***** New Prog supergroup bring joy in fragmented times Drummer Craig Blundell, keyboard player Adam Holzman and bass player Nick Beggs began playing together on Steven Wilson's Hand. Cannot. Erase tour in 2015. They also joined Steven on his To the Bone tour in 2018 and 2019. When Steven went off for a cup of …
Fear of a Blank Planet by Porcupine Tree – Album Review
The band's 2007 classic album ***** Lasse Hoile's striking cover image for Fear of a Blank Planet Within Porcupine Tree's canon of eleven studio albums, their 2007 album Fear of a Blank Planet has a similar status to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in the Pink Floyd catalogue, a cohesive and deeply-satisfying concept …
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All That I Am and All That I Was by Ms Amy Birks – Album Review
**** Achingly beautiful music in troubled times In those distant days before the world was gripped by the hands of a virus that forced us all into lockdown, I was on my way back home on a train from London. I was doing some research on my laptop into the Prog Rock band Porcupine Tree …
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Manchester Collective: Cries and Whispers – Live Review
The White Hotel, Salford Saturday 14 March 2020 Everything they touch turns to musical gold ***** Dmitri Shostakovich This was a concert for troubled times. Manchester Collective's Managing Director, Adam Szabo thanked us for braving the weather and the virus. He said that this performance, the end of a short tour, would be the end …
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Britten The Turn of the Screw – Opera Review
Opera North The Lowry, Salford Wednesday 11 March 2020 A superbly creepy staging of Britten's masterpiece ***** Sarah Tynan as the Governess and Nicholas Watts as Peter Quint ©Tristram Kenton The small scale of the forces involved in Benjamin Britten's 1954 opera was evident when the whole cast came on stage at the end to take …
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Red (1974) by King Crimson – Album Review
John Wetton, Bill Bruford and Robert Fripp Part III of How I learned to listen to King Crimson King Crimson's 1974 album Red is a challenging listen, partly because it refuses to be categorised. It's progressive rock, heavy rock, proto-metal, jazz, contemporary classical, full of terrible beauty and actual beauty. The musicianship is of the …
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Dream Theater – Live Review
Celebrating 20 Years of Scenes from a Memory Dream Theater SEC Armadillo, Glasgow Sunday 23 February 2020 A stunning stage show with virtuosic guitar playing **** The Armadillo in Glasgow somehow seemed appropriate for a stage set that began with futuristic images of robots on the big screen, revealing some of their innards just as …
How I learned to listen to King Crimson
A huge compression of grinding guitar riffs and stupefying bass, only upstaged on occasion by drumming that reminds me of the time my pet frog was squashed by seven falling refrigerators. Paul Ferguson, Amazon Review of Thrak by King Crimson, February 2003 I hope Paul’s frog survived. In case you are wondering whether Paul liked the album, …