Frank Zappa’s archival label Vaulternative Records was launched in 2002 by the late artist’s family to present a variety of fascinating odds and ends from his voluminous archive. Now, after a near-decade-long hiatus, Vaulternative is returning from Zappa Records and UMe to continue preserving the experimental side of the Zappa oeuvre.
…Sixteen of the seventeen tracks on Zappa ’66: Vol. 1: Live at TTG Studios are previously unreleased in any format. The release documents the young musician at an October 1966 session at the Hollywood studio just months after the release of The Mothers of Invention’s debut album, Freak Out!, on Verve Records. The new release has been produced, restored, and assembled by “Vaultmeister” Joe Travers and mastered…
Category: rock
Founded in 1961 by George Kooymans and Rinus Gerritsen, Dutch rock band Golden Earring (or Golden Earrings, until 1969) started off as a beat band, experimented as a psychedelic quartet and finally became a heavy rock group. Their ninth album Moontan (1973) – including their classic track Radar Love – hit the international album charts and is the band’s most successful album in the United States, being the only Golden Earring album to be certified Gold by the RIAA.
Golden Earring is the sixth, self-titled album that is also known as ‘Wall Of Dolls’ because of the cover photo. The record, released in September 1970, marks the debut of drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk with Golden Earring and is the first in a series of progressively oriented…
…Restored and newly mixed by the band’s Archivist Andy Gamble from tapes found in Francis Rossi’s library. This 2CD edition features the full 18 track concert.
Recorded at the legendary Hammersmith Odeon on 27th June 1979 as part of the bands If You Can’t Stand the Heat Tour, this is regarded as one of the most sought-after live shows from the band and shows Status Quo at their loudest and proudest.
‘Rockin’ All Over the World’ barrels out with cheerful abandon, then ‘Down Down’ grinds forward on that unmistakable Quo chug. ‘Roll Over Lay Down’ stretches into a crowd-pleasing stomp, the band sounding thoroughly pleased with the volume of their own amplifiers.
Is Trixies for real? The titular ’60s London night club – filled with cutthroats, dancers, toffs, actors, musicians – is evidently a creation of Squeeze lyricist Chris Difford’s febrile imagination. But does, as the promo insists, this song cycle/musical really date from 1974, three years before Squeeze even had a record deal and Difford and Glenn Tilbrook were all but teenagers? The idea seems quite incredible, but yes, a little sleuthing reveals it to be true: there’s a fleeting reference to it in D&T’s 2004 book, Song By Song, and it’s mentioned again in Difford’s 2017 memoir, Some Fantastic Place. Trixies, shelved for the foreseeable after punk loomed onto the horizon, might otherwise have been their first album. And how different Squeeze history may have been if it was…
Once mainly something that existed in a live setting, the group drifts further into its own orbit with a second collection of songs. What began as a collaboration between two voices now expands with the presence of a third, adding new layers that sometimes verge on something almost familiar.
The work continues to explore a method that feels less like collecting from the outside and more like rearranging from within. Fragments are taken apart and reassembled: rhythms, echoes, remnants of recognizable forms. This time, there is a stronger sense of movement, though it never quite settles. The vocals wander through it all, as if searching without urgency to arrive. At unexpected moments, other sounds surface briefly, then disappear again. The whole seems to find…
Originally released in 2011, Grace For Drowning is the second solo album from Steven Wilson. This Headphone Dust digital edition expands the original double-album experience with additional bonus tracks and demos, including the rare bonus material CD “The Map” originally included with the physical Grace for Drowning deluxe book edition.
“Grace for Drowning is more experimental and more eclectic. For me, the golden period for music was the late sixties and early seventies, when the album became the primary means of artistic expression, when musicians liberated themselves from the 3 minute pop song format, and started to draw on jazz and classical music especially, combining it with the spirit of psychedelia to create journeys in sound I guess you could call them.
Hand. Cannot. Erase. (2015) was recorded at London’s AIR Studios and saw Steven Wilson reuniting with Guthrie Govan (guitar), Adam Holzman (keyboards), Theo Travis (flute/sax), Nick Beggs (bass/stick), and Marco Minnemann (drums).
“Hand. Cannot. Erase. is an album rooted in sonic and spiritual modernity… an inventive blend of bleak and brooding industrial soundscapes.” — The Guardian
Hand. Cannot. Erase. is written from a female perspective; the concept and story were inspired by the case of Joyce Carol Vincent, a woman living in a large city who died in her apartment and went unnoticed for over two years, despite having family and friends.
The basic story, or concept of the record…
The Asteroid No.4 return in 2026 with In Praise of Shadows, their thirteenth full length album and a statement release that reaffirms the band’s enduring place within the modern psychedelic underground.
In Praise of Shadows captures The Asteroid No.4 at their most focused and assured, leaning fully into the shoegaze sound for which they are best known. Swathed in multi layered guitars, dense reverb, and hypnotic melodic drift, the record reflects decades of refinement while retaining the immediacy and emotional pull that has defined the band since their earliest releases.
Formed in Philadelphia in the late 1990s and now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Asteroid No.4 have built a reputation…
Few bands could turn sheer volume, chaos, and attitude into an art form quite like Motörhead, and The Löst Tapes, Vol. 8 (Live at Winter Gardens, Margate, 5th Nov 1984) is another explosive reminder of why the band remains untouchable in the live arena. Captured during the turbulent No Remorse era, this newly unearthed recording throws listeners straight into the sweat, distortion, and deafening force of Motörhead at one of their most transitional moments.
What makes this release especially fascinating is the lineup itself. The concert documents the short-lived but powerful 1984 formation featuring Lemmy Kilmister, Phil Campbell, Michael “Würzel” Burston and drummer Pete Gill during a period when the band was rebuilding after major internal changes.
Among his many achievements, Cooper’s 2011 release ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’ stands out as a gripping sequel to his iconic 1975 concept album ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’. Revisiting the twisted world of Steven, the album blends nostalgia with modern flair.
Originally intended as a sequel to ‘Along Came a Spider’, it features an all-star lineup including legendary songwriter Desmond Child and pop sensation Ke$ha, along with original Alice Cooper band members Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, and Neal Smith to capture that authentic ’70s vibe.
Now, Welcome 2 My Nightmare is being reissued in a newly mastered 2CD digipak edition, as well as a special 3LP vinyl version that runs at 45rpm for superior sound quality.
Bruce Springsteen doesn’t need to risk alienating a small but vocal fraction of his fanbase by taking a stand against what he sees as a clear and present danger to the future of America, a land he clearly loves with every fiber of his being.
But he does it anyway because that’s just how much he cares about the things that truly matter. That’s an admirable trait that Springsteen has embodied for the longest time.
And if the way the crowd responded to his most impassioned speeches taking Donald Trump to task at what appeared to be a sold-out Mortgage Matchup Center on Thursday, April 16, when the Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour hit downtown Phoenix, are any indication?
…He hadn’t even played guitar before setting…
…Omnivore Recordings reignite its longtime series of Knack collections with Knackology: The Zen Recordings, a 19-song collection from the archives of the label founded by the band’s main songwriter and lead singer, the late Doug Fieger. The set boasts demos, live recordings, and studio rarities from the band that’s so much more than just “My Sharona” and “Good Girls Don’t.”
Knackology rounds up demos from Fieger and Berton Averre – the pair began collaborating in 1973, six years before the release on Capitol Records of Get The Knack – of “That’s What the Little Girls Do” and “Rock & Roll Is Good for You,” as well as the band’s live performances from various venues of “My Sharona,” “Good Girls Don’t,” “Baby Talks Dirty,” “(She’s So) Selfish,”…
Fuzz Club are becoming one of the key hubs for all sounds psychedelic – whether it is the music that is fully in vein with the original psych of the late sixties or any of the updated versions from there on to current times. In that respect, to all who follow all things psych, it will probably be no surprise that one of the modern purveyors of psych that are Minneapolis’ Jason Edmonds and his Magic Castles, have found their way to this label with their new offering Realized.
Edmonds, as the bad’s principal songwriter, has always favoured that trippy, dream-like thread that original psychedelia introduced (not much fuzz or energy rush there), giving it that shoegaze/dream pop veneer, but then updated for the new century. Of course, many critics have…
…includes three reimagined tracks: a revamped version of fan-favorite “Delilah,” a duet with Billy Strings on “Dirt – Macon version” and a cover of The Allman Brothers‘ “Ramblin’ Man”. The remaining nine tracks explore walking the line between letting go of old love and addiction.
Last year, Marcus King deviated from his norm with the Rick Rubin-produced Mood Swings. He scaled back his vaunted guitar and valiantly focused on his vocals, experimenting with soul. Now he follows that up by returning to his roots, reuniting with his longtime live band for their first album since 2018’s Carolina Confessions. The new release, Darling Blue, is a safe, guest-filled, country-tinged offering that still manages to deliver a few changeups to King’s sound.
1. Marisa Anderson – Rop Koh
2. Ed O’Brien – Blue Morpho
3. The Sleeves – Empty Thoughts
4. Tamikrest – Imanin
5. Thomas Dollbaum – Pulverize
6. Blood Sucking Maniacs – Family Tree/Heartbeat (Lucky Marlo Allen)
7. Jeff Parker ETA IVtet – Like Swimwear (part two)
8. The Lemon Twigs – 2 Or 3
9. Kevin Morby – Badlands
10. Brown Spirits – Bakelite Dashboard
11. Aldous Harding – Venus in the Zinnia
12. Angélique Kidjo – Big Heart
13. Hiss Golden Messenger – I’m People
14. Suss – Sunset IV
15. Hurray for the Riff Raff – Pa’Lante (Live)
There is something especially impressive about a band from Sheffield making a record that sounds like it was born somewhere between a honky-tonk bar, a faded interstate map and a dashboard full of memories. But that is the thing with Fargo Railroad Co. They do not just borrow the sounds of classic country rock and southern rock, they inhabit them. On IV, their fourth studio album, they sound warm, wise and utterly convincing.
IV is an album which deals with themes of being stuck, nostalgia, regret and also provides a wry social commentary. Opener, ‘Skin in the Game’, deals with someone who is on the edge and is scared to move on, as he has too much to lose. “Maybe I could change but I don’t know where to start” captures that sense of ambiguity…