Author Archives: brianmc

Album review : IGNESCENT – Eternal

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Frontiers Music [Release date : 20.03.26] Judge a hot band by the company they keep. Ignescent have opened for Flyleaf, Skillet, Stryper and many other headline metal/hard rock acts in recent years. You could hear the influences of these bands … Continue reading

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Album review : WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT – Film and TV Music Of The Swinging Sixties (3 CDs)

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Cherry Red [Release date 27.03.26] The label says : “An aural soundtrack for a generation who grew up listening, not only to great pop music, but a feast of TV and Film themes”. Indeed it is, for more than one … Continue reading

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Album review : BLODWYN PIG – The Recordings 1969-74 (3 CDs, Remastered and Expanded)

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Cherry Red [Release date : 20.03.26] Blodwyn Pig had quite some pedigree. 1968: Founding member Mick Abrahams (guitar/vocals) came straight from Jethro Tull, after some conflicts with Ian Anderson over musical direction. Co-founder Jack Lancaster, sax and flute virtuoso, had … Continue reading

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Album review : THE VENUS 5 – The March Of The Venus 5

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Frontiers Music [Release date: 20.03.26] What’s so attractive about Venus 5’s second album is its refusal to choose one discrete genre, sub-genre, whatever. It dances around the fringes of pop metal, heavy metal and symphonic metal, all laced with tight … Continue reading

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Album review : ASIA – Live In England

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Frontiers Music [Release date : 13.03.26] Set in the heart of the East Sussex countryside, at night the Trading Boundaries Café transforms into an award winning live music venue, hosting concerts from world class artists in an intimate setting. Not … Continue reading

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Album review : THE LONG RYDERS – High Noon Hymns

THE 150 LONG RYDERS High Noon

Cherry Red [Release date 13.03.26] The Long Ryders are a band who’ve been long associated with the advent of the Paisley Underground movement in the early eighties. Also Punk, Country Rock, Clarence White, Gene Clark, Walter Hill and The Byrds. … Continue reading

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Album review : BLACK SWAN – Paralyzed

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Frontiers Music [Release date : 27.02.26] Four years after Black Swan’s second album, Generation Mind, comes Paralyzed, with the four horsemen, Robin McAuley, Reb Beach, Jeff Pilson and Matt Starr riding quickly into view. So called “supergroups”, of which this … Continue reading

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Album review : MOUNTAIN – Don’t Look Around – The Recordings 1969-74 (7 CD boxset)

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Cherry Red/Esoteric [Release date : 27.02.26] CD1: Leslie West – Mountain (1969) CD2: Mountain Live At Woodstock (1969) CD3: Climbing (1970) 2 bonus tracks CD4: Nantucket Sleighride (1971) CD5: Flowers Of Evil (1971) 2 bonus tracks CD6: Twin Peaks (1974) … Continue reading

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Album review : MICHAEL MONROE – Outerstellar

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Silver Lining Music [Release date : 20.02.26] Michael Monroe is on his 13th album now, with the same lineup as last half dozen or so, Steve Conte, Sam Yaffa, Rich Jones and Karl Rockvist, and so you expect more of … Continue reading

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Album review : GENE PARSONS – Kindling And Beyond, The Solo Recordings 1973-1986 (5 CD Boxset)

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Cherry Red [Release date 20.02.26] There can’t have been a music fan who lived through the sixties or the seventies who were unaware of The Byrds and/ or The Flying Burrito Brothers. And if they knew them, they would know … Continue reading

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Album review : ROSE TATTOO – The albums 1981-84 (4 CD boxset)

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Cherry Red [Release date : 20.02.26] Rose Tattoo. Now, there was a band.  Still is, in fact. Fiftieth anniversary this year.  Only man left standing from the original lineup is loud and fearless vocalist, Angry Anderson. When it all began … Continue reading

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Album review : TRANSATLANTIC RADIO – Midnight Transmission

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Frontiers Music [Release date : 20.02.26] Swedish émigré and fully fledged Angeleno since the nineties, bass playing Victor Broden is a Grammy winning musician and producer. He moved to LA on a wing and prayer, with the echoes of the AOR … Continue reading

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Album review : TEMPLE BALLS – s/t

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Frontiers Music [Release date : 13.02.26] Some of us have lived a sheltered life. Apparently “temple balls” are “one of the oldest varieties of medical marijuana”. Not a lot of people know that. And so a self titled release at … Continue reading

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Album review : This Can’t Be Today – American Psychedelia and The Paisley Underground 1977-88

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Cherry Red [Release date : 13.02.26] In the sixties, the term “Underground Music” bubbled up to the surface. It became associated with the counterculture and psychedelia, as teens and twenties began to find their voice, in life and in music, … Continue reading

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Album review : AUSTEN STARR – I Am The Enemy

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Frontiers Music [Release date : 13.02.26] The label have teamed new kid on the block, vocalist Austen Starr, with Joel (Revolution Saints/ Whitesnake) Hoekstra, and together they’ve written a bunch of edgy rock songs that allow both talents to shine. … Continue reading

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Album review : WILD HORSES – Standing Our Ground (6 CD Boxset)

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Cherry Red [Release date 13.02.26] The two Wild Horses’ studio albums were arguably the last gasp of seventies’ hard rock before it went under. Glaswegian forces of nature, Brian Robertson and Jimmy Bain, guitar and bass (and vocals), had jumped … Continue reading

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Album review : FREDDIE AND THE DREAMERS – You Were Made For Me, The Complete Recordings, 1963-70

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Cherry Red [Release date: 30.01.26] The Complete Recordings’ Boxset is a feat of logistics and research in itself, for which it deserves 5 stars, never mind the music. 136 tracks, 5 CDs. In the “Swinging Sixties” Manchester band Freddie And … Continue reading

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Album review : ANDREW GOLD – Lonely Boy – The Asylum Years Anthology (6 CDs + DVD)

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Esoteric Recordings / Cherry Red [Release date : 30.01.26] Andrew Gold was one of the finest musicians and songwriters to emerge from the Los Angeles music scene in the mid 70s. Most will remember him as being one half of … Continue reading

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Album review : MCAULEY SCHENKER GROUP – Bad Boys, The MSG Story 1987-92 (4 CD boxset)

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Cherry Red [Release date 30.01.26] Axeman Michael Schenker’s considerable CV has been well documented over the years and it’s clearly delineated in these liner notes. Brief version: between 1972 and 1984 he cycled through The Scorpions, UFO and MSG Version … Continue reading

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Album review : FRANCIS ROSSI – The Accidental

FRANCIS ROSSI - The Accidental

earMUSIC [Release date : 30.1.26] Francis Rossi’s fifth solo album, The Accidental, sees him reconnecting with the bricks and mortar foundation that underpinned Quo’s music over the years. It’s a recording studio free-for-all eventually shaped by a longing for simple, … Continue reading

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Album review : EDDIE AND THE HOT RODS – Teenage Depression &ife On The Line (2CD set)

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Cherry Red [Release date 23.01.26] So much crammed into these “two CD” reissues from punk/ new wave/ R’n’B legends Eddie and The Hot Rods’. So much history here. Of the band, of the nascent sound of Punk. Of the talent … Continue reading

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Album review : AUTUMN’S CHILD – Melody Lane

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Pride & Joy Music [Release date 23.01.26] Mikael Erlandsson: 9 solo albums, 17 albums with Last Autumn’s Dream, 10 collaborations (with Tom Galley, Tommy Denander and others). Melody Lane is his 6th (since 2019) with Autumn’s Child, his fourth on … Continue reading

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Album review : SO HIGH I’VE BEEN European Rock Anthology 1967-73 (V/A 3CDs)

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Cherry Red [Release date 16.01.26] Time was you could tell a friend that John Peel likes this band. They would either shy away like you’ve got the plague, or embrace the band like an old friend. There was no middle … Continue reading

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Album review : ROB MORATTI – Sovereign

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Frontiers [Release date: 12.12.25] Rob Moratti’s all star cast is arguably more famous than he is : Joel Hoekstra, Tony Franklin, Felix Borg, Fredrik Bergh and Pete Alpenborg. Alpenborg’s written stuff for Harry Hess, Robin McAuley, Kee Marcello, Tommy Heart … Continue reading

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Album review : BRAZEN ABBOT – Live And Learn and Guilty As Sin (CD reissues)

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Frontiers [Release date : 12.12.25] Classically trained Bulgarian multi-instrumentalist, Nikolo Kotzev founded Brazen Abbot in 1995. He could play every stringed instrument known to rock’n’roll mankind, but needed a singer. Over these two reissues, released simultaneously, the cream of European … Continue reading

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