Time Won't Wait For You and Me. I have to admit as the years role on for music to get passed my defences gets harder and harder. When I am becalmed somewhere in the world the sound track to my day is BBC Radio 3. Extra ordinary sonata's, symphonies, sacred music, jazz tumble out of my beloved Sonos. Today Janacek, Sibelius, Vaughn Williams all floated up into my loft. If I want to set the agenda it might be Holly Cole, Streisand, Sinatra as the sun falls out of the sky and supper beckons.  Jan Garabek, Jaco Pastorious, Hilliard Ensemble one could go on. I left tons of my teenage music behind years ago but if the stars collide I would happily sit in the theatre in "Chippy" and revel in the warmth of Fairport or the Nettlebed Folk Club where I have seen Home Service. So scene set whats this TMT like. Peter Jones Tiger Moth Tales has got behind my defences and its utterly wonderful.  When I listen to his bravura p...

  Circles In Time  At 65 is music, indeed everything, nostalgia, merely a rerun of the familiar? Do we travel to the same location on holiday as we have for the last twenty years, do we simply listen to music that we did forty years ago? Is the objective simply to be reminded of the past? If I listen to music from 1971 "John Barleycorn Must Die," my first LP, I am testing both Stevie and myself, do we still speak to each other? In that instance, the offering of blue eyed soul, jazz and folk does speak to me now we are still "in a relationship." The 'getting it together in the country,' walking the Berkshire Downs still happens it still means something. As with everything I do not want more of the same, to simply go through the motions, I want to pass through an experience that says something unique, adds to the journey and then stays with me adding a layer or two. John Holden makes music for himself and on the evidence of ...

  John Holden & Friends The matter we are least prepared for is death. Ours, someone we love how do you unbundle watching someone die and then deal without them. Modern life, state sponsored, is about avoiding death putting it off endlessly ... without considering whether the life we have the 'epilogue age' is of value.  Some find energy in knowing they are close to death, that life is especially precious that time is limited and when we have that sense of hurtling towards it a special kind of energy is produced. This CD/project is intended to raise awareness of death from a particular condition but I suspect the personalities involved entire lives are propelled by the fragility of life of looking into the abyss of death and loss and setting it aside and climbing more 'mountains'. That seems to me a good reason why we would skip around our end.  This CD is a simple thing."I am not bea...

The Spirit of the Bonzo Dog Do Dah Band Lives On...and others Get Out of My Father's Car After a furious intro, we settle into a wild zany piece which puts me in mind of Zappa's 'Mothers of Invention.' It's the wind instruments, in particular, that echo those offbeat sounds and shapes. But every so often the wistful elegance of Brian's Horning or is that Crumming emerge.  However, its the madcap vocal which takes me back to those Mothers Albums of the late '60s. Great Fun. A Bit of Music By Me Is entirely different a beautiful piece of flute playing leads into some very musical acoustic guitar and lovely sympathetic shuffling drums. This is where the Bonzo Dog influence comes in one minute a piece is mad, offbeat with tons of unorthodoxy and the next minute respectful beautiful.  As it moves on there is a little of that furious third album contrapuntal play but it is juxtaposed with humour and more bubbling from Brian. What always strikes me about Gryphon ...

  A Paean To A Lost Life 21 years in to the new century, almost fifty years since "Close To The Edge." is it not ridiculous to expect new triumphs, envelopes to be genuinely pushed, great new dawns? And yet "Skyscraper Souls," Downes Braide Association previous work emerged out of my lap top in amongst the sky scrapers of Abu Dhabi and did just that. The title track offered four beautiful impressions welded together into a glorious whole and took you on a journey and finally  opened out into a beautiful elegiac finale. I really did feel we had some thing greater than the past and principally because it spoke to me then, now.  So would Christopher and Geoffrey follow their suite length rockophonic with a double CD exploring the mysteries of life?  Breath easy this music is progress but in its soundscapes, its performances and not merely ..longer. Love Among The Ruins.  The spoken narrative sets the...

John Holden - Rise and Fall "Capture Light" was one of those projects which were so complete so perfectly executed that like "Close To The Edge" when you played it, it deserved unadulterated attention. Each listen was an event I felt as if I needed to "dress up" to experience it. It was a summit moment. So how do you follow the perfectly executed, bring in an orchestra, jam more and write longer pieces? Fans of what was called progressive music in 1972 have experienced those choices from their bands down the years.  John has the advantage of not being a precocious mid-twenties artist under pressure; instead, he can call on a lifetime of reflection and experience for the answer. "Leap of Faith" begins with a nagging repeating piano figure evoking, mystery, questing all underpinned with a yearning emotionalism. You are drawn in immediately but to where? After this insistent beginning, there is no prog-rock tr...

The Steve Howe Trio When the Trio toured in the UK in September 2013 it was clear the band were on the move. Their performance of Heart of Sunrise showed the band playing with more focus and attack and not afraid to pick up the more strident vibe of Steve's parent band rather than the shuffle employed previously. But what was most exciting is they played three new pieces which reflected a greater determination to move in on a more Progressive Rock feel and they showed the Trio coming into its own, developing its own musical personality. The titles of the pieces they played do not appear on this CD but I recognise the musical ideas and how they have blossomed.  Hiatus A nagging insistent organ phrase opens proceedings and the first thing I noted was the superb way Dylan has captured Ross. Its a warm and full "old fashioned" organ sound rather than the thinner modern electronic facsimile that is now de rigour. The piece relies on the repeat...