It would be difficult to imagine an album project more ambitious than "Beneath the Waves", a concept album sprung from the blood, sweat and tears of Rob Reed, founder of welsh progressive-rock band Magenta. Not only has Reed spent three years concocting this gem, gathering leading prog talents, but he managed to finish it in the same year his regular band has already produced a very good album, Chameleon. It is not unheard of -Gahalad for example has published two pretty good albums of new material in 2012- but it is still a tour de force.
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music
I remembered way back as a kid hearing "Hocus Pocus" on the radio, this must be around 1979 or 1980, on the FM dial. Around 1989, I heard this song again and found out it was "Hocus Pocus" and the group was called FOCUS.
The album that boosted Focus into at least semi-fame outside of continental Europe, Moving Waves blasts off with their hit single, "Hocus Pocus." Built around a killer guitar hook by Jan Akkerman and a series of solo turns by the band, this instrumental replaced "Wipeout" as a staple of FM radio. The bizarrely hilarious vocal and accordion solos by Thijs van Leer – one of which absurdly concludes with rousing stadium cheers – have to be heard to be believed. After this over-the-top performance, the other tracks seem comparatively constrained: the gentle "Le Clochard" features some gorgeous classical guitar over Mellotron strings. The album concludes with "Eruption," which while mimicking the multi-suite nomenclature of Yes and King Crimson, is essentially a side-long jam session.
Keigo Oyamada (小山田 圭吾, Oyamada Keigo, born January 27, 1969), also known by his moniker Cornelius (CORNELIUS(コーネリアス), Kōneriasu), is a Japanese musician and producer who co-founded Flipper's Guitar, an influential Shibuya-kei band, and subsequently embarked on a solo career…
Keigo Oyamada (小山田 圭吾, Oyamada Keigo, born January 27, 1969), also known by his moniker Cornelius (CORNELIUS(コーネリアス), Kōneriasu), is a Japanese musician and producer who co-founded Flipper's Guitar, an influential Shibuya-kei band, and subsequently embarked on a solo career…
Bill Scorzari explores Impassioned and thoughtful landscapes in Through These Waves, his second full-length record. Produced by Jonah Tolchin (Yep Roc) and engineered, mixed, and mastered by Billy Bennett, the album of all original material was recorded over twelve days at the famed Bomb Shelter in East Nashville through the studio’s 1970’s MCI console and mixed to tape. In a recent interview with No Depression, Tolchin calls Bill Scorzari, “one of the greatest songwriters I’ve ever heard.”