Gentle Giant being down to 5 musicians do not let the listener notice it too much. The sound is still very rich mainly thanks to the myriad of keyboard sounds and the keyboardist mastery of complex arrangements and hooks. Drumming has become a bit more streamlined (at least they sound more contemporary). Guitar playing gives harder edge to the music but can become quite muscular and supports the progressive direction. As usual with GG, the first track blows me away, this time it is less because of vocals and more because of very complex rhythm structure and subtle keyboard workouts. "An inmates lullaby" is an impressive lush vocal driven lullaby, maybe the most sophisticated one you've ever heard and you won't feel asleep easily ;). "Way of life" combines disco-like beat with a high number of rhythmic shifts and even medieval mini-suites with symphonic moments. This piece is overfilled with progressive moments and becomes to the best tracks by GG. It proves that even though GG could be dissonant, they could also bring harmonies together. "Experience" is perhaps the most known composition with a catchy hard-rock hook. "In a glass house" deserves the same merits as "Way of life", full excellent upbeat playing, energy and even guitar riffing.

Gentle Giant released to excellent albums in 1972 and I find "Three friends" to be a better one because of its soundscape, it is very experimental and no signs of compromising yet. It also has longer compositions to immerse in than "Octopus". "Prologue" has an ominous start and reminds a bit of King Crimson and Magma but no way ripping anything off, the rhytm is very irregular, the bass sets the tension and keyboards greatly fill the space with Hammond/synths/moog. "Schooldays" brings alteration with medieval vocals and jazzy keyboards. How they managed to combine this masterfully with the evil seemingly unrelated piano chords is beyond my understanding. The third part of the composition is a venture into a fast honky-tonky territory. Incredible amount of ideas. "Peel the paint" is one of the most successful GG hard rock composition, but don't think of a few-second riff, this one has a complex and long hook, I also love the raw guitar and intensive drumming. "Three friends" is a beautiful symphonic composition with semi-church organ/melotron and excellent vocal harmonies. It has a majestic chord sequence that Focus wouldn't be ashamed of. Excellent GG album, once again.

Hi fellow Prog rockers and music lovers. Steven Wilson, early into his solo career comes out with an album that has every bit of sophistication, imagination and production quality of the great albums we know and love from the golden age of prog rock with a slight sense of contemporary.

Featuring some guest musicians that we are all well acquainted with such as Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater) and Steve Hacket (Yes) and the somewhat familiar lineup long time collaborators Nick Beggs and Theo Travis the musicianship is high quality but in some parts more so in terms of creativity and or imagination rather than "sport" playing although they have their individual moments to shine in their own right.

The album has a very early 70's vertigo swirl record production sound to the music that I would classify as eclectic/prog/fusion rock and in my view is more a night time album where you have the time and lack of distractions so one can really dig deep into the music because there is a lot of great content along with quite long tracks.

I give this Album a solid 4 stars and in my view it is definitely SW's best prog/eclectic fusion rock album which conjures up all the elements of a classic vertigo swirl album from the early 70's and beyond with added requiem/choir parts , beautiful use of space/atmosphere along with some contemporary programming of course has a beautiful audiophile engineering production standard throughout the album as we have come to expect from this artist.

Definitely get this album, you will not be dissapointed but approach with an open mind and allow enough time to hear the whole album as it has a flow to the tracks. This album definitely grew on me after a few full album listens and now its my favourite from Steven. GET THE SURROUND SOUND VERION AND ENJOY IN 5.1

Over the years I have found Arne Schäfer (lead & backing vocals, electric & acoustic guitars, keyboards, bass, orchestrations) and Eberhard Graef (drums & percussion) to be a little hit and miss with some albums worth investigating, others somewhat in the middle, and others definitely ones to avoid. However, I did really enjoy the last two, so I had high hopes of this one, only to feel somewhat let down. Although they are rightly deemed to be crossover on PA, they have always had a high amount of neo in their style and have been seen as being somewhat at the forefront of the 90's revival in their native Germany. I think the best word to describe this album is "bland", as while there is nothing awfully dramatically wrong with it there is also little here to get excited about.

I found I kept thinking of one of Clive Nolan's many projects he used to undertake, with somewhat of a theatrical bent, but not delivered in anything like the same degree. Even when Arne has the guitar wailing and the drums are driving forward as on opener "No-one But Ourselves", it just feels somewhat staid and almost formulaic. Four of the six songs on this set are more than ten minutes in length, something any proghead will gladly sink their teeth into, yet they meander without direction or emotion, leaving the listener unsatisfied yet bloated at the same time. Let us hope this is just a one-off and the next one finds them with more bite and verve, but this just feels there is not enough clarity and space and the arrangements have been layered in the hope that something will come out of it, but it didn't.

Three years after Derbe Respect, Alder, Faust would expand a bit more on their industrial portfolio by doing another collaboration album. This time, instead of reaching towards the Americas with hip hop, they decided to reach out towards Ireland in pursuit of a very experimental direction, one that, while not as bold as their previous, certainly bode a uniqueness among their past outputs.

This time they collabed with Nurse With Wound (or NWW). Nurse With Wound is a group I haven't heard much of, admittedly only one record being A Sucked Orange, and also this as well. Formed in 1978, they have developed the industrial and noise scenes ever since, being next to greats like the disturbing oldies of Throbbing Gristle, the foreboding Einstürzende Neubauten, the chaotic Foetus, and the oddly sensual Coil. They even helped out on releases for my all time favorite neofolk group of Current 93. They have quite the repertoire of releases, about 91 in total according to RYM, so they clearly are the ideal group if you want help with any bizarro noise works, which Faust seemed to desire within the year of 2007.

This would be their last record in their more industrial time period as they would go for a more straight edged krautrock sound on their next, but this is certainly a good one to cap off an intriguing and noisy era from this wonderful band. We get 4 songs, each over 10 minutes in length. Each song on here has quite a lot of lovely textures and noises to go around, a speciality with NWW. I think this record has probably some of the best it has to offer when it comes to the sound production, as I can really feel each weird drone that the songs occupy. From the disoriented pulses of the title track, to the bassy grinds of It Will Take Time, I can really feel the music on here, and I really dig that. There are some records that I love that have elements such as this, namely those within post rock, so to hear a more quiet, droning album that has this much weight and girth really brings me some delight.

I do also wanna point out my love for the drum work here, namely on Lass Mich and Tu M'Entends, both having these sharp and grooving drum lines, with Tu M'Entends building up to the anxiety and horrific tension that the track has within most of its near 15 minute run. Werner Diermeier certainly proved to be quite the master drummer, no matter the context. Makes sense since he has been with the band since their debut, so he had a lot of time perfecting his craft.

Despite all this, though, this album suffers the same problem as Derbe Respect, Alder...but in the reverse now. This time it feels like Faust is in the back, with Nurse With Wound being on center stage. In fact, I'd say the band themselves get less time to shine than dälek, weirdly enough. Sure they show up from time to time, especially Werner, but after their time in a shared spotlight with Lass Mich, they give NWW a chokehold on the songs after the fact, creating less of a balance than what their previous album even did, and it is basically worse for it in my opinion. I mentioned this before, but the best collaboration is within a shared spotlight, not with one artist in the sun while the other is in their shadow. This does not feel like Faust WITH Nurse With Wound, or Nurse With Wound WITH Faust. This feels more like Nurse With Wound having Faust in their back pocket if they need them. Because of this, really only Lass Mich I can say is the best track on here since it does have both of these talented groups share the center stage. Afterwards though, you might as well count it more as a Nurse With Wound album.

This record is good, but certainly not great, and it was probably a message to Faust that they aren't quite shaped up for the world of collaborations. They would still work on occasion with some notable artists later down the line, such as with Keiji Haino on 2022's 这条路是正确的 This Is the Right Path, but the artists are more for features than collabs. This is certainly an interesting album, especially for the end of Faust's industrial zone, so I'd say it is a good listen if you can manage to find it, but I cannot quite rank it on the same tier as Ravvivando or The Last LP.

Best track: Lass Mich

Worst tracks: Disconnected, Tu M'Entends, It Will Take Time

It is strange to think that Pierre Salkazanov was one of the pioneers of electronic music in France, releasing three albums before stopping in 1983 because he was too busy. It took more than 30 years before he revisited the music he had been working on for his fourth album, but after he purchased an Arturia Origin synthesiser in 2014 he started playing again, and this is his fourth work since then. I came across him with the release of his last album, 'Chaos Islands', which I thoroughly enjoyed, so I was pleased when I came across this one, which was released towards the end of last year.

This is music which has been heavily influenced by Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, and Jean Michel Jarre and in some ways is quite dated because of that yet somehow also feels very modern. Unlike some performers working in this field there is always a sense of purpose and drive, and little of the meandering use of effects which some seem to rely on. This is not dance music, it is electronic which sometimes has a symphonic edge, and is something which can be readily enjoyed the first time it is played yet there are numerous threads which keep building the layers so there is always more to discover within. I don't listen to too much of this style of music and I was somewhat surprised to see how easily I fell into his world. This is where he explores the idea of being immersed in the future, suggesting a sense of adventure, uncertainty, and the enigmatic nature of what lies ahead, and is the perfect accompaniment to any science fiction book you may currently be reading. Zanov was working on his latest album when he was 76 so one can only wonder how many more we will be getting from him, but this is a delight and a great place to start investigating his music.

The Pewt'r Sessions ended up being three albums that CAUSA SUI released all featuring keyboardist Ron Schneiderman. We also get Rasmus Rasmussen on keyboards here along with the usual trio of Jonas Munk on guitar, keys, FX and electronics, Jess Kahr on bass and Jakob Skott on drums. There is a lot going on during these sessions, a lot of layers at times. Six tracks and 46 minutes in length these sessions are sort of the darker and heavier answer to the "Summer Sessions" trio of albums released previous to these. Those featured the trio plus a guest sax player and were lighter, more trippy soundscapes.

"Pewt'r Wozniacki" opens the recording with a catchy guitar melody that is repeated with bass, drums and more. They amp it up at 5 minutes and this certainly sounds better. The guitar is more of the focus 7 minutes in. It starts to wind down late and blends into "May Sun" which blends into "Wasted Milk". Same with side two where all the tracks blend into the next without a break. "May Sun" is the trippiest piece and shortest at 4 1/2 minutes while "Wasted Milk" is close to 9 minutes in length and I like the distortion and angular sounds. The drums are more of the focus here especially starting around 2 1/2 minutes. Cool sounding stuff will follow like the guitar soloing over that distorted rhythm. They start getting more passionate and check out the guitar 7 minutes in along with the brief IOMMI tribute.

"Streams Of Gratitude" opens with electronics like a sequencer as spacey twittering sounds join in too. This is different but good. Blends into "Mating Call" the longest and the energy level picks up quickly here with the guitar soloing over top. It's more intense at 2 minutes. A lot of repetitive sections on this one. "Latte Rock" yes this is what we have become eh? Double double for me but as for the song it's quite understated but the intricate sounds mixed together moving along including electronics is pretty impressive. It turns more spacey late as it winds down.

I really like this album, there's a lot more to it than you would think. These become evident with repeated listens and count me a fan of these sessions. A solid 4 stars.

The band does not make any trade-off in creating another ultra-complex, non-commercial output that few other bands could match. Using no conventional song format and also not relying on loose jamming, crafting music filled with so many ideas is a very daunting task. Nevertheless, I still thing that this one is more memorable mainly thanks to the developed classical music inspired singing that has become GG's trademark. The first composition is already a masterpiece (primary falsetto vocal reminding of Focus), great elegant chord sequences. The second track is not that distinctive but what an achievement on the King Crimson heavy-like "The house, the street, the room". The chorus is excellent with great riffing and then mellow keyboard/vocal led movement. "Wreck" is another distinctive number with folk main motive and Renaissance thanks to intelligent harpsichord and flute intermezzos. The soaring guitar complements the emotional track. "The moon is down" is notable for its keyboard-heavy footprint be it elegant or playful. Gentle Giant were in lead in 1971 when it comes to compositional complexity. While other progressive rock bands may have had better playing abilities or create more symphonic pieces, GG were the most elaborate and dense.

As they did with previous album Hyderomastgroningem, insane Japanese band Zeuhl mix their regular brand of thrashing around in a small room full of instruments, with more refined (but still heavily Avant-Garde) genuine compositional talent. The title track gives the impression that you're in for some chaos, but at Stara Planina and Eccentric Ditch we actually have something that's almost on the verge of catchy. Much of what follows though is noise and nonsense I'm afraid! That's followed by live versions of some previous tracks - of no more interest than the "studio" efforts. As a musical trivia quiz, check out the 3 minute prog rock medley at the end.

The prolific saxophonist sticks solely with the alto sax on this album, and has almost left Zeuhl behind other than a few reminiscent passages and the presence of brilliant Zao drummer Jean-My Truong. There's lots of programming involved, mostly jazz fusion throughout. To be honest, not easy to be engaged with all in one go, there's only so much solo saxophone improvisation you can take! I wouldn't pick out many tracks as highlights but Avoda is decent, as is Raspoutine as a good example of the electronic/programmed element of Seffer's style of Jazz (and with a bit less Sax!). A lot of it is quite atonal, which is great when used right, but I think there's just a bit too much of it here