Reviews

Five years on since the Looper's Delight mailing list brought together two sides of the Atlantic result in unique sound collage.

Are the accolades the band have been gathering worth the hype? The third album convinces they are.

The name means no texture but signals the comeback of a legendary band's new incarnation.

One look at the names tells it all. Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean, Allan Holdsworth and John Marshall: yes, that's a latter day's line-up of SOFT MACHINE - but only at the first glance. Listening to the record reveals not much of what's known as Canterbury sound, as the rule this quartet live by is fusion, and one of the pieces' title "First Trane" highlights Coltrane's influence, quite clear in Dean's sax soaring over his Fender Rhodes canvas. It's Elton who takes the lead this time around with Holdsworth's guitars providing an ever-changing backdrop which sometimes appears to be the forefront of a sonic landscape. A play, then? There's no vocals now, but the wordplay is another idiom in the ensemble's rule-book, "Baker's Treat" tastefully encapsulating grey English melancholia in melodic lines falling between Hopper's bass railings and Marshall's gentle percussion. Their music might be a tad moodier and a bit less adventurous than quarter of a century ago, but the appeal is still here, the title track sounding the most upbeat of the collection of tunes on offer and is catchy nevertheless. Return means bridging the time lapse, and bridging means there's always the other side, the past, so "Madam Vintage" could be helpful if one's willing to go back: and that's another play, obviously.

*****

Seek no rhyme or reason but rhythm and bliss.

Since KING CRIMSON brought Chapman Stick to the public eye, the instrument became a sign of high-voltage experimentation, and OXYGENE 8 are intense indeed - when they want to. Here, atmospheric jazz of "Funkernickel" appears beautifully soothing like a new age watercolor turned inside out, there "Stand" comes as a lightning of ex-PRIMUS' Tim Alexander's cymbals and Frank D'Angelo meandering guitar rocketing skyward from the Stick operator Linda Cushma's brooding voice and thick synth clouds. Strange, but the icy serenity of the title track's soundscape seems a logical resolution, and when a bumblebee-like buzz intrudes in the very heart of it there's a symmetry and a poetry of a highest order. That's where all the elements of the puzzle fall into their places, from soaring "Larry's Lullaby" to "Spoonaloosh" with its musique concrete lining and ebbing, slow flamenco which is "Mocha Butterfly", to erect a wonderful, heartfelt "Cathedral", in which the voice is so warm and soulful. Breath in, then.

****1/4

A Ballroom Blitz rather than a Blitzkrieg Bop. Does this look like punk?

You cannot help but dig "The Hell Song", just don't align this catchy guitar swoop to the spiky genre which slapped some sludge at the end of the '70s, explicit lyrics notwithstanding. SUM 41 shape good glam, "Over My Head" infectiously gurgling exactly where SWEET, not THE RAMONES, left their smooth, if cool, footprints. Whatever attack there is it feels a producer's laboratory product, like sharp "Still Waiting" suggests, that's why a few songs into this, the band's second, album music blurs. Fortunately, the end comes in half an hour with another guitar smash, "Hooch", leaving you vaguely recalling there was something tasty at the very beginning. The question in the title, then? It's as infected and dirty as Charlie Chaplin's boot.

***

Folk rules not only at Cropredy, it thrives Stateside as well.

Whatever brilliant this band are inside a record's grooves, a stage is where they shine ever brighter. Picking up the energy where FAIRPORTS leave off, TEMPEST weave a rich tapestry deeply rooted in both European folklore and old-school rock, so it's a massive delight yet a little wonder that they introduce the "Iron Man" riff into traditional boiling pot. This powerful mix of Michael Mullen's electric fiddle, Todd Evans' guitar and the leader Lief Sorbye's double-neck mandolin topped with vocal harmonies gets the audience by their genetic throat in "You Jacobites By Name" and majestic "Green Grow The Rashes". Mood is building up from the serene to frenetic, music coming down as a storm even if the crowd don't understand a single word in Norwegian battle hymn "Bonden Og Kraka". But that's America in the end of the day, so "Buffalo Jump" rocks it all at full tilt making the earth shake under the mighty stomp driven by John Land's bass. Blinding brilliance.

*****

Not a testament: a beautiful last gift from the Quiet One.

"Didn't want to be a star - wanted just to play guitar", sang George Harrison in 1989 before slipping into domestic joys - and misfortunes - of his last decade on Earth. So, in the words of his son Dhani who, together with Jeff Lynne, finished the work following George's instructions, this record is "a cradle for the voice and a guitar". Ex-Beatle jokingly wanted the album to be entitled "Portrait Of A Leg End", and him finding stardom unhip - legend's grotty, as George would call it running down a memory lane to his "A Hard Day's Night" persona. It's back then, in the very beginning, that Harrison was considered a thinker, and that's exactly what he had been like all of his life. And though the artist put no exuberant joyfulness into "Brainwashed", there's no life-weariness either - just quiet observations which sum up what kind of human being was George.

Just a human being - and he didn't shy away from odd poking at the way the world goes, "P2 Vatican Blues" sounding a direct, if pretty much ironic, blow at organized religion from the one raised a Catholic. But Harrison climbed up to another level of spirituality that have him freedom to enjoy the path taken, the downhome feeling filling a simple message of the opener "Any Road", and a privilege to talk to God intimately, like in "My Sweet Lord" and in the title song of this album. Assuming "Brainwashed", the track, is spilling an anger at Creator would be a grave mistake still: it's rather a cry in the wilderness that falls all around as we are misled every day and every way, a plea for the light to be rekindled, an intense chant dissolving into pacifying mantra - and there's no better example of the struggle which went on deep within George's soul.

"I'm a living proof of all life's contradictions", admits Dylanesque "Pisces Fish" which sees Harrison try to reconnect with the nature he loved so much so that even discovered himself "on a wrong planet" when going outside the garden, as George confesses on accompanying DVD. A place the artist considered his own was a garden and a cloud - not a Cloud Nine of his previous record but something too thick to make him cry out loudly, although "Stuck Inside A Cloud", a love song, isn't dark at all, with etherial instrumental "Marwa Blues" a marvellous lift to it and a reminder of how great a guitarist's gone away. Harrison's playing is excellent throughout, and it's here that he finally let himself be at play and take an ukulele to the fore in an old ditty "Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea". Which is a contradiction of another sort, you know.

George may have known the art of dying quite early, yet his search for the answers never stopped, and here "Oh Lord, I got to get back somehow to you" line of "Looking For My Life" isn't a surrender but quest. Harrison did't see death as the end, "(Can Only) Run So Far" being a mild acceptance of his own limitations with the fleeting shadow of regret lurking in "Never Get Over You". A Pisces Fish, then? Like an old bluesman, the artist bid farewell before "going down to the river", a blissful vision described in "Rocking Chair In Hawaii", but... "But in the rising sun you can feel your life begin", that's the last will of the artist who eventually resolved the greatest conundrum of his: how can a spiritual person live in a material world.

*****

You'll never forget their Internet address now - but what about music?

An evening of solo guitar that goes far beyond YES extravaganza.

New age is not the kind of music that usually turns out well in a concert environment, yet there's no other definition to what Steve Howe does when pulling strings on his own. And it's not a mastery of the instrument that matters here, it's an ability to create and convey a mood, and a passion put in the delivery whether it be jazzy "Sweet Thunder", country-and-western "Windy And Warm" or mellow "Sketches In The Sun" - all a wonderful harmony, "All's A Chord" as the guitarist has it. This makes for limited vocal abilities of Steve's when he takes to his main band's classics, all those small portions of "Close To The Edge" and "The Gates Of Delirium" with its great steel guitar, and "Turn Of The Century" which becomes less celestial and more down-to-earth here. Still, the most of the wonders Howe pulls are his solo creatures, like deeply-textured "Beginnings" off his debut record or "Blinded By Science", still fresh when this 1994's show was taking place in America. As precise as it goes, sterile it wasn't, the maestro sharing a joke with the audience and holding a real surprise until the very end, "My White Bicycle" from his TOMORROW days. With something for everybody, it's a little surprise that pleasure stole that night.

*****

Stars are out and the magic is here, Purple Minstrel leads his troupe to the Renaissance faire.

Three albums into his medieval affair, Ritchie Blackmore comes up with a live album, and though unfair it may be to single the leader out of the pack, that's how everybody feels about the ensemble. Even Ritchie himself, it seems, because there's no other explanation as to why he steps back often in favour of vocals, not the stringed instruments which make the veteran's palette these days. Love to his lady? Quite rightly so, yet the fans are up to have the pleasure as well - and we talk not only those who've been following the artist for years. Those would rather prefer him to be sticking to his crossbows not guns, and reaching out for the past times far not close: the BLACKMORE'S NIGHT live show always has some DEEP PURPLE and RAINBOW - "a couple of bands Ritchie was in before this one," as singer Candice Night confesses from the stage - classics interpreted to suit the new routine yet what's placed in the very center of this set many could find sacrilegious: the rhythmic shift that "Soldier Of Fortune" underwent robbed it of rhyme for no reason, while "16th Century Greensleeves" - the one with a proper drumming and edgy electric sound - got funked up inspite of Ritchie's famous aversion to the pattern. Fortunately, the lace he's a master of is still here.

Whole lotta shakin', slippin' and a-slidin' going on: British veterans let their collective hair down.

"Vieuphoria" turned from VHS into DVD, its soundtrack makes it to the digital era as well.

More often than not a live album is likely to bring some converts to an artist or a band as well as please the existing fans - not this time though. "Earphoria", a companion to a DVD which is an expanded version of 1994's video tape, comprises only those original tracks spanning the first five years of the band that ceased to be, and if 2001's greatest hits package "Rotten Apples" was a career retrospective aimed to everyone this archive release seems too narrow-margined to jump upon. Never far from grunge, on-stage PUMPKINS appeared rather raw yet not too extreme like many a Seattle-based freak; Billy Corgan's close-to-the-edge voice counterbalanced with James Iha's guitar equally adventurously solid in "Today" brick-heavy chops and "Cherub Rock" acoustic interpretation that reveals an obvious Bowie influence, an explanation to wry instrumental vignettes interspersing the concert cuts and theatrical space-rock of "Soma". But reckon "I Am One" a new generation's "The End" with its "Give me nothing!" battle cry to dig a source for some euphoria and an answer as to why ear-caressing these songs aren't.

***

Choose the album for your mood - there are two, and the third up for taking.

Sting may be soft, yet the bite remains the same - get stung and stunned.

Whatever successful their flirtation with an orchestra was, once the German finest took to the other extreme all the familiar tunes shone afresh, the reason being not the line-up augmented with keyboards, cello and backing singers but the strength of the material and no fear of stripping the songs bare or re-shaping them totally. Recorded live in Portugal in February 2001, most of the arrangements veer away off the obvious, "The Zoo" meeting its innate blues line and "Holiday" flourishing, Latino-way, on three guitars extravaganza. Still, while the SCORPS don't retreat to the ballad domain and give long-forgotten harmonica-oiled boogie "Catch Your Train" a mighty push, covers of QUEEN's "Love Of My Life" and KANSAS' "Dust In The Wind" add nothing to the originals, unlike THE CARS' "Drive" winsome in Klaus Meine's warm tones. That's gripping, and more so with "Still Loving You" as desperate as it should be, bereft of the usual metal ringing, and gospel-tinged "Rock You Like A Hurricane" winning over its orchestral grandeur. No sacred cow left now, which is all but great.

****4/5

Back to basics, here comes time to be killing the dragon again.

The purple piper plays his tune, the choir softly sing - an effective solo debut from one who served to the Crimson King.

It took 30 years for the main composer of amazing "In The Court Of The Crimson King" album to deliver a solo record but, though there's a shadow of all his past endeavours throughout, the music is more pleasant than adventurous, "sweet music to hang our sorrows on," as CRIMSO's poet Peter Sinfield points out here in Gary Brooker-sung anthem "Let There Be Light." And full of light it is: pitched between AOR and fusion, "Drivers Eyes" makes for an easy listening, be it transparent instrumental vignettes such as "Sax Fifth Avenue" or proper songs that build an impression of a watercolor painting with guests free to add an odd detail here and there.

Two prog proponents go pop, the Guitar Band for the '80s caught in their prime.

No more a killer on the loose: the lost last chapter of the Irish warrior's life.

By 1983 Phil Lynott sensed a strong urge for a change, as his band seemed to have become somehow separated from what it was supposed to be. THIN LIZZY were over even before their last concert, and Philo had already planned a direction for his next endeavour to develop in. Basically, it was a way back, to when there was a feeling and a social side to his hard rock, and it's no coincidence that Lynott wanted Brian Downey, the only other Lizzy member to stay through thick and thin, to be this new group's drummer. But the nucleus of what had grown into GRAND SLAM comprised also MAGNUM keyboardist Mark Stanway, and it's him who preserved all these demos for posterity.

A woman who cares gets out of the door.

To her neighbours she may be a campaigner for slowing down traffic on her street in Birgmingham and a first aider who saved her husband's life, but a time came for Sarah Birks to get renown as a singer and a songwriter. Calling herself The Cinder Princess, Sarah's doesn't go in different places and surely doesn't look for golden palaces, though there's much more to her endeavour than simply wrapping a listener in a domestic warmness of "An Open Door." Once acoustic textures and autumnal bitter-sweet yearning make one think if Nick Drake could sound like this had he matured without becoming life-weary, in rolls "Rise Up From The Ashes," an uplifting rockin' boogie nobody would expect from a housewife, and with widescreen emotion of "More Than Just Words" a full picture comes into view, in all the colors reality brings. That's what the spectrum of life looks like.

****

Coming out of the legal limbo, leftovers from the dream kitchen are up to taste.

Theirs was one of those perfect creative marriages bound to give birth to a great music and, thrown together by a management's will, John Wetton and Geoff Downes managed to cross over with pop appeal hardly expectable from artists of progressive rock pedigree. Hits or songs that didn't chart just because you couldn't tear a whole LP into singles, three albums ASIA released in the '80s were so exuberantly deep there surely must have been something left out in pursuit of excellence. Or in a hurry: listening to this collection, one may only wonder why some of the songs got discarded as with Geoff's tentative synth backing John's voice, they shine even as demos begging for a spicy guitar and imaginative Carl Palmer drumming.

With cuts like "Running Out Of Time" abandoned at rather early stages and "Oh! Carolann" re-worked into "Kari-Anne" almost finished, evident here is the pair's working method. If "Christina" which Wetton dedicated to his god-daughter, a Downes' child, is a prime example of John's writing and instrumental "Soul" of Geoff's, the one for preparation appears "Lost In America," pitched between U.K.'s "In The Dead Of Night" and THE BUGGLES' "Video Killed The Radio Star" and showing a slight rift between two composing manners. That's genuine though and touching more than a "Summer" artificially spliced with "Rock 'n' Roll Dream" intro; the former, embellished later, doesn't fit lyrically with a hook of a 1985's song.

1990's "Then And Now" could embraced more of those, as "I Would Die For You" chorus or "Walking On Air" verse melody are just a breath away of brilliance, but even fully realized - posh vocal harmonies, thoughful arrangements - "Don't Say It Again" and "Just As Long (As I Need You)" didn't get over the quality mark Wetton and Downes placed too high. ABBA's Agnetha Faltskog was glad to do their "We Move As One" anyway, and the writers felt delighted to fly over and record with her - fortunately, because the original demo got lost. More luckily, the rest survived to resurface, significantly, right when John and Geoff finally made amends and are friends again.

***3/4