Neo 6.54

Goat Girl - Lottie Pendlebury (she/her), Rosy Jones (they/them) and Holly Mullineaux (she/her) release their third album Below The Waste on Rough Trade Records. The album was co–produced by the band and John Spud Murphy (Lankum and black midi).

Prolific and constantly evolving, Portland, OR’s STRFKR have continued to release music that consistently connects with music lovers all over the globe. The band started out in a time when a co-sign from blogs and music outlets of note were all but mandatory for new music to be heard and accepted. STRFKR bypassed the hype machine almost completely, focusing instead on making their shows more exciting and pushing their music to new places. Their work ethic both in the studio and on the road has kept them on a steady climb, consistently playing venues on the level of legendary rooms like Terminal 5, Stubb’s, and the 9:30 Club while using any available downtime to work towards the next recording.

Constance Demby is one of the few representatives of the New Age movement (in both her music and her personal philosophies) who consistently creates artistic, highly expressive compositions. Demby was trained in classical music as a child, and her artistic spirit led her to also master several other art forms; at the University of Michigan, she studied painting, sculpture, and music. It was her work as a sculptor that led her to new dimensions of sound. As she was torching a sheet of metal, it roared thunderously, and thus was born the Sonic Steel Instruments: the Whale Sail, and the Space Bass, enormous bowed instruments with deep archetypal resonances.

John Scofield has turned the corner from journeyman jazz guitarist to become one of the most inventive and witty players on the contemporary scene. This date, his first for the Blue Note label, builds on a discography following several recordings for the Gramavision label, and also progresses this contemporary jazz music into an individualism that can only bode well for his future efforts. Teamed with the rising-star saxophonist Joe Lovano and the bulletproof rhythm team of bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Jack DeJohnette, Scofield is emerging as a player of distinction on the electric guitar, and a composer whose mirthful ideas add spark and vigor to his newfound musical setting…

Double album of orchestral and acoustic portraits from former Genesis guitarist Anthony Phillips and composer & arranger Andrew Skeet. Features singers Lucy Crowe and Belinda Sykes, and guitarist John Parricelli, one of the key figures on the British Jazz scene.

Pure is the eighth studio album by English neo-progressive rock group Pendragon. It was first released on October 1, 2008, on Toff Records. The overall reception of the album was very much positive. RevelationZ online magazine gave it a 7 out of 10 score and stressed "mainman - vocalist & guitarist - Nick Barrett's songs draw blood with razor sharp metaphors, often bleak but always human, cleverly broken up by melodic, muscular guitar and keyboard passages, set against a busy, but never intrusive background of whitenoise and special FX". Lords of Metal also paid attention to the album and noticed that "where Marillion drifted off of the ‘standard’ prog route Pendragon stayed steadily on course without repeating themselves", concluding with a 90/100 score.