Tentacles lives up to its name with a riff that wraps around you without ever really resolving. This keeps you invested until the final soundscape coda gives you the blessed relief the preceding has denied you.

Ringtone lock steps you into a new sensation with bold power chords and an insistent note pattern not unlike eighties-era Crim. Pat Mastelotto’s percussive output is stellar and grounds the groove.

Company Of Ghosts starts with a purposive funk groove that sounds as mysterious as Mata Hari beckoning you to discover new worlds before the transportive effect of the sound collage at the tracks’ turnaround.

Danger In The Workplace finds the percussive sound of Markus Reuter’s touch guitar and Tony Levin’s Chapman stick brought to the forefront with this ominous workout. Danger indeed.

Satieday Night brings the EP to a close with a slow burn intro followed by a marauding gang of malcontent notes that seesaw between contentment and a contrivance to leave you wanting more.

So many ideas via so few tunes.
Rob Hudson
www.facebook.com/moonjunerecords2/

After the privacy of a decent bout of silence was over, an injection of art was needed. Something that forms a challenge and benefit scenario, something like Kosmonautik Pilgrimage by those provocateurs Anchor and Burden. This is music that has a logic all its own and dares one to find a place for it in their analogue. It presents an application that band members Markus Reuter, Alexander Paul Dowerk, Bernhard Wöstheinrich and Asaf Sirkis are more than happy to provide.

In the same way, that happy stories dissipate more quickly in the ether and stern stuff sticks around, the tracks here have an abrasiveness that gives you more to grip, a friction that assures that the intention does anything but slip by unnoticed. The musicianship is such that the landscape reaches into far vistas and drummer Sirkis does a remarkable job of holding it all together.

Kosmonautik Pilgrimage is an auditory offensive that provides provocation and equal remuneration. I can only imagine the kind of commercial establishment that would dare put music like this on in the background and what wares would be on offer. Litmus strips for the coming apocalypse, or perhaps current generating devices to open the synapsis to thoughts of the new?
Rob Hudson
www.facebook.com/moonjunerecords2

A resent wait for a CD copy of Stick Men + was a case in point. Being a huge King Crimson fan, the appetite was already piqued by the impressive line up of Crimson alumni that make up the band. Every day the walk to the post box was a long one until that bundle of bubble wrapped goodness arrived.

The band, Tony Levin (the mighty Crim, Peter Gabriel and too many more to mention), Pat Mastelotto (K.C., Mr. Mister), Markus Reuter (centrozoon, Tuner) and guest David Cross (K. C., Radius) have a unique instrumental make up and sound. Levin plays the stick (a string instrument where the strings are touched – not plucked) Reuter, a touch guitar and keys, Cross, a violin and keys and Mastelotto, all things percussive. Together they stretch out over two discs and indulge in all manner of tone poems, songs and sonic sketches. They even tackle the odd Crimson tune or two.

The music contained in those two live discs was sublime (being both beautiful and challenging) and the wait for its arrival only made the initial experience that much sweeter. With the recent revival of a medium that never really went away, the vinyl record, it seems there are people that still want something physical to have and hold while listening to music. Thank goodness for that!

Rob Hudson
www.facebook.com/stickmenofficial

In the way that watching an effective non-fiction film makes you want to follow the viewing with a liberal amount of internet investigation, Wilson’s ode to the life and times of Joyce Carol Vincent has the same effect. It’s an emotional album about a story that underlines the fact that even with all the social media and Internet connections in today’s society, people fall between the cracks, intentional or otherwise.

Vincent was by all accounts, a vibrant and popular young lady who turned off the world and died alone. Her body was not discovered for almost three years and due to the condition of the corpse, no real cause of death is known. This only adds to the mystery. Wilson takes this story as a template and has fashioned a modern masterpiece.

The music can be dense in the way that only virtuosos can accomplish with Guthrie Govan (The Aristocrats) on guitar being particularly effective. Those moments however are sharply contrasted by the starkly emotional tracks like Perfect Life and the early moments of Routine before the afore mentioned Govan and guest vocalist Ninet Tayeb (winner of the Israeli version of Pop Idol) deliver one of the album’s most sublime musical moment.

If ever there was and is a musician capable of transcending the somewhat limited straight jacket (commercially) of progressive rock and becoming a crossover star, it’s Wilson. Having said that he might just be too good to make that leap.

Rob Hudson
www.stevenwilsonhq.com