If you are a fan of West Ham United Football Club, please don't sing/play/stream the club anthem while you are reading this post. Its music hall style wouldn't mix well with the progressive symphonic rock on Clearlight's second album, Forever Blowing Bubbles. https://open.spotify.com/album/7KkzZ9XnykpxNy1hm11H7f?si=YZxqU4v8TfW9rDk-cwAzMw Clearlight was founded by Cyrille Verdeaux in 1973. VERDEAUX, native of France,…Read more Forever Blowing Bubbles
jazz
Tangram
8 Tangram sets in pastel colours The crowdfunding project for smalltape's Tangram album has raised over 70% of its target, and there are just three more days left to raise the other 30%. Crotchety Man has already blogged enthusiastically about Philipp Nespital's last album under the smalltape moniker, The Hungry Heart, and made his contribution…Read more Tangram
Danny Thompson
R.I.P. Danny Thompson, 1939-2025 I was saddened to hear that Danny Thompson died this week. He was 86. “Legendary acoustic bass player Danny Thompson died peacefully yesterday at his home in Rickmansworth, UK. A musician who was both beloved and admired by everybody he worked with, his body of work is unparalleled in its quality…Read more Danny Thompson
The Hungry Heart
A feast for the hungry heart. The Crotchety Blog Library contains a lot of music, and I had forgotten that Bruce Springsteen recorded a song called "Hungry Heart". Google, of course, knows better. But I wasn't looking for that today. I was searching for a picture to illustrate smalltape's excellent album, The Hungry Heart. (I…Read more The Hungry Heart
Mail Order Quarks
This Quark is far too handsome to be on mail order, I think. What the skibidi is this? An American band called French TV offering Star Trek characters by mail order? No, it's just a tongue-in-cheek title for a 10-minute musical composition constructed in the Zappa mould. It's one of those slightly zany flights of…Read more Mail Order Quarks
Luminous Giants
GoGo Penguin's compositions often have an astronomical theme. I was drawn into their orbit in 2018 when they released their album, A Humdrum Star, and I've been floating around them ever since. When they chose to call one of their latest tracks Luminous Giants, they were almost certainly thinking of a type of red giant…Read more Luminous Giants
A Symphony of Amaranths
A symphony of colours, but probably not a natural Amaranth flower. A Symphony of Amaranths is a collection of jazz tunes composed by Neil Ardley. It's the kind of jazz that serious composers would recognise as carefully constructed, high quality music, even if they didn't warm to it themselves. It is scored for an orchestra…Read more A Symphony of Amaranths
Vertú
Vertuous living in Chaucer's England The meaning of 'vertú' is not clear to me. According to the first entry that comes up in a Google search, it's either "knowledge of or expertise in the fine arts" or "the good qualities inherent in a person or thing". Or it might just be an old spelling of…Read more Vertú
Masters of Fog
It's been chilly, damp and foggy in most of the UK for the past few days. What more appropriate choice of topic for this week's blog, then, than an album called Masters of Fog? https://open.spotify.com/album/5RAZAzKGlhdLrwmV0p97UY?si=iafK0LIuQBWhBd89Iy-_gQ The 6th album by Tonbruket, released 27th September 2019 According to Discogs, Tonbruket is a Swedish music project whose sound…Read more Masters of Fog
Deerand
How long can a hot-air balloon stay aloft? Deerand is a Persian term that means 'duration' (of instrument's tones). It is also the title of the latest album from Quartet Diminished. https://open.spotify.com/album/4elRzwcxhHDW5swyjtlrsy?si=HdJ7yhWxTDG0nOqe0EN8pQ Quartet Diminished's latest album, released to Spotify 15th November 2024 According to Spotify, the band was formed in 2013, and it can't have…Read more Deerand
Crotchety Man 