The secret of the Machines is that they have an addictively fun, poundingly-heavy beat that is reminiscent of Led Zeppelin, and they have a penchant for really stretching out their compositions for texture and emphasis. It’s prog-rock without the slightest hint of twee frilliness. Road was an EP with aRead More

After Frances the Mute, I honestly wasn’t sure if I particularly cared where the Mars Volta was going next. I found the album completely misguided — or maybe unguided is a more fitting word — and a sonic mess, as if the band simply threw together every chord progression andRead More

The Dutch quartet Talking Cows never take themselves too seriously — see video below — but the non-nonsense modern jazz they make is no joke. Admirers of The Netherlands’ great jazz icon Misha Menglelberg, Talking Cows uses strong melodies that often masks the intricacies happening underneath, and an energetic, pliableRead More

Brian Eno’s first vocal, “pop”-based album since 1990’s overlooked classic (in my opinion) Wrong Way Up with John Cale and also to Nerve Net, Another Day On Earth found Eno in much more ambient territory than one might expect from the description. Comparisons to 1992’s Nerve Net are likely moreRead More

My first thought upon listening to Warm Winter by Memories Of Machines was that it’s very similar to Steven Wilson’s softer side. My second thought was that the vocalist sounds an awful lot like Wilson’s old No-Man partner Tim Bowness. Turns out, it IS Tim Bowness singing. He formed thisRead More

Most people, when they look at me, think I’m probably one of those types who, if they get into music at all, go for the Kenny G, lite-jazz, adult-contemporary pablum — the type of stuff that people who don’t really like music get into because it gives them something toRead More

If I was to make up a list of my favorite guitar players (and, thus, exposing myself to the Internet scourge known as GuitarFan™: You know the type. They blurt out things like “Where’s Slash?!!” and “Dimebag!” — think of it as a kind of Rock ‘n’ Roll Tourette’s) thenRead More

What a trip this is, the lone and long-forgotten album from Sean Bonniwell, or T.S., or whatever. Best known as leader of the 1960s American garage-rock band the Music Machine, he’d briefly established a reputation for fuzzy-guitared, Farfisa-organed sides like the Top 20 hit “Talk Talk.” You hear, in theRead More

Sinead O’Connor’s ‘How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?’ featured return-to-form originals that are both offbeat and powerful – sometimes all at once.

The debut of this soulfully swaying amalgam finds Byron – one of this era’s more intriguing jazz clarinetist/saxophonists – turning his attention to the layered musical legacies of Thomas A. Dorsey and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Dorsey, known as the father of black gospel, pioneered the combination of traditional Christian hymnsRead More