NARCOS FAMILY BAND – Pink Blues EP

Labelled “the heaviest band you’ve never heard” by the DyingScene website, Narcos Family Band already have a reputation to live up to. Since they’re not a strictly a metal band (or better yet, a doom metal band), they’d have a hard job being the heaviest all the while bands like Heriot and Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard have plied their trade, but they’re definitely bloody raucous…and if “bloody raucous” is one of your staples when it comes to discovering new music, then ‘Pink Blues’ should definitely be sought.

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DIG DEEPER – In Central European Time

Taking cues from late 60s psych and various trippy Americana bands from more recent times, Norway’s Dig Deeper are a curious hybrid of Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Pink Floyd, Richmond Fontaine and a half remembered garage band from eons past. ‘In Central European Time’, the band’s third full length release, often plays like a dark road movie for the head and should appeal to fans of the aforementioned, possibly even those familiar with fellow Scandinavians The Bloakes, Trevor & The Joneses and King Black Acid.

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Playing In The Band: The Ultimate Grateful Dead Live Playlist

On this day in 1995, Grateful Dead bandleader Jerry Garcia passed away.  His legacy remains as strong as ever and Dead fans across the globe still hold the band’s work in very high regard.   Despite some top quality studio albums, it was always in the live setting when Jerry and the band really became something special.

Like most bands with long careers, of course, the Dead didn’t always get it right.  They’d sometimes get it spectacularly wrong (as was the case with a late 80s show with Stephen Stills).  With Grateful Dead’s official live releases now numbering several dozen and hundreds of bootlegs still in circulation, the world of Dead live recordings can be a minefield.

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KING BLACK ACID & THE CRYSTAL UNICORN – Super Beautiful Magic

In March 2017, retro rock band King Black Acid released their ‘Twin Flames‘ EP. Despite ’17 barely being a few months old at that point, it was clear that the EP was special enough to potentially be one of the year’s best releases. Bringing together the sounds of Crazy Horse, Band of Horses and more besides (not necessarily horse related), its three tracks dropped the listener into a twenty minute musical cycle that was both other worldly and pretty much timeless. If ever there were a great example of music being utterly satisfying, then ‘Twin Flames’ most assuredly fit the bill.

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