Close to The Machine

Back in 2006 after I left DOMAIN, even if we ended up with the best album that band was able to do, I needed a change of pace, something a bit more back to where I came from, back to where my heart is. What I wanted to do was a real Classic Rock album. Straight PURPLE, RAINBOW, HEEP, MANFRED MANN… you name it. Quickly I got the boys together to do it, and we managed to record a few demos. Unfortunately, the band disbanded shortly after, and as my studio jobs became more and more interesting and important, I put that idea on hold. A couple years later in 2009 I finally came to the conclusion, not to go out looking for steady band members, but to try to get all my friends together to help me out making the album, I always wanted to make…

Recorded at Delta Studio in Canterbury (date unspecified) and released in 2007 on the fusion/prog label Moonjune, Numero d'Vol is an inspired improv session between famous Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper, avant-garde jazz sax player Simon Picard, jazz keyboardist Steve Franklin, and drummer – and This Heat mastermind – Charles Hayward. The album's title is French for "Flight Number" and, yes, inspiration flies high in this music.

There has generally been a fairly limited level of exposure for Brazil's Dragonheart. Truth be told, the author of this review was only made aware of them through their connection with Dragonforce as the reason for their change of name following their 2000 demo. One might have been tempted to infer a similarity in style between the British shred machine and this seemingly similar styled Brazilian outfit that came into existence a few years prior to the former, but apart from the similar name, any comparison would be extremely limited and peripheral in nature. Far from being a coked-up, keyboard and guitar solo happy answer to Helloween, Dragonheart winds up in an older mode of power metal that has more in common with the heavier, more speed metal informed approach of German acts such as Paragon and Mystic Prophecy, and also to an extent the harder edge yet somewhat more epic equivalents in Sweden in Hammerfall and The Storyteller…

On their second album since their 2005 reunion, synth pop pioneers Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark rekindle the spirit of two new wave classics, the first being their own "slept on" masterpiece from 1983, Dazzle Ships, an album that pushed the boundaries sonically. From the blippy, robotic, and almost musique concrète opener "Please Remain Seated" to the geometric sleeve that credits DZ designer Peter Saville with Executive Art Design, English Electric carries on the pop-meets-avant-garde spirit of that fan favorite album. It gives up a love song like "Night Café" that's so glossed and polished that it could be used in a John Hughes film, and then it offers an edgy swerve like "Decimal," where answering machine messages, countdowns, and other disembodied voices provided some kind of silicon chorus that's equally majestic and precise…

After recording one of their darkest albums, 1984's The Top, the Cure regrouped and shuffled their lineup, which changed their musical direction rather radically. While the band always had a pop element in their sound and even recorded one of the lightest songs of the '80s, "The Lovecats," The Head on the Door is where they become a hitmaking machine. The shiny, sleek production and laser-sharp melodies of "Inbetween Days" and "Close to Me" helped them become modern rock radio staples and the inspired videos had them in heavy rotation on MTV. The rest of the record didn't suffer for hooks and inventive arrangements either, making even the gloomiest songs like "Screw" and "Kyoto Song" sound radio-ready, and the inventive arrangements (the flamenco guitars and castanets of "The Blood," the lengthy and majestic intro to "Push," the swirling vocals on "The Baby Screams")…