The Steel Wheels - Sideways - VINYL LP

Originally released in 1968, this is the debut album by LA psych-rock band, The Zoo. The Zoo was one of the youngest groups ever signed to a major tag during the 1960s and featured Howard Leese (later of Heart) on lead guitar. One of the true long-lost psychedelic/garage gems of the late-60s, an essential piece of psychedelic rock history re-issued here on CD for 2024.

Since their foundation in 2014, this malevolent rogues gallery of luminaries of the UK underground have consistently proven to be capable of projecting vibrations that transcend and usurp any idea of the sum of their component parts. It is true that they've clocked up notable experience sparking tinnitus with everyone from Mugstar and Bonnacons Of Doom (bassist Jason Stoll) to Dethscalator (vocalist Dan Chandler and drummer Stuart Bell) and from Earth (guitarist Jodie Cox, who also introduced keyboard player Ollie Knowles to the melee) to a dizzying variety of endeavours from the paint-stripping skronk of Dead Neanderthals to the righteous ire of Idles (all via saxophonist Colin Webster). Yet S*x Swing represents less a group of disparate musicians pooling their resources, and more a peculiar spark of collective chemistry, with all forces gravitating towards the pursuit of the same dissolute and mysterious goal. 'Type II ' is that goal reached in effortless style and amplified to intimidating aural vistas. This mighty monument of swagger and malice also sees fit to add a certain amount of glitter to the trademark gri t this time around. Just as the artwork from long-term collaborator Alex Bunn boasts a luminous sheen absent from the unsettling abjection of the sleeve of their 2016 debut, so the rolling grooves and mantric hypnosis here boast a new-found structure and a feline sleekness fresh and unusual for this pugilistic outfit. Nonetheless, this remains a band fundamentally obsessed with the expression of decadence and wrongdoing through the mediums of repetition and overloaded frequencies.' Type II ' is more than the mere machinations of a rock band - it's a howl of malfunction rendered terrifyingly visceral. It's the lightning flash and unearthly roar of the primeval battle between Godzilla and Mechagodzilla that provokes awe and disquiet in the realm of fantasy,

A few years after the success of her album crossing Baroque music with folk, Love I Obey, the Franco-American singer Rosemary Standley visits Schubert, this time with the complicity of the Ensemble Contraste InchWe all have a few notes of Schubert buried deep inside us,Inch say the artists, who have got together around his music and brought it to an original sound texture, the result of their varied influences- classical, pop, jazz, folk. They have picked some of the best-known lieder and universally loved instrumental pieces, incorporating in them rhythms from other countries and instruments unusual in this repertory the jazz trumpet of Airelle Besson, the guitar of Kevin Seddiki, the percussion of Jean-Luc Di Fraja join forces with the viola of Arnaud Thorette, the piano, cello and double bass of Ensemble Contraste- not forgetting the exceptional participation of the soprano Sandrine Piau, who joins Rosemary Standley for several duets. The arrangements are by Johan Fariot.