Porcupine Tree and their main man Steve Wilson have always been both an acquired taste and a pleasure, depending on your point of view throughout their career. They're very much a modern interpretation of Pink Floyd-esque progressive rock. They have occupied a mellower, more rock end of that genre as opposed to a band like Opeth. They are not as mellow as say Anathema or as poppy as Marillion. Then again, it could be argued that PT operate in their own time and space. They are, as with Opeth, a truly unique band that makes it all seem easy and brilliant at the same time.

Octane Twisted is a live album from the band, spread over two discs, and boy does it reward the listener. Very much like a live Floyd album, it has the habit of distracting you from whatever you are doing and taking you on a journey. I found myself unable to actually do anything but listen intently to the CD. It is both mesmerizing as it is delightful. One attempt to make it all the way through resulted in my falling into a slumber. Then again it took me about about five attempts to get all the way through Dark Side of the Moon without falling asleep, so it is hardly unprecedented.

This release is 21 songs of progressive heavy rock brilliance. This will delight all of Wilson and company's many fans. It is a complete pleasure to listen to and I would highly recommend this album even to those who have never heard anything from the band. It is not exactly a hard thing to get into and there is no denying the obvious talent on display every minute of this release.

While many live albums released this time of year come across as rushed out cash-ins, this release rewards the listener in droves. Any progressive fan you know would be pleased to receive this as a gift and it is well worth it for any fan of the genre.

is there really a 2012 daniel romano release?

Well, the year is winding down and I figure one more purchase before I run out of time. What should it be and why? C'Mon, convince me. Would be happy to be persuaded to go for something I either haven't heard or considered.

Sand-swallowed tin can distortion on a rippling little ngoni in Timbuktu, Mali, plus dry clicks of percussion made by a guy's rings slapping against a calabash gourd. The ngoni guitar is also known by 20 or so other names depending on what part of Africa you're talking about, & musicians here apparently call it a Tehardent. Chris Kirkley of Sahel sounds recorded Amoumine while collecting music for his 'Saharan cellphones' cassette. Upon his return in 2011 this session had made it to the cassette kiosks where Kirkley was looking for more music, & where the files that were getting traded around on phones mostly came from. Tracklisting: Adernibah, Khomeissa, Fatimatou, Damara, Kalitay, Hali Diallo, Taliat Nouhirase, Nouvelle Annee, Mali.

A really wonderful document of of the Takamba style of music in Northern Mali and Niger – passionate, energetic and hypnotically performed by Ali Ag Amoumine! Ali's home is in Timbouctou, a couple hundred kilometers upriver from the Takamba region, and it was here that this excellent recording by Christopher Kirkley took place. It's essentially traditional regional guitar music, electrified and played in droning, wholly entrancing patterns, while the rhythm is played on the calabash. The songs here are described as being informed by Ali's travels and including his own compositions, and it does have inimately personal feel, while also pulling us in strictly on the basis of the soaring, hypnotic sounds. Includes "Adernibah", "Khomeissa", "Fatimatou", "Damara", "Kalitay", "Hali Diallo", "Taliat Nouhirase", "Nouvelle Annee" and "Mali". (Includes a bonus 7-inch with the non-album tracks "Amidinine" plus "Hali Diallo"

Don't remember if you've heard this or not, but this is duking it out with Barry Adamson (more on that one next) for my #1 spot.
Let's let Kelly tell you about it, herself:

The courtship of ambient music and traditional songform has been a long and tenuous one, almost to the point that their differences seem irreconcilable. Spanning decades with only a few points of obscure intersections, the occasions on which the two styles have met and crossed into the pop culture lexicon have often yielded a contrary, oil-and-water form. The abstract nature of the "ambient" genre and instant gratification of the "pop" song require deft hands for successful cohabitation, thus it's little wonder that there are so few practitioners of its delicate equilibrium.

Orcas – comprised of haze-pop auteur Benoît Pioulard and post-minimalist composer Rafael Anton Irisarri – is an imaginative return to that narrative. Theirs is a style deeply rooted in personal variations on songform and ambient craft, and as a duo they bridge the furthest outlying aspects of their previous solo work published on Kranky, Touch, Miasmah, Room40, and Ghostly International. Here song and abstraction become one entity, condensing the spaces between to generate an arching trajectory. This co-mingling of contrasts is even coded into their moniker; Pioulard and Irisarri have chosen an iconic symbol of the American Pacific Northwest, a methodical sea hunter that is also a totem of the open oceans' expanse. The so-called "wolf of the seas" that evokes a quiet, stately, yet powerful nature.

Appropriately, their music is a careful balance of chiaroscuro elements, where pop hook and spatial ambience converge. In its environs, lyricism flows as a time-distended dynamic, rising and falling, proceeding almost antithetically to pop's typical gratification ethos.

Orcas has taken an immersive, fluid vector for their passions; a resonant call like sonar from the depths.

todd that kids these days sounds terrible

The new live Porcupine Tree, Octane Twisted, what else?


Definitely something you hadn't considered!