Gong – I See You (2014)

Gong – I See You (2014)

Gong – I See You (2014) How old you are? “I See You” will be probably the swan song of this legendary band which spinning around for the last 47 years. Brain-child of Daevid Allen, other notable band members include Tim Blake, Didier Malherbe, Pip Pyle, Gilli Smyth, Steve Hillage, Francis Moze, Mike Howlett and Pierre Moerlen. Others who have briefly played in Gong include Bill Bruford, Brian Davison, Don Cherry and Chris Cutler.
This is an effervescent mixture of progressive, psychedelic and space rock reaching out the border of jazz fusion and other vivid experiments. With a tasteful addition of mythology.
Gong was formed in 1967, after Daevid Allen — at that time a member of Soft Machine — was denied re-entry to the United Kingdom because of a visa complication. Allen remained in France where he and a London-born Sorbonne professor, Gilli Smyth, established the first incarnation of the band. Read more Gong – I See You (2014)

Blue Willa – Blue Willa (2013)

Blue Willa Blue Willa is the debut album by the Italian art rock quartet bearing that same name. The band had been touring and recording for years under the name Baby Blue, but then they decide it that the time has come for change and came up with a brand new identity: Blue Willa.
They explains: “Continuing a story which lasted seven years and three records so far, we decided to carry on our pursuit for a sound that would fit neatly onto our ideas asking a person we unquestionably loved to help us fulfill it.
We called on Carla Bozulich, whom we had met in Florence some four years ago, and she immediately got involved and interested in our plans.
We spent ten days in the Italian countryside, working side by side with her and our sound engineer, Davide Cristiani. Carla took care of our songs and sounds, proposing shapes and a whole new imagery for them. She made our sounds feel aquatic, ringing and overturned: a sort of underwater punk rock music from the Thirties.
This music then went on to be mixed and fixed on the Himalayan mountainside and in Paris: it is a pleasant thought for us to imagine that something from these places – as well from our provinces – got entangled and caught inside these songs.”
And well, this is really a journey to folk flavored punk, psychedelic rock and vivid experimentalism, but also to yet undiscovered places, unrevealed sounds. Read more Blue Willa – Blue Willa (2013)

Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso UFO – Son Of A Bitches Brew (2012)

Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. – Son Of A Bitches Brew (2012) Heavy Psychedelia this time merged with Electric Jazz with consistent Miles Davis aroma. References to key recordings or artists/bands of Rock/Metal/Psychedelic or Jazz were always incorporated in their works, but never so directly referential as this time. You need balls, or talent, or both to enter the musical world previously build by Davis, John McLaughlin, Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, Wayne Shorter, Bennie Maupin, and the list is extremely long and filled only with valuable artist. But these Japanese sonic samurais, got balls, got talent, but also the healthy craziness necessary for genuine creation.
“Son Of Bitches A Brew” – with it’s a clear reference to Frank Zappa as well – will not be an easy walk through some sunny sound fields, AMT are delivering extremely dense and vivid incursions into the outer limits of the known musical universe, they not only merging genres, but radically different layers and sounds mostly in the same song their building.
With Kawabata Makoto raging on his guitar, Shimura Koki smashing to pieces his drum kit, Tsuyama Atsushi grinding the bass, Higashi Hiroshi turning his synthesizers inside-out, while Tsuyama Atsushi replacing Wayne Shorter on saxophone, this trip can’t be nothing but dangerously wonderful. Read more Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso UFO – Son Of A Bitches Brew (2012)

Skafandr – Glaz (2012)

Labeled “dub metal” and delivered directly from Saint-Petersburg, Russia, “Glaz” it’s an absolutely refrashing mixture of metal and dub, one of the most efficient and criminal combination of this genres far as I heard. We’ve got 10 perfectly groovy and killer tracks.Evgenii Rybnikov – guitar, Igor Rusinovich – guitar, Yuri Vitel – bass-guitar, and Kirill Soloviev – drums find not only the perfect balance between styles, but actually write a couple of great songs, which, we have to admit it, it’s kind of rare thing in the nowadays excessively patternized music… industry. In other words, Skafandr have soul. Read more Skafandr – Glaz (2012)

Pop Will Eat Itself – New Noise Designed by a Sadist (2011)

I wrote about PWEI just a few weeks back, reminding of their album “Dos Dedos Mis Amigos” and announcing the good news: on 3rd October 2011, after a 17 years gap, PWEI will release their sixth studio album entitled “New Noise Designed By A Sadist”. And time’s up, here we go again. 11 tracks, the guys sounds fresh and still kicking like two decades ago and they bring us a little bit of chaos & mayhem, some old-school (cool 🙂 ) noises and anti-plastic anthems. It feels like yesterday, but it’s so now and eventually looking into the future.
In few words: they are back to business! Dig out your dancing shoes, grab your air guitar and bang your head: you’re so wasted! Read more Pop Will Eat Itself – New Noise Designed by a Sadist (2011)

Pop Will Eat Itself – Dos Dedos Mis Amigos (1994)

Released on 19th September 1994, the fifth album by The Poppies, also known as PWEI, “Dos Dedos Mis Amigos” bring to the surface a more industrial face of the band. Also, PWEI’s political stance became more explicit with the release of the single “Ich Bin Ein Auslander”, a collaboration with Asian group Fun-Da-Mental, song which was based on the uprise of racial tension throughout Britain during 1994 and reached the UK Top 30.
The album peaked at #11 in the UK Albums Chart and the single “Everything’s Cool” became the band’s ninth Top 30 UK hit.
PWEI found some new popularity after signing with Trent Reznor’s Nothing Records in the US, and touring with Nine Inch Nails, as well as having their songs used on the PlayStation game Loaded. In the same year they featured on The Prodigy’s album “Music for the Jilted Generation”, on the song “Their Law”. Read more Pop Will Eat Itself – Dos Dedos Mis Amigos (1994)