Buddha Sentenza- Semaphora (World in Sound WIS3031)

BS are a 5 piece band from Heidelberg, Germany. My band, ØSC, played a show with them last year and they played a lot of new songs. Thanks to Christian for sending me their latest release. The CD is about an 50mins long and features 7 songs. The band is getting more and more adventurous with each release. Jet starts things off with a long guitar solo intro and a bit of a stoner riff. Great drive and cool organ and space sounds mixed in but the wah guitar really leads this track. Very cool and nicely drifting section at the end of this long opener including some electric violin.  Greek Ancestry starts with some violin played in a plucked style as the track slowly builds up with the drums and then the lead guitar. A lot of very beautiful melodies on this track as it goes from light to dark and back and forth. Nice keyboard, guitar and violin solos. Kréèn starts with some spoken word sample and a simple guitar line. This repeated guitar is the basis for the start as the bass and drums come in. It has a sort of Christmas feel to it.. Ha. Long 10mins song. Laika has another like commercial in German before the drums lead the way with a very funky track with some intense playing from everyone. This one really kicks it up a notch but they still retain these epic and melodic parts as well.  Cool song.  Blood Rust has a more dark feeling and a slow build and quite heavy but then it totally spaces out and drifts for a bit before the band come back for organ driven attack til the end. The End is coming (not actually the last song on the CD though) starts with a spoken word sample and underneath a very spacey track is evolving before the band decides to create a heavier more dark mood. We’ll take if from Here ends this very diverse and excellent release.

http://www.worldinsound.de

http://buddhasentenza.de/ 

Space Rock: An Interstellar Travellers Guide (Purple Pyramind Records)

My band, Øresund Space Collective, contributed a track to this 6 CD box with booklet. We are the 3^rd track on CD1. This is a pretty amazing collection of the original space rock bands from around the world and many of the best from the current scene.  Almost all the tracks here have been previously released but I know the Earthly Society track is unique to the box set, just for the collectors. Tangerine Dream, Nik Turner (only person with 2 tracks), Hawkwind, GONG, CAN, Alice Cooper, Ozric Tentacles, Faust, Steve Hillage, Chrome, and Guru Guru are the big names.  A lot of cool bands from the modern scene as well like White Manna, Yuri Gagarin, ØSC, Maat Lander, Vespero, Black Rainbows, Dark Buddha Rising, The Re-stoned, Oranssi Pazuzu, The Space Lords, Pyramidal, Hidria Spacefolk, Secret Saucer, and many others. The booklet has an intro by Dave Thompson and then each and every track and band has a nice description and web links and a picture. Very nicely done and a great introduction to space rock and psychedelic music, if you are not that familiar with the scene. It is not all space rock music, at least by my definition but plenty of amazing stuff and some really strange tracks like Bob Calvert telling a story of how he and Lemmy took a lot of pills at after Hawkwind’s van was to be stopped and searched by the police, Steve HIllage and William Shatner doing Rocket Man by Elton John, and Gilli Symth (with Daevid Allen) spoken word piece.. Fun though.

http://cleopatrarecords.com

Frank Zappa FAQ- All that¨s left to know about the Father of Invention written by John Corecelli (Backbeat Books 2016)

Does the world need yet another book on Frank Zappa, that is the question?? I own Frank in his own words and a smaller one as well but have not read any of the others besides this new one. My first experience with Frank Zappa was when I was about 12 when a kid from school, named David, whose older brother played in a rock band, he played us Overnight Sensation. I was like what the hell is this, songs about Eating Yellow snow, and other strange subjects. I was intrigued. I was lucky to get to see Zappa on the Joe’s Garage tour in 1980 when I was 17.  It was a pretty mind blowing experience. I did not become a full blown zappahead until later when I was hanging out with my friend Paul and my cousin Cliff, where I got deep into Zappa and eventually recorded all of his records on tapes from Paul, Cliff and my friend Jay. Wow… Anyway.. that is my story…  This is John’s.

John tries to take a fresh approach. The book is broken up into 33 small chapters as well as a book recommendations and a complete discography, including the 30+ new releases since Frank’s death.   I learned the most in the sections about his early life as I had not read the books by his siblings, which most of this info is drawn from. The Year Book chapter, which lists nearly everyone that every played with Frank including about 100 words and their birth and death dates is very interesting as well. The cover band chapter also tells you about the most famous of the Frank Zappa cover bands but is not an exhaustive list. One of the most unique and interesting chapters was interviews with women about their opinion of Zappa as there were quite a few songs that if you did not have a sense of humor like Crew Slut and Jewish Princess.  Other chapters about Zappa's TV appearances, the PMRC, about humor and music, etc..  Even if you have read a lot of books on Zappa, you can still learn some new stuff. If you have never read about Zappa, I would recommend picking this one up and combine that with The Real Frank Zappa, which is mostly written by Frank himself. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Frank-Zappa-FAQ-Father-Invention/dp/1617136034/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480948345&sr=1-1&keywords=frank+zappa+faq+all+that%27s+left+to+know

http://www.backbeatbooks.com

STRAY- Borderline, London Nov 18th, 2016

We had a hell of a time getting to this part of London for the Beer Company and the show. At the London Craft beer Co- We tried Liquid Mistress (Red IPA), Green Hopped IPA, Extra Pale (Sussex Brewery) and I love you with my Stout (12% Imperial Stout). I think we would have tried 2 more but we were running short on time. We had a slice of pizza at a cool local place and then just made it to the first song of the show.

The Stray concert was super packed. We came in when Del Brahman was playing the first number. He played 3 acoustic numbers.

Waiting for the Big Break, Years, Around the world in 80 days.

We could get past the stairs hardly. Sue stayed but I moved to the front center.  After Del played the three songs the current lineup of Stray came out and played for 75mins or so with a great line up of songs, especially the ones from the Suicide record sounded great. He told a lot of good stories in between songs. The bass player, he has been playing with Del since I think he said 1978. He was fantastic. The drummer was also really solid and they both were having a great time.

Time Machine, Only what you Make it, Son of the Father, Jericho, Suicide, Move a Mountain, Free at Last, Harry Farr, I, Believe it.

For the next set, the guitar player who joined the band in the 1975 to make them a 5 piece, Pete Dyer came out and they played a 5-song set. He looked pretty nervous and a little stoned or drunk but he actually besides messing up a couple of guitar harmony parts did great and even sang some lead vocals.

For the People, Take it Easy, Houdini, Percy the Pimp, One Night in Texas

It was pretty emotional when the original line up came out to play. They had no rehearsals prior to them meeting and trying out the songs this afternoon and this was the first and probably the last time, there were on a stage together in 22 years!  Steve Gadd (Vocals), Del Bromham (guitar), Gary Giles (bass), Steve Crutchly (Drums).

The audience really seems to know a lot of these songs and helped to sing along. The band was clearly having a really good time. I love the drumming but he was working hard and you could tell he was not used to doing this. The set was:

Come on Over, Our Song, Pretty Thing, After the Storm, All in your Mind.

All in your Mind was their only really big hit song and it was really cool. I filmed it. See below…

They did do a short encore with a jam on the song Cold Turkey. He mentioned something about Leonard Cohen, not sure if he wrote it or if they dedicated it to him. It was a great night and about 2 and half hours and 23 songs of Stray, with more or less all the classic line-ups. Wow.

Weites Luftmeer- SiebenuddreiBigachtundvierzig (Tonzonen Records TON020)

Tonzonen is back with another release, their 20^th. This is a label I have only discovered fairly recently and I really am enjoying their releases a lot. This band hails from Munich, Germany and have been around since 2012. The duo have been described as making instrumental psychedelic shoegaze music…  The album features 4 long tracks and is released on black and magenta coloured vinyl in 500 copies total. Side A starts off with a track that borrows a guitar line from You know your only Dreaming from Hawkwind. Nice grooves and bass lines as the guitars are more floating and ambient.  Cool song with quite a build up at the end. Buoyancy another nearly 9min track starts with some bass and then a slow spacey build again.  Clearly the guitarist, Jochum is a big fan of Dave Brock,even though he does not do very make solos and is more of an atmospheric guitar player. Anyway, after 3mins a more melodic strummed guitar section kicks in and it goes like this until nearly the end but with a cool build with the drums and bass. Trail of Thoughts is an 11min mellow journey that slow builds up with a few more effects on the guitars here and there but overall very mellow. Oxykotin starts with a bass line and some spacey effected sounds as the guitar slowly fades up with a nice riff and then the drums kick in! Nice groove and later some cool flanged out wah guitar. What a great number. Cool record but I could use some more guitar solo!!! 

https://weitesluftmeer.bandcamp.com/

http://www.tonzonen.de

Megaritual- Mantra Music (White Dwarf WHD006)

Megaritual is the solo project of Australian multi-instrumentalist Dale Walker (from the band of Sun Of Man).  I have never heard of Dale or his band Sun of Man. The album features 8 tracks and is a sort of compilation of several of the tracks from his different band camp releases. Dale played all the instruments as he is credited for everything including the artwork.  Is the heart of the Mystery starts things off and I am immediately reminded of Lamp of the Universe. A very mystic, sound, with drones, sitar, different kinds of drum sounds.  After a few mins, the drum set kicks in and Dale does some vocal chants, while the rest continues in the background as a sort of loop. Later a more doomy guitar kicks in and the previous recorded stuff is off and now it is heavy guitar, drums and vocals, primarily.  Just as he starts to slow, it all sort of fades away and back into the sitar, eastern vibe again and then the heavy guitars and soloing is back again!  A new section now begins as all the tracks so far just sort of melt into each other. Now the heavy riffs are combined with some strummed acoustic guitar. The drums have nearly disappeared in the sound. A more dense sounds returns with the electric guitar being heavier but the strummed guitar is still in the forefront of the sound as the drums are nearly gone again.  Pretty psychedelic as it all fades down to use a vocal and acoustic guitar for the ending but comes back again. A very cool musical collage.  Side B continues in much the same way with some dark eastern stuff but a new drone and extra delays. This track becomes really heavy doomy stuff with some lead guitar in the background during the heavy riffing after the first vocal section. It comes back down to earth after a few mins. The mid section is really cool. I love the psyched out guitar and hypnotic stoned eastern vibe. After the comedown, we are still focused on the guitar. Wow.. side 2 was quite an amazing trip…….. I look forward to hear more.

https://megaritual.bandcamp.com/