Tag Archives: retro

CHEZ KANE – Chez Kane

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On her debut disc for Frontiers Records, British singer Chez Kane is absolutely unafraid of delivering some very retro material. With the help of Crazy Lixx guitarist Danny Rexon, she reawakens the classic sounds of 80s AOR, drawing influence from songwriters like Jeff Paris and Diane Warren, along with the sounds of Vixen, Lita Ford and Robin Beck to create a brilliant album that seems absolutely loaded with nostalgia without being lumbered with a bunch of easy cover tunes. There’s plenty about the album’s crisp sound and relentless stabbing keys that might even make you believe you’d stumbled across a lost recording from 1989. If you’re a fan of classic AOR, this is obviously a very good thing indeed.

Although Frontiers Records are very clearly pushing Kane with equally retro sleeve art and marketing her as “singing eye candy” much in the way Lita Ford and Fiona had been back in ’88, she deserves so much better, especially during the more enlightened climate at the time of release in 2021. It’s best to ignore the cheap looking sleeve as much as possible and head straight into the tunes. …And armed with ten chorus driven bangers across a vinyl friendly forty five minutes, Kane really doesn’t disappoint.

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THE CHEAP CASSETTES – See Her In Action! EP

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Everything about The Cheap Cassettes’ first full length album ‘All Anxious, All The Time’ did, indeed, scream “cheap”. It’s ten songs sounded like old demos and the choice of artwork – complete with basic Microsoft Word style font – really didn’t give the strongest first impression. However, if you were able to make it past those cosmetic flaws, some of the songs suggested a retro band with a big heart and an even bigger gift for delivering a hook.

Their ‘Kiss The Ass of My Heart’ EP – delivered some four years later, via the Rum Bar Records label – presented a marked improvement. The core of the material came with a much better audio quality and in the case of the title track, it almost felt as if you were eavesdropping on a long lost demo from The Knack. From such rough beginnings, it was more than clear that The Cheap Cassettes were a band with great promise…and indeed, the EP gained some really positive – and well deserved – press from various power pop blogs around the globe.

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Check out ‘For The Dreamers’, a new track from Astral Drive

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Back in 2018, multi-instrumentalist, producer and one-time member of The Cure launched a new project, Astral Drive.  The “band” acted as an outlet for Thornalley to revisit the kind of 70s AM radio pop he’d always loved.  The album marked itself out as an instant classic, often inviting comparisons to the best works by Todd Rundgren and Jeff Lynne; the kind of record that would keep fans of classic retro pop entertained for years.

The album was then represented in stripped back arrangements on a digital release (self-titled, referred to as “The Green Album”), but it didn’t seem as if the world would see brand new music from Astral Drive again for some time…or possibly ever. The original LP almost sounded like a flash in the pan for retro cool; a perfect statement of the past, recreated for the present.  To follow it up with anything as perfect would be a tall order after all.

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Watch the new video from Gentlemen Rogues

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When Gentlemen Rogues released their ‘Do The Resurrection!’ 7″ at the tail end of 2020, they gave the year one of its finest rock tracks.  The melodic riffs, straddling a fine line between melody and distortion, harked back to the very best college rock of the 90s.  The three minute banger carried elements of ‘Lick’ era Lemonheads, a massive love for The Replacements and even a bit of Sugar at their most melodic.  For lovers of the style, it surely sounded like an instant classic – a reminder that so much retro sounding 90s rock is now capable of creating a wave of nostalgic feelings.

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