Music Reviews: Vinyl

The mythology that has been purposefully built up around Goat is sparse but compelling. An anonymous masked voodoo collective playing psychedelic afrobeat-tinged rock, from a village called Korpilombolo in northern Sweden? It’s a nice yarn, and whether it is true or not seems irrelevant when the potency of the music itself blows away the need for a good origin story. (It turns out they actually are from northern Sweden.) If you have seen Goat perform live, you will... Read More

Trackingangle's purchased at retail copy of MoFi's "Thriller" arrived just the other day, but editor Michael Fremer was well-prepared for the review, having served as an expert witness in Quincy Jones's lawsuit against the estate of Michael Jackson. He'd spent a lot of time listening to the trio of Q produced Jackson albums.

Last year, when I reviewed the Yen Records holiday LP "We Wish You A Merry Christmas", a reader recommended another Japanese Christmas LP, simply titled 'Christmas Songs.' Released in 2010 by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Commmons label, 'Christmas Songs' is a various artists LP of then-new recordings mostly of Christmas standards by a diverse range of artists, among them all three members of Yellow Magic Orchestra (albeit on separate tracks).... Read More

By the time “Rastaman Vibration” was released in 1976, Bob Marley had already released seven albums, the first four of which had limited distribution outside of Jamaica. “Catch a Fire,” his first for Island, released in 1973 with the famous Zippo lighter flip up jacket, was a big deal in American reggae-loving outposts like Boston, where the 1972 low budget film “The Harder They Come” starring Jimmy Cliff had been a major sensation running throughout the summer of... Read More

"Welcome Klaus! Come have a listen", George Martin invited. "You can sit in my chair," he said to Klaus Voorman, bassist, artist and long time friend of The Beatles. This and other excerpts from Voorman's graphic novel birth of an icon REVOLVER tells the story of how and what moved Voorman to draw the now iconic, possibly influenced by Aubrey Beardsley pen and ink black and white cover—visually a polar opposite of Rubber Soul's inviting... Read More

It runs less than 1/2 hour but "The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark" is worth its weight in choose your favorite precious whatever. Crazy magic happened in the "small, lonely L.A. studio" A&M's Bob Garcia describes in the liner notes. Obviously the small budget or a previous booking didn't allow Gene Clark, Doug Dillard, Bernie Leadon, Chris Hillman and the others to record at the big A&M Studio, but no matter,... Read More

Monty Alexander's long association with the Montreux Jazz Festival produced many stellar musical moments. This double LP set culled from performances from 1993 through 2016 highlights many of them. There's a video interview with Alexander conducted by TrackingAngle editor Michael Fremer the day this review posts.

“David Bowie in Jazz"'s Aladdin Sane-era cover art might lead you to believe this Bowie tribute record is tied in with or is somehow connected to Bret Morgen’s feature-length "Moonage Daydream" documentary released September, 2022 in IMAX and standard theater formats and currently available for streaming and purchase on Amazon, itunes and other sites.The scant credits, however, indicate that the French Wagram Music label marketed and distributed... Read More

(This review, written by Carl E. Baugher, originally appeared in Issue 5/6, Winter 1995/96.)The lineage of American electric guitar is a long, rich, exciting thread. It runs through Muddy Waters, Albert King, Albert Collins, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix and the kid from Texas, Stevie Ray Vaughan. A plane crash in late August 1990 took Vaughan way too soon but his music sounds just as fresh and vital today as ever. Stevie never made a bad album so putting together a... Read More

When Steely Dan recorded "Can't Buy a Thrill" it was more of a "pick-up" studio band than a "group". As Donald Fagen recounts in the notes accompanying this new UHQR release sourced from the original master tapes (shown on the notes insert), Fagen and Walter Becker had failed as ABC Dunhill "staff composers" and decided it was time to live the dream leading a real band.The pair called their friend New York guitarist Denny... Read More

(This review originally appeared in Issue 7, Spring 1996.)An extended suite for musical insanity and sonic meatcleaver that mutates The Bonzo Dog Band, Spike Jones, Nino Rota, Frank Zappa, Alvin Cash, The Art Of Noise, surf music, exotica, industrial heavy metal sludge, the tango, methedrine, Metallica, Don Van Vliet, and just plain old fashioned wise-assery into a rip roaring roller coaster ride through a double E ticket musical and sonic fun house. That these guys... Read More

(This review, written by Carl E. Baugher, originally appeared in Issue 7, Spring 1996.)Don’t laugh, this is not just a novelty record—it’s actually a helluva musical album. Jim Turner is an amazing virtuoso with the ol’ crosscut and he never lapses into sound effects or cheap diddling. The album is a jumble of classical and folk music with Turner’s high-pitched saw at the center of some pretty fine acoustic recordings. The folk stuff is especially good.You gotta hear... Read More

It's not too late to order this fun record for your young children or grandchildren. The late Andrew Gold produced, performed, engineered and mixed this 1996 children's Halloween album. It's not scary and not meant to be.

It’s a bit hard to fathom, but Stereolab has now released almost as many compilations as it has original albums. Sure, there’s some crossover, but taken as a whole, all of the rarer material gathered across their Switched On series gives you the sense that during their initial 20-year run the Anglo-French outfit never left the studio .

Jethro Tull is this weird guy with an old man fetish, who fronts a rock band playing the flute while standing on one leg. That’s what we thought. He made weird noises too, while playing flute standing on one leg. A few who knew Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s music knew from where came this old standing on one leg guy’s flute sound (and noticed the credit on the first side ending cover of Kirk’s “Serenade to a Cuckoo”), but there was no Internet and news traveled slowly back then, so Jethro Tull he was until he was Ian Anderson fronting a band called Jethro Tull. Jethro Tull the man was an 18th century agriculturalist/inventor.