If there was one band that served as the axis on which seventies hard rock gave way to eighties heavy metal, it was Van Halen. Arriving on the scene just as many of metal's first wave giants were running out of steam, their flashy, glamorous sound set the stage for the next decade of rock … Continue reading Van Halen

Tournesol Tournesol (R&S: 1993) Tournesol were just one among dozens of artists pushed out into the wider world by the towering edifice that was R&S Records in the early nineties, an era when the various strands of eighties-derived dance music wove together in a vibrant tapestry of sound under the aegis of a post-ecstasy dance … Continue reading Tournesol – Tournesol

I'd nearly forgotten this mini-feature I'd started on the sidewalk art that cropped up over the course of the spring and summer during the protracted Covid lockdown. Suddenly, the pavement seemed to come alive with color as I walked my usual routes, no doubt the result of a lot of folk coming to terms with … Continue reading Sidewalk Auteurs

Silver Apples: Machines In Glorious Motion The original oscillator man Simeon Coxe died earlier this week, the man who was one half of legendary electronic duo Silver Apples, a duo that conjured up a working sketch of the future way back in the late 1960s. Their debut album appeared in 1968, its strange combination of … Continue reading Silver Apples

Jefferson Airplane Have You Seen The Saucers (7" Single) (RCA Victor: 1970) Even if they don't get nearly enough love these days, Jefferson Airplane were the premiere band to emerge from the acid rock landscape of 1960s San Francisco, the beating heart lying at the very center of the scene. I mean, I hear you … Continue reading Jefferson Airplane – Have You Seen The Saucers

Peter Green: Acid Blues Visionary In the annals of the British blues explosion — the fertile sonic laboratory of the 1960s that yielded myriad storied practitioners spanning from The Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin — there's many figures that spring to mind. Everyone knows Cream and Eric Clapton, while more abstract heads might mention the likes of Tony McPhee and … Continue reading Peter Green

A scenario unfolds on the grid... Lost in the caves, navigating 303 stalactites in flux and bathed in echoes of The Airplane, Stargate rising onna vector plane and the spectral breeze coarsing through lava flows deeper still. Underworld deep in the cut, another remix tripping out into the k-hole, wild fractals spiral off the jet … Continue reading Acid Underworld

Man Parrish Special Disconet Remixes (Ram's Horn: 1983) Soaring through the skies and landing somewhere on Earth, we discovered an alien. He was not made of flesh, he was not made of stone, he was... check it out humans: man made. Man Parrish, In The Beginning In the continued narrative of machine music, one of … Continue reading Man Parrish – Special Disconet Remixes

Kraftwerk: At the way station to the future With Florian Schneider’s passing this spring, one of the great institutions of modern music was laid to rest. Kraftwerk’s reputation truly precedes them, to the point that introductions are hardly even necessary at this point. Suffice it to say that the group took all of early krautrock's … Continue reading Kraftwerk

With the sun hanging like heavy metal fruit in the afternoon sky, there’s no question that summer has finally arrived. With the dawning of summer’s heat, the time has come for planting new shoots into the desert tropical, fractal rows of banana trees, palms, ferns, and cacti playing off one another from north to southwest … Continue reading Garden Grooves 008