Though steel guitarist Freddie Roulette was pictured on Tennessee Woman, he did not play on the album; luckily he is given ample space here, and the combination of his eerie vocal-like sound, Jack Myers's solid but adventurous bass playing, and Skip Rose's jazz piano voicings made this edition of the Musselwhite band one of the most original blues outfits ever. Charlie is in fine form as well, on a rock-solid cover of Muddy's "Trouble No More," and a lyrical reading of "Willow Weep for Me," and his harp tour de force "Arkansas Boogie."

2022 marks the 25 year anniversary of the release of Mansun's debut, the iconic #1 album Attack of the Grey Lantern. The much-loved and experimental piece of music is at the heart of fervent cult following for the British group. To celebrate, Kscope presents Paul Draper’s 2018 performance of the album in full.

Snowy White is one of a handful of classic blues-orientated British electric guitar players - musicians whose sound, technique and style has echoed the originality of the blues with the excitement of contemporary rock. When recording his many solo albums Snowy White has always gone his own way. Driving On The 44 is a further example of how he has matured and developed over the years. Ten great tracks of relaxed riffs, cool grooves and soulful blues. Snowy White is a man who has nothing to prove but who can still play hot and smoky guitar. Check out the soaring solo on 'Keep On Flying,' the long and edgy workout on 'Blues 22', the mellow guitar sounds on 'Freshwater', and the expressive 'Longtime Blues'. Snowy White - it's all in the music!

Superb 60-track compilation features "My Baby Just Cares For Me", "Don't Smoke In Bed", "He's Got The Whole Word In His Hands", "I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl", "Plain Gold Ring" and more standards.

The shock of the new meets old-school synths, free-form rock, gutbucket blues and harmolodic funk in sax master Kjetil Møster’s eponymous group’s incredibly various, genre-defying new studio album. Møster!’s latest edition is a Norwegian supergroup featuring Motorpsycho guitarist Hans Magnus Ryan (aka Snah), one-time Motorpsycho and Grand General drummer Kenneth Kapstad, Nikolai Huengsle (of The National Bank, Elephant 9, Big Bang and Needlepoint) on electric bass and electronics, plus legendary studio-boffin Jorgen Træen, who also acts as engineer, on modular synths and lap steel guitar. Kjetil Møster plays sax, clarinet, electronics and percussion.

The continuation of our survey of Moscheles piano concertos brings us to three works which have never been recorded before. The 1st Concerto, written in 1819, is a very Mozartean affair; though the young composer had become a friend of Beethoven it seems the example of that composer's last three concertos hadn't been followed, instead we have a work full of charm, grace and untroubled lyrical melody.

Originally recorded for Capitol Records in his pre-Hee-Haw days (1963), this is Roy Clark's instrumental album, an all-guitar fest that showcases the country artist's amazing chops. Kicking off with a warp-speed version of "Twelfth Street Rag" that actually gets doubles in tempo by the final chorus, this album features a brace of generic "twistin''' instrumentals (read: public domain tunes given a twist beat) like "Texas Twist," "Weeping Willow Twist," "Wildwood Twist" ("Wildwood Flower"), "Golden Slippers," and "Over the Waves," rocked up cha-cha's like "Pink Velvet Swing" and Bob Wills' "A Maiden's Prayer," and boogies like the closing "Chicken Wire." Produced by Ken Nelson and sounding for all the world like it was cut in a single afternoon session, this should open up anyone's eyes and ears who thinks of Roy Clark only as a belly scratchin' fool, telling corny jokes and singing sappy love ballads.

Countertenor performances of 19th century opera are a historical and, ultimately, true novelty. This said, for those who love the sound of the countertenor voice and want to give it a try, there are several factors that recommend this release by countertenor Franco Fagioli, with the small orchestra Armonia Atenea under George Petrou. First is that castrati were still around in Rossini's time, although on the decline, and the composer was reportedly intrigued by their voices. Second, Fagioli, unlike the vast majority of other countertenors, studied bel canto singing rather than Baroque repertory exclusively, and a certain distance present in the work of other countertenors is absent here. And third, and most important, is Fagioli's voice itself. Of the countertenors active today, he's the one with the range, the power, the attitude to make you suspend disbelief and think for a moment that you're actually listening to a castrato. He enters into the various Rossini roles represented on this recording, several of which were mezzo-soprano "pants" roles; this adds to the layers of identity-switching happening, and the parts hit Fagioli's vocal sweet spot. A bonus is that several of these are from Rossini opere serie that are little played or recorded.

Expanding the latent arena rock sensibilities that peppered Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me by slowing them down and stretching them to the breaking point, the Cure reached the peak of their popularity with the crawling, darkly seductive Disintegration. It's a hypnotic, mesmerizing record, comprised almost entirely of epics like the soaring, icy "Pictures of You." The handful of pop songs, like the concise and utterly charming "Love Song," don't alleviate the doom-laden atmosphere. The Cure's gloomy soundscapes have rarely sounded so alluring, however, and the songs - from the pulsating, ominous "Fascination Street" to the eerie, string-laced "Lullaby" - have rarely been so well-constructed and memorable. It's fitting that Disintegration was their commercial breakthrough, since, in many ways, the album is the culmination of all the musical directions the Cure were pursuing over the course of the '80s.

Powerful, subtle, beautiful tone, musical intelligence and a few individual tricks that leave other harp players shaking their heads in wonderment. Carey Bell is perhaps most famous for his many stints with Muddy Waters but has also been developing his own career since the 1960s. He may never have had a big label ‘push’ but he's still very much the uncrowned king of Chicago Blues harmonica playing. The material here was recorded under a variety of circumstances and Blues musical settings. Some with his sons, still a band too tough (in every sense) for U.S. labels to mess with and some with truly sympathetic British musicians. Listen out too for Lurrie Bell, Carey's son and an awesomely talented Bluesman in his own right…

Three years in the making (which was considered an eternity in the '70s), the Eagles' follow-up to the massively successful, critically acclaimed Hotel California was a major disappointment, even though it sold several million copies and threw off three hit singles. Those singles, in fact, provide some insight into the record. "Heartache Tonight" was an old-fashioned rock & roll song sung by Glenn Frey, while "I Can't Tell You Why" was a delicate ballad by Timothy B. Schmit, the band's newest member. Only "The Long Run," a conventional pop/rock tune with a Stax Records R&B flavor, bore the stamp and vocal signature of Don Henley, who had largely taken the reins of the band on Hotel California…

As measured by cultural impact and mass popularity, Bruce Springsteen’s 1984-85 World Tour was the apex. Considering its stunning scale, playing multi-night stadium stands, it’s easy to forget that 1984 was a rebirth of sorts, the start of a new era as much as a continuation of what came before it. On the biggest tour of his career, Springsteen was rebuilding the engine while the plane was flying.

Father John Misty is announcing a live bootleg series featuring recordings of select performances from the tour that will be available every Tuesday beginning August 9th, 2022. The shows will be available for download and streaming via Father John Misty’s Bandcamp page. The first installment of the bootleg series is one from the archives and available now, a blistering set from the “I Love You, Honeybear” tour at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels during the fall of 2015.

Everybody loves a good ol’ dumping on bedroom projects. Ain’t nuthin like tearin’ instrudjental solo guitarists a new one for how generic their riffs are, and repeating for the thousandth time that soloing dost not the songwriting maketh (think, djenter, think!). On the flipside though, whenever a solo artist does come out with something worthwhile, it becomes all the more impressive. Enter The Vicious Head Society, a solo project by Graham Keane. Now to call this an actual solo project may be a bit of a stretch given the plethora of session musicians featured on this, but all the writing and composing is done by Keane. This band has been on my radar for a while since they were featured on a Reddit series for underrated prog metal artists, so I was excited to finally have an excuse to listen to them as I saw that they had a new one coming up. So the perennial question is of course, does it live up to my own personal hype?