what are SteamGifters listening lately?

Japanese shoegaze is my favourite shoegaze but the ROW should not just be disregarded. I have always had a soft spot for All Natural Lemon And Lime Flavors, who combined shoegaze with a desire to sound like Stereolab - an interesting combination as Stereolab do not really do the guitar walls of sound that make shoegaze. So we get interesting juxtapositions of ba-ba-baa vocal melodies (they even seem to imitate the French accent at those points) and guitar pedal workouts. This does not sound particularly original but the good ideas I find really good and there are enough of them to make this album more than worthwhile. It clearly helps if you like both Stereolab and shoegaze, though!

All Natural Lemon And Lime Flavors - Straight Blue Line

Here's another heavy psych collectors' item from the 70s. This is the first album by Terry Brooks with his band Strange. There is quite a bit of Jimi worship going on (down to the song titles!) but much of this is nevertheless far, far out, in a galaxy of its own, from which it seems Terry has still not returned to this day judging from his comments on other Youtube videos. Still, he's an excellent guitar player and he clearly lives this music.

Terry Brooks & Strange - Translucent World

Sunday evening! Avant metal hour. In gallop Hesperian Death Horse.
I agree the very word "avant" is all rather chin-stroking neckbearded hornrimmed-glassed film student about to launch into a rote-learned discourse on "the post-Truffaut nouvelle vague" but HDH ain't all that bad. It is true Encyclopaedia Metallum did consider them out of bounds for their site for reasons that I either missed or were left unspecified. Still this album sounds like a less structured or perhaps ambient version of Ved Buens Ende to me - using very similar chord progressions. Haunting figures are repeated and can have a very atmospheric, even hypnotic effect: like a death horse thundering through the morbid undergrowth for minutes on end. Depending on mood and taste, this may be perceived as captivating, Or boring. Give it a try to find out.

Hesperian Death Horse - Živ

And speaking of Jimi worship, who doesn't immediately think of well-past-middle-age Cockney Jimi channeler Bari Watts? His group Outskirts Of Infinity recorded at least two instant classic albums at the end of the eighties.

Here are two tracks from the second album. I put them first because the Jimi pastiche is stronger here than on the first one.

Outskirts Of Infinity - The Laughter Castle
Outskirts Of Infinity - Scenes From The Dreams Of Angels

The first album was slightly more prog psych but the scintillating guitar work was the same. Yes, this is a Bancroft cover on a Woronzow album.

Outskirts Of Infinity - Lord Of The Dark Skies

And here's the Outskirts doing an actual Jimi cover live in studio:

Outskirts Of Infinity -Spanish Castle Magic

That entire live in studio album (their third):

Outskirts Of Infinity - Stoned Crazy

D-Block & S-te-Fan - Twilight Zone

View attached image.

Slipknot just dropped a single "Unsainted" from their new upcoming album "We are not your kind"
It grew on me instantly. Also Coreys new mask seems interesting.
Any thoughts ?

Early 1990s, prog rock aficionados themselves thought of prog rock as history. The old classics by Yes, Genesis, KC, VDGG etc. would be listened to with many a wistful tear. All those flights of fancy to marvel at, all that pretentiousness to induce occasional violent cringing...all the ambivalence of sour candy, there was no other musical style to feel about in a similar way. "Neo prog" did get off the ground in the eighties, but were Marillion really comparable to the old masters as soon as they stopped directly ripping off Genesis? And didn't IQ, Jadis, Pendragon and whoever just play long, linear rock songs weighed down with syrupy keyboard sounds? In my memories, the true prog revival started in Scandinavia, and Änglagård were at the centre of it.

Their first album was a bit too clean for my taste (I suggest it was mainly influenced by Yes and Genesis), but impeccably played and produced and with compositions of a complexity that no one had really dared to attempt for twenty years. I prefer their second album, which is just as technical, but also a bit darker and feels more mature: this now rather sounds inspired by King Crimson and Genesis.

Änglagård - Epilog

Gradually, other bands dared come out of the woodwork with albums that contained "retro prog" without any attempted concessions to 80s music of the sort neo prog had tried to incorporate. Like everything in human zeitgeist history, prog had been out in the cultural wastelands for long enough to complete a period and find itself happening again.

Psychedelic metal madness sextet #1 --

Subrosa are largely doom metal, but "psychotropic" and with elements that make their sound distinctive: violins, twin clean female vocals. Tracks can be long and journey-like, witness "Stone Carver" on this album -- absolutely sublime, especially toward the end. I am somewhat reminded of a Megaton Leviathan album I posted before as well. I found this to be instantly catchy, with a lot of underlying substance to reward repeated listening.

Subrosa – No Help for the Mighty Ones

Psychedelic metal madness sextet #2 --

Dødheimsgard, the main band involving Vicotnik of Ved Buens Ende fame, started out as trve black metal royalty to the point where Fenriz played on their first album. Creative insanity hit (hard) with the EP

Dødheimsgard - Satanic Art,

which leaves a very strong impression based on the initial French sounding piano intro (too showy for Satie, too sparse for Fauré) followed by the great "Traces Of Reality": madness full of method as it moves from metal noise to a psychotic waltz segment and back. A very prog-rock piece behind the black/industrial metal skin...

...that foreshadows DHG's current album, released 17 years later. A number of extreme metal bands have professionalised their playing and recording techniques over this interval and, in many cases, my personal view of this evolution is that their edges have been lost and they are now much less interesting. DHG have undergone the same process but I feel it has allowed them to record a true masterpiece, maybe they were too edgy for my liking. This album is exactly what a band like Änglagård (see two posts up) would sound like if they were in some way forced to record an album using the sound language of metal. I found it harder to appreciate than I did Änglagård's albums, but the payoff as I began to grasp each of the 10-15 minute long compositions was more than worth it. This is exactly what the genre tag "progressive metal" should refer to if it was not taken already.

Dødheimsgard - A Umbra Omega

Another delightful new pastiche of late 60s psychedelia, a bit less sunny than Triptides but as deep as you like. "Trädgränsen" shows these guys have no problem moving beyond the four-minute psych pop format. So much great new music showing up these days.

Melody Fields - Melody Fields

Afro space reggae jazz funk. Very chill. Not without echoes of Sun Ra but much easier to listen to. There's quite a prominent violin which is used to excellent and unusual effect considering the type of music. Try the title track for a good illustration of what these "cats" are capable of,

Idris Ackamoor and the Pyramids - An Angel Fell

new masa <3333
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBK-69S2FQM

View attached image.

From a time when music was still an art form and not the garbage that is mass-produced for profit, today (the epitome of which can be found, here).

(OK, perhaps just one more classic for the road.)

Sometimes, a silly song pops up in my playlist and I just can't get it out of my head.
AronChupa & Little Sis Nora - Llama In My Living Room

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er7MCTb30hA

sesh.

Music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FirAbvv1EQQ
Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPOlomFhehQ

My playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3NUxbgIuZJ8aZxMlqAgizJSbYLgP5HPP

Recently I started listening to a lot of Irish music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGyPuey-1Jw
or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEt2XdN_TbQ

obituary

Another excellent example of modern jazz, tuba driven and with world influences. This is one of the groups led by the remarkably talented sax player Shabaka Hutchings, who is also responsible for The Comet Is Coming - more nu-jazz, with a stronger nod to electronic music and psychedelia this time.

Sons Of Kemet ‎– Your Queen Is A Reptile

The Comet Is Coming ‎– Channel The Spirits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTTX6QbAoBE

Gap Band will never be dead!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17lkdqoLt44

A fine piece of vintage west coast psych. In the mold of Jefferson Airplane but, in my opinion, more varied and colourful (I have to say I don't particularly like JA). I feel they could have done without the "Over The Rainbow" cover but you have to take the rough with the smooth to really appreciate period pieces like this.

Neighb'rhood Childr'n - st

Something poppy. If you like the dance music with residual psychedelic influences of Tame Impala's "Currents" album, this is very similar.

Low Hum - EP

Xiu Xiu takes on ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man”
U.S. Girls - Velvet 4 Sale
DOWN- ON MARCH THE SAINTS