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
symphonic rock
The Land, the Sea, the Air
The cover art for The Land, the Sea, the Air How many band leaders are also professional circus performers? Not many, I imagine. I only know of one: Katrina "Tree" Stewart is both a trapeze artist and the founder of the prog and symphonic rock band, The Emerald Dawn. The band's latest album, The Land,…Read more The Land, the Sea, the Air
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
Mahrudin
A volcano erupts Mahrudin is an imagined island that was born many millennia ago when the seabed under the cold northern ocean first trembled, then shook, cracked, and finally tore itself apart. It is a land of myths and legends, set to music by Alan Kennedy, a musician and composer from Durham, UK. As befits…Read more Mahrudin
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
Refugee
It wasn't hard to find photos to illustrate this week's choice of music. Pictures of refugees are never far from the news bulletins these days. Whether it's Palestinians driven out of their homes by the Israelis, those fleeing the wars in Ukraine and Sudan, or families flooded out of their homes in the Far East,…Read more Refugee
In Disequilibrium
"Well, it's all topsy-turvy", sings Peter Hammill as his second collaboration with Isildurs Bane starts to swing. "Everything's turned upside-down", he continues as In Disequilibrium, part 1 kicks off their latest album. It's the first section of a three-part title track, and it sets us up nicely for 45 minutes of good, old-fashioned symphonic prog…Read more In Disequilibrium
Wally
Crotchety Man has been hearing a lot of slowish soft-to-ambient music recently and was looking for something with a bit more bite to spice up his listening hours. But the airwave gods were not paying attention. Although the cuisine was excellent and the menu was varied, each dish they served up had clearly been prepared…Read more Wally
The Voice of Beauty Drowned
"I hear those voices that will not be drowned" is a quote from Benjamin Britten's opera, Peter Grimes. It is cut into the rim of this stunning sculpture of a scallop shell standing proudly on Aldeburgh beach on England's east coast. The Scallop is a memorial to Britten who lived in the town and used to…Read more The Voice of Beauty Drowned
Heterotopia
Utopia is a place where everything is good; dystopia is a place where everything is bad; heterotopia is where things are different ... - Walter Russell Mead Heterotopia is a difficult concept to define succinctly. The word comes from the Greek roots, heteros (other) and topos (place). So a heterotopia is an other place, somewhere that…Read more Heterotopia
Crotchety Man 