Posted in Cd Reviews

Lion Music/Border

Fellow Swedes of long running melodic progressive hard rockers HOUSE OF SHAKIRA are back, now slightly revamped. Originating from 1991 the band has released nine albums, all in all, and a live DVD. Named after a bordello the band are serious enough, and have revised their situation 2007, when their previous full-length album came out. New to the band are drummer Martin Larsson, bass man Basse Blyberg and vocalist Andreas Novak, ex MIND´S EYE. The info says that necessary changes were made prior to begin recording their new album, more focused than ever. Let´s check them out.

The band has changed substantially since last time around. I think the new refrain orientation is very positive. “Opener Brick Wall Falling” has a fine refrain but is not an extravagant opener...

Posted in Interviews

Ahead of this years Cambridge Folk festival, Festivalphoto spoke to the festival organiser Eddie Barcan to ask him a few questions about the festival and what people thinking of going can expect:

Festivalphoto: First of all can you introduce yourself to the readers and explain your role in the festival?

Eddie: My name is Eddie Barcan, I programme and manage the Festival.

Festivalphoto: How long has Cambridge been hosting its annual folk festival?

Eddie: 48 years young this year!

Festivalphoto: Can you tell us a little bit about what people can expect when visiting the festival for the first time?

Eddie: That festival’s don’t have to be hard work and some brilliant music. It’s not too big but there’s more than enough to stop you getting bored. Good facilities. Very friendly people...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Former Housemartin and Beautiful South main man Paul Heaton will be on tour in July with his Soul Opera, The 8th. To tie in with this stage performance, the songs have been recorded in the studio and are being released on a CD/DVD package. The album includes performances from the full original The 8th cast, The Southside Sinnaires featuring: Reg E Cathey from US hit series The Wire, Mercury music prize nominee King Creosote, Ivor Novello winning artist Cherry Ghost, ex Beautiful South singer Jacqui Abbott, as well as sweet soul singer Wayne Gidden, Scottish singer songwriter Aaron Wright, The Earlies Christian Madden, Hull country & western singer Mike Greaves and the wonderful Yvonne Shelton.
The 8th – given a theatrical narrative by award-winning playwright Che Walker (Royal Court and ...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Sonny Landreth is a blues musician from Louisiana, best known for his slide guitar playing. ”Elemental journey” is his eleventh solo album. It’s an unusual album as it’s a completely instrumental release – absolutely no vocals on any of the songs

There are three guests on the album – Joe Satriani on ”Gaia tribe”, Eric Johnson on ”Passionola”, and Robert Greenidge on ”Forgotten story”.

There is a lot of variety in the album. All the songs have great complex melodies, but there are lots of influences intermingling to create a wonderfully rich collection of tunes. As you’d expect there is plenty of beautiful slide guitar here, but the rest of the music is equally good and all works together perfectly.

I have to say I like this album – which surprises even me as its very rare for an instr...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Von Hertzen Brothers are a Finnish rock band who over the last decade have released four albums. The band consists of the three Von Hertzen brothers (Mikko, Kie & Jonne), all of whom had been in other bands before teaming up together.
This new release, ”The best of” is as the name suggests, a compilation of their best songs. The album includes songs from each of their four albums.

This is a band I’ve not seen live – I’d hoped to see them when they played the High Voltage festival but due to a scheduling clash unfortunately missed them. Their music is really hard to categorise as its so diverse and a single song can have varying different influences present...

Posted in Cd Reviews

This is certainly an interesting concept – to take some of the best known classics from English literature – the words of William Shakspeare, and to turn them into songs by setting them to music. It’s one of those ideas that could work brilliantly well, or be a total failure.
As if setting the words to music wasnt a big enough challenge, the decision was taken to use only instruments that would have been around in Shakespeare’s time...

Posted in Cd Reviews

”Dancer in the fire” is a compilation of songs from Irish singer/songwriter Paul Brady. His music has varied over the years and has included traditional Irish music and folk music with varying amounts of pop or rock influences. Over the last 34 years he has released well thirteen solo albums plus a couple of compilations.
When I heard that Dancer in the fire was a compilation, my initial thought was that it would be the usual sort of compilation – i.e. a ”best of”, but it isn’t...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Firebirth is the new album from Swiss rockers Gotthard. It’s an album that for a while many people thought would never be made – after the tragic death of the bands singer, Steve Lee in 2010 it wasnt clear whether the band would continue or would go their separate ways. Luckily for fans the band decided that they’d look for a new singer and if they found the right man then they’d carry on. Thankfully they found Nic Maeder and he has joined the band as their new vocalist.
After so many years with the same singer then any change of singer is a big change for fans to get used to as the vocals can have such a huge effect on the sound. Gotthard released the song ”Remember it’s me” which got a great reception from the fans, which must have been a huge relief for the band.

The album opens wit...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Swedish band The Murder of my sweet took their name from the 1944 ‘film-noir’ “Murder, My Sweet”. They released their debut single in 2009 and followed this with their first album ”Divanity” in January 2010. Now two years later they are ready to release their second album

Singer Angelica remembers the creative process: ”Bye Bye Lullaby” has been a long time coming. We wrote nearly enough songs for two full albums and had to carefully choose these thirteen to truly represent the new, updated The Murder Of My Sweet. This album includes performances from close friends Jesper Stromblad (who you all know from In Flames), Fredrik Akesson (from Opeth) and Peter Wichers (from Soilwork), so it’s a really brave record...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

The night kicks off with a young band, Exit state. Despite the audience consisting mainly of more mature fans, they go down very well and get plenty of applause from the large crowd (the venue was almost full even before they came on). I really enjoyed the band’s set and songs like ”Check out the crazy” were impressive – definitely a band worth checking out if you get chance.

No matter how good Exit State were though, the man people really wanted to see was tonights headliner, Michael Schenker. Tonight he has an all-star band, and what a lineup we have – as well as Michael Schenker, we have two more former members of the Scorpions – Herman Rarebell, and Francis Buchholz, Wayne Findlay (MSG) and former Rainbow and Yngwie Malmsteen singer Doogie White...