Jethro Tull and Comus had a baby, and they named it Gravy Train. That's not strictly accurate, of course, but as the band's eponymous debut opens with the fluid changes of "The New One," it's not too far of a reach, either. Richly harmonic, daringly jam-laden, and peppered with guitar roars that simply defy comparison, Gravy Train is the sound of the British underground at its most joyously liberated peak - a time when a bunch of apparent freaks could simply go into a major recording studio and let rip. Except Gravy Train's concept of "letting rip" has more in common with a symphony orchestra than the Edgar Broughton Band. Without, of course, the orchestra. But there's a moment in the midst of "Think of Life" that cannot help but put one in mind of later Deep Purple, as the flute and guitar battle for supremacy, while the blues workout "Coast Road" is as breathtaking as any of that genre's better-feted exponents…

After recording the classic For Django and Catch Me sets for Pacific Jazz, guitarist Joe Pass got stuck recording commercial material for that label's subsidiary World Pacific. This LP finds Pass and a clearly bored Chet Baker (on flügelhorn) performing some of Bob Florence's duller arrangements for an orchestra and distracting background voices. The music consists of then-current and now mostly forgotten pop tunes (Eliot Tiegel in the liner notes raves about how great the songs are) including "It Was a Very Good Year," "What Now My Love," "The Phoenix Love Theme," and the one tune still remembered, "Dindi." Pass has a few worthwhile spots, but is often cut off by the singers or the overly tight charts. A historical curiosity at best.

Electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze has released Silhouettes, his first album of new music in 5 years. “In the wake of your 70th birthday, you naturally find yourself looking back at the past,” notes Schulze. “So the result is a reorientation, a renewed awareness of what is really important.” With this album, Schulze says that he has tried to reduce his music to its essential elements. “No great distractions, nothing to force your attention in a certain direction, no major effects or gimmicks, no frills or dominant rhythms,” he explains. “ It was important to me to paint the pictures in the depth of the space, the sonic fields of tension and atmosphere.”

The original 12-song LP has been expanded to 20 tracks for this CD. The original material comprised a very pleasant and diverting psychedelic pop release, strongly reminiscent at times of the early Bee Gees from Horizontal, interspersed with some heavier-sounding tracks that were closer to the World of Oz's actual sound on-stage. The bonus cuts are single edits and mixes of tracks that were already represented on the album, so there's nothing new to hear except for a punchier, more compressed sound on some of the better songs. The sound quality is most impressive, however, and given the sheer rarity of the original LP, the chances of anyone having the latter already lying around to be heard are next to non-existent - so this CD ends up being essential listening for almost anyone fascinated by the commercial side of British psychedelia.

Eddie Boyd was a half-brother of Memphis Slim and a cousin of Muddy Waters. He spent his early years on Stovall’s Plantation but ran away after a dispute with an overseer. Self-taught on guitar and piano, he worked around the south during the 30s, as both ‘Little Eddie’ and ‘Ernie’ Boyd, from a base in Memphis, before settling in Chicago where he worked in a steel-mill. He was active in music, performing with Waters, Johnny Shines and John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson before he had his first big hit under his own name with ‘Five Long Years’, on the Job label in 1952. He recorded extensively for Chess Records, having successes with ‘24 Hours’ and ‘3rd Degree’…

Most of the Sinatra recordings available during the 1950s consisted of his contemporary work for Capitol Records. But every so often his former label, Columbia Records, would get something together on LP from among his '40s and early-'50s sides. The Voice was one of a handful of '50s long-players showcasing the first phase of Sinatra's solo career, and at the time it wowed listeners - the focus is on the ballads, and the dozen represented here constitute a bumper crop of classics, all resplendent in the singer's richest, most overpowering intonation and most delicately nuanced work. The sensibilities, from the lushly seductive "Laura" to the gently self-satisfied "(I Got a Woman Crazy for Me) She's Funny That Way," show off a huge emotional range, and the latter song may be the highlight of the album, displaying a soft yet smugly confident brand of machismo, all of it drenched in Axel Stordahl's overflowing string arrangements, yet quietly bold in its emotional content…

The first two albums by UFO featured an odd mix of crisp, focussed songs alternating with meandering electric guitar-led soundscapes. Flying starts off with perhaps their best of the former category, "Silver Bird." This story of a primitive islander seeing an airplane for the first time begins with a pleasant little acoustic guitar melody and builds into a soaring full-band musical expression of the wonder of flight. The next cut, all 19 minutes of it, conjures up the vaster expanses of space. To complain that "Star Storm" rambles is to miss the point; sometimes Michael Bolton's guitar is used as a pure sound effect rather than to convey any kind of rhythm or melody, and if you're patient, then listening can be an enjoyable, even absorbing, experience…

Call Honeymoon the third installment in a trilogy if you will but there's no indication Lana Del Rey will put her doomed diva persona to rest after this album. Over the course of three albums, Lana Del Rey hasn't so much expanded her delicately sculpted persona as she has refined it, removing anything extraneous to her exquisite ennui. Honeymoon doesn't drift or float, it marks time, sometimes swelling with a suggestion of impending melodrama but often deflating to just an innervated pulse. Apart from the syncopated chorus on "High on the Beach," any lingering element of the hip-hop affectations of Born to Die have been banished and so have the shade and light Dan Auerbach brought to Ultraviolence, a record that feels cinematic in comparison to Honeymoon. What's left behind is the essence of Lana Del Rey: iconic images of days of Los Angeles passed, all plasticized and stylized, functioning as lighthouses in stoned, sad daydreams…

NWOBHM icons Cloven Hoof (45 years and still going strong) are releasing their tenth full-length studio album entitled Never A Prophet In Your Own Land, through High Roller Records.
Founding member, band leader, and bassist extraordinaire Lee Payne is still at it, showing again to the Metal World what a driving rhythm, tasty riff, and occasional use of “alternative” instruments can produce. Cloven Hoof has had its share of line-up changes over the years, but the attitude and approach remain the same. As Payne put it, the band wanted to make Never A Prophet In Your Own Land as varied and versatile as they could, if anything, to show how much the band is capable of successfully delving into musically…

The final Canned Heat album to feature co-founder Alan Wilson, Future Blues was also one of their best, surprisingly restrained as a studio creation by the band, the whole thing clocking in at under 36 minutes, as long as some single jams on their live discs. It was also one of their most stylistically diverse efforts. Most of what's here is very concise and accessible, even the one group-composed jam - Alan Wilson's "Shake It and Break It" and his prophetically titled "My Time Ain't Long" (he would be dead the year this record was issued), which also sounds a lot like a follow-up to "Going up the Country" until its final, very heavy, and up-close guitar coda. Other songs are a little self-consciously heavy, especially their version of Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right, Mama"…

Grant Green's debut album, Grant's First Stand, still ranks as one of his greatest pure soul-jazz outings, a set of killer grooves laid down by a hard-swinging organ trio. For having such a small lineup - just organist Baby Face Willette and drummer Ben Dixon - the group cooks up quite a bit of power, really sinking its teeth into the storming up-tempo numbers, and swinging loose and easy on the ballads. The influence of the blues on both Green and Willette is strong and, while that's far and away the dominant flavor of the session, Green also displays his unique bop phrasing (learned by studying horn players' lines, rather than other guitarists) to fine effect on his high-octane opener, "Miss Ann's Tempo," and Willette's "Baby's Minor Lope." Green's original blues "A Wee Bit O'Green" and "Blues for Willarene" are both memorable, particularly the former, and the two standards - "Lullaby of the Leaves" and "'Tain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do"…

The Uncertainty Principle was originally released on Something Else Records in 1993 and has proved to be one of Boddy's most popular albums. Conceived as a continuous suite of music the thirteen tracks cover everything from ambient space atmospheres, Berlin school sequencer tracks through to melodic synth instrumentals. The three part title track features Boddy's vocoded voice floating over deep space ambiences and the album is bookended with grandiose classical themes.