Apollo Guitars

New studio album Common Ground from the multi-award winning Big Big Train is the follow up to 2019’s acclaimed Grand Tour album and 2020’s Empire Live Blu-ray/2CD set. The nine tracks include the beautiful title track and first single Common Ground, dazzling instrumental Apollo, Zeitgeist capturing The Strangest Times and stunning 15 minute epic Atlantic Cable. In addition to Big Big Train songwriters and core members David Longdon (lead vocals), Gregory Spawton (bass), Rikard Sjöblom (guitars, keyboards, vocals) and Nick D’Virgilio (drums, vocals), the album also features Carly Bryant (keyboards, vocals) and Dave Foster (guitars) plus a guest appearance from violinist Aidan O’Rourke of highly rated Scottish folk pioneers Lau. Recorded during the worldwide pandemic, sees the band continue their tradition of dramatic narratives but also tackling issues much closer to home, such as the Covid lockdowns, the separation of loved ones, the passage of time, deaths of people close to the band and the hope that springs from a new love.

A new release from Big Big Train is never just another release in the world of prog. Since 2009’s The Underfall Yard, the band has been one of the leading bands of third-wave prog, the signal marker and bellwether. Indeed, every release from Big Big Train for the past decade has manifested itself as a fundamental shift—a very rethinking of who and what we are as a community—of the genre itself. While there are innumerable great prog acts out there, none quite match Big Big Train when it comes to innovation, to creativity, and to cohesion…

MelodicRock has announced another archival project - the double album “Voices From The Past”, composed of songs by Jimmy Waldo (Jimmy Waldo) and Steven Rosen (Steven Rosen), which were recorded in the 80s with the participation of many stars of the Los Angeles rock scene .

Created at the crossroads of Afro-Malagasy, the 70s strain fused Western and Indian cultures, pop, soul and funk arrangements, syncopated polyrhythms, saturated guitars, psychedelic organs and Creole vocals. Although the exact origins of sega remain unknown, it contains vocal and percussive practices that originated from Madagascar, Mozambique and East Africa. A social escape and a space for improvisation, satire and verbal jousting, it transcended everyday life and made room for the expression of conflicts and the transgression of taboos. The main instrument of sega is the ravanne, a large tambourine like drum made of a large wooden frame and goat skin. It is accompanied by the maravanne, a rectangular rattle filled with seeds, and other homemade forms of percussion.