Showing posts with label Canterbury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canterbury. Show all posts

Monday, 23 March 2015

Sanguine Hum

Now We Have Light (2015)

Oxford based progressive band ... 'it's a double concept album!!'

Chat Show ... 
 A quality not unlike much of the music that came out of Canterbury in the 1960/70s from groups like Egg, early Soft Machine and Hatfield and the North—the latter, in particular, one of the more important of Sanguine Hum's many touchstones (along with everything from Frank Zappa and Steve Reich to Bass Communion, Mahavishnu Orchestra and ECM Records). While the members of Sanguine Hum are unmistakably accomplished musicians who live in the world called post-progressive rock, their music possesses the same lack of self-importance, excess and "look at me" attitude that some say plagued many of progressive rock's bigger names but which those Canterbury bands managed to largely avoid.

Sanguine Hum may, in fact, be based in Oxford, England, but they're Canterburians at heart...albeit Canterburians of an unmistakably modern bent with a similarly bizarre sense of humour and a belief that, no matter how complex the music gets, melody—albeit pushed to its greatest extremes—remains paramount. Sanguine Hum may have many touchstones in the past, but its music is undeniably 21st century...in the case of Now We Have Light, perhaps, even farther ahead, as its story takes place at an unidentified future time when the story's hero, Don (just Don), has been the cause of an apocalyptic event that has reduced the earth to "The Circle"—a gated community constructed by rich survivors to protect themselves from the consequences of a ravaged planet—and the nearby village of ramshackle homes that survive only due to its proximity to "The Wheel." It's in one of these homes that Don lives, with both his neighbors and those living in "The Wheel" thankfully (for him) unaware that he was the singular creator of all their woes... allaboutjazz ...

Derision ... 

Bubble trouble ..

 

Sunday, 6 July 2014

Cos

Babel (1978) ...

Belgian euro-jazz fusion with shades of Magma ... almost Zeuhl with some Canterbury influence...

Babel ...


Oostend - Oostend ...



Philippe Allaert – drums, percussion
Daniel Schell – guitars; flutes
Marc Hollander – organ; sax
Pascale Son – vocals; oboe
Alain Goutier – bass 
With:
Nicolas Fiszman – guitars, bass
Charles Loos – piano, organ
Francois Cahen – piano 
Marc Moulin – organ 
Dick Bogaert – flute
progressor.net 



Greeneldo ...
"The Mutant Sounds website describes the album Babel by the Belgian prog rock band Cos like this: “Serious lump-in-throat jazzy prog beauty of the highest order here, people! Cos were a euphorically sublime Belgian group featuring a pre-Aksaq Maboul Marc Hollander that operated somewhere between the jazz rock magnetic poles of Canterbury and Zeuhl, taking the airy wistfulness of Hatfield And The North from the former and the ecstatic female vocal-driven rubric of early Zao from the latter, though by the time they'd arrived at this, their third album and (for me at least) definitive statement, a distinct disco component was becoming a factor, something that just pushes this from the gorgeous to the level of near-supernatural for me (after all...er...Canterbury disco-prog??), but has also managed to leave those not swayed by the (self-evident, methinks) beauty of a concept like disco-prog less than swept away. Well....phooey to them! This is one of the very pinnacles of Euro prog in my book and Pascal Son one of the greatest female progressive vocalists. Bliss awaits thee...”  A couple other fairly well-known names in this outfit not mentioned above include: Daniel Schell (guitar, flutes, composer), Marc Hollander (organ), Marc Moulin of Placebo (organ), and François Cahen of Magma (piano)." ...popsike.com...



Friday, 30 May 2014

Nanu Urwerk

Irgendwo nicht weit von hier ...

Not much known about this band from Hamburg.  This was a private pressing in 1978... Very Canterburian, German fusion with hints of Zappa maybe ...

Hear and Now ...










Thursday, 22 May 2014

Matching Mole

Matching Mole's Little Red Record ...

'Machine Molle' ...a French pun on Robert Wyatt's former group Soft Machine ... 

Righteous Rumba and Brandy as in Benji ... 



Backing vocals by Julie Christie ...


Thursday, 15 May 2014

Spirogyra

Bells, Boots & Shambles ...

This Spirogyra was a progressive folk group based around Martin Cockerham and Barbara Gaskin ...a quite unique sound.  All three of their albums are now re-released on CD ...

Bells Boots & Shambles ...



Spirogyra Cherry Red...


Wednesday, 14 May 2014

National Health

National Health ...

One of the greatest bands of the 1970s ... Often labelled 'prog' but much more than anything lazy categorizing can tell...

Tenemos Roads ... from the first album (Affinity, 1977)



National Health record...
















The Collapso ... from second album Of Queues and Cures, which in parts turns into variations on ...

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