The dawn of the British folk revival broke in 1965 when Bert Jansch’s “folk-baroque” finger style revolutionised tradition, providing the early morning light for a burgeoning psychedelic scene which, by 1972 had traveled from folk clubs to the high-concept landscapes of progressive rock, exemplified by the Eastern-tinged sitar-guitar on Yes’s ‘Siberian Khatru’.
Western artists utilised Eastern forms as a new musical bedrock. The Byrds transitioned from folk-rock into the uncharted territory of ‘Eight Miles High’, a track widely cited as the first true U.S. “Raga Rock” single. Driven by Roger McGuinn’s solos – inspired by Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane – it proved pop could embrace complex modal structures. Similarly, The Yardbirds’…
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No doubt the students that join the jazz program at The University of North Texas are incredibly advanced players eager to start making music with their classmates. But their development is also dramatically facilitated through their association with the program’s music director Rob Parton and the enthusiastic support and encouragement he and his colleagues give to them. Anyone hearing the school’s Two O’Clock Lab Band will be awed by the professional calibre of the performances and the preternatural maturity demonstrated by the band personnel. And it’s not only players we’re talking about, as its new Return Two Paradise release also features material composed and arranged by UNT students. That the album’s twelve tracks were culled from two…
The modern creative European trio 
Ian Prowse has been making music for more than 30 years, first with indie band Pele, then forming the band Amsterdam in 1999, and now releasing albums under his own name. Having recently been inducted into the Liverpool Legends Hall of Fame, No Names, his latest release, finds him involving other similarly engaged souls such as Elvis Costello, Steve Wickham, and Damien Dempsey.
While 
Described as “a luminous collection of scenes and reckonings”, Love, the 7th and possibly final album from Dexys Midnight Runners if Kevin Rowland is to be believed, continues to display the regained spirit Rowland has shown since 2012’s One Day I’m Going to Soar. If 2023’s The Feminine Divine was all about sex (and without doubt Rowland’s autobiography Bless Me Father was full of it); Love is, well, unsurprisingly, about love.
Longtime shoegaze fans and followers surely have certain sound combinations in their minds that they would love to hear, and one such a combination would probably involve My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive with a touch of Lilys to boot. And such a ‘dream’ combination’ might just have been recorded by San Diego’s 
Two years after debuting on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label with 
Itta and Marqido once performed under the name 10. However, the duo changed their name to 
Need an escape from the gloom and doom of global politics? How about a hit of Brazilian world-jazz of the “sal, sol, sul” variety? 
Barely a month after Brooklyn noise-rockers Parts & Labor made their triumphant return with Set of All Sets, their first album in 15 years, 
In early 2025, experimental trio 
Steered by their co-founder, Will Greenham, musical collective 
In the decades leading up to its release there had been loads and more loads of excellent collections of girl group and related music that originated in the U.K., but Strawberry Records’ 2026 collection 
Organ trios aren’t as common as they once were. With the keyboardist handling the bass duties from the Hammond’s bass pedals and a guitarist or tenor saxophonist providing melodic help on top of a grooving drummer, these bands once turned bars into real music halls. Today, bars are alive with the sound of ESPN, alas, perhaps.