Category Archives: Music

Track of the Day: Leibowitz – Cry of a Bird Part 1, Dark Houses

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[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=69075303 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=3580193855]

Joshua Leibowitz does things by himself when it comes to music. At least, largely on his own, albeit it not completely. Occasionally a guest musician shows up, for a guitar solo or a bit of percussion. His third album The Cry of a Bird was released  on Christmas Day 2014, and is now available in a very limited digipack edition – or digitally on Bandcamp.

leibowitz

An album that contains pop, rock and prog influences from many directions, as shown by part 1 of the two-part title track. Enjoy!

Track of the Day: Tony Patterson & Brendan Eyre – So Long the Day

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Tony Patterson and Brendan Eyre both come from North East England. Both have a history in music already when they start working together. Tony sang in ReGenesis and on Nick Magnus album n’monix, while Brendan played in multiple bands, including Riversea, and he released a solo album Ghost Ships.

After the successful release of their debut album Out of An Ancient World in 2012 they started think about follow up. That becamse Northlands, released end 2014, and sold out by January 22nd, 2015. A full review is pending, but I had to make this Track-of-the-Day, So Long The Day.

Track of the Day: Entity – L’Armatura

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Italian symphonic prog bands seem to keep coming from all corners of the country. One of them is Entity, a band for which the foundations were laid in 1994 by Mauro Mulas (keyboards) and Gigi Longu (bass). Influenced by older bands like Le Orme and Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, they lay down heavily keyboard oriented symphonic prog, with heavy elements and good vocal work (in Italian)

A good example of what they’re capable of is this track L’Armatura, from their debut album Il Falso Centro, released 20 years after Mulas and Longu got together first.

Some statistics, just for fun

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Here’s a list of the 25 most visited pages on my blog, my little corner of the web, in the past 30 days. From the looks of it, older bands attract a lot of attention still, given the high Track-of-the-day scores for e.g. Genesis and Jefferson Airplane. I’m glad to see though that newer efforts, like Oceans5, Tiger Moth Tales and Edison’s Children have high scores as well. Let’s see in a month what things look like then – and I’m pretty sure some other things on this little site of mine have changed as well then. 🙂

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Prog Rabbit courtesy of Sonia Mota

 

TotD: Genesis – Supper’s Ready 94
TotD: Beardfish – Ode to the Rock ‘n Roller 86
Oceans5 – Return to Mingulay 79
TotD: Tiger Moth Tales – Tigers in the Butter 68
TotD: Jefferson Airplane – Somebody to Love 63
Thank you all! 61
Edison’s Children – The Final Breath Before November 54
TotD: King Crimson – Starless and Bible Black 52
Night of the Prog @ Loreley, 17-19 July 2015 51
Track of the Day: Steve Hackett – Man in the Long Black Coat 45
ToYD: Dream Theater – Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding 40
TotD: Murky Red – Wild Flower 32
ToTD: Minstrel’s Ghost – Camelot 29
TotD: Aphrodite’s Child – The Four Horsemen 25
TotD: Pain of Salvation – Linoleum 25
TotD: Focus – Sylvia 24
Album Review: Torn Apart – Franck Carducci 24
Track of the Day: Fractal Mirror – Stars 23
ToTD: IQ – From the Outside In 22
L’Albero del Veleno – Le Radici del Male 21
TotD: Grobschnitt – Solar Music 19
Track of the Day: Pain of Salvation – Falling Home 19
ToTD: Corvus Stone – A Stoned Crow meets the Rusty Wolff Rat 19
ToTD: Cailyn – Jupiter 16

Track of the Day: Bjørn Riis – Stay Calm

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Lead guitarist of Norwegian Airbag, Bjørn Riis, must be a great fan of late 70’s Pink Floyd, judging by the sound of his album Lullabies in a Car Crash, released in November 2014. A wonderful album, for which I’ll do a full review in a short while. For now, let’s start by making Stay Calm, from this first solo album, Track-of-the-day. This one is close to the sound of Airbag itself, and the title of the album seems a clear indication that despite his solo efforts, co-founder Riis has not given up on his band activities just yet.

Track of the Day: Pain of Salvation – Falling Home

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Pain of Salvation is a progressive rock band from Sweden, who have been around since the mid 1990s. Headed by singer/guitarist Daniel Gildenlöw, they started out as a progressive metal band, venturing into more progressive experiments between 2004 and 2010. The 5 octave vocal range of Gildenlöw, combined with the heavy, yet where necessary melodic sound of the band may be an acquired taste to some, but will win over many a progressive rock and metal fan.

falling home

After a year of illness and recovery in 2014, when people feared for his life and the future of the band, Pain of Salvation are back in 2015. Track-of-the-day is the freshly released video for Falling Home, title track of last years cover album. I did a Track-of-the-day with them earlier, but this is to celebrate the return of Daniel Gildenlöw.

Track of the Day: Fractal Mirror – Stars

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[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=1261962020 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]

Fractal Mirror are a Dutch/American band who play, as they say themselves, pop/rock music with progressive influences. Two of the band have been working together since the mid 80’s, and in 2013 they finally released an EP and an album. In 2014, they released a second album, Garden of Ghosts. This one has received quite good feedback in the first two months, and is being played on online progressive rock stations frequently.

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Adopting a distributed recording approach (two members live in The Netherlands, two in the US), they managed to create a more than decent album, full of with keyboard heavy, atmospheric rock. A track the band themselves are quite fond of, is the closing track of the album: Stars.

Track of the Day: Gong – Fohat Digs Holes in Space

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All life must come to an end, but some will live forever. Today, Daevid Aellen, founder of both Soft Machine and Gong announced that he has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer, and has at most 6 months to live. A sad day for fans of Soft Machine and Gong, but Aellen asked them to start letting him go, and be prepared for the inevitable.

daevidallen

The mind that came up with the Pothead Pixies will be no more, but the creatures that sprang from it will live on forever. David, todays Track of the Day is dedicated to your life’s work – Fohat Digs Holes in Space, from the brilliant album Camembert Electrique, released in 1971.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wxh6dPnTj4

TotD: Grobschnitt – Solar Music

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While the Krautrock scene was raging in Germany in the eary 1970s, there was also a band named Grobschnitt. Not a typical kraut band, like Faust or Amon Duul (they were even mentioned as a Yes-clone at some point) they produced an eclectic mix of Kraut, symphonic and psychedelic music, with the highlight being the release of Solar Music Live. A brilliant live album released in 1977 – evolving around a piece cold Solar Music that had evolved over a number of years (first appearing on 1974’s Ballerman).

One of my favourite albums of all times – and a good candidate for a track of the day. Here’s Solar Music I, in one video with Food Sicore, the second track on the album. Please note the brilliant rhythm section, with co-founder Joachim “Eroc” Ehrig on drums and Wolfgang “Popo” Jäger on bass.

As can be seen on the bands web site: all 14 albums will be re-released in February 2015, by Universal music. Each CD will be filled with 79:10 seconds of brilliant music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0hxIk0S-9M

TotD: Edison’s Children – Light Years

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Edison’s Children I already introduced in my review of their album The Final Breath before November yesterday – so Eric Blackwood and Pete Trewavas need no further introduction here. However, I forgot to mention that they actually managed to make the crackle of a vinyl album part of their CD. It’s very audible on the intro of this track, Light Years, which is therefore Track-of-the-Day.