Finding a sound somewhere between a sixties surf band, easy listening library music, Saint Etienne’s quirky instrumentals and Air, Norway’s Orions Belte make neo-psych pop and downtempo sounds that totally mess with the fabric of time. Their debut album ‘Mint’ plunges the listener into downbeat moods that seem to constantly waver back and forth between sixties kitsch and mellow alt-pop from the 90s mellow pop. Occasionally, it’s as if things are deliberately presented at the wrong tempo, but the results are always finely crafted.
Author Archives: Real Gone
IDAHO GREEN – Rancher Bones EP
Montana’s Idaho Green are a band not so much shrouded in mystery as cloaked within the obsurd. Their list of band members is obviously fabricated and their band bio partly lifted from the legend of Lynyrd Skynrd. Scraping below the surface, though, they’re not related to Steve Gaines or Ronnie Van Zant; they’re still very much alive and have been active in one form or another since 2008. They’ve been releasing material since 2012 and the ‘Rancher Bones’ EP is their sixth release and despite only being short, it shows more scope and invention than before and is certainly more varied than 2016’s ‘Fuck Yeah…We’re Idaho Green’.
SAXON – Destiny
The landscape of hard rock music in 1988 looked very different, in comparison, to that of a decade earlier. When Saxon began their recording career in the late 70s, rock and metal were solely the reserves of the readers of Sounds magazine, the devotees of the Radio One Friday Rock Show and festival goers. By the late 80s, it was no longer considered such a niche genre: bands like Europe and Poison had scored chart success on both sides of the Atlantic; Def Leppard‘s ‘Hysteria’ was one of the biggest selling albums of the era and Guns N’ Roses were on their way to becoming a worldwide, stadium filling phenomenon. Whitesnake‘s ‘1987’ was selling by the bucketload to a broad demographic and even Metallica – a band that only a couple of years earlier seemed entirely marginal – were on the cusp of UK singles chart success, and yet Saxon, in terms of commercial success, appeared to be floundering.
Even In Blackouts release vinyl only compilation
Formed by ex-Screeching Weasel guitarist John “Jughead” Pierson in 2002, Even In Blackouts were formed with the idea of bringing a new acoustic twist to pop-punk sounds. Active for seven years, the band featured a line-up centred around Pierson and vocalist Liz Eldridge.
Contributing members included ex-Screeching Weasel/Rise Against drummer Dan Lumley and former Teen Idles guitarist Philip Hill. The band released four full length albums during their life-span, but none of those were ever issued on vinyl.
Glenn Frey & JD Souther collaboration Longbranch/Pennywhistle to be released on vinyl in September
Glenn Frey’s fans have always had knowledge of his pre-Eagles band with singer-songwriter JD Souther, but for many years, the Longbranch/Pennywhistle album from 1969 was notoriously difficult to find. In May 2018, the album was reissued as part of the Glenn Frey anthology box ‘Above The Clouds’, but it has been almost half a century since the album was last available on a vinyl format.