After much demand, renowned Panic Room and The Steve Rothery Band guitarist Dave Foster has launched a Kickstarter campaign to manufacture and release his latest solo album ‘Dreamless’ on vinyl.
“There have been so many requests to release the album ‘Dreamless’ on vinyl that it’s about time it happened. Its is one of those albums that deserves to be heard in all it’s glory on a turntable. Due to the albums length it spans four sides, so it very satisfyingly is a double album.
This edition of the album will feature some extra sleeve notes which are my notes about the recording and the origin of each track.
I hope that you guys really want this to be on vinyl as much as I do, it will sound ace. If the project doesn’t make it’s target, I don’t have the resources to fund it myself so sadly it wouldn’t happen…..but I think you guys will make it happen.”
I had this to say about the album when I reviewed ‘Dreamless’ on the 1st of June last year:
“The usually modest and self-effacing Dave Foster has stepped out of the shadows and onto centre stage to deliver his second solo opus and is to be applauded and admired for doing so. Such a variety of moods, styles and colours doesn’t always mix well but when it is done with consummate skill, like it is here, you are treated to a cornucopia of musical delights. While neither ground breaking or game changing, what it is is really rather good.”
Barrie, ON’s ambient progressive metal / rock duo JUPITER HOLLOW announce they will be performing the following Ontario show dates in support of their debut EP ‘Odyssey’ recently released on Jan 13th.
Show Dates:
Feb 26 – Toronto, ON @ Mod Club
March 3 – Barrie, ON @ The Foxx Lounge
April 15 – Toronto, ON @ Cherry Cola’s N Rock & Rolla Cabaret Lounge
‘Odyssey’ is a concept record featuring 5 tracks to introduce JUPITER HOLLOW‘s ambient experimental progressive songwriting plus will act as a prelude to their planned full length ‘AHDOMN’. The duo was birthed in 2015 and have already mastered the art of bringing their fans on an audio and visual experience. Their sound is usually referred to as spacey, experimental and refreshing, reminding listeners of bands like Tool, Pink Floyd, A Perfect Circle, Tesseract, The Contortionist and Rush. Consisting of two young, passionate and driven Canadian artists, Grant MacKenzie (21) and Kenny Parry (18), the pair perform with a dominating stage presence, while captivating their audiences with their unique sonic journey.
Grant, who plays guitar, bass and synth for the band started his music career 8 ½ years ago at the age of 12, sitting in his basement watching the movie Rock Prophecies. This movie was about legendary rock photographer Robert M. Knight, finding and transforming a young, unknown guitarist from a small town into a worldwide success. Inspired and motivated, Grant spent the next few years honing his guitar skills, writing music, and later learning the business side by attending college for business marketing. At age 20, Grant was invited into the Brotherhood of the Guitar, by founder Robert M. Knight, leading to endorsements with Ernie Ball Music Man and JH Audio.
While Grant was performing with another group at a local battle of the bands, he came across a mesmerizing singer by the name of Kenny Parry (vocalist, drummer and synth for Jupiter Hollow), who was almost performing as if he was possessed on stage, hitting notes that seemed impossible by any guy. Kenny Parry started music at the young age of 2 years old, setting up pots and pans like a drum set and banging away. This led to an obsession with music, and a discovery of his unique talent. In his teenage years, Kenny won himself the title “Best Drummer in Ontario” 3 years in a row. Around this time, Kenny started learning how to sing after being inspired by singers such as Maynard James Keenan, Mike Lessard, Dan Tompkins and Ian Kenny to name a few. Through years of strengthening his vocal abilities in choirs, bands and hours of dedication, Kenny has acquired an articulate vocal range, relentless endurance, and almost shocking performance through his uncontrollable stage presence.
Shortly after meeting, Grant and Kenny knew that their talents combined would create something truly unique, and Jupiter Hollow was born. Since then, the duo effortlessly created music in Kenny’s basement for months on end. The concept grew to be a two-man band, since Grant and Kenny wrote all of the music and wanted to keep it that way. The two musicians use technology to their advantage, allowing them to perform with a dominating stage presence, while captivating their audiences with their unique sonic journey.
Danish band Mew have announced Pre-order details for their seventh album ‘Visuals’, due to be released on April 28th.
Frontman Jonas Bjerre has worked on the projections for the band’s live shows since their early days. Usually, the Danish trio finish an album and Bjerre gets to work on the visuals. For their seventh record, though, the singer decided to turn things upside down, working on the visuals first and seeing if they informed the music. The resultant record feels like a culmination for one of rock’s most ambitious and inventive groups: Visuals is where Bjerre and his bandmates, bassist Johan Wohlert and drummer Silas Utke Graae Jørgensen, join the dots of a career that has spanned over two decades. “We do everything on this album ourselves,” says Bjerre. “We produced it ourselves, I did the artwork, I’m doing the visuals. Visuals felt like a fitting title. I like the idea that each song has a visual aspect to it somehow.”
Mew have a tradition of, as Bjerre puts it, hiding away in a cave for three or four years between albums. The tour that accompanied 2015’s +- album found the band reaching a creative peak that they felt was too exhilarating to be dampened by a period of extended cave-dwelling. They arrived home with demos that had been written on the road and the spark was lit. They wanted to break the cycle and make an album quickly. “We just felt like, “if we do it the normal way, it’s gonna be another three or four years before we get to do it again’,” says Bjerre. “If you keep doing it like that, ultimately you make a handful of albums and then you’re ready for retirement.” The trio wanted to make an album spontaneously, keeping the energy they’d generated on the road going.
Listen to their new song ‘Carry Me To Safety’ here:
They set to work in Copenhagen and started knocking the demos they’d written on tourbuses and in hotel rooms into shape. At the same time, new songs were emerging in reaction to what was going on around them. Mew aren’t a political band but couldn’t help but be affected by rolling news and the death of an icon. “It was pretty dark last year, so some of the darkness in the lyrics comes from that. You definitely get the feeling that things don’t last forever when someone like David Bowie dies.” Visuals was completed in just under a year – what Bjerre describes as an “incredible” feat for a band used to periods of prolonged tinkering. “Spending less time on it, you can still maintain the feeling you had when you first wrote it,” says Bjerre.
‘Visuals’ is Mew at their most compact, their chemistry at its most potent. With only one song over five minutes, it’s their most concise album. Bjerre says there was no need for a grand, overarching concept. Each song on ‘Visuals’ represents its own little chapter and story: nothing needed to be overly long. “Each album is like a collection of thoughts and ideas that fit the time we’re in,” he says. “They’re like little diary entries, except they’re a little bit more veiled perhaps. To me, albums are memories of times in my life.”
Recorded and self-produced in Copenhagen, ‘Visuals’ was completed in under a year and sees Mew at their most concise, each song representing its own little chapter and narrative. The first taste of the album comes in the shape of the mesmerising intricacies of the album’s finale Carry Me To Safety.
Meanwhile, the slow-build euphoria of album opener, Nothingness And No Regrets, and expansive 80’s-style pop of TheWake Of Your Life countered by the discordant stomp of the intriguingly titled Candy Pieces All Smeared Out and blissful glide of In A Better Place, compete across eleven tracks that convey an irrepressible ebullience of a band on their debut album.
Many of the newer tracks evolved in light of what was happening globally. “It was pretty dark last year on many levels, so lyrically that definitely came into play, it’s an important reminder to treasure the here and now,” says Bjerre. Visuals feels like the culmination for one of rock’s most ambitious and inventive groups.
Twenty years into their career, Visuals is the distinctive sound of Mew seizing the moment…
New European tour dates have been announced for May 2017.
Tickets will be on pre-sale from 9am local time on Jan 25th, and on general-sale 9am local time on Jan 27th.
May 17 – Paradiso, Amsterdam
May 19 – Point Ephemere, Paris
May 20 – Trix, Antwerp
May 21 – Trinity, Bristol
May 22 – Ritz, Manchester
May 23 – Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London
May 25 – Luxor – Köln
May 26 – Knust – Hamburg
May 27 – Immergut Festival, Neustrelitz
More world-wide tour dates to be announced very soon.
Scottish Singer-Songwriter Findlay Napier has announced details of his forthcoming new album ‘Glasgow’, which can be ordered now via his Kickstarter campaign.
Findlay describes the project:
“Just before my 18th birthday I moved from the banks of the River Spey to the 14th floor of the Red Road flats in Glasgow. I’d come to study Traditional Scottish Folk Music at what is now The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Twenty years later I want to make an album that reflects on the time I’ve spent in Glasgow making music, hanging out and growing up.
Boo Hewerdine is producing the album and we have already started recording the album in Motherlode Studio, Norfolk. We need your help to finish the recording and release the album.
Glasgow has a rich history of music and, of course, songwriting. From Adam MacNaughton‘s ‘Jeely Piece’ song to The Blue Nile‘s ‘Tinseltown in the Rain’ hundreds of songs have been written about this wonderful city. My new album will contain a mixture of some of my favourite songs, some that I’ve written especially for the project and some co-writes with Boo Hewerdine.
I’ll keep you informed all along the way either through short video blogs, blogs and sneaky listens to works in progress.
Why use Kickstarter? A few reasons for this 1) It is a simple way for you to pre-order the album. Kickstarter is a well known an trusted crowdfunding site. 2) Unless you are signed to a major label it makes more sense for a small independent act like myself to use a crowdfunding platform. 3) It’s fun to have fans involved album making process.
What are you going to do with my money? All of the money you contribute will go straight into the project. The main areas of spending are: Recording (recording, mixing and mastering), design (Photographs & design) and promotion (Local, National and Online Press plugger and radio plugger… I do the social media stuff myself… as you may have noticed). The final major expense is duplication (‘pressing’ the CD, setting up download, liscensing fees, barcode)…. and then there’s all the little things (travel expenses, tea/coffee/food for the studio, guitar strings etc.) The more money you contribute the more I can do with the album.
THANK YOU!”
You can check out this this exciting project here:
There are many who find themselves described as stalwarts, some for the rugged determination to keep slogging away and others because they contribute so much to stay actively involved on a whole range of levels, keeping sharp artistically and selflessly championing others who deserve attention.
Findlay Napier is one of the most highly-regarded performers and creative forces on the Scottish music scene – thoroughly active and truly energised with a heart-warming zing.
His last album, ‘VIP: Very Interesting Persons’, contains ten songs about real life characters with interesting lives was co-written and produced by Boo Hewerdine.‘VIP’ was The Telegraph’s #2 Folk Album of the Year 2015 and was Album of the Week in The Daily Express received many excellent reviews. To coincide with his successful 2016 solo tour Napier released an EP containing 5 new VIP songs and a behind the lyrics book.
Findlay, an inaugural graduate of The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland‘s BA(Scottish Music) program, made his name touring and recording with multi-award winning traditional Scottish folk band Back of the Moon. In his more recent projects “Queen Anne’s Revenge” and “The Bar Room Mountaineers” his song-writing took centre stage and was described by The Sunday Herald as “Genuine songcraft and wit following in the Difford & Tilbrook tradition”. Findlay is also well known as the host of Celtic Connections’ Late Night Sessions and for his Hazy Recollections concert series which showcases the very best in new roots music.
In Feb 2017 Findlay will be touring with ‘Shake the Chains’ a new touring commission of protest songs from Folk by The Oak with support from Arts Council England, Help Musicians UK and Folk Alliance International. The tour features Nancy Kerr, Hannah Martin and Tim Yates with musical director Greg Russell.
Aside from his touring commitments Findlay performs regular Stand-Up Comedy shows around Glasgow.In September he organised and sold out Glasgow Songwriting Festival.
Canadian melodic proggers SLYDE have streamed another track from their upcoming EP Back Again, due February 17.
Listen to the track of the same name here:
https://soundcloud.com/slydecanada/slyde-fading
First premiered on Invisible Oranges, the track is another tantalising listen of the band’s talents ahead of their new release. For fans of Haken, Rush, Dream Theater and more, Slyde are back after a two-year hiatus and a new line-up. Driven by the clean vocals of frontman Nathan Da Silva and the powering keyboards of Sarah Westbrook, Back Again is a fitting return to form from this beguiling four-piece.
Four tracks of virtuosic contrapuntal songwriting exploring the relationship between environmentalism and sci-fi, Back Again is a fantastically entertaining listen. Ear-catching for any fan of technically-minded melodic prog rock, Slyde are a band who before their hiatus played over 150 shows on the Eastern Canadian circuit, including shows with Protest the Hero and at Canadian Music Week (2013), IndieWeek (2011-2013), and Wacken Metal Battle (2013).
IT’S TIME! After many months of non-stop work, Legendary Swedish symphonic progressive rock band ÄNGLAGÅRD are proud to present their first ever professionally filmed concert, set to be released worldwide on February 10th, 2017. Entitled “ÄNGLAGÅRDLIVE: MADE IN NORWAY”, pre-orders are open now.
Check out the promotional video below:
“Live: Made in Norway” was captured at Musikkflekken, Sandvika, Norway on February 21, 2015, marking the band’s return to Norway stages after 23 years of absence.
Edited by Martin Gustafsson, with audio production and mixing by world renowned audio engineer Alar Suurna, and art design and production by long-time collaborator Joel Barrios, the two-hour performance is a stellar capturing of live art through and through; a perfect testimony of Änglagård‘s unique take on progressive rock, showcasing their swirling, angular crescendos along with frenetic rhythms and howling mellotron, blended with truly emotional sudden softer passages.
A sonic rollercoaster of aggressive music in odd meter, subtle parts and melancholic beauty, building suspense and abrupt stops, with a wondrous interplay of sounds, this visual presentation is definitely not for the faint-hearted. Änglagård‘s extreme level of delicacy in phrasing and dynamic is a tough match to beat in progressive music and should hold up even in the face of the snootiest of music connoisseurs.
SikTh, the UK’s progressive metal forefathers, have commenced recording their brand new studio album. The, as yet, untitled 3rd album will be their first new full length since 2006’s ‘Death Of A Dead Day’ and follows on from last year’s acclaimed Opacities EP recorded after their reunion performance at the UK’s legendary Download Festival. The new album is scheduled for a May 2017 release, with the first single and video entitled “No Wishbones” due to be released on Friday 10th February.
Vocalist Mikee Goodman reveals how the recording sessions are progressing“We’ve started recording and it is sounding really vibey so far. This album should be a lot more aggressive than our Opacities EP on the whole. A lot of slamming grooves there, also lots of intricacy and dynamics as always”. He goes on to explain the creative process within the band “There is a formula in SikTh which works well. I always take the lead in the early stages and also I write all lyrics. But of course I am open to Joe Rosser, our new vocalist’s melodic input later on. We have not entered that stage yet. These initial steps are me laying my ideas in, since I have a great studio set up, if I do something awesome now, it goes straight on the record. That’s a great thing because as most vocalists will tell you, it’s all about the vibe and feeling. It’s all about the moment.”
The vocals are primarily being recorded at Mikee’s own studio and at Adrian Smith’s (Iron Maiden) R&R Studios; Mikee & Adrian Smith worked together previously on the Primal Rock Rebellion project. The guitars and drums will be recorded at the renowned Monkey Puzzle House studios. Dan Weller will be producing, alongside Adam “Nolly” Getgood (Periphery), handling mixing duties.
The new album is to be released via Millennium Night, the newly created imprint from Snapper Music, home of Peaceville Records & Kscope. The label imprint name, chosen by SikTh, comes from the track taken from their debut 2003 album The Trees Are Dead & Dried Out Wait for Something Wild.
Mikee explains “We have signed to Millennium Night, which is a new division of Snapper Music; they decided they would invent a new label just for us, we don’t fit in and we never felt the need to”.
Further updates from the studio will be revealed over the coming weeks.
Ahead of the release of their new studio album the band will head out on tour across the UK & Europe with Trivium.
Guitar virtuoso and rock legend, Steve Hackett (formerly of Genesis), releases his latest album The Night Siren on 24th March 2017 through InsideOut Music (Sony). As implied in the title, The Night Siren is a wake-up call… the warning of a siren sounding in this era of strife and division.
The Night Siren showcases Steve’s incredible guitar playing as strongly as ever, along with regular Hackett collaborators and also musicians from several different countries who Steve invited to join him in celebrating multicultural diversity and unity. This includes singers from Israel and Palestine, who both actively campaign to bring Jewish and Arabic people together. There are also instrumentals from the USA and Iraq and a multiplicity of sounds, including the exotic strains of Indian sitar and Middle Eastern tar and oud, the ethnic beauty of the Peruvian charango and the haunting Celtic Uilleann pipes.
Steve is widely travelled, making friends everywhere he goes and has always embraced multicultural diversity. In these times of unrest, he has been inspired to express his belief that the world needs more empathy and unity. His wish to involve a range of musical sounds, instruments, musicians and singers from different parts of the world is both a development of his eclectic approach to music and shows how people can be brought together, even from war torn regions.
Talking about his latest work, Steve says, “This latest waxing represents a bird’s eye view of the world of a musical migrant ignoring borders and celebrating our common ancestry with a unity of spirit, featuring musicians, singers and instruments from all over the world. From territorial frontiers to walled-up gateways, boundaries often hold back the tide. But while the night siren wails, music breaches all defences. To quote Plato, ‘When the music changes, the walls of the city shake’.”
The musical journey takes us from ‘Behind the Smoke’, focusing on the plight of refugees throughout the ages, to the penultimate track ‘West to East’ which reflects on the damage of war and the hope for a better world. From personal to universal, the themes celebrate the life force, breaking free from chains of repression.
The album features: Steve Hackett (guitar & vocals), Roger King (keyboards & programming), Nad Sylvan (vocals on Inca Terra), Rob Townsend (all things wind), Amanda Lehmann (vocals), Gary O’Toole (drums), and Benedict Fenner (additional keyboards & programming). Also featured are singers Kobi and Mira (Israeli and Palestinian), Nick D’Virgilio (drums) from the USA, Malik Mansurov (Tar) from Azerbaijan & Gulli Breim (drums & percussion) from Iceland. Additional musicians who add to the rich flavour of the album are Christine Townsend (violin & viola), Dick Driver (double bass), Troy Donockley (Celtic Uilleann) and Leslie Bennett (keyboards on The Gift).
Full Track Listing:
Behind the Smoke
Martian Sea
Fifty Miles from the North Pole
El Niño
Other Side of the Wall
Anything but Love
Inca Terra
In Another Life
In the Skeleton Gallery
West to East
Steve Hackett is returning with an exciting new show Genesis Revisited with Classic Hackett for a 15-date UK tour in April 2017. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the classic Genesis album Wind and Wuthering, Steve and his band will be performing several tracks from the album as well as fan favourites such as ‘The Musical Box’ and other Genesis numbers never performed before by Steve’s band including ‘Inside & Out,’ ‘One For The Vine’ and ‘Anyway’ as well as material from The Night Siren.
Tickets available from www.myticket.co.uk and venue box offices. Steve onstage at 7.30pm.
Instrumental heavy rock band With Our Arms To The Sun have announced a pre-order ‘Pledge Music’ campaign for their fourth release ‘Orenda’ with a mooted release date of 21st April 2017. Pledgers can receive an immediate digital download, CD’s, Vinyl, limited edition artwork, merch, etc.
With Our Arms to the Sun is a rock band formed in the desert of Arizona. Their live shows are unique and emotional, bringing back the energy of the punk rock and grunge bands of the past who used to play to basements and art galleries packed full of kids. The music is cinematic and expressive with elements of conceptual album rock and modern electronics.
Orenda n. [aw-ren-duh]
1. A supernatural force believed by the Iroquois Indians to be present, in varying degrees, in all objects or persons, and to be the spiritual force by which human accomplishment is attained or accounted for.
A dormant potential to create exists within all human beings. It unconsciously binds the species at large. Most people just never unlock it. With Our Arms To The Sun examine that precious and potent power on their 2016 full-length concept album, ‘Orenda’ [Fade To Silence Records]. Painting in hues of rock, alternative, and metal, their cinematic sound blankets a curious canvas of Arizona Desert, weaving together a sonic journey to self-actualization for the quartet—Josh Breckenridge [vocals, guitar], Joseph Leary [guitar, programming], Joseph Breckenridge [bass], and John McLucas [drums].
“Orenda is that hidden power inside all of us,” says Josh. “The character in the album is discovering it. You can’t really transcend your own ego, shadow, or bullshit unless you make a connection with what whatever that obstacle is inside of you, eliminate it, and move past it. That’s what the new music is about.”
The band arrived at this narrative following a whirlwind of touring behind 2014’s independently released ‘A Far Away Wonder’. Loudwire began championing the album very early on, spotlighting the underground group on an international scale. The site named ‘A Far Away Wonder’ one of the “20 Best Metal Albums of 2014” and “Tessellation”one of the “20 Best Metal Songs of 2014,” admitting to being “captivated at first listen.” As buzz grew, the group landed tours with the likes of virtuoso guitarist John 5 [Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson] and Mushroomhead in addition to joining Tool, Primus, and Coheed & Cambria at the Monster Mash Festival in Phoenix. In early 2016, the group retreated to Los Angeles with a batch of demos and began pre-production on what would become ‘Orenda’ with legendary The Melvins founder Buzz Osborne.
“When we sat down with Buzz, it was a lot of refinement,” recalls Josh. “Having somebody who’s made a zillion albums listen to the ideas and give suggestions was invaluable. He’s a pretty brilliant dude, and he had some really wonderful ideas. We pieced it together from there.”
“Working with With Our Arms To The Sun was refreshing,” adds Buzz. “They were receptive to my ideas, which doesn’t always happen. They were incredibly hard workers, and I think the results speaks for themselves.”
Josh and his bandmates holed up in a rental house “in the middle of nowhere Arizona” to track the music. They emerged with the 10 songs comprising ‘Orenda’. The first single “Macrocosm – Prometheus” begins with a warbling moan reminiscent of Alien before a clean guitar takes hold. Propelled by artful percussion, the hazy six-string swell rises into thunderous distortion and an overpowering chant.
“It looks at the microcosm and macrocosm dichotomy,” he explains. “If you look at the universe and how huge it is, it’s this giant macrocosm. As human beings, we are a tiny microcosm of that macrocosm. Everything repeats itself in a beautiful outward pattern. The song is about the character coming to that realization he’s a piece of something bigger.”
Opener “Disdain”outlines the protagonist’s frustration under a gust of wind, typing, and ominous riff punctuated by Josh’s screams. “This guy is referencing a lot of the stupid shit he’s seeing around him in the world,” he continues. “I thought it would set the tone perfectly for someone who feels confused, disoriented, angry, and bitter.”
Everything culminates on “Homebound.”Amidst samples of loggers chopping down trees, the soundscape converges on one final melodic catharsis.
“That’s a conclusion of transcendence,” states Josh. “He makes an exodus off this planet and out of this world. We all agreed this was the perfect ending.”
Ultimately, ‘Orenda’ hints at something universal and essential.
“We wanted to create a record that was more than just background music or a cog-in-the-machine,” he leaves off. “You can wrap your brain around it. It’s about going on that ride together.”
Full details of the pledge-music campaign can be found here:
Brett Kull is a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, producer, and engineer from the United States. He is best knownfor being a founding member of the band Echolyn, and long standing member of Grey Eye Glances. Brett is also an adjunct college instructor sharing his love for audio engineering and sound design.
For his third solo release comprised of 10 new tracks, ‘Open Skies Exploding’, Brett decided to start releasing two songs a week starting on the 24th of December 2016 and has written a blog to coincide with these releases. When all ten songs have been released I will write a review of the full album but, in the meantime, here are Brett’s first three blogs…
Brett is heading to England for a tour with Francis Dunnery, here it is in his own words:
“Speaking of a wild ride, I’m headed to England next week for a mini tour of sorts with my friend Francis Dunnery, but I’ll try and have a couple songs in the oven, ready to go to help keep our hearts and bellies warm during my cold absence. Wait a minute, oh right, I’m starting my master’s degree this week! Shyte, I forgot!! I need to tell my instructors I’ll be AWOL for the first classes. Thanks for the reminder! Damn, one more thing to put on the list… and less time to drink wine!
But seriously, If any of you are in close proximity to ancient Britannia (during the dates below) feel free to come out and say hello. I’ve been hired to sing a hell-of-a lot, play a few keyboards, and even less guitar. It’s a good gig with an amazing songwriter and musical force of nature – Mr. Dunnery. The band is amazing and we walk the edge of complete catastrophe and utter brilliance. You wont be able to turn away! Here are the dates and where you can get tickets. Hope to share a pint with some of you… well, I’ll have my own pint and you’ll have yours.
