Kevin Aiyers June

Melancholic and reflective, Kevin Ayers' third solo effort, Whatevershebringswesing (this time sans the Whole World as a collective), finds the ultimate underachiever languishing in a realm of ballads, free (for the most part) from the façade and pretensions of prog rock that plagued the previous project. Released in January 1972, Whatevershebringswesing was Ayers' most commercially accessible album to date. The opening track, the "There Is Loving" suite, was both apropos and deceptive. The song picks up nicely from the previous album, linked by its Soft Machine/prog rock sound and fronting the lyrics from the single "Butterfly Dance"; however, for the very same reason, this was a deceptive opener for an album that was far removed from the prog subgenre…

Bananamour is ripe with Kevin Ayers' most mature and accessible compositions to date. Ayers grounded himself in a newly formed trio for his follow-up to Whatevershebringswesing. With bassist Archie Leggett and drummer Eddie Sparrow at the hub, Ayers selected guest artists for a handful of the tracks: Whole World colleague Dave Bedford ("Beware of the Dog"), Gong's new guitarist Steve Hillage ("Shouting in a Bucket Blues"), and former Soft Machine mates Robert Wyatt ("Hymn") and Mike Ratledge ("Interview"). "Interview" is easily one of the album's strongest, most original tunes, charged with a rugged, positively electrifying guitar sound courtesy of Ayers and psychedelic organ flourishes by Ratledge. And "Shouting in a Bucket Blues" is Ayers' inspired pop/blues groove…

As the Soft Machine's first bassist and original principal songwriter, Kevin Ayers was an overlooked force behind the group's groundbreaking recordings in 1967 and 1968. This, his solo debut, is so tossed-off and nonchalant that one gets the impression he wanted to take it easy after helping pilot the manic innovations of the Softs. Laissez-faire sloth has always been part of Ayers' persona, and this record's intermittent lazy charm helped establish it. That doesn't get around the fact, however, that this set of early progressive rock does not feature extremely strong material. Ayers' command of an assortment of instruments is impressive, and his deep bass vocals and playful, almost goofy song-sketches are affecting, but they don't really stick with the listener…

Kevin Welch made his name as a progressive country artist in the ‘90s, gradually evolving beyond the alt-country pigeonhole over the years, both on his own and as a member of Americana trio Kane Welch Kaplin. On his sixth solo album – and his first since he started working with the aforementioned threesome – you'd be hard-pressed to find traces of Welch's country background. You'll also encounter nary an uptempo tune – A Patch of Blue Sky is pretty much a ballad album from start to finish. One might cavil about the lack of dynamics, but over the course of these ten tracks, it seems obvious that establishing a singular mood was more important to Welch than keeping fidgety listeners fixated.

Kevin Stephen Welch is an American country music artist. He has charted five singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts and released eight studio albums. He is also one of the cofounders of the Dead Reckoning Records label, which he founded with fellow musicians Kieran Kane, Tammy Rogers, Mike Henderson, and Harry Stinson. Americana singer/songwriter Kevin Welch left his Oklahoma home at age 17 to pursue a life in music, settling in Nashville in 1978 after years of traveling. He soon signed on as a staff writer at Sony/Tree, over the decade to follow authoring songs for artists including Waylon Jennings, Roger Miller, Trisha Yearwood, Ricky Skaggs, and the Highwaymen; Welch's self-titled solo debut finally appeared on Reprise in 1990, followed two years later by the acclaimed Western Beat.

Kevin Volans is probably most famous for the 1984 Kronos reworking of White Man Sleeps. His beginnings in South Africa to the Neue Einfacheit (in English, New Simplicity) of West Germany with the theorist Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose seminal sine-waves and soundscapes shaped the landscape we understand in electronic music today, are well-documented. The Man With Footsoles of Wind, an opera about the enterprise of the influential poet Arthur Rimbaud in Ethiopia, remains very much on my ‘listening wishlist’. Volans is obviously a musicologist. He is undoubtedly a modernist. This is 2022. He has offered us Études, a collection of his own previously unreleased solo piano works performed by Jill Richards and a second-half where he performs Liszt. The listener has been invited into “a sound world” with “extremely complex and challenging arrangements”.

2014 Original Albums Series release. Includes the albums: Joy of a Toy, Shooting at the Moon, Whatevershebringswesing, Bananamour & the Confessions of Dr. Dream and Other Stories. Kevin Ayers was one of rock's oddest and more likable enigmas, even if he often seemed not to operate at his highest potential. Perhaps that's because he never seemed to have taken his music too seriously – one of his essential charms and most aggravating limitations. After the late '60s, he released many albums with a distinctly British sensibility, making ordinary lyrical subjects seem extraordinary with his rich low vocals, inventive wordplay, and bemused, relaxed attitude.

The solo debut of Kevin Ayers, originally released in 1969 on the Harvest label after his departure from The Soft Machine, was the start of a brilliant and unique career. Joy Of A Toy is one of the greatest examples of late 60s music opening up to new influences and experiences. The result is an adventurous yet accessible masterpiece by a musician free of any artistic constraints.
In 1968, after an US tour with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Soft Machine’s founding member Kevin Ayers decided to leave the band. Unsure about their artistic direction, worn out by an exhausting schedule and reluctant to become another part of the music business, he sold his bass to Noel Redding and moved to Ibiza. However, soon after he started writing the songs that would make up his first solo LP, Joy Of A Toy…

In late 2020, Kevin Morby holed up in the then-quiet Peabody hotel in Memphis to escape a pandemic-burdened winter in his hometown of Kansas City. There, he wrote This Is a Photograph, a folky, left-of-the-dial rock album and a particularly reflective entry in his catalog. Its sound is sometimes earthy and gospel-inflected, sometimes lush and symphonic, with lyrics tinted by existential reflection and the specter of death. The sinewy title track was inspired by family photos that Morby and his mother went through after thinking they’d just seen his father die following an accidental double dose of heart medication. The lived-in duet “Bittersweet, TN,” about the loss of a friend, features vocals by Erin Rae and floats along on its banjo lines. And the sparse but upbeat “Goodbye To Good Times” doesn’t offer any resolution, but instead presents a eulogy for better days as the songwriter strums his acoustic guitar, simultaneously nostalgic and grounded in the difficult present.