English psychedelia was very much the merry little cousin of its American elder. Less portentous, artier, frothier and far nearer the Kasenetz-Katz stable of 1910 Fruitgum Company and Ohio Express. As a sweeping generalisation, English psych could care little for mind-expanding revelations, content instead to ride through meadows on neon pink hippos, overdosing of twee […]
It’s impossible to start to discuss anything relating to The Residents without doffing a giant eyeball to Hardy Fox, whose passing at the end of October marks the finishing line for the band. As co-founder and producer, he has been responsible for some of the most ingenious, challenging, beautiful music of the 20th Century and the […]
In 1967, to extract himself from a contract he had with Bang Records, Van Morrison recorded 31 songs, reputedly improvised and all, certainly, examples of Van putting in zero effort, even by his standards. It worked, and Van was able to carry on with his career elsewhere, one of the most notorious examples of throwing […]
Like all music books of any worth, ‘Contract in Blood’ is as much a social history of the Eighties, Nineties and turn of the millennium as it is a studious history of discographies and live shows. What constitutes thrash from metal/hard rock/death and so on, remains fluffy around the edges, and rightly so – with over […]
Among aficionados and collectors, ‘Fingerprince’ and its associate EP, ‘Baby Fingers’, are considered a pivotal moment in The Residents’ career. No longer feeling the need to even pretend to ingratiate themselves to radio pluggers or sell millions of records, they pitched to their label their next opus – a three-sided record to be titled ‘Tourniquet […]
When The Mothers of Invention released ‘Freak Out!’ in 1966, although it was groundbreaking in its vision and appropriately ignored by the record-buying public, it was very much an album that fitted its environment and reflected the gnarled and disgusting elements that the 1960s did a terrific job of airbrushing. In contrast, The Residents’ debut, 1974’s Meet […]
One-time sideman of musical nuisance Trevor Horn’s The Buggles, Hans Zimmer is now a byword for Hollywood movie scores and is credited with revolutionising the art form, a feat achieved by using modern technology and synthesizers alongside more traditional instrumentation and arrangements. I can scarcely think of anything less necessary. There used to be two […]
If the temporary abandonment of the moniker Tad is a stripping bare of sorts, the latest release by the great survivor of the early 90s alternative music scene is positively hardcore in its gynaecological musical content. It would be easy to flap our arms and proclaim this as a massive deviation from the norm, an approach […]
Not trying too hard is the unsung rule of music disregarded by many, if not most, bands. Extra band members; lyrical references to obscure things so as to impress people; ‘an agenda’…anything along these lines takes you ever further away from the music – of course, sometimes, this can be a blessing. Dyr Faser understand […]
What a joy this is – a concept album based on an episode of The Twilight Zone, constructed entirely by one guy using loops, samples and eerie bloops. The chap in question is Dominic Francisco, a prolific producer of eulogies to places and times past, with the kind of skill and reverence seen in collectives like […]
