This is a site where I post reviews of CDs, DVDs, LPs, and concerts. I have been writing music reviews on and off since 1984. I ran a heavy metal fanzine from 1984-1988 called Metal Madness and have been a staff writer for Aural Innovations for many years. I have also contributed to Chrohinga Well (RIP), Bad Acid (RIP), Lowcut (RIP), Roadburn and a number of other zines as well. I recently moved to Portugal so please request the new address and do not send any music to Denmark anymore. Tak..
The B side is the song Cop Killer by Body Count but with a totally new arrangement that leans more towards psychobilly.. I wonder what Ice T thinks?? I guess he would dig it and so will you!! Only made in 2 or 300 copies.. A very different release from some of the bands other material but damn good!!
I have to say I have never heard the original. VDGG and ELP since they did not have a of guitar, I never really got into them. Clearly this album had more or Rob and the gang added quite a bit of guitar. The album starts with the Lemmings (incluidng Cogs) and some beautiful piano and floating synthesizer followed by the bass. About 1.5 minutes in the drums kick in and off we go, with first vocals (mixed quite low at first, as you hardly can make out the words until the chorus, then they sort it out). After about 6mins it gets quite psychedelic with a lot of cool instrument experimentation. Around 8mins we return back to the main theme of sorts and the vocals are back in full. What an amazing spacey track in the end. Lovely… Man Erg is next for another 10mins. This is classic early 70s prog with the organ dominating the sound until 3mins and then things start to change in more interesting ways and there is a beautiful keyboard solo (actually multiple) that follows. Quite a track and very different from the first one. The final 26 min track starts slow and spacey with some nice piano playing. A surprise is to hear Carry sing but why not! It is great that they are not trying to do an exact copy of the record but a really cool interpretation. What a great release… Only made in 150 copies on CD (at least for now)..
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| Andy Shades |
Anyway, there was a lot of people that I knew there and the band was set up on the patio area where they do pizzas on weds. Band was in a good mood and the sound was much better even though the left speaker was giving some distortion due to surges in the electricity (this is what I was told) and that was annoying.
The band started about 20:30 and played one 45min set and took a break. I filmed one of the songs, about not believing science and what you are told about covid (see below). A lot of Andy’s songs are political or ecological in nature and the music is pretty high energy except when they do into their lounge jazz mode and he plays the saxophone. I wish the drummer was not so laid back all the time, it would push the music into a more rock direction if he played with more force. Anyway, it was a good mix of funky, jazzy, rock songs, all originals. People and kids were dancing and having a great time. A couple of locals came up and did some singing-rapping during a couple of instrumental parts. I had a really good time.
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| Two locals who were singing, rapping a bit. |
Intro Jazz jam
Andy had a briefcase with some of this releases, none of which I had ever seen. He says he has made 12 albums under lots of different names, Us, Andy Shades, Fie Fi Foe and a few others. I should have taken a picture of them. Anyway, here is a video of one of the new songs as mentioned above.
https://expo70.bandcamp.com/
The band on this release is:
Sampo Fagerlund: drums, percussion
Mikko Kapanen: vocals, guitars
Juho Ojala: vocals, keyboards, synthesizers
Jussi Ristikaarto: vocals, guitars, electronics, percussion
Teemu Soininen: bass
Olavi Töyli: tenor saxophone, percussion
http://superfjord.bandcamp.com
Seven Rivers of Fire- Very nice solo instrumental acoustic guitar track
The Superstars- starts with piano and vocals and then drums and a bit of guitar kick in as the track picks up tempo. Intense piano playing and a unique voice.
The Hologram People- Dreamy with some acoustic guitar, keyboards. Floating..
Jim Griffin- Some spacey sounds, then the drums and bass groove kick in and synths becomes more intense and layered. At last the guitar. Laid back space rock..
Silver Vials- The most guitar intense track so far, with a drone feel but off into space we go following that lovely guitar lead…
The Strange Happenings- A bit like Reefus Moons.. Anyway,, a great 60s psych song feel.
Alain Pire Experience- A bit more rock and roll for you…
Vibravoid- Wehrhahn Wah Wah a track from the next studio album and more synth based than normal. Something new in their sound.. Cool..
Jeremy- This is an uptempo rock and roll track with some really nice guitar. Love the way it cuts through the sound and the synths bubble and girgle in the background.
Revbjelde- Some quite loud bursts of bass sounds over a synth sequence. One of the more experimental pieces for sure.
Magnus Josefsson- This is a nice melodic guitar driven track with a beautiful melody. Makes you smile.
Thought Bubble- A bit of an eastern feel on this psych track. Keeps you on edge…
St Kraut- Hypnotic, strange sound production, mostly guitar driven.
Vert-X- After a spaced out start, super intense motorik space rock… as expected..
Palooka 5- This is a track that will surprise the hell out of you. Wow… hard to describe. Unique.
Andy Shades is the leader of this band and has a home studio at his house. I have visited him a few times and watched the band rehearse once. This was their debut show with this line up. They play all original music with some instrumental tracks being mostly improvisation where Andy plays sax instead of acoustic guitar. Anyway, it was 5€ that you paid at the parking lot. The concert was in an amazing location on a private farm land and about 40-50 people showed up. They were making pizzas for 6€ (margarita or zucchini-mushroom) and served small glasses of wine (100ml) or beer (150ml) for 1€.
Band was scheduled to start at 21 and sort of did but they wanted to wait until all the pizzas were served. Anyway, they started off just Andy and the drummer jamming to the music his friend was playing on the PA and then Larry joined, then the bass player and finally the guitar player and they did a couple of jazz inspired jams. The real set began when Andy strapped on his acoustic guitar which he would viciously strum over the next 90mins. He had some problem with getting shocked by the microphone and this was really pissing him off. He was barefoot. They tried to cover the mic with cloth but then it got wet and he got a worse shock. He was given some Kroc sandals and now he was not in contact with the ground and no more shocks. This worked for a while and then he hated the Kroc’s and played on top of the kick drum case top. 
View from stage area into the mountains
Set List:
Intro Jams (Several light jazzy stuff)
Rising
Ghosts
Trust that Feeling
A Drop in the Ocean
Abort
When will it End
Always Break the Rules
Leap of Faith
Wild Embrace
Got to Give it Away
Bottletops
Monsters
Sorry
No Business
Good World
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Waiting for the Man
Wildside
The next few chapters are quite interesting (after his few months with a dysfunctional Aerosmith without Joe Perry in 1979-80. Tough time for a band that was playing stadiums and now small clubs. After this he goes into quite a lot of detail of what was required to manage a major concert venue (Calderone Hall) with a capacity of 2500 or so people. All the details of how shows are set up, run, load in and load out, what you had to do for the bands, etc.. One of this jobs when Pink Floyd did a run of 6 shows of the WALL, was to pick the band up in his car each evening from a heliport near by. Fun and he was only like 23 years old…
Eventually, his company that he was part of start doing bigger areas shows in the early 80s and this is a big step up in making these shows happen without problems and it sounds like really hard work and you really have to have dedicated people to pull this all off without problems. I think some people might not find this that interesting. I did though…
Next he describes working with some of the promoters, managers and band folk for Van Halen, AC/DC, YES, Judas Priest, etc.. The last few chapters I did not really find added that much more to the story and felt a bit like filler. Overall, I enjoyed reading the book and I think if you are interested in what it was like to manage a venue, be a tour manager, then you will get some good insight and enjoy this but if you just want good rock stories and dirt.. This book has some but not enough for you, probably.
Here is what they had to say about the record:
“Finishing the Cromlech IV album in 2019 not only brought to an end a series of albums that were not only based around the Cromlech at Mwnci studios but also brought about a conclusion to the way we had recorded those albums. Those four albums, along with 'Lilacs Out Of The Deadlands' album, had been recorded over long weekends at the residential Mwnci recording studio with a selection of invited friends in a very 70's commnal setting of improvisation.
We began recording sessions for 'And Man Created God' early in 2019 with just the four core members of Sendelica and continued through the great lockdown of 2020 in a very remote manner which ended up befitting the pandemic that engulfed us all in 2020. Although we were no longer at Mwnci studio, the spirit of the Cromlech seemed to follow us into the new album as the tracks began to form around the ideas of religion and beliefs in the history of humans.
A few years ago in a Spanish cave, archealogists uncovered a grave of a neanderthal toddler and around the bones of this young child were many animal bones and a rhinoceros skull which showed some kind of belief/religious symbolism surrounding the child's burial. There is a disagreement among archaelogists and anthropologists as to how, and why, such beliefs came about. Some argue that there is a biological explanation for a belief in God, while others argue that it is evolutionary adaption or perhaps just a neurological accident based around the need to instill some kind of order and stability to a bewildering world. One thing for sure is that religious beliefs can inspire collective collaborations on enormous, labour intensive, scales. from ancient burial mounds and giant stone circles to sky reaching Christian cathedrals to gravity defying domed mosques. At the time of the birth of Christianity the world was in ferment, the Middle East and Asian societies were rife with gods and messiahs, the belief in, and worship of, a superhuman entity, a real need for a personal God. Christians believe that God created Man in his own image, but it can be equally argued that the development of mankind caused Man to Create God in his own image as something to to mould to their own requirements. Their own personal God to twist and manipulate to their own ever changing needs, in an ever changing world”.
The band on this release was: Pete Bingham – guitars and noises, Colin Consterdine – beats, keyboards and electronics, Lee Relfe – sax, Glenda Pescado – bass and Elfin Bow (vocals track 8).
He has a lot of nice detailed comments about the different versions of the albums that exists and edits as the early records were different in different countries and the CD versions, some times were all messed up. There is a small picture gallery with some of the different artwork covers shown and some live and studio pictures of the band. The 50th Anniversary Edition Box set sounds like it is a must have for fans based on the input he uses from this box set in the book.
The author of course goes through each track from each album and he is surprisingly critical of many of the tracks, which makes you believe, he only really loves some of the bands tracks and that there is way too much filler in many ways. It is a band where two of the guys did not like each other at all and did not even record in the studio together (often) for their albums. For me, this would be a really hard situation to be in a band with someone I did not get along with at all and do that for years live and in the studio. The bands last concert was in August 1978 (before getting back together 25 years later).
While reading this book I listened to all the Focus albums that I own this week. That was fun to hear them. The live one is great and a lot of Focus 3 as well. A very interesting book and I was surprised to find out how popular the solo albums were with several being top 10 albums for Thijs and Jan. Quite an interesting story. If you like Focus you will learn a lot for sure. Well done.
Wait and See has a sort of darker mood to it with a steady drum and bass and focus to start on the keyboard lines with the guitar coming in after a couple of minutes but mainly playing accents to the keys. Around 4mins the mellotron like keyboard comes in and the drums stop for 20 seconds and then it comes back a bit more intense with the first real rocking guitar solo of the LP so far. The title track is next and starts very spacey and floating, a good contrast to the mood of the previous track. After a bit more than a minute the melodic guitar line kicks in (perhaps Michael?). This is a beautiful track. Éinstúrzende Plattenbauten changes the vibe completely and is more experimental psychedelic, especially at the start and then the drums fade up and off we go. Kraut like rhythm and then the guitar and layers of synths help you to disappear into the piece. Just too short though as I was totally into it and it ends before 4 mins. The album ends with the long track called Vast and for me this was the highlight of the album. A true musical masterpiece. Great work Nick… loved it!!! Check out the great interview with Nick to learn more about this project.
CD2 (Sides 4-6) features longer tracks and starts off with Sons of Ohm. Telefunken Baby, has some analog synth bubbles as the guitar line slowly fades up and off we go. While the guitar line remains much the same, the synths lead the way with bubbles and smooth pads, and solos. Alber Jupiter starts off with a bass line and then the Neu drums kick in. This one is super repetitive with the drums and bass. Guitars are quite nice after a bit. Just go with the flow… The Lost Stoned Pandas created a track that starts with a sample called Motorik Wah Nine, and yes.. features a lot of wah guitar. The drums are thin and weak in the sound, which is a pity as this track could have had some balls. It is all about the wah guitar on this one!! Great track and I got totally sucked into the groove. Motorik are next with a track called Tyrants! Very repetitive groove so focus on the guitar or you go crazy. Some nice heavier guitars mix things up about 4mins in. This sort of Neu groove is very popular on this compilation. Culto al Qondor from Peru stat off spacey, then the bass line starts, then the kick drum and delay guitar and off we go with a very long repeated section before a lot starts to change very subtly. Slowly a spaced out voice is used to create some psychedelic atmospheres as you get drawn into the madness. The rhythm and beat is quite the same for a very long time but then drums start to throw in little fills here and there to mix it up. Cool stuff. Psychic Lemon close out side 6 or CD2 with one called Jam 7. The Neu rhythm is running in the background under a slowly developing flange guitar line. Quite hypnotic..
The Bonus CD features Taras Bulba (ex-Earthiing Society folk) get 2 tracks, Vince Cory (Sonic Trip Project), Audio Cologne Project, Icarus Peel, Psychic Lemon (jam 5) and a long amazing version of Watussi by the Legendary Flower Punk from St. Petersburg! Great stuff.. Highly recommended.
