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Exposures
by John Kelman
Between the impact of the COVID pandemic since 2020, and in the eight year-long tenure of King Crimson's final lineup, which toured between 2014 and 2021, there's been a lot revealed about its sole remaining founding member, guitarist/keyboardist Robert Fripp. Since 2012, the more than five-decade history of King Crimson, live and in the studio, has been painstakingly and exhaustively documented in a series of large multimedia box sets and smaller, more price-friendly editions of key material, often ...
Continue ReadingStick Men: Tentacles
by Dan McClenaghan
In the early 1960s, before every teenage rock band wanted to be the Beatles, many of them (especially in Southern California) wanted to be the Chantays (1963's “Pipeline"), The Surfaris' ("Wipeout" and “Point Panic," both from 1963) or Dick Dale and the Deltones ("Miserlou," 1962). Those days were the short-lived peak of surf rock, and it was big. All of those mentioned tunes hit the pop record charts, something that became rare for instrumental music thereafter. For some, these succinct, ...
Continue ReadingBeledo: Seriously Deep
by Chris M. Slawecki
Beledo's second MoonJune release flows through the listener's ears like the cinematic adaptation of an epic novel, but in sound. Seriously Deep quite deliberately moves from scene to scene (song to song), building up and releasing tension in music that sounds much too powerful and deep to have been primarily created by only three musicians: Uruguayan multi-instrumentalist Beledo on electric guitar and acoustic piano with drummer Kenny Grohowski and master bassist Tony Levin. Within each song, this movement consists of ...
Continue ReadingKing Crimson: Music is Our Friend: Live In Washington and Albany, 2021
by John Kelman
You probably know the old adage about assumptions. After seeing the current (slightly fluid) King Crimson lineup twice every time the perennially groundbreaking group made it to North American shores since 2014, with no Canadian dates available in 2021 and the COVID Delta variant running rampant across the United States, the decision was made to forego traveling south to the USA to catch the band. After all, with the band touring, for the first time, on double bills with the ...
Continue ReadingTubby Hayes: Free Flight
by Chris May
Tenor saxophonist, flautist, vibraphonist and composer Tubby Hayes, who died at the unconscionably young age of thirty-eight in 1973, was that rare thing among the first generation of British jazz musicians in the 1960s—a player who was taken seriously by the hippest American musicians and audiences. He visited New York in 1961 and 1964 for well-received seasons at the Half Note, and went to Los Angeles in 1965 for a run at Shelley's Manne-Hole. An uplifting player, a gifted composer ...
Continue ReadingJakko M. Jakszyk: Secrets & Lies
by John Kelman
Life often unfolds in unexpected ways. For some, like Jakko M. Jakszyk, it has taken some truly surprising twists and turns. That the 62 year-old multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and songwriter has attained considerably greater visibility in the last ten years than in the previous 35 has, to say the least, righted a significant wrong. Which makes the release of Secrets & Lies, Jakszk's first solo album since the The Bruised Romantic Glee Club (Iceni, 2006) and its 2009, self-released companion piece, ...
Continue ReadingFiona Joy Hawkins: Moving Through Worlds
by Robin B James
This is a great time for something brighter and lighter, something that brings some ease to the weary listener, who is seeking feelings of harmony and simple respite from a troubled world. The gifted composer, singer, and pianist Fiona Joy Hawkins has just the thing, an album titled Moving Through Worlds, an enchanting exploration of themes such as land, water, fire, climate change and the vanishing of souls into the wind. The 14 tracks feature mostly solo piano. Some are ...
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