Spanish composer and musician Ángel Ontalva is perhaps best known as a central member of the Spanish band October Equus, but he has been involved in multiple side projects and collaborative productions in the last few years as well, in addition to establishing a solo career. Land of Rain and Steel is a solo guitar album recorded by Angel Ontalva in 2007 during the recording sessions for the album 'Charybdis' October Equus. These improvisations in real time, without overdubs or editing of any kind: what you hear is what was recorded at the time, with the exception of rhythmic loop at the end of The Border, which itself was published in the mix.
John Cale's great credit, both inside and outside The Velvet Underground, was to have found the inoculation dosage that would addict the music industry to sound without alienating one world from the other. But outside the "official" VU there was also an uncut version of the virus, incubated behind the slum walls of the 1960s Lower East Side, and maintained live in the liquid nitrogen of these insolently recorded reel-to-reel audiotapes, recorded and produced by Tony Conrad and now available in this massive Table Of The Elements 3xCD boxed set.
The test of time has generally proven to be an easy pass for the high-impact, fantasy obsessed and dense symphonic landscapes of Rhapsody Of Fire, though recent shifts in this Italian symphonic powerhouse’s lineup and the ascendancy of several competitors have caused some to question if this is the same mighty band that brought such classics as Symphony Of Enchanted Lands and Power Of The Dragonflame into the world…