The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown - 31st October 2014 - Boileroom, Guildford

I saw The Crazy World of Arthur Brown at the Boileroom in Guildford on Friday night. It was an absolutely enthralling show, without a doubt one of the best gigs I have ever seen. Arthur's voice was amazingly powerful and controlled and he had the energy and dynamism of performers 50 years his junior. His band was superb, uniformly excellent with perfect timing, and with the addition of a dancer, this was a true performance piece. I was lucky enough to be right in front of the stage and able to provide a shoulder when Arthur left the stage for an audience encounter. If you get a chance to see this tour, then do - I can't recommend it highly enough. Halloween 2014 was one of the true musical highlights of my life.

http://www.arthur-brown.com/pages/zimzamzim-tour-dates-2014-2015/8277

Nits in London 2014

On Sunday 6th April, The Nits played in the UK for only the fourth time ever. It was a great show. The highlight of highlights for me had to be 'Three Sisters', which is my favourite Nits song. It was great to hear Robert Jan Stips' keyboards on the song

Mama Loo - Whitecap

'White cap' is the fourth album by Mama Loo. I've been listening to it for the last couple of evenings and it's quite unlike anything I've heard before.

Mama loo are an innovative and adventurous Dutch power trio creating impressionistic dreamscapes of music and words. This album will take you into another world of melancholy yet joyous emotional adventure. The particular highlights for me are 'Undertow' and 'Bitter Heart' but the whole albums casts a spell for its whole running time. I've been a huge fan of Edwin de Herder's music for many years and consider him to be one of the world's best guitar players. Here he's supported by the great drumming and bass playing of Gerrie Spaansen and Rory van den Bergh on a highly unusual and captivating album. You should hear 'Whitecap'.

You can listen to it and download it from Bandcamp