Celebrities: Evelina Manna Silvio Berlusconi's Former Mistress (upgrade)

Greek hotel magnate Chrysander Anetakis's former mistress was pregnant? And had amnesia? That meant Marley Jameson didn’t remember betraying him by selling company secrets. Or that he’d thrown her out of his life. So he told her a little white lie: they were engaged. Then he swept her away to his Greek island to await the birth of his baby and enjoy her sudden devotion…before tossing her out.

Somewhere between National Health, Soft Machine, Henry Cow, and the original Mothers Of Invention lies the sound of this album by The Muffins. The music is primarily played by four core multi-instrumentalists: Billy Swan, Paul Sears, Tom Scott and Dave Newhouse (of course it helps to let Wayside Music/Cuneiform Records owner Steve Feigenbaum play on the album). The result is a wonderful journey through sometimes improvised, sometimes tightly written, jazzy rock music…

Manna/Mirage is the ongoing project by former The Muffins mastermind Dave Newhouse. While he’s obviously working towards different ends and also with a variety of different people as he explores these different ends, it’s still very much coming from his pen, so fans of the band should also greatly enjoy this release.
The 4th Manna/Mirage album is now available as a limited edition CD in a Digipack format. It features many guest musicians from the RIO / Canterbury / Independent music community. Fred Frith (guitar) adds a new level to a comp entitled "Fred's Dream" (yes, it really did come from a dream I had about Fred!), and Guy Segers (bass) monsters through an 10 minute juggernaut of a comp called "4 Steps Back".

Manna/Mirage is the ongoing project by former The Muffins mastermind Dave Newhouse. While he’s obviously working towards different ends and also with a variety of different people as he explores these different ends, it’s still very much coming from his pen, so fans of the band should also greatly enjoy this release.
Autobiographie features nine all-instrumental tracks at just over 46 minutes of playing time. The music is roughly a third Canterbury jazz, a third avant-prog and a third various ethnic folk music styles all mashed up into a cool stroll into the world of instrumental prog. The album also finds a cameo of two early members of The Muffins, Michael Bass on drums and Michael Zentner on electric violin. This album is well paced with each track sounding distinct whether it's the Canterbury dominated opening "Phantosmia" or the tango-fueled "Practicing Tonglin In A Time Of War"…