Insince.re, the blog of Clive Murray

A Good Day to Font Hard

Clive Murray — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000

I have been making stuff on the web for thousands of years, and that is a cast-iron fact.

TL;DR: I have a metric truckload of links to free-to-use fonts that you might like to be somewhat aware of very much actually.

Font Hard

Back in the dark ages of website building, you had literally^[1] eight typefaces^[2] to choose from that would work across all^[3] OSes^[4] and all^[5] browsers^[6]: five sans-serif, two serif, and a monospaced. Why so few? Browsers of the day couldn’t embed font files in the pages you were viewing, and had to look on your computer for the font you had used, and only this select bunch could reliably be semi-guaranteed to be on everyone’s computer. To get around this, generations of designers resorted to putting all their headline and decorative text in images, or even more arcane methods (anyone remember sIFR? *shudder*) to achieve their desired results.

Font Hard 2: Font Harder

Several^[7] decades later, CSS and browser advancement brought us embedded fonts ubiquitously supported across the known galaxy, thrusting us bodily into a golden age of web typography. Now you can use literally any typeface you can imagine (and many that you can’t) on literally any web page, literally just by thinking about it! Literally^[8]! You can spaff a hundred different fonts onto every page you make!

But should you?

Font Hard With a Vengeance

Of course you shouldn’t, for several mind-buggeringly good reasons. Of these, the first two that leap to mind are:

It will look shit
Fonts are someone’s copyrighted work, and if you use them without a license that’s software piracy (or “stealing”^[9], if you prefer)

And it is this second reason that brings me back to my beloved soapbox today, ladies and gentlemen and Evil Dave. I recently posted about how I was given to remove all traces of the work of Eric Gill from my web presence, and in doing so I went on quite the typographical safari while researching alternatives. I found some absolutely top-drawer fonts that are free for commercial and non-commercial use and/or licensed openly for anyone to use as they see fit, and because I am a kind and benevolent future galactic emperor, I will share these with you now.

NB: I could have embedded each of these fonts live into the page, or I could have inserted an image sample of each one. I chose to do neither of those things to reduce the number of files embedded in this one page. Instead there is an image sample for each that you may click to view, should you desire. You’re welcome.

Que Serif, Serif

If you wanted serifs on the web, it was either good old Times New Roman or Georgia. I spent years using Georgia because TNR was the boring-ass default that a browser would use if you didn’t specify a font at all – still is^[10]. This was where I would casually bung in Perpetua and impress the amassed adoring crowds with my typological nous, until I discovered what a bastard Gill was.

However, after literally^[11] years of research, I can now bring to your attention:

Vollkorn by Friedrich Althausen – sample
This is an absolutely excellent serif font, let down only slightly by the absence of weights below 400.
Cormorant by Christian Thalmann - sample
A gorgeous serif in a nice range of weights and variants. An ideal replacement for Perpetua, great for body copy.
Fanwood by Barry Schwartz – sample
One of three great serifs from Barry Schwartz of The League of Moveable Type.
Linden Hill by Barry Schwartz – sample
One of three great serifs from Barry Schwartz of The League of Moveable Type.
Sorts Mill Goudy by Barry Schwartz – sample
One of three great serifs from Barry Schwartz of The League of Moveable Type. Lovely stuff.
IM Fell DW Pica by Igino Marini - sample
Perhaps not ideal for blocks of body copy, but this one has buckets of character. Read a bit about the Fell Types if that sort of thing interests you.

The Sans of Time

Pre-renaissance, we had five – FIVE! – sans-serifs to choose from (including Comic Sans and Impact, that is), and a good portion of my formative years were spent laying everything out in teeny tiny 10px Verdana. However, I am happy to say I have since made a full recovery, and now I quiver to bring you these lovely alternatives:

Klima by Matthew Hinders-Anderson - sample
Intended initially as “a softer, more relaxed version of DIN”, this grotesque is primo gear and comes in seven weights with italics. Delete that unlicensed hooky version of DIN and get Klima on the go.
Barlow by Jeremy Tribby - sample
Three widths, nine weights, all with italics, in all the formats you can eat plus a variable TTF for later, all for free, and all looking fabulous. You can see why it’s in the top 20 most used fonts on the web.
Union Gothic by Matthew Hinders-Anderson - sample
A really nice variable width display font that goes from extremely condensed to ultra wide, in variable weights from 400 to 1000. Versatile.
Caviar Dreams by Lauren Thompson - sample
A lovely free geometric typeface to help wean you off your Futura addiction, perhaps. Nice.
Greve by Matthew Hinders-Anderson - sample
Another variable display face from Matthew Hinders-Anderson with a lot going on on the width and weight axes.
Mort by Matthew Hinders-Anderson - sample
Another geometric this time with variable weight from 100 to 1000. Looks really great at maximum chonk, but all the weights pop.

Sans Macabre

These ones are technically sans-serifs, but they’re a bit different. Come along would you, and let’s have a little look at them just now very much in fact.

Atkinson Hyperlegible Next by The Braille Institute - sample
There have been a few typefaces released over recent years that claim to be super easy to read, but this one is backed and created by The Braille Institute of America who know a thing or two about making things legible. I use it for most of my body copy. You’re probably reading it right now.
Inclusive Sans by Olivia King - sample
Another super legible typeface backed by research into legibility, Inclusive Sans additionally aims to tackle readability issues faced by those with neurodiverse conditions. Great work.
Lisnoti by Tim Gordon - sample
Tim Gordon is not a type designer or a typography expert but a frustrated user, as he explains in his excellent blog post on the genesis of Lisnoti. It is a proportional font designed for coding, a practice almost exclusively carried out in monospaced (fixed-width) type. Having wanted and searched for such a thing for 15 years, Tim finally “decided to stop waiting and to make one myself”. I have been using it to code for a week or two now. I’m not 100% sure if I dig it or not yet, but it’s definitely interesting.
Bricolage Grotesque by Mathieu Triay - sample
This neo-grotesque from a French designer living in England attempts to marry the two worlds in “a typeface with French attitude & British mannerisms.” I reckon he’s nailed it. Variable width and weight axes too, which is very nice.
Sans Forgetica by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology - sample
I love the idea behind this one. It’s almost the opposite of Atkinson Hyperlegible or Inclusive Sans – it is intentionally harder to read than regular text. What the eff? Well, quite. There is science involved, but the basic idea is you print out study notes (or a speech, or lyrics, or anything that you want to remember) in this font, and then when you read those words back your brain will “engage in deeper processing” than if you had simply read them in a clearer font like Futura or Times, and this leads to better recall. Your mileage may vary, but it’s a nice idea.
NB: this font is licensed to RMIT under the CCBYNC license (creative commons, non-commercial, attributed), so don’t just go slapping it into public or commercial work without attribution.

Breaking the News

You could possibly get away with using Arial Black for your headlines back in the day, but it wasn’t usually to be found on Macs. It was safer to just go with Arial or Helvetica bold, or Impact if you didn’t mind condensed. Nowadays with variable fonts like Union Gothic you can just whack up the weight and the width, and hey presto, Robert is very familiar with your mother all of a sudden. But if you want a dedicated chonksome headliner, why not try this absolute unit:

Folsom by Matthew Hinders-Anderson - sample

In awe at the size of this lad.

I’ll Fix YOUR Width in a Minute

I’m a web developer by trade and I spend most of my day in code editors and terminals, usually in a fixed width font. If you wanted to use one on the web back when I started out your choices were Courier^[12]… that was it. We’ve come a long way since then, and here are some choice alternatives I’ve picked up over the years that will spruce up your code samples and SSH windows:

Monaspace superfamily by Github Next - sample
The Argon variant of Monaspace has been my terminal font for two or three years now and all five faces share the same set of excellent features. The “texture healing” feature is a great way to get around one of the issues that usually affect monospaced fonts, and I think really improves overall readability. Very nice stuff.
Anonymous Pro by Mark Simonson - sample
This was my terminal and coding font for a good five—could be ten actually—years before switching to Monaspace. It ticks all the coding font boxes (no ambiguous characters, legible at small sizes, very clear at larger sizes, supports a wide character set, pleasant to read) and is genuinely a joy to stare at all day.
M+ 1m by Coji Morishita - sample
I still have a zip file of mplus fonts that I downloaded well over a decade ago containing M+1m and lots of other variants. The lowercase m denotes monospace. I can’t seem to track down these exact faces on the web now, but there is an updated version from the same author which appears to include “M Plus 1 Code” which looks similar. This is really good at small sizes, but works fine when you bump it up too.
Julia Mono by Cormullion - sample
Julia Mono is a code font that features “a wide range of specialist and technical Unicode characters”, and they really are not kidding. Each TTF file is ~3.2MB and contains over 12,000 glyphs, where Monaspace Argon (for example) has 785 glyphs. If you want to cover all the bases, or your online technical documentation uses an unholy range of special characters, then Julia Mono has you covered. (If not, think about whether you want to make your users download ~13MB of font files…)
Clack by Matthew Hinders-Anderson - sample
Matthew’s fonts are on time, every time, and his monospace is no exception.

Flip the script

I’ve left Brush Script off my initial list intentionally, because there are some things that in this modern age really should not be. If you really must use cursive on the web, you should probably have a bit of a think about why that is. That said, I am quite partial to:

Fair Prosper by Khurasan - sample

…but in the name of all the saints and sinners, go easy would you? A little script goes a very long way.

Type Free or Font Hard

Let’s just remember why we’re here, n’est-ce pas? Fonts/typefaces are copyright^[13], and you need a license to use them. Someone put a lot of work into DIN, and Proxima Nova, and Kora, and Wensley, just like I put a lot of work into writing and making music. It’s easy to forget that you are using a piece of software that someone else toiled over when you’re slapping a title onto a flyer in Photoshop or cooking up a dank meme^[14] in… whatever the kids use, and scrolling through 1000s of typefaces looking for the one that will pop.

Monotype—one of the big boys in the digital typeface playground—have an explainer about it, and this quote sums up what I’m getting at here:

“Fonts are made by the human hand, painstakingly drawn over months or sometimes years, and engineered to perform perfectly. This is what you’re paying for when you license a font: Not just the letters on the screen, but the time and care the designer put into it, often the result of a lifelong dedication to the craft.”

Sometimes these things are damned expensive, too. A full set of Helvetica Now^[15] licenses will set you back ~£550. This kind of thing is taken care of for you if you work at a design agency (or at least it damned well should be), but for the average Joe with a laptop in a coffee shop mooching on the free wifi, it might be a little prohibitive.

So, there are two paths you can go by^[16]. You can take the easy route and just use whatever you like, download the trial version of whatever it is and never buy a license, just get on with it, because who’s really going to care? Or even notice? Probably no-one, it’s true. It is software piracy, but unless your website suddenly goes viral or your band suddenly gets signed to a mega-deal or whatever, the thing you’re using your pirated fonts for is extremely likely to go utterly unnoticed and no-one will care one jot. Not one whit. Not a dickybird. The tree will fall in the forest and no-one will hear. Sure. Great. Well done.

Or, you can… not do that.

And this is the way I am going now. As I’ve covered earlier in this Ted Talk, there are free open source alternatives that look awesome for just about anything, if you just take a little time to look for them. Or perhaps cheap fonts are worth your time? Some of the fonts I mentioned earlier are around $20 for a commercial license. If the thing you’re doing is making you money, maybe buy a license for the font, and help the designer to be able to make their next one.

And, you know. You can feel good about it too.

A Good Day to Font Hard

This won’t apply to everyone. If you’re an actual graphic designer, then your standards will likely be higher than mine and these cheap/free alternatives might not quite cut it. But then, if it’s your profession, you should pay for the tools you use.

But if you’re an amateur knocking stuff up at home for whatever reason, you can find good typefaces on the web for free that meet your needs. You don’t have to just use whatever is on your computer, and you don’t always have to load up Google Fonts^[17] and spend an afternoon scrolling through endless lists (lists that contain Lobster and Papyrus, for shit’s sake).

Nobody needs Lobster or Papyrus.

–c.

P.S. Sorry, what was that? You have a question? Why all the Die Hard references? Well, it’s like this, see. When I was trying to come up with a title for this, I typed “Font Harder” and it just spiralled from there. Plus it’s Christmas. Ho. Ho. Ho.

P.P.S. Those original eight fonts^[18], in case you were wondering:

Arial – sans-serif
Verdana – sans-serif
Trebuchet – sans-serif
Impact – sans-serif
Comic Sans – sans-serif
Times New Roman – serif
Georgia – serif
Courier New – monospace

Fonts and Monsters

Clive Murray — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 12:00:00 +0000

I am going to try not to make this another 3000+ word rant, I swear, but there has to be some preamble. If you just want the main takeaway, however…

TL;DR: Eric Gill was a bastard and I will not use his typefaces any more.

Several thousand years ago^[1] I worked in a print shop in Eastbourne, which is where I am from. It was my first half-decent job, and I spent my days laying out people’s business cards and letterheads. I had no qualifications in that area, and was just lucky that they needed someone who knew their way around Corel Draw and Adobe Pagemaker. It led on to my first web job in Brighton, and from there the rest is history.

Anyway, the manager of the shop was a printer and typesetter called Ben from whom I learned loads, and also from whom I picked up an adoration of the typeface “Perpetua” to go alongside my fascination with “Gill Sans”^[2].

Anyway, life continued, and even up to a couple of months ago I was still breaking out Perpetua for headings on websites and YouTube thumbnails, because it looks great. One day something made me read the Wikipedia entry on the creator of these typefaces, Eric Gill. If you are of a sensitive disposition you may not want to go and read that yourself – I shall just tell you that he apparently got up to some pretty abhorrent things^[3].

I never liked Lostprophets in the first place, so when the atrocities of Ian Watkins came to light, my music collection was safe. When the awfulness perpetrated by the likes of Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile (and so many others) bubbled continuously to the surface during the 2010s, I shook my head and was appalled of course, but it wasn’t like I had to go home and throw away my huge collection of “Jim’ll Fix It” DVDs or anything. I never really listened to that much Michael Jackson, so deleting a couple of albums hardly stang at all.

But I couldn’t go on shoving Perpetua into everything without feeling a very considerable ick, so it had to go.

I redid my YouTube thumbnails using Sorts Mill Goudy a little while ago, and this week I have been through my whole web presence making sure I only use fonts that are open source or free to use, and have no connection with the bastard Gill.

There’ll be a more in-depth post coming up on this soon, but in the meantime why not check out:

The late 1990s. ↩︎
In my second actual web job, in London in 1999, I worked with a designer by the name of Ed. In the first week we discovered that a) we shared the same birthday, and b) we shared the same favourite typeface, Gill Sans. His favourite character in Gill Sans was the uppercase “Q”, and mine was the lowercase “t”. So there you go. ↩︎
The whole trifecta, I’m afraid: paedophilia, incest, and bestiality. Jesus. ↩︎

“Kalahari” playthrough

Clive Murray — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 13:00:00 +0000

So, having successfully recorded a playthrough video for my short piece “Resurrection”, the next logical step was to try and do a full-length song.

I had a bit of a think about which one to do and decided on “Kalahari” off of Love and Painkillers (2024), since I’ve been playing it for about 30 years and I can remember most of the notes. I even asked the internet (via Mastadon and Instagram) which guitar I should use, and the green Jem won.

30 years? But it only came out last year!

Well yes. When I rushed Earthman out in 2002 I didn’t record all the songs I had written, and this was one that has hung around ever since the mid-90s waiting for a proper treatment. It got that, in my opinion, and it’s one of my most fun songs to play. 😀

Enough waffle, here is the video (which also contains some waffle, though mercifully at the end):

I hope to do more, as time allows. Please enjoy!

“Resurrection” playthrough

Clive Murray — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 14:00:00 +0000

It has been a while before I came before you with anything new, aside from belching thousands of words at you and calling it “Album of the Year”.

And so, here I am with a fresh guitar performance (recorded yesterday in fact) of… a short tune I released 23 years ago.

Back in April I was jumping around and getting all excited because a new guitar project had emerged. That went fine for a bit, but it has stalled now and I would say it is on hiatus. I hope that it might re-emerge sometime, but it’s on pause for the time being.

The reason I was so excited about that project was it gave me a reason to play guitar. When left to my own devices, and with no project on the go, I stagnate. I gravitate away from my guitars and towards my Xbox, and I was putting in some fierce hours on Fallout 4. Then lo and behold, we had the idea for the Challenges project and that was that. I put the controller down, and got back into shape on guitar. For a couple of months back in the spring I was back up to peak fitness, ripping solos and whole songs at a fearless pace. But when it ground to a halt over the summer, I drifted back to the sofa and slipped back into lassitude.

What to do instead, then? Well, in between trying to get all the achievements in Assassin’s Creed II I had an idea. How about recording some playthrough videos of my own solo material? I know most of the steps, and I own the copyright, so there should be no impediment. Hurrah! A reason to play again!

Capital idea, Murray. Get on with it then.

I have, actually. I started softly with a playthrough of the short piece “Resurrection” from my first album, Earthman (2002).

Here it be:

I’m planning on doing more, though frequency will be determined by available spare time.

Is that the sort of thing you want?

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2024

Clive Murray — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 17:00:00 +0000

2024 was a year. I expect some good things happened, but in the main it was not zesty.

Many major armed conflicts continued in many places including Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, the Sahel region of West Africa and Syria, as well as the ongoing war in Gaza. Sweden joined NATO and Bulgaria and Romania joined Schengen. Northern America saw a total solar eclipse, and a G5-rated series of solar storms led to the aurorae (both Borealis and Australis) to be seen much further from the poles than usual, including right over my back garden in Hemel Hempstead. FACT. P45 was found guilty on 34 counts, and we thought that would be the last we’d see of him. Hah. Then someone shot him in the ear. CrowdStrike knackered up a lot of Windows computers, the knock-on effects bringing down airlines, banks, government services and more across the world. This also made it difficult for punters to buy beer at the festival I was playing that day, so boo. In an unusually positive move, the UK became the first G7 country to phase out coal power. The Europa Clipper was sent to Europa, Jupiter’s moon. (Hopefully not to attempt a landing.) The UK got its first Labour government^[1] since 2005, P45 got re-elected^[2], and many countries around the world tilted further and further to the political right, about which I am very much not OK. I try to keep politics out of these intros, but damn, it’s hard. Alright what else have I got? Um… A Magritte painting sold for USD121.1m, Estonia legalised gay marriage, literally every single company added AI to literally every single one of their products, and I released my second album. No, really, I did.

Those suddenly pining for the fjords included David Soul, Franz Beckenbauer, Carl Weathers, Steve Wright, TM Stevens, Peter Higgs (he of the boson), OJ Simpson, Dickey Betts, Bernard Hill, Steve Albini, Morgan Spurlock, Lynn Conway, Donald Sutherland, James Earl Jones, Dame Maggie Smith, Kris Kristofferson, Paul Di’Anno, Geoff Capes, Janey Godley, Quincy Jones, Vic Flick, John Prescott, Bob Bryar, Eddie Stobart, my cat Bertie, and Matt Buckley.

That last name may not be familiar unless you were involved in the local music scene around Eastbourne/Hastings/Bexhill and that sort of area in the 1990s^[3]. Matt was the first person I ever saw playing an actual Ibanez Jem in real life, and of all of us he seemed to be the most likely to succeed. I believe he went to GIT (or it could have been a different music school, my memory is bad) in the USA, and was an absurdly gifted guitarist and musician. I was only ever in one band with him, and that only briefly – one of the lineups of Iguanahead had me on acoustic guitar and Matt on lead for about a month or two before he left leaving me to take over all guitar duties. Before that, I would occasionally get up on stage with Sinister Footwear and play “Surfing With the Alien” or something to give Matt a break to go and get a pint. He was always something of an oddball, and was never dull to be around. Things could always happen, and usually did. I know very little about his passing, and all I can say is that I am immensely saddened that I’ll never get to jam with him again. RIP Matt.

Musically 2024 was a year of comebacks. All of these artists released a brand new album in 2024 after a 5+ year hiatus:

Underworld – Strawberry Hotel – 5 years
Mr. Big – Ten – 7 years
Linkin Park – From Zero – 7 years
Alien Ant Farm – Mantras – 9 years
Sebastian Bach – Child Within the Man – 10 years
The Cure – Songs of a Lost World – 16 years
Clive Murray – Love and Painkillers – 22 years

So… you know. Don’t write someone off when they’re down until their sleeping chickens are all in a row, with two in a bush and both hands on the road. Or something.

The one-liners

Sebastian Bach – Child Within the Man. (Rock.) The former Skid Row screamjouster returns after a ten-year break with a hard rocking album, sprinkled with guest guitar spots from the likes of John 5, Orianthi and Steve Stevens. Not flawless, but very good.
Jerry Cantrell – I Want Blood. (Rock.) Head plank-molester for Alice in Chains, Jerry brings us another solo outing. Sounds quite like Alice in Chains, as it goes.
Frost* – Life in the Wires. (Proggy rock. Or rocky prog, potentially.) Messrs Godfrey, Mitchell, Blundell and King return with their fifth full-length long player. Cracking stuff.
Intervals – Memory Palace. (Instrumental metal.) Aaron Marshall with another tightly conceived block of instru-metal. As great as it is, they are all starting to sound a bit samey.
Dua Lipa - Radical Optimism. (Pop). I adored Ms. Lipa’s previous album Future Nostalgia, and while there’s nothing wrong with this one, it doesn’t quite grab me the same way. “French Exit” is fab though.
Rabea Massaad – Grinding Gears Vol. 4. (Instrumental metal.) The fourth instalment of Rabea’s gear demo tunes is the heaviest and best yet. Can the man do no wrong?
Mr. Big - Ten. (Rock). If I’m honest, I only really care about the first three—maybe two—Mr. Big albums, but this here is their final one. So, there’s that.
Clive Murray - Love and Painkillers. (Instrumental rock). Ahem. Yes. Look, it took me twenty years, and I finally finished it and released it. Sue me for being proud of that.
Pet Shop Boys - Nonetheless. (Pop). Neil and Chris are still doing it, and they still sound great.
dUg Pinnick - Thingamajigger. (Rock). Chief bass-botherer off of King’s X dUg brings us a solo record to tide us over until the next KXM album. It’s fine.
Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. (Pop). I like Taylor, and I don’t care who knows it. Not as mesmerising as Midnights, not as intimate as Folklore or Evermore, and could probably stand to lose a couple of tracks. Still great though.
Týr - Battle Ballads. (Folk Metal). The Faroese metallers are still going after a few lineup changes and their ninth album is exactly what you might expect. If you like them, you’ll like this.
Whom Gods Destroy - Insanium. (Prog Metal). I wanted this to be as good as Sons of Apollo, but it’s not quite. Nothing wrong with it on paper though, and if you like Sherinian or Thal you’ll love it. Dino Jelusick (vocals) is one to watch for sure.

Honourable mentions

Alien Ant Farm - Mantras

Probably like a lot of people, I first became aware of AAF in 2001 when their major label debut ANThology dropped, bringing with it their smash cover of Jacko’s “Smooth Criminal”. You remember? The video was ace, and they did the leaning over thing like Mike? Yeah? Good times. (Well, actually the times from a musical POV were pretty dark for me, but I really liked that album.)

Anyhow, I lost touch with what they were up to after the less notable followup TruANT, and only checked back in on Dryden and co. when I heard they had a new album out, but this one is top drawer gear. Now that nu-metal is thankfully a distant memory, the band’s sound has matured and broadened while still being recognisable as the same band. The first three tracks are straight up brilliant, and “Last dAntz” particularly stands out as a nod to Coheed and Cambria with even shades of Polyphia creeping in. The album doesn’t lose steam there either, and in tru-ANT style we even get a Wham! cover, “Everything She wAnts”. Great work, boys. Top track: “Last dAntz”

Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard and Soft

Billie was born in the year ANThology came out. So, there’s that. She’s young, is what I’m saying. And yet there’s a maturity and depth in her voice that I find bewitching, and when coupled with the playful “edginess” of her lyrics and musical stylings, the results are some of the best pop songs around. She’s a proper musician too. She writes in collaboration with her brother Finneas, who is also her producer, but you don’t become the youngest artist ever to sing a James Bond theme song without being the real deal. Great. Top track: “Lunch”

Elbow - Audio Vertigo

I’ve opined before about how much I’ve loved Elbow since hearing Cast of Thousands back in the early 2000s and they remain one of my favourite British bands. Guy Garvey’s raw poetic sincerity bleeds through the band’s tight arrangements, which swing from sparse to lush with ease. If you can listen to this album and feel nothing, you might have died. Check, would you? Top track: “Balu”

Green Day - Saviors

You know what you’re going to get with Green Day, right? Right. And that’s what you get. And it’s really great. Any questions?

OK, look. I get that there’s an argument to be made along the lines of “…these multi-millionare faux ‘punk rockers’ telling me to smash the system really boil my piss…” and I understand that. But a) there’s also an argument that asks what is wrong with those who have been successful enough to reach millions of listeners then using their platform to spread their message, and b) this is also part of the bigger punk discussion. You know the one. It manifests in a few ways, from “I liked them before they were big” right the way up to “they sold a bajillion albums, that CAN’T be punk”, and so on. Whatever, girlfriend. I’m not certain they ever claimed to be punk anyway. And to be fair to BJA and crew, there is less hectoring on their more recent output… but do you know what there is plenty of? Huge tunes. Top track: “Corvette Summer”

Gun - Hombres

I don’t know how big Scot-rockers Gun ever were outside the UK, and even here they were mostly known for their smash cover of Cameo’s “Word Up” (which still owns). Well, they’ve had the usual inevitable line-up changes and a 15-year break, but the current line-up seems stable and this is a cracking rock album. Lead single “All Fired Up” is a block-rocker, and “Falling” is just lovely. Nice one. Top track: “Falling”

London Grammar - The Greatest Love

I love London Grammar. Ethereal moody indie-pop, I suppose, but what do I know? Beautiful vocals, pretty songs, what’s not to like? Top track: “House”

The Offspring - Supercharged

Again, you know what you’re going to get with The Offspring, and you get it, and it is good. 33 minutes of fun punky rock tracks. Any questions? Top track: “Looking Out For #1”

Max Richter - In a Landscape

Just beautiful. His best work since The Blue Notebooks. Absolutely indispensible. Top track: “They Will Shade Us With Their Wings”

Devin Townsend - PowerNerd

Ah, Mister Townsend, we meet again. What’s it to be this time, hmmm? Ethereal and wistful, unlistenable screaming, or madder-than-a-box-of-frogs-at-a-Focus-gig prog? Oh I see. None of those. Intriguing, dear boy, do go on. Ah, I see you’ve gone with punishingly heavy yet melodic and uplifting harmonious metal? Very well done, Mister Townsend… very well done indeed. Top track: “Gratitude”

Underworld - Strawberry Hotel

There ain’t nobody out there making the sound that these guys make. The fact that they’re still doing it, and doing it better than anyone else, is frankly awesome. Every album is wall-to-wall quality, and this is no exception. Also, I love how there are callbacks to some of their classics, for those that have but the ears to hear them. I can hear “Push Upstairs” being more than hinted at in “Denver Luna” and there is a definite nod to “Born Slippy Nuxx” at the end of “Techno Shinkansen”. Banging. Top track: “Denver Luna”

And the winners are…

I’ve gone back and forth on this a few times, and while the first one was never in any doubt, the second took a while to lock down its place on top of the podium. Yes, it’s another unbreakable two-way tie.

The Cure - Songs of a Lost World

Regular readers of this series will be sick of me saying I was “late to the party” when I “discover” some act who have in fact been huge forever.

Well, I was very late indeed to the The Cure party. They released their first album when I was 5, released their breakthrough album Disintegration when I was 15 (right when a goth phase would have been highly appropriate), and were generally successful into the mid 2000s and beyond, yet my only knowledge of them up until 2024 was “Love Cats” being on Top of the Pops a bit, and my mate playing me “Friday I’m In Love” and telling me he liked it because Robert Smith wore massive trainers in the video. It seems I’ve been doing it wrong, and apparently you aren’t allowed to exit the 90s without going through a Cure phase. Apologies, I will amend this retroactively.

Because… the new album is amazing.

I always wrote The Cure off as being gloomy, depressive, boring goth music. I lumped them in with The Smiths as being dreary, dull music to waste away to in the dark. In the early 90s I was in a rock band, playing colourful guitars and singing about girls and partying, so I had little-to-no interest in listening to whiny people being sad. Well obviously, with the benefit of hind legs, I can see that that view was reductive to the point of absurdity and that I was very much in the wrong^[4]. I’ve been back and done the required reading now, and I totally get it. Bloodflowers is excellent, Wish is brilliant, Pornography is wonderful^[5], and Disintegration is sublime. You were all right, and I was wrong, for a very long time^[6].

However, what this has meant is that I am in the rare position of being able to evaluate the band’s new album against their older albums objectively and without nostalgia or bias, and I objectively think that Songs of a Lost World is at least as good as Disintegration. I suppose the thing I can’t comment on is the experience of hearing the older albums as a teenager, because I didn’t. I can totally see how those earlier albums would really connect with someone growing and changing and feeling misunderstood or excluded, and finding solace in Smith’s words and the band’s moody vibes, but I didn’t actually feel it myself having only heard those records aged 50.

What I can comment on is the effect of the new album on me now, and it (to use the vernacular of a few years ago) hits me right in the feels. Robert’s voice has aged like a fine cheese^[7], the band’s sound is as dynamic as ever—the basslines in particular really throb along—and new boy Reeves Gabrels on guitar is an absolutely perfect fit for the band’s sound. I hesitate to use words like “ethereal” and “soundscapes”, but I just did so you’ll just have to get used to it.

This is a belter from soup to finish, whether you’re a die-hard Curist or a new fan like myself, get it down you.

Here they are with a live version of “I Can Never Say Goodbye”, a song that deals with the death of Smith’s brother. I mean… obviously, that’s a sad thing, but… how much more The Cure could it be?

Fabulous.

Top tracks: “Alone”, “I Can Never Say Goodbye”, “Endsong”

Linkin Park - From Zero

I was late to the… ah shit.

Well. I was. Back in the days of nu-metal, the haters (myself included) had absolutely zero time for Limp Park and/or Linked Biscuits, as we prided ourselves on calling them. None whatsoever. Sure, I might hear “Papercut” or “In the End” on the stereo at work, but I would never have sought to intentionally spend a single moment listening to bands of that ilk. This was 20 years ago, and in that time I have opened my mind a little, so when I heard via Nik Nocturnal that there was a new Linkin Park record and that he was, and I quote, “Stoked, dude” about it, I thought I would give it a wee listen.

I popped on the video for “The Emptiness Machine”, loved it, stuck on “Heavy Is the Crown”, loved it more, found “Two Faced”, adored it, and around this time I realised I could be looking at a contender for album of the year.

Sorry, I can’t see you? Where did you go? There’s an elephant in the room, and I can’t see past it…

My little joke. But the elephant that must be addressed here is the significant lineup change involved in Linkin Park’s return: vocalist Emily Armstrong stepping into the shoes vacated by previous shoutmeister Chester Bennington, who died in 2017^[8]. I haven’t looked, because I do not want to get vomit on my keyboard, but I would bet that there are fan forums and subreddits filled with die-hard LP “fans” spouting shit like “Aw man, how can they possibly replace Chester with a woman?” or some such.

Well, as I say, I wasn’t into them when Chester was alive so I can’t really comment. The songs I heard back in the early 2000s I actually like now, so I only have favourable things to say about him and his work, but what I can certainly comment on is the talents of Ms. Armstrong.

She is absolutely awesome.

Aside. Can we just get past this “women can’t metal” horseshit? It’s patently not true. Need I point at Floor Jansen (Nightwish), Amy Lee (Evanescence), Lzzy Hale (Halestorm), Courtney LaPlante (Spiritbox), Angela Gossow (Arch Enemy), Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), Taylor Momsen (The Pretty Reckless), or further back to Lita Ford, Janet Gardner (Vixen) and Doro Pesch? And those are just the ones that come to mind. I am certain there are thousands of bad-ass metal queens smashing stages and flooring crowds all over the world, just as there should be. They can metal your ass into the ground. Just being a woman is metal as hell. Shut up.

Ahem. Right. So, Emily Armstrong is bloody excellent and you can take that to the bank, the rest of the band are tight as anything, and the production is superb. One of the things that helped Linkin Park stand out from the crowd 20+ years ago was the interplay between the two vocalists, Bennington and founding member Mike Shinoda; Bennington having a greater range in terms of dynamics and power as well as literal vocal range, and Shinoda being a skilled rapper (and singer). Well, that is very much still the case – moreso perhaps now that Shinoda’s sparring partner is female, with a very different vocal pitch and timbre, accentuating the contrast between them even more. I realise that this is a poncey way of saying they sound great together. Some metal bands have two singers—one for “clean” singing and one for the death growls—and it’s for the same reason. The band’s music wants both textures available, and usually that means you need two people. (Unless the band is Spiritbox, Arch Enemy or Nightwish of course^[9]. Hail Courtney. Hail Alissa (and Angela before her). Hail Floor.)

So what of the songs? Well look, in this case I admit I haven’t gone back to the source so I can’t compare From Zero to the smash hit albums of LP’s past: Hybrid Theory and Meteora being the two biggest. All I can do is take the record at face value, and it’s bloody excellent. Skipping the intro track, we get three hard hitters in the first four songs: “The Emptiness Machine”, “Heavy Is the Crown” and “Over Each Other” are pretty much flawless. “Over Each Other” in particular sticks out as being a showcase for Armstrong to really demonstrate her vocal chops, and is I think my favourite song on the album. There are some tracks here that are merely good, it’s true. “Casualty” and “Overflow” fall into that bucket in my opinion. “Cut the Bridge”, “IGYEIH” and “Stained” are better, and I do really like the album closer “Good Things Go”. These are definitely good songs. Great songs perhaps, some of them. Nothing wrong with them, for sure.

But.

But they aren’t…

They’re not…

Well.

What they aren’t is “Two Faced”, which absolutely slams, dude. Honestly. If you want Linkin Park^[10], and it’s the 2020s^[11], and you just want one song, take this one. It will leave you in absolutely no doubt^[12].

Look.

See?

I was never into rap-rock, or nu-metal, or any of that stuff back then, but what did I know? I was in my 20s. What I can tell you right here, right now, at this moment in time, without a shadow of a doubt… is that From Zero is an absolute cracker of an album from start to nuts.

Top tracks: “Two Faced”, “Over Each Other”, “Heavy Is the Crown”

Turkey of the Year

Blood Stain Child - Cyberia

Japanese melodic death metal electronicore misfits Blood Stain Child released two albums in 2024, this one and another called Metalia. While I do really like their style overall (and 2019’s Amateras is excellent), their output is patchy. Metalia was not bad, but not quite of the grade to make my exalted list. Cyberia was… well. Sometimes when you don’t have anything nice to say, it’s best not to say anything at all.

Well. Sort of Labour. I mean… Sir Kier is hardly Harold Wilson, is he? ↩︎
I suppose technically he’s P47 now. ↩︎
Or, of course, knew him in later life, potentially in Germany where he lived for a while. ↩︎
…about The Cure. Not about The Smiths. I have always hated them with a passion since long before M*rriss*y turned out to be total tool. You can take The Smiths, bung them in a sack with Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode and the fucking Jesus and fucking Mary Chain, gaffa it shut, and chuck the lot in the canal. Now, if you wouldn’t mind. Come on, I don’t have all day. ↩︎
Steady on. This is a family show. ↩︎
Yes, alright, I take it as read that not actually everyone liked The Cure, and that’s fine. Well done. You don’t need to leave a comment to that effect. It’s alright. ↩︎
Yes OK, that should say wine. ↩︎
Apparently by his own hand, sadly. ↩︎
Yes, I’m sure there are others. ↩︎
You do. ↩︎
It is. ↩︎
Gwen Stefani, there’s another queen. Not metal, true, but she is awesome. ↩︎

Guitar Challenges by the Fiasco Bros

Clive Murray — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 13:00:00 +0000

New thing alert!

There’s this guy, you know?

He and I have been playing guitar in bands together since we were 17, right up until the point in the late 2000s where he selfishly left the country and started a family or some such thing.

Despite that, we’re still buddies and we still talk all the time. But, thanks to our old friend geography, we don’t get to jam any more. This made us sad.

But a couple of months ago we hit upon a great idea – we would think up guitar challenges for each other. Songs or solos that either we used to play back in the day, or would like to spend a bit of time on. Then, each week^[1], we select one from the list, learn or re-learn it, video the evidence, and stick it up on the YooToobs.

Natty, yes? In fact we have been doing this for a little while now, and two challenges have been completed, a third is imminent, and I’ve been beavering away on the fourth.

Naturally, being of a webbish mindset, I turned this little project into its own website, and so with no further ado, I present to you:

Guitar Challenges by the Fiasco Bros. EST 1991

Enjoy!

Feel free to leave comments, suggestions, critiques, and fan-mail, but just remember this isn’t a competition. We’re doing it for the joy of doing it. (Also, he’s better than me, but that’s by the bye.)

Ideally, each week. But you know, life gets in the way. We’re lagging a bit at the moment, plus some of these things are harder than others. ↩︎

K is for...

Clive Murray — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 12:00:00 +0000

K is for… KXM

Photo borrowed from unsungmelody.com, credit: Sebastien Paquet^[1].

Yeah yeah, supergroups. It’s a mixed bag of hot weasels, really.

You do get a few that fit the cliché, where they’re a big disappointment and nothing quite works like it should because of all the egos getting in the way, but I struggle to think of any at the moment.

Then you get the “meh” ones where it all sort of works, but doesn’t exactly set the world on fire (Chickenfoot, Audioslave, Zwan, Hellyeah, The Winery Dogs), you get the ones where it all works really well (Velvet Revolver, Brides of Destruction, Sons of Apollo, The Dead Daisies, Frost*, Alter Bridge, The Damned Things, Flying Colors) and then you get a couple of really rare ones where they are in fact the best thing that’s ever happened (David Lee Roth band^[2], Mr. Big).

Well, KXM are really very good indeed^[3]. Drummer Ray Luzier brings the “K” from KoRn, guitarist and friend of the show, the omnipresent hardest-working-rock-star-in-America George Lynch brings the “M” from Lynch Mob; and the “X” is lovingly provided by Doug Pinnick – bassist, vocalist and creative powerhouse behind King’s X.

With the “super” credentials established and out of the way, and an average age (at time of writing) of 65.667, these are clearly musicians who have been round the block a few times, so does it work when they get together? Is there chemistry? This is, after all, what a band must have in order to generate music that works, and the lack of which can lead to supergroups ailing, failing and flailing.

It sure does. Doug has such a distinctive sound both on bass and vocals that there was a potential danger of this sounding like a King’s X knock-off, but with Lynch on guitar that was never going to happen. I’ve said a thousand times that George has such a distinctive style, you can tell it’s him with one note. How many rock guitarists can you really say that about?^[4] Ray is absolutely excellent on drums, also. I’ve never really dug KoRn, but his playing on the KXM records is tight and fresh, leaving plenty of room for George to sprinkle his Lynchy noodles.

Best power trio since Primus? Controversial… but perhaps… yes?

Get on it.

Clive recommends:

All three records are superb. I think for the best balance, as a showcase of what they do, you would be best served starting with 2017’s Scatterbrain, but please do hoover them all up if you dig it.

Video evidence

Like what you read? Want a taste right now? Got your eyes and ears on you? Here they are with “War of Words” from 2019’s Circle of Dolls. You’re welcome.

K is also for…

Karnivool (Prog metal)
King’s X (Rock)
Kino (Prog)
Korpiklaani (Finnish folk metal)
Richie Kotzen (Rock)

I can’t find any obviously royalty-free images of KXM to use, so I have used image search to find this one and am using it without permission. I am at least giving credit. I’ll take it down on request. ↩︎
OK, this one did implode because of egos, it’s true. But they put out two of the best rock records ever made before that happened. ↩︎
I shall let you decide which category they belong in. ↩︎
One. It’s George Lynch. ↩︎

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2023

Clive Murray — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 17:09:00 +0000

2023 was one of the worst years of my life, and you can take that to the bank. I still don’t know if I will talk about that in public… probably not, as it involves idiocies and failings on my part, and is generally a period I wish to put firmly in my rear view. Suffice to say it was a dark chapter, and it is behind me now. On the positive side, I did play a lot of guitar, finish the writing and recording for my second solo album, and spent a good long time learning about mixing and production. So it wasn’t a total bust.

The COVID-19 pandemic continued to decline and the WHO called an end to “global health emergency” status. Huge cyclones and earthquakes killed hundreds of thousands, and continuing wars across the globe claimed perhaps millions more. Several large American banks imploded, as did five billionaire dickheads in a tin can. On April 14th, ESA launched the wonderfully named JUICE to look for life around Jupiter, and in further billionaire dickhead news, six days later Space Karen launched the most powerful rocket ever created. It exploded after four minutes. This test flight spread sand and soil over communities in a 6.5 mile radius, and caused a brushfire that burned 3.5 acres of state parkland. :golfclap:

Chazzy Tré got his mum’s hat, Belarus signed an agreement letting Russia station tactical nukes on its territory, which I expect is probably FINE and NOT A PROBLEM, AT ALL. Greek wildfires, Barbenheimer, Hawaiian wildfires, Rupert Murdoch retired, Canadian wildfires, the Beatles released a new song despite 50% of them being absolutely dead at the time, and did anyone notice the world is burning?

Among those running down the curtain and joining the choir invisible were Fay Weldon, Gianluca Vialli, Jeff Beck, Lisa Marie Presley, Julian Sands, Christopher Light^[1], Burt Bacharach, Raquel Welch, John Motson, Mystic Meg, Lance Reddick, Lily Savage (Paul O’Grady), Mary Quant, Dame Edna Everage (Barry Humphries), Harry Belafonte, Jerry Springer, Tina Turner, Silvio Berlusconi, Cormac McCarthy, Glenda Jackson, Kevin Mitnick, Tony Bennett, George Alagiah, Sinéad O’Connor, William Friedkin, Michael Parkinson, Molly Holzschlag^[2], Mike Yarwood, Roger Whittaker, Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum), Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), Bobby Charlton, Shaft (Richard Roundtree), Chanandler Bong (Matt Perry), Charlie Dominici, Joss Ackland, Annabel Giles, Terry Venables, Shane MacGowan and Benjamin Zephaniah.

Honestly. What a load of old shit that year was. I only made it through thanks to some serious help from two very special people (you know who you are). But while all that nonsense was going on, some rather good music was released unto the world.

The one-liners

Extreme – Six. (Rock.) Nuno and friends return with a couple of great singles and a patchy album.
Foo Fighters – But Here We Are. (Rock.) Dave and the gang are back with their first album since the passing of Taylor Hawkins. It’s good, like always, with a touch of inevitable extra poignancy.
Greta Van Fleet – Starcatcher. (Rock.) Nothing especially new from the retro-focused Michigan quartet, but then, isn’t that largely the point?
George Lynch – Guitars at the End of the World. (Instrumental rock.) Would you like some George Lynch with that? Yes, you would.
Kylie Minogue - Tension. (Pop). Another lovely 50mins with Ms. Minogue. Not quite as good as Disco, but worth it for “Padam Padam” alone.
Mr. Fastfinger – Tremors. (Instrumental rock.) Terrifying Finn Mika Tyyskä and his fast fingers serving up melodic shred tunage.
Plini - Mirage. (Instrumental.) Ol’ Plinners is beginning to go a little more fusiony than I usually like, but I’m still sticking with him for now at least. Musicianship sans pareil.
Queens of the Stone Age – In Times New Roman…. (Rock.) I can’t quite tell if I like this or not.
Nita Strauss – Call of the Void. (Metal.) Nita absolutely shreds, no doubt, but apparently (like Slash and myself) she does not do the singing so she has recruited some guest warblers here (Alice Cooper, David Draiman and Lzzy Hale among them), plus a smattering of instrumental metal tracks. Inconsistent, but good overall.
Jakub Zytecki – Remind Me. (Ambient shred.) Lo-fi ambient heavy dream-shred-gaze. I’m coining that here and now. It’s good, also.

OK, ready? Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Honourable mentions

Black Stone Cherry - Screamin’ at the Sky

I first stumbled across Black Stone Cherry in around 2008 or so, when their excellent second album Folklore and Superstition was doing the rounds. Went to see them play live and everything. Right good, they were. From then onwards I was a little dismayed to see them appear to contract a severe case of what I think of as “Aerosmith Syndrome”. Each album seemed to have a higher percentage of ballads than the previous one, and even the heavier rockier tracks began feeling over-produced and lifeless. I was mightily pleased, then, to check back in with them and discover that this album is much more in keeping with those first couple of records. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Top track: “Screamin’ at the Sky”

Buckcherry - Vol. 10

It’s Josh Todd and the gang’s tenth outing, and you should know what you’re going to get by now. Josh’s voice and Stevie D’s riffage are on point for 37 tight minutes of hard rocking that never leaves you in any doubt. Even the cover of “Summer of ’69” works surprisingly well. Cracking. Top track: “Keep On Fighting”

Peter Gabriel - i/o

Here’s a chewy one… this is Gabs’s first album of new material since 2002’s excellent Up, and yes he has been working on it all that time^[3]. Gabriel is something of a perfectionist and has been tweaking and meddling with these songs for two decades… for so long in fact that even now, when the album is released, he still couldn’t decide on how the overall mix should sound. For this reason, you get the whole album twice – the same twelve songs in the same order, first in their “Bright-Side Mix” configuration, followed by the “Dark-Side Mix”. Fair enough. It does feel a bit like “Oh… I don’t know… YOU decide! Here, have both versions!” but… you know, this is Peter Gabriel. I can forgive him that. For what it’s worth, I prefer the “Dark-Side” overall. It feels a bit more like a cohesive album production than the “Bright-Side” versions. YMMV, of course. What’s in no doubt is septuagenarian Gabriel’s vocal ability. He sounds as good as he ever has (which is very good indeed). Top track: “Four Kinds of Horses”

McRocklin & Hutch - Press Start

Thomas McRocklin and Tim Hutchinson absolutely blew me away in 2019 with their gangbuster shredwave debut Riding Out – an utterly holy marriage of 80s vaporwave retro electronica and blistering lead guitar, and an unabashed homage to 80s rock and cult movies. Does the gag work a second time? Yes, it sure does. Most of the tracks on this second album were released as singles in the wake of Riding Out, so if you’re a fan like me, you may already have most of them, but if not then you’re in for another treat. Top track: “Distorted Dreams”

Metallica - 72 Seasons

Cards on the table, I’m not fussed about a lot of Metallica’s catalogue. I dig The Black Album, I like some tracks off the old stuff, and St. Anger was utter tripe. Didn’t much care for Death Magnetic either, and I pretty much stopped caring around then. My mate, see, he’s a ’tallica old-skooler, right. He reckons that Master of Puppets is the high-water-mark for Bay Area thrash, and who am I to say he’s wrong? That’s his opinion and he’s welcome to it. Turns out we both like this one, though. Thrashy! Top track: “72 Seasons”

Nuclear Power Trio - Wet Ass Plutonium

It was back in 2020 when this absolutely barking trio dropped their EP A Clear and Present Rager and generally floored jaws all round with their incredible musicianship, wrapped in over-the-top bombast and pomp, and on top of it all shrouding their real identities behind masks^[4] so that we are presented with what appears to be Trump, Putin and Kim all giving it absolutely six-nowt shred-wise. Novelty, for sure, but the musicality speaks for itself and this is a really fun album even when you aren’t watching the goons in the suits. Top track: “Nyetflix and Chill”

Paramore - This Is Why

Paramore are a lot like DragonForce, when you think about it. Well, actually no they aren’t at all, but what they do have in common is that my first exposure to them was when playing Guitar Hero on my old Xbox 360. I always meant to go back and check out Paramore properly, because I very much enjoyed the cut of their jib, but never got around to it until 2023 (some 15 years after their songs appeared in Guitar Hero: World Tour). From the moment I put This Is Why on to play, I had a smile on my face and I still do whenever it comes up. Lovely album, this. Top track: “Running Out of Time”

The Totemist - Less We Know

In 2021 the wonder that is Rabea Massaad graced us with a side-project called The Totemist and dropped a crushing three-song EP from a great height. It was solid, but brief. This time we get four tracks which are, if anything, even more brootz than last time. Absolute slab. Top track: “Dos Huevos”

Voyager - Fearless in Love

Every time I think about Voyager it’s Danny Estrin’s astounding clean vocals that leap to the fore of what I laughably call my mind, but that’s a disservice to the rest of the band and also their songwriting prowess. To my mind no-one does heavy pop-prog as well as this, save perhaps the mighty Devin Townsend, which is no faint praise. Also, with Voyager, you’re less likely to encounter the sometimes neck-breaking genre shifts that Devin is fond of. You’re in with a pretty good bet that if you like a couple of tracks on a Voyager album, you’ll likely enjoy them all (not something I can confidently say about the undeniably amazing Mr. Townsend). Top track: “Submarine”

Steven Wilson - The Harmony Codex

I opined back in 2017 that we are lucky to live in the era of Steven Wilson, when he romped home with the top prize for his arresting album To the Bone, and I stand by that. The man is a giant of the British prog scene, whether with his band Porcupine Tree, his outstanding solo ouvre, or his various side projects. All of this quite aside from being a top-notch producer, mixer and audio engineer, and of late building a reputation for being one of the best remixers/remasterers in the business, specialising in spatial audio remixes. That’s quite a lot of talent for one guy from Hemel Hempstead, really. I personally found his 2021 disc The Future Bites to be good, but not as good as I wanted it to be. This heinous crime is rectified here on The Harmony Codex, which is fabulous. By turns lush and dense, sparse and haunting, uplifting, and occasionally unsettling. Great stuff, and as always, a guest spot from Ninet Tayeb does no harm whatsoever. Top track: “Rock Bottom (feat. Ninet Tayeb)”

You Me At Six - Truth Decay

If you’re anything like me—and I know I am—then you have been digging these boys from Surrey since you first heard them. Right? Damn right. You’ll be saddened then, as was I, to hear that this is to be their final album, and they are breaking up after their 2025 tour. Maybe I’ll actually get around to going to see them, if the tickets aren’t too ludicrously priced… yeah right. Either way, this is another cracker from Josh F. and co. with some of their best songs yet. Top track: “No Future? Yeah Right”

And the winner is…

Sleep Token - Take Me Back to Eden

Allllllll righty, then.

I’ll be honest with you, this one has been sewn up since the beginning of 2023.

The scenario: it is mid-January, and I am not in a good mental state. For reasons I shan’t go into, I have had a pretty stressful couple of months and then Christmas itself, and the wine is free-flowing to compensate. New year is out of the way, and the return to work plus the cold of winter are squashing what little spirit I have left.

I find myself alone at the computer late one night, glass of wine in hand, wandering down social media, and notice that a number of people are suddenly talking about a band I have never heard of. The name is completely unfamiliar, and I cannot discern anything from what anyone is saying regarding what kind of music they play, what genre they are, where they’re from, anything. All people are saying is:

You’ve really got to listen to Sleep Token.

What kind of a name is that? One of my friends who is saying this is deeply into death metal and deeply screamy hard stuff that I can’t listen to (although by no means is that all they listen to), and another who is frothing equally about them is into punk and industrial and a bunch of other stuff that I don’t really get (as well as metal and many other things), and I can’t get a single handle on what this band (is it a band? is it a mood? is it a genre? is it a man from Grimsby?) might sound like. Apparently lots of people are losing their minds over a song called “The Summoning”, which sounds like a metal song name? OK, maybe that’s what we’re talking about. But people are also saying that their music crosses lots of different genres^[5]. Then one of the aforementioned friends says something like “Yeah loads of people are losing their minds over “The Summoning” (and rightly so), but all of it is just so NNNNNNGH.” (I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the gist.)

So I get another glass of wine and fire up YouTube. I search for Sleep Token and press play on the first video I find, which is “Granite”. If you haven’t heard it, go on and give it a go just here.

Bruh, I was shook.

I was instantly captivated by the song and the video, and went looking for more. It turned out that “Granite” was one of four songs the band released within two weeks in early January 2023, the others being “Chokehold”, “The Summoning” and “Aqua Regia”, all of which had appeared on YouTube with similar videos. I devoured these and went looking for more. On the way I found a very entertaining reaction video from Nik Nocturnal, metal guitarist, YouTuber, metal reviewer and streamer, who was on his channel with his audience at the moment “The Summoning” was released, and while I don’t get reaction videos most of the time, this one I do find extremely fun (especially when you know how the song ends, and Nik doesn’t…)

So then I’m hooked. I go looking for older material, and for info on the band. The older material exists—Take Me Back to Eden is their 3rd full-length album—and it’s great, though it doesn’t grab me as hard as these four songs have, so I just loop the four videos whenever I’m sat at the computer for a bit.

Info on the band turns out to be something else entirely, though. It turns out that the band are anonymous… the singer is simply called “Vessel” while the other members just have numbers. II is the drummer, III is the bassist and IV is the guitarist, and they all wear masks. OK, we’ve seen this kind of thing before, see Ghost and Slipknot among others for details. But there’s more.

When they first signed to a label in 2017, the label put out this “description”:

"A band that goes above and beyond simply writing and playing music, Sleep Token are said to be “the mortal representatives of the ancient deity known only as ‘Sleep’, led by the masked and cloaked figure appointed ‘Vessel’ … the master creator behind the music.”

When I got into them, the band had only ever given one interview—Vessel spoke to Metal Hammer magazine in 2017—and that was it. No more info. Nothing on socials, no more interviews, and even when you watch videos of them playing live, they do not speak. Vessel sings, IV does some screamy vocals as well, and that is all. Since then, II has done a video interview and playthrough demo with the Drumeo channel, and his voice was masked using effects, and his answers to questions sometimes deliberately vague and mystical sounding.

So… at this point, you either buy into the schtick or you don’t. Yes, you can find out the names of the members if you happen to care and know how to use a search engine. Yes, you can find videos of the band playing open air festival gigs in the daylight where the smoke machines and light show aren’t really helping and they look a little odd hopping around in their black getups not talking to the audience. Yes, you might say “I can’t be doing with any of that D&D shit”, and that is all fair enough. I’m not here to defend any of it, but I will say that I really like all of it.

So then in May 2023, the album was released, and it was every bit as good as I had dared to hope. Much has been made elsewhere about their “fluid approach to genre” and their label even said “in a world of form and genre, Sleep Token cannot be confined”. If you have listened to “The Summoning”, you’ll know that they’re quite happy to shift between genres in one song but that also translates to the album as a whole. There are songs which are 100% flat-out heavy-as-balls throughout (“Vore”), there are pop-friendly songs that have no heaviness at all (“DYWTYLM”), ballady songs that would play fine on the radio without scaring the norms too much (“Are You Really Okay?”), there are sexy jams (“Aqua Regia”, “The Apparition”), and there are long proggy numbers that combine it all (“Ascenscionism”, “Take Me Back to Eden”).

The production is sumptuous yet spacious throughout, always serving the song, and putting Vessel’s soulful voice right up front while the rest of the band weave around him.

Special mention must go to the drummer, II. He is absolutely incredible. Check out this isolated live playthrough of “Hypnosis” from the band’s second album This Place Will Become Your Tomb. I was lucky enough to see Sleep Token live at Wembley in December 2023 and I can confirm that what you hear on the albums is II being restrained and playing for the song. Live, he is an utter powerhouse.

Sleep Token are a Marmite band^[6], and personally I love them. I get that some people will be put off by the theatrics and the costumes, and that’s fine. If you need to see the guitarist’s face, or know the bass player’s name, or just plain don’t like it when they dress up funny^[7], no worries. Even then I would still argue that you can happily just listen to the music and love it regardless.

Unless you don’t like their music, of course. If that’s the case, then I can’t help you.

Top tracks: “Ascensionism”, “Chokehold”, “The Summoning”

Turkey of the Year

I was so disappointed by the Extreme album Six that it was TotY for a while. Once I’d gotten over the hype of the “Rise” solo, and how absolutely and thoroughly great Nuno is^[8] throughout, I realised that actually only a couple of the songs stuck with me, and the elephant in that particular room…

Gary Cherone is just awful. He was alright back in the day, when his vocal chops were strong, but now… he just sounds like everything is a struggle, and it sounds bad.

However, metal’s most prolific 70yo wins the race to the bottom this year with one of his many side projects…

The Banishment - Machine and Bone

It’s no secret that we love us some George Lynch here at Clive’s Album of the Year. He’s usually somewhere in the runners and riders with at least one entry, be it a solo effort, a Lynch Mob^[9] or KXM album, or some other side project. This is one of the latter, and it claims to be an “industrial rock and dream punk” collaboration between Lynch, multi-instrumentalist Joe Haze, and artist and vocalist Devix Szell.

Bollocks, more like.

My father-in-law. RIP. ↩︎
In the mid 2000s I went to quite a few web development conferences in London. In case you didn’t know, that’s what I do for a job, and these conferences were always a great way to keep up with what was going on at the bleeding edge, and stay abreast of the industry. Molly was one of the original people who inspired me to become not just someone who makes/programs web stuff, but to be a creative web developer. She was a fierce advocate of the open web and web standards, she was a CSS sorceror, and she was possessed of a fiery wit, as my boss and I discovered one night out drinking with her after one of these conferences. RIP. ↩︎
Twenty years? Two whole decades? To make one album? Loser. Honestly. Some people. ↩︎
There’s a lot of this about at the moment – more on that later. ↩︎
Yes, many bands do this, that’s not so remarkable. What I didn’t realise at the time was that they meant several different genres in the same song. ↩︎
As in, “you either love it or hate it”. Irritatingly, whenever something is described as “a Marmite whatever”, some insightful commenter will leap in with both size 10s and say “HAHA funnily enough I can take it or leave it! I think they’re just OK! I don’t love or hate them! HAHA! You’re wrong!” Yeah OK, mate. I’m the same about Marmite, funnily enough. You know what I mean, stop being a pedant. ↩︎
I assume you don’t like Kiss, Slipknot, Gwar, MF DOOM, Ghost, Rob Zombie, Buckethead, Cradle of Filth, Daft Punk, Immortal (in fact any black metal outfit tbh), Alice Cooper or Deadmau5 for the same reason. ↩︎
Nuno Bettencourt is the Keanu Reeves of rock music. FACT. (Yes, I’m aware Keanu also plays in a rock band. Sorry. He can’t be the Keanu Reeves of rock music, because Nuno is. Maybe Keanu is the Nuno Bettencourt of movies?) ↩︎
Weren’t they going to stop using that name? ↩︎

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2022

Clive Murray — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 17:00:00 +0000

2022 was a while back now, I realise, but I’ve had other things on my mind in 2023 besides ranking my favourite albums of the previous year. 2023 did, in fact, suck. Maybe one day I’ll talk about that. But not now.

In 2022 I finally got to go to two arena gigs that were postponed from 2020, Lady Gaga and My Chemical Romance. They were both amazing shows, and I went to both on my own, as the people who were to come with me couldn’t make the new dates. The Gaga show was an incredible spectacle that I won’t forget, but the MCR show was an absolutely awesome gig and probably the highlight of my year. I just hope they put out an album. 🙏

The world population reached the 8 billion mark in 2022. Eight billion. Russia invaded Ukraine beginning a war which is still ongoing at time of writing and which has been condemned internationally, particularly in the west. Q-Tip celebrated her Platty Joobs, which was only the second most significant event in her calendar that year, as she then went on to die in September. A mixed bag there. Space Karen bought Twitter for $44bn, BogJob resigned, someone had another go at killing Salman Rushdie, floods devastated Pakistan, Liz Truss became Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister of the UK, and ChatGPT was birthed.

Those patting down their pockets to find their ethereal keys and then heading outside to the astral car park included Sidney Poitier, Meat Loaf 🦠, Barry Cryer, Bamber Gascoigne, Shane Warne, William Hurt, Peter Bowles, Taylor Hawkins, C.W. McCall, June Brown, Pamela Rooke, Terry off of Minder (Dennis Waterman), Vangelis, Ray Liotta, Alec John Such, Julee Cruise, Brett Tuggle, James Caan, James Lovelock, Bernard Cribbins, Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Issey Miyake, Olivia Newton-John, Raymond Briggs, Mikhail Gorbachev, Queen Elizabeth II, Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), Coolio, Loretta Lynn, Angela Lansbury, Robbie Coltrane, Jerry Lee Lewis, Leslie Phillips, Wilko Johnson, Christine McVie, Kirstie Alley, Ruth Madoc, Maxi Jazz, John Bird, Pelé, Vivienne Westwood and Pope Benedict the XVIth.

The one-liners

Alter Bridge – Pawns & Kings. (Heavy rock/metal.) Another solid album from Kennedy, Tremonti et al., though perhaps they are beginning to all sound a bit samey. Still good though.
Halestorm – Back From the Dead. (Hard rock.) Lzzy Hale and her gang doing what they do best.
Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxymore. (World/ambient/new age.) A more ambient side of J-MJ. If that’s what you want, then… um… this is that.
King’s X – Three Sides of One. (Rock.) Dug Pinnick is 73. He still sounds amazing.
MASTER BOOT RECORD - PERSONAL COMPUTER. (Electronic metal). Entirely electronic, but more like heavy metal than a lot of heavy metal. Allegedly “the artist claims that a computer itself has made all of the music as if it is sentient”. So, there’s that. Reminds me of the original soundtrack to Doom.
Megadeth – The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!. (Metal/thrash.) Yes, Dave Mustaine is still sneering down the mic at us all and he still doesn’t like the government. Kiko’s solos are worth the price of admission alone.
Mr. Fastfinger - Flight Mode. (Instrumental.) The sprightly Finn returns with ten more tracks of his wonderful compositions. Always fun.
Placebo – Never Let Me Go. (Alt-rock.) I’d never really gotten into Placebo but when I saw them supporting My Chemical Romance live in 2022 they were great. This is a good record. Moody.
Porcupine Tree – Closure/Continuation. (Prog rock.) Brit-prog god Steven Wilson returns to his band format for their 11th long-player. Good stuff.
Queensrÿche – Digital Noise Alliance. (Hard rock.) I still can’t get over how much Todd sounds like Geoff, if I’m honest.
Shinedown – Planet Zero. (Rock.) I mean, if you like that sort of thing then it’s fine. Concepty too, if that helps?
Devin Townsend – Lightwork. (Prog metal, maybe?) Not quite as mad as Empath, but up that end of the wackometer. Some utterly beautiful moments on this one. Recommend.
Steve Vai – Inviolate. (Instrumental rock.) Not sure how many more Vai albums I’m going to go for. Where Joe Satriani seems to have found a lot more mojo lately, Steve seems to be wandering more esoteric paths. Noodly.
Ed Wynne & Gre Vanderloo – Tumbling Through the Floativerse. (Psychedelic instrumental rock.) Remember when Ed released a solo album that was basically just like Ozric Tentacles? Quite like that. As in, exactly like that.

So. Onward.

Honourable mentions

Amorphis - Halo

I’ve loved these Finnish folkish metallers since I first heard Skyforger in 2009, and every album they’ve released since then has gone into heavy rotation as soon as it came out. Halo is no exception. Fabulous. Top track: “On the Dark Waters”

Architects - The Classic Symptoms of a Broken Spirit

Architects are from Brighton, they don’t drink, and they’re vegans. Despite all of that, they’re absolutely awesome. They romped home with the top prize for AotY 2021, as you may or may not, and here they are again the very next year with another absolute utter slab of an album. This is some primo metalcore, and you can take that to the bank. Top track: “When We Were Young”

Coheed and Cambria - Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind

There’s very little left to say about Coheed and Cambria, other than pointing out how absolutely remarkable it is that they are still putting out flawless albums. If semi-sci-fi-themed prog rock does it for you, then you should be listening to them non-stop. Brilliant. Top track: “A Disappearing Act”

Crashdïet - Automaton

These Swedish glamsters have had a patchy run of it, to be honest. Their first album (Rest in Sleaze, 2005) was very promising if a little naive, but then the singer committed suicide. They borrowed the lead singer from Reckless Love for the second one (The Unattractive Revolution, 2007) and that was OK, but then Olli Herman went back to his main band. They found another singer (who I thought was a bit of a cock) and did another couple of albums, but by that time I’d tuned out. I didn’t really think about them until they popped up on the Tube of You one day with another new singer, and a really good sound. This album is great from start to nuts, and a guest spot from Steel Panther’s Michael Starr does no harm. Top track: “No Man’s Land”

Polyphia - Remember That You Will Die

This is a tricky one, given that I don’t like about half the tracks on it. Much has been made of late about the “trick cyclist” guitar skills of wunderkind Tim Henson and the equally dextrous Scottie LePage, and there is no denying their technique is mind-blowing. Add to that the absolutely unpossible drumulation from Clay Aeschliman, in which I feel that Tim and the others write the hardest possible trap/hip-hop beats in an effort to create something he can’t play. If that’s the case, they haven’t managed it yet. But… well, it’s an album of at least two halves. See, no-one in the band sings and most of their music is instrumental. That’s great. I love that. (I also do that, in case I haven’t mentioned it…) But the Texas quartet aren’t happy to leave it there and give us forty minutes of wailage and enriffment. No. Instead they recruit guest vocalists for 5 out of the 12 songs. Again, nothing wrong with that. Your man Chino off of Deftones is one of them, and that track (“Bloodbath”) is wonderful. Where Polyphia lose me is when they recruit rappers and other “young people’s music” vocalists such as Sophia Black, Killstation, Lil West and $not. Thing is, I’m 50, and I’m not the target audience for those songs, and that’s fine! Honestly. I love the other tracks enough to still put this album in my AotY 2022 shortlist. My skip button works perfectly well, and I love the instrumental tracks and “Bloodbath”. Check the video for a guest spot from Steve Vai. Top track: “Ego Death”

Michael Romeo - War of the Worlds pt. 2

Well, we had to wait four years for part 2, but it was worth the wait. More of the same, to be honest with you, with one change: vocals this time round are provided by Croatian singer Dino Jelusic, who we last saw round these parts in 2020, knocking about with George Lynch on his band project Dirty Shirley. Dino has a hell of a voice, and Romeo’s arrangements and solos are impeccable as ever. Don’t try to pecc them, YOU WILL FAIL. Top track: “Metamorphosis”

Joe Satriani - The Elephants of Mars

OK so, Satch is important to me, so listen up. I play instrumental rock guitar, as you might know. I even released my second album in early 2024. (Did I mention that?) And the reason I started playing that kind of music was when my guitar teacher back in Eastbourne played 15-year-old me the title track from Surfing With the Alien, and my mind came clean off. I mean, the world changed. Up until that day I wanted to play rock songs like Dire Straits and Queen and blues like Eric Clapton and Robert Cray, but on hearing “Surfing”, everything shifted. Before long, I started to wonder if maybe one day I might be able to play something like that. It seemed impossible then, given I couldn’t quite get my hands around the riff for “Money For Nothing” at that time, but I did always think that maybe one day I might make that kind of music. And so I did. That is why Satch means more to me than Steve Vai, or Paul Gilbert, or Brian May, or anyone else. I got the tab books, and I learned the easy tracks first, and worked up to the harder ones over the years. Then I got a 4-track and a drum machine and started to try and write my own tunes, and the rest is (a lot of) history. So that’s why Satch matters. And that’s why it hurt so much, when in the early 2000s, he began to absolutely suck. Crystal Planet (1998) is an objectively brilliant album. Perhaps only The Extremist (1992) tops it in Joe’s entire ouvre. But… well. Engines of Creation (2000) is patchy and divisive, and I like a lot of it… Strange Beautiful Music (2002) has some great tracks, but a lot of filler… and after that it all just started to sound the same. I think Super Colossal (2006) was the last one I bought, and I absolutely hated it, and swore that I would never go back. After that I would copy or torrent his albums just to check them out, listen to about half of it, and then delete the whole thing. I was out. But then, in 2018, something made me check in and have a little listen to Joe’s album that year What Happens Next, and I was pretty surprised to find that I liked it. Didn’t love it, it didn’t make the AotY shortlist, but I liked it. OK, fair enough. Then in 2022, Joe blew me and my opinions out of the water with this album The Elephants of Mars, and ladies let me tell you this is proper Joe once again. The Joe of old. Experimental Joe, not “here are 7 mid-tempo major-key tunes and a couple of jam songs” Joe. This is his best work since Crystal Planet without a doubt. Try it, maybe buy it. I did. Top track: “Sailing the Seas of Ganymede”

Skid Row - The Gang’s All Here

If you’re anything like me—and I know I am—then you were well into Skid Row back in their heyday of the late 80s/early 90s. In fact the first proper gig I went to was the Skids at London Docklands, supported by both Love/Hate and L.A. Guns, as they launched their magnificent octopus Slave to the Grind. Well, that was in 1991 and they’ve been through a hefty batch of singers since then, including ZP Theart off of DragonForce for a bit, and are now fronted by the excellent Erik Grönwall. Erik made his name by winning Swedish Idol 2009, singing Skid Row tunes among others, and now he’s their lead singer. Which is awesome. Top track: “Resurrected”

Taylor Swift - Midnights

It should come as no surprise by now (if you’ve been paying attention) when a girly pop singer grabs me just as much as the hardest of rockers or the nimblest of guitar players. I am an unashamed Little Monster and Swifty as well as being a rocker and a shredder. People can be more than one thing, you know? Anyhow, TayTay’s 2022 album Midnights grabbed me so hard it was album of the year for a few months, but I think I kind of wore it out by overplaying it. It’s still fabulous, though. A little less folksy than the previous couple of albums with some lovely dream-pop tendencies (“Lavender Haze”, “Snow on the Beach”), it’s still on heavy rotation here. Top track: “Lavender Haze”

And the winner is…

Reckless Love - Turborider

Stranger Things has a lot to answer for.

Is that fair? Perhaps not. 80s revivals come around every now and then, and there’s nothing new under the sun, so it’s only natural that once in a while there will be a sudden resurgence of pink and blue neon album covers and a rush to download synthwave plugins and LinnDrum sample packs.

Back in 2019, album of the year went to the mighty McRocklin & Hutch with their genius shredwave album Riding Out, which remains the high water mark for 80s-movie-and-video-game-styled-synth-and-shred-guitar albums. Honestly, it’s brilliant, and still sounds just as fresh five years later.

Anyway, they weren’t the only ones catching the retro wave. Gus G had a go, so did Muse, and I’m sure there have been a whole load more that I haven’t noticed, and I do feel that a fair amount of this is thanks to the specific brand of 80s nostalgia that Stranger Things conjures.

Enter stage left, Reckless Love.

I became aware of these Finnish glamsters some time in the early 2010s during one of my (many) “glam metal is the only true music” phases. I think I’d just discovered Crashdïet, Gemini Five, Babylon Bombs and a bunch of other Scandi-rock outfits, and RL fit right in with them all. And then, like a lot of these bands, I discovered that once I sobered up and gave them a proper listen, there wasn’t much to them. A few decent riffs, a (not always) decent-ish singer, a lot of hairspray, and not a great deal else. Oh well. I moved on and didn’t listen to them again for some time.

Until 2022, in fact, when I was made aware of TurboRider. Have a little look at that album cover again, won’t you? What does that say to you? What does that subtly hint at, in such a deft way that you almost didn’t spot it at first, but once you do, it’s there for sure, and it’s really clever?

Nothing. But what it screeches at you is “GET YOUR 80S ROCK HERE, BIG BOY!”

But this is where it does actually get clever. This is not just a modern glam metal album with some synth chucked at it. By which I mean, it definitely is that, but there is more to it, thanks to producer Joonas Parkkonen (who was one of the guitarists in Santa Cruz and has produced albums for many other Scandi rock and metal bands such as Lost Society and Apocalyptica).

For one thing, TurboRider is extremely hard-rock-literate. In almost every song there are references and nods to 80s classics. In the lyrics, the production, the riffs, even the guitar sounds. For example, “Kids of the Arcade” features the line “we ain’t the worst that you’ve seen” which is lifted directly from “Jump” by Van Halen (1984). The one that kept leaping out at me in the car (my son loves this album and it’s often the soundtrack to the school-run) is the guitar lick at 0:52 in “Outrun”. That comes straight out of David Lee Roth’s “Just Like Paradise” (1988). It’s even the same guitar tone. The pre-solo lick from “Beat It” (1983) is buried in “Like a Cobra”… there are plenty more for those with but the ears to find them.

There is even a (well executed but maaaaaybe superfluous) cover of Ozzy Osbourne’s “Bark at the Moon” (1983), in case you weren’t getting the point.

So, one thing should be pretty clear by now – if you don’t dig 80s glam/hard rock, then this album probably won’t ring your fire or light your bell. But if that does sound like something you might enjoy, then you won’t find a better-executed example of retro-focussed glamrockwave out there. The lyrics are exactly what you would expect (in fact, while they aren’t perfect, they’re perhaps less misogynistic than the songs and/or albums to which homage is paid, this is 2022 after all), the musicianship is solid, the vocals and the solos all do exactly what you hope they would, and the production is absolutely spot on. All of this executed with one foot in 1985 and the other in 2022, with a knowing nod and a wink to the classics without just slavishly copying them, and somehow it all works flawlessly.

For some reason that eludes me, YouTube won’t let me embed the video for the title track “TurboRider” here. 🤷‍♀️

Top tracks: “Eyes of a Maniac”, “Kids of the Arcade”, “Outrun”

Turkey of the Year

Star One - Revel in Time

Good god, no.

Love and Painkillers

Clive Murray — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 14:18:00 +0000

Friends, neighbours, ladies, gentlemen, literally anybody who will listen…

I have finished my album.

Let joy be unbounded, let all the peoples of the world finally unite as one, and marvel at the magnificence of one hour of guitar music that took around 20 years to make.

It is called, as I have mentioned once or twice, “Love and Painkillers” and its release date is the 2nd of February 2024, so if you are reading this on or after that date, you can get it right now! Click or tap your wonderful self over to loveandpainkillers.com and you will find links to various platforms where you can obtain it.

I’m not going to waffle on for 3,000 words like I often do. I just want to mark the fact that what has been a huge project is finally complete, and the music itself will very soon be available. It is finished, it is done, is is complete.

My first album (“Earthman”, 2002) was a rather amateur-sounding affair, though I was very proud of it at the time and it was the best I could do with the equipment, money and skills I had available to me there and then. In the intervening two decades, the home recording landscape has changed remarkably, and as well as digital amp sims now sounding almost as good as the real thing, we have YouTube tutorials on literally every aspect of every part of every process, including mixing, production, sound design… everything you could ask for. I have availed myself of these and done the best I can, and I think I have made a pretty good record.

So. In the name of not waffling on for 3,000 words, I shall leave it there.

My very great thanks to my friends who played on the record: Nick Beatty, Adrian Clark, Greg Edwards, Jon Ewen, Ian Farrer, John Mitchell and Martin Szomszor (and to my son who played keyboards on one song as well). Thanks to John Mitchell for mastering the album. Huge thanks to the Kickstarter backers who enabled the mastering to happen.

And thanks to you for reading this, and maybe even having a little listen to the album itself.

Go on, it’s not much money, and you might like it. I do.

August Album Update

Clive Murray — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 15:00:00 +0000

I’m working on an album. I might have mentioned it before a couple of times.

It’s still ongoing, and I’m quite some way through the mixing process now. Two of my guest contributors have sent in their parts and those have been mixed in, and I’m finalising the sounds for the synth parts before squaring up to the final phase of mixing, the main mix/automation for each track.

Lead guitars mixed, and I’m halfway through the “other” tracks; synths, strings, sound effects, etc.

Once that’s done and I’m happy with what I have, the tracks will be sent off for mastering by His Holiness John Mitchell, and then barring the artwork and liner notes, it will be in the bag.

I’m still kind of hopeful that this can happen before the end of 2023, but if it doesn’t, it should be very soon after.

Bet you can’t wait. I know I can’t.

The Wheel of Things

Clive Murray — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:00:00 +0000

TL;DR

I made a new thing! It is The Wheel of Things. You might like it.

Longer version

In my house, we like table-top games. I didn’t say “board games” because many of them employ cards but no board, so “table-top games” it is. Also, this reminds me of the splendid Wil Wheaton YouTube series called TableTop whence I learned of some of these games. It’s great fun, go watch some episodes.

Anyway, in a bid to get my son to unstick his face from screens, we began amassing a collection of table-top games which would enable us to spend Quality Time away from digital devices and have a bunch of fun. Friends turned us onto Munchkin, Boss Monster and Escape the Dark Castle, and from there we expanded our collection with things like Forbidden Island, Unearth, Doomlings and Star Fluxx.

We bought expansions for some of them, we got more, and soon the biggest issue we had on a Saturday morning was deciding which table-top game to play. Well, being a website-making kinda guy, I quipped “Maybe I’ll make a wheel-of-fortune type website so we can easily pick one at random…”

Which of course, I then did. Once I’d built it, I figured “Hmmm… I wonder if this might be of use to anyone else… maybe if you could choose your own things to put on the wheel… hmmm…”

So of course, I built that. It is The Wheel of Things, and you are most welcome to use it. If it doesn’t work for you on your computer/device, or if you have other comments on it, you can drop me a line via email or Mastodon.

However, I accept no responsibility for anything that occurs as a result of you using the Wheel of Things. That is on you.

Moving house

Clive Murray — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 13:00:00 +0000

Well, this is annoying.

When I started this blog in 2013, the idea was to have a tinkering project and to run it and host it on a Raspberry Pi in my house, which it still is (for now).

I didn’t want it to live on clivemurray.com, for reasons I forget now, so I had a play about with domain names and found to my delight that insince.re was available. The .re TLD (top level domain) is the official TLD of Réunion, an island of French governance in the Indian Ocean.

As you may or may not know, domain ownership is a mixed bag of weasels. Many are available to all, and others are geographically limited. Anyone can register a .pt or .nz domain, for example, without having to reside (or have a business presence) in Portugal or New Zealand respectively.

The Réunion TLD is available to “individuals and companies in European Union, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein” only. Well. A smart woman like you can see where this is going.

When I bought insince.re I was a resident of the EU, but since 52% of my countrypersons voted to leave that august establishment in 2016—and that subsequently happened in 2020—this is no longer the case. Therefore, I no longer have a right to this domain.

So, this blog will move to a new address some time between now and November, when my current registration period runs out. That’s all, really. If you have it bookmarked (and why wouldn’t you?) then you’ll need to update that soon. No biggie.

Incidentally, I would probably be able to renew insince.re if I didn’t also want to change registrar. I have been with Gandi for many years, but since they were acquired earlier this year, I am no longer recommending them to anyone. The new owners have a reputation for rampant price hiking, and so I decided to move.

This is borne out by the renewal price. I could (were I geographically able) transfer insince.re to a new registrar for as little as ~$6 or so.

Gandi, however, want £17.99.

Sod that.

Kickstarter Update!

Clive Murray — Mon, 22 May 2023 11:29:43 +0000

Hey there! My Kickstarter to get my album mastered is 61% funded!

Here is an update video, including some teaser clips from the new material plus some info about the mysterious producer who will be doing the mastering if we make the target…

If you can pledge, please do! And if you can’t, or already have, please spread the word to anyone who might enjoy this sort of thing.

Thanks!

Mastering my album – Kickstarter launch

Clive Murray — Wed, 03 May 2023 12:36:54 +0000

Hello.

I’ve been working on my second solo album of guitar instrumentals on-and-off for well over a decade now. I am very happy to report that I am nearly there.

All my guitar parts are recorded, drums bass and keyboards are done, and I am just waiting for a few guest collaborators to send me their parts and then I can finish mixing it.

The last step will be to get it mastered, and sadly due to financial constraints, the whole project could fall at the final hurdle.

To try and prevent this, I have launched a Kickstarter to help me achieve the last step.

I would be extremely if you would visit it, watch the short video, and maybe even pop a little pledge in, if you can.

Thank you. 🙏

We'll be right back...

Clive Murray — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 10:32:29 +0000

This blog may disappear for a while.

Why’s that? Well don’t worry, it’s not another ~4000 word ramble, it’s very simple. This is hosted on a Raspberry Pi in my house. I have other websites, including the one for my band, hosted somewhere else, with a commercial web hosting company. This company has always been good, reliable and trustworthy, until recently when they were acquired by Some Bastards.

These particular Bastards are one of the big hosting conglomerates, and have a history of hiking prices. Sure enough, a week or two ago, I got an email from them telling me that email inboxes would no longer be included in the price, and the prices were all going up.

So, to quote the late Lionel Blair, “sod that for a game of soldiers”. I am currently shopping around for a new web hosting company that allows nodejs applications, and isn’t vastly expensive.

One idea that has occurred to me is I could move all my websites onto the aforementioned Raspberry Pi, and not pay for web hosting at all! This would have one downside, and that is that this blog could no longer live on the same device, since it has its own built-in server, and they would clash.

So. If all goes to plan, this blog will vanish in the next month or so, but my other sites will remain live, and then in time I will find somewhere else to host my lovely blog. That way I can still impart my infinite wisdom to you all.

That will be nice, won’t it?

How to Get a Custom Guitar in Just 9 Years, and Lose Thousands in the Process

Clive Murray — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 11:07:51 +0000

So, the time has come at last to tell the full story of my most recently acquired guitar. It is a long story with many trials and tribulations, meandering anecdotes, more guitar nerdery than even Pete Thorn could stand, and even a smattering of crime.

Firstly, you must gaze upon its awesomeness.

MARVEL! YOU MARVELLED, DIDN'T YOU? I SAW YOU MARVELLING!

(If you find that it is simply too awesome to behold, try using the pinhole camera trick that people use to view solar eclipses, see if that helps. I don’t want you to go blind from awesome.)

Secondly, and some observant listeners may already have spotted this, it is not a genuine Ibanez guitar. It is a clone built to my specs, and more about this process shortly. A lot more, in fact, as this guitar was nine years in the making.

Yes, nine years.

Here are the spec details:

Alder Jem-style rear-routed body with all-access neck joint (AANJ), with stunning black and white swirl by someone who shall not be named, for reasons we will come to ~~shortly~~ later
Maple 5-piece neck (with wenge fillets), Jem neck profile – 19mm thick at 1st fret, 21mm at 12th fret, 43mm wide at the nut, 56mm at the heel – 430mm radius maple fretboard with black “tree of life” style inlay, reverse goddamn headstock, 24 stainless steel frets, rolled edges, scalloped at top 4 frets, created by ET Guitars (more on this later)
Genuine Ibanez hardware in cosmo black, including Lo-Pro Edge trem
Bareknuckle pickups – matched set of Silo (Rabea Massaad signature) humbuckers and a Slow Hand single-coil in the middle
Pull-push tone pot for coil-splitting and alternative configs (more on this later also)

And thirdly, grab a coffee/beer/whatever and strap in, sit down, and gird your loins, because this is ~~probably~~ going to be a long one.

— ☕️ —

I have been an unashamed Ibanez fanboy for over three decades. My best buddy and I used to finish our shift at the soap factory and then sit on the station platform poring over the 1990 and 1991 Ibanez catalogues to the point where we knew every single detail of every single model in there, up to and including the available colours of every guitar. (Electric guitars, obviously. We couldn’t have cared less about the acoustics or basses.) We were 17, and at the time I played a Fender HM Strat and my buddy played a 1980s Charvel Model 3, but we lusted after the Ibbys constantly. We would go on road trips to Tunbridge Wells where there was an Ibanez distributor (called FCN, if memory serves, though it may not) and gawp at the unattainable objects of desire on the walls, then probably buy a couple of plectrums and drive home again.

However, around this time, my buddy had hatched a plan. He’d found via ads in Guitarist Magazine that you could get Jem necks separately, the idea being presumably that if you had a headstock break, you didn’t want to have to junk the whole guitar (they were around £1500 new, and this was 1991, so that was a lot). He then spotted a JEM777DY body (DY is “Desert Sun Yellow”) boxed on the shelf at FCN, and all the lights went green. He bought the body (for £100), ordered the matching neck to go with it (£230), priced up every spare part he would need using the Ibanez spares catalogue, and began to build his very own Jem at home. Why not? It would surely be cheaper that way, and he would learn a whole ton about guitar assembly on top of his already mad skillz. It all went to plan barring one thing – he waited months or maybe even a year for that neck to become available but it never showed up. But… a neck from a JEM777SK (SK is “Shocking Pink”) did become available – the exact same neck as the neck from a 777DY, except with a pink headstock. So with patience, diligence and not a little money (though roughly half the money it would have been to buy a new Jem off the rack), he finished it.

30 years later he still has it, and here it is:

Please do not adjust your set.

At the same time, I had fallen head-over-heels in love with the Ibanez 540PII-HH (in purple metallic), and was sending FCN about fifty quid every month in instalments. I did that for around a year, and then it became mine. Oh yes. It became mine.

I loved that guitar for a good few years, but then in the mid-90s, in a moment of utter madness, I part-exchanged it for a vastly inferior PGM30, which I then played for many more years. In fact the longest and most intense period of gigging in my life to date was done on that guitar. From the pubs of Eastbourne and Hastings to the nightclubs of Rochester and Gillingham (shudder) that guitar got more live action than any other I’ve owned. Hey-ho, so it goes.

Wind forward a few years, and now I live in London with my girlfriend and work in advertising. I have a nice Ibanez RG750 and have started writing solo music for a possible album. I still fantasise about owning one or more Jems, because they still seem to be the pinnacle of Ibanez rock guitars, and then one day I’m wandering down Denmark Street looking in the windows…

…and there is this gorgeous JEM77FP hanging in the window of Andy’s (which is now Hank’s), and it’s £699. Listener, I bought it.

That became my main guitar for a while, but the lust was not quenched. I joined a forum site focussing on all things Ibanez and it was on there that one day I found my gob to be smacked. You see, the original Jem was of course (I’m sure I don’t have to tell you) designed by Steve Vai, and was released in 1987. The very first model was limited to 777 units, and Vai signed and numbered every one of them (some on the guitar itself, some on the backplate). And one of these original Jems – the JEM777LNG (“Loch Ness Green”) – was up for sale in the forum classifieds, for around 3000 Deutschmarks. It was number 407 of 777.

I bought that too.

Mmmm... original!

The Jem lust was pretty much sated by this incredible guitar, and (unlike the floral one) I still have it and play it loads. When I write with it, I come up with stuff I just don’t on any other guitar. It has very definite “mojo”.

A year after that, someone I knew was getting rid of his battered and beaten old yellow Jem, for not much money, so I took it off his hands and… customised the finish. The chap who hosts that video on his YouTube (thanks James!) still gets hate mail about it, I understand. This was 20 years ago.

Anyway, we reassembled it with its new (cosmetic!) customisation, and I still have it and play it. I gigged on it in July this year (2022), as it happens.

What a fun gig this was...

At one point I had 6 or 7 very similar Ibanez guitars – all Jem or RG shape, all 6-string, all in standard tuning, all with locking trems. Eventually some rationalisation had to happen and I shed a few, and even branched out into owning a Gibson. Absolute scenes! I played that Gibbo solidly for a few years, in Claytown Troupe and in Little Monkeys, and it’s a great guitar. It’s just over there. (points)

The Ibanez lust never left, though, and in 2011-ish I bagged a JEM90HAM to add to the roster, and maybe a year later I even tracked down a replacement 540PII. You’d think I’d be done there, wouldn’t you? I did. I definitely thought “right, that’s enough now.”

It wasn’t though, and in 2012/2013 I began to cook up an idea.

The idea was, I would assemble (or rather, have assembled for me) a custom Jem clone. I would get the paint job I wanted, the pickups I wanted, the fretboard I wanted, but still make it recognisably a Jem in all but actual lineage. A tribute Jem, if you like.

I workshopped some ideas with that same buddy from all those years ago (who had by now left the country and moved to mainland Europe) and we came up with this image:

Bear in mind, this is a mockup image made in 2012.

So, we had the design, all we had to do was make it. The first step was the body and the most crucial part was the swirl, and here is where it gets interesting. The original swirled Ibanez guitars from the 90s were done in America, by one company – About Time Designs – and as far as I know, by one guy, whose name was Darren Johansen. I’m pretty sure he did all the official ones – the JEM77GMC, the JEM77PMC, the UV77MC and the JEM2KDNA. Well, he had hung up his swirling hat by this time, and I found out that his main competitor from back in the day, Herc Fede, was not well and I think no longer swirling (he sadly passed away in 2014, RIP), so I went to the forums to ask about alternative swirlers, and started getting in touch with them.

A few were no longer swirling, a couple gave examples that didn’t impress me enough to go with them, and then I ended up selecting one based on recommendations, price, and the fact that they actually replied to my emails. (I shall not be naming this individual or their company here, for reasons that are about to become apparent. Let’s just call them “M” for now.)

This person’s work looked great, and they could even source the guitar body for me, which saved me some work (and shipping costs), so they did that right away – as soon as I’d paid a deposit, anyway. The body arrived at their workshop in Florida, and for a while everything seemed to be ticking along nicely. They sent me progress reports (photos of the body primed for painting, for example) and meanwhile I set about sourcing other parts for the guitar. I got a neck made in Chicago, I bought pickups and a Lo-Pro Edge tremolo, and I shipped them to Florida all at my own expense, and generally got excited back home in Hertfordshire, UK.

The neck arrived in Florida on 15th July 2013, and the pickups and trem arrived on 15th August 2013. On top of these parts which I had bought myself, I had also paid M $982.90 for their work and time up to this point. Around then I saw photos of the swirled body, and my god it was good. One of the best swirls I’d ever seen. It still needed more clear coats over the top to finish it off, but everything seemed to be on track.

I paid the final invoice of $576.81 (to M’s partner, for some reason) on 17th November 2013, bringing the total paid (to M) to $1,559.71. With the other items I’d shipped to M, I was out of pocket to a total of around $2,400.

I’m sure a smart woman like you can see where this is going.

Yep, the updates dried up, the emails stopped, and when I emailed M asking for an update on 12th March 2014, I got no reply, just an automated response. Why did I leave it that long? Well, my Mum died in February 2014 and I was a little preoccupied with other things, you dig? My wife was also extremely pregnant and there were a lot more things to sort out than a slow guitar build happening thousands of miles away.

Anyway, nothing. In June 2014, once my son was born and things had settled (slightly) into a new routine, I emailed M again asking what was going on, as I’d heard nothing from them in around 7 months. This time I got a reply, saying that my guitar was “in the top 5 to be assembled soon”. Relieved, I exchanged a couple more emails, dithering about details, but in the end left the spec as it was as I didn’t want to introduce further delay.

All went quiet again until 31st October 2014, when I got—out of the blue—an email saying “I’m sending out several projects these first two weeks in October and yours is one of them!” I didn’t bother to point out that the first two weeks of October had already gone, as I was too excited at the prospect of finally getting my guitar, a year and a half after first booking M for the job. It was coming!

No it wasn’t.

I emailed back in November, and again in January 2015, asking for updates or tracking numbers, to no avail. On 3rd February I demanded that the guitar be sent, whatever state it was in. I got a reply assuring me that M would keep up their end of the deal.

Nope. I tried again in March, demanding that it be sent to my friend in Maryland, USA, to make the shipping simpler, but no response. And I never heard from M again.

(Rumour has it, and I don’t know for sure of course, that M and their partner were a little too fond of hard recreational drugs, and it is further alleged that this is what led to the downfall of their guitar business, and eventual arrest of M. This is, as I say, unconfirmed.)

In March I contacted the local sheriff’s office nearest to M in Florida but was told that my complaint was civil in nature, and if I thought it was criminal I would need to raise a case with my local law enforcement. Well… I’m in Hertfordshire, and M was in Florida. I didn’t see how that could work.

Dispirited, depressed, stressed, and frankly exhausted, I gave up. That was that.

Or was it? Well, no.

18 months later, in September 2016, I received an email from a name I didn’t recognise, but who it turned out had also commissioned a guitar from M, and been similarly ripped off. This person, this angel, this… avenger—Dave is his name—had taken to the forums and to eBay rather than giving up, and was keeping a keen eye out for his guitars in case they turned up. As far as I know, they never did… but mine did, and Dave spotted it. Or at least, the body did. It was attached to a crappy neck and had crappy hardware and pickups attached, but it was 100% definitely my swirled body. Incredibly, Dave then bought the cut-and-shut guitar (having already informed eBay that it was basically a stolen item, to no avail), and then said he would let me have it purely at cost. Wow. Unfortunately, at this time, I was involved in a very complicated and incredibly stressful house purchase and just had zero time and even less money. It was another 14 months before I could amass the energy, motivation and money to revisit even the thought of this guitar, but it did eventually happen and it got shipped it to my friend in MD in February 2018.

Well. What a turn-up. Now, the body of the guitar (plus some cheapo hardware and pickups) was at my pal’s house. This meant there was light at the end of the (by now, 5-year long) tunnel, but I was still not enthused at the idea of figuring out what to do with a guitar body, nor at replacing the neck, hardware, pickups and trem, all of which were expensive. I agreed with my pal in MD that he would basically remove the neck and then some time in the future we would figure out how to get the body to me, and then I pretty much forgot about it again. My son was nearly 4, my band was on hiatus, I had hardly played in a year or two… there was just too much else going on to worry about it right then.

(Bear with me. I know this is long. But we’re nearly there. Have another coffee/wine/laudanum/mushroom and come back in a minute or two.)

It’s Christmas! Or nearly. In December 2018 I suddenly got a message from my friend in MD saying he was coming over to visit his brother (he’s originally from very near where I live, and his brother is there still), and maybe we could meet up for lunch or a beer? We in fact met for dinner, all three of my family and all four of his, and it was lovely. A great time was had by all, and the subject of the guitar/body didn’t come up even once. We parted ways, and they returned to the US. A few days later, my guitar buddy from earlier in the story, the one who now lives in Europe, came to visit with his family.

They stayed with us for a few days, and then on the morning they were about to leave and return to Europe, my pal in MD sent me a message along the lines of “Oh hey, great to see you the other week. I completely forgot to tell you, I brought your guitar body over with me. It’s at my brother’s place. That’s near you!”

I looked at my buddy, who is a fantastic guitar tweaker, wirer, assembler… just about everything barring actually making the wood itself… and he looked at me. 45 seconds later we were in my car, tearing up the A41.

We met my pal’s brother, we got the guitar body, we tore back down the A41, and my buddy from Europe got into his car with the body (and his family, he didn’t leave them behind) and returned home to Europe. I had it in my actual possession for a total of about 45 minutes, for 30 of which I was driving.

So, we entered 2019 with the body in Europe, the rest of the previous parts long gone, never to be seen again, and so began the process of starting anew.

I sourced a new neck from the very splendid Ernie Taylor of ET Guitars in Australia, who I cannot recommend enough. The neck is absolutely incredible. NB: Ernie supplied it with a paddle headstock, as Ibanez headstocks are trademarked, but we found someone who was happy enough to finish the headstock and apply an Ibanez decal we got from eBay. From there it was merely a question of replacing the (expensive!) pickups and hardware from my end, whereas my buddy had the rather harder job of assembling and wiring everything up. We dithered a bit about whether to have a clear scratchplate on it, like the original swirled Jems do. In the end we did, which I think was the right choice. My friend went to a hell of a lot of effort to get this right over many iterations, and I’m super grateful.

We also dug deep into the wiring. My friend is an absolute wizard at this, and thinks nothing of swapping out sets of pickups during a coffee break, whereas I am the kind of person who needs to give the authorities not less than a month’s notice before picking up a soldering iron. He located a wiring scheme that has 9 different pickup configs (remember the pull-push tone pot mentioned at the start?) all of which sound great.

Here’s the wiring diagram he used – look at all those combinations, and only one duplicate (only position 4 is the same when the knob is up or down):

Some spaghetti, earlier

This final phase still took a couple of years to finish off, through one thing and another, the pandemic being one of them and geography being another. But thanks to a heroic amount of work from my best friend, it finally got finished in early 2022, and then he and his family came to visit again over Easter. On 19th April 2022, the project Jem arrived home.

And here it is.

It's MINE and you CAN'T have it!

Here’s a few minutes of me noodling around on it. Note, for this whole video, I am plugged into the wonderful Archetype: Rabea plugin from Neural DSP, and nothing else, and at no point do I change the settings on the plugin. I picked a high gain patch and left it alone. All the sound variance and control comes from the guitar.

A few minutes of widdling to show how versatile this guitar is.

I’m looking at it right now. In a few minutes I’m going to play it. It is the best guitar I own, and that is saying a lot.

— 🍺 —

I know that was long. I have an unfortunate tendency towards extreme verbosity, which is a typically long-winded way of saying I talk too much. This probably didn’t need to be ~3,700 words long. I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time.

When this was all going on, I started a Tumblr to document the project. It is still up, though as you can guess, it’s a slightly more depressing read than this. There you will, if you really want to, find out the details I have left out of this post. I cannot be bothered to go and edit it now.

Huge, moist, eternal thanks to:

Ernie Taylor, for making the best guitar neck I own
My buddy in MD, USA, for long term guitar storage service and international parts delivery
Dave Miller, the avenging angel who found my guitar body on eBay and saved it from certain death
And of course the one who assembled/wired/finished/set-up the whole thing, my guitar brother, my pal in Europe, my six-string-sibling, my Fiasco Twin, my best friend.

It really is a lovely guitar, you know.

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2021

Clive Murray — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 15:39:28 +0000

Are you still out there? Hello? What’s going on?

…

Is it…

Is it just me now?

Hello?

…

Just as verbing weirds language, pandemics weird time, and times have gotten plenty weird of late. You remember all those years you used to get, which were about a year long? Roughly a yearsworth of stuff happened? Then everyone got drunk, watched some fireworks, and started the next one? Well now we’re in for the long haul. I personally have aged seven years since last we spoke about Album of the Year, I don’t mind telling you. So many things happened, failed to happen, happened too much or happened too little in 2021 that I’m afraid I will inevitably have to leave some of it out. But that’s ok. Remember the good stuff, don’t pet the yellow snow, ride the purple train to groovy city, and soon we’ll be recounting the best albums of 2021, just you and I, shooting the Bries and the Camemberts, two star-crossed music-lovers gazing backwards at the just before, so that we can tie off the year that was and turn to glare fuzzily together at that which is yet to come. Or will be.

Or something.

If 2020 was the year of COVID, then 2021 was the year of the variants and the vaccines. A lot of things that had been postponed from 2020 happened in 2021, such as the Olympics and Paralympics, the Euro footy, and the good old UN Climate Change Conference, whereas the two events I was most interested in that had been postponed from 2020 were postponed again until 2022 (namely arena gigs to which I had tickets, by My Chemical Romance and Lady Gaga).

Tr*mpsters attacked the US Capitol, Joe Biden became US Prez 46 and Kamala Harris became VP, Poland banned abortions, a chonky ship blocked the Suez Canal, NASA flew a helicopter on Mars, the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, the first malaria vaccine was developed, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched, and a whole load of other unsavoury stuff went down. Overall, not ideal.

Signing out: Sophie, Captain Sir Tom Moore, Christopher Plummer, Chick Corea, Mike Baldwin (Johnny Briggs), Saint… (Ian St John), Murray Walker, Marvin Hagler, Yaphet Kotto, Malory Archer (Jessica Walter), Prince Philip, DMX, Helen McCrory, Michael Collins, Nick Kamen, Eric Carle, John McAfee, Donald Rumsfeld, Tom O’Connor, Joey Jordison, Dusty Hill, Una Stubbs, Sean Lock, Buddy Blaze, Sonny Chiba, Charlie Watts, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Sarah Harding, Omar (Michael K. Williams), Sir Clive Sinclair, …and Greavsie (Jimmy Greaves), Boycie (John Challis), Mozzie (Willie Garson), Ruthie Tompson, Malcolm Dome, Lionel Blair, Dean Stockwell, F.W. de Klerk, Stephen Sondheim, Anne Rice, Richard Rogers, Janice Long, Desmond Tutu, and Betty White, among (as always) many others.

I got through quite a lot of music in 2021, and even released some to boot. Shall we?

The one-liners

Adele – 30. (Pop/soul.) Ms. Adkins MBE gave us her fourth studio album, and it’s a corker, full of confidence, and worth the price of admission for “Easy On Me” alone.
Tori Amos – Ocean to Ocean. (Pop.) Tori, Tori, tell us a story. I hadn’t listened to Tori’s output for aaaages, and when this crossed my musical path I was most pleasantly.
Death Garage – Death Garage #2. (Garage, I suppose? I have no idea, TBH) The enigmatic outfit return with a second EP full of crunchy tones and moody vocals. Greasy.
The End Machine – Phase2. (Rock.) George Lynch. I mean… that should be enough, right? It is. Very good.
Garbage – No Gods No Masters. (Alt-rock.) Shirley Manson’s voice is still to this day 75% chocolate, 25% ice-cube-down-the-back-of-the-shirt, and the whole band are still masterful songwriters. You may have missed this… DON’T.
Greta Van Fleet – The Battle at Garden’s Gate. (Rock.) Nothing especially new from the retro-focused Michigan quartet, but then, isn’t that largely the point?
Indigo Down – Still Alive. (Executive rock.) Well it had to happen eventually. Yes, my band what I am actually in finally released new music. AND IT’S REALLY GOOD.
The Kite Experiment – Atmospherics. (Prog pop/rock.) Friend of the show, the eternally prolific His Holiness John Mitchell sings and tinkles the ivories on this UK prog collaboration EP with Craig Blundell and Chris Hargrave. Beautiful, to be honest.
The Totemist – 2880. (Instrumental metal.) The faultless, matchless Rabea Massaad has another side project, and it’s a crusher. Only three tracks, but NNNNNGH.
Sithu Aye – Senpai III. (Instrumental metal.) Part 3 of Sithu’s ongoing anime-themed series comprises a full-length long player, and is as well executed as always. If you like Sithu, you’ll love this.
Tremonti – Marching in Time. (Metal.) Mark Tremendous goes from strength to strength as a songwriter and frontman, and his chops are as always beyond question. Chonky.
Steven Wilson – The Future Bites. (Prog-pop-rock.) This is a great album, don’t get me wrong. It just couldn’t quite live up to its predecessor, To the Bone, but then not much can. Check it out if you haven’t already.

And that’s me trying to trim it down… I haven’t even mentioned the 2021 releases from Angels & Airwaves, Elbow, Evergrey, Foo Fighters, Gus G, Insurgent, Iron Maiden, Jean-Michel Jarre, Myles Kennedy, Liquid Tension Experiment, The Pretty Reckless, Max Richter or Taylor Swift. I mean… I could… but then this would be so much longer, and I know you’re busy. You’ve got that thing to do later, and then there’s that other thing that you nearly forgot about too. And lunch. I understand.

I’m here to help.

Honourable mentions

Black Veil Brides - The Phantom Tomorrow

When I first heard BVB, it was the high-concept rock-opera album Wretched and Divine: The Story of the Wild Ones, and quite aside from the blistering fretwork from the two excellent guitarists and the frankly preternatural vocals emanating from the bewitching Andy Biersack (mmmm), the conceptiness of the conceit worked for me, and it remains my favourite release of theirs. This, however, pops in just behind it, as they have brought the pomp back to centre stage (with aplomb), and it feels like they’ve just spent a little longer honing these songs than those on the previous couple of outings. Top track: “Scarlet Cross”

Buckcherry - Hellbound

If you’re anything like me—and I know I am—then you have loved Buckcherry since the moment you heard them. It was sooooo long in the cold and the dark, waiting for The Dark Times to end, and then there they were… BAM. Sorry, did you miss hard rock? Well here it is! It’s back! And they’ve been putting out top-drawer releases for the last two decades. This is one of the better ones, too. Get it down you. Top track: “Hellbound”

Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever

Before we even start here, sit the eff down and listen to uncle Clive: If you hear Billie Eilish using autotune, then you are supposed to be hearing it.

It is an effect, a production choice, a compositional tool, it is not being used because she can’t sing it. Billie is the real deal, she is a proper singer with chops and control that rival any of her musical peers. Is her image manufactured? Of course, she’s a pop star. Does she do everything herself? No, nobody does, not even the sainted Lady G. Is she a real musician? 100% hell yes, and if you don’t agree, there are plenty of alternatives on the Shitify top 100 you may enjoy, please don’t let me keep you.

Still here? Great. Now, as alluded to in previous years, my musical tastes have wandered from the narrow track of hard rock and metal of late and I’ve really begun to appreciate voices, a lot of them female. The progression between this album and 2019’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? is edifying, and shows a great maturing in both the lyrics and the mood—the angle of attack, if you will—of the entire album. It’s moody, it’s confident, it’s sometimes flippant, it’s always self-aware, and for me it’s refreshing in many ways. Valuable. Top track: “NDA”

Evanescence - The Bitter Truth

Another female voice, this one perhaps with a handful more miles on the clock, but bringing hard all the grit that bestows. Amy Lee is an utter god, and if you have any skin in the “gothic/symphonic rock/metal” game then you already know what she’s capable of. I was a fan back in the day, and I was overjoyed to hear rumours of reformation and new music back in The Before Times, and elated when this album dropped in Spring 2021. Uplifting, defiant, gorgeous. Top track: “Better Without You”

Frost* - Day and Age

Regular listeners will be well aware of my fandom for all things John-Mitchell-based. I think he is superb in It Bites and Kino, love his solo project Lonely Robot, and rumour has it he even sang backing vocals on a track by top executive rockers, Indigo Down. But Frost* is the brainchild of keyboardist, producer, singer, and all-round general prog whiz Jem Godfrey, with HHJM providing vocals and guitars as required, and this is their fourth studio album, following 2016’s Falling Satellites. Messrs Godfrey and Mitchell are—as seemingly always—at the top of their game here, with prog chops aplenty on show, and their expertly crafted soundscapes always sounding fresh and interesting. Prog-tastic? Not ‘arf. Top track: “The Boy Who Stood Still”

Gojira - Fortitude

I couldn’t get on with vaunted French metal quartet Gojira for a good long while. Mainly, I think, I prefer my metal vocals cleaner than theirs, and I used to find anything even remotely growly very off-putting. With these lads I persevered though, as the riffage is extremely choice. (Aside: Uncle Ben can show you some of the secrets behind the riffs.) On this, their seventh studio outing, everything comes together and makes fifty minutes of really good, really heavy noise. Weighty. Top track: “Another World”

London Grammar - Californian Soil

Man cannot live on riffage alone, though. Well, that’s not strictly true, and many do, but personally I find more and more that there has to be balance—light alongside the dark, yin with the yang, pie with the mash, etc etc. I forget where I first heard of London Grammar, but I gave them a go one day and found myself loving their indie pop stylings. Still do. They kind of remind me a little of Zero 7 but less wishy-washy. Your M, may of course, V. Top track: “Lose Your Head”

George Lynch - Seamless

Has anyone checked if George is OK? I think he only put out two albums in 2021, so he’s slowing down a bit finally. This is a solo Lynch album, and it’s purely instrumental (which can only be a relief for those of us who remember Sacred Groove…). As you’d expect from George, the playing is absolutely never boring, and there are some great tunes here. Top track: “Falling Apart”

The Offspring - Let the Bad Times Roll

I was massively into Americana back in the day, but I never delved any further into the catalogue of these Californian skate punk deities, so I’m aware I’ve probably missed some corkers. Anyway, their 2021 release wandered across my desk one day and you know what, it’s bloody great. The Offspring know what their job is, and they do it well. And I respect that. Fun. Top track: “Let the Bad Times Roll”

Spiritbox - Eternal Blue

OK, so I am old enough to still be a bit perplexed about “reaction videos”. Why on this or any other earth would I want to watch someone else watch a video? It makes no sense. That said, I do find Nik Nocturnal’s YouTube channel pretty entertaining, so go figure. And it was there that I first encountered the absolutely unearthly voice of Courtney LaPlante, singer of Spiritbox. It’s common for bands this heavy to mix “clean” and “harsh” vocal styles these days, and this often necessitates two singers. There are of course fantastic exceptions, Amorphis come immediately to mind, and let’s not forget the mighty Arch Enemy, of course. But yeah, Courtney does it all with aplomb, and the band are heavy as balls. This is their first full-length album, and it’s superb. Top track: “Yellowjacket”

You Me at Six - Suckapunch

Yeah, I do love these boys from Surrey. Their previous album was fine, but not what you’d call a classic. Not up to the calibre of, say, Cavalier Youth, for example. This, their seventh album feels a bit heavier and more cohesive, and hopefully will last a while longer in the rotation here at Murray Mansions. When it’s good, it’s very good. Top track: “Glasgow”

And the winner is…

Architects - For Those That Wish to Exist

I think it was my friend in Germany who alerted me to the mighty Architects, who hail from Brighton OF ALL PLACES, and for that I thank him enormously.

Let me tell you this right up front: Architects absolutely slam.

I think the genre we’re talking about here is metalcore, but that could be wrong… I’m not an expert, and trying to keep tabs on the shifting sands of metal subgenres is both difficult and impossible. I can tell you that I’m not a fan of death metal, or any bands that communicate their lyrical ideas exclusively through the medium of grunt and growls. (Apologies, Mathias.)

Splendid, then, that Sam Carter is an excellent metal singer. Sure, he screams and shouts, but (and I know how old this makes me sound) you can actually hear the words. This seems to me to be an advantage in a singer.

This is their ninth album, and they have been through some stuff over the years. They were formed by brothers Dan and Tom Searle—Dan on drums and Tom on lead guitars—way back in 2004, and in 2007 they found their current singer, the aforementioned Mr. Carter, and really started to hone their sound and craft with a consistent core lineup… until Tom Searle died of cancer in 2016, a career move considered by many to be “sub-optimal”. In time, Josh Middleton off of Sylosis was brought in as new lead guitarist and Architects continued.

I was unaware of the band, and indeed of pretty much all metalcore at this time, and have only read about all this in hindsight having become a fan in about 2019 or so, but I’m now fully on-board the Architects train and pretty excited for the upcoming 2022 release, as it goes.

But we’re talking about 2021’s For Those That Wish to Exist right now, so let’s do that. First up, the production is absolutely massive. Walls of crisp guitar tones, you would expect, and you would be right to do so as they are present in spades. The drums are crystal clear without being intrusive, and the bass is if anything a little too polite, but that may be in order to leave more room in the low end for the kick drum. It certainly doesn’t feel lacking. But where the production as a whole goes above and beyond is all the extra elements beyond the core instrumentation: strings, synths, keyboards, electronic percussion, all of these are present throughout and yet the sound is never overcrowded. This is a fascinating album sonically.

Musically, it crushes. Once the intro track is out of the way and “Black Lungs” gets off the blocks with an absolutely mind-buggering riff, it keeps the intensity up pretty much solidly for the next 50+ minutes. You’ll be glad of those breakdowns so you can catch your breath.

I could sit here and froth on for another few hundred words without much trouble, but honestly your time is better spent clicking the play button on this here video than reading my waffle.

So do that.

Top tracks: “Animals”, “Black Lungs”, “Discourse Is Dead”

Turkey of the Year

I initially had Liquid Tension Experiment 3 down as Turkey of the Year, but on reflection it is such an utterly unlistenable bucket of total sonic diarrhea, that it would be unfair to even include it as a contender. I wouldn’t rest even one of my drinks on the CD of it that I didn’t even buy.

Hurling that metaphorically—and had I bought it, literally—out of the window of a moving train, that leaves us with…

Iron Maiden - Senjutsu

Look, I know this is hallowed ground, and I’m playing with fire just by mentioning the sainted Iron Maiden… but the fact is that this just bored me to tears. I don’t think I even managed to bear the whole 82m running time before binning it. Or maybe I did… or maybe I fell asleep. Don’t know. What I will say is that’s nearly enough time to listen to Piece of Mind and Powerslave back to back, so maybe do that instead?

J is for...

Clive Murray — Fri, 13 May 2022 15:43:23 +0000

J is for… Al Joseph

I first became aware of Al Joseph through a couple of YouTube videos and Instagram clips, and then a friend playing me one of his solo albums. Turns out he’s a very active guitar teacher over there in the good old U.S. of States, both privately and through the splendid JamTrackCentral, and I also just learned that he was born in 1987, which means I have a guitar which is as old as he is.

Al absolutely wails, dude. His feel and technique are both death-defying, but the thing that leaps off the screen at me whenever I watch him play is how effortless his picking action is. Everything looks as easy as it sounds difficult. You won’t catch me learning any of his songs, put it that way.

Further, it turns out he also sings, and as well as solo instrumental albums he also has a band project called Hyvmine with which he has released two vocal metal albums, and those are also very good (though the second one is pretty much more of the same as the first… fine if you like the first one, of course!)

Clive recommends:

All of Al’s solo albums are chock-full of nuts, and indeed notes, and you can’t really go wrong with any of them, but if I were to pick one (and I were) then it would be 2017’s All of Creation, I reckon.

Video evidence

There are literally^[1] billions of videos of Al on YouTube, what with him being such a prolific guitar instructor and all, but here’s the full official video of his latest (at time of writing) single “Elemental”:

J is also for…

Jóhann Jóhannsson (Neo-classical)
John 5 (Instrumental metal)

NB: not literally. ↩︎

The One True Pick

Clive Murray — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 11:09:03 +0000

Most electric guitar players (and many acoustic players also, I suppose) use a pick, or plectrum, when playing. And while a percentage of these players are equally happy with any old pick in their hand, many—myself included—are part of an eternal quest, a never-ending search that occupies a tiny part of our brains 24/7…

The Quest For The One True Pick.

There are many who seek the One True Pick, and a smaller number who will claim to have found it. It is an even smaller number of these, who have indeed actually found it. Some say it cannot be found, that it is a myth, or even that if it were in fact to be found, another greater pick would spring up immediately somewhere else to supplant it.

They are all wrong. The One True Pick does exist, and I have found it. I was given it, in fact. But first, what is the One True Pick? What does that mean? And why? Also, who are you and why are you in my house?

When you start playing guitar, you likely don’t know your Jim Dunlops from your D’Addarios, your Tortex from your carbon fibre, your Jazz III from your… er… Jazz III XL, etc. In fact you’ve probably got a handful of flappy bendy nonsense that’s no good for anything other than chord strumming. (You may even have been given one of those crappy things that let you press your own picks from used credit cards or whatever. These are exclusively given by well-meaning relatives and friends who have never even heard of The Institute of Pickography, the Shredder’s Guild, or the OTP. It’s not their fault.) This is completely normal, and usually goes away during early guitar lessons, assuming your teacher is not some kind of idiot. Early guidance should inform you that you want something rigid in your hand (!) whenever you are really getting into the repetitive back-and-forth motions (!!) of advanced picking, something that won’t go all bendy at the crucial moment (!!!) when things are getting sweaty (!!!).

Thickness can be important too, but it’s largely a matter of taste.

And so it came to pass that in my early years of playing, I gravitated towards the Jim Dunlop 500 1.14mm pink ones, and occasionally the 1.5mm purple ones for variety. They felt right, they were cheap, they were in every guitar shop, I didn’t feel the need to go any further with my research (at this time I was not aware of the OTP, of course).

Years went by, and nothing changed. I might have had a bit of a dalliance with the Tortex purple ones but it was just that. Too bendy. I stuck with what I knew.

Later, I met some real good guitar players 😉, some of whom really liked to talk about the details, really dig into the nitty gritty of the brass tacks about what gear was best, and I discovered that a couple of these in particular used Dunlop Jazz III picks (also known as “The Small One”). Guff, thought I. Too small. I’d be missing notes and that.

Not long after that I discovered the One True Pick: the Jim Dunlop GatorGrip 2mm (also known as “The Roof Tile”). My picking was more confident and when I picked a note, it stayed picked. I bought bags and bags of these things and threw away all else. Why would I need any other pick? I had chanced across the OTP! The quest was over, without my having known I was even on it. I decided there and then that all other picks were inferior, the Roof Tile was the OTP, and anyone who used anything else was a fool. The end, thank you and goodnight.

Until…

My good friend and guitar brother was playing The Small Ones by this time. When I was round his house, it was all he had lying around, so I would try one. “Yeah it feels fine, but… small!” I would say. “I do like the pointier shape though. Shame they don’t do a big one.”

Well, dear Listener, it turned out they did. Enter stage left, the Dunlop Jazz III XL (the Bigger Small One). When I got my picking paw on this, I knew in a split second I had been a fool. The Roof Tile was not the OTP after all. The Jazz III XL had all the benefits of the Jazz III (pointier shape for increased accuracy, but not too pointy, calm down calm down), without the downside (too small), and brought it all together in one tidy package, available from all good music shops as well as some of the bad ones. It was less clanky, too.

Chastened, I got rid of all the Roof Tiles and bought bags of The Bigger Small Ones. I felt a little silly, looking back on it, to have thought I had found the OTP on the first try, but at least I had realised the error of my ways and discovered the real One True Pick now, and could continue on through my guitar playing life with unwavering certainty. I would not be distracted from the path.

Until…

Well, I kept going round my mate’s house, and all he had were The Small Ones. He even had a few different types of them now… there was The Red Grippy Small One, The Black Grippy Carbon Fibre Small One and The Red Eric Johnson Small One. There were more, I know, but these were the ones he had. And the ones he gifted me. The swine. I said thanks but no thanks, but he insisted I put them in my wallet and give them a go, so I took them home. One day I couldn’t find a pick for a moment, and one of The Small Ones was laying around nearby, so I gave it a try. A proper try.

Oh my.

The Black Grippy Carbon Fibre Small Ones

Within no time, The Bigger Small Ones were history, the scales fell from my eyes, and a golden new age of Plectrology dawned, as I accepted The Small Ones as my church and specifically The Black Grippy Carbon Fibre Small Ones as my personal saviour. Many bags of The Black Grippy Carbon Fibre Small Ones were purchased, and hitherto advantages that hadn’t even occurred to me revealed themselves (you can get three in the little pick pocket on your jeans, whereas with big picks two is probably maximum, if you want to also get your fingers in there to get them out again). Being carbon fibre, they lasted a while too. I was overjoyed to have finally discovered the REAL One True Pick.

The Black Grippy Carbon Fibre Small One

I should thank my guitar brother, and indeed I do. I shan’t use his name here as he prefers it that way, but I am truly grateful for his continued interest in providing me with new and different ways to discover the One True Pick, among a million other things. (Truthfully I would not be the player I am today without him. We have evolved together over the last 30 years and learned an unimaginable amount from each other over that time, about a great many things, not just picks.)

But…

One day I was round his house. (You can see where this is going, can’t you?) He’d moved house, so he wasn’t just down the road any more. In fact he had moved to an entirely different country and had a family there and everything, so I reckoned it was probably serious. Anyway, we were playing guitar. He handed me a little bag.

Have a stab at what was in it.

Go on, I’ll wait.

…

That’s right. In the bag was the One True Pick.

The One True Pick

It came in three different shapes, only one of which was the OTP, but the three were clearly hewn from the same flourescent cloth. They were the Gravity Classic Mini, the Gravity Sunrise Mini, and the Gravity Razer Mini. Oh my days. Playing with these felt like I had been driving with the brakes on for decades. Suddenly fast runs were faster and more accurate, notes were clearer and more defined, the air contained 7% more oxygen, carbon emissions were down in the area, Local Sports Team began winning all their Sports matches, the sun shone down from the heavens, the lame walked, the blind saw, and all was truly well.

Such is the limitless power of the Gravity Razer Mini, 1.5mm, flourescent green, with “master finish” bevel for preference.

For it is The One True Pick.

The Quest Is Over

Feel free to @ me with your Hawk picks, and your GraphTech Tusq picks, and your Red Bear picks, and whatever boutique picks made out of, I dunno, whalebone or something, that you personally use and/or recommend. Just be aware that I will very probably ignore it, since the Quest is over, and I have found the One True Pick.

I is for...

Clive Murray — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 16:57:27 +0000

I is for… It Bites

Images used with absolutely no permission.

It’s a game of two halves, when it comes to UK-prog-rock-pop luminaries It Bites. There’s the original band from the 80s, fronted by mercurial guitar wizard Francis Dunnery, and there’s the 2000s comeback lineup led by friend of the show and genuine UK prog royalty, His Holiness John Mitchell.

I was a fan of Dunnery-era It Bites, having been introduced to Eat Me In St. Louis and The Big Lad in the Windmill by a friend when I was about 16. I loved Francis’ guitar lines on rockers like “Positively Animal”, “Sister Sarah”, “Screaming on the Beaches” and the classic “All In Red”, though I must say I was less enamoured with the sprawling epics like “Yellow Christian” and “Once Around the World” (though that one did grow on me eventually, and it’s pretty epic to see live) and I really don’t know what was going on with “Plastic Dreamer”…

But the band were undeniably awesome, and their sound was to my mind unique. Part pop, part heavy rock (occasionally even metal, perhaps?), part prog, there was just nothing else around that sounded like them. Perhaps that’s why they weren’t massive—they were just ahead of their time (as with T-Ride a few years later). But in the end, after three studio albums and a great live album (Thank You and Goodnight), Francis went solo and It Bites were done, barring a couple of half-hearted reunion efforts.

Until…

In the mid 2000s, It Bites reappeared in the world of music with a new frontman, the aforementioned John Mitchell, and in 2008 popped out a brand new album, The Tall Ships. I immediately took up against this idea for some reason. I was in a very focused hard-rock-only phase at the time, and also had firm nostalgia for the Dunnery era, and thought “How can you replace that guy?”.

Well, it turns out that what you do to convincingly replace Francis Dunnery is… get John Mitchell. When I actually got over myself and listened to The Tall Ships properly, I realised two things: 1) it’s a great record, and 2) HHJM can do everything Dunnery did and more. The band sounded fresh and exciting again, and tracks like “Ghosts” and “Memory of Water” stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of the 80s material, no problemo. I still have a bit of a problem with the 14-minute “This Is England”, but maybe I’ll get over that too one day.

Then in 2012 they released a concept album, Map of the Past, which again, I took up against for no good reason. This time I got over myself more quickly (no 14-minute epics this time helped, possibly) and eventually properly appreciated what is a fantastic record. Standout tracks on this one for me are “Wallflower”, “Cartoon Graveyard” and the title track “Map of the Past”. Great stuff.

Full disclosure: since then I’ve got to know John a little, as he’s a pal of my band Indigo Down, and we even recorded our EP with him at his studio in Reading. If you’re reading this, John, keep it up, fella. You’re doing it right. 👍

Clive recommends:

Of the Dunnery era, the three studio albums all have much to recommend them. My personal favourite is Eat Me In St. Louis, perhaps because it was the first one I had, but I would maybe recommend The Big Lad in the Windmill in terms of bang for your buck.

Both the Mitchell-era albums are wonderful, but I think Map of the Past edges it.

Video evidence

OK, so you have to have one of each, naturally. Here’s Francis and co. with “Screaming on the Beaches” in 1989:

…and here’s Johnny boy and friends banging out “Ghosts” in an altogether more recent 2010:

Marvellous. Aren’t you?

I is also for…

Indigo Down (Executive rock)
Intervals (Instrumental metal)

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2020

Clive Murray — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 14:49:04 +0000

Well, that was definitely a year.

Or so I’m told. It felt like at least seven years, possibly more. But no, it was just one year, though I think it’s fair to say it was a year like no other. There have been global pandemics before, but not in an online interconnected world that should allow for unprecedented collaboration and information sharing, yet somehow has instead led to a global atmosphere of fear, uncertainty and doubt for many, and exasperation for many more.

Oh, while we’re on the cheery stuff, I saw a line go past on Twitter a few months ago that kind of hit me. It went something like:

Person 1: “Wow, this is the hottest summer of my life!”

Person 2: “No. This is the coldest summer of the rest of your life.”

Le sigh. So, in summary…

Obviously COVID-19 defined the year for many, and along with it the lockdowns, disruption, recession, protests and general idiocy that came with it. (I’m not here to document the pandemic—you can read about it pretty much anywhere else.) It was also the International Year of Plant Health and Year of the Nurse and Midwife, so that’s nice. What else? Well, Brexit finally happened facepalm, everything else that was supposed to happen in 2020 got postponed to 2021, including the kicksport, the Olympics, and the two gigs (My Chemical Romance and Lady Gaga) that I had bought expensive tickets for (and which have both since been postposed again to 2022), and a whole bunch of other stuff. They even cancelled Eurovision, which on balance I see as a good thing. US police murdered a black man called George Floyd and triggered a wave of unrest, riots and protests over institutionalised racism, Costa Rica legalised gay marriage, NASA sent Perseverance and Ingenuity to Mars, Africa eradicated wild polio (because vaccines, yay!), the Falklands were declared free of land mines, Joe Biden became 46th US President, the Arecibo Telescope collapsed, I learned a whole lot about video editing, and I bought a 12-ft above-ground pool for the back garden.

I left a lot out there. Various parts of the world were—and still are—in various states of upheaval due to international conflicts, civil wars, natural disasters, invasions, and general Bad Stuff, and frankly a lot of it is too depressing to retype here. And that’s without all the T**mp rubbish. 😞

We said goodbye to (as always, among many many others): Elizabeth Wurtzel, Neil Peart, Terry Jones, Nicholas Parsons, Andy Gill, Kirk Douglas, Andrew Weatherall, Jens Nygaard Knudsen (the inventor of the Lego minifig), Hosni Mubarak, Max von Sydow, Roy Hudd, Kenny Rogers, Bill Withers, Adam Schlesinger 🦠, Eddie Large, Honor Blackman, John Prine 🦠, John Conway 🦠, Stirling Moss, Tim Brooke-Taylor 🦠, Brian Dennehy, Florian Schneider, Dave Greenfield 🦠, Little Richard, Jerry Stiller, Mory Kanté, Willie Thorne, Dame Vera Lynn, Ian Holm, Joel Schumacher, Ennio Morricone, Peter Green, John Saxon, Olivia de Havilland, Julian Bream, Chadwick Boseman, Diana Rigg, Terence Conran, Notorious RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsburg), The Crobar, Eddie Van Halen, Spencer Davis, Bobby Ball 🦠, Sean Connery, John Sessions, Geoffrey Palmer, Des O’Connor, Jan Morris, Diego Maradona, Darth Vader (David Prowse), Chuck Yeager, Harold Budd 🦠, Barbara Windsor, John le Carré, Pierre Cardin, Alexi Laiho and Maurice the cockerel.

(As you might have guessed, 🦠 in the above list denotes a death attributed to COVID-19.)

Phew.

Musically it was another bumper crop, though. Due to changes in financial wossnames I have had to reduce my rampant musical intake a little, but I still managed to find all of the following for you:

The one-liners

AC/DC – Power Up. (Rock.) You know what to expect from Brian, Angus, and co. by now, and that’s exactly what you get.
Aldious – Evoke 2010–2020 and Evoke II 2010–2020. (Metal.) This all-female Japanese metal band got a new singer and re-recorded a selection of their catalogue. Great fun.
Alestorm – Curse of the Crystal Coconut. (Pirate metal.) The pirates from Perth return with their 6th long player, and get right on with shivering your timbers from the get-go.
Ólafur Arnalds – Some Kind of Peace. (Neo-classical.) Evocative, minimal, lovely.
Black Veil Brides – Re-Stitch These Wounds. (Hard rock.) BVB felt, on reflection, that their debut album could have sounded better, so they re-recorded it.
Dirty Shirley – Dirty Shirley. (Hard rock.) George Lynch pops up with his first contribution for the year, with a slightly patchy but overall fun rocker, sporting a brand new singer, Dino Jelusick.
Enuff Z’Nuff – Brainwashed Generation. (Rock.) Enuff never seems to be Enuff for Chip and his gang, as they’re back again with more.
Intervals – Circadian. (Instrumental metal.) Aaron Marshall returns with another impeccably executed collection of hard instrumentals.
Al Joseph – Labyrinth. (Instrumental metal.) Al’s effortless shredding and brutal riffage are always solid. Cracking.
Lonely Robot – Feelings Are Good. (Prog.) Friend of the show, His Holiness John Mitchell, returns with his first solo album since the astronaut trilogy and explores some new ground sonically and lyrically. Top stuff, John!
Lost Society – No Absolution. (Metal/thrash.) Brutal.
Lynch Mob – Wicked Sensation Reimagined. (Hard rock.) George again! A complete re-make of the 1990’s classic, some songs benefit from the update, some not so much. YOU be the judge. (Note: George and co. have retired the “Lynch Mob” moniker due its oppressive historical connotations, so this will be the last LM album.)
Rabea Massaad – Grinding Gears vol. 3. (Instrumental metal.) Rabea’s third collection of gear demo tunes showcases as always his jawdropping technical expertise and supernatural feel. This boy’s really got something.
Tim Minchin - Apart Together. (Piano/pop.) Tim should need no introduction as a musical comedian, and this album is by turns funny, heartwarming and relatable. Good work.
Kylie Minogue – Disco. (Pop.) What, I can’t listen to Kylie? Can, and will.
Oh Wonder – No One Else Can Wear Your Crown. (Electropop.) I’ve loved these folks since I heard one of their songs on the telly. Sparse.
Ozric Tentacles – Space for the Earth. (Instrumental psychedelic.) If you don’t know what the Ozrics sound like, I can’t tell you. If you do, then this sounds like that. Bloody marvellous.
John Petrucci – Terminal Velocity. (Instrumental metal.) Trooch brings us his second solo outing, and once again there are some cracking tunes on here, and absoutely blistering lead work, as you would expect.
Max Richter – Voices. (Neo-classical.) Max is not afraid to push the envelope, even if there’s danger of it falling off the desk altogether. This comes in two “discs”, as it were: one with spoken vocals and one without. The former is selections of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights set to classical/experimental backing. The latter has the voices removed. Intriguing.
Sons of Apollo – MMXX. (Progressive metal.) The superest of supergroups is back for more, and bloody impressive it is, if you like that sort of thing. Do you?
Testament – Titans of Creation. (Metal/thrash.) Thrashy. Heavy. Good.

☕️

Ready? OK. Here are the contenders for the top spot from 2020, a blighted year that still gave us plenty to listen to.

Honourable mentions

Jon Gomm - The Faintest Idea

It blows my mind that (at time of writing) if you go to the acoustic guitars page on the Ibanez website, there are three signature acoustic ranges: one for Steve Vai, one for Joe Satriani, and one for a guy from Yorkshire who I sort of know a bit. Like many acts who were suddenly everywhere, Jon was of course toiling away doing his thing for years before a chance confluence of circumstances led to a breakthrough event that catapulted him to much-deserved recognition back in 2013, following the release of his smash album Secrets Nobody Keeps. We’ve been waiting 7 years for the followup, during which time Jon has toured the globe, and traversed some no-less-gnarly personal and emotional terrain, and come out the other side scarred perhaps, but on the top of his game, and bearing an absolutely beautiful record. Raw, touching, personal, inspiring, fragile and slightly bloody. But enough about me, go listen to this record. Top track: “Deep Sea Fishes”

Green Day - Father of All Motherf***ers

You should know what to expect from Green Day by now. This particular album is more pop punk party than political pomp or puff proselytising, and there’s only 26 minutes of it, so pay attention. It’s really good, and you don’t want to miss it. Top track: Fire, Ready, Aim”

Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia

My musical tastes—and my personality—have changed pretty wildly over the last year or two, and while I still dig rock music the most, you’re nowadays as likely to find me listening to girly pop as manly hetero testoterone-powered rawk. Say what you like about that, I couldn’t care less. This is a brilliant album, the songs are catchy as hell, the production is fantastic, and Ms. Lipa is one heck of a singer. Not sorry. Top track: “Hallucinate”

Nuclear Power Trio - A Clear and Present Rager

Barking, but brilliant. Check this out, why don’t you? Maybe that will help. Top track: “A Clear and Present Rager”

Plini - Impulse Voices

It was five years ago that Mr. Roessler-Holgate graced us with his first full-length album, and what an album it was. Here, then, is the followup and yes, dear listener, he’s done it again. It’s under 40 minutes again, but the quality of these songs… the musicianship, the composition, the production, the care and love that has gone into them… you can’t walk away feeling short-changed. Some of the songs feature a little more of Plini’s jazzier/fusionier side, but do not be afear’d – there is wailage aplenty, and it’s beautiful. Top track: “Pan”

Protest the Hero - Palimpsest

These Canadian boys make a goddamn wonderful metal sound. Rody Walker’s vocals are absolutely unnatural, the riffage the band smash out is always interesting, the compositions and production are top drawer… just a great band, and this is a great record. Top track: “All Hands”

Public Enemy - What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down?

I am not, and have never been, a hip hop or rap fan. I was surprised by this album, though. Very listenable, and still relevant. Fight the power, indeed. Top track: “GRID”

Taylor Swift - Evermore

I don’t know much about Tay-Tay, and had never heard any of her music before the lockdowns came. But, as isolation threatened to scatter my mind beans to the four winds, I found solace in music I hadn’t previously tried, and I found Ms. Swift’s recent folkier output to be a wonderful tonic to the oppressive atmosphere of some of those long hot claustrophobic 2020 summer nights. Great stuff. Top track: “No Body, No Crime”

Taylor Swift - Folklore

Oh, and she even had time to release two albums in one year. I guess if you can’t tour because of a global pandemic, best get busy making music? I couldn’t choose between this and Evermore, so they both get a spot on the list. Splendid. Top track: “Exile”

And the winner is…

Lady Gaga - Chromatica

I was converted to the Church of Gaga via a friend in late 2019, and her music got me through some very very dark teatimes of the soul indeed. You may find that just the idea of listening to Lady Gaga leaves you cold, and that’s fair enough, I won’t try to change your mind. What I’ll say is that I’m a different person to the one I was two or three years ago, and listening to something other than constant rock has helped me to get out of a personal rut and feel less stagnant in my mind.

Something like that, anyway.

Whatever the case, if you’re able to appreciate pop music, then give this a listen. Stephanie Germanotta is a proper singer, songwriter and musician, so focus on the music rather than the ostentatious stunts that gave her so much publicity earlier in her career. (Meat dress, anyone?)

I love all her albums, though not every single track is a zinger. That said, Chromatica is perhaps the most consistent of them all to date. The production is epic throughout, and the songs themselves are expertly crafted, as you might expect of an album with no less than 13 producers credited, including such EDM/house/pop luminaries as Skrillex, Burns, Axwell, Max Martin and Tchami, all masterminded by Gaga and uber-producer BloodPop. Lyrically, Gaga deals with themes such as mental health struggles, self loathing, sexual assault, substance dependence, and desire for acceptance, but the overall tone of the album is one of hope. It is split up into three “acts”, each introduced with a short orchestral interlude, and can be characterised overall as a musical “quest for healing”.

And what songs they are. The relentlessly fun “Stupid Love” was the lead single, with its camp-as-Christmas-balls cyberpunk dance battle video (see below), and it only got better from there. “Rain On Me” (duet with Ariana Grande) is one of the best pop songs I’ve heard in recent times, and the slightly chewier subject matter in songs like “Sour Candy” and “911” keep the whole affair from vanishing in a puff of saccharin smoke.

I’m not going to go on much further – I’m not trying to convert you or to convince you. I’m just saying that this is without a shadow of a doubt my Album of the Year for 2020. A bright, shiny, fun 43 minutes of dance pop in a year that gave us very little to celebrate.

Top tracks: “Sour Candy”, “Rain On Me”, “Stupid Love”

Turkey of the Year

You know who just can’t sing? Ozzy Osbourne. I’ve spent time listening to Ozzy, and I realised, I was only really interested in whoever was on guitar in his band – Randy Rhoads, Jake E. Lee, Zakk Wylde, Gus G., etc. So when I stuck on his 2020 effort Ordinary Man and found the guitar to be pretty incidental and uninteresting, I figured that would be enough to make it the Turkey of the Year.

But no. No no no. That dubious honour goes to…

Reb Beach - A View from the Inside

I really wanted this to be good, and it really isn’t. I love Reb’s playing, from back in the day with Winger up to his newer stuff with Whitesnake, he’s always great and original-sounding. But this record is just… bad. It starts strong, with a remake of “Black Magic”–Reb’s track for the 1991 compilation album Guitars That Ruled The World–but unfortunately it goes rapidly downhill from there.

Avoid.

47%

Clive Murray — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 13:21:42 +0000

A long time ago I released an album. (I play guitar, you know.) It was recorded with the limited equipment I had at the time, and with the limited skill and patience I had at the time.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of Earthman. I’m proud that it got made at all, and thankful to the backers who chipped in to get the CDs pressed and who I never did manage to pay back.

I’m proud that I can hold up a shrinkwrapped CD with a barcode on it and say, “That’s my album. I wrote that.” Very proud, and very grateful to all those who helped it happen.

But, that was 2002. Since then the home recording landscape has transformed unimaginably, and during a profitable period of work I availed myself of non-pirated decent recording software (Logic) and all the plugins I could eat. I even bought a decent bass.

And? Well. I’ve been promising a second album for well over a decade now, but you know what? As always, life gets in the way. In that time I changed jobs many times, got married, left London, had a child, joined and formed many bands, bought a house, and… well… aged 20 years. I also stopped playing for long periods of time.

But at the start of 2020 (before the lockdowns) I started a regular music night. A regular slot, ringfenced and sacred in the calendar, that is for working on music projects. And so, once the Indigo Down video and EP were out, my focus shifted back to one of the projects on the shelf, namely album 2.

To spur me on and motivate me, I decided to create a small website which shows the progress I’m making on it. I’m not sure why – perhaps if my progress is visible, then there’s more impetus to keep making visible progress? Something like that.

Anyway. It’s going to be called Love & Painkillers, and it’s 47% complete. I am very much hoping to get it released some time in 2022, time and… gestures wildly all this… allowing.

Peace and love, and good happiness stuff. 🙏

Still Alive

Clive Murray — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 14:29:29 +0000

It’s been a while, I’m aware. Let’s get right to it, shall we?

We – and by we I mean my band, Indigo Down – finished the video, we released the EP, we did a photoshoot, and you are cordially invited to:

Watch the lockdown video for the song “Alive” that took me eight months to make. It will only take you less than four minutes to watch. Please? Go on.
Buy or stream (preferably buy, to be honest) the EP “Still Alive” from whichever platform suits you best. You can find it on pretty much all of them, but links to some of the most popular are right here on our site.

So, yeah. We’re really happy with the EP. Personally I can say for sure it’s the best sounding recording I’ve ever played on to date.

Huge thanks to everyone at Outhouse Studios who was involved in making this a reality, and special thanks to His Holiness John Mitchell for mixing, remixing, mastering, and generally being lovely throughout. (If you listen carefully you might even hear his dulcet tones somewhere on one of the songs…)

L-R: Martin Szomszor, Jez Fielder, Clive Murray, Paul Fielder. Photo: k b photography.

Enjoy! Then put some clothes on, for pity’s sake.

What’s going on?

Clive Murray — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:18:20 +0000

Observant listeners could be forgiven for wondering where the hell the Indigo Down lockdown video is that I promised you all last year.

You may also be forgiven for wondering why no blog posts for almost a year, though some of that is probably self-explanatory.

First, the video: it is finished. It has been finished since December, in fact, dear Antonia.

So why have you not seen it, my dear Candace? Why isn’t every music channel playing it 24/7, and the name Indigo Down being chanted on every street corner, praising us as the Saviours of Executive Rock that we truly are?

Well, here’s the thing with that, Grichard. We have an EP to release as well, and it makes sense to use the video to promote the EP, and the EP is currently undergoing the finishing touches of finishing and touching to make it as aurally pleasing to your dear ears, Margaret, as is humanly likely. His Holiness John Mitchell is, even as I type this, slaving over a hot mixing desk somewhere deep in the heart of Monaco. (Or Reading? One of those.) I bid you watch the skies, Rosalita, for whensoe’er it is ready, you will be among the first 7 billion to know about it. I promise you that much, Clarence.

And aside from that? Well, Algernop, it’s been a funny old year, as I probably don’t need to tell you. And yet I just have. See? It’s like that at the moment, Karl-Heinz. I haven’t been into London, where I normally work, or spent any time with my friends, or done anything normal in a year. Like everybody else. And it is, to quote Nelson Mandela,“Doing my bloody bonce in”.

Just like everybody else.

Thus, Rashmi, I have not found time for blogging. What would I blog about? “Yesterday was annoying – I had six conference calls and got very little done – but then I played MineCraft with my son in the evening, then had a glass of wine and watched an episode of The Blacklist, so you know, not so bad all things considered.”

Yeah, so mentally paste that in a few hundred times and you’ve got the general idea, Portia.

Just like everybody else.

One thing though: in the early days of lockdown – or possibly before, my little grey cells appear not to have held onto the exact start date – I instigated a regular once-a-week evening slot to work on music. Tuesday night is Daddy Music Night. Naturally, throughout 2020 that was dedicated in the main to working on the video (you cannot imagine how time consuming video editing is, Mohammed, unless of course you can), but since January I have repurposed this slot back to its original… um… purpose. Namely, working on my second album.

I’ve hardly played guitar in the last year or perhaps even two. I know when we started doing the video I had to spend a while re-learning the song so I could mime to it properly. But this is what Daddy Music Night was intended to do – give me a reason to play again, and it has. My lead playing is still a very long way off from what it was, but I have been pleased to find the rhythm tracks are all still in muscle memory, so it shouldn’t take too much work to get the lead chops back up to flight temperature once I oil the joints and grease the aforementioned grey cells accordingly.

I have even made a little website which details my progress. It’s a music-related version of “coding in the open”, the thinking being that if people can see that, I will be that bit more encouraged to keep working on it lest I let people down. I am heartened and proud to say that a few people have already commented on Twitter that they are already looking forward to its completion, dear Beresford, and this has been the shot in the arm I needed to keep going with the project.

As for that other shot in the arm, I await the appointment card with bated letterbox, but no news as yet, my dear Glary. I’m not at risk, I’m under 50, semi-healthy, and can work from home, so that’s as it should be. Very much looking forward to that particular superpower though, as it will mean I can go outside again.

I’m really looking forward to that. How are you all? Hope you’re OK.

Hello you

Clive Murray — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 16:00:23 +0000

Well, yes. I know. I only call you when I need something or when I feel bad. Which is it today? I don’t know.

But you’re my blog, and that’s why I have one. Sometimes I need to just say the stuff out loud, or in any event, type it. I used to do this over 20 years ago. I’d format it manually and upload it via FTP, having updated the index page and suchlike. Such ancient, so journal, wow.

Anyway. It’s self-isolation day 113 here at Murray Mansions, and everything is wearing thin. Patience, sanity, reason, sobriety, they’re all in short supply, especially at the weekends when there isn’t even the welcome distraction of work (crammed in my tiny little box room) to make the days trundle by a little quicker.

So what’s changed? Well, one quick highlight – we went to the zoo yesterday. All three of us in the car, out to the zoo, and a jolly good time was had. I think aside from my wife and I we saw precisely two adults wearing masks, and two children (in different families). We remained masked up regardless. It was nice.

On Saturday night the wife and I had a video chat and a couple of beverages with some friends in Germany, and tried out an “online escape room”, which was heaps of fun. Check out https://thepanicroomonline.net/ if that sounds like something you might enjoy. We didn’t finish it (it is possible that performance may have been impaired by alcohol) but we can resume it any time, apparently, so we’ll see how that goes.

We bought an above-ground 12ft pool just in time for the hot weather. Unfortunately, the lawn wasn’t level enough to set it up. So now – literally as of today – we have a levelled lawn covered in astroturf, and we’re almost 2 grand poorer. But soon there will be splashy splashy, so… that’s good.

My band was doing a lockdown video for one of our songs, but what with life being as crazy as it is right now, no-one else in the band has had time to get any footage to me yet. I hear rumours the singer has been filming up a mountain, so I’m sitting by my inbox awaiting the results.

If I had gone insane… actually lost my mind… would I be able to tell? Probably not. Which is troubling.

I have applied the jumper cables to the project folder on my mac labelled “second album”, and have gotten as far as redoing drums for two songs and bass and rhythm guitars for one. More news on that as it breaks.

Oh, and in a surprise move, I appear to be having a short course of guitar lessons starting on Friday with a splendid chap called Jay who lives in Brighton. He’s my mate’s teacher, and my mate is having three weeks off, so I’m taking his lessons for that period. No idea what I want to do with these, but it will be interesting I am sure.

I hope you’re OK.

Not waving

Clive Murray — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 11:21:28 +0000

I’m having a bad day today.

I guess we all are. In the immortal words of Marcus Aurelius, “Stuff be messed up, yo”.

It certainly is. And nearly everyone is having a worse time of it than I am. I’m a middle-class white guy who can work from home and who has a contract running for a further four months before I even have to think about looking for work. My immediate family are safe and healthy (if bored and scratchy), as am I, and the freezers and cupboards are stocked to bursting. (There may have been some Brexit-related stockpiling before the current situation which saw us through the initial period of shopping difficulties.)

So that’s all good. We’re OK, and we’ll probably continue to be OK.

But I am going out of my goddamn mind. I was having some issues with my mental health last year from around September onwards, and that situation is far from resolved. It’s just had to go in the internal cupboard marked “Can’t do anything about it right now” so that I can continue to function and keep the income incoming. My normal method of plastering over stuff like that until I have time to process it is wine. But I’m currently not drinking (33 days so far), so I’m having to actually … you know … have emotions and deal with them.

Turns out I’m not great at that.

Dammit. Now I’m whining into my blog.

Bah.

OK never mind, do what you can to support your health services and call out the racists.

Stay safe, I’ll see you soon.

The Indigo Down Lockdown Rockdown

Clive Murray — Fri, 29 May 2020 16:22:14 +0000

So, some time about 2010 I joined a band. They are excellent, and they are Indigo Down. We played a load of gigs, opening for the likes of [L.A. Guns](L.A. Guns), Love/Hate and [Enuff Z’Nuff](Enuff Z’Nuff) all at the splendid [Underworld in Camden](Underworld in Camden). Oh how I miss that place.

Anyway, we got older and some of us had kids, and things slowed down, and one day I noticed that the singer had left the country and gone to live in France. “Band’s probably on hiatus then,” I thought. And so it was. We hadn’t done anything of particular note in a year or two, so fair enough.

Then the virus and the lockdown happened, and people started having meetups over Zoom and suchlike, and I thought “Hey maybe we could have a band drink one evening”, and so we did.

During this, the idea of doing a lockdown video for one of our unreleased songs was floated, and… well, we’re doing it.

Which is why there is this:

It’ll be slow going. The other guys have busy lives and I have a lot to learn about video editing. It’s possible that lockdown will be over before we get it done. But, I think we’re going to do it either way.

Hopefully!

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2019

Clive Murray — Wed, 13 May 2020 09:00:00 +0000

😳

Remember 2016? Good times, man. Good times.

😭

Anyway, we’re here to talk about 2019, not 2020 just yet. So…

Chinese probe Chang’e 4 landed on the far side of the moon, science achieved the first ever actual image of a black hole, Assange was booted out of his cupboard and arrested, the Emperor of Japan abdicated (the first one to do so since 1817), Johnson, Thomas Cook, Greta Thunberg, climate, impeachment, the first news about a little thing called novel coronavirus, and my cat Jeff disappeared 😿.

All this against a permanent backdrop of increasing unrest over climate change and utter despair and disbelief at the state of the governments on both sides of the Atlantic. Remember Brexit? Good times.

People died. Among them: Windsor Davies, Jim Dunlop, Albert Finney, Stringfellow Hawke, Gordon Banks, Karl Lagerfeld, André Previn, Keith Flint, Magenta Devine, Dick Dale, Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), Freddie Starr, Doris Day, Grumpy Cat, Bob Hawke, Niki Lauda, Judith Kerr, Paul Darrow, Dr. John, Rutger Hauer, Toni Morrison, Peter Fonda, Jacques Chirac, Peter Sissons, Ginger Baker, Gay Byrne, Clive James, Gary Rhodes, Jonathan Miller, Odo (René Auberjonois), Marie Frederiksson, David Bellamy and Neil Innes.

As the world swirls further and further down the pan, at least we have a good soundtrack. 2019 was possibly the best year for music since 2018, I don’t mind telling you. There is no way on this or any other Earth that I can keep these things down to 6 any more… so 12 is just going to have to be the new 6.

Saying that, here’s a further load of albums I recommend checking out, even though they didn’t make my top 12:

The one-liners

Lari Basilio – Far More. (Instrumental rock/fusion.) Really interesting, great playing and production.
Buckcherry – Warpaint. (Hard rock.) Another solid block of rock from Josh Todd and pals.
Cloudkicker – Unending. (Instrumental prog.) Ben Sharp straddling comfortably as always the line between prog/math rock and ambient soundscapes. Nice.
The Damned Things – High Crimes. (Hard rock/metal.) Fallout Boy plus Anthrax equals this? Fair enough, it’s good!
Paul Gilbert – Behold Electric Guitar. (Instrumental rock.) A little less shred and a little more melody from Paul on this interesting if perhaps patchy album.
Lonely Robot – Under Stars. (Prog rock.) His Holiness John Mitchell completes his spaceman trilogy in epic style.
Rabea Massaad – Grinding Gears vol. 2. (Instrumental metal/rock.) Rabea’s gear demos make some great tunes, and here is the second compilation of them. Some of the heaviest riffs you’re likely to hear alongside some of the sweetest mood playing. Tasty.
Myrath – Shehili. (Prog/metal.) If you like your metal with an eastern flavour, these Tunisians will sort you right out, and Malek Ben Arbia shreds.
Periphery – Periphery IV: HAIL STAN. (Prog metal.) I normally can’t be doing with Periphery, as I cannot stand deathy vocals, but the singy fella calms it down a notch on this one and there’s some awesome riffs going on round the back. (I know where to get it, if you want it.)
Queensrÿche – The Verdict. (Rock/metal.) I had no idea they were still going, and I tell you this, the new singer’s Geoff Tate impression is scary good. He’s less of a tool, as well!
Mary Spender – Lone Wolf EP. (Pop/rock.) Mary’s voice is like a bath of warm chocolate and her songs are great.
Devin Townsend – Empath. (Prog metal.) Absolutely barking.
Týr – Hel. (Folk/Viking metal.) The Faroese folk-metallers drop another great and heavy album. You really can’t go wrong with this lot.
Underworld – Drift Series 1. (Techno/electronic.) Underworld’s mental project to make a new thing every week for a year yielded a 7-disc album at the end of it. It’s bloody great.
Steve Vai & Miho Arai – Piano Reductions vol. 2. (Piano/acoustic.) The second volume of piano interpretations of Vai’s pyrotechnic guitar songs. Interesting, and wonderfully played!
Jakub Zytecki – Nothing Lasts, Nothing’s Lost. (Instrumental.) Jakub is one of the most innovative and interesting guitar players of the new wave, and this album mixes his boggling guitar work with ethereal woven vocal lines and Jakub’s trademark new-lo-fi production. It’s gorgeous.

Wow, the preamble is almost as long as the actual post these days. I suppose that’s a side-effect of being locked in this house for the last 2 months. Oh well. Grab a cuppa, because here come the top 12. Beezer. ☕️

Honourable mentions

Alter Bridge - Walk the Sky

A regular fixture in the Honourable Mentions, Alter Bridge return with their 6th long player, and you’ll be pleased to hear it’s their best since the mighty Blackbird back in 2007. Myles Kennedy’s voice still gives me shivers, and Mark Tremendous on guitar just gets better and better. This is a really tight record, despite weighing in at an hour. The production is on-point and delivers the riffs right where you need them, even under the rim. Top track: “In the Deep”

Blood Stain Child - Amateras

I’ve been lucky enough to play some London shows opening for some of the classic rock acts of my day like Enuff Z’Nuff, L.A. Guns and Love/Hate. All of these shows have taken place at The Underworld, in Camden, London, and have been enormous fun. Anyway, I follow the Underworld on Twitter, and it was there that I saw them announce a show (now cancelled because COVID-19) coming up featuring a Japanese trance metal band called Blood Stain Child. Wait… what? Trance metal? CLICK. They’re bloody brilliant. Top track: “Del-Sol 1.02”

Billie Eilish - When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?

I’m a mid-40s guy, so I’m probably not supposed to be listening to 18yo girl music. Well, I don’t care. My listening tastes have shifted pretty radically in the last year, and this is a great album of darkened pop songs that never fails to evoke the feels, and it’s damned good fun. Top track: “You Should See Me In a Crown”

Elbow - Giants of All Sizes

I absolutely love Elbow, and I will make no apology for it. (I once professed this opinion somewhere and one incisive commenter took the time out of their day to inform me that “Elbow is the most boring band name I’ve ever heard.” Thanks so much for that.) I was first enamoured with 2003’s Cast of Thousands and later with their whole catalogue. I found 2017’s Little Fictions to be a tad disappointing, but I’m happy to say that Guy Garvey and friends are back on top melancholic form here. Lush. Top track: “Dexter & Sinister”

Eluveitie - Ategnatos

Long-time listeners will be aware that I have something of a fondness verging on tumescence for folk metal. It all started back in around 2008 when a colleague played me Skyforger by Amorphis and something by Blind Guardian. I was smitten with these alternate takes on what is often an extremely po-faced parent genre (Metal) – the humour of Alestorm, the hedonistic revelry of Korpiklaani, the epic tales told by Amorphis, Týr and Ensiferum, and in many cases the weaving of traditional folk instrumentation into modern sounding heavy metal. This last attribute is one of the bedrock features of Swiss Celtic-metallers Eluveitie and while their discography has had ups and downs, this latest release is absolutely solid from soup to bottom. They are one of very few bands from whom I can put up with the injection of death vocals, since the balance with the soaring clean vocals is perfectly struck. The band are incredible, and when the choruses kick in with the harmonies and the penny whistles and the hurdy-gurdies all giving it ten-nowt the hairs fair stand up on the back of my wossnames. Inspired. Top track: “Ambiramus”

The End Machine - The End Machine

It is a truth universally acknowledged that George Lynch is the George Lynchest George Lynch who ever George Lynched. Now I can’t prove that, but it is a medical fact. This was the first album to go on the 2019 list, back in March of that year (which feels like a decade ago), and it’s never been out of rotation since. The band line-up is basically Dokken with Don Dokken removed (good start) and replaced with one of the various singers from Lynch Mob’s varied history, Robert Mason. It doesn’t sound anything like a Dokken rehash though – the production is roomy and modern, the songs are riff- and groove-oriented and the whole thing sounds fresh as a daisy. George Lynch, man. George goddamn Lynch. Total leg-end. Top track: “Alive Today”

KXM - Circle of Dolls

So… you remember that George Lynch fella I was talking about? He’s a busy lad. (Lad! He’s 65!) That The End Machine project mentioned before could sort of be called a supergroup, if one felt so inclined, but supergroup is a label that can certainly be applied to KXM. As mentioned in 2017 they comprise Ray Luzier of Korn (K) on drums, Doug Pinnick of King’s X (X) on bass and vocals and George Lynch of Lynch Mob (M) on guitar. This is their third album and their best yet. It’s heavy and packed with riffs, as you would expect, and Doug’s voice is in splendid form for a chap who’s going to be 70 this year. (In fact Ray is the baby of the band, at 49!) For me one of the things that keeps KXM fresh is that each member has a unique sound that you don’t find elsewhere. Of Doug, that should be no surprise. His is one of the most legendary rock voices with which we as a listening mass have ever been graced. Similarly, George’s guitar playing is simply in a class of its own. There is just no-one like him. You can hear two notes – one, even – and you know it’s Lynch. And Luzier’s drumming is so so tight and snappy that I was even driven to listen to some Korn for a bit. (Not much, don’t really like them.) Get some KXM down you, then go and get all of it. Three rocking crackers for your lockdown collection. Top track: “Mind Swamp”

Mr. Fastfinger - Mountain Tone

Well, there’s a lot going on in here. So much in fact that Mika released it in two halves, but I’m treating it as one double album. Mika’s retro shredwave project Night Overdrive romped home with the top prize last year and many of those synthwave-influenced sounds have bled through into this project, but now we are back in the land of Mr. Fastfinger rather than Mika Tyyskä (they are of course one and the same), and that means that the fingers must go faster. And crikey, do they. In fact, if you have 20 minutes spare check out this video of Mika’s live trio playing four of the songs off this album, live to a backing track (click-track and synths presumably). I had that playing while writing this entry and I had to keep stopping and switching to the video and winding back to see Mika smashing out those amazing fast phrases. This is an hour of joyous guitar music that should raise the spirits and perhaps even a smile or two. Bloody lovely. Top track: “Mystery”

Tool - Fear Inoculum

(NB: I’m vaguely aware that there are allegations of some rather unsplendid behaviour against singer Maynard James Keenan. I have no comment on that, and I knew nothing about it when I got into this album, so I’m just going to talk about the album on its own merits. If that gives you the icks, I completely understand, just skip ahead to the next one. We do not endorse unsplendidness.)

Tool are a funny one. Up until 2006, you couldn’t throw a prog fan in a semi-crowded room without someone piping up “HEY, I’m trying to listen to Lateralus here!” And after that, well you know – the same thing but with 10,000 Days. During all of this, I tried with them several times and failed. It wasn’t the prog, the shifting time signatures, the vaguely disturbing imagery… I really don’t know what it was, but they just didn’t click for me. That is, until 2019’s Fear Inoculum. This album grabbed me right away, and I have no idea what it was that changed in the 13 years between it and its predecessor. Me? Indubitably. But I’ve gone back to those earlier albums and given them another go, and they still leave me cold. Curious. Top track: “Invincible”

Voyager - Colours in the Sun

Over on their bandcamp site Aussie five-piece outfit Voyager tag themselves as “epic electro progressive power pop metal”, which is quite the genre name. It is also astoundingly accurate. Daniel Estrin’s voice is unlike any other I’ve heard in metal, and I mean that in a good way. The ultra-clean vocals aren’t the only thing that sets Voyager apart from the herd though, old Dan’s pretty nippy on that thar keytar and the twin guitar attack and tight AF rhythm section that are necessary for this kind of music absolutely smash it out of the park and hold it together at the same time. I’ve had a lot of caffeine. This is great. Top track: “Colours”

Ed Wynne - Shimmer Into Nature

A long time ago, when all this was trees, some friends of mine liked to gather and smoke herbal cigarettes and listen to music and not do much else. It was a splendid way to spend an evening, I gather. Some of the music they listened to was quite psychedelic in nature, as I believe befits such pastimes, and one of the beat-combos they would frequently listen to was Ozric Tentacles (often referred to as “Tantric Obstacles” or “Ostrich Testicles” haha) as their long-form instrumental psycho-rock was, I am told, great for “spacing out” to, whatever that may be. One friend of mine spoke very highly of the guitarist and main writer, John Ozric, as not only was he an absolute wizard on the guitar, he also happened to play our favourite guitar at the time, the Ibanez Jem (specifically the JEM777VBK). And bloody right he was too – at least about the playing. Sadly not the name. John Ozric is in fact Ed Wynne, as any Ozrics fan will know, and he has been the mainstay of the band since 1983. The Tentacles are still going strong, but it was last year that Ed put out a solo album, which this is, and it’s… well it’s amazing, and frankly it sounds just like an Obstacles album to me. Groovy. Top track: “Glass Staircase“

And the winner is…

McRocklin & Hutch - Riding Out

I’ve been yelling from the rooftops about this since I heard it, waaaaayyyyyyyyy back in April 2019. Thomas McRocklin appeared in last year’s list when he suddenly reappeared after many years with a 6-track instrumental rock EP that had a great fresh feel to it. I dug it, and hoped for more. Well, listener, I got it.

In early 2019 Tommy started showing up on Instagram a whole bunch with little promo videos and an excellently British sense of humour, and I thought “Oh great, last year’s EP wasn’t just a flash in the pan, he’s properly back on the scene” and a couple of weeks later he posted about an album being out. Listener, I clicked so fast my mouse exploded and minutes later I was listening to this sublime, spacious, catchy, soothing, 80s-influenced yet also ultramodern-sounding album, from McRocklin & Hutch.

This has never been out of rotation in the last year. It’s epic. Tom & Tim have birthed a whole new subgenre here: Shredwave. The wonderful commingling (yes that is a word, look it up^[1]) of 80s nostalgia genre synthwave (see alsovaporwave) and shred guitar. It is a marriage made in The Good Place, and every track on here is a total delight. Tommy’s chops have never been in question, and Hutch’s keys and backing^[2] provide the perfect soundscape for stellar guitar lines and cracking hooks throughout. The production is awesome too – the synthwave/retrowave values are upheld throughout but it’s not slavishly 80s. Yes there are big synth drums, and plenty of reverb washes all over the place, but there’s a lovely clarity and spaciousness to the sound that gives all the melody lines room to breathe, stretch, and kick their Adidas off and run around a bit.

I could probably sit here and crack off about this album all day long, but you’ve slogged through over 3000 words to get this far, so Imma shut my keyboard-hole and give you a video so you can get an idea of what the holy bastard I’m on about.

Maybe you love every second of it like I do, maybe you don’t, and that’s fair enough. I will defend your right to be wrong with every breath in my wossname. But there it is – from the moment I heard this I knew it would be Album of the Year 2019.

Top tracks: “Animals”, “One of Them”, “Jugaar”

Turkey of the Year

Jesus. Effing. Crisps.

Dream Theater cranked out another loaf of whatever it is you call that noise these days, and wrist-gnawingly boring as it is, it had absolutely no chance of beating the Swedish Meatball (he doesn’t like donuts, by the way) to the punch.

Yngwie Malmsteen - Blue Lightning

I’m going to be 100% honest with you, I’m giving this the Turkey of the Year award, and I haven’t even heard all of it. I can’t. I just can’t. Please, don’t ask. It’s so bad. So bad. So so so SO bad.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/commingle ↩︎
And, I later learned, guitar. He’s extremely nippy himself. I had no idea at the time. Sorry, Tim. ↩︎

Proof of life, 22/04/2020

Clive Murray — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:18:21 +0000

Hi gang, I’m still here.

It’s self-isolation, day 38 for me. It’s going fine, as I’m lucky enough to be able to work entirely from home and we booked a load of grocery delivery slots well in advance when lockdown started.

The four walls are beginning to get a bit samey, I’ll admit, but we’re also very lucky in that we have a large garden and the weather has been good, so it could be so so much worse.

In blogging news, I have whittled down the 2019 Album of the Year contenders to a final list and will start that post very shortly. The next A-Z entry will be “I”, so look out for that when I get time too. I know, edge of your seat, etc.

I’m also going to do a little series on albums that I didn’t include in my AotY posts because I hadn’t heard them yet when the posts were written. I’ve been hoovering music up like it’s going out of style this last couple of years, and a load of possibles got missed out. It is my intention – nay, my DUTY – to share these with you also, my dear listener.

In the meantime work continues apace for my current contract, and what with that and keeping the family alive and entertained, not much time for making music remains at the moment. There are several projects in unfinished states (and even a guitar in an unfinished state, but more on that another time) that I hope to return to one day. You will of course hear about it first.

Stay safe, stay home, stay frosty.

–c.

A New Journal of the Plague Year

Clive Murray — Tue, 31 Mar 2020 11:14:18 +0000

A good pal of mine is blogging their way through COVID-19.

You too may enjoy A New Journal of the Plague Year.

H is for...

Clive Murray — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 14:13:30 +0000

H is for… Daniel Hope

Image from Daniel’s website, © Nicolas Zonvi

Once again, it’s not all rock and metal round here at Murray Mansions. One of my favourite modern composers is the splendid Max Richter, and it was at one of his concerts I discovered this rather good violinist, viz Daniel Hope. He played up a storm on Max’s stuff, and later on I discovered a couple of rather good albums of his. I’m no classical buff by any stretch of the imagination, but one thing I do like is some well-played violin, and that’s what you get from Daniel.

Clive recommends:

Daniel’s work with Max Richter is outstanding, particularly “Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons”, but his own albums are also wonderful and sport a nice variety of material. I’d go for his 2013 release “Spheres” where he gives his spin to various pieces from modern classicists like Richter, Einaudi, Glass and Pärt as well as more traditional pieces by Prokofiev, Bach et al.

Video evidence

Here’s Daniel playing a piece from Max Richter’s rearrangement of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons:

Respect.

H is also for…

Halestorm (Hard rock)
Hardcore Superstar (Hard rock)
The Heavy (Neo soul)
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (Jazz)

Best Of Your Life (Little Monkeys)

Clive Murray — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 11:08:36 +0000

The band I was in in 2005 played The Marquee.

Here’s a song from that gig.

Little Monkeys – Best of Your Life (Live at the Marquee, December 2005)

Shouts to Jon Ewen (vocals), Ian Farrer (bass) and Dan Roth (drums). Love you guys.

That was fun. 😄🤘

Well, isn't this lovely?

Clive Murray — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 15:29:52 +0000

Maybe you heard something about a virus…?

The delight that is COVID-19 is making its merry way around the globe. Thousands have died, hundreds of thousands have caught it (how the hell have 47 people in the Faroe Islands caught it? I didn’t think there were that many people there…), and many many more will catch it. At time of writing, schools in England remain open and BogJob has advised people to stay away from pubs and restaurants without making them close, so they can’t trigger their insurance. Screw you, Boris. Screw you so very much.

My family went to Luton on Saturday and successfully bought a car for my wife and did some shopping. On Monday we went into self-isolation mode, since my current workplace advised working from home if possible, and later that day they shut the London office due to a confirmed case of COVID-19. My wife went down with what appeared to be a cold on Sunday. She seems much better now. We decided to keep our son home from school regardless of what the clown at number 10 says.

So this is self-isolation day 3, and I’m very grateful to have a job that allows me to work from home. As the only source of income, and a freelancer at that, any interruption in earnings hits us seriously. It’s going alright at the moment.

Eagle-eyed listeners will note there isn’t really a point to this post. You’re right, of course, but that is the point. I’m just sticking my hand up and saying “I’m still here, and it’s going ok.”

I hope you’re still there and that it’s going ok too.

I hope to fit in some proper blogging during the coming weeks, if only to prevent my brain from eating itself. I’ve half-written the “H” entry of the A-Z, and I’m still whittling the shortlist for 2019’s Album of the Year. I know, I bet you’re on the edge of your wossname.

So that’s it for now. Stay safe, stay home, stay hydrated, stay frosty.

Find me on Twitter or Instagram if you want.

Please hold, caller...

Clive Murray — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 17:02:10 +0000

…your call is important to us.

But we are going through a number of things at the moment, and honestly haven’t felt capable of blogging for a while.

It’s OK to not be OK, and frankly, I’m not. But, I have people around me who love me and help me and support me, and I’m slowly putting the broken pieces back together, bit by bit.

We’ll be back, we’re sure. We’ve been doing this since before the word “blogging” was coined, after all. And there will be ranting, and music, and rubik’s cubes, and all the other stuff.

Just give me a little bit longer, that’s all I ask.

In the meantime, here is a picture of some cats.

Two cats (not mine)

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2018

Clive Murray — Tue, 21 May 2019 06:44:58 +0000

Those year things just keep on coming, don’t they? Jesus. I swear they’re getting more frequent, too…

In 2018 there was a super blue blood moon total lunar eclipse (no that isn’t an album title), a former Russian double agent and his daughter were poisoned in Salisbury, the last male northern white rhino died, ETA was officially dissolved, GDPR came into force, Saudi Arabia decided to let women drive, twelve footballing kids and their coach were rescued from a flooded cave after being stuck for 17 days, scientists found water on Mars, India decriminalised homosexuality, Canada legalised cannabis, 700,000 people marched through London to protest against Brexit and InSight landed successfully on Mars.

We waved goodbye to Peter Wyngarde, Dolores O’Riordan, Ursula K. Le Guin, Mark E. Smith, Pat Torpey, Roger Bannister, Ken Dodd, Stephen Hawking, Eric Bristow, Dale Winton, Verne Troyer, Dennis Nilsen, Margot Kidder, Kate Spade, Peter Stringfellow, Anthony Bourdain, Dirty Den (Leslie Grantham), Matt “Guitar” Murphy, Koko the gorilla, Vinnie Paul, Harlan Ellison, Barry Chuckle, Aretha Franklin, Kofi Annan, Burt Reynolds, Fenella Fielding, Denis Norden, Chas off of Chas and Dave, Montserrat Caballé, Scott Wilson, Stan Lee, Paddy Ashdown and June Whitfield (along with many many others, of course).

Musically speaking – well pickle my cotton socks, we appear to be smack-gob in the middle of another golden age of music, at least for the music I like, and once again there was no way to get the shortlist down any lower than 12. Even with this bumper harvest, there was still no room for any of the following: Black Veil Brides - Vale, The Dead Daisies - Burn It Down, Halestorm - Vicious, Kino - Radio Voltaire, Rabea Massaad - Grinding Gears, Orphaned Land - Unsung Prophets and Dead Messiahs, Plini - Sunhead, Joe Satriani - What Happens Next, Slash - Living the Dream, Tremonti - A Dying Machine… all of which are really good and I recommend the whole lot. Yes, even the Satriani one. I know, I was surprised too.

So, twelve releases that rank higher on the playlist at Murray Towers than every one of those? Damn straight. Now shut up and dance.

Honourable mentions

Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog

I honestly wasn’t that fussed about Alice in Chains first time round. For one thing, they arrived as part of the wave of grunge that killed rawk back in the day, but they just never really grabbed me. I like “Man in the Box” well enough, and people tell me that Dirt is a barnstorming album, but I guess I must have been doing it wrong. I’ll tell you what though - wind forward to 2018 and they’re still going (RIP Layne, natch) and I was curious enough to check out this album, named after a volcano that overlooks Seattle apparently, and I found myself to be suitably impressed. This was a real grower – I just kept coming back to it again and again. Still do, because it’s great. Top track: “Rainier Fog”

Amorphis - Queen of Time

Regular listeners will know that I love me some Amorphis, so I was chuffed as a Finnish elk who’s just discovered a whole glade of aspen sprouts to read AMG’s frothing review of Queen of Time, and I duly bought it on release date and shoved it through my head. It did not disappoint, and Amorphis appear to still somehow be simply infallible. Tomi’s voice is in absolute top-form and the orchestrations are some of the best I’ve ever heard from them. Indispensable folk-ish metal – get it down you. Top track: “Amongst Stars”

Coheed and Cambria - Vaxis, Act 1: The Unheavenly Creatures

New York’s sci-fi-space-prog-rock-opera darlings return to their concept narrative again with their 9th studio album, having deviated from that path just once, and by cracky are they good at this or what? As always, you don’t have to care about the characters, the story, sci-fi in general, or any of that to enjoy what is under all the concept frippery a damned good prog rock album. Claudio Sanchez can write hooks like no-one else, and his voice is just unnatural. (In a good way.) Top track: “Toys”

Gus G. - Fearless

I was all geared up to dislike this. I had my best disliking boots on and everything. I’d previously had a quick listen to Gus’s band Firewind and been pretty unimpressed, and just because he plays for Ozzy doesn’t make everything he touches turn to gold. Seen Zakk Wylde lately? Me either. Anyway, I was super-pleasantly surprised by an absolutely top-drawer hard rock album with guitar pyrotechnics that are always interesting, never just pure dull shred. (Even the slightly misguided Dire Straits cover sort of works.) Top track: “Don’t Tread on Me”

Hyvmine - Earthquake

I became aware of the superb Al Joseph’s instrumental work through a friend and via JamTrack Central, and his instrumental albums Out in the Open and All of Creation are absolutely top-drawer stuff – the man can shred, of that there’s no doubt. I was chuffed to find he’d gone back in the studio armed not just with his guitar, but also his lungs, and the results are superb. Heavy, melodic, sometimes proggy, sometimes catchy, all really well done. Top track: “Shift”

Myles Kennedy - Year of the Tiger

I’ve always loved Myles Kennedy’s vocals with Alter Bridge and with Slash, and I think he has one of the best voices in rock today. That said, when I first heard this album and realised “Oh, it’s an acoustic album? Dude, where’s the rawk?” I took it out of the shortlist. But you know what, it kept popping up on shuffle and every time it did, I enjoyed it more and more. This is an absolutely solid album from start to nuts, 12 solid songs some of which will lodge in the hindbrain and stay there. Two thumbs fresh. Top track: “Year of the Tiger”

McRocklin - New Beginnings

I, and some of my contemporaries, first heard of Thomas McRocklin in the late 80s, when he was a child shred guitar prodigy. I had it in mind that he was featured in Decline of the Western Civilization pt.2: The Metal Years, but have since found this to be false. In fact, according to this clip I dug off the tubes, it was in fact a BBC Arena “Heavy Metal special” from 1989. Nonetheless, it showed Thomas wailing away on an Ibanez JEM77FP and smashing out Vai/Roth tunes, and apparently he even opened for Ozzy when he was 8 years old. He then appeared in Steve Vai’s video for “The Audience is Listening” portraying Vai’s younger self, then in 1992 released an album with a teenage (literally the oldest member was 16 – they were under the wing and guidance of Vai though, it was all OK, really) rawk band called Bad4Good, which was honestly not terrible. And then as far as I was concerned, he disappeared off the face of the earth (along with most of the good music of the times…). It was with some joy then, that in 2018 I noticed the name McRocklin crop up somewhere attached to a bandcamp link. “Here, Tommy, have six of my very freshest pounds, it’s damn good to see you” quoth I, and have not regretted it. In the interim it appears Tommy has i) grown up (duh), ii) kept up his playing (yay, more than I’ve managed), and iii) gotten his hands properly dirty as a producer and learned some serious studio chops (seriously, way to go man). So then he popped out a 6-song instrumental EP, and this is it. And you should listen to it if you like that sort of thing, because it is so very choice. Top track: “Square Dreamz”

Nita Strauss - Controlled Chaos

I first became aware of Hurricane Nita as one of the members of The Iron Maidens (the world’s only all female Iron Maiden tribute act), and figured I’d check them out. I did, and they’re great. Then she left them and toured with Alice Cooper before writing and releasing her own solo album, which is a shred masterpiece (if you ignore the extremely ill-advised Queen cover at the end) with neo-classical leanings. Lovely. Top track: “Mariana Trench”

Toska - Fire by the Silos

Toska are a funny one. Guitar-playing listeners may well be familiar with the name Rob Chapman, he of Chapman Guitars. Well he plays in a band called Dorje who are not really to my taste for some reason. But the rest of the band have an instrumental side band, and that is Toska. All the guitars in Toska are handled by none other than the absolutely blazing Rabea Massaad, one of my absolute favourite players of the moment (he also provides lead guitar for FrogLeap when they play live). Toska’s music is moody dark instrumental prog, and while their first album Ode to the Author didn’t really grab me, this one did. Top track: “Abomasum”

And the winners are…

Yeah, it’s happened again. With so much awesome music out these days it’s getting impossible not only to prune the shortlist down to 6, but also to separate my favourites. So 2018 has provided us with a three-way tie, I’m afraid. Not my fault, honest.

Greta Van Fleet - Anthem of the Peaceful Army

Well. It’s true that last year’s winner From the Fires was in fact two EPs bolted together to make an album in order to get GVF out into the world, but it never felt like it. It felt like a cohesive album, though maybe one that could have used another month or two in the studio (two covers out of eight songs (one of them by sodding Fairport Convention for cock’s sake) could be seen as meriting a black mark). Nonetheless, it was with a little trepidation that I received their first proper full-length studio album and put the zeros and ones into the player and lowered the virtual needle.

I needn’t have worried – it’s a belter from soup to finish. The kids (I’m allowed to call them that – I’m twice the age of their eldest member) from Michigan have absolutely stuck the landing with this one. I’ve seen them live twice too (it would have been three times had singer Josh not gone down with a chest infection and had to postpone the 2019 tour) and they are absolutely electric in the flesh. This is a brilliant rock album, full of heart and sincerity, and if you can’t get past the comparisons to Led Zeppelin then the problem lies with you, not them. These guys are something new and inspiring.

Top tracks: “When the Curtain Falls”, “The Cold Wind”, “Brave New World”

Michael Romeo - War of the Worlds / Pt. 1

It was another particularly foamy AMG review that tipped me off to Michael Romeo, and knowing absolutely nothing of his previous work (his daytime gig is apparently Symphony X of whom I know nothing) I went into this with virgin ears wide open. That sounds wrong.

Anyway, what I found in my ears was one of the best heavy metal albums I have ever heard. Romeo’s arrangements and orchestrations really carry along the concept-y feel of the album (it is apparently inspired by the H. G. Wells novel but is not a full concept album in the literal sense) and the guitar work is flawless and pyrotechnic throughout. Romeo even manages to work in some elements of dance music and even dubstep without it feeling out of place – no mean feat in what is on the face of it a straight-up metal album.

The vocals, supplied by Rick Castellano apparently, are of the clean variety, or to be honest this wouldn’t even have made the shortlist. I cannot be doing with death metal growls. Really. I’m sure it’s lovely if you’re into that, but I’m not, so Rick’s style suits me fine and it definitely suits the material.

If you like metal – and you do like metal, by the way – then you will like this. So what are you doing? Why aren’t you listening to it? I AM.

Top tracks: “Fear the Unknown”, “F*cking Robots”, “Oblivion”

Mika Tyyskä - Night Overdrive

This Finnish virtuoso was first known as Mr. Fastfinger – an animated (Flash, remember that?) web character who ran his own online guitar school back in 2005. Behind the gimmicky character and animation was in fact a great guitarist running real guitar courses, and that was Mika Tyyskä. (Incidentally, he did all the animation and stuff himself – talented bugger.) The more the site gained popularity, the more the mythical mystical Fastfinger was asked to share and teach in the real world, and so Mika stepped out from behind the computer and began running guitar clinics in Europe and Japan.

Inevitably there had to be output, and so the debut Fastfinger album The Way of the Exploding Guitar was released in 2009, and excellent it is too. It might have been in the shortlist had I known about Tyyskä when I compiled that year’s list. (The same goes for 2012’s In Motion, 2015’s Spirit Rising, and the 2013 and 2016 EPs Stringweaver and Neon Alchemist, actually. They’re all excellent.)

Anyway, I only became aware of Mika in 2018, and it was in that year that he set himself a challenge which resulted in releasing his first album under his own name – Night Overdrive. Inspired by the films and the music of the 80s, Mika had discovered an old 4-track tape recorder and a bunch of tapes, and so set himself a challenge – to write, record and produce an album of music entirely using tape. No DAWs in sight. He wrote pretty rudimentary stereo backing tracks using Korg Gadget on the iPad (which I have since purchased and HIGHLY recommend), and then wrote guitar parts to go over the top on the two tracks he had left.

The result? An absolutely fabulous shredwave album. When I heard this I fell in love with Tyyskä’s playing all over again, and the 80s aesthetic and shredwave vibe all over this stuck me in nostalgia overdrive for a good month or two.

If you like the movie soundtracks of John Carpenter, anything by Jan Hammer, or just interesting guitar music, you need to get this.

Also, if you have an hour to spare and this sounds interesting, do watch this 1-hour long workshop video Mika made documenting the process he used to inspire himself and come up with this splendid album.

Top tracks: “Punch In - Punch Out”, “Driving with Mr. Carpenter”, “I Respect This Moment”

Turkey of the Year

I don’t have one for you, to be honest. It seems I made only good music choices in 2018. Just goes to show… something, possibly.

Mirror cube solve

Clive Murray — Sun, 12 May 2019 09:26:39 +0000

Solving my mirror cube in 4:06. Not exactly lightning, but a new personal best for me. The solve part of the video is sped up to 500% to keep the video short.

Cube: ShengShou Mirror 3x3.

Music: more of my noodlings in Korg Gadget.

4x4 solve

Clive Murray — Wed, 08 May 2019 09:23:58 +0000

Further adventures in cubing!

Here we see our hero solving the Supernova WuQue 4x4 M in a pretty poor time of 5:00. I’ve sped the solve up by 500% so you don’t have to sit watching me fumble about for five minutes. One day I’ll learn a method that’s quicker than the beginner method, but I haven’t yet.

Cubist

Clive Murray — Sun, 28 Apr 2019 22:40:37 +0000

I’ve had a brand new hobby for over 6 months now, and I haven’t written a word about it on here, which is rather remiss of me. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you’ll have seen photos and such, so it won’t come as a complete surprise, mind you.

It is Cubing. Before I left my previous contract I became aware that one of my colleagues was part of The Silent Cow and I became intrigued. He very kindly gave me a training set (2 cubes and motivational stickers) as a leaving present and pointed me to the training videos, and a new obsession was born.

The Silent Cow 3x3 Cube – where it all began

I carried one cube with me to work at my new contract, and kept one at home on my desk. Whenever I could carve out a spare half-hour, I’d go and watch the videos and drill the sequences over and over until they became second nature. If R’ D’ R D means anything to you, you know the kind of thing I’m talking about.

That particular course is broken down into 5 levels, the first being “make a cross of one colour that matches the adjacent centres” and the 5th being “able to solve a 3x3 cube from any scrambled position”, and when you achieve each level you get to put a sticker on your box.

Being able to put that last sticker on felt like a pretty big achievement, I don’t mind telling you.

See, the way my life is at the moment I just don’t have time for guitar. My band is on hiatus, and my biggest priority in life is my family, so pretty much all of my spare time is spent on days out with my wife and son, or playing in the garden, or what-have-you. My son is 5, and he’s not going to be 5 again, so I don’t intend to spend the time I should be spending with him cooped up at my desk trying to get a perfect take on a solo or melody line. My main hobby is not abandoned, just sidelined for now. As one friend put it “your guitars will wait – your son growing up won’t”.

So I needed another hobby (another friend once said sagely “Once you have kids, you only have time for one hobby”), and ideally a portable one, something I can do on the go, while commuting, even in downtime at work. Enter stage left, my new six-sided friends.

So there I was, chugging away happily, just about able to solve the cube without having to look at my notes 7 times out of 10. “I’m getting on top of this” thought I. Then yet another friend (I truly am blessed) gave me a fun Christmas present… a 4x4 cube. Riiiiiight.

Ow... my carpal tunnels... the Rubik's 4x4

Cue many more spare hours of struggling (it was an original Rubik’s – the stiffest cubes to turn out there… my poor wrists…) until I could just about get it done in 15 minutes with occasional glances at my extensive notes and reviewing the great tutorials from the excellent JPerm.

I had realised by this time that I had caught the cubing bug, but the 3x3 cubes were beginning to fall apart and the 4x4 was just soooooooo hard to turn… I turned to the internet and quickly found SpeedCubeShop.com, at which point things really started to escalate.

In early January I ordered these two beauties:

Supernova GTS2M 3x3

Supernova WuQue M 4x4

Those are both “Supernova” brand cubes, which is to say that they are other brands, setup (tensioned and lubed etc) and rebadged by SpeedCubeShop.com. The Supernova 3x3 is a souped-up MoYu GTS2M and the Supernova 4x4 is a similarly fettled QiYi WuQue. In both cases, by the way, the M stands for “magnets”. There are little magnets in the pieces that help each turn slot nicely into place making for a much smoother experience.

Well, this was where the game changed completely, as did the solutions. As you’ll know if you’ve done any serious cubing, once you get bigger than the 3x3 you run into all sorts of situations that aren’t possible on the 3x3. I now had to memorise lengthy algorithms and know when to apply them and do so for quite some time in order to reduce the 4x4 to effectively a scrambled 3x3, then solve that. Lengthy algorithms? Well yes. The “OLL Parity” algorithm goes: r U2 x r U2 r U2 r’ U2 l U2 r’ U2 r U2 r’ U2 r’. Got that? Good.

However, as I no longer had to fight the dreaded Rubik’s, I got pretty nippy at the twists and turns and learned to solve my way out of any situation the 4x4 could throw at me, all the while getting better and quicker with the 3x3, and I was honestly happy with the situation as it was. That is until one day I was solving during some downtime at work and a colleague happened to say “So, are you going to get a bigger one then?”

You can probably guess what happened next.

MoYu AoChang 5x5 GTS M

Yep, another size up, and another set of edge cases (literally, haha) to learn. Back to YouTube, back to the notation and the practicing, and a couple of days later I could solve this too. The thing is, once you can do the 3x3, you have the core set of moves under your belt. Once you go up to the 4x4, you add another layer (haha) of complexity. But after that, you’ve basically got it. The 5x5 OLL parity algorithm is the same as the 4x4 one, except you just need to know when to include the middle slice and when not to depending on which situation you’re fixing.

No need to go any bigger than that then, right?

MoYu AoShi GTS M 6x6

Well, no. No need as such… But damn I love to cube, so I was always going to get the 6 if I’m honest with myself. With the 6 it was just marrying the problems of the 4 (you can get edge parity where a whole edge is flipped) with the difficulties of the 5 (you can get inner edge parity, where you get all the edge pieces together but the middle one is the wrong way round) and enjoying them all in the same place and spending entire minutes just trying to pair up a few edges. But mostly it’s literally more of the same – as in, you have the same issues crop up but there are just physically more pieces per edge to get in the right place. Oh for the simplicity of the 3x3!

So – “Speed” cubes? That is the idea, I suppose. I don’t time myself on the 5 or 6 yet, as I think I need to learn some new methods rather than plugging away with the beginner method and hoping that will magically yield fast times. On the 4x4 I’ve got my personal best down to 4:11, though I haven’t really drilled it so I hope to get that way down. On the 3x3 though, I broke the minute mark a few weeks ago, and on Friday just gone I got my new PB of 0:54, and have had a handful of 58 and 59 second solves since then.

As for bigger… well, the WCA cubes do go up to 7x7, so we will see.

In the meantime, money where my cube is, here is a 3x3 solve I sped up slightly to fit it into a 1 minute video.

(I did the John-Carpenter-esque music myself in Korg Gadget, by the way.)

I have no comments section on this site (I will not be adding Disqus to any site I maintain, thank you) but hit me up on the ~~Twitter~~ Mastodon if you want to know more, or indeed less.

G is for...

Clive Murray — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 21:03:38 +0000

G is for… Jon Gomm

Image from Jon’s website, taken by Marc Mennigmann, used with permission

I became aware of Jon Gomm some time in the early 2000s, as he was on a Usenet (remember that?) group I also frequented, uk.music.guitar. It was a by definition a localised (to the UK) community of guitar players who were also geek enough to use Usenet, so there was plenty of common ground. I began to hear about this amazing acoustic player who plays percussion on his guitar while playing it, and sings at the same time. Sounded pretty far fetched at the time, but sure enough, it was true. I checked out some of his music and was suitably impressed. Jon is a true independent musician, by the way. He has released his three solo albums on his own record label, and generally avoids playing chain venues and corporate events.

Wikipedia says that Jon is “a disciple of Michael Hedges”, which I can neither enforce nor dispute since I have no knowledge whatsoever of Hedges, but does say that he is “part of a generation of guitarists using extended techniques”, referring to the way he plays an entire rhythm section and melody at the same time on the one instrument, often while singing over it at the same time, and mentions another such player Andy McKee, whose video “Drifting” had been my very first exposure to percussive playing of this kind.

Andy took my breath away with that, but it was Jon who clean knocked me off my feet with his musicality and his technique.

Clive recommends:

Jon’s been a busy touring lad of late, so we’re still waiting for new material since 2013’s amazing Secrets Nobody Keeps, but if you don’t have that yet, you’re doing it wrong. Stop that right now.

Video evidence

Jon is no trick-cyclist, his percussive and unique guitar playing style comes from deep within his soul allowing him to make the noises he must. That said, his technique is utterly jaw-dropping, and nowhere less so than on the breakout song “Passionflower”. Wrap your looking gear around the video that helped him to achieve the recognition he so richly deserves.

He does this stuff live, you know. No overdubs, no retakes. One man, one heart, one incredible sound.

G is also for…

Goldie Lookin’ Chain (Hip hop/Newport)
Grand Magus (Metal)
Greta Van Fleet (Rock)
Gus G (Rock/Metal)

2011 AotY Retcon

Clive Murray — Fri, 05 Apr 2019 14:34:48 +0000

Small point of order – I have retroactively changed Clive’s Album of the Year 2011.

The more time went by, the less Steel Panther felt like a good fit, so they’re out. I still like them, but the joke has worn thin now, and it just doesn’t feel very… woke, as I believe people say these days.

So sorry to Steel Panther, and congrats to You Me At Six on the upgrade.

If you cared.

The Land Before Time

Clive Murray — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 20:25:14 +0000

Me aged 22.

Dark mode

Clive Murray — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 17:03:06 +0000

Sometimes I post stuff on here that doesn’t sound very happy, or not like I’m in a very good place. And sometimes that is because I am not.

I have ups and downs like everyone, I’m sure. I struggle with reliance on self-medication, I often can’t sleep without some kind of chemical help, and I paper over the cracks in my personality with abrasiveness and gregariousness.

On the whole I’m mostly OK. Don’t worry, don’t place me on psych hold just yet. I’m dealing with one or two chronic health issues that are getting me down. These come and go.

Anyway, this site is hosted on a Raspberry Pi, and it is an outdated version of Ghost. I have bought a new Pi to move it to, but haven’t got round to sorting that out. When I do, there will definitely be a new look and feel around here – possibly more than one. Possibly even a theme switcher.

Everyone loves dark mode, right?

Another one down

Clive Murray — Thu, 14 Mar 2019 14:11:10 +0000

Keith Flint (2019)
Stephanie Adams (2018)
Kate Spade (2018)
Anthony Bourdain (2018)
Verne Troyer (2018)
Margot Kidder (2018)
Chester Benington (2017)
Chris Cornell (2017)
Keith Emerson (2016)
Lil’ Chris (2015)
Robin Williams (2014)
Phillip Seymour Hoffman (2014, accidental)
Whitney Houston (2012, accidental)
Smiley Culture (2011)
Gary Speed (2011)
Amy Winehouse (2011, accidental)
Alexander McQueen (2010)
Lucy Gordon (2009)
Dave Lepard (2006)
Hunter S. Thompson (2005)
Layne Staley (2002, accidental)
Lolo Ferrari (2000)
Justin Fashanu (1998)
Michael Hutchence (1997)
Kurt Cobain (1994)
David Rappaport (1990)
Mark Rothko (1970)
Tony Hancock (1968)
Marilyn Monroe (1962)
Ernest Hemingway (1961)
Alan Turing (1954)
Virginia Woolf (1941)

…and those are just the ones that come to mind. All suicides (or accidental suicides brought on by trying to self-medicate for depression).

RIP all of you. I hope you found something on the other side.

F is for...

Clive Murray — Mon, 10 Dec 2018 11:45:09 +0000

F is for… Frost*

Image borrowed from the Frost* website with absolutely no permission

Frost* are a funny one to be honest (and tricky to italicise in Markdown, but that’s my problem). In great prog tradition, they have released just three albums across a span of a decade, been on hiatus for a number of years, released a double live album, split up for a period because of creative burnout, and generally done the things that prog royalty should do. And this is true BritProg royalty for sure. Handling guitars and some vocals is friend of the show, His Holiness John Mitchell (also of It Bites, Kino, Arena and Lonely Robot… more about him in future posts…) but the mastermind of Frost* is songwriter, producer and keyboardist Jem Godfrey who is damned nippy on the ivories and also takes most of the lead vocals.

Frost*’s songs are by turns intricate and melodic with heaviness always within reach, and of course virtuoso musicianship on display from all members. Humour is allowed to creep in in some unlikely places here and there (one song is titled “The Raging Against the Dying of the Light Blues in 7/8”) and many of their songs are short, catchy and melodic. Though this is prog, so don’t be too shocked when you discover that the eponymous final track on the first album Milliontown is 26:35 long.

All in all they make a great noise. Are there huge solo breaks in various keys and time signatures? Of course there are. And it’s great.

Clive recommends:

The first one, Milliontown, is a cracker but I think the writing on the 2016 comeback album Falling Satellites is more cohesive, even while it spreads out into more diverse musical territory. There’s even a guest appearance from the enchromed Joe Satriani.

Video evidence

From Falling Satellites, take four and half minutes to acquaint your gorgeous self with “Numbers”.

F is also for…

Flying Colors (Progressive Rock)
Freak Kitchen (Rock/Metal)
Furyon (Rock/Metal)

Things American people refer to all the time as if everyone knows what they are, but anyone from outside North America doesn't...

Clive Murray — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 11:21:42 +0000

Half & half
Sweet & Low
Crisco
Bear claws
Varsity
Ivy League
Valedictorian
401k
Carrot Top
Spanx
The GOP
The Hamptons
Cabo
Churros
Bangs

E is for...

Clive Murray — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 12:56:32 +0000

E is for… Elbow

(Image by Evita wiki via Wikimedia)

OK so first let’s get this out of the way, I absolutely hate that Manchester scene crap from the 90s. The Madchester (spit) bloody tosh from such luminary bellends as Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, James, The Charlatans, The Stone sodding Roses and that swaggering Gallagher penis can all do one, alright? (And no this isn’t the embittered tirade of an erstwhile Blur fan… the winner of the Blur vs Oasis “war” of the mid 90s was clearly the far superior Pulp.)

Right. But one very successful band from '90s Manchester (a fantastic place, by the way – I have no quarrel with the city) have been in my desert island discs for some time now, and that band is – as observant listeners will have gathered from the headline – Guy Garvey’s long-serving troupe Elbow.

This is by some margin the most mainstream of my 26 alphabetical selections (it is by the narrowest of whims that you are not currently reading about Swiss Celtic Folk Metal), and the reason for their inclusion is that it still dismays me how often I wax lyrical about them to people who can’t name a single Elbow song, and despite my frothing I can see that they have already mentally moved on and aren’t going to be checking them out any time soon, as they’ve already decided this band are not for them.

So here is one band you have probably heard of, but maybe only in passing, and honestly that isn’t how they work. Elbow are an album band, not a single band. You are unlikely to hear one song of theirs and immediately fall in love, but put an album on while there are no distractions – maybe while you commute, or do the washing up, say – and perhaps then Garvey’s evocative lyrics and the band’s emotive layered instrumentations will hopefully have a chance to take hold.

I love 'em. They are still one of my most used “I’m having a bad day and today I seem to hate all music, what the hell can I listen to to stop me stabbing everyone I can see starting with myself” go-to saviours, and they never fail to sock me right in the feels. Some years ago a colleague had lent me Cast of Thousands when I felt like taking an uncharacteristic break from hard rock for the day, and it felt like I had been given an hour off from eternally pushing boulders uphill and given a lovely soft sofa to lie on while someone rubbed my feet, only for the soul. You get me?

What do they sound like, you clamour. Well, they sound like… Elbow, to be honest. I don’t have anything to directly compare them to. Pulp would be the best I could hazard, though with one caveat… they sound nothing like Pulp.

I don’t think I’m getting this across very well. This is why they glaze over, isn’t it? Damn. Go listen, maybe you understand?

Clive recommends:

Every album is a joy in its way, but I would hope that Cast of Thousands might reel you in the way it did me.

Video evidence

While Cast of Thousands is still my favourite Elbow album, my favourite song of theirs comes from 2008’s The Seldom Seen Kid. Ladies, Gentlemen and Evil Dave, please enjoy “Grounds For Divorce”.

E is also for…

Eluveitie (Celtic Folk Metal)
An Endless Sporadic (Err… Prog, maybe?)
Ensiferum (Folk/Viking Death Metal)
Enuff Z’Nuff (Glam/Hard Rock)
Evanescence (Gothic/Symphonic Metal)

Spontaneous fictions, x in an occasional series...

Clive Murray — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:29:06 +0000

I mean gestures

for f***’s sake

…but more specifically

generally, though

overall, you mean?

specifically overall, yes

so we can drill down to ‘overall’. it helps to pinpoint these things.

in general

So in summary, for f***’s sake in general

you got it.

OK. Let’s run with that.

all of that

Tell the boys in the print room to get on it

Oh those guys. Don’t get me started.

For f***’s sake

Don’t start on them. You know they’ve been short staffed since that thing with Kenny.

Oh, KENNY. Don’t start. For f***’s sake.

If he can’t sort out his problems with Wilhelm, it’s an HR matter.

Is Kenny part of the overall problem here, generally? As I recall it, he was one of the few guys in the print shop that would even wear overalls. In fact, that was all he was wearing and that was generally the problem.

Jesus. The overalls. Just… for f***’s sake.

Don’t you be bringing Wilhelm in then. It was dealt with.

Was it though?

Was it?

Then why am I still hearing about it seventeen months later from Katarina in accounts and Taj in procurement?

It’s a f***ing rats’ nest down there. I’m not going below the 7th floor for anything less than a gold watch, and you can take that to the bank.

Fing grief counsellors. For f’s sake.

Meanwhile, where is Roy in all of this?

Roy? He’s down on sixth firefighting the rat’s nest.

Yeah, that’s what Janine and Helga have been telling everyone, but have you actually seen him in the building since June?

I get hourly reports every day

I don’t think he’s even a real firefighter.

He was hired as a rat catcher. He’s doing what he can, but he’s only got one flute.

Tell me about it. It’s all I hear from Taj. “Roy needs more flutes!”

Roy needs to spend less time on the golf pitch and a little more grind to the nosestone is what Roy needs.

Then we’ll see about some flute budget wiggle-room.

Well, the only tune he’s playing at the moment is the Downsizing Waltz

Oh for f***’s sake.

Actually, he does a medley with the Offshoring Blues which is quite catchy

Well, that was always Wilhelm’s favourite, which is partly how we got into this whole situation.

When I started this company I had two things.

A dream and six million pounds?

a dream, and 2) six million pounds.

I’ve a good mind to send the security team down to the sixth floor and look for Roy.

Security doesn’t go on sixth any more. You know that

Yes. Because of Roy!

And his damned rats!

It’s because the health plan doesn’t cover the inoculations.

Right. Get onto the insurance team and get those inoculations for the security team.

And tell them to do it as a team.

For f***’s sake

For f***’s sake.

D is for...

Clive Murray — Sun, 29 Jul 2018 21:01:58 +0000

D is for… The Dead Daisies

(Image sourced from Wikipedia)

Meh, rock supergroups. Amirite? Aside from Flying Colors and Velvet Revolver, what have supergroups ever given us? Oh, and Sons of Apollo, obviously. They’re amazing. Well, OK, The Damned Things were pretty awesome but seems like it was just a one-shot project. Oh I suppose Them Crooked Vultures count too. And Chickenfoot. Oh, and KXM are great. No, you can’t have Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Or Gorillaz, for god’s sake. Where do you think you are?

So anyway, supergroups. Bad call, all the egos mash together, and you end up with a badly coordinated half-baked (or overbaked) mess. Just look at what happened when David Lee Roth left Van Halen and tried… um…

OK, so sometimes they DO work. But you get my point? Those are the exceptions, not the rule.

Well pin them back and be not afear’d, gentle listener, for I bring you the latest exception to fall under the scrutiny of my Sauron-like eye of rock. They are The Dead Daisies, and they are indeed exceptional. If I were to list every band who has had a member wander through the line-up, this page would be 80% italics, but suffice to say the lead singer is the best vocalist Mötley Crüe ever had, they have Whitesnake’s lead axeman, Thin Lizzy’s bassist, and the drummer has played with everyone from Journey to Steve Vai, via Ozzy and more. It’s a hell of a line-up, is what I’m trying to convey, comprende? They know what they’re up to.

The member you’re least likely to have heard of is 63-year-old David Lowy on rhythm guitar. No, me either. Exactly. But this is his band, and in fact TDD are often referred to as a musical collective rather than a band, due to the revolving door membership policy, the only original member being Lowy himself, and this is AFAICT intentional. It appears that having achieved business success, Lowy decided “Screw it, Imma make the best rock band I possibly can” and then did exactly that.

They’ve put out four studio records and a live album, all of which rock all of my socks, though I am highly of the opinion that the optimal line-up was reached for 2016’s Make Some Noise, largely due to the synergistic and tasteful (thankfully still current) pairing of John Corabi on lead vocals and Doug Aldrich on lead guitar. The Crab can scream (niche reference alert), of that there’s no doubt, and Saint Doug knocks it out of the park on pretty much everything he touches. Messrs Lowy, Mendoza and Castronovo aren’t mucking about, either, and they do sound like they’re having a very large amount of fun while they make some excellent rock records.

(You have no idea how happy I am to be able to write a sentence like that in 2018. It really did go very bloody dark for quite a long time, you know.)

Hear them continue to do all the above on 2018’s really rather very Burn It Down.

Clive recommends:

Make Some Noise is probably the high water mark thus far.

Video evidence

Not conwinced? Look, I can’t pretend it’s not five ageing white guys who are lucky to be there. But they make a good noise, right? Here, have a video.

D is also for…

D-A-D (Hard Rock)
The Damned Things (Hard Rock)
Danger Danger (Glam Rock)
Days of the New (Weird Acoustic Rock That Thinks It’s Metal Kinda)
Disperse (Weird Math Prog… I dunno, tbh… pretty good tho…)
DragonForce (Speed/Power/Nintendo Metal)

C is for...

Clive Murray — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 00:12:21 +0000

C is for… Cloudkicker

(Image on loan from Cloudkicker’s Bandcamp)

In around 2011 I discovered a number of heavy instrumental acts who rocked my bell, among them Scale the Summit, Chimp Spanner, Sithu Aye, the mighty Plini and Cloudkicker. This last is in fact a one-man act, and that man is Ben Sharp. Like a few of the others I discovered around this time, Ben writes, produces, programs and plays everything you hear, and releases his music on the splendid Bandcamp platform, rendering him truly a one-man-band.

Cloudkicker’s music is very hard to categorise, though I wouldn’t be a proper music journalist if I didn’t at least attempt to pigeonhole him a little, so let’s call it “heavy ambient guitar math prog metal”. Then again, I’m not in fact a journalist of any kind at all, so I can call it what I want, and for now I shall just say it is very good indeed.

What it also is, is varied. I don’t think Ben has any grand plan in place for his releases and just writes what he feels at the time, so his works vary a lot in tone and feel. Beacons is perhaps his best known release, and that is a structured melodic yet intricate metal album whereas Fade and Let Yourself Be Huge are far more mellow and introspective, and the Portmanteau and the bafflingly titled ]]][[[ EPs are just mental. The consistent through-line of all of his music would be ever shifting textural guitar patterns. Whether it’s something angular and challenging like “Fourteen Nights” from Portmanteau or something more thoughtful like “LA After Rain” from Fade, Ben is a genius at creating ever-shifting fabric-like textures that change and morph subtly while seeming to stay at least recognisably the same. It’s kind of the guitar equivalent of M.C. Escher’s tessellating works such as “Day and Night”, “Metamorphosis II” and “Sky and Water I”.

Ben is not what I would call a shredder or even perhaps a lead guitarist in the most obvious sense, but he is a master of making interesting guitar music, much – perhaps all – of which you can download right now (and name your own price, mind you… yes literally…) from his Bandcamp site. I suggest you do. If any of this frightens you, start with Fade or Woum. If not, crack on with Beacons. Personally I would get it all – I know I did.

Clive recommends:

I reckon Beacons is a good place to start kicking clouds.

Video evidence

Mr. Kicker is not seemingly a particularly fanatical self promoter, and while he continues to produce and release music on a continual slow burn, finding live footage of him playing was quite a task. I mean it took me literally almost a minute on YouTube to find you the following, but find it I did. Here then, is Ben playing live with Intronaut as his backing band, performing “Push it way up!” from Beacons. I totally did find it though. Look.

C is also for…

Chimp Spanner (Instrumental Prog Metal)
Coheed and Cambria (Sci-fi themed Prog Rock)
Jonathan Coulton (Geek Rock)
Crashdïet (Hard Glam Rock)
Jan Cyrka (Instrumental Rock)

Dad

Clive Murray — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 01:38:00 +0000

Hark you, and listen.

In 1926 in the city of Liverpool there was born a boy, and today would have been his 92nd birthday had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma not taken him six years ago. This man was Thomas Shildhauer, son of Godfrey Ernest and (forgive me, I think she was perhaps Elizabeth?) and brother to Ernie (RIP) and Ronnie (still going strong), grandson of Gottlieb of Dessau, Germany.

A very VERY large part of who and what I am is Tom. Anyone who knew Tom, knew Tom. He and my mother were, as I understand it, forces of nature in a time (the 70s) when men and women were goddamn doing what felt right, and no-one was telling them not to. It’s potentially no surprise that when I was born, upon leaving the hospital in Eastbourne, my parents went not home to bed for rest and recuperation, but to the bar where my Mum worked and I was immediately passed around among the staff and regulars for admiration and adoration while my parents had a much needed drink or three.

But see further.

My Dad was 47 when I was born, and was no stranger to the family whirlwind. While I grew up as an only child, I later discovered that I have a sister who I now love enormously and a small number of other estranged relatives who I shall likely never know, at least one of whom has passed on. I know, right? Families are weird. My Mum, 34 when I was born, in her closing statement wanted nothing more than to be a granny but sadly she missed that window by 6 weeks, for which I can only blame my own irresponsible self, as I was her only offspring and I just hadn’t made peace with the concept of making peace with the concept of having children until it was – unbeknownst to me – too late for her to welcome my own son into the world with us.

“No regrets”, right? The clarion call of the naïve. I tear up now at the thought that if I’d got my damned act together a few years earlier, both Tom and Ann could have met my son and bounced him on their knees.

[interlude, which involves beer]

So, Tom then. Thomas Shildhauer, who changed his name to Murray after leaving Liverpool and moving south, when he first married, to save the rest of the family changing their names (pretty progressive thinking for a Scouse builder in the 60s) and became Tom Murray. Later to meet Ann, and thence to become my Dad.

Daddy.

Did he teach me how to shave? No. Did he teach me how to drive? No. Did he take me to the football every week? No.

Do you know what he did do, though?

He was MY DAD. MINE.

And he was that EVERY SINGLE DAMNED DAY.

And he was AWESOME.

EVERY DAMNED DAY he was GOD DAMNED AMAZING.

He had wiry hair and a weird sense of humour, he occasionally got sidetracked with projects like buying and selling cars or deciding to make wine out of everything, but also he BUILT HOUSES. WHOLE ONES. He FIXED STUFF. He once double-glazed our entire 6-bedroom detached house ON HIS OWN. IN HIS SIXTIES.

And by gawd, was he funny. My friends would come round to play of a weekend and come through to my room (due to the architectural vagaries of our house my bedroom adjoined the lounge on the ground floor) and would arrive in my room unable to keep a straight face. I’d wonder why, peek out, and find my Dad had been sat there the whole time watching TV with a knob of chewing gum stuck on the end of his nose for literally no reason other than to look funny.

He would routinely turn on the light switch - you know, the one at about eye-height - with his foot just to make sure he still could.

One time (Hi James, yes I couldn’t really leave this story out could I?) he surprised a friend and I who were playing in the back yard by arriving unannounced with a WHOLE TELEGRAPH POLE over his shoulder like it was nothing.

He and my mate next door (Hi Craig, drop me a line if you read this!) routinely traded greetings that went over my head though Craig was only a year older than I, that started with what sounded like “Hiya”. Dad’s go-to was “Hiawatha” to which the usual response was “Hiyacinth”, but Craig came up with the retort “Hiya-purchase” all off his own bat, which greatly impressed me.

It is knackered, and I am late. Perhaps my good friend Mr. Staropramen has made me a little more emotional this evening/morning than would otherwise be the case but if so, sod it. I have emotions. I have to spend so much of my life buttoned up for work and buttoned down in front of my young son (both metaphorically) that I don’t often find a place to express feelings like this, and I must say I feel a cathartic release here and now, pouring my own juices into your gentle face, dear listener.

Those of you who knew Tom and who know me still will I hope delight when you meet my son, for he has been blessed with (aside from the Murray Hair) Tom’s steely blue eyes and eternal sense of fun. Not a single day goes by when I don’t hug my son and wish that the two could meet. I almost feel that they would hit it off so well that I could just leave them to it, and would no longer be needed.

[interlude of much crying]

And those of you who didn’t know him, well… I hope you have a family member – perhaps a parent, perhaps an uncle or aunt or even an older sibling – who you think of so fondly as I do of my Dad, imperfect as he may have been.

Every day.

Every day.

Every single one.

Dammit, Dad, I love you so much. I miss you so much. Still. ALL THE TIME, DAMMIT. I’M 44 and it’s been SIX YEARS. WHEN DOES THIS GO AWAY?

I can only continue to express my love for you in how I help to bring up the grandson you never met, my beautiful boy, and I hope you’d be proud. (And I’m pretty sure you would, since he’s basically you but smaller.)

I have a great many things in my eye, it would seem. Please, if you have living parents with whom you are at least on civil terms, don’t take them for granted. Tell them you love them. Tell them and tell them and tell them until they beg you to stop. I wish I had.

Happy birthday, Dad.

The Gin Diesel

Clive Murray — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 14:06:59 +0000

Many years ago, I came up with an excellent name for a cocktail – the “Gin Diesel”. However it was at least a full year before I could properly nail down the recipe.

It must contain gin, natch, but also something dark and strong to represent the diesel element, while still remaining drinkable.

The end result is very drinkable, and is the official cocktail of Indigo Down.

It’s a cracking Summer drink, somewhere between a Moscow Mule and a Dark & Stormy. Want to try one? OK, here you go:

2 measures (50ml) gin (nothing too floral, Tanqueray is perfect)
1 measure (25ml) dark rum (ideally not spiced or gold… Lamb’s Navy is spot on)
1 measure (25ml) lime juice
pour over ice into a highball or tumbler
top up with ginger beer (Old Jamaica is 👌)

Lob in a mint leaf or a strawberry if that’s your kind of thing. I don’t, because I’m not a monster.

B is for...

Clive Murray — Thu, 24 May 2018 11:12:48 +0000

B is for… Sebastian Bach

(Photo by Jamie - Flickr: Sebastian Bach & Rachel Bolan, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14408377)

Hah! Didn’t see that coming now, did you? OK, so I’m aware that a number of my listeners will be fully aware of Señor Bach from his time as lead shoutmarshall for that fine old American band, Skid Row, who released two absolutely barnstorming albums (and one mediocre one) right before the coming of The Dark Times. None of that is in question, and is a matter of immutable record.

But what you may not have known is that Bach has also made some cracking solo albums. Unfortunately, there is some total nonsense here too (Madam is please advised to skip directly past Bring 'Em Bach Alive! and Bach 2 Basics), and I actually know next to nothing about The Last Hard Men or SuperGroup other than they are things that have happened, so please bear with me, caller.

Where it gets properly interesting is the true solo Bach stuff, the albums where he just went into a studio with a band to write and record an album rather than producing something through a TV show or assembling a doomed roomful of broken egos. 2007’s Angel Down was a promising if a little inconsistent affair, featuring a smattering of little-known covers, and even a couple of guest vocals from none other than Seb’s good pal, Bill Bailey. It doesn’t hit its mark every time, but it’s still not a bad record overall.

Bach moved it up a gear for 2011’s Kicking & Screaming, though. Gone were the covers and the attention-grabbing guest spots, and in their place is solid record of damned good rock songs. One reviewer quoth:

Kicking & Screaming is unexpectedly fantastic and the Sebastian Bach record that I’ve been wishing for, for more than a decade now…

Citation: Dave Steed of Popdose.com, via Wikipedia

…and I remember feeling exactly the same when I heard it. In fact I recall taking to Twitter and posting something like “I’m listening to brand new albums from Sebastian Bach, Electric Boys, Mr. Big and Primus… is it 1990 again?” and Seb replied to me saying “Actually, it’s 2011…”

His point, of course being, that no it’s not 1990 any more and he (like the others) was doing more than just rehashing the past. Good point well made, Mr. B, I shan’t say it again.

And it gives me the very greatest pleasure to say that he’s gone and done it again. 2014 saw the release of what is for sure Bach’s best solo record to date, Give 'Em Hell. This one has been on pretty solid rotation here at Casa Murray since I got it and it’s a cracker. While I can take or leave the April Wine cover, the rest is top drawer material and as I type this the chorus of “All My Friends Are Dead” just will not leave me alone.

Give it a go yourself, and you may find you like it right up you. Don’t be put off if Skid Row weren’t your cup of tea, either. Like I say, Sebastian is no longer looking Bach.

Clive recommends:

Give 'Em Hell, natch.

Video evidence

You would perhaps like some video to go with that, Sir? I bring you “Temptation” from the aforementioned Give 'Em Hell, and a very fine rockingest tune it is too once it finally BOTHERS to start. Eagle-eared readers may spot a familiar figure wielding the lower strings. Oh yes indeed, that’s how we do things around here, yessum.

B is also for…

Backyard Babies (Hard Rock)
The Black Dog (Ambient/Electronica)
Black Stone Cherry (Rock)
Black Veil Brides (Hard Rock)
Blind Guardian (Power/Folk Metal)
Bozzio Levin Stevens (Instrumental Rock/Fusion)
Fred Brum (Instrumental Prog Metal)
Buckcherry (Hard Rock)

A is for...

Clive Murray — Fri, 18 May 2018 14:24:05 +0000

A is for… Amorphis

(Photo by Cecil - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3668860)

The year was 2009, I was still working in advertising, and I was in need of new music. I mentioned this to a colleague and he surprised the waste solids out of me with the news that he was quite deeply into something called “Battle Metal”. “What the Jeff on earth is that?”, quoth I, or similar.

It transpired to be a subset of the genre I would then plunge myself into for the following year to the exclusion of all else - Folk Metal. Now while the distinctions between various strands and strains of metal are infinite and largely irrelevant, I would argue that the two albums Nick turned me on to that day are Folk Metal though not necessarily Battle (for Battle Metal, in my opinion, you want Turisas or Týr). Those two were Nightfall in Middle-Earth by Blind Guardian and the peerless Skyforger from the mighty Amorphis.

Hailing (as many folk-metallers are wont to do) from Finland, Amorphis have been going since 1990 and their oeuvre can be divided into a couple of phases. I’m honestly not that keen on their stuff before 2006’s Eclipse, mostly because I don’t get on with their original singer (or rather, with his singing). It was Tomi Joutsen’s vocals on Skyforger that won me over in the first place, and it’s the sound of that lineup that rings my folk-metal bell the hardest.

If you care, many of Amorphis’s songs source their lyrics and themes from the Kalevala – the Epic Poem of Finland – bringing their work officially under the umbrella of folk metal, while their instrumentation is heavy yet eclectic, blending occasional folk and psychedelic sounds with the traditionally heavy layered guitars you’d expect.

Regular listeners will have already been made aware of Amorphis, as Skyforger was Clive’s Album of the Year for 2009, and it pleases me hugely to say that they have gone from strength to strength since then. The two previous albums - Eclipse (2006) and Silent Waters (2007) are wonderful too, and serendipitously I write this on the day that they release their latest album, Queen of Time (their 13th studio release and 7th with Tomi J on vocals), which for some reason I do not yet possess even though it has been out for hours.

[Brief interlude of approximately 20 seconds…]

I do now.

So yeah, get into Amorphis. If you like heavy metal in any way at all, you will at least find them interesting. And if you want a second opinion, ask Angry Metal Guy.

Clive recommends:

It has to be Skyforger.

Video evidence

Check out the video for “Silver Bride” (from Skyforger) if you need further conwincing…

A is also for…

A (Rock)
Alestorm (Pirate Metal)
Alter Bridge (Metal/Rock)
Angels & Airwaves (Alternative Rock)
The Answer (Rock)

What now?

Clive Murray — Fri, 11 May 2018 14:49:35 +0000

So yeah, observant listeners may have realised that I have now completed my task of picking an Album of the Year (plus runners-up where applicable) for every year from 2017 right back to the year of my birth, 1974.

Since some people might be interested to see it, I have compiled a master list of the runners and riders, the wailers and the failures, the winners and the sinners and the chicken dinners, and made a permanent page for it. I shall of course add to it once a year from now onwards.

But what now I hear you cry? With what spurious bumwater will I pollute this blog now that my opinions and decrees upon what music was hot and what was not for the previous 44 years have been fully ascribed and transcribed?

Fear not, gentle listener, for coming your way very soon, right here, in this very corner of the ee-lectrick hinternet, prepare your fragile eggshell minds for…

Clive’s A-Z of Artists/Bands Of Which You May Not Have Heard!!*

Yes, that’s right. I know. Please try to contain your gibbering, frothing excitement – ew, you got some on your leg there – and prepare as best you can to come with me on a 26-stop journey through my music collection examining briefly or in-depth, sometimes perhaps coherently, a musical act for each and every letter in the English alphabet that may be unfamiliar to you.

Unless of course they aren’t, in which case they won’t be. No refunds will be given. Naturally some of these artists will have cropped up in the Albums of the Years series, but I can promise that some will not and some may hopefully be new to you.

You might even find new music that you like.

–c.

* (Working title)

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2017

Clive Murray — Wed, 02 May 2018 16:27:37 +0000

OK, so I think I’ve sat with the albums of 2017 for long enough now to make the necessary judgement calls. 2017 was the year that came after the one before, and if anyone tries to tell you different, SLAP THEM. People have been banging on about how terrible 2017 was… and they’re not wrong… but hey, did everyone forget about 2016? This was just more of the same but at least we had some idea of what to expect. Oh, and Prince and Bowie didn’t die in 2017, so on that basis alone it must be better than 2016.

See? Things are looking up!

That said…

In 2017, [MORON REDACTED] was sworn in as the 45th President of the good ol’ US of States, article 50, WannaCry, Ariana Grande concert bombing, London Bridge attack, Grenfell Tower disaster, Petya, hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, the Orlando nightclub terrorist shooting (yes, homegrown white idiots with guns are terrorists, get with the program, USA), Mogadishu truck bomb… ehhhhh. Got bleak?

On the other hand, Mugabe cashed out, Mladić got life in jail and a new species of orangutan was discovered in Indonesia.

See? Bright side!

Those no longer pining but passing on included Miguel Ferrer, Gordon Kaye, John Hurt, Richard Hatch, Larry Coryell, Hudson sir… he’s Hicks (Bill Paxton), Chuck Berry, Allan Holdsworth, Powers Boothe, Chris Cornell, Roger Moore, Gregg Allman, Peter Sallis, Batman (Adam West), Hat Cabbage (Helmut Kohl), Nelsan Ellis, Glen Campbell, Brucey, Jerry Lewis, Tobe Hooper, Harry Dean Stanton, Hugh Hefner, Tom Petty, Fats Domino, Malcolm Young and Charles Manson.

Musically speaking, it was a cracker, and the longer-than-usual shortlist reflects that. Onwards…

Honourable mentions

Jonathan Coulton - Solid State

OK, so you probably have to be at least a mild nerd to know about JoCo, but that’s fine, I am a huge nerd and proud. I first heard his sublime nerd-anthem “Code Monkey” back in about 2007 or so, and from there discovered his splendid homegrown lo-fi comedy rock stylings to be most pleasing. He then took a long hiatus, but two bestselling videogame theme tunes (“Still Alive” and “Want You Gone” from Portal 1 and 2 respectively) didn’t hurt his music career any, though I kind of lost touch with what he was up to. Out of the blue I checked him out, and discovered Solid State – a dystopian future concept album about the internet, trolls, AI and humanity. Deep. Anyhow, forget all that, get this – it’s fab. Top track: “Don’t Feed the Trolls”

KXM - Scatterbrain

No, neither had I until recently. But if you take K from Korn, X from King’s X and M from Lynch Mob, you get KXM - which is Ray Luzier (drums), dUg Pinnick (vocals and bass) and George Lynch (guitars) respectively. This is their second album and it’s bloody great. Pinnick and Lynch are on sparkling form, and Luzier stands out by a country thumb as being one of the most interesting drummers I’ve heard in a while. That sentence sucked – this album does not. Top track: “Calypso”

Lonely Robot - The Big Dream

Yes, it’s His Holiness John Mitchell again, with the second album from his solo project Lonely Robot. This time out John explores themes relating to consciousness, the continuum of being and the nocturnal machinations of the old grey cells, all the while weaving his proggy magic and delivering persistent hooks and crackling guitar-work as he goes. Lovely stuff. Top track: “Sigma”

David Maxim Micic - Who Bit the Moon

I became aware of this wunderserb not long after discovering the likes of Plini and Sithu Aye, and David is with no shadow of a doubt an absolutely phenome-damned-nal musician, but I have found his previous output a highly mixed kettle of ferrets, to put it mildly. It’s all been incredibly well executed and produced, I just found that about 30% of it I plain didn’t like. Hey ho, it’d be a boring life if we were all the same, n’est-ce pas? Anyway, this album ticks all my instru-shred boxes and has a lovely lush production to it. Get it down you. Top track: “Living Room”

Oh Wonder - Ultralife

I’m a big fan of actor Johnny Lee Miller, and the CBS show “Elementary” in which he plays a modern day Sherlock Holmes in New York, with the splendid Lucy Liu as Watson. As a number of these US procedurals are wont to do, a number of episodes like to ram home the emotional content of the final scenes with choice music. That’s fine, everybody does it. Occasionally though, one of these closing tracks leaps out as being worthy of further investigation, and so it was with “All We Do” by Oh Wonder from their eponymous debut album. In fact, so taken was I that I immediately bought that album and the followup, Ultralife. If quality alt-pop is your thing, you should check them out. I did. Top track: “High On Humans”

Sons of Apollo - Psychotic Symphony

Well now. We’ve all been there, some of us many times. “Oh look, another prog supergroup… let me guess who’s on dru… yep, of course it’s Mike Portnoy. Had to be. Well, the last four or five didn’t really work did they, so maybe I’ll sit this one out too…” I know, I said something very similar, but the rest of the roster just seemed too good for this to fail. Derek Sherinian on keys, Billy Sheehan on bass, Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal on guitars and the mighty mighty Jeff Scott Soto on vocals. No weak links there, you would think. Well guess what, you’d be right – this is TOTAL BELTER. Check out this video if you don’t believe me. See? Top track: “Coming Home”

You Me at Six - Night People

Those boys from Weybridge return with their fifth studio album, and they just get better and better. I heard a criticism levelled at this album, along the lines of “There aren’t any standout tracks, there’s nothing like “Loverboy” on there”. Well, what I would say to that is that the band’s songwriting has matured over the course of their career and while there may not be anything as instantly attention-grabbingly poppy or catchy as some previous singles sticking out here, what you do get is ten great songs and an album positively oozing re-listen appeal. Great work. Top track: “Give”

Jakub Zytecki - Ladder Head

I first became aware of Jakub Zytecki around the time I discovered those other guys – Plini, Sithu, Micic - but did not dig his full-length solo album Wishful Lotus Proof. I did register him as a totally blinding guitar player, but just wasn’t into the tunes. A bit later I checked out his band Disperse, and while they have a very interesting and unique sound, I’m not sure it’s for me. Splendid, then, that JZ released two EPs in 2017 - this one and another called Feather Bed. They’re both wonderful from start to finish, lo-fi sounds and smooth production with nifty guitar chops nestled within, but this one just edges it for me. Nice. Top track: “As You Are”

And the winners are…

I couldn’t separate the top two for this year - so it’s another tie!

Greta Van Fleet - From the Fires

These boys are the simply the best thing to happen to rock music in some time. Much has been made of the similarity between the band’s sound and that of early Led Zeppelin, and rightly so. When I first put this album on I thought to myself “Hang on a minute, did I put Led Zeppelin II in there by mistake?”.

But you know what, it doesn’t matter one jot. Even Robert Plant has given them his blessing, and you should too. They’re not just ripping off Zep, this is at most homage and it’s done so bloody well that it’s easy to ignore, since the songs are so good, and my sweet lord, Josh Kiszka’s voice…

So forget about Zeppelin if you can, and listen to this with open ears, in your own time, and in your own trousers. You will find that far from being a rehash of something long gone, Greta Van Fleet are a breath of fresh mountain air, bringing new life to a wheezing “classic rock” genre.

Top tracks: “Talk on the Street”, “Edge of Darkness”, “Black Smoke Rising”

Steven Wilson - To the Bone

We are blessed to live in the era of Steven Wilson. Whether you are a fan of Porcupine Tree or not (and if you’re anything like me – and I know I am – you are) the man’s impact on British prog music is undeniable. A disgustingly talented multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, producer, engineer, lyricist, all-round musical demigod and apparently a very nice chap to boot, Steven has also worked with acts like Opeth, King Crimson, Pendulum, Jethro Tull, Yes, Tears for Fears and even Marillion over the last three decades, and the chances are that you’ve heard some of his work even if you don’t know it.

It shames me to note that this is the only SW solo album I possess, despite all the rave reviews I saw of the predecessors Hand. Cannot. Erase and The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories), though rest assured I intend to rectify that at my very earliest.

Wilson says that this album was inspired by the prog-pop albums of his youth such as Peter Gabriel’s So and Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love, and indeed this is not a prog rock album in the vein of his Porcupine Tree work, and would happily sit on the same shelf as those two previously mentioned works.

It is a gorgeous album, this, and while not every single track is a perfect ten, overall it’s indispensable stuff.

FUN FACT: Steven Wilson’s original home studio “No Man’s Land” is ten minutes walk from my house, right here in Camel Humpstead. I passed it last night on the way home from the pub. So there you go.

Top tracks: “Pariah”, “The Same Asylum as Before”, “To the Bone”

Turkey of the Year

Lynch Mob - The Brotherhood

It pains me to say it because I love George Lynch, but this is utter crap. I wish I could unlisten to it. Scroll back up to KXM and get some good Lynch down your soundtubes.

Clive’s Album of the Year, 1974-1976

Clive Murray — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 09:29:45 +0000

The final part. The end, or I suppose, the beginning. Back to 1974, the year of my birth. The best release of 1974 was clearly me and frankly I only get better every year, but musically…

1976

Winner

Jean-Michel Jarre - Oxygene

One of the few artists I got into when I was young (not in 1976, obviously) and before I was gripped by the majesty of rock (and the mystery of roll) was J-MJ. I like pretty much all his stuff and always have. Oxygene was probably my favourite of his, and “Oxygene 4” was used on the TV in the 70s and 80s all over the place. Still listen to this now and still love it.

Top tracks: The whole thing, really, but if you have to pick one out, it’s “Oxygene 4”

1975

Honourable mentions

Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffitti

Remember “the double album rule”? Well, this is not another exception I’m afraid – there’s a bunch of filler on here, as Zep slid inexorably into the Valley of Diminishing Returns after Houses of the Holy, but when it’s good it’s very very good. Top track: “Kashmir”, as well you know.

Queen - A Night at the Opera

Early Queen is a mixed bag, but this one gave us lifelong classics “You’re My Best Friend” and “Love of My Life” as well as overlooked gems like “Death on Two Legs” and “'39”, and that’s before you even get to track 11, a little ditty called “Bohemian Rhapsody” of which you may have heard. Top track: “Bohemian Rhapsody”, like, duh.

Winner

Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

Worth the price of admission several times over for the title track alone, Wish You Were Here is just great. It’s great. That’s what it is, great. Stick it on. It’s great.

Top tracks: “Wish You Were Here”, “Have a Cigar”, “Welcome to the Machine”

1974

Honourable mention

Deep Purple - Burn

Deep Purple have had as many lineup changes as any band you can mention, and are still going today. In fact, their 2017 album Infinite is on the longlist for that year, though I need more time with it to see if it makes the cut. Burn, however, was “the first Deep Purple album to feature then-unknown David Coverdale on vocals”, and doesn’t it just? Blackmore is on fire, Coverdale and Glenn Hughes smash the vocals out of the park, and mainstays Lord and Paice do what they do best. I hadn’t properly consumed this album until recently, only really being familiar with the title track, but it is indeed a cracker. Top track: “Burn”, natch.

Winner

Queen - Sheer Heart Attack

Back to the mixed bag of Queen then, to round this thing out. This was in fact their second album of 1974, following the release of Queen II earlier on, and it is an entirely different gunnysack of weaselfish than the band’s first two albums which were heavily 70s-prog influenced. This for me was where they started to really find their stride and start writing true Queen material, and while there are occasional oddities (“Bring Back That Leroy Brown”, anyone?) it’s otherwise solid and home to not only classics like “Killer Queen”, “Brighton Rock” and “Stone Cold Crazy”, but my favourite Queen song of all time, “Now I’m Here”.

Not perfect, but bloody good.

Top tracks: “Stone Cold Crazy”, “Now I’m Here”, “Killer Queen”

Clive’s Album of the Year, 1977-1980

Clive Murray — Tue, 30 Jan 2018 09:56:25 +0000

On we go, come on come on, keep up, I haven’t got all day, you know.

1980

Honourable mention

Van Halen - Women and Children First

When Van Halen burst onto the scene they undeniably took it apart (more on that later), and they were still pretty much at the top of their game by the third album. Punchy. Top track: “Everybody Wants Some!!”

Winner

AC/DC - Back in Black

Well. I know I’m going to get into trouble in some quarters, but for me AC/DC has a Geordie singer with a flat cap. I know, I know, and all you O.G. Bon Scott loving fans can go right ahead and tell me how wrong I am, but I’ll just smile and stick this album on again. Of course it’s a tragedy how BS died, of course he was taken too early, naturally he was a huge part of how the band achieved their success to begin with. I’m not arguing with any of that. But for me, this is THE AC/DC album, and no amount of “Beating Around the Bush”, “Big Balls” or “TNT” is going to change that.

Top tracks: “Hells Bells”, “You Shook Me All Night Long”, “Back in Black”

1979

Honourable mentions

AC/DC - Highway to Hell

Now that’s not to say that I don’t like Bon Scott, by the way… I just prefer Johnson. But on this, Scott’s final album, he was pretty damned amazing and Angus is absolutely out of control. Top track: “Highway to Hell”

Van Halen - Van Halen II

Ah, Van Halen, you say? Well yes. Their second album has some crackers on it, and the musical pyrotechnics of EVH are if anything a little more harnessed than on the debut. Just a little filler here, but mostly killer. Top track: “Light Up the Sky”

Winner

Pink Floyd - The Wall

So you thought you might like to go to the show?

If you’re going to concept album, this is how you do it. (I’m looking at you, Dream Theater.) An introvert odyssey into isolation and what boils down to PTSD and depression, this 81-minute cheery tale of one young man’s breakdown and consequent regression inside himself is a prog masterpiece, one of the few of the era that I can actually tolerate, laden as it is with drama and melody from the get-go. Total boner-fido classic, and the only example that comes to mind of a justifiable double album. Go on, name one other (discounting live albums and soundtracks) that wouldn’t be better boiled down to a single album… You can’t. But this is worth every second.

Top tracks: “Comfortably Numb”, “Mother”, “Another Brick in the Wall pt. 2”

1978

Honourable mentions

Dire Straits - Dire Straits

This may in fact be my favourite Dire Straits album. There’s a prowling moodiness to the lyrics and Mark Knopfler’s lead guitar crackles throughout. “Sultans of Swing” indeed. Top track: “Down to the Waterline”

Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports

Ambient music is not for everyone, but if it is even mildly your bag then you need this. High water mark. Top track: “1/1”

Winner

Van Halen - Van Halen

Are you kidding me? I frequently wax lyrical about the greatest debut album of all time being Appetite For Destruction in 1987, which it is, but this has to be right behind it.

I can’t imagine being the rock music industry when this thing hit it. I imagine it must have had to go and have a bit of a lie down.

Top tracks: “Ain’t Talkin’ 'Bout Love”, “Atomic Punk”, “Runnin’ With the Devil”

1977

Dishonourable mention

The Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks…

I was never into punk, not even a little bit, but it definitely happened, of that much we can be sure. It transpires that this is actually pretty good, even now. Top track: “Pretty Vacant”

Winner

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

Retroactively, for sure, though many of the Mac tracks I grew up loving seem to have come from this album, so why not? Wikipedia tells me that following the previous eponymous album the band’s two couples – Christine & John McVie and Buckingham/Nicks – had split up (as well as drummer Mick Fleetwood going through a divorce of his own), lending a certain frisson to the writing process for this, later claimed to be their most important album of all time (and the band’s 11th overall).

Whether you have any time for Fleetwood Mac or not, they were one of the bigger bands of this era and I grew up with many of these songs on the radio, and I still love them. So there.

Top tracks: “Dreams”, “Go Your Own Way”, “The Chain”

Clive’s Album of the Year, 1981-1985

Clive Murray — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 14:18:19 +0000

Right, I hadn’t developed a real taste in music this far back, and a lot of what I’ve gotten into from these years is the back catalogues of a handful of bands, so it’s going to get samey from here on in. I shall therefore be brief, we’ll skip the preambles and births and deaths etc. – I’m sure you can all use Wikipedia.

1985

Winner

Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms

Possibly the first album I properly enjoyed. My mate next door, Craig, had it on tape and we would play it over and over in the tape decks of the junk cars that forever occupied the bottom end of his family’s garden. I think the video for “Money For Nothing” likely played a part in lodging this stuff firmly into my brain, though it was the start of a very long love affair with Dire Straits and I still credit Mark Knopfler as being the one who made me want to play guitar in the first place.

Top tracks: “Money For Nothing”, “Brothers in Arms”, “Ride Across the River”

1984

Honourable mentions

Steve Vai - Flex-Able

My first experience of Steve Vai was hearing David Lee Roth’s Skyscraper, and not long after that Vai’s magnificent octopus Passion and Warfare came out to enormous acclaim, but going back to his debut album is a mixed bag of nuts and weasels. There are moments of unalloyed genius, heartbreakingly tender musicality, off-the-wall tinfoil-hat nutbaggery, ill-advised singing, and utterly unlistenable nonsense. In summary then – Steve Vai. (Overall, it’s excellent.) Top track: “Call It Sleep”

Van Halen - 1984

Natch, and in any other year this may well have wombled off with the prize. In fact, if it wasn’t for a couple of conspicuous duddos (“House of Pain” and “Girl Gone Bad” leap to mind) it may still have. On balance though, it’s a cracker. Top track: “Panama”

Winner

Iron Maiden - Powerslave

And now you see why Van Halen had to forego the crown. Honestly. If you’re still reading this and haven’t by now slammed on Powerslave and are not even now being thoroughly rocked by the opener “Aces High” then you’re doing something wrong. Possibly many things.

Top tracks: “2 Minutes to Midnight”, “Powerslave”, “Aces High”

1983

Honourable mentions

David Bowie - Let’s Dance

Little can be written here about Bowie that has not already been written elsewhere, but what I will say is that you will never hear a more perfectly crafted piece of pop music than the title track. You also get Stevie Ray Vaughan thrown in for free. Not bad. Top track: “China Girl”

Stevie Ray Vaughan - Texas Flood

Speaking of the boy from Seattle, this is an essential album. Essential. DO YOU HEAR ME? ESSENTIAL. GET IT. NOW. Top track: “Texas Flood”

Winner

Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind

If 1984’s Powerslave was Maiden at the very height of their powers, then 1983’s predecessor was pretty bloody close behind. Actually in a stand-up fight I probably couldn’t pick between them. Luckily they were released in different years so I don’t have to. Another golden slab of pure British metal from the best era of the best metal band ever, and I will fight you.

Top tracks: “Revelations”, “Die with Your Boots On”, “The Trooper”

1982

Honourable mention

Dire Straits - Love Over Gold

Once I’d fallen for Dire Straits I had to track back through their discography, which contains some gems and some plums. This is the former, and the ~15m first song “Telegraph Road” still makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. Look. They’re doing it now. Top track: “Telegraph Road”

Winner

Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast

So… observant listeners will be detecting a theme by now. What can I say? Iron Maiden were the best damned band of all time at doing this thing they do. This was Bruce Dickenson’s first outing on lead vocals, replacing the charismatic but patchy Paul Di’Anno, and that was that. Listen and marvel. You marvelled, didn’t you? I SAW YOU MARVELLING.

Top tracks: “Children of the Damned”, “The Number of the Beast”, “Run to the Hills”

1981

Winner

Mötley Crüe - Too Fast For Love

Much has been written about the history of the most notorious band in hard rock, notably by the band themselves in “The Dirt”. This was their first album, and it is hard to imagine it coming out in 1981 when I was 7. The first I heard from Crüe was 1989’s Dr. Feelgood, which we’ve already covered, and which is a much more slick Hollywood production whereas this is almost punk in places and has the raw gritty feel of a band who’ve got enough (chemical) energy to pull a crowd at a graveyard and enough hairspray to make them all stand to attention. Great fun.

Top tracks: “Piece of Your Action”, “Merry-Go-Round”, “Come On and Dance”

Clive’s Album of the Year, 1986

Clive Murray — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 14:01:42 +0000

1986. I was 12, and had yet to develop any taste in music, so as before this is all retroactive. This is also as far back as I’m going with the whole “1 winner and 5 runners-up” thing. My original idea was to try and go right back to the year of my birth, 1974, but I just can’t find enough music that I like from all of those years. What we’ll have after this is a digest format with the best one of the year, and possibly an honourable mention or two. So now you know.

1986 was designated the International Year of Peace by the UN. Good-oh. Kodak were beaten out of the instant camera game by Polaroid, the first PC virus started to spread, Voyager 2 met Uranus (snigger), Space Shuttle Challenger tragically exploded 73 seconds after launching, Pixar, Halley’s Comet popped by, Mir, hailstones weighing 1kg killed 92 people in Bangladesh (yes, really), the Chernobyl disaster happened killing over 4000 people and forcing 350000 out of their homes, Hands Across America, Maradona and the “Hand of God”, New Zealand decriminalised homosexual sex (between men – lesbian sex was never criminalised in NZ), Andrew married Fergie, Phantom opened in London, the M25 was opened, The Simpsons were created and the first commercial 3D printer was sold.

Those cashing in their chips and going for a long lie down included Phil Lynott, the git behind scientology, Jimmy Cagney, Wallis Simpson, Cliff Burton and Cary Grant.

Arriving presumably not on a one-in-one-out basis were Matt Heafy, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Gemma Arterton, Ophelia Lovibond, Charlotte Church, Lady Gaga, R-Patz, Megan Fox, Rafael Nadal, Shia LaBeouf, LiLo, Usain Bolt, Florence Welch, Emilia Clarke, Oscar Pistorius, Amir Khan, John Snow (Kit Harington) and Ellie Goulding. There were of course many more, but those are the ones I’ve heard of.

As mentioned my 1986 list is completely retroactive – in 1986 I think all I was listening to was Dire Straits, Queen and Jean-Michel Jarre (not that there’s anything wrong with any of that).

Some notable omissions that didn’t make the list: Bon Jovi – Slippery When Wet, Metallica – Master of Puppets, Iron Maiden – Somewhere in Time, It Bites – The Big Lad in the Windmill and Beastie Boys – Licensed to Ill. Those are all good, but imho, these are better…

Honourable mentions

Megadeth - Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?

My metal awakening was still a few years away when this came out, but looking back it’s an absolute classic and a shortlist must-have. Worth the price of admission several times over for the title track alone, yet some may say “How can you include this and not Master of Puppets? Are you a mental?” The simple fact is I prefer Megadeth to Metallica – always have. I’ll give you that there are a couple of missteps on this album (WTF is “I Ain’t Superstitious” doing on here?) but when it’s good, it’s impeccable. Top track: “Peace Sells”

Queen - A Kind of Magic

I was even in the Queen fan club for a few years. At the time I had no idea what AIDS was, or what gay really was, and had no idea that Freddie was not that long for this world. I just loved their music, or at least what I had of it. It’s only recently I’ve gone back to the early proggy albums and discovered a whole bunch of weird, but then that was the 70s for you. This, the unofficial soundtrack to one of my favourite 80s films “Highlander”, has a couple of mawkish moments but again – when it’s good, it’s absolutely amazing. See “One Vision”, the title track, and the splendid “Gimme the Prize” for details. (I know his name.) Top track: “One Vision”

David Lee Roth - Eat 'Em and Smile

When DLR quit Van Halen, the rock world must have wondered what the hell he – or they – were going to do next. Well, Diamond Dave recruited the hottest musicians available (Steve Vai, Billy Sheehan, Gregg Bissonette, Brett Tuggle) and punted out a solo album that combined Dave’s trademark lounge schtick with some of the most blistering virtuoso rock tunes ever made, still to this day. Indispensable, though hardly flawless. Top track: “Ladies’ Nite in Buffalo?”

Paul Simon - Graceland

This was the first album I ever owned that wasn’t a kids album like Mr. Men or something. My late Grandma bought me the tape of it for Christmas or birthday, probably in 1987, and it went into my tape player and hardly came out for months. I still love it. Thanks, Grandma. Top track: “The Boy in the Bubble”

Van Halen - 5150

So we know what Roth did when he quit Van Halen, but what did the rest of his erstwhile band do? They recruited a new singer and kept on trucking, that’s what. This was Sammy Hagar’s first album with VH and it was one of the first two rock/metal albums lent to me as part of my metal education by my best friend at the time, Nick Redfearn (the other was Eliminator by ZZ Top). Having never heard VH with Roth at the time, I was spared the inevitable comparisons and potential disappointment that a lead singer swap can engender, and loved it from the get go. Still do. (The following album OU812 is a total crock, though.) Top track: “Good Enough”

And the winner is…

Peter Gabriel - So

I simply will never get bored of this album, as long as I live. I adore everything about it. From the swelling intro to “Red Rain” right to the closing repeated phrases of “This Is the Picture”, there is not a sound on this album that I am not eternally in love with. As an aside, it is also forever linked in my mind to the Clive Barker book “Imajica”, which I was reading when I first discovered this album. I recommend them for simultaneous use.

I was never into Genesis of any era, so only really first heard of Gabs when “Sledgehammer” stormed up the charts and appeared on Top of the Pops with its splendid video, and then noticed him again when the duet “Don’t Give Up” achieved similar success, but it was a few years later that I picked up the album and properly explored its groove, which I found to be righteous (helped along massively by the extremely groovy Tony Levin on bass, of course).

A pop classic, 9 well-crafted songs, and a voice with a range and depth of emotion that I’ve rarely heard. Lovely stuff.

Top tracks: “Mercy Street”, “Red Rain”, “Don’t Give Up”

Turkey of the year

Poison - Look What the Cat Dragged In

Oh good god.

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2016

Clive Murray — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 07:03:27 +0000

Unnnnnngh. Whoo. Ummm… yeah. 2016. OK. Damn.

*deep breath* Right. Let’s do this. *girds loins*

2016 was The International Year of Pulses, but despite that it started badly and then went downhill from there. And after that it got worse. We were still reeling from the (not wholly unexpected) passing of Lemmy in December 2015 when the (relatively unexpected) news of David Bowie’s demise reached us, and so began Super Grim Reaper Ultra Party Bonanza Deathfest. (Plenty) more on that shortly. I had spent my Christmas holiday (hah) looking for work, and ended up back at my old place (phew). Zika broke out, North Korea got all launchy, the United Kingdom punched itself as hard as possible in the financial plums while screaming WHY ARE YOU HITTING YOURSELF?, the US and China joined the Paris climate agreement (insert le sigh here), the USA elected a COMPLETE MORON (whose name I shan’t lower myself to type) to its highest office, and the whole world basically swirled further and further down the pan. Oh and I bought a house.

Mortal-coil-shuffler of the year awards go to (oh boy… here we go… grits teeth) the aforementioned David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Glenn Frey, Abe Vigoda, Terry Wogan, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, George Martin, Keith Emerson, Johan Cruyff, Garry Shandling, Prince, Nick Menza, Muhammad Ali, Anton Yelchin, R2-D2 (Kenny Baker), Gene Wilder, Pete Burns, Leonard Cohen, Robert Vaughn, Andrew Sachs, Fidel Castro, Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), Peter Vaughan, Greg Lake, John Glenn, Henry Heimlich (yes, he of the manoeuvre), Zsa Zsa Gabor, Rick Parfitt, Liz Smith, George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (Carrie Fisher’s mother).

Honourable mentions

David Bowie - Blackstar

Unnnngh. Yeah. Ooof. So, I wasn’t so deeply into Bowie when I was younger, but he was always there doing quality stuff. I loved the Bowie/Jagger “Dancing in the Street” video, and of course I was massively into Queen so dug “Under Pressure” the most. It was his later work – really from Heathen onwards – that really grabbed me. I saw him at Wembley Arena on the Reality tour, and then laughed my arse off with a tipped hat when he recorded The Next Day without even his record company knowing about it. I think that is my favourite album of his from this period, but that’s just because it’s impossible to listen to Blackstar without being reminded in every word that you’re hearing one of the most creative and influential artists the Western World has ever produced wave goodbye to the world and his life. Not an easy listen, then, but a worthwhile one. Top track: “Lazarus”

The Dead Daisies - Make Some Noise

If you’ve never heard of The Dead Daisies, that’s OK, don’t feel bad. They’re a kind of revolving-door band with an ever-shifting line-up and only one consistent (founder) member, David Lowy. This is their third album, and for me this is where all the pieces really clicked together primarily due to the partnership of two of the longest-standing and most consistent stalwarts of the hard rock scene, John Corabi (The Scream, Mötley Crüe, many more) on vocals and Doug Aldrich (Whitesnake, Dio, many more) on guitar. This album packs mean tunes, some great production and a proper sense of fun rock and roll. Best straight-up hard rock record in years. Get on it. Top track: “Song and a Prayer”

Frost* - Falling Satellites

Oh look, another appearance by friend of the show, HHJM†. Frost*, though, are the brainchild of Jem Godfrey with John maintaining guitar duties with the occasional lead vocal thrown in. This is the third album from the BritProg supergroup, and it’s the most cohesive and best yet. The debut Milliontown is pretty hard to beat, but I reckon this does just about manage it. Progtacular! Top track: “Signs”

†His Holiness John Mitchell

Mandroid Echostar - Coral Throne

When I discovered acts like Scale the Summit, Plini, Chimp Spanner and Sithu Aye back in around 2012 or so I gorged non-stop for months on their wonderful chuggy grooves and brain-melting technical prowess, but one thing I did start to yearn for was something similar but with vocals. Enter stage left, the bafflingly-monikered Mandroid Echostar with their eponymous EP that year and the followup EP Citadels in 2013. However, in 2016 they graced us with their first full-length album and it left my old boots firmly stuck on the “f***ed” setting. Vocally Michael Ciccia reminds me a little of Claudio from Coheed & Cambria, but instrumentally the band are a little heavier though no less melody-focussed. Tight as. Top track: “Matoax”

Sithu Aye - Set Course For Andromeda

So, Scottish/Burmese shred prodigy Sithu Aye is certainly more prolific than his buddy, the truly astounding (and oft-mentioned in these pages) Aussie wunderkind Plini, but I’d say his quality control is perhaps not quite as stringent. On my first listen through this double album I felt I had a problem with the mix, and that the lead guitars just weren’t prominent enough, spoiling my enjoyment of some otherwise excellent instru-prog. Subsequent listens, however, have revealed that I just had bad ears on that day, and it’s great. A long, interesting musical journey as the name would suggest. Great fun throughout. Top track: “Beyond the Boundary”

And the winner is…

Plini - Handmade Cities

Oh, be still my fluttering heart, this album. I’ll be honest with you, I hadn’t even finished listening to this for the first time (on release day, 26th August) and I knew it was going to be the 2016 winner.

By now regular readers of this column will doubtless be sick of my clanking on about Plini, but tough. Strap in. When I first heard Joe Satriani in 1988/9 I was blown away. In 1990 when I heard Steve Vai’s Passion and Warfare everything changed again. In 1992 John Petrucci’s playing on Images and Words by Dream Theater floored me. It was a good 14 years or so before I was as impressed by a player again, and that was Guthrie Govan.

Wind forward a few more years and a new wave of players begins to emerge – people who’ve put in the time and effort in their bedrooms and are able to produce nigh-on professional quality albums right at their computer, and regularly do. Add web-based platforms like Bandcamp, and you have homegrown virtuosity making its way right from the player’s hands to the listener’s ears without record labels or even recording studios needing to be involved. I’m talking about players like Aaron Marshall, Sithu Aye, David Maxim Micic, Jakub Zytecki, and of course Plini Roessler-Holgate, among others.

I’ve been a huge Plini fan since I first heard his work, so when it was announced that he was releasing his first full-length album, my anticipation went through the roof, and by deep-fried CHRIST, did he deliver.

Handmade Cities comprises 7 songs and clocks in at 34:38, but my god what a ride. From the opening teasing notes of “Electric Sunrise” to the closing echoes of “Cascade”, the listener is left in no doubt that this is a creative musical force finally given free reign to produce his very best work. Yes, there is shred here in abundance, but as ever with Plini, it is never unwarranted and always joyous to hear. This is not guitar widdlery, this is music first and foremost. Even if Guthrie Govan leaves you unmoved (you monster!) you should still listen to Plini – the innate musicality of his composition is somehow more pleasing to my ear than GG’s more fusiony moments. You may agree, or your mileage may naturally vary.

Try it though. If you like instrumental guitar music of any stripe, there’s a strong chance you may spend half an hour grinning like a loon like I did.

Top tracks: “Pastures”, “Electric Sunrise“, “Handmade Cities“

Turkey of the Year

Dream Theater - The Astonishing

Oh dear Satan, no. I’m on record as saying that the rot set in with DT when Rudess joined, and that Scenes From a Memory is rubbish, and that it only got worse from there. Well, I seriously SRSLY hope that it can’t get any worse from here. This is one of the worst things I have ever done to my ears. Utterly utterly execrable. A double concept album based on a world in which “the Ravenskill Rebel Militia […] defy the Great Northern Empire of the Americas using the magical power of music”. Jesus. With Gabriel and Princess Faythe on one side and Emperor Nafaryus on the other? Oh good god. Faythe. Nafaryus. Right.

facepalm

I think I really checked out when LaBrie started singing in an evil voice to represent Nafaryus. Sorry guys, you’re turning into a total parody of yourselves, if you hadn’t already.

HARD NOPE.

Clive’s Album of the Year, 1987

Clive Murray — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 10:49:48 +0000

In 1987 I was 13, so what do you want? I was at school with spotty hair and short curly skin, choosing my subjects for GCSE, and in a deeply committed relationship with my ZX Spectrum.

It is the year in which the movies American Psycho and The Wolf of Wall Street were both set, which just goes to show you… something. Aretha Franklin became the first woman to enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Terry Waite was kidnapped, British Airways was privatised, cross-channel ferry the Herald of Free Enterprise capsized killing 193 at Zeebrugge, The Simpsons first appeared on television (as short sketches on The Tracey Ullman Show), the dusky seaside sparrow went extinct, the DLR opened, HESS, 16 were killed in the Hungerford Massacre, a hurricane hit southern England and I didn’t do my paper round that day, Black Monday, Lester Piggott went to pokey for tax fiddlement and Prozac and Perl were bestowed upon the world.

Those reaching the clearing at the end of their path included Liberace, Andy Warhol, Buddy Rich, Rita Hayworth, Andrés Segovia, Fulton Mackay, Fred Astaire, Lee Marvin, Commander Adama (Lorne Greene) and Jaco.

They were swapped out for Paolo Nutini, Marcus Mumford, Ronda Rousey, Kesha, Joss Stone, Maria Sharapova, Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Dappy, Kendrick Lamar, Lionel Messi, Draco Malfoy, Hilary Duff, Zac Efron and Amy Pond.

Let’s be clear, I was listening to none of the following in 1987. I hadn’t discovered rock music or playing guitar, and was probably listening to all manner of Electro nonsense at the time. What? I was 13.

Retroactively, then…

Honourable mentions

Aerosmith - Permanent Vacation

I am familiar with precisely none of Aerosmith’s pre-1987 work, a situation which if I’m honest is unlikely to change any time soon. There are a couple of tracks on this album I’m likely to skip, but the good ones are really good. Top track: “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)”

Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse of Reason

I know, right? I’ve never been the most rabid Floyd fan alive (though I did live with one for some time), but I’ve always had time and respect for them. In fairness I haven’t gone back and properly engaged with the Roger Waters era (except The Wall obviously – that’s a masterpiece) and I’ve certainly never even tried with the Syd Barrett era, so I’ve really only been a Gilmour guy. I wasn’t listening to PF in 1987, but have appreciated them greatly in later years, and this album while not one of their most essential is still very good. Top track: “Learning to Fly”

Joe Satriani - Surfing With the Alien

In any other year, blah blah blah. But wow, it is hard to overstate the importance of this album to rock guitar. Satriani had self produced and released a weird home-grown EP in 1984 and then released his label debut Not of This Earth in 1986 to limited acclaim, but when Surfing came out in 1987 it changed the game completely. This took instrumental guitar out of the realms of “Apache” and “Telstar” and sent it soaring into the space age with its stellar technique, melodic sensibility, and finely honed production. Even moreso than hearing Van Halen for the first time, hearing this was what made me want to play real rock guitar. Thanks, Joe. Top track: “Circles”

Sting - Nothing Like the Sun

Yes, I like Sting (up to a point, and Mercury Falling was that point – after that, no ta) and while I didn’t get into this album until relatively recently it does contain some of his crackers, most notably “Englishman in New York” which I think I was aware of and liked even in 1987, but see also “They Dance Alone”, “Fragile”, “Straight to My Heart” and “Sister Moon”. Hell, I even quite like his cover of “Little Wing”. Top track: “Englishman in New York”

Whitesnake - Whitesnake

The ’Snake have had many incarnations, but predictably it’s the hard rock version I dig. This album features the incomparable John Sykes on guitar and while some of the tracks don’t quite gel for me, it’s a belter overall. Top track: “Still of the Night”

And the winner is…

Guns N’ Roses - Appetite For Destruction

In some ways, this entire series has been leading up to this point. (I’m certainly not going much further back than '87… perhaps another year or two if I can find enough good stuff…)

It is, as should come as little surprise to most, my favourite album of all time. Every single track on it is so far superior to any track on almost any other album of its time or since that comparison between AFD and anything else is like comparing the performance of your favourite Lego airplane to an actual Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.

If you’ve read the books, and you should, then reasons for this are plain – five talented guys and years of hard work produced twelve perfect songs. Maybe Steven Adler couldn’t keep it together after this point, but during the recording of AFD he was right on the money. Slash and Axl, yeah yeah, we all know all about them. Of course they’re brilliant. At the time no-one could touch them (Roth, Michaels and Neil, see me after class), and whatever you may think about their recent output, they’re still world class musicians. 30 years ago, they were simply Best In Show. Izzy Stradlin was the rock (heh) the band nailed itself to (usually the drummer’s job, of course, but Adler was perhaps more stone(d) than rock.) Stradlin was the co-founder of GN’R (with Axl) and also if I recall correctly the core songwriter, and generally the glue that held the band together even when things got crazy (again, read the books – things got crazier than most humans would believe).

But the real hero of this album is Duff McKagan. That man does not put a single note wrong here, and in many cases it’s what he’s doing that makes the song so interesting. Any bassists reading this who’ve learned (properly learned, mind you) more than a couple of tracks off AFD will attest that Duff doesn’t just hit the roots and play it safe, he’s all over the place. He gets more damned mileage out of those 4 strings than most of your modern djentmeisters get out of their sub-sonic nonsense. Honestly, go and stick on “It’s So Easy” right now and listen to the bass throughout. Wonderful stuff.

Of course, we’ve all heard cover bands murder a 9 minute version of “Paradise City”, we’ve all got a little tired of hearing “Welcome to the Jungle” on US cop shows, we’ve perhaps even decided we don’t need to hear “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, “Nightrain” or “Mr. Brownstone” even one more time, but stop. Listen to them properly. If you play, learn them. Now compare them to literally anything else in the genre. This is the best that this particular thing has ever been done.

So yeah, best debut album ever? Best rock album ever? Best… album ever? For me, yes. In 30 years a handful have come close to approaching its raw, louche, electric brilliance, but none have equalled it.

Yet.

Top tracks: “My Michelle”, “Think About You”, “Rocket Queen”

Turkey of the year

Mötley Crüe - Girls Girls Girls

Meanwhile… le sigh.

Clive’s Album of the Year, 1988

Clive Murray — Thu, 25 May 2017 11:30:55 +0000

1988 was the year in the 20th century that had the most digits when written as Roman numerals: MCMLXXXVIII. So there’s that.

The Phantom of the Opera, the Lib Dems, Al-Qaeda, Fairtrade and the Tokyo Dome all became a thing, Celine Dion won Eurovision, Lester Piggott, Piper Alpha, Benazir Bhutto became the first female head of government in an Islam-dominated state (Pakistan), the Clapham Junction rail crash, the Lockerbie disaster and the first proper Internet connection was made between New Jersey and Stockholm.

Going underground were Richard Feynman, John Holmes, Kenneth Williams, Enzo Ferrari, Roger Hargreaves, Roy Kinnear, Charles Hawtrey and Roy Orbison.

In exchange we were graced with Skrillex, Rihanna, that kid who saw dead people, Adele, Lily Cole, Michael Cera, Jack Whitehall, Ron Weasley and Conchita Wurst.

Honourable mentions

Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son

I was definitely late to the Maiden party. My good friend Nick was way into them at school – logo scrawled on exercise books, patch on the back of jacket, that kind of thing – but I hadn’t even gotten properly into rock yet. Later on, of course, that all changed and for a while I was in a band that was planning to do a whole set of Maiden covers. For my money, Seventh Son is a fair way from IM’s best, but it’s undeniably still a fabulous album. Top track: “The Evil That Men Do”

It Bites - Once Around the World

It Bites were a strange confluence of odd prog throwbacks among the plastic pop of the 80s and being oddly ahead of their time. There’s no doubt that Francis Dunnery is a hell of a musician and songwriter, though. When I got into them, I really loved them, but then fell completely out of love with them for years – until their recent relaunch (featuring His Holiness John Mitchell) in fact. So if you like poppy prog with a tendency towards, shall we say, esoteric lyrics (“Plastic Dreamer”? Errr… no), then the old IB albums are worth a listen. (Otherwise stick to the newer ones, they’re in fact better.) Top track: “Kiss Like Judas”

Jean-Michel Jarre - Revolutions

What? Not all music is rock, you know. Before I got into rock music I was quite a JMJ fan, and this is a really good album. Get over it. Top track: “Revolutions”

Ozzy Osbourne - No Rest For the Wicked

A friend of mine does not dig the Ozzy at all, saying “I like singers to be able to.” I get that. Another friend was complaining about Vince Neil, saying that he doesn’t like Vince’s voice. I queried “Yet Ozzy is fine?” “Funnily enough, yes” was the reply. It’s on odd one alright. No-one is going to put Ozzy on a list of greatest singers of all time. As a frontman and general force for music, his influence and contribution is undeniable (and I don’t even like Black Sabbath. What? Say something.) This was the first appearance of the pyrotechnic Zakk Wylde on guitar, and this is an absolute CORKER. Get it. Top track: “Devil’s Daughter”

Queensrÿche - Operation: Mindcrime

It was Empire, the followup to this album, that really lit the Queensrÿche fire for me, but of course I had to go back and do the required reading, and this is definitely a great album. Concept albums that bang on about conspiracies, the New World Order, and WAKE UP SHEEPLE can grate (yes Bellamy, I’m talking to you) after a while, but this is a superb rock opera from start to finish and the twin-guitar force of Chris DeGarmo and Michael Wilton is in full effect throughout. Shame Geoff Tate has become such a toolbag of late though. Top track: “Revolution Calling”

And the winner is…

David Lee Roth - Skyscraper

OK.

Really.

I don’t know if I’m going to try and make a Clive’s Top 10 Albums of All Time, but if I did, this would be in the top half of that list.

A little background: DLR was of course the frontman for Van Halen from their seismic launch in 1977 right up to releasing the seminal 1984 in 1984. Roth left VH in 1985 due to natural causes^[1], and started a solo career which kicked off properly with the 1986 release Eat 'Em and Smile. For this Dave assembled a band the like of which has not been seen before or since – Steve Vai, fresh from his stints with Frank Zappa and Alcatrazz on guitar, the inhuman Billy Sheehan on bass and Gregg Bissonette on drums, along with a host of guest musicians. EEaS is a terrifyingly good record, but it’s not without its problems – 3 out of 10 songs are covers, two of which are more or less in the lounge style, and the sound is occasionally not as cohesive as one might like. Don’t get me wrong, it’s brilliant…

…but it isn’t Skyscraper. On this record all those problems were gone, and you can hear the songwriting gel in a way it didn’t on its predecessor. Radio smashes “Just Like Paradise” and “Damn Good” nestle comfortably alongside punchy rockers like “Hot Dog and a Shake” and the sublime “Knucklebones” and the moodier tracks “Skyscraper” and “Hina”. The production is first class, and Vai and Sheehan are on absolutely unstoppable fire.

If I had to pick something I didn’t like, it would be the album cover. Dave climbing a mountain? Don’t care. But that’s my only beef. (Aside from the CD release getting two extra crappy tracks from Dave’s first EP shoehorned onto it…)

Top tracks: “Knucklebones”, “Skyscraper”, “Damn Good”

Turkey of the year

Van Halen - OU812

Relatedly, after Roth left Van Halen, they carried on with a new singer, one Sammy Hagar. The first album he sang on came out in 1986, and I loved it. It was one of my first rock records ever. OU812 was the followup… and I can’t stand it. It’s just so dull and lifeless. Nah.

Glaring omission

Guns N’ Roses - GN’R Lies

“But Clive,” you say, “didn’t Guns N’ Roses release GN’R Lies in 1988? That’s awesome too, isn’t it?”

Well. The clue is in the question. That album is a lie.

Side one of Lies is four songs (three of which were covers) played ‘live’ in front of an audience and previously released as an EP in 1986. Side two is four acoustic songs recorded in 1988, one of which is the wonderful “Patience”.

But here’s the thing – that EP was not recorded live at all. It was recorded in a studio and then they dubbed on a huge stadium crowd afterwards. The songs also just aren’t very good.

The acoustic songs I like more, although “One in a Million” does have its own problems, lyrically speaking.

But it’s the fake live thing that irritates me enough to discount GN’R Lies from the 1988 shortlist. So there you are.

It’s more usually called “creative differences”, which is a well-known euphemism for “two or more members of the band despised each other and could no longer work together”. ↩︎

Clive’s Album of the Year, 1989

Clive Murray — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 13:21:41 +0000

In 1989 I was fifteen, and for my birthday I got my first guitar and a year’s worth of guitar lessons. Thank you eternally, Mum and Dad, RIP.

It was, it transpires, a historic turning point (yes I’m quoting Wikipedia) in politics, due to a wave of revolutions that started in Poland and swept across Europe eventually ending in the dissolution of the USSR at the end of 1991.

It was the last year of the 80s, and the last year until 2040 that, when written in Roman numerals, contains an L. Make of that what you will.

Bush Snr. entered the Oval Office, Eurosport started broadcasting, Ayatollah Khomeini really didn’t like a book, the first GPS satellite went up, Iceland ended 74 years of prohibition on beer, the Purley rail crash, Exxon Valdez, Tiananmen Square, The Hillsborough Disaster (#YNWA), a tornado killed ~1300 people in Bangladesh, riots and looting in Argentina, the Game Boy was released, Voyager 2 swung by Neptune, Denmark became the first country to legally recognise same-sex union, the Guildford Four were released, and a whole lot of way more important geopolitical stuff was going on that I, as a 15-year-old, simply ignored. The reason I don’t mention much of it in these things is it made no impact on me at the time.

We bade bon voyage to, among as always many others, Emperor Hirohito of Japan, Salvador Dalí, Ted Bundy, Sergio Leone, Mel Blanc, Laurence Olivier, Herbert von Karajan, Harry Corbett, Irving Berlin, Bette Davis and Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef).

Those arriving while those above were leaving included Anton Yelchin (d. 2016), Peaches Geldof (d. 2014), Daniel Radcliffe, Taylor Swift and lots of other no doubt excellent people whose names mean zero to me, but appear to be mostly sports people or reality TV people.

Musically things were pretty bloody zang all round. I’ve managed to pick a clear winner (just) but my usual shortlist of 5 has swollen to 10, and even that doesn’t include Alice Cooper’s Trash, W.A.S.P.‘s The Headless Children, eponymous debuts from Enuff Z’Nuff and Extreme, It Bites’ splendid Eat Me in St. Louis, L.A. Guns’ raucous Cocked & Loaded, Little Angels’ raw and lively Don’t Prey For Me or even Queen’s The Miracle.

OK. Shall we?

Honourable mentions

D-A-D - No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims

It was my good old pal Stix McFlick who introduced me to this Danish 4-piece wayyyyyy back in the day, and though they never really achieved mainstream success despite slogging away through the oft-mentioned Dark Times, those who know their work will always remember the absolutely brilliant “Sleeping My Day Away” and many others. Fun fact: Wikipedia files this album under both genres “Hard rock” and “Cowpunk”. Great fun. Top track: “Sleeping My Day Away”

Electric Boys - Funk-O-Metal Carpet Ride

I remember saying once upon a time to my guitar bud Pearl Fiasco “you’ll never get me into that funk-metal rubbish”. I was wrong, on a number of counts, and this album is still one of my faves of the period and still gets regular play time. Nice big-sounding production, too. (BTW I’m really not the only one who still has a soft spot for this album…) Top track: “All Lips N’ Hips”

Faith No More - The Real Thing

It’s impossible to properly explain the impact this record had at the time. Things were so simple – metallers listened to Metallica, Maiden, Slayer and Megadeth and wore black leather jackets, black band t-shirts, big white trainers (for reasons that still escape me) and tight black jeans. Rockers listened to Poison, Guns N Roses, Skid Row and even Bon Jovi, and wore glammed up versions of the same uniform (ripped blue jeans, cowboy boots, slightly more colourful t-shirts). Then along came Faith No More with not only a complete lack of respect for the dress code (Jim Martin aside, obv – just look at these bastards, will you?) but also a total blurring of the genre lines. Yes, I know they had been around for a while before 1989 with previous vocalist Chuck Mosley, but it’s undeniable that it was The Real Thing (the band’s first release to feature mercurial maniac Mike Patton on vocals) that broke them and guaranteed the band’s place in the annals of metal. Catchy hooky choruses yet slamming metal riffs? Check. Undeniably odd metal tunes with screamed threatening lyrics? Yep. Sombre ballads? Yeah, just about. Black Sabbath cover? Oh yes. One of the tightest and funkiest rhythm sections ever to grace a tape reel? Aw yeah. Verdict: Indispensable. (Though I’m still never going to like “Surprise! You’re Dead!”) Top track: “Falling to Pieces”

King’s X - Gretchen Goes to Nebraska

King’s X are a bit of an odd fish, band-wise. An extremely groove-adept metal power trio hailing from Springfield, Missouri, they always had some elements that sounded like nobody else. Doug Pinnick’s vocals are distinctive, for sure, as is his penchant for 12-string basses (no, not with a massive neck, it’s … oh just look it up), and guitarist Ty Tabor’s enthusiasm for altered tunings has always helped to keep their sound fresh as well. This was their second album and it’s my favourite of the nine of theirs I appear to have in my library. BTW, some label King’s X as “Christian Metal” which is lazy and incorrect, as the band’s Christian image was in fact largely manufactured by a former manager to appeal to a crossover audience. Either way, it shouldn’t matter – you don’t need to get kneebound to enjoy some good solid rock music. Top track: “Over My Head”

Mötley Crüe - Dr. Feelgood

Another record about which I can’t be particularly objective, since it was one of my first forays into the world of hard rock proper. I remember listening to the tape in my Walkman (remember the ones that only had three buttons - Play, Stop, and Fast-forward? And if you wanted to rewind you had to flip the tape over to do it? Ask your Mum, she probably had one…) as I went to my first job, scraping plates at Wimpy in Eastbourne for £1.25 an hour. I listened to it over and over and over, and loved it all. Nowadays I skip “Without You” and “Time For Change” with an alacrity that would surprise a casual observer, but at the time I drank it all in. This was Crüe at their very best. Top track: “Dr. Feelgood”

Mr. Big - Mr. Big

Well, it was the follow-up to this that won AotY for 1991, but this is where it started. Paul Gilbert had been shredding long and hard with Racer X and was widely acknowledged as simply one of the best technical players to have ever picked up a pick, and crucially, was not a twat about it. Billy Sheehan is just Billy Sheehan, and there’s nothing you can do about that. They recruited Pat Torpey on drums and Eric Martin on vocals and put out an album that combined glam rock fun with top-drawer musicianship and it’s a winner. And that opening track is still an absolute jaw-dropper. Top track: “Addicted to That Rush”

Rush - Presto

Yeah. I was surprised too, actually. Early Rush? No thanks. Can’t be doing with it. I’ve tried, and Geddy’s voice makes me want to start firing randomly into crowds of fluffy bunnies. But I picked this up on tape randomly one day and fell strangely in love with it. Top track: “Scars”

Joe Satriani - Flying in a Blue Dream

OK, so some might think this should win 1989, and while it is an astoundingly good and indispensable album, there are a number of things wrong with it. (It’s Joe’s vocals, mainly, if we’re being honest.) While I applaud the bold decision to follow 1987’s Surfing with the Alien – a 10-track purely instrumental barnstormer that changed the musical landscape – with an 18-track opus, 6 of which being vocal tracks, in hindsight I’d rather Joe had stuck to the winning formula (of course, he returned to that exact formula with spectacular results in 1992). That said, many of the instrumental tracks on here are Joe’s best work ever – the title track, “The Forgotten pt. 2”, “Back to Shalla-Bal”, “The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing” – these are all incredible tracks, and no-one’s denying that. There’s just a bit much filler in between the killers, and it’s mostly the singy ones, I’m afraid. Top track: “Flying in a Blue Dream”

Skid Row - Skid Row

Hell yes. I think my vinyl copy of this was one of my most prized possessions when I was 16 or so. I remember lending it to my first girlfriend and then getting a bit nervy when she lent it to a friend of hers to tape it. (I got it back fine without a scratch, btw.) OK, so we’ve all heard “18 & Life” and “I Remember You” a million times, but what you’ve got to remember is that this is a harder edged album that floated to the top of a sea of glam because of its heavier riffs (do excuse my metaphors) and punchier production than that of competing bands like say Cinderella or Warrant. And if you have a bad word to say about “Youth Gone Wild”, then you and I need to step outside for a moment. Top track: “Can’t Stand the Heartache”

Whitesnake - Slip of the Tongue

As the Cove himself is wont to say, ‘Here’s a song for ya’. In fact, here’s ten, and I’m willing to go on record saying that eight of them are bloody good. “The Deeper the Love” can go die a hole, but then we’re in 80s power-ballad country so it does come with the territory. And “Slow Poke Music” is just… not very good. Everything else on here, I love. Oh, did I mention that all guitars on this album are by friend of the show Steve Vai? Well they are. Adrian Battenberg apparently injured his hand and couldn’t play while they were recording the album. And apparently he injured his hand. Anyway, wrap your listening holes around “Cheap and Nasty”, “Wings of the Storm”, the reworked “Fool for Your Loving”, “Judgment Day” and the title track, and you’ll be left in no doubt that you’re left in no doubt. Solid throughout, and Coverdale is matchless as ever. Top track: “Slip of the Tongue”

And the winner is…

Aerosmith - Pump

OK, before we start - yes, Permanent Vacation is fine. Not much wrong with it at all. But this knocks it into a cocked chimp from a mile away.

Are you kidding me? There is a reason that the theme tune to Raw Power was “Love in an Elevator” for years and years. And by the way, the reason is, that song is amazing.

The album kicks off with the kick in the face that is “Young Lust” and doesn’t let up from there. There’s not a bad track on here, not by a long chalk. The closing ballad “What It Takes” is, as mentioned par for the course, but unlike pretty much every album that followed this one, Pump is not ballad-laden. The rest of the tracks are by turns blazing rockers (“Young Lust”, “My Girl”), stomping riffers (“F.I.N.E.”, “Love in an Elevator”, “The Other Side”), bluesy groovers (“Monkey on My Back”, “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even”) and swampy atmospheric growers (“Janie’s Got a Gun”, “Voodoo Medicine Man”).

10 tracks of greatness. If we’ve learned anything over this series, it’s that this is a winning formula for a rock album. Shame Aerosmith forgot this advice from this point forwards, really.

Get Pump. Love Pump. Be Pump.

Top tracks: “Love in an Elevator”, “Janie’s Got a Gun”, “Young Lust”

Turkey of the Year

Warrant - Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich

Urrrrgh.

Clive’s Album of the Year, 1990

Clive Murray — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 17:40:00 +0000

So, 1990. What happened in 1990? Um… I finished school, I suppose. Passed all my GCSEs and waved goodbye to Ratton. Errrr. Oh, I think I got my first decent guitar – a Fender HM Strat in Ice Blue. Nice.

Mr. Bean came to our televisions, the US invaded Panama, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was closed to the public, Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years, the “Pale Blue Dot” image was sent back from Voyager 1, Gorbachev became the first President of the Soviet Union, Poll Tax, Strangeways riot, Hubble, the World Health Organization declassified homosexuality as a disease (really), Windows 3.0, an author had an idea for a book, the actual goddamn Berlin Wall came down and East and West Germany were reunified, a stampede at the Hajj killed nearly 1500, Iraq annexed Kuwait and the first Gulf War kicked off, Home Alone, the Cold War formally came to an end and Margaret Thatcher resigned as British Prime Minister and was replaced by John Major.

Those heading downwards by approx 6ft included Terry-Thomas, Gordon Jackson, Greta Garbo, Dexter Gordon, David Rappaport, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, SRV, Leonard Bernstein, Art Blakey, Roald Dahl, and Conservative MP for Eastbourne, Ian Gow.

I mention Mr. Gow since I knew him personally – my Mum was a local Conservative, and worked as Ian’s secretary for a number of years, and he came to our house on many occasions. When a friend and I did some work around my Mum’s office – weeding and tidying the back yard, I think – we both received letters of thanks from Ian on House of Commons headed paper, which seemed incredibly fancy at the time. And I mention his death as he was assassinated by the IRA due to his stance on Northern Ireland and Irish independence. He was the last British MP to be killed until the murder of Jo Cox in 2016.

I recall wandering around the house playing my guitar, the aforementioned Fender, and idly flicking on Ceefax for something to do and seeing the headline “MP Gow killed in bomb blast”, and thinking “Oh wow. There must be another MP with the surname Gow. I wonder if they’re related…” before reading further and discovering the truth.

Oddly, a few years later I joined a local band called May 19. The singer was a photographer for the local newspaper and his assignment on the morning of July 30th 1990 was to take pictures of Mr. Gow at some local event. It was only when Ian failed to arrive that he contacted his office and they told him what had happened.

Musically things were awesome. Like really really awesome. While the field isn’t as hotly contested as '91 or '92, there are still lots of players on the board. So here are the runners and riders…:

Honourable mentions

Extreme - Pornograffitti

I’d missed Extreme’s self-titled debut at the time, so this was my first exposure to Portugese shredwizard Nuno Bettencourt and his gang, and it blew my mind clean off. Thanks once again to Teutonic producer-in-chief Michael Wagener the sound of this record is gigantic, and this was Nuno at the absolute peak of his pinnacle. Gary Cherone managed to write some actual lyrics (seriously, going back to the first album, have you actually listened to “Smoke Signals” or “Play With Me”? Those aren’t songs, they are largely just LISTS OF CONNECTED THINGS) and the whole album just kills. Well OK, not the whole album – you can bail on “When I First Kissed You” and “Song For Europe”, but the rest of it is riffmungous magic. Top track: “Suzi (Wants Her All Day What?)”

Richie Kotzen - Fever Dream

Richie Kotzen was one of Mike Varney’s original Shrapnel shredders and at the tender age of 19 he put out a face-melting eponymous album of wicked instrumentals. However, he followed that up the following year with Fever Dream and added vocals, giving space to the wailing and revealing that by cracky this boy can sing. He’s put out about a billion and nine solo albums since then, not even considering his work with Poison, Mr. Big and lately The Winery Dogs, but for me this will always be the high water mark. The production has dated pretty badly, but the sense of fun hasn’t, for me at least. Top track: “She”

Love/Hate - Blackout in the Red Room

This is one of those albums I cannot possibly be objective about, I love it far too much. The musicians aren’t virtuosos, the lyrics are sometimes clichéd and occasionally downright problematic (“met a little girl / just thirteen / she’s a knock-down blue-eyed slut psycho-virgin tease” from the track “Rock Queen” springs to mind), and the whole thing is just so 90s rock it hurts, but I cannot distance myself even now from hearing this when I was 17 or so and loving it SO much. The album has a harder-hitting slightly punkier edge than a lot of the stuff around at the time (Winger, Warrant, Poison, the rest of the spandex and hairspray brigade…) and it really feels like these guys mean it. Plus, this was the first real band I saw live in all of ever – they were opening for Skid Row at Docklands Arena and from the moment they came on stage I knew I would love this band. Happily in recent years, my own band have opened for Jizzy and a couple of recent incarnations of Love/Hate and I tell you this, that man can still bloody do it. Top track: “Mary Jane”

Lynch Mob - Wicked Sensation

Well, now. Lynch Mob, eh? Yeah. See, George Lynch is utterly amazing, but I just never could get on board with Dokken. Just no. Cannot. Uh uh. Nope. But this… this is an amazing metal record. There is not one bad track on this, and it kicks every single variety of ass you could care to mention. In almost any other year, this would take the competition to the cleaners. Top track: “Wicked Sensation”

Pantera - Cowboys From Hell

What else to say about Pantera? Not much that wasn’t covered previously, really. This was the breakout album for the Texan four-piece, and pretty much invented and established the subgenre of groove metal. Fun fact: breakout album? Yes. Debut album? Nope. They released four albums before this one, three of which were glam. Yes, glam. Go look it up if you don’t believe me. (I’ve never listened to any of them, they might be awesome. I somehow doubt it though…) In almost any other year, this would floor all comers. Top track: “Cemetery Gates”

Queensrÿche - Empire

Oh my god, this album. I’d seen Guitar World and GFTPM banging on about Chris DeGarmo and Michael Wilton all over the shop, and finally one day heard “Jet City Woman” somewhere, at which point I simply had to have this album. I’ve heard faithful 'Rÿche fans say this is where they went commercial, and nothing can ever top Operation: Mindcrime or even Rage for Order, and that’s their opinion to which they are welcome. For me Empire is unsurpassable, and in almost any other year it would have thrashed the competition with the stoutest of ibstocks. Top track: “Jet City Woman”

Thunder - Back Street Symphony

Awwww, Thunder! You have to love them. Not only did they keep on slogging all the way through The Dark Times, they genuinely seem to still be having a great time doing it. Even now! This album was their debut, and it’s really great fun. Top track: “She’s So Fine”

Winger - In the Heart of the Young

OK, yes. Po-faced poodle-y hair metal that took itself too seriously could perhaps be epitomised by Winger, but this is still a great album if you’re into that sort of thing. And I am. Guitarist Reb Beach was absolutely on fire when this album was recorded, and every solo is a melodic joy. You just need to skip the mawkishly terrible piano ballad “Miles Away” and then somehow use strong magnets or drugs or both to wipe the bit of your brain that knows about even the existence of the shockingly ill-advised rap bit in “Baptized By Fire”, and this is a cracker. Fun fact: “Rainbow in the Rose” features my favourite ever recorded note, at 4:05. Top track: “Easy Come, Easy Go”

And the winner is…

Steve Vai - Passion and Warfare

Whooo-whee. OK.

To set the scene, it was (obv) 1990. Melodic instrumental rock guitar was an established thing, thanks largely to Joe Satriani, and to a lesser extent the Shrapnel crowd, though they were in many cases trick cyclists going for notes-per-song rather than melody and songwriting. But Joe really had set the bar pretty high with 1987’s Grammy-nommed Surfing With the Alien (and to a lesser extent his mixed bag 1989 follow-up Flying in a Blue Dream, to which we will come in due course). Vai had firmly made his name playing with Frank Zappa then Alcatrazz before carving his name deep in the fabric of rock with stellar performances on the two classic David Lee Roth albums, Eat 'Em and Smile and Skyscraper. He’d even put out a quirky self-produced solo album Flex-Able in 1984.

So, were we ready for his first full proper major solo release?

Hell, no. There’s no possible way anyone could have been ready for this thing. This didn’t just change the playing field, it tore the whole playing field up into little pieces, ate them, vomited them out of the window, and then somehow morphed the idea of there even having ever been a playing field into a magical astral unicorn of music upon which you were suddenly riding through fifteen new dimensions you’d never heard of before while simultaneously experiencing the sonic equivalent of LSD, a really nice glass of Chianti, an orgasm, a birthday, the feeling of sun on your face on the first warm day in Spring after spending the Winter in the Outer Hebrides, MDMA, some incredibly strong cheddar (like, really strong, like not just “Strength: 5” on the packet, but like, really strong…), and a back massage ALL AT ONCE.

Oh, and while he was writing this album, Vai also invented the 7-string guitar, so you know – you’re welcome.

I bought this album pretty much as soon as it came out, and still to this day, 27 years later, I am still hearing new things in it. For me it is like Beethoven intertwined with Brahms, wrapped in Bach and dipped in a thick gooey coating of Mozart.

Hyperbole? No. I honestly could listen to this forever. I’d have a hard time separating this from the other candidate for favourite album of all time, and if it was a burning house scenario I’m pretty sure I could get two CDs in my pockets, so I’m just not going to pick between them, and you can’t make me. (More on the other in due course.)

In terms of instrumental guitar rock albums this has to be one of the most important records ever made, and it could have been made at no other time, and by no-one else.

Regardless of what I do or don’t think about Vai’s more recent output, Passion and Warfare remains a perfect star in the rock music heavens, shining light (without heat) through time and space onto every musical stave to contain instrumental rock music since that day.

I haven’t been as moved by a guitar album since. That is… not until 2016. (More on that, of course, in due course.)

Top tracks: “I Would Love To”, “Sisters”, “Blue Powder”

Turkey of the Year

Iron Maiden - No Prayer for the Dying

Jesus.

Clive’s Album of the Year, 1991

Clive Murray — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 18:09:53 +0000

In 1991 I lost my virginity and got a 49cc moped. And the first Gulf War began. So, you know. A mixed bag there.

Street Fighter II hit the arcades, the Birmingham Six were released, former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, Boris Yeltsin, Sonic the Hedgehog, TBL announced the WWW, the Soviet Union fell to bits, Linus Torvalds announced he was working on an operating system and a really old dude was found.

The fallen included Steve Clark, Leo Fender, Johnny Thunders, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, Gene Roddenberry, Robert Maxwell and a man from Zanzibar originally named Farrokh Bulsara, who you may have known better as Freddie Mercury.

In exchange we got Pixie Lott, Ed Sheeran, Jedward and many other no doubt wonderful people who are, I’m afraid, still far too young for me to have the tiniest inkling who they are or what they are for. (Including the delightfully-if-mystifyingly-monikered Fetty Wap.)

We’re smack bang (biff, boom, crack) in the Golden Age of Hard Rock here so the shortlist is once again impossible to whittle down as much as I’d like, though this time there is least a clear winner. Here, then, are the top 12 in the Class of ’91…

Honourable mentions

Danger Danger - Screw It!

Extremely good fun, this was, and it was where I first discovered shredwizard Andy Timmons. Place tongue firmly in cheek, remove all po from your face, and enjoy it. Top track: “Beat the Bullet”

Enuff Z’Nuff - Strength

Enuff Z’Nuff’s eponymous debut was fun, but on this follow-up record Donnie Vie and Chip Z’Nuff really nailed the songwriting to the back wall. With classics like “Heaven Or Hell”, “Baby Loves You”, “Blue Island” and “The World Is A Gutter”, this is a fun, bouncy rock record that was never far from my CD player back in the day and is still in my car even in 2017, no guff. Great. Top track: “Strength”

Metallica - Metallica

I came to the Metallica party late, and kind of thought some of Ride the Lightning was OK, but it was the self-titled album (also known as The Black Album) that really lit the fire for me. And regardless how many times you’ve heard cover bands plod through “Enter Sandman”, it’s still one of the best metal songs of all time, no doubt, and I will brook no goddamn argument on that. Hetfield is at the top of his game throughout this record – the songwriting, the vocals, the absolute jackhammer riffing, the man has it all. And Kirk… well, he has a wha pedal. Almost any other year, this would have won by two country miles at least. Classic. Top track: “Sad But True”

Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears

And speaking of being at the top of one’s game, this is perhaps Ozzy’s finest moment. This was absolutely huge in 1991, and it hasn’t gotten any smaller. Not every single track is a zinger, but you can’t deny the riffage when Zakk Wylde gets down to it. Almost any other year, this would have won by at least one length of the pool. Classic. Top track: “No More Tears“

Primus - Sailing the Seas of Cheese

When I saw these freaks on Raw Power, I just had to go out and buy the album. There’s been nothing like Primus before or since, and that is a good thing. Very hard to explain, so I shan’t try. Go find “John the Fisherman” or “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” on the yootoob if you want further information. Brilliant, in my opinion, though occasionally slightly chewy listening. Top track: “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver”

Dan Reed Network - The Heat

Dan and his Network put out some really good pop-infused rock albums back in the day, and for my money this is the best of them. Ignore the odd choice to cover Pink Floyd’s “Money” and you’re onto a winner. Top track: “Baby Now I”

David Lee Roth - A Little Ain’t Enough

Much to be said about this album. If you know any DLR history then you’ll know that his first two solo albums after splitting with Van Halen were absolute tours de absolute force, featuring the incredible guitar and bass partnership of Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan. Well, they’d both gone their own ways after the previous album Skyscraper, so Dave needed a new band, and by cracky did he get one. Recruiting the Bissonette brothers on drums and bass is never a bad move, but the USP of this album was getting wunderkind Jason Becker to step into the shoes recently vacated by Vai. It’s hard to quantify just how hard that must have been – taking over the guitar slot from the fastest rising star in the rock guitar skies, but it’s testament to the chutzpah and genius of Becker that he did it, and absolutely smashed it. His guitar work on this album is nothing short of astounding, and to have knocked it that far out of the park with Vai’s shadow looming over him can’t have been easy. Of course, as is well documented elsewhere, it was during the recording of this album that Jason was diagnosed with ALS and given only a handful of years to live. It was the end of his guitar playing career, though he still to this day composes music using assistive technology, which is pretty amazing. Becker aside, this is quintessential Roth – indispensable rock music with tongue firmly in cheek. Almost any other year, this would have won by a lap and a half. Classic. Top track: “A Lil’ Ain’t Enough”

Saigon Kick - Saigon Kick

This was one of the two first CDs I ever bought, the other being Richie Kotzen’s second album Fever Dream. I bought them both at the same time from PowerPlay in Eastbourne (you know, the one that was opposite the library?) then rushed home and put them in my brand new CD player. (One after the other, obv.) Unfortunately my CDs are now all in storage so I can’t check for sure that the enormous guitar sound was thanks to 90s rock uberproducer Michael Wagener, but I’m sure he at least had a hand in it. Anyway, as po-faced as it is at times, this is a cracking hard rock album with hooky choruses, punk overtones here and there and some spicy guitar work from Jason Bieler. Nice. Top track: “What You Say”

The Scream - Let It Scream

So there was Mr. Big, and they had the amazing Paul Gilbert on guitar. And before that, he was in a band called Racer X, which was a neo-classical shred-metal over-the-top affair. The kind of stuff they did necessitated two guitars, and that meant someone who could keep up with Pablo, and that was Bruce Bouillet. Well once Paul had a couple of years under his belt in Mr. Big, Bruce teamed up with the amazing John Corabi on vocals and formed The Scream, releasing an under-supported under-appreciated but absolutely top shelf hard rock album, and this is it. Corabi has one of the all-time best voices in hard rock, and he’s still going strong (pick up The Dead Daisies 2015 album Revolucion if you want proof), and this is bloody great stuff. Almost any other year, this would beat the competition into the dust. Classic. Top track: “Tell Me Why”

Skid Row - Slave to the Grind

Skid Row’s eponymous debut was right at the pinnacle of what glammy hard rock could and should be in 1989, but the follow-up was a real landmark in terms of songwriting maturity and simple rock longevity. Yes, there’s a track called “Get the F*** Out” but as Seb says just before the solo, “F*** you if you can’t take a joke.” The lyrical progression from the debut album to tracks here like “Quicksand Jesus”, “Livin’ On a Chain Gang” and even “Monkey Business” shows some proper growth, and the riffs are harder and tighter than they were first time out. And the production and guitar sounds are absolutely crushing. Oh look… Hi Michael! Almost any other year, this would have felled the competition before the first bell. Classic. Top track: “Quicksand Jesus”

Dweezil Zappa - Confessions

First up, I never dug Frank Zappa. It’s probably a failing in me, and I have tried on multiple occasions, but I just can’t get into it. But in the early 90s when I was reading guitar magazines fanatically every month, his son Dweezil popped up here and there and was by all accounts a fabulous musician in his own right and was trying to step out of his father’s shadow. (I recall an interview entitled “The Son Also Rises”.) So having read a number of long in-depth interviews with Dweezil in Guitar World et al, I headed directly for PowerPlay in Eastbourne and handed over my (not particularly) hard-earned cash for a copy of Confessions. It had guest spots from Nuno Bettencourt, Zakk Wylde, Warren DeMartini and more! The magazines said it was amazing! Guess what? It is. Still. Top track: “Maybe Tonight”

And the winner is…

Mr. Big - Lean Into It

OK, so we touched upon the wonder of Mr. Big earlier, so here it is. Paul Gilbert had made his name and put down the miles with Racer X and was the risingest star in the shred heavens at the time. Billy Sheehan was routinely voted the best bass player of all time, including the entirety of the future, and having seen him live a handful of times I can assure you the man is not a human being, because they just can’t do the stuff he does. (Billy I was already well aware of from the David Lee Roth albums.) Pat Torpey and Eric Martin were unknown quantities to me, but to be honest the guitar magazines were shouting so hard about Paul and Billy that it could have been Pat Butcher on drums and Eric Morecambe on vocals and I would have bought this.

As rabid as I am about this music, I have very few albums I would call “perfect”. You know, even something as awesome as Slave to the Grind has some pony track like “Mudkicker” on it. Pornograffitti has “When I First Kissed You”. Blackout In The Red Room has “Hell, CA”. So I mean like, there’s maybe three or so, and right now I can only think of two.

This is one.

Every single note, every single vocal, every single word, every single cymbal, every single key change on this album is 1991 rock crystallised into its densest and most perfect form. You know how you wish you could go back to 1970 and oil John Bonham’s bass drum pedal before they recorded “Since I’ve Been Loving You”? You know how you wish you could go back to 1994 and tell Jeff Buckley that skinny dipping and heroin are probably best enjoyed on different evenings? Well if I could go back to 1991 to when these guys were recording Lean Into It I would just stay inside the time machine and hope like hell that my very presence isn’t somehow changing the riff to “My Kinda Woman” by some kind of weird butterfly effect.

I got the tab book to this album and learned to play over half of it over the years, and that has destroyed none of the magic, the way it has with a lot of music I’ve learned. This album is magical, ethereal, and should be kept in a sealed vault somewhere under Switzerland as the ideal measure of “exactly one rock album”.

I’ve pretty much worn out the keys that form the word “perfect” during this review, but honestly, this album does so much so well so consistently that it is absolutely perfectly justified.

This may be the best of the best. If the house was on fire, and I for some reason could only grab two CDs to spend the rest of my life listening to, this would be the second. (The first, well, it’s coming. Everything starts somewhere.)

Top tracks: “Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy”, “Green-Tinted Sixties Mind”, “My Kinda Woman”

Turkey of the Year

Guns N’ Roses - Use Your Illusion I & II

For f***'s sake.

No, don’t even.

SRSLY.

DO NOT.

Don’t even start with me about “You Could Be Mine”, “Civil War” or Dawkins help us “November Rain”. Just cut the crap.

Are those amazing songs? Yes! Of course they are! No-one’s doubting that for a moment. But shut your yap for a second… how many tracks are on the really good albums that you remember forever? Imma say 10 or 11 is ideal. 12 is OK if you have 12 really good ones, but generally you could probably trim one or two.

You know what’s too much, particularly when people have been waiting for four years? THIRTY. THIRTY SONGS IS TOO MUCH. Especially when AT LEAST HALF OF THEM ARE AWFUL.

“Shotgun Blues”? “Get in the Ring”? Are you kidding me? “Perfect Crime”? What even is that? It sounds like someone recorded Slash checking his guitar was in tune and then excreted vocals on it from 20 storeys up. “Garden of Eden”? “My World”? Oh just f*** the f***ing f*** off.

Look, you can make a really pretty good album out of this total mess if you throw away about 18-20 songs. Honestly, there’s some great stuff here. “Yesterdays”, “Bad Obsession”, “Dust N’ Bones”, “Pretty Tied Up”? All really good.

I know what this needs! A cover of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door!”

Jesus f***ing wept.

Clive’s Album of the Year 1992

Clive Murray — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 11:00:00 +0000

Right. This is going to be a long one, so strap in. Get a coffee, or a beer, or a whiskey, or a cigar. Or all of them if you think it’ll help. But first, our usual business…

In 1992, I turned 18 and joined my second band, a heavy metal outfit called Ugly Seed. Excellent fun, that was. I finished college and failed the absolute Jesus out of my A-levels (two Ns and a U), and so started working full-time in a soap factory in my home town of Eastbourne. The Atari 2600 was discontinued, Boutros-Boutros Ghali became UN Secretary General, George Bush Snr. boked all over the Prime Minister of Japan, the Cold War was officially declared over, the Maastricht Treaty was signed, founding the European Union, Mike Tyson was convicted of rape and jailed, Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 16 life terms in prison (of which he served only two years before being killed in the showers), Windows 3.1, Clinton (Mr.) won the election to become POTUS, the whites in South Africa finally voted to end apartheid, the Rodney King riots kicked off in LA, Black Wednesday, the world didn’t end, and Q-Tip had a bad annus.

Lots of people died. Among them: Isaac Asimov, Sam Kinison, Frankie Howerd, Benny Hill, Marlene Dietrich, Jeff Porcaro, John Cage, Denholm Elliott and voice of Winnie the Pooh, Sterling Holloway.

However, we were blessed with John Boyega (Finn in Episode VII), Joffrey, and… um… Miley Cyrus. Really those are the only names on the list that I recognise. Sorry. I’m old.

And so we come to the main business, and I’ve known since I started this thing over three years ago that 1992 was going to be the most difficult year to do. As mentioned in The Dark Times, this was the end of the golden era of hard rock but at the time we didn’t know it was the end. Every shredder with a pout and spray-on trousers was getting signed up and sent out on arena tours, and if your hair was huge, probably so were you.

Albums that were initially shortlisted but didn’t make the cut include Alice in Chains - Dirt, Lynch Mob - Lynch Mob, Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine, Blues Saraceno - Plaid, Saigon Kick - The Lizard, The Shamen - Boss Drum and Thunder - Laughing on Judgement Day.

Even so, the list just cannot be whittled down to the usual pool of 6, so here are the best 12 - yes twelve - of that magical year.

Honourable mentions

Barenaked Ladies - Gordon

Ah, it was a strange time. I’d discovered that I have anxiety disorder and was off work for a short period due to debilitating panic attacks, and was living on a good friend’s floor for a little while as I couldn’t handle being alone even for a short time. Sometime around then, he introduced me to Canadian songsmiths Barenaked Ladies, and I immediately adored their humour, their musicianship and their endlessly inventive and clever lyrics. This was their debut album, and it is hard to beat. Such heart, so melody, much clever, wow. Top track: “Brian Wilson”

Jan Cyrka - Beyond the Common Ground

So as mentioned last time, Jan graduated from stunt guitarist for Zodiac Mindwarp to do his own solo thing. This was his debut solo release, and while it’s a little more raw than the follow-up Spirit I think it’s actually a better record, and it’s just more fun. Top track: “On the Contrary”

Extreme - III Sides to Every Story

Riiiiight. So. I gather that debates still rage on fora about how much of the huge sound of Extreme’s 1990 smash Pornograffitti was down to legendary producer Michael Wagener and how much was the input of bonsai guitarist Nuno Bettencourt. (My 2p-worth? Michael did most of it, if not all. He didn’t make just one amazing sounding record in this period, go look at the list if you want proof. FWIW I adore Nuno as a guitarist – I just think he’s a better player and songwriter than he is a producer.) Anyway, on this album, following the double platinum success of Porno and riding the wave of hard rock excess and ego, i) Nuno decided to sit in the producer’s chair and ii) the band decided on an ambitious “three-sided” semi-concept album, which kind of works. For my money, they should have ditched the loftier tracks and stuck with the format of the first “side”, i.e. the hard rock songs. Some of those are absolute belters, mind, and the album as a whole is definitely worth your time. Top track: “Rest in Peace”

Faith No More - Angel Dust

FNM have always been a difficult one. While some of their stuff flies to the very top of the genius pole, other tracks are just unlistenable nonsense, and this has been the case on pretty much every release. Angel Dust, though, is a very cohesive album and is perhaps the best recorded synergy between Mike Patton’s unhinged persona and Jim Martin’s unstoppable riffage. Only one or two skip-tracks on here, and when it’s good it’s very very good. Top track: “Midlife Crisis“

Peter Gabriel - Us

A friend and I used to frequently argue about which was better of Gabriel’s two-letter albums, 1986’s So or 1992’s Us (a problem which has been compounded further by 2002’s Up), the answer to which of course is So. That doesn’t mean that this isn’t absolutely brilliant though. (Hint: it is.) Top track: “Blood of Eden”

King’s X - King’s X

I knew of King’s X and their splendid sophomore record Gretchen Goes to Nebraska, and had heard one track of this eponymous release on the soundtrack to “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” (non-heinous) so picking this up was a no-brainer. Doug Pinnick’s unique vocal and bass stylings and Ty Tabor’s always always interesting guitar work make this a joy from start to finish. Top track: “Black Flag”

Love/Hate - Wasted in America

Love/Hate’s debut Blackout in the Red Room was then and is still one of my favourite albums of all time, and if anything the follow-up is more cohesive and better put together. One absolutely awful track (“Social Sidewinder”), a bunch of crackers, and one anthem for the ages (“Don’t F*** With Me”). Top track: “Wasted in America”

Megadeth - Countdown to Extinction

On almost any other year this would win, and by some margin. There is not a moment or a note wasted on this album, with Dave Mustaine sneering relentlessly down his microphone at you for 47 minutes while perhaps the tightest recorded metal rhythm section ever pound out crisp riff after riff and the pyrotechnic Marty Friedman soars over it all at the absolute height of his angular-yet-melodic powers. The then ubiquitous “Symphony of Destruction” is a masterclass of metal songwriting and worth the price of admission alone, and it’s not even close to being the best song on the album. Really, put this album in any other year and it would be in the bag, and the bag would be sewn up. In 1992 though, the field is just too crazy, and not everything can fit on the top of the podium. Sorry, Dave. Top track: “Foreclosure of a Dream”

And the winners are…

I spent ages on this. Weeks. I agonised. I fretted. I consulted with my longest serving music friend and we put in literal hours of consultation, and between us we just couldn’t break the deadlock. Such a golden year was this for the music I love, that there is simply no alternative to the FOUR-WAY TIE I now present. Honestly, we tried.

Dream Theater - Images and Words

You have to remember, it was 1992. Shred had existed for years (Malmsteen, Becker, Gilbert, all the Shrapnel label fellas) and prog had for decades, though I’d never really listened to any of it. And then one day someone showed up with a tape of Images and Words, and it blew my mind clean off. I’m aware that it wasn’t their debut album, but it was the first with singer James LaBrie and it was, I think, the first to get proper label backing and promotion. Anyway, I knew nothing about it.

The intro to “Pull Me Under” is long. It takes quite a while to build up to full steam, but it’s never boring, and when that first heavy riff crunches in it’s like a punch in the eye. In a good way. From there the album just goes from sublime to ridiculous – see “Take the Time” and “Metropolis” for details.

I’d never heard musicianship like it from a whole band at once before – perhaps the closest I’d heard was the interplay between Paul Gilbert and Billy Sheehan in Mr. Big or Sheehan and Vai on the early David Lee Roth albums, but this wasn’t just rock with shred in it, this was 8 minute prog epics with entire sections of simultaneous virtuosic extravagance from every member yet still melodic and singable. And the solos, oh my bleeding god, the solos. Nowadays I can’t get excited about Dream Theater and John Petrucci in particular, but in 1992 this was absolute sorcery. A must-have album.

Top tracks: “Take the Time”, “Metropolis”, “Under a Glass Moon”

Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power

F*** me. This is how you do metal. OK, so it turns out that vocalist Phil Anselmo might be at best a bit of a tool and at worst some kind of white supremacist, but you can’t deny his output on this album is nothing short of mindbending. Gone are the Rob-Halford-esque high squeals that date the previous album Cowboys From Hell so much, and here is a voice that commands and delivers power from start to finish.

Again, it’s possible in this day and age to be a little concerned with lyrics that constantly bang on about demanding respect and claiming power, as these can be somewhat right-wing themes, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for now and look at the album as a whole. We’ve covered Phil’s vocal performance, and it’s unparalleled. So much attitude and grit without ever resorting to death growls, and rarely going for the high screams that can just sound like parody. So he’s solid.

Vinnie Paul on drums is just a total and undeniable groove machine. At this time I’d never heard metal have anything resembling this much groove - 1992 remember. Your big metal drummers at the time were Lars Ulrich (f***’s sake) and Charlie Benante from Anthrax who is absolutely incredible, but in a different way. Vinnie throws pop and jazz tricks like skipped beats, rimshot grooves and offbeat hi-hats into straight out metal songs turning them into something new entirely. Rex Brown on bass is kind of in the Noel Redding role here, playing it solid and straight for the most part and being the guide-rope for everyone else to fly by, and solid is absolutely the word. Not a note out of place, every groove held down like concrete.

So then, “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott on guitar. So much has been said about him elsewhere that to repeat it all here would be largely redundant, but this guy belongs up on a special unique plinth for rule-breaking cavaliers in rock guitar, a plinth that in my mind he shares with only two other players – Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix. Technique aside (and he had that in spades), it’s the constant sense of fun and disregard for constrictive musical theory that put Darrell so far removed from his peers. Gnarly, dude. RIP, melonfarmer.

Vulgar Display of Power remains for me the high water mark for heavy metal albums, and by it shall all others ever be measured.

Top tracks: “Mouth For War”, “This Love”, “Walk”

Joe Satriani - The Extremist

It was Satch’s 1987 release Surfing With the Alien that earned him his first grammy nomination and which blew the world of instrumental guitar wide open, and rightly so. His 1989 follow-up Flying in a Blue Dream trod some new, slightly shaky ground, with Joe taking lead vocals on some songs in between the instrumentals with (if I’m honest) mixed results.

So in 1992 Joe went back to the previous formula of 10 instrumental tracks, and crikey, did he deliver.

Recruiting Matt and Gregg Bissonette on bass and drums respectively, and legendary producer Andy Johns, Joe created what is in my mind his best album of all time. From the moment I first saw the video for “Summer Song” on Raw Power to getting home with the CD and feverishly ripping off the cellophane right up to listening through it again today as I write this, it is an album of perfect guitar music. Joe’s later albums have become somewhat ballad-heavy (a malaise I think of as “The Aerosmith Affliction”) and prone to way too many mid-tempo major-key 4-minute chunks of not much, but every track on The Extremist would stand out as the best track on most other albums you’d be lucky enough to own. This truly is all killer, no bull, and you can take that to the bridge.

There is an element of “Let’s Name a Song With Joe” going on here, it’s true. “Summer Song”? “Motorcycle Driver”? Come on Joe, you can do better than that. Mind you, I’d rather have that than what you get with a lot of instrumentalists… generic bumwater like “Shifting Sands of the Soul”, “Beyond the Vale of My Mind”, “Wandering in the Ether” or “Behind the Great Unknown, Just Down a Bit, Near the Lake of Mystery, No, Keep Going, You’ll Know It When You See It” all of which translate directly as “It’s not really about anything but this sounds sort of deep”. (And Joe’s song naming problem didn’t get really bad until 2002, when he actually named a song “Seven String”…)

But anyway, balls to that, we’re not here to read the titles are we? We’re here for the songs. And that’s what you’ve got here, friends and noodles, SONGS. Many instrumental guitarists will shart out 40 minutes worth of technically excellent playing without so much as a melodic hook among any of it, but this is a collection of ten actual songs, GOOD songs, ones that you can even actually hum later. I recommend this even if you’re not particularly into guitar. It’s just good music.

Top tracks: “Why”, “Friends”, “War”

T-Ride - T-Ride

People fall into two categories: people who have never heard of T-Ride, and people who absolutely loved them and still to this day cannot work out why they weren’t the biggest band of their time.

See, remember Joe Satriani mentioned above? Well he purty good on dat ole geetar, y’dig? And not only that but he was also a guitar teacher. Yeah. If you’re a guitar player, you may have heard of some of his pupils – Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett (Metallica), Larry LaLonde (Primus) and Alex Skolnick (Testament) number among them. One you probably haven’t heard of though is Jeff/Geoff Tyson (used to go by the former, now appears to go by the latter, go figure) of T-Ride.

Anyway, amid no fanfare at all, this album got released. The first I heard of it was when meeting some friends in a pub and hearing them saying stuff like “Have you heard that song ‘Zombies From Hell’?” and wondering what they were on about. I eventually cadged a tape copy of it off someone to see what all the fuss was about and once again, set my best boots to f***ed.

There has literally never been anything like it before or since. Read that again. It’s true.

They were a 3-piece outfit that produced some of the grooviest rock tunes I’ve ever heard, with amazing vocal harmonies and (in 1992, remember) no guitar solos. What Tyson did instead was sprinkle little fills in between the vocals here and there, any one of which I’d probably have to spend a month woodshedding to get even vaguely up to speed. His rhythm playing too… I’ve never heard the like. I still listen to the album and just don’t know what he’s doing. I mean, I hear it… and I go “Yeah… but what is he doing?” If I knew, I would… do it.

Check out “Zombies From Hell” on YouTube, why don’t you? Dawkins knows you won’t be able to buy the album any more even if you want to.

The story that I half-remember is that the record company didn’t have any faith in them, didn’t promote the album, it didn’t sell, and the band got canned in the wake of bad sales and the impending march of grunge (see The Dark Times passim).

So all we got was this. 34 precious minutes of wonderment that was just too far ahead of its time to live.

We shall not see its like again. Cherish it. Love it. Cover it in chocolate sauce and lay with it in sin if the mood takes you. (I know it does me.)

Top tracks: “Zombies From Hell”, “Backdoor Romeo”, “Hit Squad”

Turkey of the Year

Electric Boys - Groovus Maximus

Balls, this was. Shame, as the first one was excellent.

Clive’s Album of the Year 2015

Clive Murray — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 16:16:49 +0000

In 2015 I left my two-year contract in Westminster to go work for a Jimmy Wales venture, and the nearly 2-year wait for my BlacKat DC7 finally came to an end. It was both the International Year of Light, and of Soils. Something for everyone there, then.

The Charlie Hebdo shooting happened, an earthquake hit Nepal killing over 9000 people, Sepp Blatter, Greek money bother, NASA did a flyby of Pluto and found liquid water on Mars, Volkswagen were caught rigging emissions tests, a stampede at Mecca killed over 2200 people, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched and landed a reusable rocket, and there was further general increasing unpleasantness in the Middle East.

Off to Valhalla (or their designated equivalent) went (as always, etc.) Leonard Nimoy, Terry Pratchett, Ben E. King, Ruth Rendell, B. B. King, Christopher Lee, Mr. Steed (Patrick Macnee), Omar Sharif, Cilla Black, Batgirl (Yvonne Craig), Wes Craven, Jackie Collins, Phil Taylor, Jonah Lomu, Scott Weiland, Jimmy Hill and of course Lemmy.

Honourable mentions

Furyon - Lost Salvation

Brighton metallers Furyon’s second album is as good as the first, sprinkled liberally as it is with Chris Green’s crackling guitar work. Shame he left the band after this album, as he’s going to be tough to replace. Top track: “Lost Salvation”

Lonely Robot - Please Come Home

The long-awaited solo album project from British prog mastermind John Mitchell (It Bites, Arena, Kino, Frost*) is nothing short of genius. My band happened to be at John’s studio recording our EP while John was working on this and we got to hear some of it before it was released. It’s absolutely top-drawer stuff, and I’m eagerly awaiting the follow-up. C’mon John, what’s the hold-up? You busy or something? Top track: “God vs. Man”

Mumford & Sons - Wilder Mind

Yeah yeah. We’ve done that before, I’m sure. I like the Mumfords and you can stuff it. On this, their third album, they’ve dropped the banjo-and-waistcoat trappings and just written some songs. I like them. You might too, if you give them a try. Top track: “Believe”

Plini - The End of Everything

Aussie wunderkind Plini goes from strength to strength, and in 2015 he completed his trilogy of EPs, the previous two being Sweet Nothings and Other things. Sounds like just the thing. This guy deserves every ounce of the recognition he’s getting in guitar spheres right now, and I hope to catch him live one day. This is his best stuff yet. Top track: “Paper Moon”

Teramaze - Her Halo

Nope, I hadn’t either. I completely forget how I happened across this prog-metal outfit from Down Under, but happen I did, and this is some great stuff. Sort of reminiscent of early Dream Theater without half the pretension. Great singer too. Top track: “For the Innocent”

And the winner is…

Coheed and Cambria - The Color Before the Sun

Well, now. What can I say about C&C that hasn’t been said copiously elsewhere? If you like prog, or even just interesting rock music, you’ve probably heard of them. If you’re anything like me (and I know I am*) you’ve probably got every one of their CDs and don’t plan on stopping any time soon.

Unusually, this is their eighth full length album, yet their first non-concept album. Again, if you know anything about them you’ll know that their previous output is effectively the soundtrack to The Amory Wars, a series of sci-fi comics and graphic novels written by the band’s frontman Claudio Sanchez, and is extraordinarily good taken with or without that alongside.

So can they do it when they don’t have a plot to follow? Of course they can. This is some of their catchiest work too, and that’s saying something. Sanchez can’t half write a melody and a hook. So if you thought they sounded interesting before, but didn’t want to buy into that concept nonsense, get this. In fact, just get it generally. It’s brilliant.

* Ta, iffy50.

Top tracks: “Island”, “From Here to Mars”, “You Got Spirit, Kid”

No Turkey of the Year for 2015, as there just wasn’t anything in my collection from the year that I found disappointing. Perhaps I bought less music, or perhaps I just got a bit more discerning about what I shelled out for. (Yes kids, music costs money, and so it should.)

One side note though: I had Muse’s Drones listed as a possible honourable mention contender. I mentioned this to a friend, who said that they make him physically sick. I said yeah, Matt Bellamy’s constant hectoring to WAKE UP SHEEPLE can get a bit tiresome after a while, and he made his feelings very clear. Quoth he: “F*** off you middle class post alt rock prick”.

Look Them In The Eye

Clive Murray — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 13:47:06 +0000

Right, stop what you’re doing and listen closely.

If you go into a shop to buy something, or interact with someone behind a counter who is serving you in any way, STOP YOUR DAMNED PHONE CALL WHILE YOU DO IT.

OK? Understand?

Whether you’re buying a packet of crisps from a corner shop or £300 of groceries from bloody Waitrose, STOP TALKING TO THE PERSON ON THE PHONE while you conduct the transaction.

You can do this in one of a number of ways. You should be able to work some of these out, but in case you’re one of the people who thinks that conducting a transaction with someone without even acknowledging their existence other than to wave a tenner at them with your precious fondleslab cradled in your shoulder is an acceptable way to behave, I have to assume that it’s possible these haven’t occurred to you:

Say to the person on the other end “Hold on a moment, I have to pay for something” and drop the phone, still connected, into your pocket. This way you can pluck it out again once your business is concluded and continue right where you left off.
Say to the person on the other end “Hold on a moment, I have to pay for something, I’ll call you back” and end the call. Conclude your business, then call them back. They really will understand.
Just cut the call. Then when you’ve finished your transaction you can call them back and choose whether to tell them the truth (again, they’ll be very understanding as long as you weren’t actually in the middle of guiding them step-by-step through an open heart surgery procedure) or just say “Sorry, the call dropped, not sure what happened there. Anyway, where were we?”

There are more. Honestly, I reckon you can come up with a few more if you try.

The important fact here is that you actually sodding do it. It is so unfathomably rude not to, I can’t understand how people have the gall to do this and make it through the rest of the day. Thankfully I haven’t worked behind a counter since mobile phones became omnipresent, but if I did I would refuse to serve anyone who didn’t even manage to pause their conversation while expecting me to serve them (like they do at one of my favourite pubs in London).

Really. Just say “Hold on a sec, I’m at the bar” or “One minute, got to pay for my shopping, I’ll ring you back” and then speak to the person serving you as if they are an actual human being with their own feelings and thoughts.

Because, in many ways, they are.

Seventeen

Clive Murray — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 17:17:34 +0000

And so, the blog is back. I’ve moved house and though the boxes still fill most corners of the new place, there is at least internet and I finally got the Raspberry Pi that houses this thing a wi-fi adapter and got it back on the internet.

Let joy be unbounded.

So shortly we return to the Albums of the Years series. I’ll bet you can’t wait. We shall probably skip forward again to 2015 before returning to the thorny issue of the 1992 shortlist. And as for 2016, well I’m not looking forward to writing the intro to that one I can tell you. (The 2016 winner is 100% decided though, no doubt whatsoever, and has been in the bag since the day it was released. More on that, naturally, at a later date.)

OK so. 2017. What’s in store? Who knows. Hopefully some good music at least.

Going Under

Clive Murray — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 11:49:42 +0000

This blog will be going offline for a little while shortly, as I’m moving house.

The blog runs off a Raspberry Pi in my house, and since the new house won’t have internet for a good week or so after the move, it will be perforce offline (and probably in a box).

Which means that you won’t be able to read this. If you can, then i) I haven’t moved yet, or ii) I haven’t got internet in the new house yet.

Should be back online early-to-mid-December.

As you were.

Clive’s Album of the Year 2014

Clive Murray — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 16:51:58 +0000

2014 was the International Year of Crystallography, of Family Farming, of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, and of Small Island Developing States. So now you know.

I turned 40, lost my Mum but gained a son, lost a wonderful cat, but gained four more. A mixed bag there, then.

Ebola broke out in West Africa, Belgium legalised euthanasia, Russia annexed Crimea, Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 Flight MH370 disappeared, Boko Haram kidnapped ~276 girls and women from a school and killed ~300 people in a single night in the towns of Gamboru and Ngala, another Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was shot down over the Ukraine by a missile and there was generally a massive amount of unpleasantness between various groups all about the place.

Resting in pieces (among, as ever, many more) were Eusébio, Ariel Sharon, Trigger (Roger Lloyd-Pack), PSH, Shirley Temple, Egon (Harold Ramis), Paco de Lucía, Tony Benn, Sue Townsend, Bob Hoskins, H. R. Giger, Rik Mayall, Tuco (Eli Wallach), James Garner, Robin Williams, Lauren Bacall, Dickie Attenborough, Joan Rivers, Jaws (Richard Kiel), Jack Bruce, Acker Bilk, Glen A. Larson and Joe Cocker.

Honourable mentions

Sebastian Bach - Give 'Em Hell

I was a huge Skid Row fan back in the day, natch, but I’ve always found Seb’s solo output extremely variable, to put it politely. This, however, is a solid hard rock album. Some really catchy choruses (“Harmony”, “All My Friends Are Dead”), a liberal bucketload of stomping riffs plus guest spots from Steve Stevens and good old John 5 all make for the best thing Bach has put out since Slave to the Grind back in 1991. Great. Top track: “Harmony”

Black Veil Brides - Black Veil Brides

I think it was my good friend Rick who introduced me to BVB, and I thank him hugely for that. Sounding not a million miles from some kind of weird bastard offspring of Mötley Crüe and Pantera, these guys stand for everything I stood for when I was young enough to still stand for it. Oh man, and that voice. That goddamn voice. Top track: “Last Rites”

Buckcherry - F**k

It’s no secret around these parts that I love me some Buckcherry, but I had found the quality control to be slipping a little in recent years (since the excellent 15, actually), so it was refreshing to check out this 6-song tribute to the good old F-bomb, as these are all great fun. Novelty record? Sure. Great fun? F*** yeah. Top track: “I Don’t Give A F***”

Elbow - The Take Off and Landing of Everything

Let me say first of all, that I hate all that Madchester crap. Honestly, take your Oasis, your Stone Roses, your Inspiral fing Carpets and your Happy bastard Mondays, and f** the f*** off. But it transpires that it is a city capable of making wonderful, intelligent – I’ll go so far as to say occasionally transcendental – music, via the ever-ethereal Elbow. This is Guy Garvey’s mob’s 6th studio outing and it is very nearly my favourite, though Cast of Thousands does still just about pip it to that vaunted post. Top track: “Charge”

Slash - World On Fire

Slash’s solo work has been a mixed bag – the first album (with a varied cast of guest singers) just didn’t click, in particular. But this, the behatted Stokian’s 3rd crack at the solo thing gels much better, and of course benefits enormously from one of the most incredible voices in rock, that of Myles Kennedy, throughout. It could do with losing about 6 tracks, but weight-loss tips aside, it’s a good-un. Top track: “Withered Delilah”

And the winner is…

You Me At Six - Cavalier Youth

I honestly don’t think these lads from Surrey can do anything wrong. Not a thing. I adore every track on all four of their albums, and await the forthcoming fifth one with bated credit card.

I was enamoured with their sound as soon as I heard their first two albums – produced by friend of the show, Mr. John Mitchell – and their songwriting chops have grown and matured heaps since then. There is always a level of dynamics in their songs that I find missing in so much new music. I can’t recommend them enough.

I can try though.

Top tracks: “Fresh Start Fever”, “Carpe Diem”, “Lived a Lie”

Turkey of the Year

Winger - Better Days Comin’

Oh no.

See, Winger were one of the hairspray and spandex brigade back in the day, but their USP was that their guitarist and drummer could really play, and their singer could hold his own with the best and poodliest of the day. Their 1990 release In the Heart of the Young is a classic of the genre (though slightly hard to listen to now, because DATED). They disappeared during the Dark Times, but came back in the 2000s with a couple of pretty good, if po-faced, albums, and it seemed like they would bounce back and ride the resurgence like many others. But… this is just awful. It pains me to write that, but it is. OK, check this - the opening track is called “Midnight Driver of a Love Machine”. I’ll just leave that there.

My band almost got a slot opening for them on the launch tour for this album. We didn’t get it. I’m sort of glad about that.

(Who am I kidding, I’d have been backstage with Reb Beach, it would have been amazing… Doesn’t make this album any better though…)

House

Clive Murray — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 15:28:26 +0000

I just bought a house.

(It’s that one.)

Albums of the Year, 1993-2013 recap

Clive Murray — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 00:43:17 +0000

So when I launched this blog, 3 years ago this month, it was mainly because I had discovered the wonder of the Raspberry Pi and wanted an excuse to buy one (that wasn’t bitcoin mining) so a blog server seemed like a good idea.

But also, I used to blog a lot. In retrospect I suppose I was never that prolific, but I have been at this a long time. Long in web years, anyway. My first “online journal” (as we called them before the word weblog had even been coined) started in 1998 or so, and was manually written in HTML, with manually updated archive pages, and the whole thing uploaded manually via FTP. This is before even Blogger, remember.

Anyway, I used to do it a lot. Then I got a job on the web, so I did it even more. Then I got a much more busy life (and a girlfriend) and I did it less. Then along came things like Twitter and Facebook, and the urge to self-publish became a mainstream thing, and I went with the flow. Blogging dwindled.

When I launched this blog in November 2013, I knew it would wax and wane according to various tides in my life, and so it has. So I decided to have an ongoing little theme that I could come back to when I wanted to publish something but wasn’t up for full-scale discourse, and that was the Clive’s Album of the Year series. I decided I would make a shortlist of albums from my collection for every year, then pick a winner (and a handful of runners-up) from each year and publish a little post about them. I started from 2012 and worked backwards, pausing briefly to fill in 2013 once I’d spent a little more time with the albums of that year.

I intend to carry on doing this for a bit longer (my collection peters out pretty dramatically pre-1984 or so), and also to catch up with the years that have elapsed since I started the list.

All of which is a huge preamble to this – here are the winners thus far:

And that’s as far as I’ve got so far. I’ve covered present day (from when I started, anyway) right back to the start of the oft-mentioned Dark Times, and I shall carry on back as far as my music collection will let me.

And let me tell you, 1992 is the most difficult of the whole lot. I’ve been workshopping it with a friend for a week, and it’s still a 4-way tie with no sign of the deadlock breaking. Bet you’re on the edge of your seat.

Tell you one thing – I’m not looking forward to writing the intro piece for 2016.

Clive’s Album of the Year 1993

Clive Murray — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 09:52:39 +0000

1993 was the last year of my teens. I’d been playing guitar long enough to think I was pretty good, although that was wrong.

In the first three days of this year alone, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist (becoming the Czech Republic and Slovakia), TV-am and TVS were replaced by GMTV and Meridian respectively (I lived in the south-east so those were the TV channels I knew), and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine began. A heady start to the year! Clinton (Mr) replaced Bush (Senior) as POTUS, James Bulger (a kid) was abducted and killed (by kids), Waco happened, there was a Great Blizzard, um… Bobbitt…, Fermat’s Last Theorem was proved, the Hokkaidō earthquake and resulting tsunami killed hundreds, “Don’t ask, don’t tell”, Windows NT 3.1, Magic: The Gathering, Linux Debian, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and the Oslo I Accord were all a thing, the Maastricht Treaty took effect establishing the EU, and a whole lot of other important and mainly depressing stuff happened.

But also, Doom.

Among those getting comfortable in pine were Dizzy Gillespie, Rudolf Nureyev, Audrey Hepburn, André the Giant, Bobby Moore, Brandon Lee, Mick Ronson, Les Dawson, Criss Oliva, Vincent Price, River Phoenix, Mr. Theremin and Frank Zappa.

But this was over 20 years ago… who did we gain? With whom did the universe replace all these people? Well… To be honest, I had a look down the 1993 births list and by the time I’d got to September, the only name I had recognised was someone out of One Direction (and that only because I read too much Twitter). We’ll try that again next time, maybe.

Meanwhile, in the land of rock, things had started to go very wrong indeed…

Honourable mentions

Anthrax - Sound of White Noise

I was never into thrash or proper metal to begin with, so I was never into the early Anthrax stuff, despite no little coercion from my schoolmate Nick who was all up on it. By 1993 though, I had developed some fairly metal leanings, just in time for them to switch out their rather screechy singer for a guy with some depth. The riffs are tight, the vocals are really listenable and dynamic (no monotonous screeching or growling here), and the drumming is frankly astounding. Great stuff, and has barely aged in 23 years. Top track: “Only”

Jan Cyrka - Spirit

Referred to by those in the know at the time as “Britain’s Satriani”, Jan got some decent exposure even before that as lead guitarist in Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction under the pseudonym Flash Bastard, presumably because he could actually play. This was his second solo instrumental album and for my money it’s still an absolute cracker. Top track: “Spirit”

Jamiroquai - Emergency on Planet Earth

What? I don’t care. La la la, I can’t hear you. This is bloody great. Yes, even now. (Hint: make music that sounds 20 years old at the time, and it won’t date any further…) Top track: “Too Young to Die”

Poison - Native Tongue

So, as documented elsewhere, the hair metal scene was collapsing like a hairspray flan in a grunge cupboard (or something). Instead of jacking it all in Poison recruited hotshot guitar wizard Richie Kotzen to replace the frankly dodgy C.C DeVille, and turned out the best thing to ever bear the Poison name. This is a stonker of an album, that could just possibly be improved by leaving a couple of the 15 tracks off. Top track: “Blind Faith”

Steve Vai - Sex & Religion

Ah well, now. You have to realise that Vai was the biggest thing in guitar at the time. He was simply the most powerful force on 6 - and he was the one who invented 7, remember - strings and his 1990 magnificent octopus Passion & Warfare was and still is regarded as an untouchable instrumental masterpiece. So what did he do next? He recruited a dynamic 20-year-old Canadian singer with a skullet, and recorded an absolutely astonishing vocal rock album. Natch. Unfortunately this was their only full-album collaboration, with Vai himself taking up the lead vocal slot on his later work. 23 years later, there’s still nothing quite like this. Top track: “Still My Bleeding Heart”

And the winner is…

Sting - Ten Summoner’s Tales

So yeah, it’s cool to think that Sting is a twat. So what? It’s probably the norm to dismiss all his music as poncey pop garbage. With some of it I agree, but not this album. This album is sublime.

The musicianship is superb, helped along by recruiting Frank Zappa’s favoured drummer Vinnie Colauita (Sting has a penchant for songs in 7/8 and 7/4, which I always like, and which you certainly never got with The Police) and excellent support from pianist David Sancious and guitarist Dominic Miller both staying on from Sting’s previous album The Soul Cages.

By turns moody (“It’s Probably Me”), irreverant (“Love Is Stronger Than Justice”), abstract (“Shape of My Heart”), narrative (“Something the Boy Said”), heartfelt (“Everybody Laughed But You”) clever (“Seven Days”) and quite simply fun (“Saint Augustine in Hell”, “She’s Too Good For Me”), this is an absolute classic. Like they used to make, back in the day. Proper.

Top tracks: “Saint Augustine In Hell”, “Something the Boy Said”, “It’s Probably Me”

Turkey of the Year

Love/Hate - Let’s Rumble

Aaaargh. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Love/Hate. They were the first real band I ever saw live (opening for Skid Row) and my own band has supported them twice in the last few years. Their first two albums are utter rawk classics, and the first of those – Blackout in the Red Room – has been welded into my car CD player since I had one that worked (November 2014). But… this album just failed. Remember The Dark Times were upon us, and the musical landscape had changed. I assume there was some kind of falling out as lead guitarist Jon E. Love was replaced by wunderkind Darren Householder… and somehow all the magic was just gone. Stick with the first two L/H albums, and you won’t go wrong. Those are brilliant.

Clive’s Album of the Year 1994

Clive Murray — Sun, 23 Oct 2016 17:00:00 +0000

In 1994 apartheid ended in South Africa with the election of Nelson Mandela as the first multiracially and democratically elected president of that country. Orenthal James Simpson was arrested on multiple murder charges despite his excellent appearances in the Naked Gun movies. The cinema gave us Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction. The first passengers travelled through the Channel Tunnel and Michael Schumacher won his first F1 World Championship.

If you think the death toll in 2016 has been bad, consider that in 1994 we lost The Joker (Cesar Romero), Kojak (Telly Savalas), Bill Hicks, John Candy, Kurt Cobain, Richard Nixon, Ayrton Senna, Hannibal (George Peppard), Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Henry Mancini, Peter Cushing, Roy Castle, Danny Gatton, Burt Lancaster, Gomez Addams (Raúl Juliá) and Cab Calloway to name just the ones that pop out at me. Sheesh.

For rock music, the Dark Times were upon us, and all around was grunge. Nonetheless, a few dim gems sparkled in the muck…

Honourable mentions

Dream Theater - Awake

When DT first came to my attention in 1992 with the incomparable Images and Words, that attention was fully grabbed. That, of course, is another story to which we will come in the fullness of wossname. This was the follow-up, the attempt to fully capitalise on the proggy geist of the zeit, and it’s absolutely amazing. Some of Petrucci’s and Moore’s finest work. If prog you can, then this you must. Top track: “6:00”

Gun - Swagger

Well yes, actually. These relatively unknown Scottish rockers had some mild success with their previous release Gallus but for my folding this was their sweet spot. Worth it for their magnificent cover of Cameo’s “Word Up” (a full decade before Korn would come along with the same idea) alone, this is a solid 41 minutes of good old-fashioned rock songs, just like Mama used to make. Top track: “Don’t Say It’s Over”

Megadeth - Youthanasia

Again, this was perhaps overshadowed by the monumental success of its predecessor Symphony of Destruction, but now that I come back to them over a decade later I can’t honestly peg which I think is the better album. Yes, this has mis-steps like most Megadeth albums (ignore the last track, it’s for the best) but pound for pound, riff for riff, this delivers right up there alongside any of Mustaine’s gang’s releases. Top track: “Train of Consequences”

Mike Oldfield - The Songs of Distant Earth

I am not going to apologise for this. You can say what you like. I love it, and I always will. I went to sleep to this album every single night for years and years and still find it to be one of the most calming and grounding pieces of music I have ever experienced. Top track: “Only Time Will Tell”

Portishead - Dummy

It was a difficult old time, the mid 90s. Brit-pop was just finding out where it had left its knackered Gibson 335, hard rock was laying in the gutter having had one too many lines of spandex (as documented elsewhere), and industrial rock and nu-metal were still getting their hobnail boots and baggy shorts on. Portishead, then, were a breath of fresh - if melancholy - air. And Beth Gibbons’ voice is unlike any other, so goddamn help me. Top track: “Roads” or “Glory Box”

And the winner is…

Jeff Buckley - Grace

I’d heard about the guy, you know? People on guitar forums – people who knew what they were talking about – would say things like “Such a shame”, “Died so young”, “What a talent” and “Imagine what he could have done”, but I’d simply never actually heard anything by him, and was still mourning the loss of my beloved hair-metal.

So when, sometime between 2002 and 2006 (I remember which house I was in at the time, but little else) I stuck on a guitar magazine backing track for the title track “Grace”, I thought to myself “Hey, this is pretty good. I think I have a copy of this somewhere with vocals… let’s dig that out…” and right there I got epiphany all over the place.

“Why did no-one tell me?” I yelled to the empty air, but of course they had. For me it was one of those doors that could only be opened, I myself had to walk through it. So glad I did - this is still one of my favourite albums of all time, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes music of any kind.

Top tracks: “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over”, “Last Goodbye”, “Grace”

Turkey of the Year

I don’t really have a Turkey nomination for 1994, so much of it was just purely mediocre that very little stands out for good or for bad. But seeing as this was the year that spawned the following utter pile of arse, I’m picking…

Oasis - Definitely Maybe

For f***'s sake, no.

Status:

Clive Murray — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 23:15:54 +0000

This.

That creaking sound you hear...

Clive Murray — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 16:07:42 +0000

…is this blog trying to live.

I’m not promising to post much, but I am at least trying to get the thing working again.

This blog lives on a Raspberry Pi in my house. It runs on the excellent Ghost. I got it running using the latest version of Ghost at the time, which was v0.6.0, and then left it. I posted stuff, I tweaked the theme, it worked.

Then I just stopped posting, because that’s what happens. Blogging always goes in phases. But one day I went into the admin interface and saw that Ghost was now on version 0.11.x and I had missed a whole load of upgrades. So I tried to upgrade… and killed the whole thing.

I ended up in a labyrinthine mess of being unable to update sqlite3 (the database that Ghost uses) on the version of Node.js I had, but if I upgraded to the new version of Node I would have to upgrade to the latest version of Ghost, and my old posts would probably get lost, as the database migrations wouldn’t work…

Whatever. I’ve now got Ghost up to v0.7.9 and Node up to 0.12.something and I’m leaving it there until I have a little more time to do some more incremental updates, each one of which will migrate the database forward, until I get to the latest version.

At which time I will probably forget about it, and the whole thing will atrophy again.

Ho hum.

Reports of my...

Clive Murray — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 21:59:36 +0000

…etc etc.

You know how it is. Blogging comes and goes in phases. I used to be pretty prolific – hell I was doing this in 1998 before the word blogging existed, and we had to phone up the web server and shout the 1s and 0s down the line.

I’m well, my family are well, things are all OK. That’s what really matters.

I’ll be back sometime, when there’s time.

Clive’s Album of the Year 1995

Clive Murray — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 23:52:25 +0000

In 1995 I reached legal USA drinking age, ST:Voyager started, Richey Edwards disappeared, Kevin Mitnick was arrested, Nick Leeson collapsed an entire banking firm, Yahoo!, sarin gas, the Oklahoma bombing, Windows 95, the DVD, eBay, and OJ Simpson was acquitted.

Bon voyage was bid to (as always, etc.) Larry Grayson, Peter Cook, Gerald Durrell, Donald Pleasance, Vivian Stanshall, Ronnie Kray, Kenny Everett, Ginger Rogers, Rory Gallagher, Jerry Garcia, Sherlock Holmes, Paul Eddington and Dino.

Honourable mentions

Faith No More - King For a Day… Fool For a Lifetime

When my mate Justin came round with this album, I had no idea what to make of it. It’s about 50% what I expected from FNM, about 10% unlistenable screaming that sounded like Mr. Bungle having a bad day, and the rest… weird lounge crooning. Fascinating for the most part. Top track: “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”

Garbage - Garbage

I think I first saw Garbage live on TFI Friday back in the day, and while I liked what I heard well enough, it was years later I went back and really appreciated their catalogue. Superbly crafted songs. Top track: “Stupid Girl”

The Presidents of the USA - The Presidents of the USA

PUSA! If you don’t know then I can’t tell you, etc., but here is where it all started. Worth the price of admission for “Lump” alone, obviously. Top track: “Body”

Steve Vai - Alien Love Secrets

This 7-track EP benefits hugely from Mr. Vai keeping his gob shut, and aside from the truly unlistenable “Ya-Yo Gakk”, everything else here is absolutely top-drawer Vai. Top track: “Tender Surrender”

And the winners are…

It’s another tie for 1995. I just couldn’t separate what are for me still to this day two perfect albums that have barely dated in two decades.

Pulp - Different Class

Brit-pop and me didn’t really get along for the most part, but this album is absolute perfection from start to finish. There’s not a bad moment on it, from the anthemic “Mis-Shapes”, the visceral “Pencil Skirt” and the outright venomous “I Spy” to the floor filling classics “Common People” and “Disco 2000” there’s not a note out of place.

It’s somehow of its time but also timeless. Honestly, go and put it on now. It could have been released this year.

Bloody wonderful stuff.

Top tracks: “Pencil Skirt”, “I Spy”, “Underwear”

Radiohead - The Bends

I’m aware that I’m in the minority in thinking that Radiohead peaked here and everything they did after OK Computer was frankly dirge, but can we perhaps agree that when this album came out it was absolutely gobsmacking?

It was. And it still is.

Top tracks: “High and Dry”, “The Bends”, “Fake Plastic Trees”

Turkey of the Year

It’s actually hard to pick, there were so many misfires this year - the Dark Times had really set in. But for pure disappointment value I’m going for…

Extreme - Waiting For the Punchline

Oof. No. Awful.

Clive’s Album of the Year 1996

Clive Murray — Sun, 19 Apr 2015 01:10:30 +0000

1996 was a leap year, and was designated as the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. So that went well, then.

A blizzard hit the eastern States of the US killing over 150 in January, and the next day a cargo plane crashed into a market in Kinshasa killing 300. The IRA ceasefire ended with the Canary Wharf bombing. Deep Blue beat Kasparov. Pokémon. The Dunblane Massacre. Mad cow disease. The Unabomber was arrested. Chechnya. The N64. Yeltsin. Dolly the sheep. Apple bought NeXT.

Setting out on the final journey were (as always, etc.) François Mitterand, Gene Kelly, Bob Paisley, George Burns, Saul Bass, The Third Doctor (John Pertwee), Timothy Leary, Ella Fitzgerald, 2Pac, Leslie Crowther, Beryl Reid, Eva Cassidy, Willie Rushton and Carl Sagan.

I was working in a bar in my hometown of Eastbourne, and praying for hard rock to come back.

Honourable mentions

Barenaked Ladies - Born on a Pirate Ship

This album does go a little bit nondescript in the second half, but the first seven songs are gold. Worth the price of admission for “Straw Hat and Old Dirty Hank” or “The Old Apartment” alone. Top track: “The Old Apartment”

Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go

You can’t really ignore this album. I know, I tried. I really didn’t want to put it in the shortlist, but so huge was its impact that I just couldn’t leave it out. And whatever you think of JDB’s hectoring, there are some massive tunes on here. Top track: “Australia”

Matchbox Twenty - Yourself or Someone Like You

This is quite a poppy album for me to own, and I honestly can’t recall where I came across it. Cracking tunes though, and Rob Thomas has a great voice. Top track: “Long Day”

Ocean Colour Scene - Moseley Shoals

If you were a 22-year-old male in 1996, which I was, you probably watched the TV show “TFI Friday”. And if you watched that show, then you heard quite a lot of Ocean Colour Scene. This album has some absolute classics on it, and if you spent any time in a British pub in the late 90s, you’ll know a good few of them. Top track: “The Riverboat Song”, obviously

Underworld - Second Toughest in the Infants

As has been mentioned before I was a little late picking up on the Essex outfit’s output, but this - as with all of their early albums - is pretty much essential. Top track: “Juanita/Kiteless/To Dream Of Love”

And the winner is…

The Presidents of the USA - The Presidents of the USA II

PUSA!

How can you not love a band that don’t play traditional instruments, instead favouring their own Frankenstein-ish creations the Guitbass and the Basitar and like to write songs about frogs, bugs, kitties and boll weevils?

The first Presidents album was great but a little patchy, whereas this one feels way more cohesive and solid. It definitely feels like the highpoint of the band’s ouvre, particularly when you note that the following album Freaked Out and Small was played on regular instruments with regular tunings! Get out of town!

No, for me the classic PUSA experience is this album, and wonderfully daft songs like “Froggie”, “Volcano”, “Mach 5”, “L.I.P.” and “Lunatic to Love”.

Unique, if nothing else.

Top tracks: “Volcano”, “Bath of Fire”, “Lunatic to Love”

Turkey of the Year

Mr. Big - Hey Man

No no no. The one before, Bump Ahead had gotten ballad-heavy and nondescript enough for me to consign it to the “probably won’t listen to that again” CD pile, and this one (the last before Paul Gilbert left, though he did return 15 years later) really felt like everyone was phoning it in or just didn’t know quite what they should sound like. This was The Dark Times after all…

Clive’s Album of the Year 1997

Clive Murray — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 12:23:26 +0000

1997 was the year I first got a modem and discovered the Internet, a move that ended up providing me with a career but started with a £10/month Demon account and a 19.2kbps (it was supposed to be 28.8kbps but I think it was a bit broken and it never once connected at that speed) modem.

Mike Judge’s King of the Hill started, there were some strange lights in the sky, a load of idiots killed themselves, the first burials at space took place, Tony Blair, WinNuke, Harry Potter, Steve Jobs returned to Apple, South Park premiered, there was a car crash in Paris, Cassini-Huygens was launched and Kyoto was signed.

The final toll was paid by (among, as always, etc etc) Biggie, Terry Nation, Allen Ginsberg, Jeff Buckley, Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Gianni Versace, William S. Burroughs, Jeanne Calment (the oldest person who ever lived), Princess Diana, Georg Solti, Mother Teresa, The Penguin (Burgess Meredith), Roy Lichtenstein, John Denver, Stephane Grappelli and Big Daddy.

Musically it was… really not great. Not great at all.

No.

Not really.

Nope.

Still… there were a couple of shiny-ish flecks in the swathes of aural dung…

Honourable mentions

Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen

I only got into Ben Folds Five through a friend, and only then into a few choice tracks. Turns out most of them are on this album, and on listening back to it again, it’s cracking. Top track: “The Battle of Who Could Care Less”

Mansun - Attack of the Grey Lantern

Can’t remember where I heard of Mansun, but once I did I grabbed this album (their debut) and really dug it. Weird UK alt-rock with a really immersive feel. Top track: “Wide Open Space”

Primus - The Brown Album

Primus. If you don’t know, then I really can’t tell you. I wouldn’t recommend this as your first Primus album either, if you’re a virgin. But if you know them and love them then you should get this. Mind you, you probably already have it. I’ll stop now. Top track: “Shake Hands With Beef”

The Prodigy - Fat of the Land

As has been intimated previously, I’ve never been much of a dance head. But throughout the late 90s The Prodge were ubiquitous and the very block-rockingest of their beats are all right here (and yes, I’m fully aware that’s a Chemical Brothers, not Prodigy reference, thanks). Still bitch-up-smackingly good, if I may. Top track: “Breathe”

Radiohead - OK Computer

Yeeeeeah. So. About that. Post The Bends, I fell out of love with Radiohead. In truth, I’m still in two minds about this album. One thing you can’t deny is its impact on the music of the time - if The Prodigy were everywhere in the late 90s, then Radiohead were even everywherer. I will say I’ve gradually warmed to it over the last 18 years. Top track: “Paranoid Android”

And the winner is…

Dream Theater - Falling Into Infinity

Yep, I’m the one who likes it.

I gather that the DT faithful see this as the album where they sold out and tried to sound more commercial.

Well, screw 'em.

Faithful Dream Theater fans are the kind of people who think Jordan Rudess was a good thing to happen to the band, so they can f*** right off. I lamented the departure of Kevin Moore like anyone else, but I thought Derek Sherinian was a splendid replacement, bringing a bluesier edge to the band’s sound and dare I say it, some soul - something the more clinical musicians in the band (i.e. the rest of them) are often sorely lacking.

I’m fully willing to go on the record saying that this is the last DT album that I properly enjoyed. Since then (and DO NOT start with any of that Scenes From a Memory garbage, either) every single one of their albums has been around 70 mins of miscellaneous prog beige. You could start it at any point in the record, play it for a while, then turn it off. It just depends how much you want.

“How much Dream Theater do you want today, Gladys?”

“Oh, just cut us about 40 minutes off the end will you Alf, I’m not that hungry today.”

I mean yes, it’s all incredibly executed and very clever, but I just find it all just so so soulless.

Not so, Falling Into Infinity. I can actually sing you lines from several of the songs without having to look at the lyrics! I can recall more than four of the song titles without looking at the CD cover! This was truly the last time I could claim that, and I really tried with the later rubbish, I honestly did.

This all sounds awfully apologetic - it shouldn’t. FII is a really good album - and remember it’s only the third full-length album they released (in the LaBrie era, let’s pretend the Dominici stuff didn’t happen, it’s best for everyone), and it felt to me like a proper natural progression from Awake and the intervening (but patchily produced) EP A Change of Seasons.

It’s great. Bung it on and stop being lame. Or don’t. The choice is almost literally yours.

Top tracks: “Lines in the Sand”, “New Millennium”, “Trial of Tears”

Turkey of the Year

Mötley Crüe - Generation Swine

Oh good lord, no. If you read the wiki page for this album it’s easy to see why it’s so bad… but that doesn’t make it any better. Gah.

Clive’s Album of the Year 1998

Clive Murray — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 23:31:15 +0000

1998 marked the end of a few chapters for me, and the beginning of actually having a proper job and getting on with things.

Nineteen European nations banned human cloning, an earthquake in northeast Afghanistan killed over 5000 people, the Kosovo War began, it was discovered that Europa has a liquid ocean (under ice) and that the universe is indeed expanding at an accelerating rate, Titanic won 11 Oscars, Windows 98, Omagh happened, Bear Grylls (aged 23) climbed Everest, a different earthquake in northern Afghanistan killed about another 5000 people and two guys started a company.

Auf wossname to Sonny Bono, Falco, Father Ted (Dermot Morgan), Lloyd Bridges, Cozy Powell, Tammy Wynette, Pol Pot, Linda McCartney, Ol’ Blue Eyes (Frank Sinatra), Catherine Cookson, Akira Kurosawa, Flo-Jo and Miss Marple (Joan Hickson), among (as always) many others.

Most of the Resident Evil video games were set in 1998. Musically, meanwhile, things were pretty bleak.

Honourable mentions

Fatboy Slim - You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby

OK, let’s not dress it up, this thing hasn’t aged well. It was fine up until a few years ago I guess, but now it tends to be a “Oh that? [skip]” moment when it comes up on shuffle. Undeniably massive and genre-busting at the time though. Top track: “Praise You”

Garbage - Version 2.0

I think I missed the first Garbage album when it came out, mainly due to having my fingers in my ears and pretending that The Dark Times weren’t happening, but when I heard the follow-up that all changed. Wonderful pop/punk/rock tunes with a sultry yet powerful voice over the top and some wonderful production. Still fresh. Top track: “Hammering In My Head”

David Gray - White Ladder

I remember reading a one-line review that said this was “an album that makes you feel better just for knowing it exists” and that was certainly the case for years. My girlfriend was in uni halls (a couple of years later), and I’d go to her place and we’d listen to this and then try and sleep in that tiny, tiny bed while her housemates got up to hi-jinx and inevitably someone set the fire alarm off. This got us through though. :) Some may find his singing nasal and his songs insipid, but I will always have a soft spot for this finely-crafted album. Top track: “Please Forgive Me”

The Offspring - Americana

Like (I suspect) many, the first I heard of The Offspring was “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)”, despite them being around for years beforehand. Having heard it, though, I loved it, and grabbed the album and have never regretted it. Classic. Top track: “Staring At The Sun”

Joe Satriani - Crystal Planet

Having been a Satch fan for about a decade at the time, I thought this was a fine return to form after the patchy Strange Beautiful Music a couple of years before and the disappointing self-titled album before that. I’ll also say this though: it’s been downhill since here. Top track: “Crystal Planet”

And the winner is…

Barenaked Ladies - Stunt

I’d not long been acquainted with the fabulousness of BNL in 1998. Some friends played a few of their tracks in their band’s set, and I liked those well enough, but I hadn’t really gotten into them properly. Then this album came out with its vanguard single, the tongue-twistingly delightful “One Week”, and I had to have the CD, which then led to a (pre-torrent, pre-Amazon) hoovering up of all their previous works (every one of which I recommend highly).

As with the Satriani album though, I reckon this was the high point. The subsequent album Maroon has some cracking tunes on it, but doesn’t feel as cohesive a listen as Stunt, and everything after that just felt a little but more washed out each time round.

Top tracks: “One Week”, “Never Is Enough”, “Alcohol”

Turkey of the Year

Pulp - This Is Hardcore

I wanted to like this, but no. No no no.

Clive’s Album of the Year 2013

Clive Murray — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 01:46:40 +0000

2013 was the last year of my 30s, and was a pretty OK year for me all round. I didn’t have to move house, no-one super-close to me died, my work situation was good, and I played a couple of gigs.

There was a pretty intense meteor over Chelyabinsk, Russia, a papal resignation, a 3D-printed ear, some Snowden disclosures, an Egyptian coup, an Indian Mars orbiter and a pretty bad typhoon. Oh, and a prince.

10-4, over and out, sayonara, take it easy to Michael Winner, Hugo Chávez, Clive Burr, Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths), Margaret Thatcher, Storm Thorgerson, Ray Manzarek, Iain Banks, James Gandolfini, Mel Smith, David Frost, Lou Reed, Nelson Mandela, Peter O’Toole and Mikhail Kalashnikov (among, as always, many, many others).

I’ve lived with my 2013 shortlist for a full year now, and have thus decreed:

Honourable mentions

Alter Bridge - Fortress

Well what more can I say about the semi-divine Alter Bridge? Really, you’ve heard me wax lyrical about them enough. Know this though - this is their heaviest disc to date, and the most cohesive, and the best. Get on it in 2015 if you haven’t already. Top track: “Addicted to Pain”

Ólafur Arnalds - For Now I Am Winter

I think I saw Mr Arnalds on the programme at the Barbican at a Max Richter concert and took a gamble on tickets. Top choice. This is his first work to include vocals, and it’s utterly gorgeous. Top track: “Reclaim”

David Bowie - The Next Day

Bowie infamously recorded this album without even his record company knowing. It was his first release in ten years, and it’s the freshest sounding thing he’s done in… well, decades. It’s great. Top track: “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)”

Hugh Laurie - Didn’t It Rain

While I loved Hugh’s first blues album, I did find the roster of guest vocalists a touch irritating when Hugh’s own voice is so soulful and gritty. Great, then, that this album sees him tying things down with his Copper Bottom Band and singing most of the leads himself. Better than the first one, if such an idea is to be entertained. Top track: “One For My Baby”

Plini/Sithu Aye - I

Well. These guys. Plini from Sydney and Sithu Aye from somewhere in Scotland have between them reinvented what it is to be a young blazing solo guitar player, by having amazing production chops, great songwriting abilities, technique out the yin-yang, incredible musical sensibilities and a massive amount of fun releasing music. Or so it appears, anyway. Check out both of their catalogues on Bandcamp while you’re about it. Top track: “Rupture”

And the winner is…

Jon Gomm - Secrets Nobody Keeps

Jon is flat-out one of the most incredible musicians I can name, and if you’ve never heard of him I urge you to stop here and spend the next 7 minutes watching his incredible Passionflower.

Yes, he really is doing all that live, at once. He pretty damned good, n’est-ce pas? I confess to not really digging his previous album Don’t Panic - I’m not sure why, really, I think I just didn’t get on with the production, or his vocals at the time, or something like that. But this album is flawless from start to finish.

It’s true that Jon’s current wave of success was catapulted forward by Stephen Fry tweeting one word (“Wow”) about that “Passionflower” video, but all that did was accelerate the process a little. Jon would have got there anyway, he’s that awesome.

And to cap off the splendid, Jon is an independent musician. This album was originally funded through Pledge Music, and there’s no record company behind him scraping profit off his earnings. (I was, naturally, an early backer.) I usually link to the albums in these lists on Amazon, but for the best karma and to keep supporting independent music, you should really buy this album direct.

He’s also a really nice bloke. Sickening, really.

Top tracks: “Everything”, “Telepathy”, “Passionflower”

Turkey of the Year

Johnny Flynn - Country Mile

Meh.

Clive’s Album of the Year 1999

Clive Murray — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 23:10:19 +0000

In Summer 1999 I met a girl. We hooked up for a bit and it didn’t really work out. But then in Autumn 1999 I met another girl. That went much better. :)

The Sopranos and Family Guy both debuted on US television, Melissa “attacked the internet”, the Columbine massacre happened, Jill Dando was shot dead on her doorstep, The Phantom Menace um… happened, Napster debuted, we had a total solar eclipse which I peered at through the clouds on a rooftop in Soho, having landed my first London job, Apple released the G4 and Sega released the Dreamcast.

It was thank you and goodnight to (among, as always, many others) Dusty Springfield, Stanley Kubrick, Yehudi Menuhin, Little Ern, Dirk Bogarde, Bones (DeForest Kelly), Q (Desmond Llewelyn), Screaming Lord Sutch and the mighty, mighty Oliver Reed.

On millennium night I played a covers gig in Hastings, where for the first half we partied like it was 1999, because it was. And then it wasn’t. But we carried on anyway.

Honourable mentions

Buckcherry - Buckcherry

I’ve written much about Buckcherry as it is, but this was their debut album. I missed it at the time and came to it later, and still to this day prefer the followup Time Bomb, but this is still a righteous rocking album. Proper raw rock and roll. Top track: “Lawless And Lulu”

Ludovico Einaudi - Eden Roc

I’ve only quite recently discovered the minimalist stylings of Ludo, but when I heard him on Classic FM I rushed out and bought just about everything of his I could find. Minimal classical, nothing too challenging, perhaps a little anodyne for some, but I love it. Top track: “Due Tramonti”

Powerman 5000 - Tonight the Stars Revolt!

No idea where I first heard “Nobody’s Real” but when I did it made me want more, and this is such a cracking album. Snarly punk-industrial-metal (nu, perhaps… shudder…) and great fun throughout. Top track: “Nobody’s Real”

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication

This was the Chilis’ first studio album in four years, and marked the return of John Frusciante on the six-string twangplank. It remains their best-selling album ever, though for my money it’s slightly bettered by 2002’s By The Way. Still great though. Top track: “Scar Tissue”

Stereophonics - Performance and Cocktails

The 'phonics were everywhere in 1999. You couldn’t move for “The Bartender and the Thief”, “Just Looking” and “Pick a Part That’s New”, and that was because they’re ace songs. The rest of the album is just as great, if not greater. Top track: “Pick A Part That’s New”

And the winner is…

Underworld - Beaucoup Fish

King of Snake, King of Snake.

Tina lives in Berlin, her voice so seldom on my machine.

Etc.

Again, I was late to the Underworld party, but my mate trying hard to get me to listen to something that didn’t at least feature a fast lead guitarist must have finally broken through because one day I saw the light. I won’t lie to you, alcohol probably played a part. This is splendid music to get at least partially off your ordinary face to. In fact I think I’d been listening to this album for a number of years before I realised that the lyrics to “Push Upstairs” and “Push Downstairs” are the same, and that one is a downtempo moody version of the other. Which is quite clever, though I obviously wasn’t.

Intelligent, dancey electronica that isn’t afraid to go dark occasionally all carried along by Karl Hyde’s swirling stream-of-consciousness lyrics.

And, to quote Rufus (from Bill & Ted), it’s excellent for dancing.

Top tracks: “Push Upstairs”, “King Of Snake”, “Cups”

Turkey of the Year

Mr. Big - Get Over It

Oh dear. For me Mr. Big needed Paul Gilbert’s sense of humour running through their music to make it listenable, and his replacement Richie Kotzen - while an absolutely incredible musician - is pretty po-faced, and the band lost something vital at this point.

Clive’s Album of the Year 2000

Clive Murray — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 22:32:48 +0000

MM. Let’s all meet up in the year 2000, won’t it be strange when we’re all fully grown?

In 2000 not all the computers in the world blew up, the PS2 was released, PJ2 said sorry, Big Oily Vlad came to power, India’s population reached one beeelion, the Tate Modern opened and the Nintendo GameCube arrived.

Buh-bye Hedy Lamarr, Charles M. Schulz, Ian Dury, Walter Matthau, Kirsty MacColl and Sirs Stanley Matthews, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness and Robin Day.

I’d pretty much just about landed what later turned into a career in web development, and I moved to London. Musically it wasn’t going that well, though.

Honourable mentions

Coldplay - Parachutes

Another unpopular selection, I suspect. Don’t care. Still love this album. Again, try to forget what a pile of assclownery they’ve turned into - in 2000 this album filled the hole left in my musical consumption left by Radiohead’s change of direction. I still turn frequently to this record when I want a break from the rock. Top track: “Spies”

Danger Danger - The Return Of The Great Gildersleeves

I had no idea that Danger Danger had been slogging away all through the Dark Times until much later, but it turned out they had (although without Ted Poley), and this is such a good fun album. Top track: “Dead Drunk & Wasted”

Slash’s Snakepit - Ain’t Life Grand

Slash! He of the hat! There were only two Snakepit albums, and this is by far the superior. Utterly riffdactic, as you would imagine. Top track: “Mean Bone”

Transmission OK - The Sky, the Stars and the Great Beyond

Way back in the day, like 1990 or so, there were lots of up and coming young shredders, and they mostly got in bands, did a couple of albums, and disappeared when that kind of music fell out of favour a few years later. C’est la vie. One of them, Mr. Blues Saraceno, suddenly reappeared in 2000 with a pop/rock band and album, and it’s just great. Top track: “Fiberglass”

Wheatus - Wheatus

I honestly don’t know how or where I heard Wheatus but when I did, I liked them. I bought the CD, and even took the (then) girlfriend to one of their gigs. We were about 26 or so, but we were the oldest people in the crowd. We pogoed for a couple of tracks, then went and leant against the bar. Cracking fun album though. :) Top track: “Love Is A Mutt From Hell”

And the winner is…

Paul Gilbert - Alligator Farm

Pablo Gilberto! Yayyyy!

When PG split from Mr. Big to go solo, I hoovered up his albums with religious fervour, but for me it wasn’t until this - his third - that he really clicked into gear. A splendid assemblage of tunes with Paul’s omnipresent sense of fun running throughout, and of course a lot of insane guitar licks. But you really don’t need to even be a rock-head to dig this album. His music isn’t impenetrably widdly, it’s if anything more pop-friendly than Mr. Big’s stuff, and somehow manages to fold his insane guitar playing into a collection of tunes you’d happily play to your mum.

There’s even a Spice Girls cover.

Seriously. There is.

No, really.

Top tracks: “Alligator Farm”, “Individually Twisted”, “Attitude Boy Will Overcome”

Turkey of the Year

Radiohead - Kid A

I didn’t like the change in Radiohead’s sound from The Bends to OK Computer, so when they did this, I really couldn’t hang. I’m not saying it’s bad—how could a billion Chinese people be wrong?^[1]—it’s just not for me.

Don’t like rice, Michael? ↩︎

Clive’s Album of the Year 2001

Clive Murray — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 23:53:20 +0000

2001 was of course released in 1968, and what’s up with that monolith? Amirite?

The US elected a barely intelligible hominid to its highest office, the UK got Foot and Mouth, Dennis Tito became the world’s first space tourist, we were gifted with Windows XP, and - of course - the World Trade Center was destroyed on the 11th of September, amid a coordinated attack on the USA by al-Qaeda. My grandparents had both just died the previous month and I was returning to London from their joint funeral in Eastbourne when we got the news. I expect you can recall where you were when you heard about it too.

Aside from the thousands lost in those tragic events, we also waved goodbye (as always, among many others) to Robert Ludlum, William Hanna, Joey Ramooooooone, Douglas Adams, Perry Como, John Lee Hooker, Jack Lemmon, Chet Atkins, George Harrison and Nigel Hawthorne.

Musically we were struggling to escape The Dark Times but still albums that failed to make my top 6 arrived from Aerosmith, Alien Ant Farm (very close call, that one), Alice Cooper, Hardcore Superstar, King’s X, Megadeth, Tenacious D, Mr. Big and others.

And so, to business.

Honourable mentions

Backyard Babies - Making Enemies Is Good

I’ve mentioned these Swedish sleaze pioneers before, and this was the first work of theirs to grace my ears. It grabbed me immediately, and was one of the first lights to truly go on in the darkness. Still great 13 years later. Raw and punky, but slick enough to enjoy on a daily basis. Top track: “The Clash”

Beautiful Creatures - Beautiful Creatures

Around the time I first heard of Backyard Babies, it also came to my attention that Joe LeSte (previously of Bang Tango) had a new outfit on the scene, and I checked out the record. It’s great - but it’s dated far worse than the Babies’ record has. Still has its moments, though. Top track: “1 A.M.”

John Butler Trio - Three

Yes! It’s not all about hard rock! I had never heard of Mr. Butler or his trio, until my wife’s (then girlfriend’s) cousin Roland So Real came all the way from Australia to stay with us for a bit and brought a couple of CDs as a gift. This was one of them, and it remains a solid favourite. Real hard, dirty, acoustic grooving with a top soulful voice. Thanks heaps, Rols. Top track: “Betterman”

Muse - Origin Of Symmetry

The Devon mega-trio really broke through with this one - not a bad tune on there. I originally had “Bliss” down as top track, but who am I kidding? Top track: “Plug In Baby”

Nickelback - Silver Side Up

OK. Yes. Yes, you’re right. Yes, they are. I know. No please, go on.

Yes, I accept that. Of course not. No.

Done?

OK. Try to imagine you’ve never heard Nickelback, and there’s very little decent rock music around. OK? Suddenly, “This Is How You Remind Me” is all over everything, guys with guitars are starting to be back in vogue, and you know what? This is a good album. It is. If you can forget everything that came after, the generic corporate-rock assclowns they turned out to be, the carbon copy albums they churned out after it, that haircut, the lot… it’s a good album. Sorry Hrishi, but it is.

I’m listening to it right now as I type this and YOU CAN’T STOP ME. Top track: “Never Again”

And the winner is…

Buckcherry - Time Bomb

I’ve described the impact this album had on me before, but it bears repeating. Having been brought up on Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe, Skid Row, L.A. Guns and all the other sleazesters of the late 80s, I was just laying there begging for Buckcherry to come along, and when I first heard Time Bomb (late one night, having imbibed more than one small sherry, in the company of Rory Dale and Dave To The Grind, if memory serves) something in me - thought long dead - stirred. The all-consuming antipathy I felt towards grunge had dissipated along with most of that music itself, the waves of Britpop and Madchester had finally broken, and it turned out that Hard Rock was pulling its boots on and thinking about finding a beer and trying to find a ride to the next party after all.

Thank you, Buckcherry, from the bottom of my arrhythmic heart. I really can’t thank you enough.

Top tracks: “Frontside”, “Whiskey In The Morning”, “Underneath”

Turkey of the Year

Stereophonics - Just Enough Education to Perform

Awww, no. I loved the previous one, Performance and Cocktails, but this really missed the mark in my opinion. Too self-indulgent. Too introspective, not enough crowd-pleasing. Sorry guys, but this is where I tuned out.

Clive’s Album of the Year 2002

Clive Murray — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 22:22:04 +0000

2002 was the first palindromic year since 1991 and the last until 2112. It started on a Tuesday, which was the day the Euro first became legal tender.

2002 marked Q-Tip’s Golden Jubilee on February 6th, though her sister - Princess Margaret - died from a stroke in her sleep three days later, and The Queen Mother died in March. Mixed fortunes for the Windsors there, then.

A new insect order was discovered, BT Cellnet rebranded as O2, Brazil won the World Cup, central Europe flooded and Dubya gave birth to the Department of Homeland Security.

We lost (as always, among many others) Chuck Jones, Spike Milligan (turns out he was ill), Dudley Moore, Layne Staley, Thor Heyerdahl, Linda Lovelace, John Entwhistle, Richard Harris, Jam-Master Jay, James Coburn and Joe Strummer.

2002 is also the name of a new age band from Texas.

Honourable mentions

A - Hi-Fi Serious

The least web-search-compatible band in the world, A had released two albums before this but my advice is to skip them - the songs and the production don’t come anywhere near close to matching this cracker. Punchy as hell and great fun throughout. Top track: “Nothing”

Freak Kitchen - Move

In 2002 I became aware of many of my guitarist friends suddenly raving about this Swedish guy called Mattias Eklundh. I found his first solo album mind-blowing and impenetrable in equal measure, but when I heard his band this album became an instant favourite. Clever, sometimes heavy, always interesting. Top track: “Nobody’s Laughing”

Paul Gilbert - Burning Organ

I’ve always dug PG’s solo albums, though due to his self-confessed “pop voice” they are sometimes a little ballad-laden. This one rocks out though - it even starts with a track called “I Like Rock”. Top track: “My Religion”

Porcupine Tree - In Absentia

During my time in advertising, I made one of the best friends of my life - Mr Mathias Hellquist - and it was he who introduced me to this album, which proved to be a gateway drug to the whole Porcupine Tree back catalogue. This one is for my money the pinnacle of the oeuvre, though that may be because I haven’t spent enough time with its successors. Either way, it’s magnificent. Top track: “Blackest Eyes”

Red Hot Chili Peppers - By The Way

You could not move for this album in 2002-2004 or so. You know why? It’s good. Top track: “Can’t Stop”

And the winner is…

Damien Rice - O

Oh god, this album.

It took me a while to get down into it, having been played it a few times at a friend’s flat, but a few more repeat listens and a heart-rending live gig at the Union Chapel later and I was a Damien Rice convert. This album…

This album.

I find it hard to even write about, since I often find it hard to listen to. And I find it hard to listen to purely because if I actually pay attention to it (as opposed to, say, having it in my headphones while working) then I find it drags me on an emotional roller-coaster journey that frankly wears me out. I know music is supposed to do that, that’s generally the idea. But the epic trek that these ten tracks comprise demands a lot of the listener. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not challenging music - it’s just… deep. I think. I could be wrong.

I’ll say this - go with it. You’ll get back at least as much as you put in, though you might end up a little different by the end.

Top tracks: “The Blower’s Daughter”, “Amie”, “Cannonball”

Turkey of the Year

Rush - Vapor Trails

Bleurch. Honestly. Wow. No. Don’t do that.

Clive’s Album of the Year 2003

Clive Murray — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 22:37:07 +0000

In 2003, the US Department of Homeland Security was established, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry, SARS happened, Apple released OSX Panther, I got a job at the then fledgling Dare Digital and using mobile phones while driving was outlawed in the UK, though you wouldn’t know it.

Among many others we lost Maurice Gibb, Nina Simone, Noel Redding, Barry White, Bob Hope, Johnny Cash, Robert Palmer and Bob Monkhouse.

2003 was also the International Year of Fresh Water, and the first year that really felt like rock music wasn’t dead after all for about a decade, thus marking the end of The Dark Times.

Honourable mentions

Backyard Babies - Stockholm Syndrome

These Swedish glam/sleazesters really know their way around a riff. Cracking stuff packed with attitude. Top track: “A Song For The Outcast”

Larry Carlton - Sapphire Blue

I went to see Larry play at the Camden Jazz Cafe with a couple of guitar playing buddies, and was wowed. Bought the CD that night, I think. But is it blues-tinged jazz or jazz-tinged blues? Top track: “Night Sweats”

Elbow - Cast of Thousands

I was late to the Elbow party, but since discovering them they’ve become one of my favourite bands of all time, and this is my favourite album of theirs. Just wonderful. Top track: “Fugitive Motel”

Evanescence - Fallen

If you don’t love Amy Lee’s voice, you might be doing it wrong. Top track: “Everybody’s Fool”

Skid Row - Thickskin

A reformed Skid Row without Sebastian Bach was always going to be a bit of a tricky proposition, but I think this album really works. The one after is pretty bad, but this one’s fab. Just skip the horrible, unnecessary punk reworking of “I Remember You”. Top track: “Born A Beggar”

And the winner is…

The Darkness - Permission to Land

Absolutely! You couldn’t move in 2003 for stripey spandex catsuits, and Justin climbing up on Jools’ piano to play a solo during their first appearance on Later is something I’ll remember for a while.

The thing is, it’s not just a joke - the songs are incredibly well written, especially the lyrics. Yes there is humour involved, but under that there is a damned fine rock band playing great rock songs. And Justin has a knack for writing a song that initially seems to be about one thing but when you actually stop and listen to what he’s saying, it’s totally something else.

Plus, the album and the band really were absolutely everywhere in the Summer of 2003, and that woke the general populace up to the return of Rock.

Top tracks: “Growing On Me”, “Get Your Hands Off My Woman”, “Love Is Only A Feeling”

Turkey of the Year

The Coral - Magic and Medicine

I loved the first Coral album, but this one was balls. Balls, I tell you.

Cats update!

Clive Murray — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 21:52:10 +0000

Ok, so when last I spoke about feline friends, my wife and I had just adopted four new sets of paws - a mummy cat and her three kittens.

Well, that was three months ago, and they have settled in marvellously. The kittens have grown lots, they no longer feed from their mum, they can all go outside and have all been spayed/neutered, and are generally having a splendid time of it all.

Here’s Cleo looking fabulous in the kitchen:

Here’s Izzy relaxing on the sofa:

And here’s Jeff and Ziggy cuddling in the morning:

Clive’s Album of the Year 2004

Clive Murray — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 09:00:34 +0000

2004 was a leap year starting on a Thursday, and soon after that I turned 30. It was also the International Year of Rice.

NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity landers touched down on Mars, Facebook launched, Massachusetts legalised same-sex marriage and North Korea banned mobile phones, Cassini-Huygens reached Saturn, The Scream was stolen, Ubuntu was launched, and the Southeast Asia earthquake and tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people on Boxing Day and generally devastated the entire Indian Ocean region.

Those taking the Stairway or the Highway included Peter Ustinov, Estée Lauder, Ronald Reagan, Ray Charles, Marlon Brando, Francis Crick, Rodney Dangerfield, Superman (Christopher Reeve), John Peel, Emlyn Hughes, Yasser Arafat and goddamn Dimebag Darrell, dammit.

Honourable mentions

Alter Bridge - One Day Remains

Yep, Alter Bridge again. Honestly, one of the best heavy rock bands around, and this was their debut album. It’s amazing from start to finish - one of the best debuts ever. It craps all over Creed from the greatest of heights. Top track: “One Day Remains”

Green Day - American Idiot

You’ve always known what you’re going to get with a Green Day album - well delivered straight-ahead punky rock with plenty of attitude - but for me this was where they took it up a notch and really felt like they had something to say. Top track: “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”

The Streets - A Grand Don’t Come For Free

I really don’t do the hippety-hop, save for the mighty Scroobius Pip, but when I gave this “rap opera” concept album a crack I couldn’t get enough. Skinner is properly clever with his lyrics and the tunes are engaging. Plus I’ve totally been that guy in the club in “Blinded By The Lights” once or twice. Top track: “Blinded By The Lights”

Velvet Revolver - Contraband

I love Slash and everything he does, so when he reunited with Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum of Guns N’ Roses to form a supergroup with Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots on vocals, I was sure the resulting album would be stellar. You know what? It is. Top track: “Headspace”

And the winners are…

I couldn’t separate the top two for this year - so it’s a tie!

Max Richter - The Blue Notebooks

I first encountered the neoclassical stylings of Max Richter on Classic FM a few years ago. I was returning home late one evening and as I parked outside my house I was transfixed by the short piece playing on the radio - it turned out to be “H In New England” from Richter’s 2008 album 24 Postcards In Full Colour. I immediately sought out more information and promptly bought all the CDs I could find, the pinnacle of which being this one. Utterly sublime.

Top tracks: “On The Nature Of Daylight”, “The Trees”, “Arboretum”

William Shatner - Has Been

I’ve tried before to tell people about this album, and I know I’ve failed. So I’m going to have one more go.

It’s not a joke. I don’t like it because it’s “so bad it’s good”. Irony is not involved, though intentional comedy is, on occasion.

OK? Do you get it? Yes, William Shatner. No, not kidding.

See, the music is co-written, produced and arranged by Ben Folds. In fact, I get the idea that in many cases Shatner has scribbled down some words and Folds has basically done the rest, but no matter. What you’ve got here (ignoring the attention-grabbing opener, a cover of Pulp’s “Common People”) is a guy laying his soul bare to music. “That’s Me Trying” is an open letter to Shatner’s estranged daughter. “It Hasn’t Happened Yet” is a chronicle of his trials and failings as he sees them. “Has Been” is a nod to the fact that perhaps his glory days are behind him. “You’ll Have Time” is a knowing wink and a smile to his own mortality. “I Can’t Get Behind That” is just Shatner and Henry Rollins cooped up in a studio and revelling in the joy of yelling about stuff that annoys them. And “What Have You Done”… well I can’t talk about that one - you should just listen to it and you’ll see.

Honestly. No guff, Chet.

Top tracks: “It Hasn’t Happened Yet”, “I Can’t Get Behind That”, “You’ll Have Time”

Turkey of the Year

Razorlight - Up All Night

F*** all of that noise.

Clive’s Album of the Year 2005

Clive Murray — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 18:10:08 +0000

2005 gave us YouTube, the Kyoto Protocol, Pope Benedict XVI, the first flight of the A380, Live8, a metre of rain in Mumbai, Disneyland Hong Kong, the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, an earthquake in Kashmir that killed around 80,000 people, the first human face transplant and the Chadian Civil War.

The reaper came for Hunter S. Thompson, Tommy Vance, Dave Allen, PJP2, Luther Vandross, Scotty (James Doohan), Robin Cook, Mo Mowlam, Ronnie Barker, George Best and Richard Pryor, among many others.

I can’t remember anything at all about what I was up to at that time, other than I was playing guitar in Little Monkeys, which means I must have been enjoying myself.

Unfortunately, even though The Dark Times had ended by 2005, this was not a great year for music.

Honourable mentions

Crashdïet - Rest in Sleaze

These Swedish glamsters were at the forefront of the new wave of sleaze and glam metal, and this - their debut - is their best album to date, featuring as it does the vocal stylings of the late Dave Lepard. Nothing outstandingly original here, but delivered with flair and conviction at a time when it was sorely needed. Top track: “It’s a Miracle”

Forty Deuce - Nothing to Lose

I’ve been a Richie Kotzen fan for a long time, but always wished he would record more hard rock - it’s been a while since Fever Dream, after all - so this (recorded, I assume, when he reached age 42) was a welcome find. Top track: “Oh My God”

Hardcore Superstar - Hardcore Superstar

It’s Swedish glamster time again. These guys have been banging it out since the late 90s and while their earlier efforts were somewhat naïve to say the least, their writing has matured over time and this eponymous release (their fourth album) is a really good cohesive listen. Bung it on and crack a beer. Top track: “We Don’t Celebrate Sundays”

John 5 - Songs For Sanity

When I first heard Señor Cinco’s debut solo album Vertigo I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s really something, even if the production isn’t quite what it could be. I bet his next album will be a cracker.” It is. Top track: “Perineum”

John Petrucci - Suspended Animation

Warning: contains notes. I was all set to write off Petrucci’s solo album as a dull shredwankfest, but it’s actually pretty damn good. Some of the melodies are downright catchy. Really good to hear what he gets up to outside of Dream Theater. Reminiscent of Steve Morse in places too, which is never a bad thing. Top track: “Glasgow Kiss”

And the winner is…

Coheed and Cambria - Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness

Hinted at before, this is of course the gold medal for “Longest Album Title” in my music collection. If you know nothing of C&C, the formidably-maned Claudio Sanchez, The Amory Wars or The Bag.On.Line Adventures, don’t worry about it. This is a fantastic album of catchy, interesting proggy rock songs in its own right and you don’t need to worry about the ongoing comic/book/graphic novel sci-fi saga that underlies the sequence of albums. Honestly. Don’t concern yourself with the fact that one of the tracks is written from the point of view of the story’s writer hallucinating a demented ten-speed bicycle which is a manifestation of his own subconscious and is guiding him to kill off one of the characters within the main story itself. It’s not important.

Just stick it on and enjoy it.

Top tracks: “Ten Speed (Of God’s Blood & Burial)”, “Welcome Home”, “Once Upon Your Dead Body”

Turkey of the Year

Nickelback - All the Right Reasons

No. Just no.

Clive’s Album of the Year 2006

Clive Murray — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 16:20:40 +0000

In 2006 a man named Mathias hired me for the second time, I moved from Leyton E10 to South Woodford E18, I turned 32 and my band Little Monkeys released a live album on 6th June (6/6/6).

Twitter was launched, NASA successfully obtained dust from a comet, Pluto lost its status as a planet, Ban Ki-moon became head of the UN and Paul McCartney - writer of the song “When I’m 64” - turned 64.

The roll-call for the dead included Wilson Pickett, Linda Smith, Gene Pitney, Syd Barrett, David Gemmell, Steve Irwin, Alan “Fluff” Freeman, Charlie Drake, Saddam Hussein and Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn).

And there was some music.

Honourable mentions

Buckcherry - 15

Buckcherry went and vanished for a while after their epic 2001 release Time Bomb but when they did show up again five years later, this is what they had for us, and it’s a beauty. Top track: “Everything”

DragonForce - Inhuman Rampage

Like many people my first encounter with DragonForce was at the end of Guitar Hero III on the Xbox. It intrigued me enough to get the album and I loved it immediately. What I love about their music is that it’s honest - it’s shreddy speed metal with a sense of humour and it’s not trying to be anything else. Fun. Fun fact: I’ve jammed with Herman Li of DragonForce a couple of times. He’s terrifying. :-) Top track: “Through the Fire and Flames”

Guthrie Govan - Erotic Cakes

I’ve been playing guitar for over two decades. When people used to ask me “Alright, so who’s the best guitarist in the world, then?” I used to have to say things like “Well, it’s not like that, there are great shredders and real virtuosos, and then you’ve got amazing band players like Slash and Page, and songwriters like Knopfler and…” but that’s all gone now. Now I just say “Easy, it’s Guthrie Govan. Next?” Top track: “Fives”

The Killers - Sam’s Town

I used to hate The Killers. It wasn’t helped by designers at the ad agency I joined in 2006 playing this album over and over on the office stereo. But over time it grew on me, and I realised that “The Best British Band to Come Out Of Las Vegas” had produced a classic. Top track: “When You Were Young”

Muse - Black Holes & Revelations

Matt Bellamy is an utterly astonishing musician and Muse just keep knocking out brilliant album after brilliant album. Top track: “Knights of Cydonia”

And the winner is…

My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade

See previous re MCR being emo. Whether they were or weren’t, I honestly couldn’t care less, as underneath there was a damned excellent hard rock band. I’ve checked out their first two albums and the quality isn’t quite there to be honest, but this - their third studio album - is utterly flawless from start to finish.

So come one - come all - to this tragic affair, and make sure you play it loud.

Top tracks: “This Is How I Disappear”, “Welcome to the Black Parade”, “The Sharpest Lives”

Turkey of the Year

New feature! If there was really an album that stuck out to me as being a low moment of the year, I shall record it so that others might not make the same mistakes I did.

Joe Satriani - Super Colossal

This was the last Satriani album I bought, though he’s released several more since. I just couldn’t keep doing it. I couldn’t keep going back to the same well and drinking the same dull sugary water any longer. He’s still an incredible musician, but this was a bridge too far. Too many predictable ballads, too many mid-tempo groovers that go on for 4? 7? 10? minutes or basically until you rip the CD out and put something fun on. If you want to listen to some cracking Satch, stick on Crystal Planet and avoid this at all costs.

Incoming

Clive Murray — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 10:19:04 +0000

So, if the story is about Shira and her departure then this is the third and final part of that story.

My wife and I visited a cat rescue place in Luton on 21st June, five days after Shira finally went to her well-earned rest. We predictably enough fell in love with a lovely female black and white (black, essentially, but with a white diamond on her chest) cat who came home with us and who we have named Cleo. This is she:

But…

Well…

The thing is…

Cleo had kittens. And we felt bad about taking their mummy away.

So…

This is Jeff:

…and this is Izzy:

…and this is Ziggy:

…and now we no longer have the wrong number of cats.

We will never forget Shira, our darling Little Bear. She will always be in our hearts. But life does move on, and so must we. The pain will fade (I’m crying now) over time and we will carry on with our new little feline family.

RIP Shira. Say ‘Hi’ to Trevor for me.

The Wrong Number of Cats

Clive Murray — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 23:54:04 +0000

In my opinion there is only one wrong number of cats to have, and that is none.

I wasn’t always That Cat Guy. When I was very young my Mum had a dog - a poodle called Freddie. I don’t remember him well, only that he died while I was a kid, in my Mum’s arms as we left the vet. He had a heart attack right there in the street and by the time we ran back to the vet’s surgery he’d gone. He was fairly old, I think, but of course that didn’t help any. It doesn’t. Mum was distraught.

A few years later we got a rabbit. He was jet black all over and - this being the 70s, before political correctness had been invented - Mum named him Ayatollah. Go figure. He died before very long, as it happened - there was an accident involving me learning to ride a bike… The indelible picture in my head is at least as grim as you are probably imagining it to be. At least he didn’t suffer.

We got another black rabbit the same week, and Mum struck again with the naming scheme by going for Cassius. Cassy, as he was inevitably known, lived a long rabbity life and was joined along the way by Sandy, Crystal, Measles and Inky, and when it turned out that Inky was in fact (contrary to assurances) female, a couple of litters of little black bunnies. Five adult rabbits and eleven kittens (baby rabbits are called kittens - FACT) was plainly Too Much Rabbits, and eventually Inky and her brood were taken to a rabbit shelter leaving us with just the remaining four adults, who dropped off one by one over the following few years, until eventually we were a petless household.

I’ve glossed over the hamsters here, which is remiss of me. The exact chronology of this eludes me but I suppose the string of little hamsters that started with Screwball and included such luminary characters as Miss Ellie and Snatch (yes, really) probably started around the time of Cassy’s arrival and ended some time before the last of the rabbits - Sandy, the original hard bastard - departed. They were hamsters. There isn’t a whole lot else to say about them. One story: the first day we got one, that evening Mum got him (Screwball) out of his cage and was walking across the room toward me with him just sitting in the palm of her hand. We’d never had little rodents before and knew nothing really about them, and so it as with horror and a simultaneous inward shriek of “Oh Christ he’s going to die!” that we watched him swandive straight off Mum’s hand, five inexorable feet to the floor. Of course, he didn’t give a toss about our ignorance or expectations, and simply bounced once and ran off behind the telly. This same hamster once climbed to the top of a doorframe, around 6’6" off the ground and performed a very similar dive, with exactly the same result. Bounce, twitch whiskers, run away and (presumably) journal the results. (NB: I have no idea if this is normal. Please do not try this with your hamster. It may be that Screwy was just tough and/or A Mental.)

By the time the rabbits had all gone, I was a moody teenager with frustrating hair, acne and no luck with girls, and the last thing on my mind was pets, but it turned out that that wasn’t the case for my Mum. One day in 1991 or 1992 I was walking home from college across the field when I saw Dad’s car arrive in the driveway. Thinking no more of this - a perfectly ordinary event - I entered the house, wandered into the front room and chucked my college bag into a corner, then turned to regard the tiny little kitten sitting alone in the basket in the middle of the room. It was a little pretty grey kitten with long fur with a splash of white and sky blue eyes. It peered over the edge of the basket at me and said “Mew?” I honestly had no idea how to reply to this, so went to quiz my father. It transpired Mum had always wanted a pretty grey cat with blue eyes, and so he had gone out and bought her one. She was at work. This might have been a wedding anniversary thing, but I honestly cannot remember if that was the case or not. It’s equally possible that Dad had just gotten around to it.

This little kitty was named Selina, and she was utterly beautiful, though she knew it. She would demand a fuss in exactly the way she wanted it, and if you got it wrong or continued it for a picosecond too long or dared retract the fussing hand a femtosecond too soon she would let you know that you had incurred her wrath in a very painful way. In latter life I swear she was sponsored by Wilkinson Sword. When Selina eventually passed on Mum got a rescue cat called Lucia, who she still had when she (Mum) died in February this year. Lucia was always a difficult cat, at least for most people. Mum told me she was a sweet thing to her and Dad, and in later years she eventually warmed to me and let me fuss her for up to five minutes at a time, but for anyone else she was a streak of black and brown fur legging it out the door and hiding until the strangers had gone. After Mum went she got rehomed with a family who had young children and I hear they hit it off famously, which fact makes me very happy.

At some point during Selina’s tenure, I moved out of the parental home and in with my girlfriend and her enormous (I think I’m remembering this right) Setter/Wolfhound cross, Aslan. My girlfriend’s brother - my mate Paul - described Aslan with a phrase that still kills me to this day. “Aslan strong like bull! Smart like tractor!” I’ve honestly never got on well with dogs, and me and Aslan never saw eye to eye. He was a soppy slobbery thing, full of love and a burning desire to bark down anything that came within two-hundred yards of the letterbox. I’m saying “was” - for all I know he’s still going, but this was 15 years ago, so perhaps not. It’s not for me to know. It was in fact during my time living with Aslan that I discovered I’m actually a bit scared of big dogs. Not a fact I’m proud of, as it goes, but hey-ho. Chalk it up alongside all the other neuroses and move on.

I lived a pretty animal-free life for a bit, save the amount of time I spent with my good friend Jon, who had around that time got himself a whacking great Alaskan Malamute called Balto. I used to crash at Jon’s place quite often, and around this time I would often wake up with my arm around Balto. I might not like big dogs, but they seem to like me well enough.

In 1999 I met a nice girl, and in 2000 I moved into a flat with my mate Paul, and in May 2000 that went all kinds of Janice Long, so I moved in with the girl and her family for a few months before moving to London that August. This is relevant because they had five cats: Gizmo, Kitty, Rusty, Sultan and Oscar. Sultan and Rusty were elderly black creatures who loved a fuss, their food, and lazing around on whatever you might be trying to read. Kitty was mischievous and lightning fast with his razor-sharp claws. Gizmo was (and still is) a highly-strung Persian/Norwegian-Forest-Cat cross with ginger cotton-wool fur and a little girly meow, and Oscar was a big loveable dope. I was commuting from Hastings to London at this point and I was the first one up every morning. And every morning I would come down to the kitchen for a glass of milk, and Oscar would be sitting bolt upright on the kitchen table waiting for me to come and scratch him behind the ears and tell him he was a big cuddly boy.

In August 2000 I moved to London (the girl following the month after - she went into halls at South Bank University) into a shared house with two other programmers who also worked in what I thought was called New Media, but later found out was actually called advertising. This was just after the first dotcom crash, as the second dotcom bubble was still inflating. Many were the late night all-staff parties, the little metal scooters, the nights crashing on a workmate’s sofa. Around this shared house there was this ginger cat who would occasionally appear in the back garden, and who would sometimes come down to the back door while you were cooking and scratch at the door until you opened it and gave him some of whatever you were making. It was obvious he didn’t have an owner - he was basically a stray and was making good with all the terraced houses, getting by on whatever people would give him, and sunning himself on our shed roof in between.

In mid-2002 it was time for me and the girl to get our own place, which we did (renting alas), and we took that big soppy ginger cat with us and named him Trevor. Trevor was the most wonderful cat I could ever have imagined, and remains to this day one of my very best friends I’ve ever had. It was crushing when he got ill just after Christmas 2011 - we never really found out what he had, but hyperthyroidism was initially suspected and other suspected problems linked to his declining health over that six months included asthma, heart disease, and even cancer. Whatever the case, right at the end he ballooned in size and couldn’t look after himself, and we had to make the impossible choice for him, and send him to play with the big ball of string in the sky.

RIP Trevor the cat, 11/6/2012. We still think of you every day, Trevley-Paws.

As mentioned previously, the giant furry hole in our lives was made bearable by Shira, the little black and white 18-year-old moglet we inherited when we moved into our current (still rented, dammit) house in Hemel Hempstead. In those early days in 2012, the pain of losing Trevor was so hard on the girl (who by now become my wife) that she almost shunned Shira for a little while. She just couldn’t move on from Trevor, she loved him so much and it didn’t help that Shira had actively hissed at and attacked Trevor pretty much every time they met over the 6 or 7 weeks that they coexisted in the same house. She had of course lived in this house with no other cats for 18 years, and then we go bringing a huge great boy cat into her domain. But any hardness or resistance between my wife and Shira melted away in next to no time, once the rawness of loss had started to scab over a little, due to Shira’s innate loveableness.

Shira wormed her way into both our hearts in no time and soon I had more pictures of her on my phone than I did of guitars, or of me looking cool in the band. Soon she was all we thought about when we went away on holiday, and I even set up a spy-cam so that we could watch the cat sitter feeding her when we were on holiday in Santorini last year.

Well, as also mentioned previously, Shira recently got very ill. She just stopped eating, and once again we will never know exactly what it was she had. And it is with the very heaviest of hearts that I report that we lost her this morning. She’d seemed like she was going to bounce back again and again, but in the end it seems she had used up all her 18-or-so lives, and it was finally time for her to go. I knew this morning when I came down and found her sitting next to the sofa, having been unable to get up onto it in the night, that the time had come. The vet was wonderful as always, and now our beloved Little Bear is buried at the bottom of the garden here, at the house she lived in for all that time, and next to Trevor.

RIP Shira the cat, 16/6/2014. Our darling Little Bear. Bobble, Shouty Bob, Feetsie, Queen of Tail, the Little Minx. Do excuse me, I have a great number of things in my eye.

So now, for the first time in 12 years, we have the wrong number of cats. And there is only one wrong number of cats - and that number is none.

Clive’s Album of the Year 2007

Clive Murray — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 10:33:40 +0000

In 2007 the Writers Guild of America went on strike, utterly buggering up the second series of Heroes and cutting short the annual season of many other shows. Oh, and winning a huge battle for the rights to residual payments or something, I guess.

Anna Nicole Smith, Luciano Pavarotti, Anita Roddick, Colin McRae, Marcel Marceau, Ned Sherrin, Alan Coren, Evel Knievel, John Inman, Mike Reid, Kurt Vonnegut, The First James Bond (Barry Nelson), George Melly and Boris Yeltsin died, Windows Vista was released and Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, but it wasn’t all doom and gloom - Apple released the first iPhone and I visited Amsterdam for the first time, and got engaged while I was there.

Also the new Wembley Stadium opened. I went and saw Muse play there, as my (then girlfriend) wife had bought me tickets as a birthday present. It was ace.

Honourable mentions

Airbourne - Runnin’ Wild

Do you like AC/DC, but sometimes find them a bit long in the tooth? Fancy a younger version? Wish their songs were about 25% faster across the board? You want Airbourne, then. Proper carefree reckless rock and roll, this, and authentically Australian to boot. Top track: “Girls In Black”

Alter Bridge - Blackbird

I’ve mentioned the other-worldly voice of Myles Kennedy before and it’s in the context of Alter Bridge that I first became aware of him. If you kind of dig Creed but wish they were a bit heavier and their singer was a bit less whingey and a lot more amazing then Alter Bridge are for you, and this album - their second - is absolutely killer throughout. STOP READING, BUY IT NOW. Top track: “Blackbird”

Coheed and Cambria - Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World For Tomorrow

This, the silver medal for “Longest Album Title” in my collection, marks the soundtrack to the chronological end of the “Amory Wars” saga of comic books, as written by Claudio Sanchez. Who is also guitarist and singer of the band. Mental stuff - and awesome music. Top track: “Feathers”

Underworld - Oblivion With Bells

Underworld took a few years - not just 100 days - off after their previous so-so release A Hundred Days Off and it seems the rest did them good. This is packed with gems. Top track: “Beautiful Burnout”

Vangelis - Blade Runner Trilogy

A bit of a cheat here, what with the original Blade Runner OST being released in 1982 along with the movie. But Vangelis’ timeless score was re-released in 2007 to mark the 25th anniversary of the movie and coinciding with the release of The Final Cut, Ridley Scott’s last word on the subject. This 3CD release contains an extra CD of score from the film plus a disc called BR25 - new music inspired by the movie and its legacy. Top track: Still the sublime “Blade Runner Blues”

And the winner is…

Turisas - The Varangian Way

“I WAS CONWINCED!”

Yes, another folkish metal winner this year, this time from Finnish battle metallers Turisas with this truly magnificent album. It’s a concept journey (of course it is) and tells the story of a group of Vikings (or Varangians, natch) travelling the rivers of medieval Russia (obviously) down to the Byzantine Empire. The sound on this album is really focussed and the songs perfectly executed yet with such an atmosphere that you can almost hear the creak of the oars and feel the wind in the sails.

So wrap up warm and let Warlord Nygård and his crew lead you down those ancient waterways to Holmgard… and beyond!

Top tracks: “To Holmgard and Beyond”, “Five Hundred and One”, “Miklagard Overture”

Cats and Dogs

Clive Murray — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 12:50:54 +0000

People seem to divide reasonably neatly into two groups: cat people and dog people. People who say “But I like both!” - you’re probably dog people. People who like both (in my experience) tend to be more devoted to their dogs while the cats are just kind of around the place. Whereas people who are only cat people often have either a basic mistrust of dogs (and dog people) or just don’t have the time to traipse after a drooling needy idiot, picking up their faeces. (Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, I’m sure you love your cat as much as your dog. Sure, fine, OK, it’s a generalisation. Sue me. Can we move on?)

Cat people are often viewed as obsessive, and this is only because they usually are. But it’s definitely true that there are some cat people who take it to a whole new level of obsession. You know them - their cat is their phone wallpaper AND desktop wallpaper, they buttonhole you in the lift and show you photos “Look! He’s wearing a hat!”, and they phone home occasionally to an otherwise empty house so that their cat can hear their voice talking to the answerphone. Don’t tell me you don’t know one of these.

Well I’m the guy that those people think are a bit weird.

Cats to me (or at least the two cats I have lived with for any time) aren’t animals, or pets, they are best mates who happen to be shorter than me and covered in fur*. A handful of you reading this will remember Trevor. Trevor was a big ginger moggy my wife and I adopted when we moved house since he obviously had no owner and he lived ten happy years with us until ill health took him in 2012 - the year that also took my father.

I cried far harder on June 11th, 2012 when Trevor departed than I ever did over my father’s 2-year decline and eventual death** from (what else) cancer in November of the same year. Seeing this cuddly, furry force of nature brought low by hyperthyroidism, asthma, heart disease and god alone knows what else was unbearable and I will never forget digging a grave for him down the bottom of our garden in the rain that evening. The cherry tree we planted alongside him will forever be Trevor’s Tree.

The void he left was in part filled by Shira, the 18-year old black-and-white female cat we inherited when we moved into the rented house we still occupy. The owner had moved into assisted living due to ill health and left her cat behind, hoping that new tenants would take her on. We did, of course, and she wormed her way into our hearts in next to no time and became our beloved Little Bear.

You can probably see where this is going.

Shira is now very ill indeed. She is now 20 years old, and has been having fortnightly antibiotic injections to counter various gum infections and similar ailments that plagued her for a while, and doing OK on it until just over a week ago when she stopped eating entirely. We suspected teeth problems but at the vet this was found not to be the case, and the dreaded hyperthyroidism was suspected again - but following blood tests this too turned out not to be the case. In fact, Shira’s numbers were all inside the normal ranges - amazing for a 20-year old cat - which when coupled with the racing heartbeat all pointed to the one thing you can’t test the blood for, heart disease.

We continued with the antibiotics, and right now I’m administering a (meant for humans, cut into quarters) heart pill three times a day, and we’re trying all the easy-to-eat foods and supplements that we can. She occasionally eats a couple of mouthfuls of cooked chicken, or trout, but every time we think “Aha, she’ll eat X” she turns away from it the second or third time we try it. The frustrating thing is she seems to be hungry and to want to eat - but when we put anything in front of her she goes up to it, looks at it, then walks away. Heartbreaking.

So. Further emergency supplies (high calorie gels, assistive diet foods) have been ordered from the internet, post haste, paying utmost for fastest delivery possible, but I hear that today she is even refusing cream and pâté, the two things she had been fairly reliably at least nibbling at. Hopefully the syringe of stuff that aims to counter the negative effects of antibiotics on the digestion will arrive in time (it’s due Wednesday) to help her turn this around, but if we’re still in the same situation this time next week (vet appointment on Monday) we will very likely have to make the Final Decision for our gorgeous little Shira.

And that is why I am sad.

* Definition borrowed unceremoniously from Tom Cox.

** Of course I cried for my Dad. Of course I did. But that is another story for another time. RIP, Dad. You were the best.

Band Names

Clive Murray — Wed, 14 May 2014 15:19:05 +0000

The hardest part of starting a new band has always been coming up with a cool name. Nowadays it’s even harder since you need to come up with a name that has an available .com domain. If you have to add “online” or “rocks” to the end of your band’s name to get the domain, you haven’t put enough work into it.

Here’s a chronological list of all the bands I’ve been in over the last 23 years:

Shockwave
Sister Steele
NSK
Pegasus
Ugly Seed
May 19
Chameleon
Strange Machine
Three
Iguanahead
The Clive Murray Band
Claytown Troupe
Little Monkeys
Panik Attakk
Thunderhead
Crashstars (which was Little Monkeys renamed)
Indigo Down

The Dark Times (1993–2003)

Clive Murray — Sat, 10 May 2014 22:40:05 +0000

I was born in 1974.

Image borrowed from http://www.localbandreview.com/2012/03/spotlight-on-1974-the-band-not-the-year/

I grew up normally for an only child, the regular average upbringing of a semi-affluent family in Southern England, and some time in my mid-teens I decided I’d like to learn to play guitar. I’d been brought up on a musical diet of crooners (via my Dad), Abba and Elvis (my Mum) and Radio 2, but by this time I had developed a liking for classic rock in the form of Dire Straits, Eric Clapton and Queen. The thing was, although I didn’t know it at the time, I was starting on guitar smack-bang in the middle of a - perhaps THE - Golden Age of Hard Rock.

The year was 1989. Guns N’ Roses were the biggest thing to happen to rock music since the ’70s, Aerosmith had just come out of retirement, Bon Jovi were megastars, and the LA rock scene had exploded all over the face of the industry thanks to bands like Mötley Crüe, Poison, Skid Row, Extreme, Winger and many many more. Hard rock had separated itself from its punk roots - and very definitely distanced itself from its heavier cousin Metal - and carved out its own hairspray-and-spandex-flavoured shelf in the record store.

Image borrowed from http://www.rockbandaide.com/19827/rock-band-community-nights-poison-giveaway/

Was it utterly ridiculous? Of course it was. But I loved it. In 1991 I played my first live gigs with my first rock band NSK, got my first Ibanez guitar (upgrading from the Fender HM Strat), and the soundtrack to my life was “Slave to the Grind”, “Appetite For Destruction”, “Pornograffitti” and “Skyscraper” over and over. Life was good. It seemed like this would go on forever. Surely, as Bill & Ted foretold, rock music would heal the world and bring about an Age of Enlightenment.

No.

By the end of 1992 the ridiculous excesses of the rock scene were becoming too much for the music-buying public to swallow, and while many diverged off into the saner territories of metal or (whisper it) electronic music, others still railed against the plastic parade.

Enter Kurt Cobain, stage left.

Image borrowed from http://testcopytheme.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/kurt-cobain-biography-legend-singer-of.html

The grunge shockwave that emanated from Seattle in 1993 was the inevitable backlash that the rock music industry needed if it was to survive as anything other than a parody of itself. “No more!” audiences yelled when Axl Rose kept them waiting for three hours yet again. “Shut the hell up!” was the cry when yet another coked-up spandex-clad peacock launched into yet another indistinguishable 10-minute guitar solo. Already the landscape had started to shift with the industrial rock movement (see Helmet, Therapy?, Ministry and others for details) and the (shudder) rap-metal crossover genre gaining thousands of fans by the day, and it was truly time for something else.

Well, something else arrived in the form of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and the like. Grunge turned up, slouched into the party, sat heavily on the sofa and stared at its boots while smoking and not talking to anyone. Gone were the guitar solos, the power chords, the lyrics about partying, the hairspray and the excess, and they were replaced by droning lyrics, dissonant riffs, introspection, flannel shirts and (gasp!) short hair. Flamboyance was out, moping was in.

Or at least that’s how it appeared to me at the time. I hated it. I’m not generally one to use the word “hate” lightly, but this was utter, pure, unalloyed hate. Hate focused like a laser. Hate that gave me energy. Hate that got me up early in the morning just to spend more of my time hating it. Grunge killed the music I loved and for that I despised it and all it stood for. Of course, since then I’ve come to realise that was maybe a good thing, and I can now listen to Pearl Jam’s Ten without grimacing even once, but back in 1993 if you’d given me a shotgun I would have gone at Kurt Cobain like it was all his fault. It hurt.

Well, we all know how that played out. Grunge stormed the world and eventually the rebellion against the rebellion became the mainstream. GNR, Poison and Crüe posters across the globe were torn down, Axl, Bret and Vince were replaced by Kurt, Chris and Eddie, and a year later Kurt famously took his own life.

I’m not here to talk about that. It’s a hell of a thing when someone makes that decision, and I can’t claim to feel anything about it other than sad. Musically though, this marked the start of “The Dark Times”.

In 1993 the rock bands I loved were still trying to forge ahead like nothing was wrong. Richie Kotzen joined Poison and they released Native Tongue, their best album ever. Vince Neil went solo and released Exposed with Steve Stevens on guitar. Winger, Mr. Big, Love/Hate and Enuff Z’Nuff released their third albums, a rejuvenated Aerosmith powered ever onwards with Get A Grip, Steve Vai released a hard rocking record with a new singer, and Ozzy pumped out Live & Loud. But the damage had been done, and the public were voting with their wallets. Some people tried to move with the times, failing to notice that the times were trying to get away from them at any cost.

By 1994 if this had been a boxing match, the commentator would have said “THE KNEES HAVE GONE”. Rock was still upright, but everyone could see it wouldn’t be that way for long. Mötley Crüe had a new singer and released their ill-fated eponymous album, Zakk Wylde’s Pride & Glory was a beacon in the darkness, and Enuff Z’Nuff seemingly didn’t get the memo, but elsewhere the bouffants were wilting, the makeup had run and the spandex was getting a bit too tight, and just a little smelly. The sun was coming up, the booze and drugs were just about out, and people were coming to the harsh realisation that the party was just about over.

Image borrowed from http://midnightmoviewatcher.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/can-i-borrow-your-underpants-for-10.html

1995 had similarly slim pickings, Slash’s Snakepit notwithstanding.

I don’t even want to talk about 1996.

1997 was pretty grim, aside from The Colour and the Shape. (More on the Foos later.)

After that it went downhill.

By 1999 my CD player was looking at me with weary exasperation every time I approached it with Appetite, Porno or Slave, and all I could do was shrug and say “Yeah, I know. But someone has to do it. Someone has to wait here in the freezing dark and keep the pilot light burning. Rock will come back. And when it does, someone has to be here. Someone has to be here to welcome it back, hand it a beer, and tell it we’re glad to see it again. And that someone is me.”

1999 was pretty much the bottom of the trough. And on a graph, what happens at the bottom of a trough? The curve begins to rise. Things start to get better. The spots in your vision that you’ve become so used to seeing from banging your head on the wall coalesce into something, a blur that eventually turns out to be a light in the distance, so very far away, but nonetheless a light. Is it getting bigger? Closer? What’s that smell… is it… is that whiskey?

Enter Buckcherry, stage right.

Image borrowed from http:/www.metal-rules.com/

It would be a disservice to all the other hard rock bands that were around at the time, particularly the ones who slogged all the way through The Dark Times without a break (here’s to you, Enuff Z’Nuff, Danger Danger and Thunder, good on ya) to say that Buckcherry saved the rock single-handedly, but they definitely found rock laying ODing in the alleyway and administered the necessary adrenaline shot to the chest. Buckcherry’s eponymous debut album was the first in a long time that felt right. It felt like the good old days might—just might—not be gone forever. Maybe a time could return when one could play a Les Paul on stage and drink a beer at the same time. Maybe songs could once again be about good times, and not so much about how Daddy didn’t come to your ball game. Maybe this time around we don’t need the spandex or the hairspray, maybe just good loud music will be enough?

Evidently others felt the same. 2000 gave us American Pearl, the debut from Hardcore Superstar, and the second and best Slash’s Snakepit album. Then 2001 really got the upswing going with cracking albums from Backyard Babies and Beautiful Creatures, plus the absolutely rockmungous sophomore release from Buckcherry, Time Bomb. This was the record that for me meant that I could finally call it a comeback. The light at the end of the tunnel was the front of an oncoming train… of rock, and I couldn’t wait for it to smash right into my face.

Image borrowed from http://kosslo.deviantart.com/art/Rock-n-Roll-Train-183204071

Another big event in 2001 was… wait for it… Nickelback. Yes, I know. But Silver Side Up sold millions and it’s a decent album. Everything they’ve done since then has been worse and worse kinds of crap, but I’ll stand by that album and point out the great riffs and you’ll know I’m right. “This Is How You Remind Me” was everywhere in 2001, and it woke up the general public to the fact that rock was still alive, and it was actually pulling its boots on and about to head out to the next party.

2002 continued the upward trend, if a little slowly, and then in 2003 and 2004 the veil was completely lifted, the mists were parted, and proper rock music was finally discharged from hospital (no more need for the Glambulance), as The Darkness stormed the UK, Evanescence arrived to cater for the moodier customers and Alter Bridge splintered off from Creed to cater for the heavier-minded, Skid Row came out of retirement with a really solid record, Slash’s long rumbling project finally emerged as Velvet Revolver and decent records were delivered from Backyard Babies, Brides of Destruction, Danko Jones, DoubleDrive, Enuff Z’Nuff (quelle surprise), Hardcore Superstar, Josh Todd, The Wildhearts and Young Heart Attack. Hell, even White Lion got in on it.

By 2005 it was open season again, and with the arrival of Crashdïet among others it soon became obvious that the bubble wasn’t about to burst again any time soon, and I’m happy to report that it still - as of May 2014 - hasn’t. Recently we’ve been given The Answer, The Winery Dogs, The Treatment, Halestorm, Slash’s solo stuff, Shinedown, The Last Vegas, You Me At Six, Black Stone Cherry, Airbourne and more, as well as enjoying the continued output of Buckcherry, Alter Bridge, Enuff Z’Nuff (naturally), Hardcore Superstar, and all the others.

Steel Panther almost ruined things by turning rock into a joke again, but thankfully they’re way better than that as both musicians and writers and have somehow turned it into a joke that works.

NB: This whole piece has basically ignored the Foo Fighters, and I don’t have a valid reason for that. Of course the Foos rock, and Dave Grohl will be my first choice for president when the global revolution comes, but the focus of the crux of my thrust, if you will, is the demise of the rock bands I loved and their gradual return to prominence. The Foo Fighters—and to a lesser extent Green Day—were to my mind just kind of always there during the 90s. They weren’t part of the downfall and neither were they part of the revival. They were in between while not really filling the gap, if you get me. Don’t get me wrong, I love FF and GD, but during those dark, cold, lonely years I was longing for Skid Row or GNR to come barreling out the darkness (pun intended), and it was that kind of punch that Buckcherry eventually delivered.

It’s great to have hard rock back, and this time happily co-existing with the other genres. It’s grown up a little, and keeps the hairspray and posing to a necessary minimum while still allowing the required amount of rebellion and raucousness without which it would be pretty pointless music. Things are once again good in the Land of Rock.

Image borrowed from http://www.billboard.com/articles/list/469368/the-25-hottest-clubs-in-north-america

It was cold in the dark, though.

So cold.

–c, 09/05/2014.

Clive’s Album of the Year 2008

Clive Murray — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 08:28:26 +0000

2008 was a year.

In it, Cyprus and Malta joined the Euro, Iran launched a rocket into space, Northern Rock collapsed, Fidel Castro and Bill Gates resigned, Falcon 1 made orbit, over 69,000 people were killed in an earthquake in China, the Large Hadron Collider had a “quench incident”, Barack Obama was elected, the QE2 was retired, and Bernie Madoff was arrested for the largest financial fraud in U.S. history.

The world said goodbye to Edmund Hillary, Heath Ledger, Roy Scheider, Jeff Healey, Gary Gygax, Arthur C. Clarke, Charlton Heston, Yves Saint Laurent, Bo Diddley, George Carlin, Bernie Mac, Isaac Hayes, Paul Newman, Michael Crichton, Mitch Mitchell, Majel Barrett, Harold Pinter and Eartha Kitt, among others.

Musically it was a year of comebacks, with return albums from AC/DC, Extreme, Guns N’ Roses, It Bites, Metallica, Mötley Crüe, Portishead and Whitesnake, almost all of which were disappointing.

Honourable mentions

Black Stone Cherry - Folklore and Superstition

Black Stone Cherry are an awesome young rock band from Edmonton, Kentucky, and this - their second album - is the sweet spot of their output to date. This album is packed with cracking rock tracks, and Chris Robertson’s voice has no right to be issuing from one so young. Cracker. Top track: “The Ghost of Floyd Collins”

Dan le Sac vs Scroopius Pip - Angles

I’ve mentioned Scroobius Pipbefore but this was his first album, a collaboration with his erstwhile partner-in-rhyme (sorry) Dan le Sac. Worth the price of admission for the sublime “Thou Shalt Always Kill” alone, this album should be of interest to anyone with a mind, whether they like hip-hop or not. (I don’t.) Top track: “Tommy C”

Johnny Flynn - A Larum

The Nu-Folk thing was only brought to my attention by Mumford & Sons in 2009, but I later discovered the splendid Mr. Flynn and this, his debut album, has some truly wonderful songs on it. Check out “The Box” on that YouTube and see if this might tickle you pink as it did me. Top track: “The Wrote & The Writ”

Guns N’ Roses - Chinese Democracy

When Duke Nukem Forever was eventually released in 2011 after 15 years in development hell, there was no possible way it could live up to its own hype, and so it is with the comeback album from GNR, the long-awaited Chinny D. The chief problem most people have with this release is that it is nominally a Guns N’Roses album, while the only original member of the band is the much-maligned lead screechwarden, W. Axl Rose. “Shame! Boo! This should be an Axl Rose solo album, not a GNR album! Where is Slash, where is Duff, where is Izzy? Boo! Shame!” these people trumpet, and while they are at least partially right, that doesn’t tell you anything about the album, chiefly and crucially failing to answer the most vital question “Is it any good?”

I can do better than that though, and while this is certainly no Appetite For Destruction, nor is it really even a worthy follow-up (What could be? AFD remains a perfect album and the toughest act to follow in rock history) to that or to the unnecessarily bloated Use Your Illusion combo, I can definitely and definitively give you an answer to the question “Is it any good?”

Ready? Here is your answer:

Yes it is. Top track: “Better”

It Bites - The Tall Ships

It Bites are a funny one. I liked them back in the early 90s, but then Francis Dunnery’s ego appeared to go mental and they disbanded. Then, decades later, the guys in the band told me they reformed and played me a couple of tracks off The Tall Ships, and I took an immediate dislike to what I heard - but over the months since then I’ve totally come back round, and have concluded that this is a great album. His Holiness John Mitchell is certainly a brilliant replacement for Mr Dunnery, and I hope they keep writing new stuff. Top track: “Ghosts”

And the winner is…

You Me At Six - Take Off Your Colours

Again, I’ve written a little about You Me At Six before, and it pleases me greatly to say that this - their debut - doesn’t have a bad track on it. Catchy rocky tunes that will lodge in your mind, great choruses and lovely raw production (recorded at His Holiness John Mitchell’s Outhouse Studios, and co-produced by HHJM too, funnily enough)… what’s not to love?

Get it.

Top tracks: “Save It For the Bedroom”, “Tigers and Sharks”, “Call That a Comeback?”

Tools in the Shed

Clive Murray — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 21:50:16 +0000

I wrote ~2500 words about guitars I own, guitars I have owned in the past, and guitars I will own very soon.

Maybe you like that sort of thing?

Clive’s Album of the Year 2009

Clive Murray — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 08:51:10 +0000

In 2009 we lost Michael Jackson and Patrick Swayze, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel prize for peace, there was a coup d’état in Madagascar and swine flu broke out in Mexico. Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson River with zero loss of life, the civil war in Sri Lanka came to an end, as did my ten-year stint in advertising, and Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was elected as Iceland’s first female prime minister and the first openly gay head of state in the modern world.

It was a cracking year for music too, and shortlisted albums that didn’t even make my 5 runner-up slots include Muse - The Resistance, Ludovico Einaudi - Nightbook, Steel Panther - Feel the Steel, The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die, Devin Townsend Project - Ki, Lynch Mob - Smoke & Mirrors, Yoshida Brothers - Prism, Ensiferum - From Afar, and more!

Honourable mentions

Alestorm - Black Sails at Midnight

YARRR! In 2009 I was deep in the grip of my folk-metal obsession and completely unaware that Pirate Metal was even a thing, when along came Alestorm and fair shivered me timbers, so they did. Some people I know just can’t get on with the singer, but for me that’s proper pirate vocals. Top track: “That Famous Ol’ Spiced”

Florence + the Machine - Lungs

Another amazing voice, Florence Welch and her popular beat combo took the charts by storm in 2009, and I for one applauded. This aptly named album is chock full of great pop songs, and she really can belt them out. Beezer. Top track: “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)”

Halestorm - Halestorm

Yep, Alestorm and Halestorm. Crazy, right? I only got into Halestorm recently (2014), but this, their debut album, is a total corker and Lzzy Hale’s voice is one of the best female voices in rock. Top track: “It’s Not You”

The Last Vegas - Whatever Gets You Off

I do like the sleaze, it must be said. A cracking collection of proper old-fashioned sleazy rock songs from Chicago, this was TLV’s major label debut and it’s ace. Top track: “Whatever Gets You Off”

Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

Go on, get it out. You’ll feel better. No, not that, put that away, that’s disgusting. No, I mean get all the anti-Mumford bile out. Go on, bang on for a while about how twee and generic their songs are, and how there are a million better faux-lk (fauk folk, get it?) groups out there and the Mumfords are just knocking out recycled insipid pish. Go on, I’ll wait. In fact I’ll go and get a coffee. You probably want about 2 or 3 minutes on that yeah? Cool. Off you go.

…

All done? Good. Now piss off, I’m going to curl up on the sofa with this cuppa and the Mumfords on the stereo. Lovely. Top track: “Dust Bowl Dance”

And the winner is…

Amorphis - Skyforger

Ah yes, Amorphis. This was in fact the first folk-metal album I ever heard, and it’s still one of the best. It doesn’t use the overtly folkish elements the way that Eluveitie do (no hurdy-gurdies or penny whistles here) but it does draw on folk elements in the sound and you always feel like you’re being told a story. Of course, for the most part that’s exactly what’s happening, since Amorphis (like some other Finnish folk metal bands) often draw from the Kalevala, the Epic Poem of Finland, as a source for their lyrics.

The thing that really holds my attention here is the huge magnetic presence of Tomi Joutsen’s vocals filling every corner of the band’s sound. Don’t get me wrong - the band are all excellent - but the character and depth of Tomi’s voice as he weaves these tales just transports me to some campfire in the wilderness, wrapped in a sheepskin and sipping brandy from a flask.

Or something.

Top tracks: “Silver Bride”, “Skyforger”, “Sampo”

Clive’s Album of the Year 2010

Clive Murray — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 19:22:44 +0000

This post was lost in the ether after a server crash, until my pal and colleague Mat Harden dug it out of his Instapaper for me. Thanks Mat!

2010 was the year in which I got married, the Burj Khalifa opened, Ronnie James Dio and Leslie Nielsen died, and Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon went on The Trip.

New-releases-wise it was a cracking year for metal (The Damned Things, Triosphere, Hellyeah, Furyon, Grand Magus, Star One, Alter Bridge, Iron Maiden, John 5), folk metal (Blind Guardian, Orphaned Land, Amorphis, Wuthering Heights, Eluveitie, Heljareyga), prog (Coheed and Cambria, Myrath), rock (Hardcore Superstar, Slash, My Chemical Romance, Airbourne, Buckcherry, You Me At Six, Ratt, Crashdïet), dance (Daft Punk, Underworld, Deadmau5, Pendulum) and pop (Angels & Airwaves, Johnny Flynn, Cee-Lo Green).

Honourable mentions

Cloudkicker - Beacons

Cloudkicker is the recording monicker of one Ben Sharp, and aside from that not a great deal more is known. He’s a one-man show that creates wonderful music, and pretty much gives it away - which in the end is probably as much as you need to know. Great stuff. Top track: “Oh, god.”

The Damned Things - Ironiclast

I know nothing about Fall Out Boy, Every Time I Die, or Volbeat, which puts me at a disadvantage here as I am unfamiliar with the work of 5 out of 6 of the members of this metal supergroup. The one member I do know is Scott Ian of Anthrax, and it was on his presence alone that I took a gamble on this album. It’s bloody excellent. Top track: “Bad Blood”

Eluveitie - Everything Remains As It Never Was

Power metal riffs, death metal vocals, penny whistles and hurdy-gurdies. Smashing. Top track: “Thousandfold”

My Chemical Romance - Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

No, shut up. Shut your hole, dammit. I know you, and you were thinking about saying something like “But aren’t they emo?” Stop it. This is a fantastic album of pop/rock tunes, and even if the pseudo-post-apocalyptic concept schtick can feel a little forced, songs like “Sing”, “Summertime”, “The Kids From Yesterday”, and the sublime “The Only Hope For Me Is You” are proof that MCR were never some sub-genre fad, but a damned decent rock band. Shame this was their last album, as it turned out. Top track: “The Kids From Yesterday”

Pendulum - Immersion

I’d not heard of Pendulum before this, but when I did I loved them. An excellent mix of drum ‘n’ bass styles and real instruments, plus some cracking tunes. Lovely stuff. Top track: “Crush”

And the winner is…

Furyon - Gravitas

Good god, yes. These metallers from Brighton are yet to achieve the recognition they deserve, in my opinion. I hadn’t had my socks so completely rocked off since hearing Images and Words back in 1992 or so. This is some properly hooky metal, with grooves and riffs like you wouldn’t believe, and oh my days, the guitar solos… Personally I cannot wait for the followup album, but in the meantime stick Gravitas on, pin back your ears, and do nothing else for 55 minutes. You can thank me later.

Top tracks: “Disappear Again”, “Voodoo Me”, “Souvenirs”

Invisible sound bacon

Clive Murray — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 12:00:00 +0000

My good friend Nick Beatty, known on the Twitters as @bumlaser, has a unique way with words.

If you like words, and things that are funny, you should follow him.

Additionally, he has written a thing for Seymour Duncan regarding multi-amp guitar rigs, and you should read it - even if you don’t care about the subject, it’s still highly amusing yet informative at the same time.

Go on - it’s here.

Clive’s Album of the Year 2011

Clive Murray — Sat, 16 Nov 2013 17:00:00 +0000

AotY2011 RETCON UPDATE!

2019-04-04

Originally I had a different album of the year for 2011, which was Balls Out by Steel Panther. While I still get the SP joke, it is wearing thin over the years, and looking back I feel more and more embarrassed by that choice. The irony has burned a hole through which I can now see the woke. So guess what? I’ve changed it!

OK, as you were…

wibbly wobbly, wibbly wobbly, wibbly wobbly

A lot of great music came my way in 2011. There were comeback albums from Anthrax, Mr. Big, Sebastian Bach, Electric Boys, Primus, and Vain, great new folk metal albums from Alestorm, Amorphis, Turisas and Týr, the long-awaited Aristocrats album arrived, Lady Gaga was Born This Way and Hugh Laurie Let Them Talk. So with no further ado…

Honourable mentions

Evanescence - Evanescence

Oh my word, how do I adore Amy Lee’s voice. Three studio albums in 8 years is hardly prolific, but by god they’re good albums, and in my opinion this is the best of them. The final track “Swimming Home” usually ends with me in bits. Totes emosh. Top track: “Made of Stone”

Hugh Laurie - Let Them Talk

“Have you got any grollings?” … “Flushed or galvanised?” Yes, most people on this side of the Atlantic over the age of 30 will think of Hugh’s comedy work with Stephen Fry and Rowan Atkinson, and those of an American disposition I’m sure can’t help but conjure up the cantankerous Gregory House, MD. But it turns out Hugh is in love with the blues of the deep south, and this album is completely magical. Top track: “St. James Infirmiary”

Mr. Big - What If…

No disrespect to Richie Kotzen, but I for one was thrilled to hear that Mr. Big had reunited with the full original lineup. This album’s a total cracker too. Top track: “Undertow”

Myrath - Tales of the Sands

Imagine if Dream Theater had all the annoying bits (i.e. Jordan Rudess) removed, they were all about 15 years younger, the singer had much more (i.e. some) charisma, and they were from Tunisia, and that was reflected in their music. In fact, forget Dream Theater - just listen to Myrath. Top track: “Braving The Seas”

Scroobius Pip - Distraction Pieces

I’ll level with you, I don’t like hip-hop. Eminem leaves me cold, Mos Def most definitely doesn’t interest me, and you can keep your Snoop, Dre, Kanye, JayZ and whatever the hell P. Diddy is calling himself this week. But sometime in 2007 I happened upon a YouTube clip of a British rapper called Scroobius Pip and his brilliant “Thou Shalt Always Kill”. I was immediately hooked and hoovered up his two album collaborations with DJ Dan le Sac as they were released. This is Scroob’s first solo album though, and it is worth the price of admission purely for the sublime track “The Struggle”. Yo, or something. Top track: “The Struggle”

And the winner is…

You Me At Six - Sinners Never Sleep

These guys are so great it’s sickening. Oh and they’re probably really young, and good at sports or something too. [Checks…] Yeah the singer was born in 1990 for Christ’s sake. That’s just rude. I’ve no idea what to call the genre of rock they play, but Wikipedia gives me three: alternative rock, pop punk, and post-hardcore. Make of that what you will - it’s loud and I love it.

Top tracks: “Loverboy”, “This Is The First Thing”, “Reckless”

Clive’s Album of the Year 2012

Clive Murray — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 12:00:00 +0000

2012 was a jolly fine year for music - or at any rate, music that I like. It was also the year in which I discovered a genre that took my ears by storm for some while, and which I can only attempt to name something like “technical instrumental djent-y metal-y stuff”. Since that’s such a crap name, go away and listen to Chimp Spanner, Cloudkicker, Scale the Summit and Intervals, and you’ll soon get the gist.

Honourable mentions

Chimp Spanner - All Roads Lead Here

Just 6 tracks, but 100% awesome. Some incredible guitar work here from Paul Ortiz. If you haven’t tried the genre give this a go. Top track: “Cloud City”

Grand Magus - The Hunt

Real good honest-to-horned-gods metal, from a Swedish power trio. Love JB’s voice. If you don’t like this, you don’t like metal. It’s that simple. Top track: “Silver Moon”

Max Richter - Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons

I love Max Richter’s minimalist neo-modern classical stuff, and if that’s too poncy a sentence for you then I quite understand. But his reworking of Vivaldi’s classic is absolutely sublime. I’m listening to it right now, in fact. Are you? Top track: “Winter 1”

Savage Messiah - Plague of Conscience

If you like your metal traditional, angst-free, long-haired, beer-fuelled and up-front, then Savage Messiah are for you. Fun fact: in the mid 2000s I was in a band with Savage Messiah’s lead guitarist Joff Bailey. Top track: “In Thought Alone”

Tremonti - All I Was

I was never a huge fan of Creed, far preferring the heavier Alter Bridge and the preternatural Myles Kennedy’s voice over the frankly-a-bit-whingey Scott Stapp’s, but I didn’t know what to expect when Mark Tremonti - guitarist for both bands - launched a solo album. What I got was bloody good though. Top track: “Brains”

And the winner is…

Flying Colors - Flying Colors

Supergroups often end up somehow not quite equalling the sum of their parts, be it due to ego clashes, overhype, production nightmares or whatever. But sometimes it does in fact work out - see Velvet Revolver, Audioslave, Them Crooked Vultures and even the David Lee Roth band of the late 80s for details. And so it is with Flying Colors.

The pedigree of the lineup is unquestionable: on lead guitar we have Steve Morse - solo artist and main axeman for The Dixie Dregs and latterly Deep Purple, he is an absolute star in the six-string heavens and would be considered “most valuable player” in any normal band lucky enough to have him. Versatile, tasteful, and - like Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden - can take over flying the plane on tour if the pilot has a heart attack.

On bass is Dave LaRue, also from The Dixie Dregs and the Steve Morse Band, so we know he can keep up with ole Steve, but who has also held down the low end for John Petrucci, Vinnie Moore, Joe Satriani and Jordan Rudess among others. He knows his way around, shall we say.

On keyboards it’s Neal Morse (lending the band a 40% Morse/non-Morse ratio that is unparallelled in the world of rock) from prog superluminaries Spock’s Beard and Transatlantic, and while he does bother deities in his spare time, he’s no slouch on the ivories so I’ll let him off just this once.

Thumping the tubs, it’s Mike “Yeah sure, I’ll play on that” Portnoy, the busiest man in prog/rock. He should really need no introduction, but if you turned up here by accident and really need to know who MP is, go look up Dream Theater, Liquid Tension Experiment, OSI, Avenged Sevenfold, Stone Sour, Adrenaline Mob, The Winery Dogs, and probably your mate’s band who didn’t really get anywhere but bugger me their drummer was good. (Rumours of him starting a project with Geoff Tate called Sour Grapes remain unconfirmed.)

And on lead vocals we have Casey McPherson, who I’m not really that familiar with, though I gather he’s lead singer for an outfit called Alpha Rev. Make of that what you will.

So this could be an album of endless prog wankery. Is it?

Honestly, no it’s not - it’s bloody good. Don’t get me wrong - this is a prog-tinged rock album, and everyone in the band can (and does) hold up their end, but it’s much more than a collection of 6-minute synchronised 32nd-note wankfests that gets samey after the first track (DT, are you listening to this?). This is an album of songs with hooks. You know, like they used to make? Back in the day? There are virtuoso passages, there are indulgences, but all of it works in context and you never get the feeling that anyone in the band is waiting for their bit so they can show off.

Damned fine album, that. Get on it.

Top tracks: “Blue Ocean”, “The Storm”, “Forever In A Daze”

Remember, Remember...

Clive Murray — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 12:00:00 +0000

A friend just posted on Twitter “Remember, remember the 5th of November” and I immediately felt crushingly depressed.

He doesn’t know of course - why would he? - that 5th November 2012 (a year ago today) was the day my Dad died.

I remember clearly waking up at 7am as per usual (it was a Monday morning) and seeing missed calls from my Mum timed at around 4am. I knew then that he was gone, and the first feeling I experienced was a huge rush of relief. He’d been ill for a long time - he was diagnosed with lymphoma (my memory refuses to recall whether it was non-Hodgkins or not - at this point it doesn’t matter) two years previously and given six months to live, but the doctors hadn’t taken into account what tough old bugger Tom was.

After the initial wave of relief there was just numbness - shock, I suppose - and I began the process of calling work and telling them I wouldn’t be in for a while, then packing a bag and heading down to Eastbourne. I’d already done the crying and the grief two years previously. If I recall correctly when I heard the original diagnosis I crawled inside a Scotch bottle and stayed there for a few days. My employers at the time were an understanding bunch, thankfully.

Today, a year later, I’m sitting here at work trying to give a toss and honestly not really doing very well at it. Later I shall raise a glass or two to the old fella, though within sensible limits.

I will always remember the 5th of November with mixed feelings. I just need to learn to nod and smile when people invoke the poem.

Miss you Dad, you silly sod.

RIP Tom Murray, 13/7/1926 - 5/11/2012.

Insince.re, the blog of Clive Murray

A Good Day to Font Hard

Font Hard

Font Hard 2: Font Harder

Font Hard With a Vengeance

Que Serif, Serif

The Sans of Time

Sans Macabre

Breaking the News

I’ll Fix YOUR Width in a Minute

Flip the script

Type Free or Font Hard

A Good Day to Font Hard

Further Reading

Fonts and Monsters

“Kalahari” playthrough

“Resurrection” playthrough

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2024

The one-liners

Honourable mentions

Alien Ant Farm - Mantras

Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard and Soft

Elbow - Audio Vertigo

Green Day - Saviors

Gun - Hombres

London Grammar - The Greatest Love

The Offspring - Supercharged

Max Richter - In a Landscape

Devin Townsend - PowerNerd

Underworld - Strawberry Hotel

And the winners are…

The Cure - Songs of a Lost World

Linkin Park - From Zero

Turkey of the Year

Blood Stain Child - Cyberia

Guitar Challenges by the Fiasco Bros

New thing alert!

K is for...

K is for… KXM

Clive recommends:

Video evidence

K is also for…

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2023

The one-liners

Honourable mentions

Black Stone Cherry - Screamin’ at the Sky

Buckcherry - Vol. 10

Peter Gabriel - i/o

McRocklin & Hutch - Press Start

Metallica - 72 Seasons

Nuclear Power Trio - Wet Ass Plutonium

Paramore - This Is Why

The Totemist - Less We Know

Voyager - Fearless in Love

Steven Wilson - The Harmony Codex

You Me At Six - Truth Decay

And the winner is…

Sleep Token - Take Me Back to Eden

Turkey of the Year

The Banishment - Machine and Bone

Clive’s Album of the Year, 2022

The one-liners

Honourable mentions

Amorphis - Halo

Architects - The Classic Symptoms of a Broken Spirit

Coheed and Cambria - Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind

Crashdïet - Automaton

Polyphia - Remember That You Will Die

Michael Romeo - War of the Worlds pt. 2

Joe Satriani - The Elephants of Mars

Skid Row - The Gang’s All Here

Taylor Swift - Midnights

And the winner is…

Reckless Love - Turborider

Turkey of the Year

Star One - Revel in Time

Love and Painkillers

August Album Update

The Wheel of Things

Moving house