Goodbye, Robin Lumley

March 11, 2023

Arguably the best jazz-rock keyboard player to have come out of Blighty, Robin Lumley, who passed away on March 9th at the age of 75, was instrumental in forming the British fusion scene of the ’70s and, thus, influenced the entire genre. If not for him, there would be no BRAND X, the revolutionary band Robin initiated to stay with, leave and come back to further down the line, and no the ambitious reading of Prokofiev’s “Peter And The Wolf” that he designed with Jack Lancaster to involve such elite players as Manfred Mann and Gary Brooker – to name only ivories drivers whose participance showed Lumley was never afraid of healthy competition.

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Bruce Cockburn Reaches For The Skies On A Post-Pandemic Platter

March 10, 2023

Only a few years ago Bruce Cockburn didn’t feel like it was in him to write songs anymore, which was why the veteran’s 2019 release “Crowing Ignites” offered only instrumental numbers, yet recent times not only impacted everyone but has given this artist an impetus to weave words into melodies again. The result is a new album, poetically titled “O Sun O Moon” and planned to be out on May 12th.

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ULTRAVOX Dig Into “Quartet” To Make It Deluxe

March 9, 2023

ULTRAVOX‘s “Quartet” might have been originally perceived as a relative failure – what with its predecessors “Vienna” and “Rage In Eden” charted rather high all over the world, and with the winning team of George Martin and Geoff Emerick manning the desk – but this album kept on growing in status and is considered a classic four decades down the line. Not surprisingly, though, given it contained no less than four successful singles – out of nine tracks which comprised the platter – so there’s no surprise in it getting a deluxe treatment now.

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Don Shinn’s Light Ceased To Shine

March 8, 2023

Don Shinn might have never been referred to in the same breath and with such reverence as Brian Auger, yet the former used to be as adept on Hammond organ and other ivories as the latter. However, even though Shinn was up with the best of them, he allowed himself to get overshadowed by peers, and while his light has shone brightly for decades, Shinn’s passing on February 18th at the age of 77 didn’t register with too many a listener.

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T.REX Explore The Era Of 1973

March 6, 2023

There was a time, in the late ’90s – early ’00s, when hardly a month passed by without another compilation or box set of previously unreleased material from Marc Bolan and T.REX saw the light of day, as if competing with Jimi Hendrix’s rare gems, until the market felt oversaturated, and that endless slew stopped. Few years ago, though, once the glam heroes’ principal albums had been properly reissued, a flow of deluxe editions, contextualizing the classic platters and their creative periods, started, with the series next installment, titled “Whatever Happened To The Teenage Dream?” and concentrating on 1973, slated to hit the shelved on May 26th.

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