Shape Of The Rain. If you are immediately asking ‘who?’, then you are in good company, as I have to confess they are a band who had eluded me as well until this release appeared. In actual fact they were a band formed in Yorkshire around the mid to late ‘60s, who did the hard..
Anthony Phillips – The Living Room Concert: Remastered & Expanded (Esoteric)
Alternating sections of gentle, fluttering notes and commanding strumming... With thirty-one studio albums, a host of compilations, boxed sets, and a massive amount of library music to his credit, Anthony Phillips is not the type of musician whose catalogue is easy to trim down to an hour's worth of favourites. But 'Ant' was tasked with..
Judie Tzuke – The Chrysalis Recordings (Cherry Red)
This three CD set represents Tzuke at her artistic peak and proves categorically that she was much more than a one hit wonder. The 1979 hit single Stay With Me Till Dawn – a good ballad made memorable thanks to the glorious vocal delivery of Tzuke – has etched itself into the national consciousness as..
SIR LORD BALTIMORE – THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS (HNE / Cherry Red)
[on the second album] They'll still hit you over the head with a wooden mallet, but they'll see if they can do it in an interesting time signature. Here we are, finding ourselves in the company of another one of those artists who spend most of their time hiding in the shadows, and lurking in..
FISH ON FRIDAY – BLACK RAIN (Cherry Red / Esoteric)
...if you are after a well-crafted, well-produced, melodic rock album which isn't afraid to go for the grandiose jugular when the opportunity arises, you can safely order a helping of this particular seafood Fish. They seem to exert a curious fascination with prog rock, as the piscine influence has intertwined itself with the music for..
VARIOUS- A Slight Disturbance In My Mind: The British Proto-Psychedelic Sounds Of 1966 (Cherry Red / Grapefruit)
Things get even more interesting on the second disc, with the lost tracks by the big guns jostling with ever more eye-opening lesser lights The 1960s are rightly remembered as being perhaps the most pivotal decade in the development of what we now know as rock music, and that largely comes from specific events. The..
Anthony Phillips …in conversation
One might be inclined to think that an 86 minute album of guitar instrumentals could wear out its welcome and tempt the attention deficient among us to turn it off before it was halfway done. Certainly that has been the case with past releases from some of the flashier players in Guitarland, with their endless..