Exposé Online

Aelian - A Tree under the Colours

Aelain is a five-piece guitar / keyboards / bass / drums Italian band that serves up music in the 80s AOR rock style. The song arrangements are typically neat and clean and there are loads of...

Alo Mattiisen - Read

After some none-too-fulfilling encounters with the likes of Eloy Fritsch and Artemiy Artemiev, I was becoming weary of what my next task with reviewing synthesizer-based music would hold. Alas,...

Amoeba - Pivot

Without reading the credits, it would be easy to assume Amoeba is a four or five member band, but in reality it’s two guys: Robert Rich (vocals, keyboards, steel guitar, flutes) and Rick...

Amstrong - Sprinkler

Amstrong hail from Copenhagen, and are often compared to massive Attack and Portishead, but I don’t hear much of that. Their sound is a strange mixture of very artificial and organic, with...

Annbjørg Lien - Baba Yaga

Annie Whitehead - Home

Annie Whitehead is a trombonist and composer who has made what I’d characterize as an optimistic revalidation of the roots of early Brit jazz, adding a careful handling of world music themes....

Anscha - Anscha

This is a very good example of good “musical” ideas ruined by an out-of-control singer. “Musical,” here meaning instrumental ideas. The vocalizations of the singer, Andreas...

Anthony Moore - Reed, Whistle and Sticks, Out & Flying Doesn't Help

Before hooking up with Peter Blegvad and Dagmar Krause to form Slapp Happy, Anthony Moore was experimenting with some very innovative musical techniques. Reed, Whistle and Sticks is one of...

AoMusic - Grow Wild

Ao, which is a Polynesian word for light and illumination, is the duo of Nahoo (aka Ric Gannaway) and Jojo (aka Jay Oliver), a pair of Mid-Westerners with a strong affiliation for New Age...

Arturo Meza - Borges

It’s been so long since we have heard anything from this Mexican prog man that I was beginning to wonder what happened to him. Outside of various appearances with the likes of Nirgal Vallis...

Ash Ra Tempel - Gin Rosé at the Royal Festival Hall

This CD is a concert by Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching which took place in April 2000 at Royal Festival Hall, presumably the site of earlier Schulze recordings of the same name. Not...

Atman Featuring Anna Nacher - Tradition

No newcomers to Exposé, this exotic Polish ensemble check in with another release. Atman’s sound is tough to pigeonhole, their forte being a bent for creating ambient drones...

Audra & Voltaire - Audra & Almost Human

Audra captures the factory sound of the late 70s, of bands like Bauhaus and Joy Division. Their debut CD opens with a tasty little bit of nostalgia. “In All Our Androgyny” features an...

Azazello - Black Day

The electronic drum kit will undoubtedly make or break one’s opinion of this release by Russian prog-metal quartet Azazello, depending on your tolerance for such a mechanical backbone. And if...

B.J. Cole - The Heart of the Moment

Veteran pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole became visible on the UK music horizon within several contexts by this release from his Transparent Music Ensemble in 1995. Since 1989’s Transparent...

Bill Nelson - Buddha Head & Weird Critters

Birdsongs of the Mesozoic - Petrophonics

Ever since I first heard this band back in the early 80s, I’ve been fascinated by their style: rock instrumentation playing challenging music which is not based in the conventions of rock and...

Calix - Canções de Beurin

Cálix is a young Brazilian band that seems to strive for an early 70s rock sound as opposed to strictly prog, with easily grasped melodies and song structures, and a dominant Anglo-American...

Car 44 - Platinum Holes

As part of Thirsty Ear’s effort to expand its scope to a varied roster, ex-Rollins Band and Bowie’s recent guitarist Chris Haskett puts on his production hat to produce Virginia...

Curved Air - Live 1990

Curved Air was always one of the most talented bands that was unable to realize the financial rewards for leading the crest of the 70s progressive wave. This was due in part to the massive hype by...

Darren Stroud - Guitar Absolute

On Guitar Absolute Darren Stroud plays all guitars and plays bass on most tracks. Tones range from warm, clean jazzy tones to more distorted offerings. Stroud presents a balanced sense of...

David Davidson - Celtic Fantasy

There are loads of musicians trying to cash in on the Celtic music craze, and here’s another. This quote found on the web site should be warning enough: “David’s passionate use of...

David Jackson - Fractal Bridge

Utilizing the heretofore-unknown Soundbeam system, Dave Jackson has found a means to incorporate together his love of the spontaneous moment as well as live improvisation. Across the eleven cuts,...

Five Fifteen - Silver Machine & I Don't Remember

Here we have two four-song discs from Finland’s psychedelic progressive hard rock masters. The first (I Don't Remember) features a short version of a track from their album...

Fonya - Sunset Cliffs

Those expecting the usual collection of Yes-inspired sci-fi instrumentals from Chris Fournier this time out are in for quite a shock. For one thing, while the overall sound and production quality...

Frank van Bogaert - Docking

Van Bogaert’s electronic leanings remind me a lot of 70s Vangelis and more symphonic-oriented electronic music like Tomita or some Kitaro. Throughout the 11 tracks on the CD, there is a...

Gavin Harrison - Sanity and Gravity

With Sanity and Gravity UK session drummer Gavin Harrison steps up to the lead role with his very first album. Harrison is known for accompanying many divergent artists such as Iggy Pop,...

Gilgamesh - Arriving Twice

The musical world suffered a major loss in May of 1981 when Alan Gowen died of leukemia at the age of 33. Perhaps best known for his work with National Health, Gowen had also been the leader of his...

Gjallarhorn - Sjofn

Glenn Hughes - Return of Crystal karma

Glenn Hughes has always been a hidden, overlooked talent in my book. The man came to prominence first with rockers Trapeze, before moving into the high profile of Deep Purple during the...

Golaná - Feather on the Wind

Though Golaná (a.k.a. Scott Cunningham) plays handcrafted Native American wood flutes, his compositions have little connection the musical traditions of his Cherokee ancestors. Instead, the...

Guillermo Fragoso - Mexxico

Fragoso practices a brand of swarthy, doomy ambient prog that bears the imprint of Peter Frohmader. Fragoso serves up dark, dank soundscapes with a love of low registers, thick textures, and...

Guru Guru - 2000 Gurus

I remember Guru Guru from back in the 70s, when I picked up one album on a whim. It was spacey, funky jazz rock done with a sense of humor (I don’t suppose you can be too serious with a name...

Hands - The Early Years 1974-76

Further tapping the bottom of the barrel of archives by Texas group Hands is this collection of live recordings and rehearsals by two prior incarnations of the band, named Prism and Ibis. The first...

Hector Hernandez - La Evocación de lo Sublime

The up side of the modern availability of inexpensive digital recording equipment is that virtually anybody who wants to can put out a CD of their own music without having to go through the...

Hugh Burns - Dedication & Mindwash

For those of you who don’t know him, Hugh Burns is a much traveled and in- demand session guitarist who has played with the likes of Wham, Gerry Rafferty, and Jack Bruce. He is also involved...

James Johnson - Entering Twilight

This 66 ½-minute, one track CD reveals a style that may be part of the lineage of positive, gentle, cloudy ambient music that one finds on Steve Roach’s Quiet Music albums and...

Joe Jackson - Summer in the City: Live in New York

Leave it to musical chameleon Joe Jackson to twist the standard pop jazz arrangement of a few well known pop tunes and provide further proof of his oft-ignored creative genius. Dipping into his 60s...

Keith Jarrett / Gary Peacock / Jack DeJohnette - Whisper Not

Recorded in mid-1999 in Paris, Whisper Not is the first recording of the trio since Jarrett took a health break in 1997 and 1998. He suffered from CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome). To do a whole gig...

King Crimsom - A Beginners Guide to the King Crimson Collectors' Club

One thing is certain: Robert Fripp and company have found a marketing outlet to appeal to the hard-core Crimson collector. Those of us left in the financial lurch now have a suitable access to the...

Kurgan's Bane - The Future Lies Broken

L'Ange Vert - Vol de Nuit

Following quickly on the heels of Tempête et châtiments (reviewed in #20), l’Ange Vert’s fourth CD showcases live material from their 1999 tour. This French...

Laraaji / Roger Eno - Islands

First of all, this album is not a collaboration between Laraaji and Roger Eno. It is a split live album with separate performances from the two, recorded at the Lanzarote Music Festival in 1989....

Lester Palocsay - Baby Data Drop

The music on this disc was originally recorded from 1984 to 1990. Nothing is provided in the way of musician credits, but judging from the sound of it, Palocsay worked on his own. Most of the...

Lol Coxhill / Morgan Fisher - Slow Music

Lol Coxhill and Morgan Fisher are two musicians whom you wouldn’t think had crossed paths before. Coxhill’s resume consists of an early stint with Kevin Ayers and Mike Oldfield in The...

Mashu - Elephants in Your Head?

Hugh Hopper’s penchant to seek the unobtrusive collaboration results in another crystal of a project. This improvising trio is based on your typical guitar, bass and percussion scenario,...

Micro-Ritmia - Micro-Ritmia

Despite the supposed 1986 release date on this, it must have languished in total obscurity for several years. The first this writer ever heard of this duo was on the Margen sampler, reviewed a...

Mongol - Doppler 444

How this one was missed by Exposé’s radar when it first came out is still a mystery to me, having only been brought to our attention earlier this year. The six tracks herein...

Morgan Fisher - Hybrid Kids 1 & 2 + Miniatures

In the middle of his work as a keyboard player (with Queen, Mott the Hoople, and others) and as a producer (Allan Holdsworth), Morgan Fisher came up with two albums worth of oddities called...

Music from the Future - Mind Trips

Music from the Future is the recording name of Marcel Peelen, a Dutch native who now resides in the United States. A certified therapeutic recreation specialist who seeks to use synthesized sounds...

Mythology Bullfinch - The Age of Chivalry & Songs from the Age of Fable

This oddly entitled outfit seems to get their influences as much from classic and psychedelic rock as progressive rock. The Age of Chivalry is mostly a guitar, bass, and drums affair, with...

Nouvelles Lectures Cosmopolites - Unis & The Cereal Killer

NLC is a project led by one Julien Ash, who has apparently been at this for some time, although these two releases were my first exposure to his work Their relative anonymity may not last, as they...

Out of Focus - Not Too Late

Cosmic Egg is one of the recent CD labels of Audion magazine’s Alan and Steve Freeman, acting sort of as a offshoot to their Auricle cassette line that they have run since the 80s. The...

Peter Banks - Can I Play You Something?

Guitarist Peter Banks continues to dig deep into his roots and comes up another winner with his latest disc. This one is of keen interest to collectors of the psychedelic era, since that’s...

Peter Frohmader - 2001

Pounding beats, throbbing bass, swirling electronics. Is this latest acid house, acid techno, electro-techno (whatever label you choose) sensation from Germany? No, surprisingly it is a foray into...

Peter Frohmader - Kanaan Live 1975

Peter Frohmader was in a number of groups in the early 70s that predated his tenure with the moniker “Nekropolis.” Kanaan is one of these groups, presented here live in concert in 1975....

Peter Frohmader & Fuchs-Gamböck - Das Ist Alles

German rock journalist Michael Fuchs-Gamböck and Peter Frohmader met at a Faust concert in 1997. Their mutual interest in Krautrock and experimental music led to a lasting friendship and now a...

Peter Ulrich - Pathways and Dawns

To me, at first this sounds a heck of a lot like Robert Wyatt vocally and Dead Can Dance (or other similar 4AD artists) musically. Ulrich has a thin, plaintive tenor voice that, like Wyatt’s,...

Preston Reed - Handwritten Notes

If you think that the acoustic guitar is a conventional instrument then you haven’t heard Preston Reed play it. Combining a tapping approach that is considerably evolved from the style of the...

Radiohead - Kid A

Remy - The Art of Imagination

The Art of Imagination is a series of six musical images in the European electronic tradition. The first is in a melodic, minor key with shakuhachi-like patches intoning over some deeper...

Robert Carty - The Inexplicable

Robert Carty is an independent musician who runs his own label and releases several CDRs a year in a variety of electronic styles. He has an enormous back catalog that I have only begun to tap, but...

Russ Tolman - New Quadrophonic Highway

Tolman is a singer-songwriter with a half-talking / half-singing Lou Reed style of vocalization. In other words, he’s got the vocal range of about five half-steps. This is not necessarily a...

Sabah Habas Mustapha & The Jugala All Stars - So La Li

Most progressive rock fans know him as Colin Bass, bassist for Camel since the late 70s, but in Indonesia he is Sabah Habas Mustapha, the youngest brother of the famous 3Mustaphas3, an incredibly...

Scenic - Spheres

Sigmund Snopek III - Trinity Seas Seize Sees (Long Version)

Though best known these days as the keyboardist for the Violent Femmes, Sigmund Snopek’s first and greatest accomplishments have been in progressive rock. A three-act rock opera written in...

Similares y Conexos - De Flora y Fauna

Of the Mexican progressive groups I’ve heard, none attempts to integrate the traditional music of their country as much as Similares y Conexos. The five-pieces ranges from tunes a bit like...

Solaris - Back to the Roots - Solaris Archive 1

Shot right out of the cosmos to earth by the stories of Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke is the Hungarian formation Solaris. Hungary is not the friendliest of places to release music that tries to...

Spirogyra - Burn the Bridges: The Demo Tapes 70-71

Not to be confused with a similarly-named 80s fusion act, this British band released three undisputed classics of progressive / psychedelic folk back in the 70s: St. Radigunds, Old...

Spring Heel Jack - Oddities

Underground darlings Spring Heel Jack is the duo of Coxon and Wales from the UK. Oddities is their last segment in a trio of recordings the composers created, which has a consistent set of...

Star People - ...Are Coming

Anyone who’s seen the Ozrics on their last couple US tours may have caught these folks inadvertently as their opening act. Yes, these are those bizarre guys in tuxes that look like some kind...

Stephane Vaillant - Crazy Stuff

Okay, let’s get one thing straight; this guy can play guitar. It’s obvious he can play circles around any of these modern thrashy guitar heroes. Stéphane Vaillant has got very...

Steve Hackett - Feedback 86

It just doesn’t get much worse than "Prizefighters." I remember when GTR introduced this song during their only tour, I disliked it then and this version is worse. Take one guitar...

Supersister - M.A.N. - Memories Are New

After a silence of 27 years the illustrious Dutch psychedelic group is back, not with a new album, but with treasurable memories. The first four albums, Present from Nancy (1970), To...

Suzanne Lewis - Suzanne Lewis

Vocalist Susanne Lewis finally steps out into her first true solo album, nearly fourteen years after her most notable stint as lead singer for Colorado’s Thinking Plague. She’s also...

Sviraj - Ciganine

Omnium’s primary mission is releasing “folk music that rocks,” and they turn slightly aside from that with this disc. Though Sviraj (pronounced “svee-rye”) have energy...

Tara Vanflower - This Womb Like Liquid Honey

Miss Vanflower is the vocalist for Lycia, another Projekt band. My favorite tracks on the Lycia I reviewed were the instrumentals, none of those here. Tara “plays” all the instruments:...

Tempest - Live at the Philadelphia Folk Festival

It’s about time that these Bay Area Celtic rockers released a live CD! Impressive as Tempest’s studio releases have been, they’ve never come close to the essence of the...

Tempus Fugit - Official Bootleg Feb.98

This live album is listed as “The concert before the Rio ArtRock Festival ‘98” and is the original Tempus Fugit line-up. The bass player would leave shortly after this. Tempus...

The Insect Trust - The Insect Trust

This late-60s quintet from NYC epitomized the broad sense of musical experimentation of the era, pulling incongruent forms together, and through a combination of optimism and naiveté,...

The Insect Trust - The Insect Trust

As a longtime fan of Fairport Convention and British folk rock, I had dismissed American folk as being either too cloying or too familiar. Not so with The Insect Trust, who do for American folk and...

Theta - Seeds of a Dream

Although the 80s produced a spate of Japanese sympho bands, in recent years one tends to think of Japanese progressive music in terms of zeuhl (Ruins and related Yoshida projects) or the...

Thinking Plague - Early Plague Years

The recent resurgence of Thinking Plague has finally yielded the reissue of their (rare) first two albums (both included on this one CD in their entirety), showcasing the beginnings of one of the...

Tony Levin - Waters of Eden

Over the last half dozen years, King Crimson bassist Tony Levin has produced a small but impressive body of work on his own Papa Bear Records, including World Diary (1995), a collection of...

Twin Age - Moving the Deck Chairs

Ten years ago this would have been right at home on the SI label. For many readers, maybe that’s all you need to know. If you don’t know what that means, well, consider some of the more...

Various Artists - E-Progeny

This interesting compilation is the result of a collaboration between members of an Internet mailing list called “e-Prog,” which is dedicated to the discussion of keyboard-led...

Various Artists - Looper's Delight Compilation CD: Volume 2

This was an awesome Internet find. I discovered the Looper’s Delight web page one day and am the better for it. A site dedicated to the use of the tape loop; its origins, tech tips and...

Vujicsics Ensemble - 25

Founded in 1974, the Vujicsics Ensemble is perhaps Hungary’s most widely respected folk group. Named for Tilhamér Vujicsics, a composer and musical folklorist in the tradition of...

Wittox O'Hara - Blame: Mascot

This is the second album by the Canadian guitarist, and although it’s getting a bit moldy by now, it does deserve a mention here. O’Hara plays electric and acoustic guitars, and also...

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These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.

• Release: Il Giardino Onirico - Apofenia
  Updated 2021-09-16 15:49:48
• Release: Doracor - Passioni Postmoderne di un Musicista Errante
  Updated 2021-09-16 15:44:18
• Release: Doracor - La Vita Che Cade
  Updated 2021-09-16 15:39:47
• Release: Doracor - Lady Roma
  Updated 2021-09-16 15:37:42
• Release: Doracor - Evanescenze
  Updated 2021-09-16 15:36:35
• Release: The Green Pajamas - Sunlight Might Weigh Even More
  Updated 2021-09-16 02:42:00
• Release: Black Tape for a Blue Girl - The Cleft Serpent
  Updated 2021-09-16 01:33:46
• Release: Hollow - Tower
  Updated 2021-09-16 00:52:05
• Release: Hollow - Between Eternities of Darkness
  Updated 2021-09-16 00:51:14
• Release: Hollow - Architect of the Mind
  Updated 2021-09-16 00:50:03
• Release: Hollow - Modern Cathedral
  Updated 2021-09-16 00:49:06
• Artist: Hollow
  Updated 2021-09-16 00:46:51
• Release: The Moon Mistress - Silent Voice Inside
  Updated 2021-09-15 12:36:27
• Release: Super Florence Jam - We Always Knew It Would Come to This
  Updated 2021-09-14 20:20:51
• Artist: Super Florence Jam
  Updated 2021-09-14 20:18:51
• Release: Nuclear Bird - Tyrannical Megalomaniac
  Updated 2021-09-14 19:17:29
• Artist: Nuclear Bird
  Updated 2021-09-14 19:15:54
• Release: ONETWOTHREE - ONETWOTHREE
  Updated 2021-09-14 12:16:30
• Artist: ONETWOTHREE
  Updated 2021-09-14 08:57:28
• Release: Closure in Moscow - Pink Lemonade
  Updated 2021-09-14 01:01:51