Real People 13 August 2020

One of the best-known blues musicians in Israel, American singer/songwriter/guitarist Lazer Lloyd (born Lloyd Paul Blumen) carved a career for himself by promoting the blues genre in the Middle East, where it was lesser known than at home. A soulful singer and guitarist, he was born in New York and raised in Madison, Connecticut on blues, folk, rock, and jazz by a musician father, having access to his extensive record collection. Eventually developing a style that incorporated all of these genre influences into his emotive blues, he was playing lead guitar along the East Coast with his band Legacy by age 15. He started singing and writing songs while a music major at Skidmore College in upstate New York, where he studied under the tutelage of musicians including jazz bassist Milt Hinton and Blood, Sweat & Tears' Randy Brecker…

A concept album that sticks straitjacket tight to its concept throughout, Shobaleader One: d'Demonstrator is a record of throwback electronic rock, with an R&B edge and synthesized vocals, performed by a hooded band - and if Daft Punk springs to mind, it should. After a record of solo bass (titled Solo Electric Bass, Vol. 1), Squarepusher's Tom Jenkinson soon unveiled his next project: the masked foursome named Shobaleader One. (Jenkinson's claims that the group consists of real people is certainly possible, but the omnipresent masks make one wonder if the producer is playing puppetmaster here.) A combination of stark electro and swinging funk, most tracks featuring vocals, the album will have listeners thinking of Daft Punk one minute and stark '80s television themes the next (read Knight Rider)…

In 2013, Future was re-released on the Big Beats label featuring outtakes, alternate versions, and extensive liner notes by Alec Palao.
Though the Seeds' third album, 1967's Future, was pegged by critics as the band's attempt to ride the wave of baroque/psychedelic/orchestral magic the Beatles defined with Sgt. Pepper's, the recording was actually complete before the release of the Beatles' far more popular breakthrough album, making it impossible for the influence to touch the uncannily similarly minded flower power tones of Future. The Seeds had their own relatively huge smash with the raw high-pressure garage thumper "Pushin' Too Hard" the year before, and saw nothing wrong with recycling that tune's melody on more than a few songs on their first two albums…