In the second of this week’s “two-for-one” review slots, Esoteric graces us with two more reissues, set for release at the end of the month. This time around it’s Isotope guitarist and constant factor, Gary Boyle, with his two solo albums, The Dancer and Electric Glide, which first saw the light of day in 1977 and 1978 respectively.
Now, if you’d visited HFoS a year or so back, you would’ve found a place of seething hostility, so far as the the jazz-rock was concerned. It was a musical pariah, persecuted by the very same pen that writes these words now. A lot can happen in a year though, and whereas at one time, anything hitting the HFoS Towers’ doormat intent on jazz-fusion would’ve received short shrift and a thorough kicking on the car park, nowadays the sinewy grooves of bands such as Soft Machine, Mahavishnu Orchestra and the aforementioned Isotope have been welcomed into our collective bosom, nurtured and – dare I say it – thoroughly enjoyed.
The Dancer fits into this newfound appreciation of all things fusion, somewhat perfectly.
With the help of an assorted band of musicians, including Zoe Kronberger, who also appeared on the final Isotope album, Deep End, Gary Boyle delivers a sultry collection of sounds that, as Sid Smith notes in the accompanying booklet, could easily be a continuation of that record. Nice!
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album reviews, jazz rock, prog rock
It’s been such a long time since I last reviewed anything at HFoS, I think I’ve forgotten how to do it. Hold on, it’s coming back to me… Listen to album. Write some words. Get drunk. That sounds about right. I don’t think I even have to do it in that order.
So first up for 2012 and, incidentally, the 300th post on Head Full of Snow, are these soon to be released Terry Riley reissues from Esoteric.
Not to be mistaken with sugar-coated R&B producer Teddy Ruxpin, the albums In C and A Rainbow in Curved Air, are the fruits of the American composer, who, while sporting a Mick Miller haircut, championed, influenced and became a fundamental part of the – then burgeoning – minimalist music scene. Think of a bunch of Beatniks sat around in a New York basement, smoking the contents of a herbal teabag and trying to get a tune out of a chair leg. That’s (possibly) how this movement started.
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album reviews, avant-garde, prog rock
Back again. Yes, despite the best efforts of an aircraft hangar’s worth of booze and a blossoming addiction to Mike Oldfield’s ‘On Horseback’, HFoS has made it through yet another Christmas.
King Crimson react to the news HFoS survived another Christmas
This year I’ve resolved to beat the post-seasonal hangover by remaining drunk, which, thus far, has proved to be an agreeable tactic… Pay no heed if my eyes glaze over or I lose my train of thought mid
As is customary this time of year, I will be making one or two rash promises, none of which I have any intention of adhering to. So we might as well get those out of the way first.
2012 will see a new look website and a raft of new features, as well as the return of some old ones.
There, pretty much the same as last year, minus the enthusiasm.
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music vid, news, prog rock, progressive folk
Hell’s teeth! It’s that time of year again. When I make a host of rash promises for what the new year at HFoS may bring, before buggering off to imbibe the Christmas spirit for a month or so.
This year, I’ll dispense with anything that could be held against me at a later date and, instead, leave you with the latest mixtape: The HFoS Prog Rock Xmas Stocking Filler.
Granted, it’s not particularly festive, nor exclusively prog-orientated, but it’s the best you’ll get from me this side of 2012.
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mixtapes, prog rock, progressive folk, psych-pop, psychedelic rock
The constraints of time have decreed that there will only be the one HFoS Selection Pack this year; an amalgamation of three as opposed to the usual singular entities. Time has also put paid to the promised King Crimson reviews, but fear not, they will arrive – like a forgetful Santa – in the new year.
So what festive fare have I picked randomly from the ether for you spend your Our Price vouchers on this year? Read on, my fine fellows and fellowettes:
Rick Wakeman – Journey to the Centre of the Earth
As it’s Christmas, something supremely daft is in order and they don’t come much dafter than this live recording. A man in a cape, with enough electric pianos, organs, Moogs, Mellotrons and what-have-yous to cause an energy crisis on a small Mediterranean island. The London Symphony Orchestra. The English Chamber Choir. Narration from the preposterously eyebrowed David Hemmings (following Billy Dainty’s scheduling conflict). An audience anticipating something with the subtlety of a broken bottle to the throat… What the deuce were they all thinking?
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album reviews, folk rock, prog rock, psych-folk, psych-pop, psychedelic rock
Although it’s widely accepted that Billy Dainty invented prog rock in 1968, while on a works beano to Cleethorpes, there were many bands around at the time that also played their part in authoring the blueprint for what would later become this much derided genre.
One such purveyor of proto-prog goodness was keyboardist and singer, Norman Haines, who fronted Birmingham band Locomotive – which, following his departure, became The Dog That Bit People – and went on to form The Norman Haines Band. As was often the case with bands from my hometown (for every Move or Traffic, there’s twenty Worlds of Oz) none of these incarnations found the success they sought and were pretty much forgotten to the purple haze of time. Good news for rare vinyl collectors, bad news for the rest of us.
Fortunately, Esoteric has completed the harvesting of these three lost gems, with the recent reissue of the Haines Band’s Den of Iniquity. First up though, is Locomotive’s 1970 album, We Are Everything You See.
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album reviews, prog rock, psychedelic rock
Out-bloody-rageous! Not only the title of a track on Soft Machine’s Third album, but also a fair summation of Jon Anderson’s 1976 solo excursion to the inner reaches of his own mind, Olias of Sunhillow. In both concept and execution it layers on the degrees of ostentatiousness with a whopping great trowel, the size of which would’ve given Percy Thrower a crippling hernia had he attempted to brandish it.
If it’s subtlety you’re after, look elsewhere.
But then, nobody’s ever going to arrive at a mid-seventies album from the lead singer of Yes, expecting restraint and delicately nuanced, musical refinement. Nor would you want such a thing. It’s 1976. It’s Jon Anderson. It’s out-bloody-rageous!
Not outrageously good, nor, thankfully, outrageously bad. Olias of Sunhillow is just… outrageous. It’s also rather enjoyable, so long as the dosage is prescribed with a generous pinch of salt. Indeed, one might think that this album is a carefully constructed piss-take of the progressive rock genre. But it’s not. It’s 1976. It’s Jon Anderson. The man largely responsible for 1973′s Tales from Topographic Oceans, which is as daft as it is dull.
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album reviews, prog rock
I was nowt but a month old when Jack Bruce took his short-lived band of musical desperadoes to the Manchester Trade Hall for the recording of Live ’75.
Formed to tour the 1974 album Out of the Storm, the Jack Bruce Band dig a little deeper for this particular show, incorporating, not only, that record, but also material from Song for a Tailor, Harmony Row and Cream’s Disraeli Gears.
Featuring jazz keyboardist Carla Bley; journeyman keyboardist Ronnie Leahy; late drummer with The Knack, Bruce Gary; and a post-Rolling Stones Mick Taylor, the Jack Bruce Band was a formidable assembly of musical talent, spearheaded by one of most respected bassists of the 60s and 70s. And the calibre of musicianship on display is more than evident throughout this superior live document of a troupe whose musical alignment was all too brief.
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album reviews, jazz rock, prog rock
Remarkably for a man who, to this day, is considered by many to be little more than a one hit wonder, by 1977 Arthur Brown had recorded his sixth album (seventh if you count the “lost” Strangelands); the enigmatically titled Chisholm in my Bosom.
Now this isn’t, as you would be forgiven for thinking, a concept piece based around the character of Albert “Cheerful Charlie” Chisholm, malodorous Detective Sergeant and bane of Arthur Daley’s life. The title, in fact, is an arcane reference to the home of some “spiritual guru” type, with whom Brown was involved at the time of recording. As was the done thing in the 1970s.
While the UK music scene was being rent asunder by the amphetamine-fuelled fury of a legion of bronchial ‘erberts, the original shaman of overcooked shock had mellowed a tad, and whereas brief blasts of three-chord anarchy were all the rage, Arthur wasn’t about to be swayed by the musical disposition of a new generation of acne-festooned upstarts.
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album reviews, prog rock
Between now and Christmas, HFoS intends to feature all seven King Crimson studio albums from the 1969-1974 period. A classic era for a band that, from day one, existed in a state of flux; the single constant being, of course, the thinking man’s guitar legend (and occasional Mellotron maestro) Robert Fripp.
With a timorous and unassuming bearing, it’s difficult to equate his appearance with the fearsome sound that King Crimson produced, beginning with the heart-stopping opening to ’21st Century Schizoid Man’, right through to the closer of 1974′s Red, the wonderfully eclectic and moving ‘Starless’.
1968′s The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles & Fripp, featuring Mike and Peter Giles – both of who would feature at some point or another in the ever-changing King Crimson line-up – came out a year before In the Court of the Crimson King, the KC debut, and couldn’t sound any more different to that album if it tried. What a difference a year makes, eh?
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album reviews, prog rock, psych-pop
Call me a tenuous bandwagon-jumper, if you like. I readily hold my hands up.
Well, it is Halloween, so what better than a horrifying mix of prog, psych and folk to blow the cobwebs from your proverbial tombstones?
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folk, mixtapes, prog rock, psychedelic rock
Take one sound engineer and producer, who had worked with not only The Beatles but also twiddled the nobs on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon. Add a songwriter and manager who’d provided words and music for the likes of Marianne Faithfull, The Tremeloes and Marmalade, as well as handling Kung-fu fighting one hit wonder, Carl Douglas. Give them a stir with whatever’s at hand, be it spoon, pen or screwdriver, and what have you got?
I’ll tell thee. The Alan Parsons Project is what you’ve got; a collaboration between the aforementioned sound engineer, Alan Parsons, and Eric Woolfson. Together, they would release 10 albums between 1976 and 1987 under the TAPP banner, the first of which, Tales of Mystery and Imagination: Edgar Allen Poe, is without a doubt the finest.
Created in conjunction with an army of session musicians and guest vocalists – Parsons and Woolfson pitching in where necessary – the 1976 debut is a masterly example of the much-derided concept album in action. Each track takes one of Edgar Allen Poe’s tales of the macabre and adapts it to a piece of prog rock loveliness. Granted, it loses something in its translation, ensuring little of the suspense or, indeed, the mystery that its source material provides, but who cares when there’s such a cracking selection of tunes on offer?
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album reviews, prog rock
For their second album, 1971′s Moving Waves, barmy Dutch proggers Focus decided to open the proceedings with a barnstorming festival of foolishness entitled ‘Hocus Pocus’. The rest, as they say, is history, with the aforementioned opener going on to be their most recognisable tune (though ‘House of the King’ and ‘Sylvia’ run it a close second and third), still gaining recognition as recently as 2010, when it popped up as the soundtrack to Nike’s World Cup ads.
Rightfully so too, as it’s a splendid seven minutes of Netherlandic nonsense, with a tongue lodged so firmly in its cheek, there’s a very real danger it might starve to death. The fact it’s a cracking good tune, to boot, only increases its appeal onehundredfold. If you’re reading this now – and how else would you know I just said that? – then there’s every chance you’re already acquainted with the rare delight that is ‘Hocus Pocus’; if not take a look at this bastard.
But that’s just one song on an album of six. Is this sum part greater than its whole? Is the brilliance bound to the buffoonery of one track? Does anybody actually care?
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album reviews, prog rock
A sharp-dressed, clean-cut and fragrantly scented Tangerine Dream release is always a reason for celebration at HFoS. Reactive’s tasty, sleeve-bound reissue of 1973′s Atem, in a double-disc format, proves to be no exception.
Featuring what legendary bumbler John Peel would make his 1973 album of year on disc 1, remastered and given a thorough seeing to with the feather duster, as well as a previously unreleased live recording – the excellent ‘the deutschlandhalle perfomance’ – on disc 2, Atem provides a cornucopia of ambient wonders for the kosmische musik devotee.
The last album recorded for the influential Krautrock label, Ohr, prior to TD jumping ship to bearded twat Richard Branson’s embryonic Virgin, Atem comprises of four tracks: ‘atem’, ‘fauni-gena’, ‘circulation of events’ and ‘wahn’. A searching journey across the sonically-crafted landscapes of the German trio’s minds, moods and tone, dictated via the considerable Mellotron, organ and synthesiser rigs that the band employed.
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album reviews, krautrock, prog rock
Truth be told, no album is ever going to match the expectations kindled by a cover like the one that graces Andrew Leigh’s Magician (Bo Hansson’s Magician’s Hat and Heron’s Twice as Nice & Half the Price being two other salient examples).
That said, this 1970 release by the sometime Spooky Tooth bassist and future Matthews’ Southern Comfort member, does attempt to scale the heights of anticipation its somewhat wonderful artwork inspires… for the first two tracks anyway.
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album reviews, blues rock, country rock, prog rock, psych-folk
Thankfully – for miserable old barks such as my good self, anyway – the summer is all but over and a respite from all this sunshine and happiness beckons, with several months’ worth of grey skies, torrential rain, high winds and the occasional blizzard to look forward to. Granted, not the most dramatic departure from the weather we British types have already enjoyed this summer, but at least it gets dark earlier.
Heralding this imminent change of season is the reissue of Jack Bruce’s 1974 album, the aptly titled Out of the Storm.
A formidable offering, it captures the prolific bassist and vocalist (perhaps most famous for making up one third of psychedelic supergroup Cream) during a particularly fruitful period of his solo years. Kicking off with the stately ‘Peaces of Mind’, a progressive piece demonstrating some fine piano-work (which also featured on last month’s ‘Prog Rock Mixtape‘), Out of the Storm maintains a strong pace throughout, never once blowing anything across the threshold akin to a dud.
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album reviews, jazz rock, prog rock
Did you think I would leave you crying, when there’s room on me hoss for two? So said Rolf Harris to a small boy and it’s with a nod to this spirit of benevolence that I’ve put together a summer treat for both of my loyal readers. The one’s that put up with this nonsense week in, week out.
Yes, the first – and quite possibly last – ever Head Full of Snow progressive rock mix is here to tickle your royal earholes (track listing below).
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acid-folk, mixtapes, prog rock, progressive folk, psychedelic rock
Speaking of Time Actor, ex-Crazy World sparring partner and Atomic Rooster founder, Vincent Crane, also made an appearance on that album, which neatly segues into this, the second Arthur Brown album of today, Faster Than the Speed of Light.
Recorded in Germany at around the same time as the aforementioned album – but released in 1980 – Faster Than the Speed of Light is a very different beast to the Time Actor. In fact, it’s far superior.
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album reviews, prog rock
1979. Arthur Brown was no longer crazy. A little unhinged perhaps, but he seemed to be over the worst of the mania that inspired him to steal his dear old mother’s favourite cake tin, strap it to his head and set the bastard on fire.
Fetched up in Deutschland and looking for a gig, who should the now less-than-deranged Arthur spy, while out for an afternoon stroll along the strasse? None other than Richard Wahnfried. This was no hallucination; a side-effect of over-exposure to the butane fumes fuelling his incandescent hat. No, Sir Alan, this was the real thing.
It was the Richard Wahnfried, sauntering along the strasse with an independent air; you could hear the folks declare- Enough of that. What’s this rumble of discontent I hear before me? Who’s Richard Wahnfried? Who’s Richard Wahnfried? Are you serious?
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album reviews, krautrock, prog rock
Edit: This review was originally published on 13th May 2010. However, Aardvark’s wee gem gets a long-overdue UK reissue next week (25th July 2011) and as I’ve got my grasping paws on a copy, it offers the perfect opportunity for me to review the beast, without putting the hours in. (Update at bottom of page)
For a brief moment in 1970, keyboard-prog outfit, Aardvark, had the world at their feet… Not strictly true, but they did have a record deal and an album, which, even in a time when there were possibly more people with album deals than without, is still an achievement.
Aardvark also had a USP among prog bands of the time, in that they operated without a guitarist (a la Soft Machine, so maybe not that much of a USP). All they required were bass, drums and the considerable keyboard skills of Steve Milliner, whose Hammond organ takes the lead, filling the hole left by the absence of a guitar. On the opening track ‘Copper Sunset’, the organ actually sounds like a fuzzed-up guitar as it breaks forth with a powerful riff, accompanied by some strongarm drumming courtesy of Frank Clark.
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album reviews, prog rock
Progressive rock is no stranger to space-age themes and concepts. The entire sub-genre of space-rock is, perhaps, a fitting testament to this. The psychedelic culture of expanding one’s mind via various forms of stimulus leant itself somewhat perfectly to imagined, kaleidoscopic voyages into both inner and outer space; a fashion, which, unlike Paisley Y-fronts and Winklepickers, failed to die out with the naive innocence of the late 60s.
Dutch proggers, Earth & Fire forsook the Netherlandic pursuits of porn cultivation, pancake consumption and totaalvoetbal in favour of synthesisers and Mellotrons, which might’ve been bad news for Johan Cruyff and the national team, but proved to be good news for the likes of HFoS and the rest of Europe. To the World of the Future, released in 1975, was their fourth album and one that courts the aforementioned cosmic angle, with a concept rooted in echoes from the past and what the future may bring.
To the World of the Future gets off to a flying start, with the title track setting a typically intergalactic scene, lovingly rendered by the rich texturing of an arsenal of synthesisers, Mellotron, electric piano and stylised vocal bursts. It’s urgent stuff and a terrifically energetic opener, with suitably barmy lyrics that make little sense – though they’re delivered with a sincerity that makes one think they could well be communicating the meaning of life – adding to the overall lushness of the production.
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album reviews, prog rock
For American singer/songwriter Donald McLean – or Camelface, as he was known in our house – Tuesday 3rd February 1959 was the day the music died. For myself and all that sail on the good ship HFoS, fast forward 19 years and to Monday 10th April 1978. That, for us is the day the music pretty much died, for it was the day that Jethro Tull released the rather splendid Heavy Horses. Anything recorded after that, with the odd meritorious exception, largely leaves us cold, sometimes angry and, more often than not, in need of a big hug.
So, you can probably imagine a certain amount of trepidation from my good self when the new album from Cavalli Cocchi, Lanzetti and Roversi – or for the sake of my poor old spell-check, CCLR – landed on the doormat at HFoS Towers.
Recorded this very year and released by the good people at Esoteric Recordings, CCLR brings together keyboard noodler Cristiano Roversi, drummer Gigi Cavelli Cocchi and vocalist Bernardo Lanzetti. That’s the same Bernardo Lanzetti who fronted, not only, Acqua Fragile, but also served a notable tenure with PFM. Both bands key contributors to the 1970′s Italian prog scene. The CCLR album piqued one’s interest for no other reason than the recent appreciation of Acqua Fragile.
If the truth be known, it’s not as bad as anticipated. This, by no means, makes CCLR great. Far from it, in fact. But at least it’s not unlistenable.
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album reviews, prog rock
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