Jet Black Sea is an experimental, extra-curricular musical outlet for a couple of cult figures associated with the prog rock scene. Nine Stones Close guitarist Adrian Jones and his band producer Michel Simons created the project in order to create music that stretches beyond the parent band’s more direct progressive rock and metal sounds. Stripped of all vocals and the most of the crunchy guitars heard on many a Nine Stones Close recording, there are still some meaty sounds present and a few rock influenced passages, but Jet Black Sea’s core sound is almost ambient in comparison. Not necessarily ambient in the true “Eno/Music For Airports” sense, but definitely more chilled out. Naturally, there’s still a great deal of prog at the heart of their music – given the pairing’s usual musical outlet, that is unsurprising – but it is prog rock in a much more minimal sense, although ‘The Path of Least Existence’s broad soundscapes rarely sound minimalist in their overall vision. An hour’s worth of instrumental sounds float by without ever resorting to self-indulgence and a stronger focus on keyboards brings a very cinematic feel to proceedings throughout.
Monthly Archives: November 2014
Frank Turner to tour Australia in April 2015
Frank Turner is to tour Australia in the new year. The folk/punk singer-songwriter will play eight dates in all, across the country. A list of confirmed shows can be seen below.
Turner released a new compilation album ‘The Third Three Years’ on 24th November and is scheduled to start recording a new album before xmas.
Read a review of ‘The Third Three Years’ here.
Roughneck Riot cover NOFX in new video
Following praise for their current studio album ‘Out of Anger’ folk-punk/street punk band Roughneck Riot have something new for you… An acoustic cover of the NOFX number ‘The Idiots Are Taking Over’, filmed live in the studio. The full clip can be seen below.
ABSENT FRIENDS: Oranjuly
With Real Gone celebrating its fifth anniversary in November 2014, we thought it would be a good time to catch up with a few faces and bands not featured in our columns for some time. Bands move on, bands split, bands plough on… In a first instalment of an ongoing series, we caught up with Brian E. King, mastermind behind Oranjuly to find out about his current activities.
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Hello, Good Evening, Welcome…and Goodbye: A Final Farewell to Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine
It is October 21st 1993. An ordinary autumnal evening for many, but for two lads from Kent this is a Thursday night like no other. For these two – at this point aged approximately 17 and 19 and only some six weeks into a friendship – this is to be a very momentous occasion. For both, it is a first gig experience and they are going to see Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, a band with somewhat of a cult following. By this point, Carter USM – still a duo with drum machine and a world of pre-programmed trickery – have scored a run of hit singles and have four hit albums under their belt, including a number one. They’ve rugby tacked Phillip Schofield on live TV (a man still young enough to care about dying his hair) and only within the last couple of weeks have appeared on the long running chart showcase Top of the Pops. Indeed, the very idea that this band would venture into the middle of Kent and play a show in a leisure centre seems like a visit from music royalty. Almost surreal– especially in the eyes of these two teenagers, keen to immerse themselves in a world of live music – but here they are, ready to promote their current full-length release, Post Historic Monsters.