Hlm Crys

The band, based around the figure of keyboard player Guy Leblanc, puts together a very potent mix of sounds to produce this Progressive (mostly instrumental) work. Their music is both dark and light, complex and largely symphonic prog, loud and quiet, yet always stretching way beyond. Their musical style incorporates elements of Yes, ELP, Gentle Giant and even a bit of Frank Zappa, blending it together to create a style that is very much their own.

An outstanding progressive rock group in their own right, Goblin's name is synonymous with the cinema of Dario Argento, the imperious director of stylised Italian horror. For him they composed such celebrated scores as Profondo Rosso that starred David Hemmings and which provided the group with a domestic number one hit and the hallucinatory Suspiria, where Goblin's blend of primal rhythms, haunting celeste arpeggios and unearthly voices add immeasurably to the film's delirious sensory overload…

The 2005 released "The Inconsolable Secret" wasn't the best, but it was the most ambitious album of the two US-Retroproggers Steve Babb and Fred Schendel. The double CD was a monumental concept album, on which for the first time Fiauch used a real drummer. In the past, the two multi-instrumentalists had "drummed" or programmed corresponding machines themselves. They also put no less than fifteen guest musicians at the service of this epic work, including a four-piece "Girls Choir", a soprano and a tenor as well as various strings. The album was sold out for a long time - and is now coming back on the market in a deluxe edition. But what's special is probably CD 3, which contains "The Morning She Woke" as well as the four longest tracks of the original work in remix versions. Glass Hammer's current singer Jon Davison, who also serves on Yes, breathes new life into this track and "Long And Long Ago"…

For those unindoctrinated to the obsessive world of Grateful Dead culture that goes past fandom into a somewhat disconcerting preoccupation, the Deadhead's need for rampant collection and cataloging of live recordings of the band's jammy shows may seem completely insane. Ranging from the many, many live albums officially released when the band was still active to countless bootlegs and even more low-quality audience-recorded tapes, almost every minute of the group's over 2,000 concerts have been documented in some form, with newly refurbished or remixed gigs coming out from the vaults every year. To untrained ears, these shows could sound like interchangeable noodly nonsense, but even the most reluctant listener would be struck by what the initiated already hold dear from a recording like Sunshine Daydream: Veneta, OR, August 27th, 1972…