Guineafowl – Hello Anxiety

I'm rather curious. Who decides to adopt a name like Guineafowl for himself as well as for his band? I received a copy of this five track EP recently and, though again here's a recording that's outside of the original remit of this blog it's something that I enjoyed and wanted to highlight. Well, someone who comes from a highly creative background – we learn from his press release that his mother, stepfather and brothers are all successful visual artists who are able to live off the financial rewards of their work, while his sister is a film producer and his father a fashion designer with his own boutique. So while none of those connections necessarily confer a successful creative gene, it's clear that our musician here has at least been exposed to the environment where creativity is more than just its own reward but can repay hard work and inspiration in financial terms as well.

"My family, particularly my brother, showed me that art is about capturing stories," he tells us. "Although I'm not a painter, that's how I've always seen my songwriting – another way to translate a story."

He's from Sydney, described as having captured his first recordings in "a small dwelling above an antique store near Bondi Beach" with "merely his laptop, its in-built microphone and a soda water at his side," and from there Hello Anxiety started to ferment and brew into its current form, and from which Guineafowl has developed into a full band line-up, bringing the songs to audiences and challenging the main protagonist who notes that "In choosing my band there was only one rule: they had to be better players than me."

Across the EP is the development of the artist. 'Botanist' represents the lonely starting point as it contains an original vocal delivered into that laptop microphone, but, that aside, and I guess aside also from the demo 'Mothr', the other tracks, 'In Our Circles', 'Little Fingers' and 'My Lonely Arms' are full-band studio affairs. They're not all easy listening – 'My Lonely Arms' has an aggressive lyric and there is a sense of pent-up emotions coiled tightly within these songs. But they are most definitely intriguing songs with resonance and depth that capture a range of feeling and emotions, circumstances and frustrations.

Guineafowl Myspace

Dew Process Records

Fruits de Mer Records

A lovely warm spring morning in Cornwall, book-ended at both sides by long bank holiday weekends and a chance to deliberate over some of the records that have been landing here, including these releases sent over by Keith from the excellent Fruits de Mer label.

Let's talk first about Earthling Society's 7" single 'The Green Manalishi' / 'And I Heard The Fire Sing', because aside from this release we've the next ES album to look forward to in the summer (I understand from Dave at 4Zero, who will be releasing Stations Of The Ghost, that it will be appearing sometime in June) and I should have an interview with ES mainstay Fred Laird to conduct and post during the next couple of weeks. This one is 7" coloured vinyl and limited to 400 copies and should be available from 31^st May as I understand it.

The A-side takes the sinister twists and turns of Peter Green / Fleetwood Mac's original and gives it Earthling Society's own haze and fuzz psych-gothic layers over which the lyrics are drawn and declaimed in a manner that is both whisperingly confidential and yet in keeping with the grotesquely imagined original, whether it be describing Peter Green's schizophrenic collapse, his monetary disputes with the other members of Fleetwood Mac (as Green himself maintained) or is a some form of LSD-fuelled reflection Green's own drug issues and struggles. ES's rendition is inspired, taking the song to a lower fidelity of delivery while managing to paint a vivid mysticism to the song, restrained and yet restrained as though there are both internal and external forces conspiring to hold this one in tight grasp.

On the other hand, the label asks whether the flip side of this record is "Jimi Hendrix-meets-Skippy the Bush Kangaroo". Personally, I like to imagine Fred as possessing a near encyclopaedic knowledge of the most obscure psychedelia and chortling in delight at recreating near-forgotten sixties garage numbers, such as this one from Adelaide-based Australian band The James Taylor Move (hear the original here). How do Earthling Society manage this neat trick of being so fabulously flamboyant in performing their stylistically lo-fi interpretations? This is quite deliciously over the top and just so way out there, man...

Moving on, then, but staying in the covers arena, Keith also sent over a promo of Roqueting Through Space, more coloured vinyl on LP plus a 7" single and a gatefold sleeve of space and Krautrock renditions including appearances from long-time friends of this blog, Sendelica and Vert:X. "As we discussed possible tracks for inclusion with a number of our favourite bands, the press sheet notes, "we gradually realized that 'space rock' is a great term for a type of music, but it means completely different things to different people – spacey, spaced-out, outer/inner space, sci-fi, instrumental jams, electronic rock..." Tell me about it!

"We decided to drop the pretence of defining the genre," the PR goes on to note, "and instead gave our chosen bands the scope to decide for themselves what 'space rock' meant to them – and if the end result worked for us it was in." Well, the collection as a whole worked very well for me – covering and capturing a range of concepts that encapsulates the multiple possibilities that 'space rock' evokes, from the heavy, driven, rock end of the genre through the more eloquent song-based sci-fi imagery and off into its wild and the wacky nether-regions.

OK, let's pick some highlights out of this ensemble. Let's get a listen to the 7" element of this package – Sendelica and Nik Turner reimagining Hawkwind's 'Urban Guerilla' and Alpha Omega doing an amalgamation of the Hawks' 'Transdimensional Man' and 'Paradox'. Though a huge Sendelica fan, actually I wasn't totally sold on their take on 'Urban Guerilla' (not, I'll add here, one of my favourite Hawkwind tracks in the first instance) even though they take a completely fresh look at it and avoid any semblance of the slavish cover. Alpha Omega's collision of two Hawkwind numbers that I've always really loved really hit the money for me. "We wanted a more obscure track and a well-known one and so decided to combine the two," they note. The merging of the two is totally unexpected and the female vocal really brings something additional to the interpretation.

Dairmuid MacDiarmada's engagingly humourous and deceptively complex reimaging of The Tornados' 'Telstar' is a real scene stealer with a droning foundation overlaid with some childlike glee at getting to grips with such infectious melodies; I'm hearing a little bit of 'Here Come The Warm Jets' in the rethinking but also some real enthusiasm at being able to play around with such a classic number. Helicon sprawl across ten minutes of Neu!'s 'Hallogallo' (I'm hearing some semblance of Astounding Sounds-era Hawkwind here, 'Dream of Isis', that sort of thing but that's the cross-fertilisations of influences anyway); "We were jamming along and simply couldn't stop..." they comment - and they've concocted a really trance-inducing soundscape. The other Neu! capture here is Frobisher Neck's 'Isi', another great example of an artist delighting in the opportunity to develop on a theme from something they've always loved and been inspired by and the result is really happy and inspiring take, spacey and expansive and uplifting.

Elsewhere here, Julian Cope's 'I Come From Another Planet, Baby' is covered by Vert:X, Vibravoid (who I'm not familiar with) play Hooterville Trolley (who I'm not familiar with) on 'No Silver Bird' (which I'm pleased to now be familiar with), Cranium Pie's Research Baking Station (would be a great name for a fanzine, that) cover Brainticket's 'Blacksand', Luck of Eden Hall are present with Pink Floyd's 'Lucifer Sam' and The Grand Astoria deliver Can's 'Oh Yeah'. A really great exploration of what space rock is and where it meets and merges with Krautrock.

Fruits de Mer Website

Scarlet Utopia - Supernovae

Nog Cavanagh – Sombre Castles of Desire

Describing himself as "an independent musician based in the north of England", Nog Cavanagh has already released one album of instrumental space rock, Everything Leads to Here, on his Angry Robot imprint and, though it has taken him a further five years to produce a follow up now offers us Sombre Castles of Desire as his second exploration of outer and inner space – and a mighty fine offering it is too.

Cavanagh effortlessly moves through most of the touchstones of contemporary space rock, composing mellow soundscapes and crystalline visions here, driving, sometimes even guttural, rockers there, delivering a wide-ranging sense of aural textures that meld together across this record. It's a genuinely multi-instrumental approach that is employed here. Nowhere do we hear a focus of one instrument over another, everywhere is Cavanagh's multi-layered techniques building up strata upon strata of sound with guitar, drum machine, synth and electronics that create a sound that is sci-fi in the best sense of space rock with an intriguingly slick and professional aura to it – these are well developed compositions with a lot happening within them and which really hold the attention throughout.

'Astraglyde' has a thoughtful aura about it, gradually building up the atmosphere, never getting heavy but methodically becoming more layered as the track expands and develops until it draws back inside of itself again. Following it, 'King Arachno' opens its account with some grinding guitar overlaid with a repetitive sequence of signature notes that soundly strangely familiar even while I'm struggling to place them, developing into an intoxicatingly space rocking number. 'A Chemical Taste On The Tongue' is all weird electronics and pulses with some doom-laden synths happening in the background; the title track starts as though it's going to continue the theme before quickly becoming a more gossamer electronic rumination. Four tracks in and we can hear the range with which Cavanagh is building his work, and that's generally the approach here – around each corner, into each individual track, there's something new and interesting while all the time poking at the different vibes and angles of space rock. Writing as a non-musician, this is a record that's full of the "what's that going on here" or of the "how's he achieving that?" It's an inventive, creative, exciting and engaging record.

Nog Cavanagh Website

Skin Alley Competition

Here's something I've not done before on this blog, but with the kind permission of my friends at Esoteric Recordings I've copies of their recent and excellent Skin Alley releases – The CBS Recordings Anthology and Two Quid Deal? to give away as a promotional competition on this blog.

I've one set comprising the two CDs to give away, anywhere in the world, to the first randomly selected e-mailer who correctly answers the following question:

Which founder member of Skin Alley later spent time as bassist for Hawkwind?

E-mail your answer to mailto:spacerockreviews@gmail.com

I'll keep this competition open until midnight on Saturday 19^th March 2011 and e-mail the winner for their postal address as soon after the closing date as possible. Please feel free to post this link around the newsgroups, Facebook, etc. Please note that these CDs have been made available with the kind permission of Esoteric Recordings but that that does not imply any endorsement of this blog by Esoteric Recordings or Cherry Red Records.

Supporters of the blog can buy Esoteric's Skin Alley, High Tide and Hawkwind titles on these affiliated links.

Big Brother Is Watching You: The CBS Recordings Anthology
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Esoteric Recordings are pleased to release a two CD anthology by legendary Ladbroke Grove underground act Skin Alley. Formed in 1969, Skin Alley were part of the infamous Clearwater stable that included fellow acts such as Hawkwind, High Tide and Trees. Skin Alley's infectious fusion of jazz and rock was suited to the time and the band became a regular attraction on the underground festival and concert circuit. Signing to CBS Records in the autumn of 1969, the band recorded their debut album with producer Dick Taylor (former guitarist with the Pretty Things).

Famous for its Policeman cover, the album featured excellent tracks such as Living In Sin, Tell Me, Country Aire and Night Time. Prior to the release of their second album Skin Alley recorded a soundtrack album for the film Stop Veruschka! about the infamous German model. A wonderful set of music and songs, the album was shelved in favour of a new set of recordings that was released as the album to Pagham & Beyond. This anthology includes all tracks from that second album, plus the entire unreleased Stop Veruschka! soundtrack. Re-mastered from the original master tapes, Big Brother is watching you is a fine tribute to one of Britain's greatest underground acts of the early 1970s.

Living In Sin / Tell Me / Mother, Please Help Your Child / Marsha / Country Aire / All Alone / Night Time / Concerto Grosso (Take Heed (Going Down The) Highway / Taken From The Album Skin Alley - Better Be Blind / Tell Me (Single Version) / A & B Sides Of Single - Shower Music / Sofa, Taxi And Sand Themes / Cemetery Scene / First Drug Scene - Taken From The Unreleased Soundtrack Album Stop Veruschka

Big Brother Is Watching You / Take Me To Your Leader's Daughter/ Walking In The Park / The Queen Of Bad Intentions / Sweaty Betty / Easy To Lie / Taken From The Album To Pagham And Beyond ; Russian Boogaloo / Skin Valley Serenade / Sun Music / Bird Music / Snow Music Taken From The Unreleased Soundtrack Album Stop Veruschka

Two Quid Deal
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Released on 31/01/11. Esoteric Recordings are pleased to release a newly re-mastered edition of the third album by legendary Ladbroke Grove underground act Skin Alley, Two Quid Deal.

Formed in 1969, Skin Alley were part of the infamous Clearwater stable that included fellow acts such as Hawkwind, High Tide and Trees. Skin Alley's infectious fusion of jazz and rock was suited to the time and the band became a regular attraction on the underground festival and concert circuit.

Signing to CBS Records in the autumn of 1969, the band recorded two albums for the label and underwent a change to their line- up before departing CBS and appearing at the 1971 Glastonbury Fayre. Soon after the band signed to Transatlantic Records and recorded their third album at Rockfield studios with producer Fritz Fryer. Arguably their finest effort, Two Quid Deal includes the classic sun music (recorded in a different version for the album Glastonbury Fayre), Nick's Seven, Skin Valley Serenarge and Graveyard Shuffle. This reissue is re-mastered from the original tapes, restores all of the original album artwork & includes two bonus tracks.

Nick's Seven / So Many People / Bad Words & Evil People / Graveyard Shuffle / So Glad / A Final Coat / Skin Valley Serenade / The Demagogue / Sun Music / Bonus Tracks -You Got Me Danglin / A-Side Of Single - Sun Music (Glastonbury Fayre Version)

New Riffs and Eastern Promise

Here's one of those irregular, ought to be more regular, round ups of things of interest, mentions of new releases from artists that I've previously covered in more depth (doesn't preclude a longer commentary later of course), tasters of items that will definitely be covered in further detail soon and notes of stuff that I've received and will be reviewing in print elsewhere...

I received a couple of packages in the mail this last week from my old mate, and long-time Hawkwind fan / lyricist, Roger Neville-Neil – one contained another couple of novels featuring the classic pulp character The Avenger (see previous post mentioning these very welcome packages) and the other is relevant to this blog since it contained a copy of Two Sides by Mars Retrieval Unit, who I'd commented on a couple of posts back as having enjoyed some of their music which bassist Joel Davis had kindly directed me to. Roger also included some of his excellent gig photography, various images of the band at a recent gig – funnily enough he's particularly photographed their saxophonist, Chelsea Luker, which I think must stem from an interest in saxophonists in general since he's often photographed Nik Turner as well... I'm sure that's why! (I'd insert a smile here if this were an e-mail exchange). Seriously, Roger has sent a number of photograph collections across recently – including some great pictures of another of his, and mine, favourite bands, The Upsidedown, which he's previously given me permission to feature here, so I'll do an Upsidedown post in the next few days and then try and organise a posting on MRU with a proper CD review and Roger's photographs.

Also received this week was the just released Hawklords Barney Bubbles Memorial Benefit Concert DVD, recorded live at the 229 Club in London a while back – I did a little bit of work on the press for the show and so won't be reviewing this one in print since that always seems a 'conflict of interests' but it doesn't preclude me from covering it on the blog so again look for a write-up on this over the next week or so. What I can tell you now is that it's getting excellent reports on some of the Hawkwind-related Internet groups and can be purchased via PayPal at their Hawklords@hotmail.co.uk address for the price of GBP £19.99 + Postage (£1.00 in the UK, £1.50 for Europe and £2.00 for the rest of the world). I was certainly delighted to discover they've included me in the 'credits' for the show under 'Publicity and Promotion'. Should mention there is a YouTube channel for the Hawklords which can be found here.

Hawklords Website

Sticking with the Hawkwind-related releases for the moment, I've also received a copy of what I think is one of the most hotly anticipated Hawkwind-related releases of the moment, the album from Alan Davey and Bridget Wishart under their Eastern-monikered 'Djinn' identity. This is one that I will, all being well, be covering in print fairly soon but I'll also be featuring here, possibly with some commentary from them both when I can get that organised. But for those who've been eagerly anticipating this album, based on Alan and Bridget's shared loved of Arabic scales and the ambience of middle-eastern music, the album was released on 25^th February and can be purchased direct from Alan's official website. This one is £10 plus P&P.

Alan Davey Web Shop

Should say, if anyone is ordering from any band or artist via link here, do please let them know who sent you!

The Universe Is Mental, claims the new album from the excellently monikered Nick Riff. It certainly seems so at the moment – perhaps even more so than unusual. I've been a bit of a fan of Nick's music since receiving a copy of Photon Shift from him a while back and this latest in his sequence of 'Riffdiscs' doesn't disappoint. "Musicians are always asked to describe what their music sounds like," he notes in the sleeve notes. "The Riffdisc Series is an attempt to answer that question by focusing each release on a different element of my music, and in the process somehow maintain a continuity and essential Riffness." Again, I'll write this up in a little more depth when I've the opportunity but this one is nine tracks of instrumental-focused space rock – very good stuff.

Nick Riff Website

The very honestly monikered Pete Unsigned e-mails to tell me that his band supported Alan Davey at a show in Glasgow a couple of years back and to direct me to his Myspace page where there are three classic rock tracks on his music player. 'Tsunami' builds up and rolls in with a real force behind it, with heavy riffs, sharp and precise drumming and some gruffly barked vocals – I'd have thought this would go down very well with the Alan Davey Bedouin/Gunslinger audience. 'Follow Me' sounds lo-fi in one sense, it's a bit muted and demo-like, but it certainly does have a bit of a punch to it as well with some militaristic drumming and an incessantly marching guitar riff. 'Hangmans Call' is a live recording, a real thrash of clashing guitars, drums and screaming vocal delivery, sounds a damn good moshing number for Heavy Metal enthusiasts.

Pete Unsigned Myspace

Dick Lucas, ex of Subhumans, who is a contributor to the still forthcoming, but soon to be published honestly, Festivalized, e-mails to announce the release of the new Citizen Fish album, Goods, on the Alternative Tentacles label. “13 songs of ska-punk with twists... and it is the best one yet.” And it comes on a choice of formats... CD and LP... for £8 including P&P (or €12.00 in Europe, or $16.00 to the USA). “It’s just good, catchy shit” says Punk World Views.

Citizen Fish Website

I'm looking forward to my mate Dave Weller at 4Zero Records releasing the latest Earthling Society album in the Spring, and organising an interview with band-leader Fred Laird in due course as this is a band that regular blog readers will know that I'm a huge admirer of. Fred recently e-mailed around to relate how "Earthling Society recently took the rock road down to London to have Stations of the Ghost sonically enhanced. The brilliant Nick Robbins of Sound mastering / Ace records, who engineered on classic albums by The Pogues and mastered the recent re-releases by The Move and all manner of reissues through Ace/Big Beat has done a wonderful job at bringing the new album to life. Stations... features seven tracks of epic psychedelic rock mixing Dark Prog, autumnal bucolic folk, Doctors of Madness ballad-esque glam and Stoner/drone rock, taking in themes of weird cosmic horror inspired by our literary hero Arthur Machen and the tales that surround the witch country that is our home county of Lankyshire." They've also been busy reworking Fleetwood Mac's 'Green Manalishi' and "an obscure down under hard pysch number from the James Taylor movie" which will appear as a coloured 7" vinyl only release on Fruits De Mer.

Earthling Society – Stations of the Ghost Preview.

Louis Davey – Last Chance Of A Lifetime

To set the scene of this solo record from Gunslinger guitarist Louis Davey, he's the nephew of Alan Davey and has drawn on some of the same group of people who've been working on various projects with Alan since he left Hawkwind: the Pre-Med vocalist Danny Faulkner, Paul Cobbold who has ,as I understand it, recently been working with Alan on the mastering of a much anticipated Gunslinger live album, and Kevin Sommers who has produced some excellent artwork for Alan's own releases over the last few years. And, of course, Alan himself who plays bass and synths on all tracks here, with the exception of Cobbold popping up with Bowed bass on the title track, and adds his production skills to proceedings (and no doubt adds a valuable layer of experience to proceedings in general).

OK, look, that gives us the context of some of the contributors to this record but let's move straight on from that and give Louis the full credit he deserves in his own right for this vivid and muscular and very rocking collection of songs.

This is a record that has a real pace to it, lead guitars full of fire and vim supported but not overwhelmed by that rolling, driving bass that we're so familiar with give the music a dynamic and purposeful energy that's pretty exciting through-out the ten songs. If we want to give some sense of where this album lives then it's moving in the same area as some of the heavier elements of the two Pre-Med records, but it also has a really good juxtaposition of vocalists present because aside from Faulkner (whose delivery I'm such a big fan of and who pops up on two songs here) there's some very good work from Georgina Davey, Lindsey Wyborn, and Emma Mackenzie. If it's wrong to specifically pick one of these three ladies out then apologies to the other two, who both add sterling contributions, but Mackenzie's cool and sweet vocals on 'In Her Light', 'Higher Tax' and 'No Sense' are a fabulous contrast to the richness and depth of the music and work extremely well.

The title track, which actually plays the album out, is a moody and spacey instrumental with a dreamlike quality to it with what my musically untrained ears take to be Cobbold's bowed bass playing (booklet pictures suggest it's exactly that – a bass guitar being bowed) adding a extra melancholic dimension to the sound. To pick some others, 'Don't Hide Behind' has a psychedelic jam band quality to it that does have something of a Hawkwind feel, 'Free' starts with synths and strumming that leads into a vaguely middle-eastern moment before picking up some quirky electronics that give way to Louis's guitar work and Faulkner's vocals on a classic 'time has come / years have passed' lyric. 'In Her Light' is catchy and accessible while 'The Other Face' is intriguingly sci-fi in tone and atmosphere.

So, two ways of looking how to file this on the CD rack here. It sits very well next to the run of CDs by the more senior Mr. Davey and deservedly so because this is a high quality record. On the other hand it absolutely stands on its own merits as well.

Louis Davey Myspace Page
Last Chance Of A Lifetime Order Details

Alone Records

Towards the end of last year I received a bundle of new releases from Malaga-based Alone Records which I've been looking for an opportunity to cover here; not a label that I've encountered before but a look at their website (available both in Spanish and in English) reveals a company that works in the general area of psychedelia – progressive – folk and has a number of releases coming to fruition currently.

Holy Picnic is the debut album from psychedelic folksters Aleppo Pine who came together in Barcelona during 2008 and who place their music in the context of inspiration from Fairport Convention, Pink Floyd and Soft Machine. "Coloured trees, sounds from the forest and space trips. Submerge inside the occult among folk, psychedelia and rock... The landscape transforms all around you." What they've produced is very much a late 60s, early 70s sort of feel using sitars and theremins to create a typically quasi-mystical hippie vibe that's also suggested by the surrealistic collage artwork of their cover and booklet. It veered too much towards that sort of 'fairy magic' for my own tastes, though some of the tracks that possessed a harder edge, such as 'It's all in Your Mind', I found much more successful in delivering a psychedelic mind journey into inner self... as it were. The eastern theme of 'Coloured Trees', very heavily dependent on sitar sounds, I also thought very pleasing and evocative and when they talk about their music leading to "hidden paths, where darkness and mystery become light," then I think these tracks particularly deliver on that intent, evoking an incense and mysticism based mediation and peace that has an gossamer and elusive charm about it. Not quite my thing, overall, but I can see the appeal for followers of this strand of psychedelia.

I always sit up and take notice of albums recorded at Dave Anderson's Foel Studios up in Wales as the amount of great music created there increases year on year and the musicians that I talk to that have recorded there have only good things to say about their experiences – particularly when Dave plays them In Search of Space in that environment, so The Soulbreaker Company's Itaca immediately grabbed my attention for that very reason. And indeed the Welsh studio seems to have worked some magic again for its part in recording this atmospheric mix of soulful, progressive and heavy space rock. Hailing from Vitoria in the Basque Country, this is their very accomplished third album, full of fury and with a really sharp edge – big, rounded sounds with a classic rock vocal delivery, some insistent drumming and really thrilling lead guitar lines offset with some excellent sax from guest saxophonist and flautist Kike Guzman. As with the Aleppo Pine, the vocals are delivered in English and in the case of Itaca these are very strong lyrics. 'Oh! Warsaw' talks of how 'I heard the chimes of war / Till the end of my life', while 'Where the Mermaids Sing Loud', a really powerful and energetic piece of work deals with rootless and inner turmoil while having a true wall of sound cacophony in its delivery. The overriding musical motifs are those of a heavy progressive persuasion tripping into the space rock genre by virtue of the sax and synths but it's an album of steely resolve and boundless power playing that's very motivational with the dial turned up very high.

Which leaves us pondering the final in this trio of releases, Barcelona-based Cuzo and their improvisational and experimental guitar / bass / drums and effects mesh, Otros Mundos, visually the most overtly space rock in terms of presentation and a really challenging mix of heavy and deliberate rhythms often overlaid with distortion and fuzz that actually never loses sight of its musicality despite that. 'Coche Imaginario' takes as its starting point a very slow bass line that develops with tribal drumming and a gritty guitar riff and works itself into a dark jam, densely textured even whilst it maintains a feeling of space between the instrumentation. 'Ni Vivos ni Muertos' has a brooding sense of unease that leads into 'Robots en Movimiento' with its aura of regimentation and repetitive action that has a Fritz Lang / Metropolis sense about it, certainly a black and white cinematic feel that lingers around a lot of Cuzo's music here. Rather dark in mood and texture, and very successful.

Alone Records

Round Up the Unusual Suspects

Before kicking off this quick survey of things I've been e-mailed about or that have otherwise come to attention and need passing onwards, a quick mention of what I'm up to in the print world this month. R2 magazine has just published its January/February edition (if you're attending any of the forthcoming Levelling The Land Levellers shows, this issue will be available from the band's merchandise desk – otherwise from the usual outlets, or use the handy stockists locater here). My principle activity for R2 this month is way outside of the space rock arena, as I've a three-pager interview with Mike Scott on the Waterboys Appointment with Mr. Yeats shows that are taking place over the next few days, and chatting with 'white bluesman' Dirty Ray and his excellent debut album Big World for a Little Man, but I'm also covering a couple of reissues from the always dependable Esoteric Recordings, notably the Here & Now album Give and Take and the Soft Machine disc Land of Cockayne as well as releases by Dakota Suite, Mostly Autumn, Haight-Ashbury and The Daydream Club. Over in the February Record Collector I'm taking a turn at tackling the regular 'Label of Love' column by interviewing Dave Weller of 4Zero Records about the inception, development and future plans of the label, enjoying the diaries of Belle & Sebastian mainstay Stuart Murdoch, The Celestial Cafe, and covering a DVD of Ginger Baker's Airforce and EMI's Lindisfarne reissue package. Busy week then... other than all being written back in 2010. So last year!

Ciprian Costache from Romanian band Arc Gotic has dropped me a note about an instrumental track, "recorded in our garage", that's now available on Soundcloud, tagged as shoegaze and space rock, entitled 'Floating Upstream'. I really rather liked this well-named composition, one that feels intimate and yet spacious at the same time with a real dream-like quality to it. I'm interested to hear more and have added their Soundcloud page to the links on this blog – I'll get around to dividing the links into blogs and bands at some point, and start adding more links, so if a link would be useful to you then drop me an e-mail. I've not really got into Soundcloud so far though it seems to be something that has taken-off with the apparent demise of Myspace as a meaningful way of distributing new music – someone should have told Myspace that if it's not broke you don't need to fix it, now they have one miserable mess on their hands it seems to me – but I picked up, thorugh the Arc Gotic page, a link to another band who I think are called Harmony of the Spheres with some interesting, if defiantly lo-fi, sounds uploaded; also worth a look.

Soundawesome is, I assume, another music distribution system that is coming through to fill the gap left by the current poor state of Myspace. I need to mention here that the Hawklords have a presence there – and am most heartened by their status tagline advising that they are "planning UK gigs for Spring 2011". The principal reason for directing people to their page is that their Barney Bubbles concert from a while back is in the final stages of being released on DVD and looking, from the clips already released, as though it's going to be a very good film indeed. Advance order details are on the Hawklords' page, and Jerry Richards tells me that the actual release date is only a couple of weeks away.

One of my up and coming print reviews will be of the Tim Smith benefit album, Leader of the Starry Skies, a gathering of musicians including Julianne Regan, Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson and XTC genius Andy Partridge. I know there'll be a lot of fans of Cardiacs here and this is a respectful and enthusiastic reflection of the esteem in which Smith's music is held, a little idiosyncratic perhaps for the non-devotee but still a good reflection of the body of work so cruelly halted by Smith's massive heart attack back in 2008.

OK, more Soundcloud postings. I've heard from Joel Davis of Portland band Mars Retrieval Unit, or MRU, who recently had the opportunity to support Ozric Tentacles in Portland. They've just released a CD, Two Sides, and Joel's directed me to some tracks that he particularly thinks of as being space rock. I'll note these tracks here and plan to produce a proper review in due course. 'Amanita Dream' is a delicious mix of a rather clean and cool jazz sound mixed with a heavier spacey lilt in places, 'Osmosis' (featuring dual vocals that I believe are from Chelsea Luker, who is really good on 'Amanita Dream' and guitarist Rob Sipsky) is again a clean sounding, leaning almost to AOR, song with some lovely sax playing, also from Chelsea, extending out to ten and a half minutes so that MRU can lay claim to jam band status in the way that they extend and use the running time – though I don't know much about them aside from one live CD in my collection I'd say they touch a bit of the same ground as Phish. 'Ares' has space rock lyrical themes and resides to towards the modern progressive rock side of the genre, consummately professional in delivery and contemporary in feel. I've delved into their Facebook page and see that my old mate Roger Neville-Neil is a fan of theirs – that's a good enough recommendation for me and I'll follow up and cover this band in more depth in the future. I assume the Soundcloud link is for public consumption (again, I don't really know the ins and outs of Soundcloud yet) so I'll note that their page is here, and delete the link if I'm in error, but it seems to me a good way to sample before buying and naturally encourage appreciative ears to support the band with a CD purchase from their website.

Mugstar - Lime

Let's not even get into New Year resolutions that might include keeping this blog rather more up to date than it has been over the last couple of months; I mean, the resolution is there sure enough and there's a stack of great material that arrived in the last quarter of 2010 that needs a proper addressing and writing up but recently there's been plenty of print work which has rather got ahead in the 'to do' list I'm afraid. For those asking, and 'thank you' because there have been plenty, Festivalized is going through its final editing process and we can very confidently anticipate a publication date during the spring; aside from that there's a few interviews coming up for R2 magazine, and Record Collector readers will hopefully have spotted a number of space rock items that I've reviewed in its pages over the last few months, particularly Esoteric Records' very welcome Here & Now reissues, the In Search Of Hawkwind covers album that I also covered here a few weeks back and a number of Steven Wilson / Porcupine Tree CDs and DVDs among other items of interest to readers here.

But to kick off 2011 here, what better start than to go back and cover one of the best space rock albums of 2010, from a band that managed two album releases last year and most definitely therefore out most, your humble chronicler of the scene among them, to be the busiest working in the genre by a country mile! I didn't get to hear their first offering of the year, ...Sun, Broken..., but received a review advance of their second, Lime, from Important Records and can't really enthuse enough about the four dense and dirty tracks powering across this record.

'Sunburnt Impedance Machine' (what sort of machine?) launches proceedings in a full-on manner, really solid drumming and some driving guitars and keyboard sounds that create a mighty conflagration which gets right into their uncompromising mix of space and kraut rock and burns with a undying sense of primal urgency. Like a lot of In Search of Hawkwind, Lime has a debt to the Nik Turner wing of the Hawkwind sound, promoting weirdness and discordance but there's also the chugging drivability of the Brock approach as well. 'Serra' just seems to go on forever, weaving in and out of its groove, testing out pathways and following its own internal sense of reason, totally absorbing, absolutely mesmeric. 'Radar King' is a total mind-fuck, commanding its share of the disc with military authority before descending into fx loops and then outwards and onwards to experimental adaptations of its original theme before returning to its original process with even more added menace. And 'Beyond The Sun' plays things out with a studied repetition of aching atmospherics that once again demands the comment that this is totally absorbing. I think what 'Beyond The Sun' leaves us with is a reminder that while across this record the power of Mugstar's sound is the predominant force, the brooding mood of unsettling unease is another compelling component of what they are all about.

Important Records
Mugstar Official Website