Die Geister Beschwören - Ghosts, This Is Survival  Oryan Peterson-Jones has released a new album featuring himself on various guitars, modified sitar and field recordings with Joey Binhammer guitar, pedal steel, synth, autoharp, glockenspiel, drums and bass, Andrew Pritchard – bass, slide guitar and chimes and Evar Restad – musical saw with guests Helena Espvall - cello, Kate Kilbourne – Violin, Amie Beckwith – vocals, Alex Nozop – turntablist, The Unipiper – bagpipes, T J Thompson – vibraphone, Sean Barry – tenor and baritone sax, SSSam Smith – cajon, kalimba, cabasa, shekere, shakers and marimba. Up in Northern California amongst the giant redwoods of Humboldt County Oryan has emerged with a psych- folk classic. It’s loose and varied. According to Oryan “Australian label Ramble Records have picked it up for a vinyl release later this year”. The disc is split into two sides anyway. It opens with a slippery Cultivation Of Reflective & Meditational Skills, lots of spacey sounds and vocals, (not unlike Gong) through Cerro De La Muere to a delicate Defenders Of Ghost – Seeing & Diablerie. Side two starts with Grains Of Selim and ends with The Seal’s Wife. It may well be the first record I have which features both a turntablist and a sitar player. www.daturablues.com 

My Beloved - Tarnish is a new album released to celebrate the bands 25^th anniversary, the Danish prog goth rock/ post rock deacons of noir have recorded a very good album, plenty of rockers like Dead End but also balanced out with some slower dreamy songs like Frontier. Restored is a great song, soft and proggy at the start but turning more muscular. The title track Tarnish is rich and melodic. Piano features prominently on The Dance, Solitaire up next is more of a drifter and well placed. The album ends with the expansive Superior Mirage. www.mybeloved.bandcamp.com

Ian Button head honcho at Gard Du Nord records has released a concept album as Toni Tubna With The Stockholm Tuba Sect - When The Magic Went Wrong (memories of an unfortunate magician). It’s accompanied by a small 50 page book with illustrations by Fay Sta- Presto. It’s the story of an inept magician, the songs /stories involving showbiz, crime the occult and more. Ian is joined by pals Andy Lewis and Fay Hallam who appear here as The Tony Tubna Trio. It’s all very much good fun from the deception of The £200 Wallet to album closer and title track When The Magic Went Wrong. The New Assistant is gently humorous and The Dummy unsettling, we even have an intermission before side two begins with the strange tale of Talismano which is followed by the Lewis Carroll inspired The Triennial. I love Clash Of Minds inside the mind of one Barrington Small. The Painting is the starting point for this project, inspired by a mysterious painting sent in to Ian years ago by the art historian Scott Thomas Buckle who proposed writing songs to accompany the book that Ian had written the project and supplied many of the words for the songs. www.garddunordrecords.co.uk 

Steve Dawson & The Telescope 3 - Phantom Threshold. Following on from Steve’s recent rootsy album Gone, Long Gone comes an atmospheric, instrumental album featuring Steve mainly playing pedal steel guitar on a suite of songs. The core band is Steve along with Jeremy Holmes holding down the bass duties, Chris Gestrin on all manner of keyboards including mellotron along with noted drummer Jay Bellerose. It sounds incredibly warm due to the vintage tube amps. It’s very much the kind of thing that Daniel Lanois has been aiming at away at over the last twenty years or so.  It’s one of the best things I’ve heard this year and it’s rarely been off the deck since receiving it, admittedly I’m a bit of a sucker for ambient steel playing and Steve is one of the best. It certainly has a filmic quality to it, highly recommended for all you cosmic cowboy’s out there, just one listen to the opening song Cosy Corner and I was hooked. It gets the balance of moods just right, drifty languorous tunes for a psychedelic summer’s afternoon. www.blackhenmusic.com or www.stevedawson.ca

David Nigel Lloyd - Of Service In Rosemary Lane. It’s very much one man and his guitar, in thrall to Bert Jansch.  When David was 18 he wanted to write songs like Robin Williamson and play guitar like Bert Jansch but moved to the states aged 17 and recorded a sort of The Who meets the Incredible String Band album, which remained unfinished and unreleased. One of David’s favourite albums is Rosemary Lane by Bert Jansch and one day he wanted to record a similar album in feel and song choice, he kept practising and sure enough that day came when he was the recipient of one of Bert’s Yamaha acoustic guitars whom The Bert Jansch foundation awarded to suitable players like Tommy Emmanuel, Rick Chelew and Alex De Grassi  for six months at a time, with that kind of fate David set about recording his much promised album. He presents 10 songs, some of which date back four decades. He has also managed to release that early album WatThe? L: High Up In The Death Zone after cleaning up the recordings and adding new parts as and when required. It’s available from Blue Chair Productions. davidnigellloyd.bandcamp.com      

Steve Wallis - Nothing Stays The Same Way For Long.  Debut album by Australian singer- songwriter Steve. After spending his formative years playing around his hometown of Byron Bay, duly relocated to Paris, France in 2014, eventually travelling over here to England, recording this album in Devon after meeting album producer Joe Boon. Some of the recording was realised in a studio but also in three different churches. It is very much in the folk singer-songwriter tradition as inhabited by the likes of John Prine and Townes Van Zandt. Mainly acoustic in nature and mainly first takes, it gives the performances a freshness that you get from a debut album of much played  yet unrecorded songs,  to that effect the albums closing song and its title track was recorded live in a small church in Georgeham. The songs are fleshed out further by Dan Walker’s reed organ, Morganeve Swain’s Violin, Bruce king’s sax and Jon Graboff’s pedal steel guitar. www.stevewallismusic.com. It’s a pretty decent debut album which I’m sure I will be returning to over the ensuing years.

The Rotary Fifth - The Rotary Fifth. This is the Liverpool band’s debut album. The band consists of Michelle Bee who wrote and sang the songs along with Mark Kyriacou keyboards, drums and backing vocals, Eamon Ellams drums, Tom Sumnall bass and baritone guitar and Jonathon Copley acoustic and electric guitars and backing vocals. It starts off with a song called Unknown Unknowns which lays out their stall of atmospheric dream pop nicely. Restlessness is a yearning song of the heart, a finely wrought song with a ton of electronics resulting in a very modern sound. The People’s temple is a jazzy soft psych song of note. Side two kicks off with The Art of Keeping Water Still, and at over six minutes is almost the longest song on the album. A sort of Boards of Canada meets the Soundcarriers description is probably giving it way too much credit, but that’s the kind of Ball Park they are operating in. I particularly like Sacred Geometry, it sort of sums up their sound in a song, skittering drum pattern, shimmering guitars and soft sheen vocals. The band almost veers into Free Design territory at points, most evident on the Reflections Reveal, which running to over seven and a half minutes is  the longest song on the record. It’s a fine debut album; they previously put out an EP called Automata which was released  early in  2020. therotaryfifth.bandcamp.com

Shawn Phillips - Live In The Seventies on Think Like a Key records Here we have a 3 cd set of live performances from the difficult to categorise singer songwriter. The concerts featured are Dallas in 1973, Rochester in 1972, Texas in 1973, Inglewood in 1974, Chicago in 1977 and lastly back to Houston, Texas in 1978. A very clever distillation of these gigs means that the songs flow, and in the main only feature once. With 51 tracks and a well compiled 24 page booklet, it’s quite a lot to get through. I have a few of his albums and all are worth listening to, he is also an excellent guitar player ably demonstrated on this set.

Also out on the same label is another 3 cd set of live recordings by Flash - In The USA dating from 1972-3. It’s an entertaining listen, the band featured ex Yes guitarist Peter Banks in their ranks. Beginning with Black And White and ending with Manhattan Morning, we also get four versions of Children Of The Universe and Small Beginnings, it’s interesting to hear the slightly different versions but I feel a bit more variation would have helped here. www.thinklikeakey.com

We are indeed blessed to have a few words for this set of rumbles by the esteemed Terrascope legend that is Simon Lewis. Over to you, Sir Simon!

 It has been a long time since I wrote any Rumbles so let's kick straight in at the deep end with two recent releases from Blue Tapes (Blue Tapes ), beginning with The All Golden, the current alias of Pete Gofton (who happens to be the brother of Lauren Laverne), the album a collection of recently finished demos from 1992-2021, the ambience kinda shoegazy as “Mount Florida” crashes waves of distorted guitar onto reverbed rocks, the sound receding and returning for 2 minutes of sonic fun, get the volume up for this one. Changing pace, “Suzie Sees a Butterfly” flutters and ripples out the speaker in dreamy harmony. Elsewhere, “Protection Spells” rumbles and stomps around, whilst the distorted fuzz of  “Thanks” adds some melancholy vocals to the album for the first time, shades of Galaxie 500 to be found. Lo-fi, quite short, but rather lovely, this might just tickle your fancy. Also on Blue Tapes, Gultskra Artikler presents a slightly more difficult listening experience with the 24 minutes sound collage “System Audio 20151019 1532”. Here looped vocal samples, noises, synths and god knows what else writhe and tumble over each other creating Musique Concrete for alien lifeforms, the ever evolving sounds easily holding the interest, sequences taking over from voices, drones  from sequences, electronic bleeps liberally sprinkled everywhere whilst percussion and piano add emotional textures to the composition. Also on the tape is “System Audio 20151019 1558”  a four minute foray into paranoia complete with a cheap seventies electronic movie score and more perfectly chosen vocal samples, fabulous stuff.

 Sounding like Todd Rundgren jamming with Super Furry Animals, the animated and melodic music of Spygenius hits the spot perfectly on “Jobbernowl” an 11 track collection that ambles wonderfully around fields of Psych-Pop, Canterbury sounds and jangly West Coast. One early highlight for me is “2020 Revision” , the beautiful melody tempered when you realise the song tackles the pandemic in a seemingly personal way, that sense of melancholy also found on “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air”, a song that wraps itself around you for a welcoming hug, although it is unclear if you are giving or receiving said hug. To cheer us all up a bit, “The Marvellous Mendacious Time Machine” is a jaunty organ led garage tune, although the lyrics seem to become darker the more you listen, a trick the album pulls off song after song adding much to its appeal. A fine collection of tunes that bear repeated listening, fans of The Lilac Time will find much to enjoy maybe because of the vocal delivery, maybe that is just me. ( Big Stir Records  )

 Moving on now to a trio of acoustic based album with “Cross the Rolling Water” being a collaboration between fiddle player Hannah Read  and Banjo player Michael Starkey, both also contributing guitar and vocals to the album. Opening with the instrumental 2Apple Blossom” it is clear here are two excellent musicians at work, with the fiddle dancing over some precise guitar work. On the following “Blue River” the melodies intertwine wonderfully, the tune rolling on beautifully in timeless fashion. On “shenandoah” Hannah's crystalline vocals stop you in your tracks with their wistful beauty, whilst the musical interplay on “Missouri Wagoner” will easily get you jigging in the kitchen, or any other room you are in at the time. Over thirteen fine tracks this album delivers , emotion, skill and good vibes in equal measure, fans of traditional instruments and tunes should not hesitate to dive in. Released on Hudson Records as CD/DL/LP. (Hudson Records ) 

Hailing from Canada but sounding like a Bluegrass heavy Americana band, The Slocan Ramblers have energy a-plenty as they rip through 11 original tunes and one Tom Petty cover. Beginning with the sweet harmony of, “I Don't Know” you are drawn right in especially when the band launch into the rip-roaring bluegrass of “You Said Goodbye” followed by the sad and beautiful “Won't You Come Back Home”, which reminds me of The Steep Valley Rangers and definitely tugs the heart strings. 

 Moving on “A Mind With a Heart Of It's Own” is a spirited and entertaining Petty cover whilst “The River Roaming Song” showcases the quality of the playing and is just a lovely tune. Finally, “Bring Me Down Low” is a loose and lively tune with a jammed ending that rocks in a bluegrass kinda way. Highly entertaining. (The Slocan Ramblers ).

 Treading a very similar path, The Lucky Ones also impress on their “Slow Dance, Square Dance, Barn Dance” a rousing collection of tunes the tell tales of the Yukon area they hail from, the lyrics having plenty of emotional content as the stories are spun. Highlights include the melancholy “Keno City Love Song” , the Jason Isbell sounding”Jake”, (probably the aching violin), and the opener “Kate and Dan” a song about two local criminals that end up being hung. Billed as a loose concept album, there is indeed a delightful narrative flow to the collection all ending with “My Gal Is Good To Me” a surprisingly cheerful tale with rambling honky tonk piano and a warm glow. Quality roots music for those, like me, that are fond of that kind of thing. ( The Lucky Ones  ). 

 Sticking with a country theme, Italian band The Blues Against Youth, ply Blues with  definite country tinge on “As The Tide Gets High And Low” , a fine collection of stomping tunes that have both warmth and charm, as well as reminding of all those sixties West-Coast bands that dabbled with country rhythms as the sixties became the seventies. An early highlight is the sprightly, “Chicago” which has a great groove running through it, whilst “Going To East Texas” reminds me of Billy Childish with its energetic and primitive stomp, including some fine slide work. Leaving on a high the final track “Oblivion” is a slower more atmospheric tune with a slightly lysergic feel as it drifts around the room, good stuff and now I have this sudden urge for some Moonshine. (escapefromtoday ) 

Finally from me, I would like to draw your attention to Japanese label Black Editions who started as a label dedicated to re-releasing music from legendary label P.S.F Records and have now begun releasing new music in the same vein. Artists on their catalogue include Masayuki Takayanagi, Keiji Haino, White Heaven, Acid Mother Temple as well as the Tokyo Flashback series and a host of others. Specialising in vinyl (although sadly sending promos as downloads) the releases look to have been created with love and care, the music within experimental, sometimes noisy, sometimes beautiful, intense and generally wonderful. Definitely worth taking a look at their website. (Black Editions  )... Thanks Simon. 

Up next we have Never Twice The Same Colour by Sparky’s Magic Piano, a duo from Hanwell, Pob and Marion Bartlett. They released their first album in 2007; it was kind of an electro pop album. As a fan of Piano Magic I often encountered the name Sparky’s Magic Piano when trying to buy Piano Magic’s music, as a cheesy record from the late 50’s exists with that name. Anyway, this is charming and well worth wrapping your ears around. They make a sort of jangly, ethereal, folky, dream pop sound. The vocals are by Marion, often double tracked and layered, Pob plays some sparkling guitar throughout. The songs are all around the three minute mark, they add occasional trumpet and cello, lots of synth and catchy. Investigate further here www.sparky’smagicpiano.co.uk

We’ve liked what we’ve heard by Mood Taeg so far and they continue to delight with their latest offering Anaphora Versions. Modern Kraut rock, the band consist of three members, tdk, K’ko and Lowell Freeman who is based in Shanghai but they are centred in Düsseldorf, home of Neu and Kraftwerk, it builds in all the right places, reoccurring dialogue is peppered throughout and it all shimmers and moves along at a great pace. Bleeps, wows, flutters are all present and correct; it’s also very modern, not retro in anyway. The album Anaphora was released in 2021 and now gets a makeover with versions of the songs presented on that album. It has a sort of concept feel  of man versus machine. www.happyrobots.co.uk. 

Nick Frater - Aerodrome Motel. Nick is on a bit of a roll right now and this new one could well be his best so far. The opening track The Pleasure Is Mine sounds a lot like Up The Junction by our very own Squeeze, I say our own because Nick is from over there in the USA, where he has been busy perfecting the perfect pop song, catchy breezy pop confections. Nick virtually writes, performs and produces the entire thing and obviously knows his way around the studio. A few guests appear on pedal steel, guitars, horns, percussion, drums and backing vocals. It sounds great and the songs are really well played with very tight arrangements which make it a joy to listen to and I shall be checking in again. www.nickfrater.bandcamp.com

Rome 56 - Days Of Carefree Living. Arthur Lamonica, for it is he is a New York city based singer songwriter who sounds not unlike a less vitriolic Elvis Costello in places. He’s been around since the seventies with his band The Shirts having a top 10 hit with CBGB favourite Tell Me Your Plans. From the jangly On Portebello Road through to the bluesy As I Stroll Through The Night it is a really nice and varied album, with a sort of unhurried feel to it, it’s home-made and all the better for it. The laconic Girl Of Outer Space is a favourite and A Happy Man is also of note. rome56.bandcamp.com 

It wouldn’t be a rumbles without a a few releases from the ever dependable Sound In Silence record label who quietly go about their business releasing lovely hand-made CD’s of note. I have four recent releases and the first one I’d like to inform you about is Logout with Instrumentals. Logout is a multi instrumentalist hailing from Athens in Greece and releasing albums on labels like Inner Ear and Tiny Room and this is his fifth release as Logout. He plays classical guitar and is supported by violinist Kalliopi Mitropoulou. The vocals here are wordless and he also adds sparse percussion. Test Card -  Patterns. Test card is the solo project of Lee Nicholson a Canadian musician who was once a member of Brighton’s Domestic4. Releasing albums and singles on Fierce Panda and Kooky amongst others. It is a very good album in the same vein as the Duritti Column or Leed’s favourites Hood with a splash of Labradford and Epic 45. I have a couple of the others but this one for me is his best yet. Lastly on the label is Nowherians with That Is Not Accepted Lullaby. Nowherians is the brainchild of Crawford Blair late of 90’s indie band Rothko. This album has a strange genesis in that after moving to a remote part of Norfolk in 2018 Crawford got involved in various musical gatherings exploring composer William Byrd and laying down some recordings, blending cello, violin and viola, these were subsequently informed by Mount St Helen’s current eruption. The album has a strange cathartic mood; things develop quite slowly in a crepuscular way, inescapably heading towards a conclusion. www.soundinsilencerecords.bandcamp.com

Rogers & Butler - Brighter Day  This is the second album by the two piece band Edward Rogers and Steve Butler who combine powerful melodies with reflective lyricism. It opens with the title track Brighter Day sung by Rogers a strident paean to hope and this is followed by Where Does The World Hide sung by Butler, their voices are quite different which is why I noted it and I hope I got them in the right order. There are shades of Mott The Hoople and the Kinks and they have recently opened for The Zombies, which will give you an indication of style presented. Marmalade Eyes is a favourite with its trippy middle section. There’s a real Englishness to on A Perfect Market Day, imagine Anthony Newly having a chat and a cup of tea in Carnaby street in the mid sixties. The faded charm of Cabaret’s tale of woe, informed by accordion and Spanish guitar is well placed. A jangly Sun Won’t Shine and a mandolin inflected Oh Romeo follow, before things are wrapped up with an upbeat A Brand New Tomorrow. This is a very enjoyable and well played album. Available at www.rogersbutler.bandcamp.com

Rod Picott - Paper Hearts And Broken Arrows Utilising John Prine and Lucinda Williams producer Neilson Hubbard for his new album, he is crazy prolific with at least four albums in the last three years. Here he shapes some affecting and moving story songs. On one of the songs Neilson says “Rod, this sounds like an Eagles song where the singer can’t really sing”  So Rod then played it slow quiet and ragged, “That’ll work” says Neilson. This is his fourteenth album; it is classic folky singer songwriter stuff, not too dissimilar to Tom Russell or Greg Brown, full of story songs like Frankie Lee, Valentine’s Day and Washington County which get under your skin with their visceral descriptive lyrics. Rod has also written and published a couple of poetry collections which is why he is such a good songwriter, he delivers the songs which are often co written with fellow singer songwriter Slaid Cleaves, in a relaxed and lived in manner, ragged but right, nice one Rod. Available at www.rodpicott.com

More missives from the small, but perfectly formed imprint Folk Archive, I have three new releases to tell you about. The first is David CW Briggs with No Blues/ I Bid You Welcome No More. It is a lengthy record encompassing the complete 2014 recordings of No Blues and I Bid You Welcome No More both of which were previously only available as downloads. Float down a hazy river to the Promised Land with opener The Golden Stairlift, a fuzzy morphine jive, taking in such delights along the way as Cats Eyes Blues and soft focus, gossamer tunes like The Long Grass. The Changeling meanders along listlessly, in no hurry to get anywhere, a real backwater tune. Wooden Beads is primitive as is the warped blues shuffle of Hobby Horse, real digital lo-fi. David is on fine form on the title track, a cross between Paul Roland and Bevis Frond via Syd Barrett and Robyn Hitchcock. There’s plenty more on offer too. A new album from Gavin John Baker - Last Light it’s a confessional singer songwriter kind of record if that songwriter were signed to Sarah records for example. Of exploring nature in the impressive Walk In the Woods which is followed by the cynical Haunted House, of things that go bump in the night, accompanied by some nice, fluid electric guitar lines and skittering drums. I like the slow, languid, sky high lead guitar patterns on potential slacker anthem Red Mornings. The Ship Was Alive a grungy sea shanty is well placed too. The album ends with the atmospheric, gloomy The Night The Town Burned Down which has a great wig out ending. The last of these new releases is by Marc Roberts who also records under the Zeuk moniker. Ghosts Of Clone is his new album. Cat and Crow is full of portent, a female narration over a bed of strange sounds, electronic in nature. We then get some eerie cello noir in Its Fine Its All Part Of It with its oblique instruction. Howl and Echo revels in the cut up technique. Cascade is rather dense and strange. Come Like Moons is also very strange, full of juxtapositions. The record ends with A Ghost Lost In Light, it adds some double bass to the proceedings. All from www.davidcwbriggs.bandcamp.com 

Mark & The Clouds - Live At The Betsy Trotwood  I enjoyed Mark’s last album and it never left the car for quite a while so I was pleased to see that he has just released a new live album featuring many songs from that album. Mark sings and plays guitar and harmonica and he is joined by John O’Sullivan bass and backing vocals and Dan Hurst on drums. The songs are less refined and more muscular when presented here. Kicking off with a rousing version of You And Me In Space. The proggy melodies in Free Me Now are a welcome change of pace after the vitriol of You Wanna Put Me Down, it also includes a couple of killer guitar solos. A rocking version of No One Makes A Sound is followed by a terrific The Same Old Dream. The title track from the last album Waves makes a welcome appearance, it’s a dreamy, yearning song which they follow with In The Big Crowd. The album ends with the old faces classic All Or Nothing, a good night was had by all. www.markandtheclouds.bandcamp.com

The fourth album by Da Captain Trips - Maths Of The Element  is a bit of an instrumental gem, it takes its theme from nature  and of the elements with a suite of songs with titles such as water, deserts, mountains, clouds and oceans. The band’s members change frequently and this time it is Riccardo Cavicchia handling the guitars, Paolo Negri: keyboards, Frederico Chippa: bass and Tommaso Villa: drums. Between the songs field recordings are added, linking them to the elements. It’s a pretty good record with plenty of fine moments such as expansive opener Rivers Water Earth And Stream. The dry dusty Deserts : Earth and Air Carve. I also like the proggy moves of Clouds: Water And Fire Shape and Oceans: Air And Water Sculpt.  There is plenty more to like too, in the slow build of Skies: Fire And Water. The CD version includes a bonus track entitled Crystal. www.dacaptaintrips.bandcamp.com.

Miraculous Mule  - Old Bones New Fire. This is the band’s first album since 2017’s Two Tonne Testimony. The band consists of Micheal Sheehy, Alex Petty, Patrick McCarthy and Ian Burns. The record takes in the washed in the blood gospel of I’ve Been Changed through to the Bo Diddley moves of We Get What We Deserve. Taking in along the way some rootsy, stonesy rock with Fire In My Blood, a brilliant cover of both O Death and John The Revelator appear as does a haunting cover of Butcher Boy. The album ends with Sinnerman, which provides a fine conclusion to a most enjoyable album, available from www.michaeljsheehy.bandcamp.com

And lastly a new album from Mark Mulholland - Revolutions Go In Circles.  Singer songwriter Mark shows his influences right away on opening track Moving On a Dylanesque number which also name checks the bard. The following track Filling Up The Silence appeals immensely, a lovely frailing lilting banjo picking out the melody. He has travelled quite extensively and his love of African music seeps through with River Walk featuring Tony Allen. Live Anywhere has a Celtic flavour and features a bouzouki. Other highlights are a bluesy Head Against The Wall, Walk Awhile which has Toumani Diabati playing the kora, a beautiful Silence Falling Slow and a lilting syncopated On My Way. The album ends with another highlight 900 Miles featuring kamelengoni, calabash and karanya. This is an unusual singer songwriter album, due in part to its African elements being fairly prominent. www.markmulholland.bandcamp.com

Well that’s about it for now, happy trails and I hope to see some of you further down the line.

Terrascopic Rumbles for Autumn 2022 was brought to you by Andrew Young and Simon Lewis.

 Artwork, layout & direction by Phil McMullen - © Terrascope Online, 2022