Stewart Copeland, former drummer with The Police, has announced the imminent release of one of his most ambitious and audacious albums, a concerto fusing orchestral compositions with authentic animal sounds, recorded in the field by celebrated British naturalist Martyn Stewart.

Inspired by the migration of the Arctic tern from pole to pole, Wild Concerto will be released by Platoon Records on April 18, and will be premiered live on Earth Day, April 22, to underscore its environmental message.

In a video released to tease the concerto, Copeland says, “This project is the culmination of everything that I learned as a film composer, and then the years since as an opera composer, taking all that I've learned about how the orchestra works and guides emotions. I don't have a soprano and a tenor, I've got hyena and wolves and all different kinds of birds howling away.”

In the video, producer Ricky Kej describes Martyn Stewart as “The David Attenborough of Sound”.

Copeland adds: “In my comfortable air-conditioned studio as I'm composing these sounds I am very aware of Martin out there on his hands and knees in the deepest jungles getting bitten by tsetse fly, Black Mamba, tarantula. Because he has to go far, far away because of sound pollution he's got to go way out there to get this incredible library of sounds.”

Talking exclusively to The Guardian about his new 'bandmates', which include an Asian barred owlet, a black-footed albatross, and red deer, Copeland says, “Their voices bring an unparalleled authenticity to the music.”

“They all have their own individual, often atonal melodies but when you put a flute against a red-breasted nuthatch, for example, the synergy is amazing. I picked out sounds that I felt were the soloists, like the wolves, and others that were more atmospheric, like the wild winds of Antarctica, and treated them in a similar way to a trombone or a guitar … The wolves are howling with great soul, great passion, and accompanied by a trombone following their line. It’s jazz, the jazz wolf of the Arctic tundra.”

Watch the teaser video, and listen to the album's first single White Throated Sparrow (Is Happy On the Glacier), below:

Kiss may have played their final ever show a year ago today, but bassist Gene Simmons shows no sign of slowing down. The demon surfaced on the soundtrack to this year's Reagan movie – about former US President Ronald Reagan, with Dennis Quaid in the title role – and now a video of his contribution has been released by the film's distributors.

A whiskey-voiced Simmons sings the jazz standard Stormy Weather, written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler in 1933 and first performed by Ethel Waters at the Cotton Club in New York City. He joins a list of artists to have covered the song that includes Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Etta James and Judy Garland.

"It seemed to me during the scenes where Ronald Reagan was sitting with Jane Wyman [Reagan's first wife] at the club, there would probably be music playing in the background," Simmons tells Newsweek. "I was actually thrilled that the producers thought my version of the song would work in the scene."

Simmons also reveals that he's considering recording a covers album along the lines of Johnny Cash's much-vaunted American Recordings series.

"I sat down with producer Rick Rubin, who worked on those Johnny Cash albums," Simmons reveals. "And we had a brief conversation about the very same subject."

In other news, Simmons has once again claimed that rock is dead, this time during an interview with the Zak Kuhn show.

"Mike McCready [Pearl Jam guitarist] told me he was growing up with those Kiss records," says Simmons. "In fact, one of his solos he took note for note from Ace Frehley. But that's not my point. My point is if you randomly walk down the street and you ask the first young person you meet, a 20-year-old, and you say, 'Name me anybody in Pearl Jam,' good luck with that. 'Name me or tell me a song. Hum a song.' They can't."

Donner, an offshoot from White Willow's Jacob Holm-Lupo (also The Opium Cartel and Solstein) have paid tribute to legendary jazz label ECM on their new single Grey Skies Over Stridsklev.

The new track is taken from Donner's second album, The Van Gennep Gap, which will be released through Apollon Records on November 4. The album takes its name from the Dutch-German-French ethnographer Arnold Van Gennep, the "father of liminality". The album is a series of vignettes, chronicling impressions from various places and areas in the Grenland area of south-eastern Norway where Holm-Lupo lives.

"Grenland is not generally considered a beautiful place, even though it belongs to the Telemark County, famous for its natural beauty," Holm-Lupo explains. "But Grenland is more dominated by several small cities connected in what city planners call the 'multiple nuclei' model, with accompanying suburban sprawls, and Norway’s largest industrial park, Hærøya.

"But personally, I find the area quite magical and beautiful. In the music on this album, I’m trying to chronicle the fleeting but often powerful experiences of beauty and magic I frequently have while traveling around the area. It can be something as transient as the way sunlight hits the concrete on a street corner, or as monumental as one of the large factories at Hærøya blasting blue flames from its tall chimneys into the evening sky. The Van Gennep Gap, to me, is the inconspicuous, in-between spaces and times when that little bit of everyday magic reveals itself, and that’s what I wanted to recreate, musically."

The new album features Holm-Lupo on synths, keyboards, bass, guitar, programming and percussion, as well as guitarist Stian Larsen, who also plays with Holm-Lupo in Solstein, trumpeter Jonas Vemork Kilmøy and Kristoffer Momrak (Tusmørke, Alwanzatar)  on flute.

Get Grey Skies Over Stridsklev.

Mysterious resurfaced 60s and 70s outfit Jazz Sabbath will release their third album, The 1968 Tapes, through Blacklake Records on November 29.

The new release presents even new exploratory jazz arrangements based on Black Sabbath tracks from the period 1970-1973. You can watch a video trailer for the upcoming release below.

The liner notes for the upcoming album claim to reveal the true story behind the release: "Although never released until recently, Jazz Sabbath's music has been finding its way to millions for over 50 years. Through a vicious cycle of personal tragedy and plagiarism the songs intended to change the jazz world ended up giving birth to a much darker sound. Now a third recording from the Sixties has resurfaced, perhaps their most important one.

"In 1968 Jazz Sabbath were an instant hit on the UK jazz scene. It wasn’t long until they were offered a record deal. This first recording was rejected by the label; the label manager said it was too experimental and had no hit potential. However, just like the tracks from albums that followed, these tracks were also shamelessly presented as 'original songs' by that band from Birmingham a few years later. Their lasting popularity, even in the crude way they were covered, only proves just how monumental these songs were and how record labels are often wrong."

At the same time the band have been announced for next year's Cruise To The Edge which sets sail in April 2025. The trio will also embark on an extensive UK/IE tour in 2025, followed by shows throughout Europe and beyond.

The 1968 Tapes will be available on vinyl, CD, cassette and all streaming/download platforms.

Pre-order The 1968 Tapes.

Disclaimer: Milton Keanes is actually Adam Wakeman, long-time keyboard and guitar player for Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne.

Jazz Sabbath: The 1968 Tapes
1. Into The Void
2. Spiral Architect
3. Warning
4. The Wizard
5. Electric Funeral
6. Supernaut
7. War Pigs

Cult post-rock hero Julie Christmas has told the story of how she woke up from a drunken stupor with a tinned ham in her bed.

Talking exclusively in the new issue of Metal Hammer, the solo artist names the 10 songs on her dream playlist, one of which is Is That All There Is? by American jazz singer Peggy Lee.

“Peggy Lee had a rough life, but made music before the idea of being ‘unleashed’ like [noise rockers] The Jesus Lizard was a thing,” Christmas says to explain her selection. “When I heard Is That All There Is? for the first time, my heart stopped. This glorious woman with this voice was talking about nihilism!”

Christmas then offers a truly bizarre anecdote of drunkenly singing the 1969 track at a karaoke bar. “I never do karaoke but one night I had, like, 18 whiskies and said, ‘I’ll do Peggy Lee,’” she remembers. “Next thing I know, I woke up in my bed next to a canned ham that I’d won.”

In the same interview, Christmas also expresses her admiration for singer/songwriter Tom Waits, especially his 1985 song Singapore. She explains how a romantic drive from her home in New York City to New Orleans led to her finding an appreciation for the musician.

“I hated Tom Waits at first,” Christmas confesses, “but I had a girlfriend called Andrea who loved him. We went on a road trip with my sister from Brooklyn to New Orleans. While I was sleeping [in the car], Andrea, because she’s a fucking traitor, put on Tom Waits. 

“I woke up in New Orleans, looked up and saw these ornate buildings with beautiful colours. There was something about the romance of that moment, with his voice as the soundtrack, that made Singapore one of my top listens for the next few years.”

Christmas rose to prominence in the noise rock band Made Out Of Babies, who split in 2012. She started a solo career with 2010 album The Bad Wife and released its long-awaited followup, Ridiculous And Full Of Blood, this summer. Metal Hammer gave the new album a glowing four-star review.

Journalist Alex Deller wrote: “Whether it’s scuttling, crunching, or throwing off showers of incandescent sparks, though, there’s a giddy, genreless joy to it all, ensuring Ridiculous And Full Of Blood upends every expectation you might have, while delivering one spine-tingling thrill after another.”

Christmas is also known for her work in post-metal supergroup Battle Of Mice, where she performed with former Neurosis members, and her collaboration album with sludge metal beloveds Cult Of Luna, Mariner (2016).

As well as featuring an exclusive interview with Julie Christmas, the new issue of Metal Hammer offers the story of new Nightwish album Yesterwynde. It also celebrates 20 years of Mastodon classic Leviathan and gives the stories behind the greatest Slayer songs. Order your copy now and get it delivered to your doorstep.

UK prog rockers The Tangent hit a nice jazzy stride on their new single, the nine-minute long The Fine Line, the video for which you can watch below.

The new single is taken from the band's brand new studio album, To Follow Polaris, which is released through InsideOut Music today!

"There's a Venn diagram with one circle that says 'The Apocalypse' and the other that says 'Having to go to work' and the area on the middle is where we've ended up," says Tillison of the new single.

Whilst still very much a Tangent album, To Follow Polaris has ended up being very much a singular venture for Tllison, whose regular bandmates were all busy working with other people when it came to recording the album.

"The album is intended to be thought of as a regular Tangent album - but not as the future of the band," Tillison laiughs. "It's everyone’s intention to make the FOURTEENTH album as The Tangent. For Five."

To Follow Polaris will be available as a limited deluxe Collector’s Edition CD mediabook (including bonus track and extensive 24-page booklet), gatefold 180g 2LP vinyl (also including bonus track) and as a digital album. You can see the new artwork and tracklisting below.

Pre-order To Follow Polaris.

Dan Hicks was a genuine American eccentric. A member of influential West Coast group The Charlatans, he was better known for his role as bandleader of Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks, a vaudeville and ragtime troupe who specialised in what Hicks termed “folk jazz”, albeit with tongue in lugubrious cheek. His best known songs were throwback tunes, but then Dan was always happier gazing at the past, and was delighted to tell people, “I don’t have a computer… yet.”

The Charlatans were an eccentric outfit. They dressed as Wild West gunslingers or Gold Rush prospectors, with a touch of Mississippi river boat gambler thrown in. Hicks was hired to play drums, but his songwriting blossomed so he moved front of stage and strummed a nifty rhythm guitar. 

Dandified and rebellious, The Charlatans laid claim to being the Bay Area’s first psychedelic group, although their music was hard to categorise. On one hand they hit dark druggy depths in Buffy Saint Marie’s Codine and toughed up Robert Johnson’s blues 32-20, but they could also trip out with the hypnotic Alabama Bound, a song that managed to sound as old as the railroad but as acidic as anything by the Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead.

Like many pioneers, The Charlatans were usurped by their followers and only released one single in their original guise, a cover of Lieber and Stoller’s The Shadow Knows for Kapp Records. Produced by Lovin’ Spoonful mentor Eric Jacobsen, the record was a local hit but failed to ignite interest elsewhere, and by 1967 Dan was itching to move. He already had the idea for his next project, and formed Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks in 1968.

“The Hot Licks was more of a cabaret act that evolved from the folk thing I was doing before the Charlatans. It was quieter (than The Charlatans), more lyric-oriented, swinging. The stuff I liked was jazz, Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band and Sergio Mendes’ Brazil 66. That jazz influence with contemporary tunes which somehow had a retro feel. It just sounded better to me. 

"It’s not about retro or modern, it’s about this note or that note, which sounds better? The Charlatans were falling apart, there was no good management, didn’t seem to be any future in it. I was only fond of the music up to a point. Rock and roll wasn’t really my love. Then I started getting a couple of gigs, and added the girls, a female accompaniment came to mind.”

Hicks made a cameo appearance in the 1968 documentary film Revolution, but even in that exploration of San Francisco hippie counter culture he looked like a fish out of water, though he performed at all the big West Coast venues - the Fillmore, Carousel and Avalon Ballrooms. 

Audiences loved it, but the Hot Licks were viewed as light entertainment when it took hours of practice to sound that straightforward. As Hicks would say “You probably think it’s easy being up here. Singing and everything, and playing. It’s not. It’s not easy. Thank you.”

With his ideal group in place — violin, vocals, guitar, bass, no drums — Hicks released his 1969 debut on Epic, Original Recordings, produced by Bob Johnston (Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Mac Gayden). It featured I Scare Myself, Waiting For the 103 and Canned Music, as well as the laconic How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away? 

Hicks and co. eventually won a deserved reputation for their musicianship, and there was plenty of humour in his writing alongside the poignancy. He spent his life creating. “He worked so hard on each and every detail – they are all pure Dan,” says his wife, Clare Wassermann. And it wasn’t just the music. Hicks also designed his own concert fliers. He said, “I’m just a doodler, really”. A damn good one.

The minutiae evidently didn’t impress Epic much. Hicks switched to the well-regarded Blue Thumb Records, whose boss Tommy LiPuma was more enamoured of the band’s crazy fusion of jump jazz and Western Swing. LiPuma produced the live at the Troubadour album Where’s The Money? and the ironically titled Striking It Rich. 

Still getting nowhere fast LiPuma insisted a drummer be drafted in for Last Train To Hicksville (1973), and Dan even made the cover of Rolling Stone in August that year, posed in front of a naked woman’s crotch while she ruffled his hair.

Still, Hicks was usurped again by the infinitely cheesier Manhattan Transfer, though he had more in common with Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Asleep At The Wheel or Willie Nelson & Family (all four acts recorded a version of Merle Travis’ Western Swing hit Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette).

Just as he was gaining mainstream acceptance, appearing on popular TV outlets like The Flip Wilson Show, Hicks disbanded the Hot Licks and became a virtual Mill Valley recluse. I arranged an interview with him in 1978, but he’d vamoosed from his London hotel before I arrived, leaving a note that read “Sorry to let you down, but I don’t think I’ve got much to say that will interest you.” Curses. I saw him disappearing into a local public house but left him to it.

In his wilderness years Hicks gained a reputation for being a committed toper. Surf Dog Records rescued him and he graced the studio again in 2000 with a star studded comeback, Beatin’ The Heat, featuring fans Rickie Lee Jones, Bette Midler, Brian Setzer, Elvis Costello and one of his most ardent acolytes, Tom Waits, who growled along to I’ll Tell You Why That Is.

Even better was Featuring An All-Star Cast Of Friends (2003) where he was reunited with Charlatans Richard Olsen, George Hunter and Mike Wilhelm and the Hot Licks, including original violinist David LaFlamme. That 40-strong crew performed live at the Warfield, San Francisco in 2001.

His last album, with intros from Harry Shearer and Van Dyke Parks, was recorded at Davies Symphony Hall in 2013, by which time Hicks was sick and sang while sitting down.

After his passing in 2016, aged 74, Dan’s wife posted “So, Duke, Benny, Django and Stéphane – he’s on his way – you’ll be laughing soon!” Mike Wilhelm concurred. “I just found out that our beloved Dan Hicks left to play in the Really Big Band… If I know him he is already spicing up the arrangements of that esteemed aggregation. He will be sorely missed by everyone who knew him or was touched by his music and great wit."

Guthrie Govan, Bryan Beller and Marco Minneman established The Aristocrats – named after a joke – with the express aim of making fun as important as good music. In 2015, when they released third album Tres Caballeros, they told Prog how they saw themselves, and how they thought the world saw them.

“The Kentucky Meat Shower is a historical incident, something that happened in 1876 in a small town in Kentucky. It essentially rained meat and no one was quite sure why. Modern science had a rational explanation which involves a flock of buzzards feasting on a horse, which I guess must have been past its expiry date. So they munch away on the dead horse for a while and then take to the air and realise that what they’ve eaten is not good food and spontaneously they all disgorge it over this unsuspecting town. It’s an eerily accurate title and all-encompassing. I just felt it deserved to be a song.”

Instrumental music is a funny old business. For every sublime flight of voiceless fancy, there are a thousand appalling squalls of virtuoso posturing and tuneless showmanship. Until now, however, there has never been a band inclined to pen instrumental tunes about 19th-century fleshy downpours. Neither has there ever been a band – particularly one featuring noted masters of their chosen instruments – that have been anywhere near as unashamedly joyous and exhilarating as The Aristocrats.

Named after a legendarily foul and wicked joke told by comedians to other comedians (and if you haven’t watched the docu-movie of the same name, we urge you to do so immediately), the band is a collaboration between guitarist Guthrie Govan (to whom the above explanation of new Aristocrats tune The Kentucky Meat Shower should be attributed), bassist Bryan Beller and drummer Marco Minnemann. And on paper, at least, it appears to be another one of those interminable three-way muso-fests beloved of gifted sidemen in the prog world.

“It’s funny you should bring that up because we were dead set on not being one of those bands,” Beller tells Prog. “We didn’t want to call ourselves Govan Beller Minnemann and have song structures that were basically just vehicles for everyone to solo endlessly. We all felt like we should make a real band and write songs that stood on their own merits, and to try to create a sound that was identifiable as The Aristocrats, as opposed to, like you said, some hotshot collaboration record. Some of those things are good, for sure, but we just didn’t want to be that thing.”

In stark contrast to pretty much all equivalent projects, The Aristocrats are very much a real band, and one focused wholeheartedly on the art of penning actual songs. Their new album, Tres Caballeros, hammers that fact home with a big, shit-eating grin plastered across its face. These nimble-limbed craftsmen audibly revel in shared chemistry and each other’s brilliance across 10 tunes that veer from swivel-eyed bluegrass metal through to squawking, off-kilter jazz fusion, often within the same song and rarely with a pause for breath.

The third album the trio have made since first playing together for fun at a NAMM conference in Los Angeles in January 2011, the record is undeniably progressive but so far away from ponderous demonstrations of individual dexterity that it seems almost punk. The result is that while their associations with the likes of Steven Wilson and Mike Keneally will certainly endear The Aristocrats to the prog faithful, the sheer exuberance and scattershot focus of their wild compositions may yet have appeal way beyond this realm. It certainly helps that the band’s shows have swiftly become notorious for being raucous, celebratory affairs.

“We’re very friendly with the audience and it all happens on the spot,” notes Minnemann. “The chemistry we have personally in the band, where we end up telling jokes on stage or make fun of our own song titles, it’s just about being entertaining. It doesn’t really happen on purpose. We just feel comfortable with each other and we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We want that communication factor and that energy exchange.”

“We seem to get a healthy cross section of people at the shows,” adds Govan. “You obviously get a few people that focus exclusively on one particular instrument and bring their notepads and binoculars and scrutinise everything, but a lot of people come because they find the fun aspect appealing, like, ‘Hey, these guys seem to really enjoy playing together – let’s go and soak up some of that infectious naughtiness!’ I don’t know if we can categorise what we do. It’s not prog because it’s silly, it’s not jazz because it’s too loud and it’s not rock because it’s too weird. It is what it is.”

It is, of course, impossible to not notice how insanely proficient each member of The Aristocrats is on his respective instrument, but even Tres Caballeros’ most complex and bewildering moments are tempered by an overarching sense of fun. Even more so than on either 2011’s eponymous debut or its 2013 follow-up Culture Clash, the band’s combined effervescence makes for a gloriously uplifting and musically rich experience, albeit one peppered with bursts of jarring mischief and, most amusingly, a first flurry of vocals on an Aristocrats record, on the Sergio Leone sprawl of Smuggler’s Corridor.

“It’s one of those things where I wrote the song in a very specific genre, the whole Spaghetti Western thing, and I heard that melody when I woke up one day,” explains Beller, the song’s composer. “I heard the groove, I heard the whole thing and I knew how it was going to sound. As I started demoing the album, we had the solo section with the guitar solo, the bass solo and the drum breaks. I knew there was gonna be a breakdown and I knew that there would be people humming the melody. I didn’t know what Guthrie and Marco were gonna think about it. 

”As it turns out, Guthrie strongly disapproved [Laughs]! Marco thought it was funny. It ended up on the record, but because of scheduling more than anything, I brought in Brendon Small, the leader of the fake metal band Dethklok, and Ben Thomas, the lead singer of Zappa Plays Zappa, and they both came in to hum that melody. It’s just silly. As you would say in England, I think we were taking the piss!”

“This ended up being a very overdub-heavy record, which we wouldn’t have predicted before we made it,” Govan continues. “It’s also strangely American. The whole thing seems to be infused with various flavours of cowboy, which wasn’t a deliberate thing. That’s just what we discovered when we pooled all the demos together – this Americana thing seemed to have come to the forefront, much to everyone’s surprise and, dare I say, delight. I guess as we’ve played together for a few years now, we’ve figured that we can do silly things and take risks without compromising the overall sound of the band, and that’s heartening. We’re having a lot of fun doing these silly things!”

What started as a one-off jam has plainly mutated and evolved into something that all three musicians are now enjoying to such a colossal extent that The Aristocrats have long since stopped being a side project and they’re now beginning to feel the wind in their sails and the momentum that follows.

As modest and self-effacing as each band member assuredly is, there’s an unmistakable sense that they’re genuinely surprised and thrilled to discover that the chemistry between them has continued to spark and fizz. Tres Caballeros has plenty of substance to back up the silliness and showboating, and showcases a meeting of musical minds that’s gently nudging the progressive rock rulebook towards the furnace.

“The helpful thing is that we’ve done a lot of gigs, and every time you gig it cements that chemistry a little more and enables you to feel freer in what you do,” Govan states. “We’re not trying to force anything but there’s logic behind playing more and more and hoping that you become a more cohesive unit. We’ve always focused on the compositional aspect so there’s always something there that’s recognisable as a tune, and the notes are played in that order deliberately! There’s balance between composition and letting off steam, and I guess whatever you hear on the albums is a group consensus of where that balance should be, between those two extremes.”

Clearly the most fun that three grown men can have together with their clothes on, The Aristocrats may take their name from the foulest of dressing-room banter, but their motives are endearingly pure: this is all about music, friends and having as much fun as possible. It’s prog, it’s fusion, it’s rock’n’roll. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entertainment.

“Yeah, we’re playing music but the music business is part of what is generally known as the entertainment business,” Beller concludes. “If we’re not entertaining people then what are we really doing? In order to have something that we think is fun and the audience reacts to it and everybody has a good time, there have to be some kind of entertaining parts in there. Fortunately it’s just built into this formula somehow… and it’s occurring naturally.”

We once proclaimed – in a fit of hype and mischief-making – that the future of rock’n’roll was… Swindon. Yeah, that’s right, Swindon.

Now, The 3 Clubmen are not all from Swindon and they’re not a bunch of cool young whippersnappers. In fact, they’re not even a proper band, they’re “an improvisational project”: ex-XTC legend Andy Partridge experimenting with Stu Rowe (The Amorphous Androgynous, Future Sound of London etc) and an American singer, Jen Olive.

And, alright, it is almost 10 years since we predicted big things for Swindon. But, fuck it, it still counts. WE WERE RIGHT, that’s the main thing.

The 3 Clubman EP might well be the best record you missed in 2023, a record that's hard to categorise, but dazzles with invention and hooks and good old-fashioned songcraft.  There are flutes, steel drums, saxophones, fantastical lyrics – every song is a melodic, rhythmical and lyrical delight, constructed and honed in fits and starts over 13 years.

Green Green Grasshopper could be a classic Disney song, rescued from the cutting room floor of Pinocchio. Look At Those Stars is just waiting for some US teen movie to snap it up for its climax. Racecar sounds like three bands playing at once – one of them playing the Beatles' Getting Better – while Aviatrix is the music of Damon Albarn’s dreams: it sounds like Talking Heads and the Bhundu Boys battling a giant octopus sent to kill them by evil genius Bjork.

The whole thing sounds like it was carved out of caramel and boiled in a pot with gunpowder, sunshine and jazz: mad and lovely and addictive as fuck.

(Apparently, Andy Partridge was recently asked to write some songs for Liam Gallagher, a man who, gawd knows, could do with both some songs and a soupçon of strangeness in his predictable old pallet. Liam’s verdict, according to Partridge? “They’re all shiiiite, mate.” What a diddy.)

As debauched parties go, this one had it all. And then some. It was October 31, 1978 and Queen were launching their Jazz album in New Orleans with a bash whose guest list included 80 reporters flown in from around the globe, and 52 EMI company MDs. 

The champagne flowed like water, couples coupled under the tables, and the entertainment included meat-covered dwarves, transsexual strippers and a woman who smoked cigarettes via an unlikely orifice.

Freddie Mercury: We just wanted to have a bit of fun. The title suggested one or two promotional possibilities… New Orleans was the obvious place for a party to launch it. 

Bob Hart (Head of Corporate PR, EMI): Queen were one of those acts that Capitol Records, as they had previously done with The Beatles, decided had no chance in the United States, and passed on. 

Bob Gibson (partner, Gibson And Stromberg PR): So Queen were on Elektra Records in the US and EMI for the rest of the world. Contracts were coming up, it was time for renegotiation, so the party was really sort of a precursor to negotiations. 

Bob Hart: The MD of EMI at the time, Leslie Hill, called me in and said: “We’re going to stage a party for Queen in New Orleans and I want every MD of an EMI company in the world to attend.” 

Bob Gibson: Queen’s American agent called me and asked if I’d be interested in doing something. Our company was called Gibson And Stromberg, but we were given the nickname Guzzle And Snort and it kinda stuck. I was Guzzle for my alcoholic intake and my partner, Gary Stromberg, was Snort. 

We had a meeting at The Polo Lounge in Beverley Hills with Queen’s manager Jim Beach, where they told me it would be in New Orleans, and it would be Halloween, so what did I think and how much would it cost? I was very cocky when I was young and I remember saying: “I have no idea how much it’s gonna cost, and I don’t wanna hear the word ‘budget’. It’s gonna be successful and you know what I’m capable of doing.” 

After two or three trips to New Orleans with my staff, we decided that the only suitable facility was the Fairmont Hotel, which had a giant ballroom. We wanted to create an environment where whatever you wanted to do was sanctioned, and we decided to play up the Halloween aspect of it. The room was very stark and bare, very high ceilings, so the first thing we did was to rent 50 dead trees.

Bob Hart: The Fairmont was a clean, modern-looking hotel, but with the trees it ended up looking like a skeletal forest. It had a kind of witchcraft theme. 

Tony Brainsby (Queen’s publicist): Masses of hanging, creepy vines, dry-ice smoke, and snakes… 

Bob Gibson: Queen wanted a lot of street people. Remember, there’s a lot of underground sexual perversion in New Orleans, which seemed to please Freddie. We held auditions over a period of three or four days, and hired a total of 60 or 70 entertainers. All kinds of people turned up, but we had to draw the line at the guy whose act was that he bit the heads off live chickens. Several of the bars on Bourbon Street had to close on the night of the party because we took all of their entertainers 

Sylvie Simmons (US correspondent, Sounds): I was installed in this very grand room at The Fairmont, where the first thing I saw was a bottle of champagne in a big steel bucket, topped off with a gorgeous, plumed and sequinned eyemask to wear to the party. I remember walking into the ballroom where there must have been 400 or 500 people. The tables were laden with pyramids of food – shrimp, oysters, lobsters, all kind of meats – like a bizarre medieval fantasy banquet for a king. Unfortunately, being vegetarian I couldn’t eat any of it. So my calorie intake had to be liquid. 

Mark Mehler (journalist, Circus): Shortly before midnight the Olympia Brass Band came marching through the hall, accompanied by Queen. 

Sylvie Simmons: There were strippers and exotic dancers of all denominations, gorgeous women, handsome men. Something to suit every taste. There were huge black ladies, 300lb specials in tiny thongs, and dwarves… 

James Henke (journalist, Rolling Stone): …And a naked lady who smoked cigarettes in her crotch. 

Sylvie Simmons: It was a bit like being in a weird Fellini movie. There was endless champagne being poured, and a display of naked flesh that went on well into the next morning.

Joe Smith (Chairman, Elektra Records): It was definitely a Freddie party. He was testing the limits of what he could get away with. And people were kind of dazed, because there had never been anything quite like it. 

Freddie Mercury : We wanted the atmosphere to fit in with the rather naughty reputation of the French Quarter.

Brian May: It was deliberately excessive. Partly for our own enjoyment, partly for friends to enjoy, partly because it’s exciting for record company people – and partly for the hell of it. 

Bob Gibson: The Japanese and South American label representatives were astonished by all these naked women, or men, or whatever. So Jim Beach and I got every dollar bill in the hotel and went back into the ballroom with armloads of money, which we distributed so the people could do the traditional thing of putting money in the G-strings. 

Peter Hince (head of crew, Queen): Being the crew, we had to finish up the load-out after the gig, so we didn’t get to the party until it was well under way. It was hard to see what was going on, there was just this mêlée, and you’d be wading through the crowd and suddenly come across women tangled up with snakes, or jugglers, transsexuals, all kinds of extreme acts. Everything was going off at the same time. Fred was signing naked girls’ bums. 

Bob Hart: There were lots of dwarves strolling around but not, as legend has it, with trays of cocaine on their heads. That wouldn’t have gone down well with all of those EMI executives. 

Peter Hince: I have no doubt there were narcotics at the party, but trays of cocaine, that was complete bollocks. The crew would have cleaned them out in 10 seconds. 

Roger Taylor: It never happened. Well, I never saw it… Actually, it could have been true. 

Peter Hince: Among the piles and piles of food on the tables, there was this huge mound of meat. But when you went to take a slice off, a midget would burst out from underneath it all. Then he’d go back inside and wait for the next person. I remember a few of us from the crew sitting around with all these girls going past, then this blonde comes and sits on my lap, and I thought: “Phew! All right! Here we go, rock’n’roll.” And she was getting quite affectionate, sticking her tongue in my ear, when one of our guys came up and said: “It’s a bloke! It’s a geezer, I tell you.” They were very convincing.

Bob Hart: A lot of what went on has become exaggerated over the years. I’ve heard it said that hookers were flown in. That did not happen. I mean, flying hookers into New Orleans? Gimme a break. If anyone wanted a blowjob they could just stroll down the street. 

Peter Hince: There were definitely people at it under the tables. All kinds of goings-on. 

Bob Hart: I think it was Brian who said to me that he thought it was all a bit too contrived. That was an interesting comment, coming from a member of Queen. It was like it was a mild disappointment to the band. I don’t know quite what they expected – human sacrifice or what – but they felt it was contrived decadence, not real decadence. That was Freddie’s complaint. He said: “This is pretend.” 

Peter Hince: We wheeled out all these crates of booze and started partying on the bus. Some of these ‘girls’, shall we say, decided they wanted to come on the bus with us, but we couldn’t tell what sex they were. Next thing you know, one of my guys is down on his hands and knees, sticking his head up one of their skirts. Then he comes out and says: “This one’s definitely a girl, but look at this!” He’d found a backstage pass in her knickers! 

Sylvie Simmons: Not long before dawn, Tony Brainsby, Freddie Mercury and I went for a walk down Bourbon Street. Freddie was in a great mood. I was pointing out what I considered to be cute boys, and Freddie was saying: “No, they’re gay.” Then he waved at them and it turned out, sure enough, they were gay. I don’t remember him getting off with any of them though. 

Bob Gibson: Overall, it was a smashing success. We had a couple of photographer friends who shot great pictures that went around the world, and the journalists wrote accounts that made it sound even better than I remember it.

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 162, in September 2011.

Earlier this year we reported on Megadeth drummer Dirk Verbeuren being challenged by the good people at Drumeo to play the drum parts on The Killers indie-rock anthem Mr Brightside having never previously heard the song. Spoiler alert: he killed it. 

Recently the same team threw down a similar challenge to jazz drummer Ulysses Owens Jr., the Small Ensemble Director at elite American musical school Juilliard, with the Prof. being asked to recreate how he imagines Dave Grohl's drum parts sound on Nirvana classic In Bloom, from 1991's Nevermind album.

And just as Dirk Verbeuren had never previously heard that ubiquitous Killers anthem, Ulysses Owens Jr. is equally in the dark as to how any song on Nevermind sounds, though he stresses that he's heard the band name, which is a start, we guess.

Being a frighteningly talented individual, the drummer does a sterling job of approximating Grohl's drum pattern on the song, while confessing that, really, he's not much of a hard rock fan, although he "loves" Incubus.

Introduced to the original recording, Owens Jr. expresses his admiration for Dave Grohl's drumming. "The way Dave is playing it is really like a funk tune," he says. "He's just wide open with it. So, I think, that was hip to, like, to hear a guy who was really playing some funk shit, but with a rock tinge. Dave is funky man, I never realised how funky he was."

His comments are interesting because they echo Dave Grohl's own comments on his playing on Nevermind.

"If you listen to Nevermind, the Nirvana record, I pulled so much stuff from The Gap Band and Cameo and [Chic’s] Tony Thompson on every one of those songs," he admitted to Pharrell Williams during his Paramount+ series From Cradle to Stage. "Nobody makes the connection."

Nobody until just now...

By the time he retired, Bill Bruford’s prog CV boasted Yes, King Crimson and Genesis, among others. In 2019, a decade after bowing out, he released a box set from his jazz fusion project Earthworks, and took the opportunity to look back with Prog.

The history of music is full of passionate conflicts between rival subcultures, factions and fan tribes – some more celebrated than others. But while, say, punk’s implacable opposition to prog in the late 1970s has been well-documented, and often wildly overstated, other battles are largely forgotten.

Take the searing distaste jazz aficionados once had for rock’n’roll and its myriad stylistic offshoots. From the moment Elvis and his vulgar, backbeat-pounding friends stole the limelight from them in the late 1950s, many uncompromising fans of jazz dismissed the simple, sleazy, overhyped charms of rock as intrinsically inferior, juvenile and moronic. This continued even after rock’s desire to broaden its sonic palette saw a generation of musicians draw on numerous unorthodox influences. 

As a young teenager, Bill Bruford had particularly mixed musical heritage, with “my family’s Dansette record changer” featuring everything from Big Bill Broonzy to Sinatra to Elvis, while the BBC’s Jazz 625 TV show opened up other inspirations. “It hipped me to Joe Morello’s unhurried elegance, Max Roach’s compositional style, and Art Blakey’s explosive groove,” he says by way of explaining the evolution of his drumming style. “Couldn’t do any of it, and came out sounding like me.”

But when it came to joining bands in his late teens, a serious dilemma presented itself. “In 1968 you could like Hendrix or Coltrane, but not both,” he says. “Adequate jazz players who moved to rock – Charlie Watts, Mitch Mitchell – were held to have ‘sold out’ and were generally disowned [by the jazz fraternity],” he says. “This was as serious then as it is laughable now.”

With the simple motivation of just “trying to get a gig”, that same year he joined Mabel Greer’s Toyshop – soon to be renamed Yes – and in theory, he never looked back. But after establishing himself as one of prog’s premier percussionists with King Crimson, Gong, National Health and Genesis’ live line-up, there was an itch still needing to be scratched. By the late 1970s Bruford was veering back towards jazz, initially with the fusion flavours of his 1978 Bruford album with Allan Holdsworth, then with Moraz-Bruford’s two stripped-back but stirring albums of instrumentals, and then, from 1986, with his own quartet, Earthworks.

As he released a complete set of recordings from a band dormant since Bruford’s 2009 retirement, we wondered if he ever felt the prog sound he helped shape had things in common with the jazz he grew up with. “After Robert Wyatt there was precious little jazz in progressive rock, and Steve Howe had most of it,” he quips with typically dry wit. “Ian Anderson fashioned his flute playing after Roland Kirk, but that was about it. No musician could possibly have less jazz in him than, say, Rick Wakeman. Progressive rock owed nothing to jazz at all.”

Strong words, but while prog could take the drummer boy out of jazz, they couldn’t take the jazz out of the drummer boy. “I think from day one with Yes I was subconsciously trying to find a way back to performance with those characteristics,” he says. “Joining Crimson was a step on that path. Crimson was more interested in a European style of collective improv that had as much or more to do with timbre and sound colours than running scales through chord changes, if that’s what you think ‘jazz’ is – much of Starless And Bible Black, most of [jam-based live set] Thrakattak, tracks like No Warning and Requiem...”

By the mid-80s, he admits, “I was increasingly interested in being on stage with people who are not only comfortable with not knowing exactly what’s going to happen next, but would actively rather not know.”

After King Crimson was disbanded by the ever-mercurial Mr Fripp in 1984, Bruford was free to seek out more of those likeminded improvisers. He’d spotted multi-instrumentalist Django Bates and sax player Iain Ballamy in fast-rising British jazz collective Loose Tubes, and they in turn invited double bass player Mick Hutton to complete the foursome.

The generically correct but uninspiring monicker of the Bill Bruford Quartet was replaced with the more evocative Earthworks, and when their eponymous debut album emerged in 1987, the prominent role of Ballamy’s tenor, alto and soprano sax, alongside Bates’ freewheeling trumpet, made it abundantly clear that they were cooking in a distinctly different kitchen.

Those who showed up at Earthworks gigs hoping for a quick jazz-tinged blast of Roundabout for old time’s sake were to be disappointed. But the new outfit still managed to pull in a loyal audience, even if there might not have been a huge crossover from the prog days. “There is always a small coterie of wackos who are prepared to go to some gig they are uncertain about, or invest in an album without a guitar on it. But no guitar and no singer? That’s a challenge,” Bruford says.

“Sure, there was a drop-off in audience at the beginning as Earthworks found its feet, and we had to build back up again once it became apparent what the band was about. The US was always supportive, but South and Central America were our biggest and most appreciative audiences.”

No guitarist, no singer, no problem, but what’s striking about the early Earthworks recordings is how electronically based they are. In fact, Bruford later described Earthworks’ debut as “expensive, electronic” – probably not by Yes or Crimson standards but doubtless more carefully constructed than most jazz combos got the chance to be.

“In the 80s, jazz was at most a two-day affair,” he says. “One day to record, one day to mix and sequence, et cetera. Rock records were the opposite – days and days of getting drum sounds and so on. I wanted Earthworks to inhabit a middle ground where an intelligent young player like Django Bates could get more than 10 minutes with a fuzz box, or [producer] David Torn might introduce a young Iain Ballamy to the delights of a harmoniser – as on Temple Of The Winds. We wanted to level the playing field a bit.”

Bruford’s enthusiastic embrace of electronic drumkits didn’t always go down well with more traditionally inclined listeners, but to him it was about exploring the technology available. “That’s what you’re paying me to do,” he says. “And it could go places others couldn’t go. It was fundamental to lots of stuff – Up North, Stromboli Kicks, All Heaven Broke Loose from Earthworks; and Waiting Man, No Warning and Indiscipline from Crimson, for example.”

This was also an era when electronic music – and indeed prog of the variety King Crimson had been making in the early 1980s – was exploring all sorts of new possibilities. “There was an explosion of new sounds and machines with which to do business,” Bruford agrees. “That said, Earthworks made its jazz up out of just about anything we could find lying around. TV images of Romanian orphanages [on Candles Still Flicker In Romania’s Dark] – rave, on Splashing Out... northern brass bands on the second part of All Heaven Broke Loose, and not entirely successful stylistic blurrings of all sorts on, say, Pressure.” He could also have mentioned the alluring Parisian accordion stabs on Pigalle or the funk influences brought in with Tim Harries’ introduction on fretless bass.

Either way, this important creative outlet wouldn’t stop Bruford hopping back and forth between Earthworks and higher-profile rock projects in the years that followed, the first of which was the initially exciting but latterly disappointing (when it evolved into a supersized but underfuelled Yes) Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe project. Although he previously told Prog that his motivation for taking part in that was to push that music forward just as keenly as he was trying to do with Earthworks, he has also acknowledged that the handsome remuneration for ABWH allowed him to do more with Earthworks, which he still did in sporadic shows with the band.

“The performer is forced to conclude early on in a career,” he admits, “that the smaller, the more challenging, the more individual the musical gesture... the less it will be welcomed.” Many a modern-day progger will ruefully echo those sentiments, and after a few days snatched to record Earthworks’ 1991 album All Heaven Broke Loose, Bruford found the Yes reunion project disintegrating, with a particular low point for Bruford being the “humiliating” breakdown of “the world’s most expensive drumkit” – enhanced by two Simmons electronic kits – live at Madison Square Gardens.

Earthworks shows are described in Bruford’s diary from the time as a “relief”, but increasingly Bruford was falling out of love with the electronic percussion that had been such a trademark part of the first two Earthworks records and, to a lesser extent, All Heaven Broke Loose as well.

As he reflected in 1993 before he returned to the King Crimson fold for Vrooom and Thrak, “the rigidity of the digital drums militates against the suppleness and flexibility required for jazz performance”. By the time Earthworks reconvened again a few years later, a more acoustic approach was taken.

“In 1997 I’d just come off Thrak-era King Crimson,” he says, “and pushed samples and electronic drums as far as I wanted to. Someone at a party played me Joshua Redman’s Freedom In The Groove, which was essentially a muscular acoustic fusion that could turn on a dime, and I knew at once that Redman had opened a door Earthworks could venture through. The album [we made] was A Part, And Yet Apart: a rather lumpy way of saying too jazz for rock and too rock for jazz.”

Fans will doubtless have their own favourite era of a band that operated on and off for more than 20 years in several different line-ups, but the Earthworks Complete box set also has some highly diverting new material. The Conception To Birth CD is a particularly intriguing affair, in that it puts early demo versions of tracks next to their finished incarnations. There’s an infectious quality to shape-shifting polyrhythmic patterns on the embryonic Triplicity, for instance, but then the slicker, finished version has a beguiling groove to it too. It is then elasticated into a more urgent, excitable eight-minute shuffle on the Live In Santiago incarnation.

That track comes from the final Earthworks studio album, 2001’s The Sound Of Surprise. Their releases would be recorded live from that point on, but on January 1, 2009, Bruford announced his retirement from professional performance. He has since completed a PhD and run his own labels, Summerfold and Winterfold.

That decision to hang up his sticks doesn’t seem likely to be reversed; and while he may have ended up playing jazz partly as a reaction to the rigidity of rock’s performance culture, when asked if he thinks rock could learn from jazz’s more fluid structure and more freewheeling ways, he answers with something of a resigned shrug: “Yes, but then it wouldn’t be rock. Many musicians and listeners are comfortable with a rigid structure that delivers the entirely expected, nervous of any kind of freewheeling.”

Steven Wilson has carved a place as one of the most unique and productive musicians of the past 30 years, most notably as the leader of Porcupine Tree and as a solo artist. So when he makes the bold claim that rock has become “a cult music”, it’s worth listening to what he has to say.

Speaking in the latest issue of Classic Rock magazine, Wilson says that the days of rock bands selling millions of albums are a thing of the past.

“It doesn’t happen with rock albums any more,” he tells Classic Rock‘s Polly Glass. “Rock has become the cult music of the 21st century, in much the same way that jazz became a cult. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. It certainly liberates it, in some senses. It’s a kind of very passionate minority. I don’t mind being a part of that minority.”

Wilson, who recently released his seventh solo album, The Harmony Codex, says that the lack of commercial pressure combined with the creative freedom provided the pandemic, meant he had the freedom to make exactly the kind of record he wanted.

“There was a sense of going to the studio and going: ‘Fuck it, I’m just gonna make a record exactly like I want to make it now, that I would want to hear at this moment in my life, almost as an antidote for everything else that’s going on in the world right now.’

He continues: “So maybe this time around, subconsciously I’m just thinking: ‘Okay, let’s make a big, self-indulgent, unashamedly reaching, pretentious, cinematic journey of a record’. Let’s give them a record that they can lose themselves in. I don’t see a lot of people making records like that. So in my view, this is the truly alternative music of 2023.”

Read the full interview with Steven Wilson in the brand new issue of Classic Rock, featuring Status Quo on the cover and on sale now. Order it online and have it delivered straight to your door.

On the surface, there’s little to connect late pop/R&B superstar Whitney Houston with the proto-prog Canterbury Scene that emerged from the UK in the late 1960s and early 70s. Yet it would be a cover of a song by prog/jazz pioneers The Wilde Flowers which gave Houston her break as a vocalist years before she shot to fame.

Formed in Canterbury in 1964, The Wilde Flowers sowed the seeds for a very English strain of progressive rock, mixing jazz, blues and humorous and sometimes whimsical lyrics. Their career lasted little more than three years, and while they gigged regularly and wrote several original songs, they never released anything during their lifetime. One of the songs that emerege from their short career was Memories, a haunting, piano-led ballad written by bassist Hugh Hopper and sung by drummer Robert Wyatt (Hopper later said it was just the second song he ever wrote).

After The Wilde Flowers split in 1967, their past and current members went on to form such psych/prog luminaries Caravan, Camel and Soft Machine, while Wyatt and original vocalist Kevin Ayers went onto to become cult solo artists. It was Wyatt who released the first official version of Memories, covering it as the B-side to his 1974 single I’m A Believer, itself a cover of The Monkees hit (a demo of Memories by Soft Machine had emerged two years earlier on the unofficial outtakes compilation Faces And Places Vol. 7).

It was Wyatt‘s version that inspired another cover of Memories, this one by the New York art rock band Material. Founded in 1978 by producer/bassist Bill Laswell and featuring keyboard player Michael Beinhorn, they were part of the Big Apple’s arty post-punk milieu.

Material’s third album, 1982’s One Down, saw Laswell and Beinhorn working with a rotating cast of musicians and vocalists, including ex-Labelle singer Nona Hendryx, Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers and Rolling Stones backing vocalist Bernard Fowler. Tucked away towards the back of the album was a cover of Memories, featuring an unknown 19-year-old singer named Whitney Houston.

“[Ex-Henry Cow member and sometime Robert Wyatt collaborator] Fred Frith was working with Bill Laswell at the time and he introduced Robert’s version to Laswell,” said Hugh Hopper, who wrote the original song, in an interview with The Vermont Review.

Music ran in Houston’s veins. Her mother was gospel singer Cissy Houston and her aunt was Dionne Warwick. She had sung back-up for Chaka Khan and Lou Rawls, but Memories would be her very first lead vocal. Material’s cover stays close to the original, adding a glossy, slightly funky production, with saxophone from jazz legend Archie Shepp. But it’s Houston’s tender vocal that marks it out, reining in the acrobatics she later became famous for.

“The interesting thing is that she copies Robert’s phrasing on his Virgin single almost exactly,” said Hopper, adding: “To be honest, the production is a little ropey – Laswell’s bass is out of tune and Shepp sounds as they only gave hom one take and no chance to listen beforehand… but yes, a nice little record to have been involved with.”

The Whitney Houston-sung version of Memories barely made a ripple beyond hipster circles at the time, but just as The Wilde Flowers proved to be a jumping off point for many stars of the Canterbury scene and beyond, so the people who played on Material’s cover went on to much bigger things.

Bill Laswell balanced work in the experimental/avant garde field with production duties for everyone from Herbie Hancock and Mick Jagger to Public Image Limited (1985’s Album) and Motörhead (the following year’s Orgasmatron), while Michael Beinhorn produced hit albums by the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Hole and more.

And Whitney Houston, the teenager who sang on the cover of that obscure prog/jazz number? Under the guidance of music mogul Clive Davis, she went on to become one of the biggest stars of the 80s and 90s, before her drug-related death in 2012 at the age of 48.

The Wilde Flowers’ original version was eventually released in 1994. Hugh Hopper, who passed away in 2009, remained quietly proud of the song he’d that provided an unlikely launchpad for one of the most pop singers in history.

If only Whitney Houston had recorded Memories a year or so later,” he said, referring to the success Houston would go on to have. “I‘d be a rich person now.”

Steven Wilson has shared a brand new track, the ten-minute plus Impossible Tightrope, which you can listen to below. It's the second track he's shared from upcoming album The Harmony Codex, which will be released through Virgin Records on September 29, and is described by Wilson as a "mash-up of progressive rock, spiritual jazz and electronica".

"Accompanied by an astonishing animated video directed by Miles Skarin/Crystal Spotlight," writes Wilson, "both the song and the video take you on an immersive and constantly evolving journey. Oh, and see how many times you can spot 'the object' in the video!"

The new track features Wilson on vocals, piano, acoustic guitar, bass, strings, Moog Sub 37, ARP 2600, Cobalt 8, electric guitar, harp, Rhodes, Hammond organ, Solina Strings and programming, with Adam Holzman on electric piano (including solo), Nate Wood on drums, Nicko Tsonev on guitar, David Kollar on ambient guitar, Theo Travis on saxophone, Ben Coleman on violin and Lee Harris on psychedelic guitar.

The Harmony Codex also sees Wilson collaborating with long time studio partners such as Ninet Tayeb and Craig Blundell alongside a host of first time collaborators including Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto and Interpol’s Sam Fogarino.

The Harmony Codex will be available as a single disc as well as a  limited edition three disc deluxe hardback book-set which features Harmonic Distortion, a 77 minute reimagining of the album featuring alternate versions and remixes by Manic Street Preachers, Roland Orzabal (Tears for Fears), Mikael Åkerfeldt (Opeth), Interpol, Meat Beat Manifesto, Faultline, and Radiophonic Workshop.

The third disc is a deluxe-only version of the BluRay featuring high resolution 96/24 stereo, 5.1 surround, and Dolby Atmos mixes of The Harmony Codex, 2 videos, and exclusive instrumental mixes of the full 65 minute album in high res 96/24 stereo, 5.1 surround and Dolby Atmos. The 100 page Carl Glover designed hardback book and  features Hajo Mueller’s artwork. 

Norwegian jazz rock quartet The Verge are the latest band to sign with the increasingly prolific Is It Jazz? label, the Bergen-based offshoot of Karisma Records, home to the likes of Wobbler, Airbag, Seven Impale, Major Parkinson, Meer and more.

The Verge comprise of Emil Storløkken Åse (Phoenix, Emil Storløkken Åse solo) on guitars , Aksel Rønning (Cosmic Swing Orchestra, Aksel Rønning Trio) on saxophone and flute, Alf Høines (Caramel 11, Leon Røsten Trio)on electric bass and Ingvald Vassbø (Kanaan, Juno) on drums.

"Myself, Emil, Alf and Akse are really looking forward to releasing our debut album on Is It Jazz? Records," says Vassbø. "I've been a long time fan of Karisma Records and it's an honour and a privilege to be on the same label as so many other great artists that we admire and draw inspiration from."

"Together they have  created an intense and energetic debut album that draws its inspiration from extreme improvisational rock and dreamy noise/dronescapes, and offers more than a nod in the direction of free form jazz," the label add. "It is an album that promises to be vibrant and multifaceted, one where the ability of the individual musicians to interact with one another is front and centre."

Krokofant, the Norwegian jazz prog quintet have signed to the increasingly prolific Is It Jazz? label. Guitarist Tom Hasslan and drummer Axel Skalstad are already signed to the label with the band Soft Fogg.

Krokofant join a roster that, as well as Soft Fogg, also includes Datadyr, Wizrd, Jacob Holm-Lupo's Solstein, Leagus, Shakai and Aksel Røed’s Other Aspects.

"Krokofant is super excited about signing on the Is It Jazz? Records label, and are really looking forward to the collaboration," the band exclaim. "Krokofant is buckling up in the spacecraft and getting ready for take off to the eternal cosmos!"

Krokofant are described as "playing a free jazz style with precise and heavy riffs that are redeemed by jarring and strong improvisations," and being "one of the most 'prog' ensembles amongst Norway's prog jazz rock bands".

The band are currently working on their sixth studio album for release later this year.

“Nutty is important to us because it’s uniquely ours,” says band leader Sonny Noon. “It’s creative and it brings two great genres together: classic rock and classic jazz.”

You heard that right: classic rock and classic jazz. In one band. And it works.

Nutty began life as a lounge project named Chase Lounge and the Lazy Boys, and over the years evolved into something entirely different: a jazz band who tackled classic rock covers. They took on a new name, Nutty – named in tribute to Jerry Lewis’s The Nutty Professor – and released a debut album, Spiked Rock Classics From A Cool Cocktail Jazz Tumbler, in 2003. It included such magnificent mash-ups as The Reaper (We’ll Be Able to Fly), in which Blue Oyster Cult’s 1976 classic was given a Dean Martin makeover, Paranoid Cat (think: Black Sabbath play bossa nova) and Back in Black, Baby! which took Aussie legends AC/DC in directions Angus Young must surely never have considered.

Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick is a fan.“He approached me about playing his wedding,” says Moon. “We decided not only to take the gig but to create a Kiss song for the show; we put Detroit Rock City together with Wes Montgomery’s Four On Six and retitled it Four On Kiss. After playing the song in the first set, I jokingly said to Gene Simmons, “I hope we didn’t fuck your tune up too much,” to which he quipped, “I came twice.”

A second studio album, Jetsetter Jazz, followed. It followed the same formula: the songs of Jimi Hendrix, Van Halen, Neil Young, The Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, Aerosmith and more were skilfully blended with the music of Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Lalo Schifrin, Chet Baker, you get the idea.

And now the band have instigated an IndieGogo campaign to finance the completion of a third album, Live Art The Purple Pit.

“The costs associated with finishing the record are considerable,” says Moon. “And we need help. With licensing and post production, artwork, promotion and distribution, we decided to reach out through IndieGoGo to raise the funds we need to get the project finished. We’re a little past half way through the campaign, and we still need more than half of our determined budget.”

“We love to hear people tell us that they enjoy a rock song they never really liked before until they heard our version, or how they get through traffic or a long drive with Nutty blasting on their car stereo,” he adds. “But the two compliments that validate us most are that our arrangements are mind-blowingly clever and that we are engaging from start to finish. This is what keeps us going.”

How do you choose the songs you cover?

It begins with instinct and inspiration. It could be a title mashup, like That Old Black Magic Woman, or a rock riff that gels well with a jazz riff or hearing a Latin groove on some straight ⁴⁄₄ pop rhythm and taking it from there. Some of our songs pay homage to a jazz innovator, using several quotes from the artist’s jazz repertoire, cats like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk (who, by the way, is our droll reference for a Monkees tune).

And this has expanded to a rock band tribute, where we use several quotes from the rock band, like our new Doors tune. Sometimes our songs come together effortlessly, and other times, it’s a real challenge. And that other oddball thing we like to do is we change the title of each song to reflect the rock and jazz “blends” we create, i.e. Pleasant Valley Monkday, Magic Trane Ride, Purple Panther and the Santana tune I previously mentioned.

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Tell us more about the Indiegogo campaign.

We’ve got some nice band swag as pledge perks, and I’d like to add a vinyl run of this record if there’s enough interest. A special perk we’re offering is to create a one-time arrangement of any backer’s personal favourite song and record it just for them, something that is most relevant to Nutty’s métier. Another is to play somebody’s event in the local area. We’d do it anywhere if travel wasn’t a consideration.

With a little word of mouth, we hope to attract more awareness from both the pop/rock and jazz worlds. Support us in what we do, which is to make jazz FUN using classic rock as its mate.

What’s the band’s plans for the rest of 2018?

More songs in the works. More club gigs, parties and festivals. Los Angeles limits us and our potential. It’s time for us to expand our horizons and play the rest of the world. I’m originally from London, and I can’t help thinking we’d kill it over there in the UK, Europe and beyond. I’d like to find a rep who knows the route and then roll the dice.

Support Nutty’s campaign at Indiegogo.

Foo Fighters get their freak on in monster funk mash-up