(39:40; Spirit of Unicorn Music) As one may have guessed from the album title, Focus are back with their twelfth studio album, which may not be many given their very long existence but it is a delight all the same so it is quality and not quantity. Thijs van Leer (flute, organ, piano, synths) is still very much at the helm, while Pierre van der Linden (drums) also shows no signs at all of slowing down even though both are now well into their seventies. Menno Gootjes (guitars, piano, synths) first joined the band in the 90’s while “newbie” Udo Pannekeet (bass, synths, programming) has been there since 2016, and the two youngsters have taken the audio reins on this album, acting as producers. This sounds like the work of a much younger outfit, with Gootjes blasting away with some stunning leads, daring the others to stay with him, yet Linden is still as powerful and dynamic as he was when playing on the stunning “Hocus Pocus” all the way back in 1971 and shows no sign whatsoever of slowi...

(48:57; Findlestilts) In February 2023 Bloodcog started work ‘Exoskeleton’. The idea was that  Fran Bass (electric bass) Richard Harding (chapman stick) and Richard Harrison (drums/percussion) would go into the studio and start improvising, with Phil Hargreaves (flute/sax) and Pete Smyth (electronics) then pulling those recordings to pieces and adding additional layers. However, they ended up with way too much material, so instead Phil divided the recordings into what he thought would work best for Bloodcog, and added reeds/EWI to the rest, mixing them more like a conventional band album, rather than Bloodcog’s power electronics/improv approach. This means that Findlestilts are actually 4/5 of Bloodcog, with just Pete Smyth missing. There is no doubt I have been listening far more to this style of music in recent years, heavily improvised, RIO, way out of the mainstream and the more I listen to it there is no doubt the more I get a great deal from it, even though I am fully aware t...

(61:00; Sony Music) Putting The Orb to one side (with whom he has recorded two albums), it can never be said that Gilmour has exactly been prolific away from Waters (however much he would hate to admit it). Together they recorded 11 albums in 15 years (plus Gilmour’s debut), and then in the following 40 years Gilmour released 3 with Pink Floyd and 3 other solo releases prior to this one, the last being 9 years ago. I am not sure who was expecting another solo album now Gilmour is in his late seventies, but it certainly was not me. Also unexpected was the realisation that Richard Wright performs on the title track, and given he died back in 2008 it shows how long Gilmour has been sat on that material. I have been a fan of Floyd for more than 40 years, even buying ‘Animals’ on 8-track when it was released, and remember the joy of first getting a CD player and playing ‘Wish You Were Here’ on repeat all day in my flat. But when one comes to release from an icon how can one remove the subje...

(57:12; Talking Elephant) Carroll has returned with his second album, which is a very close sequel indeed to the debut from last year with the same guests as before, making this something which any fans of folk rock, and in particular of Gryphon and Fairport Convention must have in their collection. Carroll (bouzouki, mandolin, acoustic & electric guitar, acoustic & electric dulcimer, uilleann pipes, lute, vocals) has again been joined from the former by Brian Gulland (bassoon, contra bassoon, keyboards, soprano alto tenor & bass crumhorns, recorders, soprano sax, tuba, euphonium, tenor horn, cor anglais, harp, whistle, vocals), Dave Oberlé (drums, tubano dancing drum, bhangra dhol, bodhran, spoons, vocals) and Graeme Taylor  (electric guitar, engineer, producer) while from the latter we have Chris Leslie (fiddle, vocals) and Dave Pegg (bass) plus Tom Spencer (banjo) from The Professionals and The Men They Couldn’t Hang and Lucy Cooper (vocals). Given who is involved, t...

(16:46; Chantelle Smith  & Richard Wileman) I have been writing about Richard’s music for 30 years, firstly as Lives & Times, then Karda Estra, until finally he was releasing music under his own name. There were also a few studio only collaborations, but here we find him with Chantelle Smith as a duo who have been performing their  folk/horror, weird tales and myths project live for just over a year, containing songs written by both of them plus storytelling and improvisations. On this four-track EP, songs 1 and 3 are written by Chantelle, 2 and 4 by Richard, while Chantelle provides vocals, harp, guitar, shruti box and Richard guitar, guitar synth, keyboards, bass, percussion, vocals, accordion. With proper vocals as opposed to the wordless improvisations of Karda Estra, and a much stronger move into folk with harp and stringed instruments having a very important part, this is quite a departure to what I would normally expect from Richard. However, when one looks at C...

(11:03; LucidBrucid) Following on from Matt’s EP last year, ‘The Bob Lazarus Chronicles Pt. 1: Foodstool Resurrection’, we now get another release of short choppy numbers which is Matt finishing off some pieces he has been working on for some years. The foodstool is ever present, as here the artwork is food on a stool! Plus the longest song on this release (at a whole 2:49) is “Foodstool vs Dronestool’ (for more of Matt’s work in a drone style then check out Dronestool, as he  has been releasing material under that name as well). Matt is an eclectic highly skilled-musician, and I have often felt the reason he is not more well-known within prog circles is that, like me, he resides on the South Island of New Zealand, which is roughly a million miles away from any prog hub. Just one of the downsides of living at the end of the world is that very few musicians can actually make a living in their own country, although the isolation from the rest of the world has nothing to do with the q...

(62:27; Lumberton Trading Company) There is no doubt in my mind that Steven Wilson has been one of the most important progressive musicians over the last few decades, but I have also learned to treat each of his albums as a separate entity as while he has released some masterpieces there are also others which I have felt to be quite poor, even though others have raved over them. I even once used the horrific phrase “prog by numbers” with one of his solo albums, but no-one could ever say that about the latest release as Bass Communion. Even though I have reviewed albums of his for the last 30 years I have not previously come across Bass Communion, even though the debut came out at the end of the Nineties and this is his sixteenth album since then. Here we find Steven in a very different place to what I have come to expect from him, as he brings together ambient, drone, noise and other sub-genres to create something which is seeing him being likened to SunnO))), Earth and Merzbow. When I...