Psych
Track: Velvet Morning – ‘You’re Blue, I’m Blue’
Taking their name from one of my all-time favourite retro psych tracks, Velvet Morning create a musical concoction made up of all the best cuts from the past 50 years of psych, blues and soul and serve it up as a beautiful dish to add to the current new wave psychedelia menu. ‘You’re Blue, I’m …
A beginners’ guide to Peter Gabriel
From progressive rock pioneer, to art rocker, to world music conduit, to pop star, to multi-media explorer, Peter Gabriel has covered a tremendous amount of ground in his four and a half decades in the music industry, ensuring him an unarguable place among popular music’s icons. Starting as frontman for Genesis, from 1969 onwards he …
Live Review: The Gluts & White Hills – Bloom, Mezzago (Milano) 25.04.15
Ever since I had first clapped ears on The Gluts‘ debut LP ‘Warsaw’, I had been longing for the opportunity to see them play live. There was the small matter of their being based in Milan, which is only 1475km from Belfast as the crow flies… No matter, when the opportunity for The Gluts to open for White …
Say Psych: Album Review – Keeper of the Dawn by Ancient River
At a time when every man and his bong can be said to be exploring the final frontier with cathedral reverb plastered all over their stoned guitar noodling, it is becoming increasingly difficult to stand apart from the rabble. Ancient River try their best at saying something new by, perversely, not saying very much at …
Psych Insight: New Music – Open Visions EP by Kobadelta
There is something of the night about Kobadelta, in the way that there is something of the night about The Amazing Snakeheads. The band’s songs are reminiscent of drunken late nights in back alleys where under the haze of darkness and incoherence, they stumble across liminal realities which the band crystallise through their music. I …
A beginners’ guide to Pink Floyd
With The Beatles having called it a day, Bob Dylan walking in the opposite direction of the psychedleic counter-culture and The Rolling Stones having reached a critical mass they would never exceed, throughout 1970s there was only one band that even vaguely threatened Led Zeppelin’s positiion as the biggest act on the planet. That band …
Listen : Dublin psych band Tomorrows draw on the spirit of krautrock for “Another Life”
My oh my, have you heard Tomorrows’ “Another Life”? No? Well you really should. It’s like a druggy, sunny afternoon baking in the rays with someone you wouldn’t mind melting into the earth with. It’s like a hot air balloon ride into the stratosphere. It’s like a stroll into the ether and laughing all the …
Album Review: Sonic Jesus – ‘Neither Virtue Nor Anger’
‘Neither Virtue Nor Anger’ by Sonic Jesus, is perhaps 2015’s most eagerly anticipated debut LP, certainly for those fortunate souls who take their music with more than just a pinch of gravitas. Few releases have me contemplating the juxtaposition of Platonist preponderance over Aristotle’s ‘Ethica Nicomachea’, combined with Blake’s adherence that “there is no suffering except …
Psych Insight: Album Review – Hypnophobia by Jacco Gardner
Well Jacco’s caught me out again. When I first came across his music ahead of the Liverpool PsychFest in 2013 I was fairly unimpressed by what I heard that I didn’t have him on my list to see. I caught him quite by mistake while finding myself in the same room as he was performing, …
Live: Sonic Jesus (Album Launch) & The Underground Youth – The Waiting Room, London 16.04.2015
I appreciate that people generally make the pilgrimage TO Ireland, but this was one divine intervention I was not going to miss for anything… Two years in the making and the day finally arrives for the official unveiling of the debut album by Sonic Jesus – ‘Neither Virtue Nor Anger’. (Full LP Review to follow). In a …