(48:49; SJS) This is the third album from Stuart J Strawman (yes, his initials form the name of the band), and he is again joined by the same core who played on 2021’s ‘The Unlikely Event’ with Graeme James (drums),  Christopher Soulos (upright & electric bass), and Douglas Skene (guitar) while Stuart wrote the songs, provided vocals and guitars and engineered and produced everything. He has been based in Australia for exactly half his lifetime and has recently been in touch with British family, and ended up in contact with his cousin, Richard Naisbett who he invited to contribute keyboards to this release. Richard is also in a duo with singer Kirsty Forster, and she was also invited to get involved so the band are now Australian/Anglo, and it is unlikely they will ever all be in the same room at the same time but it certainly never sounds like that. The only person who is on every track is Stuart, but this never seems like a project, but much more like a band outing. He descri...

(48:09; Fruits de Mer Records) Singer Cecilia Miradoli and guitarist/producer Max Tarenzi formed Pinhdar in Milan in 2019, but they had been working together for years prior to that in the rock band Nomoredolls. Fruits de Mer released their debut in 2021 and now they are back with the follow-up as they move through trip hop, dark wave and particularly dream pop. I was not surprised to see they spent time collaborating with Bruno Ellingham (Massive Attack, Unkle, Portishead, Everything But the Girl, New Order) as all of those bands have had an influence on this album. Here we have an album which really could move in many different directions and if the electro beat was removed then we would be talking about something else entirely, yet the focus is always on Cecilia’s vocals and the atmosphere being created by Max. In many ways I hear a lot of French For Rabbits in this, but whereas they approach the dreampop scene from more of a folk leaning this is much more in electro dance with plen...

(50:19; Code666) Formed in 2010 by guitarists Luiz Felipe Netto and Igor Meira, the group sought to conjure the introspective yet grandiose nature which can be found in the work of artists like Ihsahn, Opeth and Enslaved and there is no doubt that on their third album they are still working very much in that vein. After a brief stint as a trio in 2018 when they brought in a full-time drummer with whom they recorded their last album, they have gone back to being a duo with Netto providing vocals, guitars, keyboards and Meira guitars, bringing in a host of other musicians to assist them in fulfilling their vision. A special callout should go to Tony Lindgren (Leprous, Amorphis, Enslaved) as he mastered this and turned fully understood the brief. As with their major influences, one is never sure quite where Piah Mater are going to go as some of the music is very dark and Black Metal in its approach, while others are far lighter (and indeed closing number “Canicula” commences as Brazilian ...

(127:59; Cuneiform Records) The full name of the band is Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. / David Borden while the album is ‘Make Way For Mother Mallard: 50 Years Of Music’, and as one may surmise from the title is a celebration of a band’s 50th anniversary. American composer and musician David Borden helped pave the way for electronic music – via both analogue synthesizers and digital instruments – by forming the world’s first ever synthesizer ensemble in Bob Moog's Trumansburg studio, using Moog’s prototypes and finding a way of enabling them to be used in performance. He then later founded and headed Cornell University's Digital Music Department. This 2- disc set features one disc of early (1970’s) and one disc of recent (2019) Mother Mallard performances of several key Borden pieces. The first two songs on this set, “Endocrine Dot Patterns” (15:30) and “C-A-G-E I” (32:10) feature the earliest full line-up of the band, with David Borden and Steve Drews being joined ...

(37:47; Lunar Mistake) Somehow I came across the band Lunar Mistake and when I asked them for more information I was sent this, “Lunar Mistake is a prog/post-punk/new wave band from Oakland. It features long-time members of the Bay Area music scene, including Matt Lebofsky (Secret Chiefs 3, miRthkon, MoeTar) on keyboards, Steve Lew (New Zombies, Eskimo, Ebola Soup) on bass, David Shamrock (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Free Salamander Exhibit, Slombis) on drums, Drew Wheeler (Free Salamander Exhibit, Young Has Beens) on guitar, and Jackie Wheeler on vocals and percussion. Points of reference may include: Devo, Thinking Plague, Danny Elfman, Rush.” The more observant of you may have seen a couple of musical genres listed which surely could only mean one thing, and you would be right, as here is a pronk band which Tim Smith would surely be proud of. I cannot believe I don’t see a mention of Cardiacs in their influences (is it really more than a quarter of a century since ‘Sing To God’?) as ...

(57:35; Unicorn Digital) With the debut release in 1994, and the second in 2004, there has been a larger gap than normal to the third but multi-instrumentalist/singer Bernard Ouellette has now returned with new guitarist Eric Bonnette and new bassist Eric Portelance. The result is an album which is both interesting and somewhat confusing in that the vocal melodies are quite commercial and certainly fit well within the crossover progressive rock sub-genre, but the keyboard sounds are quite dated and chunky and often feel they have far more in common with classic RPI. He is also quite content to have passages where the two Eric’s are not playing at all, which is a shame as the bass is remarkably fluid and driving, while the different guitar sounds utilised are interesting and when the guys decide to rock it then certainly do, coming across as a polished Deep Purple or Uriah Heep but with rather more interesting time signatures. The result is something which is interesting, but is not nea...