Jewels & Binoculars was a project by Michael Moore (alto sax, bass clarinet), Lindsey Horner (double bass), and Michael Vatcher (percussion), devoted to interpreting the music of Bob Dylan.
Melodic and lyrical. All balanced by contributions from each member of the trio.
The trio has released three albums, the first two of which I have enjoyed this morning.
Jewels & Binoculars: The Music Of Bob Dylan (2001, cd, NL, ramboy recordings)
"In Search Of Captain Beefheart" is a book by Opher Goodwin, released in 2014.
The title might be a bit misleading as Opher Goodwin tells how he dedicated his live going to concerts and collecting records. Opher had good taste in music, so it's fun to read how he went to see Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull or Captain Beefheart, but it's not really about Captain Beefheart. Sure, Opher also researched the blues and did lectures and courses on rock music but I would not have called it "In Search Of Captain Beefheart". Still, I enjoyed reading it.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: Infest The Rats’ Nest (2019, cd, Australia, flightless) – 2019-08-16 (2019, lp, --, flightless) (2019, download / streaming, --, --)
Album number 15 for KG & TLW. From 2019. "Infest The Rats' Nest" got released worldwide on vinyl by Flightless. A CD version was only made available in Australia. Also by Flightless. As always, the LP exists in different vinyl colors. New colors and variations being added almost every year.
"Infest The Rats' Nest" is a heavy metal album. It was a bit of a surprise when I first heard it, because I hadn't expected this from KG & TLW. But it's a fine album. Call it heavy prog, or stoner, or whatever, in the end, it's just a fine album.
With this album KG & TLW shows that it's perfectly fine to appreciate heavy metal, next to psychedelic rock. Not that I needed that confirmation, but it might open the minds of their public. Also noteworthy is the fact that "Infest The Rats' Nest" got recorded by a slimmed down version of KG & TLW. It's a power trio (guitar, bass, drums) exercise.
Hardscore was Frank Nuyts' project, releasing several albums between 1997 and 2004. The first album was recently made available on bandcamp as and 'expanded edition'.
On their sixth long player The Breaks – their second for Joyful Noise Recordings – SUUNS find themselves lost in limbo. For some artists, being caught in flux may result in songs that are either naive, out of touch or both, simply as a consequence of being cut off from human civilization. But for SUUNS, a band who have grown more than comfortable in the oblique and the intermediate, it actually had the opposite effect. The Breaks marks the Montreal experimental rock outfit’s most emotionally resonant and tonally rich collection of music to date.
The trio of Ben Shemie, Joseph Yarmush and Liam O’Neill leans more zealously than ever into their pop instincts. Yet remarkably enough, with that same dauntless abandon, SUUNS have mined a more extreme sonic palette this time around, one that stretches far beyond their core fundamentals as a band. “Before we had a kind of rule that we wouldn't have any instruments on the record that we weren't actually playing,” drummer/percussionist O'Neill says. “The recordings we made were always more of a document. There were no overdubs. And now…we don't care about that! Now we do whatever just sounds good.”
Steve Vai: I was approached by Rufus Publications back in 2019 with an interest to create a high end and compelling book of 100 of my most unique and used guitars. I knew there was only one guy that could do this job most effectively and that was Michael Mesker, who was eager to do it. There isn’t anyone who knows the history of my guitars, nor has the artistic overview of photography and forensic attention to detail as he does. Mike spent 5 years compiling this book and photographing the guitars with a quality technique that will blow your mind. He scoured the globe to find many of these guitars, as I had given many away or sold them through the years, but he tracked them down and got the necessary shots. The results are stunning and the book is a masterpiece. I didn’t realize how diverse, eclectic and innovative my guitar collection was until I saw this book. Besides the documenting of various models, this book is the penultimate definitive word on the history of the Jem and the guitars that were part of its evolution. It’s magnificent and I’m blown away. Pre-order your copy here: https://www.rufuspublications.com/rufusbooks/vai/
Check those prices... The 'ultra ediition' comes with a guitar...
Instrumental "super" group (rock, metal and new age/jazz) with Michael Manring on bass, Tim Alexander (ex-Primus) on drums, and Alex Skolnick (from Testament) on guitar.
