Author Archives: Tim Hall

A lot of prog bands have been playing Christmas standards as encores over the past month. I’ve heard three very different versions of “I Believe In Father Christmas” and two different takes on “A Spaceman Came Travelling”. While I can think of one or two, not many bands have tried to write any completely new Christmas songs? Is is time for bands to try and write a new Prog Christmas classic?

Posted on December 22, 2012 by Tim Hall | 2 Comments

Instagram’s TOS vs. FIle-sharers

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Tim Hall

I’ve seen one too many retweets of this, or other with similar wording in the wake of the Instragram’s “All your photo are belong to us” announcement (From which they appear to have backtracked) It’s got the point where I’m willing to unfollow people who retweet it.

It’s difficult to know where to start when unpacking everything that’s wrong with that Tweet.

For a start, it makes the assumption that “the internet” is one vast undifferentiated mass, and the same people who took exception to Instragram’s TOS are those who illegally share music on an industrial scale. As one who probably spends a four-figure sum on music a year I have every right to take offence at that.

And while I don’t condone illegal filesharing, it’s true that I’m on record as being heavily critical of some of the draconian measures such as SOPA and ACTA proposed by the lobbyists for the big studios and record companies, which I see as a power-grab by big corporations which is unlikely to benefit many actual creators. I don’t see any contradiction or double standard between that and thinking Instagram’s TOS is a stupid dick move. Surely both are examples of abuse of power by big companies to screw over the little guys?

And finally, in terms of passive-aggressiveness, this one’s just off the scale. Exactly what do @RainsBand hope to achieve? If they’re going to complain about “Shitty Instagram photos”, do they really think it will make anyone more likely to listen to their shitty music

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Charlie Stross on dealing with reviews

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Tim Hall

A very, very good blog post by author Charlie Stross, one of my favourite writers, on how to deal with online reviews.

Reviews by regular readers, as opposed to professional critics, are like the publishers’ proverbial slushpile: a seething, shouting mass of logorrhea in which a few gems may be submerged, if you can bear to hold your nose for long enough to find them.

But for an author to make a habit of ignoring feedback is pretty much the first step on a slippery slope down into a mire of self-indulgent solipsistic craziness.

Further down, he makes a very good point. Not only are unrelentingly negative reviews not worth reading, but neither are the uncritically positive.

Similarly: if you write and publish novels on a regular basis, you will acquire a core of fans, and they will do their five star cheerleader thing in the Amazon fora and reviews every time you emit a new fart, whether fragrant or otherwise. You should strive to ignore these reviews. No, seriously. While it’s probably okay to indulge yourself and roll around in them if you’re feeling down, you should not take them seriously

While he’s naturally talking about book reviews, I think the same principles apply for criticism of any kind of creative endeavour, including music reviews of the sort that appear on this site. I would like to hope that the majority of the reviews I write fall into the “perceptive 60%” he talks about.

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The Guardian Needs More Dom Lawsons

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Tim Hall

The Guardian have been doing their annual rundown of the Albums of The Year (Their #1 was Frank Ocean‘s Channel Orange, if anyone reading this blog actually cares). As usual, it’s assembled from votes by individual writers. I have always thought that such aggregated lists complied by a committee are a complete waste of space. Regardless of the mechanism used to tally up votes, they end up favouring the lowest common denominator, which at the moment seems to be faux-edgy indie-rock and commercial R&B at the expense of the more diverse and interesting.

Far more interesting and illuminating is the individual critics top tens, which is a good guide to which of their critics are worth taking seriously, and which ones are not.

When comparing with my own end-of-year list, there are two in common with Dom Lawson’s list, Gojira‘s “L’Enfant Sauvage” and Marillion‘s “Sounds That Can’t Be Made“. None of my other albums of the year appear on the lists of a single Guardian writer. I recognise some of my choices are independent releases by artists without large PR budgets that might not be on the radars of those whose exposure to new music is limited to major-label freebies. But the absence of a record like Anathema‘s “Weather Systems” does make one question the depth and breadth of The Guardian’s writers’ musical horizons.

What’s very telling is just how much Dom Lawson’s albums of the year are completely out of line with the rest of The Guardian’s. A few days earlier a couple of Guardian writers were making rather arch remarks on Twitter about Guardian commenters complaining about the lack of Swans and Scott Walker on the official Guardian list. Then Dom Lawson goes and puts those two at the very top of his list.

This does give me the impression that Dom’s taste in music is more widely shared by the readership than some of their other writers seem to realise. What The Guardian really needs is far more writers like Dom Lawson, not specifically metal fans, but people with a deep knowledge and love of different non-mainstream genres. They can pension off some of the surplus superannuated NME types to make room for them.

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At the moment, Facebook’s only selling point is the network effect from the size of it’s user base. People put up with the appallingly bad user experience and increasingly mercenary behaviour because all their friends are there. I think it’s only a matter of time before a competitor reaches a critical mass of users and Facebook goes the way of AOL and MySpace. It will happen sooner and far more rapidly than many people think.

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Tim Hall | 4 Comments

2012 Album of the Year

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Tim Hall

And finally we get to the album of the year. I can’t really imagine this one’s going to be much of a surprise for most regular readers – I’ve written about this album a lot over the past year, and even interviewed the band for Trebuchet Magazine.

Panic Room – SKIN

In a year that’s seen the release of many great albums, there is still one that manages to stand out, and that’s the third album by Swansea’s Panic Room.

Their 2008 début was the sound of five supremely talented musicians searching for a new collective musical direction. The second was the sound of a band with a clear vision of what they wanted to be. With SKIN, they’ve consolidated that vision and taken it to another level. With the combination of Anne-Marie Helder’s award-winning vocals, and the amazing vituosity of the band, the result is a an ambitious cinematic work that defies simplistic genre pigeonholing. It’s a hugely varied record, with songs ranging from shimmering jazz and heartfelt stripped-down ballads to hard rock numbers that sound like Kate Bush fronting Led Zeppelin.

For years, Panic Room have been one of the British rock scene’s best-kept secrets. With “Skin”, their strongest and most assured album to date, they’ve delivered a record that deserves to be heard by a far wider audience.

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Sunset on Instagram

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Tim Hall

With the news that Instagram’s new terms-of-service appears to allow them to sell users’ photos to any third party without restrictions, I do have to wonder if there’s a viable business model for social networking other than free access in return for selling your personal data to advertisers.

Paid subscription websites have never really got off the ground. It seems people are quite happy to shell out significant amounts of money on laptops, tablets and mobile devices, yet the market is resistant to paying for online services, which can’t compete with “free” (even though you end up paying far more than you realise in other ways).

It will be interesting to see what happens to app.net, which is an ad-free, subscription-based social network. Will it break out beyond a small niche of technophiles, or will it only ever be used by small numbers of enthusiasts?

I can see a “freemium” model working; a basic “free” model supported by advertising, with a paid subscription option for power users that banishes the ads and adds both more features and gives users more control over their personal data. As far as I know, nobody does this.

We shall have to see what sort of backlash Instagram’s announcement generates. If they end up losing a significant proportion of their user base, maybe the next generation of social media startups will explore other models?

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2012 – A few more records of note

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Tim Hall

I decided to restrict my best-of-2012 list to full-length studio albums of new material with a 2012 retail release date. But there are a few great records that fall outside that definition, and would be difficult to place in any kind of ranking. But they’re all too good not to give a mention, so here they are.

The Heather Findlay Band – Songs From The Old Kitchen

A delightful album of acoustic reworkings of Heather’s songs from Mostly Autumn, Odin Dragonfly and more recent solo work, with the band featuring the now-departed Dave Kilminster and Steve Vantsis. The organic chilled-out arrangements are a very good match for the natural warmth of her voice, making this perhaps the best record she’s made since going solo.

Karnataka – New Light, Live in Concert

Live album (also an excellent DVD) capturing the band on their first tour with new vocalist Hayley Griffiths, fronting the short-lived six-piece lineup with multi-instrumentalist Colin Mold, whose violin playing enhanced the Celtic side of their music. Aside from Hayley’s imaginative re-interpretation of old favourites, this record is also a showcase for Enrico Pinna’s phenomenal guitar playing.

Crimson Sky - DawnCrimson Sky – Dawn

Excellent four-track EP from the new lineup of Crimson Sky with Jane Setter and Moray McDonald, with two brand new songs and two reworked older numbers. As with their previous work, it’s an intriguing blend of progressive rock and 80s-style new-wave, and benefits from a far more polished production than earlier recordings.

Twelfth Night Live and Let Live - Album CoverTwelfth Night – Live and Let Live

The classic and long out-of-print single LP-length album from the seminal 80s neo-proggers, reissued and expanded into a two-hour double-CD capturing the entire two-hour show, which must have been a painstaking labour-of-love to put together.

Rob Cottingham – Captain Blue

One of those records where the pre-orders shipped in December, although the retail release isn’t until the new year There will be a full review of this forthcoming, but let’s just say this is a good one. Will it make the 2013 end-of-year list? Time will tell on that…

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2012 Albums of the Year – Part Three

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Tim Hall

Counting down from Five to Two, we get to the year’s Superb releases. In many previous years any of these might have been a strong candidate for my album of the year. Indeed, the previous album by one of these bands was my album of that year, even though the album listed below is the stronger album. That’s how good a year it’s been. Again, the order is simply alphabetical; these albums are so good it’s next to impossible to rank them into any kind of order.

Big Big Train – English Electric Part One

With music reminiscent of “Wind and Wuthering” era Genesis with hints of Barclay James Harvest and Gentle Giant and lyrics about the industrial revolution, this is a quintessentially English record steeped in the nation’s history and landscapes. With varied instrumentation including strings and brass, it transcends obvious influences and evokes the spirit of 70s pastoral progressive rock far more strongly than any 80s style neo-prog band can hope to.

Mostly Autumn – The Ghost Moon Orchestra

Olivia Sparnenn finds her voice on her second studio album since taking over as the band’s lead vocalist, and makes her mark with some soaring leads that make it clear just why she was shortlisted for the gig with Nightwish. With their signature guitar-driven celtic-tinged classic rock on one side, and a more modern symphonic metal feel on the other, the result is a strong record with one foot in the past and one in the future. It delivers a powerful riposte to those who wrote the band off a couple of years ago.

Riversea – Out Of The Ancient World

Years in the making, the collaboration between singer-songwriter Marc Atkinson and keyboard player Brendan Eyre along with an all-star cast of guest musicians resulted in one of the progressive rock surprises of the year. Marc Atkinson’s emotive vocals recall Marillion’s Steve Hogarth and the keyboard-led arrangements range from simple piano accompaniments to moments of heavy symphonic rock. An album that proved to be well worth the wait.

Stolen Earth – A Far Cry From Home

The band that grew out of the short-lived final incarnation of Breathing Space get off to a very strong start with their début album. The combination of Heidi Widdop’s soulful vocals and Adam Dawson’s effects-laden guitar gives a rich sound based around big wall-of-sound rock ballads. There’s a hint of early Mostly Autumn in the Floydian atmospherics, especially with Heidi’s low whistle, but this is a band with their own sound and their own identity. It will be very interesting to see how they progress from here.

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2012 Albums of the Year – Part Two

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Tim Hall

Continuing the end-of-year list, these six are the year’s Great releases. Again, though they represent nos 11 down to 6, I haven’t attempted to rank them in order, and have just listed them alphabetically. It says something about the quality of this year’s releases in that any of these would have been top-3 contenders in many other years.

Anathema – Weather Systems

With their intense and atmospheric sound, it’s hard to imagine that Anathema started out as a death-metal band. It has a lot in common with 2010′s “We’re Here Because We’re Here”, and like that it’s best experienced as a single piece of music that builds in emotionally intensity as the album proceeds. Anathema are precisely the sort of band who deserve wider mainstream recognition.

Gojira – L’Enfant Sauvage

The strongest modern-style metal release I’ve heard all year. This release by the French technical metallers is the sort of thing that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go. It’s a monstrously heavy and unrelenting piledriver of a record that sounds like something out of the twenty-first century rather than anything out of the 1970s or 1980s.

Marillion – Sounds That Can’t Be Made

Thirty years into their career, at a stage where most bands have long since burned out and turned into their own tribute acts, Marillion prove that they’ve still got something to say in their own inimitable style. It’s an album of lengthy epics, with three songs extending past the 10-minute mark, and yet again Steve Rothery’s fantastic less-is-more guitar playing demonstrates why he’s one of the best guitarists in the business.

Morpheus Rising – Let The Sleeper Awake

Classy old-school twin-guitar hard rock with echoes of NWOBHM bands like Iron Maiden and Diamond Head without ever sounding like a derivative pastiche. It contains some very strong songwriting combined with great guitar harmonies and tight arrangements. It’s all unashamedly retro, but none the worse for it. If they’d been around in 1981, they’d have been huge.

Muse 2nd LawMuse – The 2nd Law

This is the one big mainstream stadium-rock act in this list. With their mix of rock, metal, glam, funk, opera and God knows what else, they put it all in a blender resulting in prog-rock with a pop sensibility. It’s all completely and gloriously over the top, of course, and they steal shamelessly from many other bands and somehow manage to get away with it in a way that Oasis didn’t. But that’s precisely what’s great about Muse.

Storm Corrosion – s/t

One of the most “out there” releases of 2012, the collaboration between Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson and Opeth’s Mikael Ã…kerfeldt sees them take off into uncharted territory, eschewing the expected prog-metal in favour of dark and sinister semi-acoustic soundscapes. A clearly experimental record, the result sounds like a cross between “Simon and Garfunkle on magic mushrooms” and the soundtrack of a 1970s horror film shot in grainy back-and-white.

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