Ex-Dead Kennedy front man Jello Biafra’s career has been nothing if not entertaining – he ran for mayor of San Francisco on a policy that would have forced businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits – but to expect him to create an album as spittle flecked and in yer face as Dead Fruit For Rotting Vegetables almost thirty five years on is expecting a little much isn’t it? Ha! Far from being past it Biafra and Co. are a genuine and refreshing kick in the nads, the music sounding like beefed up prime time DK’s with Biafra in lyrically fine form, without doubt the best thing he has put his name to since Frankenchrist or The Power Of Lard.
The Oracle

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Most of you will be aware the Ruts were a reggae/punk outfit whose career hit a wall when their singer Malcolm Owen died in 1980, perhaps less well known is the bands output as Ruts D.C. and the hugely underrated Rhythm Collision album recorded with the Mad Professor. Now, some thirty years later, we have Rhythm Collision Vol. 2 which, if anything, is even better than its predecessor with several tracks like ‘Sun And The Stars’ and ‘Heavyweight Style’ sounding like prime time Tubby/Scientist cuts, and the tribute to Smiley Culture (who managed to stab himself to death during a police raid in 2011) counts amongst their finest
Drew Bass

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The problem with At The Drive-In was they had one hell of a job capturing their utterly unhinged live vibe on tape (watch their performance of Relationship Of Command's lead single ‘One Armed Scissor’, possibly the most fearsome performance ever recorded for Jools Holland’s Later, here). But this, their last album before fragmenting into The Mars Volta and Sparta comes closest to capturing their melding of thought provoking lyrics and aggressive adrenaline fueled racket. The more stripped down but also superb debut album Acrobatic Tenement is also being re-released by Transgressive but if you only get one make it this.
Ruby Palmer

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The second outing from Norwich based Transept and once again unsettling drones and lurching rhythm’s are the order of the day, opener ‘Happysburgh’ taking fifteen plus minutes to slowly evolve into a shuddering racket (which sounds not unlike the far off echo of a washing machine on rinse-cycle being scraped with a sitar). But fear not there is beauty to be had amongst all the industrial sonority, not least the stripped back re-reading of ‘Death Of The Sea Sentinel’ from debut TRSPT001 (just called ‘Sea Sentinel’ here) and the fantastically woozy take on Art Garfunkel’s 'Bright Eyes' which leaves you feeling seasick but content.
Ruby Palmer

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We have said it before but we are long time admirers of the multi-headed category defying, left-field Norwegian jazz-prog hydra that is Jaga Jazzist and were genuinely excited to learn that the guys and gals would be collaborating with the Britten Sinfonia and taking their walloping great Frank Zappa meets Lalo Schifrin meets Miles Davies noise into another realm entirely, and blow us down if they weren’t going to do it live! Somehow avoiding the obvious dangers of the several million people on stage crashing musically headlong into each other and these reinterpretations from their back catalogue range from playful to balls out bonkers.
Drew Bass

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Rose has built his fan-base over the years but this, his 12th album, may well be the one to bring him widespread attention. A mix of classics like 'Honey Hush', 'If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want To Be Right)' and 'Stormy Monday' would seem commonplace, however, the treatment of these standards and Rose’s superb guitar playing makes the album well worth seeking out. Guest vocalists pepper the album; Terry Evans on the beautiful, Gospel influenced 'Dark End Of The Street', Sweet Pea Atkinson on the rocking 'Ball & Chain' and Raffia Ford on the excellent R&B of 'Crazy ‘Bout You Baby' are standouts.
David Blue

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Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson’s career was a long and illustrious one, beginning in the ‘50s when he was still just a teenager developing an aggressive blues guitar playing style that would go onto influence a generation of guitarists (including Stevie Ray Vaughan and Frank Zappa who was a big fan), but it was his reinvention in the 1970s as a funk artist that proved to be his most successful period, and this double disc set collects his two finest funk moments (originally released in 1976 and 1977) in one natty package. If you only ever buy one Johnny Guitar Watson album (and you should), then make it this one.
Ray Harper

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Rodriguez’s sound is rooted in Americana (country/pop of 'Devil In Mind' and' Whiskey Runs Thicker Than Blood') and Jackson Browne and The Eagles influences abound (the ballads 'Sad Joy' and 'Cut Me Now', the latter a triumph). She uses her fiddle to great effect on the instrumental version of 'Devil In Mind' and the gritty country rock of 'I Cry For Love'. She’s not just a fiddler though; her voice is powerful in places ('Tragic'), soothing in others ('Get Back In Love') and her easy to fall for style is exemplified by nu-country songs 'Lake Harriet' and 'I Don’t Mind Waiting' as well as the strangely effective 'Brooklyn'.
David Blue

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Several bands could lay claim to breaking the ‘all boys’ rock club (we’re plumping for the aptly named Fanny from the early ‘70s), but the bubblegum rock of the Runaways aside the real first ladies of heavy rock have to be Girlschool (and any band who get the thumbs up from Lemmy have to be taken seriously). So this VFM collection of all their output for Bronze Records will be manna from heaven for rock fans the whole shebang collected together in a box which comes with four individual albums in wallets depicting original LP artwork plus bonus tracks and a booklet with detailed liner notes on the bands career with Bronze Records.
Ray Harper

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Chances are that you have already heard Woodkid (Yoann Lemoine to his mum), given that his music has been used in Nike ads, computer games and most recently as the trailer music for the BBC’s last series of Being Human – he’s also a video director of some note, but that’s a whole other story. Sounding not unlike a lower register Antony Hegarty, and like Hegarty Woodkid’s music is also on the grandiose side but with more of a galloping, percussive element which propel the songs along, dragging the listener down dark claustrophobic alleys and out into expansive lush pastures, this really is an incredibly assure debut.
Ruby Palmer

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So how do you follow a critically acclaimed solo debut album (Queen Of Denmark) recorded with psych/folk rockers Midlake? Well, if you don’t want to alienate the punters you have just picked up you probably don’t go and record an electronic album with Gus Gus’s Biggi Veira in Iceland, but thankfully John Grant is having no truck with being jammed in any pigeonholes (lest we forget he once fronted alternative rockers The Czars) and thus we have parping synths and (whisper it), disco influences underpinning Grants winning way with a lyric, and regardless of what music he is currently enjoying his way with a tune remains completely undiminished.
Drew Bass

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One of those performers that you often wondered about, Eric Burdon never actually stopped working he simply got nudged out of the spotlight, so genuine fans continued to buy, increasingly rare, albums and attend his, very regular, live performances, whilst the rest of us wrongly assumed that great voice was being wasted selling double glazing, which brings us neatly to this excellent collection of, mainly, original new material plus a brace of high fives to one of his heroes Bo Diddley (one a cover; one a tribute). No reinvention of the wheel here, just a 71 year old master blues singer doing what he does best, and doing it bloody well.
The Oracle

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Being the son of a Rock legend doesn’t guarantee you success but Devon Allman has enough talent to make it on his own. Fresh from his collaboration with Cyril Neville and others in Royal Southern Brotherhood, Allman releases his debut solo album mixing blues with country ('When I Left Home' and 'Don’t Set Me Free'), soul ('Into The Darkness') and rock ('Homesick', 'Strategy' and Tom Petty’s 'Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around') delivering an album that you can use to rock out to or find your mellow side. Santana style guitar, excellent backing vocals from Samantha Fish and songs that make you feel at ease are trademarks.
David Blue

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Can’t imagine that a less ‘cool’ album will be released this year as progressive jazz rock is about as hip as, erm, actually is there a genre less hip than progressive jazz rock? It’s also only got four tracks, two of which are over thirteen minutes in length and, natch, there are no men (or women) to be found vocalising herein. So why should you buy it? Well how about the fact it features loads of great dusty old stuff like Mellotron’s, glockenspiel’s, flutes, Moog's and Phil Manzanera’s most angular guitar noises in years? It also sounds like Caravan meets Hatfield and the North via Echoes era Pink Floyd. Cool be damned this is hot.
Ray Harper

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Welcome to the big time, Martin Harley! Mixing things up with the reggae beat of 'Rum Shack' and acoustic folk of 'Cardboard King', the latter rivalling current overlords, Sheerin and Howard. However, it’s when he unleashes Ry Cooder influenced electric slide on 'Working For The Man', 'Mean Old City' and 'Ball & Chain' that he shines. The title track hints at the White Stripes and 'Wrecking Ball' at Jazz, Blues and Big Band whereas 'Tightrope' and' Treading Water' show acoustic class, the former a marriage of Paolo Nutini and The Stereophonics. Harley has it all – voice, guitar artistry and the songs. Can’t wait for a live performance!
David Blue

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Hot Milk couldn’t really have picked a better debut album to launch their re-issue label than this one from The Dark Prince Of Reggae, Keith Hudson a man who who first cemented his recording career working with artists like Big Youth and U Roy. However in the early ‘70s he began using his own vocals alongside dub and deejay ‘versions’ to marvelous effect and it is from this purple patch that this hard to find 1975 album comes - following classics like Pick a Dub and Flesh Of My Skin, Blood Of My Blood (both ’74) - providing further proof that Hudson’s take on dub was as idiosyncratic and important as Lee Perry’s.
Drew Bass

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Unless you have been living under a stone for the past six months you will doubtless already be aware that Atoms For Peace are Thom Yorke, Flea, Nigel Godrich and various muso buddies who take Yorke’s, some felt slightly stilted, laptop experiments from his solo album The Eraser a stage further by adding rather more in the way of a groove, and if all the Autechre-esque glitchy electronica is still present and correct the off-kilter skittering beats don’t ever derail the tunes, of which there are plenty. In fact the only moot point is that this could just as easily have been Radiohead’s follow up to King Of Limbs.
Ruby Palmer

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For those of you unaware of the man, Shulze was once a member of both Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel and is regarded by many as one of the major precursors of ambient music – but as we imagine hardcore fans will already have this we’re going to review it for the uninitiated with no reference to previous works, and the first thing you need to know is that it’s long, five tracks, none under seventeen minutes, and two in excess of forty, the second thing you need to know is that everything happens at the speed of treacle climbing up a mirror and the third is that it is all really rather beautiful.
Drew Bass

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Dutch master Julian Sas’ latest album confirms his growth into a top blues guitarist. Trademark bludgeoning blues arrive in the shape of the opener, 'Life On The Line', the eponymous title track and Steve Marriott’s '30 Days In The Hole'. 'Swamplands' and 'Tear It Up' are boogies at either end of the speed scale, whilst the remaining two covers, Dylan’s 'Highway 61 Revisited' and Rory Gallagher’s 'Shadow Play' are high octane versions with slinky slide guitar and lightning fingers respectively. Throw in the offbeat blues of 'The Blues Don’t Worry' and you have an album to be proud of.
David Blue

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Being entirely unaware of Boduf Songs (apparently one Mat Sweet), until this particular waxing it’s hard to make comparisons with previous work which was apparently largely acoustic, however such is not the case here as occasional walls of distorted guitars via with spooked and frankly rather scary electronica and minimal drum machine pattering, Sweet’s almost whispered vocals buried amongst the malevolent mire. There’s precious few giggles to be had here but this is a fascinating work nonetheless managing to leave you with a sense of creeping dread and a reluctant desire to dive right back in.
The Oracle

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Finnish songstress Lyytinen’s latest album shows a more personal side and the bittersweet 'Joyful Misery' is a fine example. She goes through a number of styles, from the funky 'Soul' to the slow blues and jazz of 'Hold On Together'. Blues themes permeate the album with the eponymous title track being a contemporary blues, Lil Johnson’s 'Press My Button' continuing the tradition of blues double entendres and 'Things About Coming My Way' traditional Delta. Her trademark slide playing is all over Son House’s 'Death Letter' and everything is backed with emotion laden vocals, wonderful harmonies and expert guitar playing.
David Blue

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We’re often found enthusing around these parts about Mr Wilson and his idiotically high output, however his latest solo outing has taken his love of classic rock a step further by reaching back (Chris Squire style lead bass, flutes, organs and Mellotrons, angular Yes/King Crimson-esque time signatures, ten minute plus tracks) and then stitched them all onto almost nu-metal style tight clipped rock riffage and gorgeous jazzy flourishes to create a prog rock fans wet dream. Special mention must go to guitarist Guthrie Govan who plays like an amalgam of Jeff Beck and Adrian Belew (which is guitar heaven let me tell you). Best solo Wilson effort yet.
Ray Harper

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The ludicrously prolific Richard Thompson returns with, what can best be described as, a stripped down, ‘recorded live in the studio’ set recorded in Nashville with Buddy Miller, which finds our hero exploring both his poetic lyricism and his blistering guitar chops. As always his songs are populated with flawed people, grim situations and violent repercussions (he’s never seemed to have any problems remaining in touch with his baser instincts for a committed Muslim). As is also always the case there are a clutch of songs here that will sit happily alongside his best work, and if anything his guitar playing is actually getting better with age.
Ray Harper

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Many older readers will doubtless first recall being drawn to London based afro-rockers Osibisa due to their first two Roger Dean designed album covers Osibisa (’71) and Woyaya (’71) - although this, their third album, was designed by Mati Klarwein, known for his Abraxas and Bitches Brew covers – and then been blown away by the groundbreaking amalgam of western rock, African percussion and jazzy brass. This was the final album featuring the classic line-up, and probably their last great record and if nowadays this doesn’t sound quite as mind-boggling to young rock fans as it did at the time it still stands up really well.
The Oracle

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I've been trying hard to think of an album that was so enormously successful and that came in for quite so much derision, whether from old Fleetwood Mac fans who missed the old blues line-up or rock and roll fans who found it too polished (probably didn’t help that it came out at the height of punk in 1977), regardless this isn’t an album that found many fans outside the millions and millions of people who purchased it, which just goes to show how snobby and idiotic music fans can be, ‘cos this is brilliant, loaded with fantastic, yes grown up, pop music, and now with plenty of added live cuts and outtakes for the faithful.
Ray Harper

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We’ve said it before an we’ll say it again The Beat were a hideously underrated band releasing just three excellent albums before morphing into General Public and The Fine Young Cannibals and on the back of the recent fine re-issue packages of those album comes this, really rather good, CD/DVD set made up of two fine live performances, separated by eight months, at (the Apple funded) The US Festival. Both sets highlight the bands, well deserved, live rep (for this reviewer the ’82 just pipping the ’83) and, given the paucity of decent visual Beat material, these are well worth adding to any Beat fans collection.
Drew Bass

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My neighbour is a big fan of Scott Walker, or at least he was a big fan of the early solo albums (and those great Walker Brothers singles). See the leap from ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ to Scott’s Jacques Brel solo covers, whilst a stylistic leap, is still a surmountable gap, however the gap between ‘Jackie’ (from Scott 2) and ‘SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)’ from Bish Bosch is such that my neighbour actually looked a little frightened until I took it off. This is an astonishing album and probably the most genuinely ‘difficult’ thing I have encountered in years however I love it (I think), just don’t expect ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’.
The Oracle

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The debut album by Kasabian endorsed Brighton-based outfit Dark Horses is many things, however cheerful ain’t one of ‘em - as some reviews have been at pains to point out. But that’s like complaining that the Velvet Undergound (whose influence reverberates here) were a bit glum, I mean the album is called Black Music for god's sake, and it contains some cracking moments melding motorik beats, blurred electronica, post-rock racket, ice-maiden vocals (think Shirley Manson meets Hope Sandoval via Elizabeth Fraser), and if it’s perhaps a couple of tracks too long it’s still a fine debut and leaves you very keen to hear what’s coming next.
Ruby Palmer

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Not the first improvisational link-up between Theo Travis and Robert Fripp (see also 2009’s Thread and 2010’s Live From Coventry Cathedral), but certainly the most interesting thus far as the trance like ambience of T&F pieces to date, utterly lovely though they are, receive an angular and thoroughly noisy shot in the arm on final track 'So There'. So There! indeed. The package is rounded out with a short live set recorded in a church in Cornwall, and if Mr Fripp is to be believed about giving up live work entirely (and we sincerely hope he is not), then this is as close to seeing the great man perform you are now likely to get.
Ray Harper

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Clearly we have no hope of doing justice to a 10 CD box-set in such a short review but if you're a fan of challenging, darkly ambient electronica then you will definitely want to get hold of a copy of this link-up between Vince Clarke and Martyn Ware, just don’t expect it to sound anything like their previous days jobs in Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Heaven 17 or The Human League (although there are certainly echoes of Ware’s B.E.F. project). This features both 1999's Pretentious and 2001's Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle albums plus a further eight CDs of previously unreleased material, but you’ll need to get a wriggle on as they are limited to 1000. You can check out samples from the album via the 'buy this album' link.
The Oracle

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F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that ‘an exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes’ which as a writer is certainly a bad thing, however in GY!BE’s case it is probably exactly the sort of joke they really enjoy. See GY!BE are about as removed from the whole record/promote/tour treadmill as it’s possible to get and like previous albums this has had no pre-publicity it was just suddenly available (their first in ten years in fact) and is worth getting for the immediacy of the twenty minute post-rock on steroids sturm und drang of ‘Mladic’ alone although the three remaining tracks definitely repay repeat listens.
The Oracle

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