Indigène D'eurasie Eastern Drift (2010)

These two albums are part of a clutch of albums Michael made when he was between record companies and which he recorded for his own production company Rural Retreat Records. Rural Retreat West Virginia, on the old Virgin Creeper Line, was the subject of one of O.Winston Link's famous "train" pics of whom MC is a huge fan. We made the pilgrimage on one of our US road trips hence the name. 2xCD + Booklet in 6 panel Digipack with sleeve notes by Andru Chapman.

German band Frequency Drift creates atmospheric, melodic and yet challenging music which they call Cinematic Progressive Rock. Published on The Musea Parallele label, "Personal Effect - Part One" (2008) is a concept-album set in a dystopian future. It focuses on the two main characters, and each has its own musical theme. The album is mainly influenced by movies or television series like "Ghost In The Shell", "Blade Runner" or "Cloverfield". Musically, it can be compared with the likes of Marillion's "Brave" or Sylvan's "Posthumous Silence", if these two bands had a female singer. The story is told through the songs, though not in a chronological order. The booklet contains a storyboard-like picture for each song that will help the listener understand the story.

Long-term ELP fans will doubtless recognize much of this box set as a reprise of sundry, previously released collections and anthologies, most notably the three Manticore Archives box sets of the early 2000s. The cumulative cost of those boxes, however, makes this a magnificent alternative, cherrypicking the very best of those earlier releases to create a one-stop portrait of one of the world's most exciting live bands at its best. With 43 tracks spread across four discs, the first three CDs are sensibly divided between the three primary eras of the band - soundboard quality collections of "the early 1970s," taking us up through the band's 1974 tour; "the late 1970s," rounding up the Works tours of 1977-1978; and "the 1990s," capturing the reunions…

After 40 years, a number of ill-conceived posthumous albums, and countless bootlegs, one would almost have to be skeptical of a new album billed as "12 previously unreleased studio recordings - almost 60 minutes of unheard Jimi Hendrix!" The good news is that Valleys of Neptune largely delivers on that promise. Even hardcore collectors will likely be surprised at how much of this album they haven't heard. But much of this material has been available before in some form, official and otherwise. Although there were tons of posthumous overdubs, elements of these very versions of "Stone Free" and "Hear My Train Comin'" were used as building blocks for the versions on Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning, respectively…