X 菅野よう子

Overlooked German band with great love for 70's progressive rock, led by (professional chemist) Arne Schaefer, also leader of the side-project Apogee. They were formed at the dawn of the 90's by Schaefer and drummer Stefan Maywald, who were members of the new wave band ''Vague Venture''. Keyboardist Ekkehard Nahm saw Scahefer playing at a solo concert and meant to be the third member of the band's early years. The Frankfurt-based trio recorded their debut in 1994 with Schaefer playing basses, guitars and handling the vocals.
As Schaefer is a devoted fan of Peter Hammill, plenty of the material is song-based without lacking in instrumental intensity…

The second volume of Queen’s Greatest Hits appeared a decade after the first; a decade after the group started its slow shift from international superstars toward ruling the world that existed outside of the United States. Apart from “Under Pressure” and “Radio Ga Ga,” all of the 17 singles here did not crack the American Top 40, but they’re well-known throughout the world, particularly the operatic anthems “A Kind of Magic,” “I Want It All,” “I Want to Break Free,” and “Who Wants to Live Forever.” Generally, the songs here favor melodrama to untrammeled rock & roll, which means while there’s nothing here that hits as hard as “Tie Your Mother Down”; there’s also nothing as light on its feet as “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” either. This is not necessarily a bad thing: nobody scaled the dramatic heights like Queen, and this captures their pomp & circumstance at its most polished.

If Day at the Races was a sleek, streamlined album, its 1977 successor, News of the World, was its polar opposite, an explosion of styles that didn't seem to hold to any particular center. It's front-loaded with two of Queen's biggest anthems – the stomping, stadium-filling chant "We Will Rock You" and its triumphant companion, "We Are the Champions" – which are quickly followed by the ferocious "Sheer Heart Attack," a frenzied rocker that hits harder than anything on the album that shares its name (a remarkable achievement in itself). Three songs, three quick shifts in mood, but that's hardly the end of it.

Pure X is the last band, has always been the last band. Not that there won’t be future acts, more that Pure X understands that all this pageantry, this civilization is wrapping up. It burned hot and bright like thermite used to bust a safe open, but now is the age of radiating waves, each one buckles the foundation more than the last.