of Into the Black Hole doesn’t get you fired up, then perhaps Eyes of Time or Cold Metal will.
I love this album. Again, I have no idea why he’s not as well known in the UK as he is in Europe.
Us Brits are good at looking like vampires. I suppose it’s because of our pastey looks and how we never seem to smile much. Inkubus Sukkubus are an 80’s goth band complete with Elvira like female lead singer and videos that make Razorblade Smile look like a blockbuster.
Away with the Faeries crams in just over an hour of witchy vampyric music for those eager to mope around in black and look miserable while somehow trying to summon ancient and arcane demons through the power of an electric guitar.
There’s a nice cover of Paint it Black and a good selection of live tracks just incase you think this type of music isn’t popular…
If you survived the brain mashing of the last two Les Joyaux de la Princesse, albums you’ll be pleased to know they won’t resurface until we get to C.
Like a refreshing aural drink, Bryan Ferry oozes cool swarveness through your speakers and leads you into a seedy world of lounge bars, loafers and broken hearts.
I’ve got a thing for Bryan Ferry’s Roxy Music work. It just sounds and feels so sophisticated. Like a white suit and black shirt on the morning after a rather sensational party when you have stayed up all night with a bottle of Bolly stinking of tobacco and still not pulled the foxy chick who may or may not be a high class prozzie dressed in a red short dress.
Avalon is no exception. Listen to it, let it seduce you, have its wicked way with you and leave you with a feeling like you’ve just been used by some knob head in a white suit who stinks of cigarettes, has a nasty rash and is carrying a bottle of Bolly with some Asti decanted into it…..
Aux Volontaires Croix De Sang – Les Joyaux De La Princesse
If it’s not Scottish chicks with guitars or hairy men from the 1970s, this project seems to dip in and out of the darker recesses of Euroculture.
This is yet another limited edition LP from LJDP. Not satisfied with having Absinthe bleeding from your ears or Aux Les Petits Enfants de France giving you frightful nightmares about goings on in Vichy era France; Aux Voluntaires Croix De Sang leads you through the even darker twisty bendy turns of dark French history.
Now here I must put a disclaimer. I like the atmospherics of LJDP. Nothing more. I don’t sit in my garret with my jackboots on saluting like a fuckwit. Nor do I burn religious symbolism, shave my head or tattoo swastikas all over my face. My political beliefs are so removed from the far right it’s down the road in the other direction, over the bridge and through the gap in the fence. I repeat, I like the atmospherics. I am mature and sensible enough to appreciate art for the creators effort, whether I share their beliefs or not and maintain detachment from anything subversive or otherwise.
Aux Petits Enfants de France – Les Joyaux De La Princesse
If you read the entry forAbsinthe and tried out the Youtube playlist, you should have some idea about what is about to follow.
Les Joyaux De La Princesse (LJDP) presented the darkwave world with this album in about 2006. Dark, mournful vibrating chords force themselves into your skull via the ear like lukewarm liquid metal prongs.
Accompanied by recordings of French politicians from 1944, a very dark period of French history that you won’t find on l était une fois… l’homme, this haunting work will lay earworm eggs in your brain which will hatch and bury themselves deep into your psyche. Only resurfacing when you are having delirious hallucinations brought on by a nasty infection or a bad pint.
This is the stuff you should be listening to if you even consider yourself a hipster. Of course, I heard it first, so I’m hipper than you’ll ever be. Soul patch or no soul patch.
Scottish rock. It seems to be featuring heavily in this project. Maybe I was Scottish once. Or maybe they’re just good at making music.
Automatic is the Jesus & Mary Chain’s third studio album. You can really hear the hints of dirty damp streets of East Kilbride oozing from the synths. I can just imagine the Scottish teenage girls with attitude listening to this in an attempt to be independent yet mainstream.
But unfortunately, as with most 80s bands, excellence comes too late and many potential fans have already heard it a hundred times before from other artists.
Nouvelle Vague are one of those covers bands who really make the music they’re covering their own. Lounge versions of popular songs sung by French ladies with sultry voices to a live audience.
German pensioner Rocker Joachim Witt is one of those rock stars all the old rock stars want to emulate. Nonchalance, no guitar wanking or face contorting, just nonchalance and an air of cool that would make Bryan Ferry feel a bit of a knob head. Thats Joachim Witt.
I came across Witt a few years ago while looking for some Euro pop. Of course, he’s been around since before Elvis learnt about burgers being tasty, which is fairly good all things considered. I vaguely remember a couple of Witt tracks appearing in the tail end of the Top 40 way back when.
Auf Ewig is nothing to do with earwigs, it is the best of Witt. Which I always think is a bit like drawing a line across your work and saying anything that follows is not the best of. Anyway, this IS the best of. All in one album. Typically, there are a number of tracks that are good, and a number which I wish I’d never heard.
Back in the dark days of the 1990s I was introduced to the 4AD record label by way of a free CD on the cover of a magazine. Over time on the back of this, I developed a taste for all things 4AD. One of the many artists signed to 4AD was Bettie Serveert.
This is the first in three Serveert albums I have. To be honest, I’m not a massive fan, it’s just nice music to have. One of those musicians that don’t seem to have a large fan base in the UK. However, just think Suzanne Vega with a croakier voice and you’ll get the idea.
Some time ago, somebody tried to trick me into thinking that Dead Can Dance had a new album and line up. I was given a CD with a load of songs on that sounded DCDish but actually turned out to be a collection of stuff by Love is Colder Than Death (LCTD) and some other band whose name escapes me.
Being a bit of a nerd I was able to actually find out that LCTD was one of the bands and that the majority of the recording was copied from this album.
It’s easy to hear how someone might get mistaken that this is DCD. All the elements are there. Middle Eastern and Asian influences, nonsensical chanting with some hard to decipher lyrics and the occasional use of uncommon instruments like hurdy gurdy and sackbuts.
If you’re a DCD fan then LCTD is one to give a go of.
AHM is clearly a fixed point in Pink Floyd history. It shows the fledgeling dissolution of the psychedelic Post Barratt years and emergence of the Waters era.
This would be an unusual album to start with on any aural discovery voyage of the works of Pink Floyd but it depends on what aspect of music you approach it from. The first track, Atom Heart Mother is an instrumental with accompanying brass band while the final track, the quirkily titled Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast is one of those experiments with sound which some listeners might switch off from.
I like it. I also have a limited edition Trance Remix version of this album which even better.
More Nordic big boobed Valkyrie warbling this time enhanced by death growls and choir.
Never understood death growls. They’re not singing, they just make you lose your voice and do untold damage to your vocal chords. Still, it’s popular with some. So who am I to tell them not to?
So yes, big boobed warbling and death growls. Just what you want to unwind to after a hard day’s work and Stress Gen plc.
At Royal Albert Hall With The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – Renaissance
Earlier in the project I introduced readers to the artist, Renaissance; Annie Haslam, Michael Dunford et al. Renaissance are one of those prog bands that have undergone many line-up changes and developed themselves into what they are today. Very much like Yes.
This is a live album spread over 2 discs. It was recorded at the Royal Albert Hall. Along with accompaniment from The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Self explanatory really.
This line up has Annie, Michael and Orchestra joined by:
John Tout – keyboards
Jon Camp – vocals, bass
Terence Sullivan – drums, percussion
This is the best introduction to Renaissance as a band. It has all the “Classic” Renaissance favourites. Lots of twiddly and what sounds like a very enthusiastic audience. Again, I’m surprised I never encountered them until 2001. But, as you will read, there are many other albums to come.
Unfortunately I was unable to locate any Youtube footage of the actual Albert Hall concert, so instead, here is a broadcast recorded about the same time.
Someone once told me, “You listen to a load of shite mate”.
They were right. One of the many albums of shite you might find in my collection is Asylum by the Legendary Pink Dots. Led by Edward Kaspel (more of him later), Legendary Pink Dots use a bizarre mix of stilted lyrics with equally stilted music to produce the kind of music you would probably not want to hear in a nightmare.
You will notice that a lot.
Music in my collection seems to be dark or nightmarish or both. Coincidence I think.
Classical guitar is one of my favourite genres of classical music. It’s difficult to play and often rocking guitar people will cower away from Classical guitar music because they are afraid that their prowess at wanking guitars will be shown for what it is. Guitar wankery.
Classical guitar sets apart the men from the boys and the women from the girls. It’s all well and good getting on stage and wanking away to Stairway to Heaven or pretending you’re Jimi Hendrix but, in my book at least, if you can’t do a galliard or a Saltarello then you’re about as good as me with a yogurt pot and an elastic band.
Yepes has compiled some good examples of Classical guitar here including Asturias and Recuerdos de La Alhambra (two of my most favourite guitar pieces). In doing so he has made a distinctive compilation of background music for those summer evenings sat on the verandah, overlooking the hacienda while you sip mojitos and swat away mosquitos.
Like a bad penny, Duran Duran resurface from the depths of music history every so often with a couple of good tunes slapped on an album.
Perhaps if I was Simon Le Bon, I would also realise that occasionally you need that little bit of extra cash for things like extensions, new cars or helicopter landing pad and getting together with your mates to chuck out an album now and then will get you that little bit of extra cash.
And good for him. I’m pleased for him. He’s good at what he does, old Mr Le Bon, and every time they’ve resurfaced they’ve brought with them tunes that say “DURAN DURAN” and introduced themselves to whole new audiences.
See. That is how you market and promote your music. Either give all your stuff away (Radiohead/Amanda Palmer) then start charging as you become more and more popular. Or strut about on the stage for a few years, go off radar living on royalties for a bit before resurfacing and capturing a whole new audience a la Duran Duran, Yes or even U2.
Astronaut contains typical Duran Duran fayre to introduce a new generation to their style. Whether it worked I have no idea. It’s certainly catchy but (Reach Up For The) Sunrise is the only hit from it.
Hawkwind prog their way through 7 tracks of drug infused twiddle. How Hawkwind became as popular as they did I have no idea. Drugs in the 70s must have been some kind of mad shit.
Typical Hawkwind with only Reefer Madness, the title track, being of note. Twiddly keyboards and Gongesque overtones. One for the very stoned I think. How I ended up with it, I’ve got no idea.
Asleep on The Floodplain – Six Organs of Admittance
Throughout this project I have had some preconceptions. It is natural to have preconceptions. This particular preconception is that Six Organs of Admittance (SOA) are a one trick pony of gloomy music for use in horror films.
No.
That is wrong. That is an incorrect preconception. As I listen to Asleep on the Floodplain for the first time, I now realise the true genius and talent that bely the group SOA. This is a completely different slant to Ascent. In fact in style it is so different it is like asking Elvis to perform Abba. A little more acoustic than Ascent but unmistakably SOA. Tiny dribbles of Meddle era Floyd and occasional blips of Spirit’s Randy California.
It was, so John Wetton (ex-King Crimson), Steve Howe (Yes), Geoff Downes (also Yes and Buggles) and Carl Palmer (ex-Emerson, Lake, Palmer) sing, the heat of the moment.
Indeed it was, the heat of the moment when I got this album thinking “Hey! It must be ok if two fifths of Yes play in it“. It was a moment that quickly entered an ice age where all life ceased to exist. Because, this album, is actually an accurate description of the word bollocks.
And so, I leave this album review with a warning. Buying side project work can be harmful to your musical credibility.
Sometime in the 1970s people with hair would gather and make music. Lovely music. Happy music. Nothing about killing policemen or getting your body parts ogled so you can become famous. Nor was there anything about “fucking the system” or being worthless. Music was a different place. A different time. A different meaning.
Out of the flotsam and jetsam of the musical ocean, a band washed upon my aural shore in the early noughties. A band I had no idea even existed and yet every song I heard seemed to slot into the crevices left by the ice age of Yes, Pink Floyd and Triumvirat. A band whose output left me feeling cosy in my jumpers, sated aurally and at one with the world. That band was Renaissance.
I would ask people if they had heard of them and most people would go “No” and yet they were massive in their time. Like giants. But then something happened and no trace was seemingly left.
Like I said in the preamble of Sieben’s As They Should Sound, the mass theft of musical property did only good for bands like Sieben and Renaissance, introducing their works to whole new audiences who would then show their appreciation by going out and buying the albums they had heard. If it wasn’t for illegal downloads, I would never have heard of Renaissance and I would never have that Renaissance shaped gap in my auralscape plugged and I wouldn’t have spent lots of money on their music.
As withA Song for All Seasons, this is a typical collection of long haired folky tunes. The kind of stuff you might expect to hear on A Handful of Songs in the 1970s. Close harmonies, lots of piano and nothing overwhelming the acoustic craftsmanship that they make. Though not necessarily a good introduction to the band, Ashes are Burning is certainly one of Renaissance’s better albums and contains fan favourites Let it Grow, Ashes are Burning and Carpet of the Sun. You can also find out more about Renaissance on Facebook and on their website because, yes, they have reformed recently and are touring again….
Imagine, if you will, one of those really dodgy independent films of the 1960’s where people gather in some drug filled party hosted by some evil satanist or mind controlling megalomaniac, and dance away to unusual music which, it turns out, probably has hidden satanic mind controlling chants or codes to trick the unwary youth.
The room is white except for moulded plastic chairs, synthetic fur throws and lurid orange cushions. The people are young, mini skirted, beret wearing toss pots. The kind you would expect to extol the virtues of Jim Morrison’s poetry and how “deep and complex” the meanings. You have no sympathy for these people and you begin to carve them into bloody stumps with a manic grin on your face and, like some avant garde drama company, the people just flop on the floor without protest or struggle, arterial blood arching over the brilliant white walls.
This is the music that would be playing at such a party. Heavily Floyd influenced with flavours of Broadcast and hints of psychedelia, SOA are definitely something you want to have on your stereo when you drop that bad acid or begin on your Clockwork Orange inspired killing spree….
I used to think that the UK led the world in good music. In arrogance, I believed that the world revered our music and that all the performing artists met up regularly, performed and people got to know who they were and what they sounded like.
I was 14 then.
I now know the music industry in the UK is a cut throat, back stabbing, incestuous institution insidiously managed by suited Y List celebrities such as Cowell, Waterman and Walsh. Telling the easily led British public that they will only like “this” rather than “that” and denying the promotion of “that” because “This” is more likely to make money. Unfortunately, then came the internet and “illicit” downloads. Many artists will argue that illegal downloads destroyed their career. Bollocks it did. In many cases, illegal downloads propagated your reach and you probably made fans who would never have heard of you by other methods.
One such artist is Sheffield neo-folk violinist, Matt Howden. Mr Howden has two hats. Classical sensible arty farty soundtrack hat – Matt Howden. And then, there is dark, arty, creative Neofolk artist – Sieben. I first discovered Sieben on a compilation that I “Obtained” called “Looking for Europe” which acted as a catalogue for the little-known Neo-folk/Darkfolk subgenre popular in the mid to late noughties. On this catalogue was a little track called “Love’s Promise” performed by Sieben.
Intrigued I looked up the artist and discovered that he actually only lived down the road from where I lived at the time and yet I had not heard of him. No local posters advertising gigs, no mentions in the local press. Who was this guy? Turned out Mr Howden is hugely popular in Europe where he tours and plays various festivals such as Wave Gotik Treffen, Castlefest and the like. Much loved. Highly revered. Virtually unknown in his home country.
I aim to stop this. I then sought out all his work, and, because I am impressed with his work, I bought, yes, paid for, every album he made. THAT is how music should be.
Sieben’s, As they Should Sound is a kind of remix/ best of compilation where Howden has taken his favourite tracks and rejigged them to how they should sound. A good introduction to the darkfolk/neofolk genre and an even better introduction to Sieben as an artist.
I first heard Sarah Blasko on that bastion of non-music radio, BBC Radio 4, while driving somewhere. I made a mental note and later that evening I was the obtainer of all Ms Blasko’s works. By the end of the week, I was smitten.
As an introduction to Sarah Blasko, As Day Follows Night is a good place to start. All the tracks are catchy and simple which, I think, is what makes a good musician. You knock together your lyrics (a bit like my crap poetry), get your instrument of choice out (kazoo, flute, sackbut) and then start strumming, tooting or bashing out a melody that fits with the emotion and message behind your lyrics. Something I think Sarah does very well.
Kind of folky, but not with unique, Antipodean melodies As Day Follows Night covers topics as diverse as broken hearts, confused parentage and neurosis. In fact, it did so well the album won a number of prestigious awards catapulting Blasko to the global stage. Except, of course, in the highly controlled music scene in the UK.
Back Again in the DHSS – Half Man Half Biscuit
Away with the Faeries – 
Avalon – 
Aux Volontaires Croix De Sang – 
Aux Petits Enfants de France – 
Automatic – 
Attagirl by Bettie Serveert
![Renaissance - Renaissance at the Royal Albert hall ''Live'' [part 1] (Front)](https://stegzysmusicproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/renaissance-renaissance-at-the-royal-albert-hall-live-part-1-front.jpg?w=150&h=148)
Astronaut – Duran Duran
Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music – Hawkwind
Asleep on The Floodplain – Six Organs of Admittance
Asia by Asia
Ashes Are Burning – Renaissance
As They Should Sound – Sieben
As Day Follows Night – Sarah Blasko
Stegzy's Music Project 