Pretty excited about this:

DISTRICT 97 will now proudly unveil their third studio full-length recording this Summer, once again through Laser’s Edge. With just over a full hour of the band’s most dazzling instrumentation and vocal prowess yet, In Vaults was recorded at IV Lab Studios in Chicago, engineered by Chris Harden with additional engineering by Shane Hendrickson, mixed by Rich Mouser and Jeff Fox at The Mouse House Studio and mastered by Bob Katz at Digital Domain. The brilliant cover art by Björn Gooßes and the album’s track listing have been unveiled.

In Vaults will be released on June 23rd, 2015. Stand by for audio samples, videos and more from In Vaults to be revealed shortly.

In Vaults Track Listing:
1. Snow Country
2. Death By A Thousand Cuts
3. Handlebars
4. A Lottery
5. All’s Well That Ends Well
6. Takeover
7. On Paper
8. Learn From Danny
9. Blinding Vision

http://www.district97.net

I wish I could follow Rush on tour all summer long and see every single live show.

That’s because on every night they mix it up and play different songs!

Check out the set list chronicles over at Cygnus X-1 and you can see the interesting variations to date:

R40 Live 40th Anniversary Tour Set List Notes

Set One
[1] – Clockwork Angels – played on May 8th, 12th, and 14th [performed after The Anarchist on the 12th and 14th]
[2] – The Anarchist – played each night however opened the show on May 10th, 12th, 14th, and 16th
[3] – The Wreckers – played on May 10th and 16th
[4] – One Little Victory – played on May 8th, 12th, and 14th
[5] – How It Is – played on May 10th and 16th
[6] – Distant Early Warning – played on May 8th, 12th, and 14th
[7] – Between the Wheels – played on May 10th and 16th

Set Two
[8] – Red Barchetta – played on May 8th and 14th
[9] – The Camera Eye – played on May 10th and 16th
[10] – YYZ – played on May 12th
[11] – Natural Science – played on May 12th

If I were to compile a wish list for their Vancouver stop this summer, here’s what I would hope for based on the apparent options implied by the above data:

Between [1] and [3], it’s a tough call, but I would pick [3].

Between [4] and [5], I would choose [5] without hesitation. (I never thought [4] was much of a song.)

Between [6] and [7], don’t ask me to choose!!! But if forced to, I would pick [7] because it wasn’t a video single whereas [6] was. (This would be an instance of invoking the “pick the more rarely performed song” rule.)

Between [8] and [9] and [10], don’t ask me to choose!!! But, if forced to, perhaps I would pick [9], by the “pick the more rarely performed song” rule.

Yet if [10] is picked, does that mean [11] also comes with it? I am unclear on whether [11] replaces “Jacob’s Ladder” on those evenings when [10] is played. The set list chronicles do not note this switch, but is that an oversight?

The WSJ reports:

During the song, each band member intended to make an individual, grand exit across the catwalk. But the Edge took a bad step and fell off the edge of the catwalk on his way out (Bono did his best to keep the show moving, and kept on walking while the crew attended to his bandmate).

The set list:

“The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)”
“Out of Control”
“Vertigo”
“I Will Follow”
“Iris (Hold Me Close)”
“Cedarwood Road”
“Song for Someone”
“Sunday Bloody Sunday”
“Raised by Wolves”
“Until the End of the World”
“Invisible”
“Even Better Than the Real Thing”
“Mysterious Ways”
“Desire”
“The Sweetest Thing”
“Every Breaking Wave”
“Bullet the Blue Sky
“Pride (In the Name of Love)”
“The Troubles”
“With or Without You”

Encore:

“City of Blinding Lights”
“Beautiful Day”
“Where the Streets Have No Name”
“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

Guess what we catch a glimpse of at the end of the Rush R40 Set List?

The Heavy Metal Philosopher has superb, detailed coverage of the great new release, ExtermiNation, from Raven.

Here’s the bottom line:

Raven has always been a bit experimental — you might think of them of the Rush or the Yes of actual metal, so confidently anchored in the mainstays of the genre, so competent in their musicianship that they were free to incorporate whatever they chose into their songs.  On this album, it’s clear that there’s some musical influence and homage from a variety of sources — there’s passages where while listening you’ll be reminded of bands as fundamentally different as Megadeth, (pre-Hagar) Van Halen, Queensryche, Iron Maiden, Accept, and even Metal Church.  At the same time, there’s a definite contemporary power-metal sensibility running through many of the tracks — particularly in terms of the drumming. …

Simply put, this is a must-have album for anyone who is interested in contemporary heavy metal.  If we have to pick a genre to place it within, it would be Power Metal — but it’s not just that.  This is classic New Wave of British Heavy Metal, updated to the present day, by a band that has decades of achievements to their credit and is, quite simply, in their musical prime in the present.  Decades down the line, anyone who didn’t purchase this album is going to be kicking themselves for their oversight!

Go read the whole thing.

And then go rock out with Raven!

Whoa! Did you know Terry Brown mixed the new FM album, Transformation?

He brought together the original audio tracks that were recorded at each band member’s home studio.

This album is going to make the year’s Top Ten lists, mark my words.

Terry explains why in the liner notes:

Producer’s Notes…

I have always thought of FM as Canada’s quintessential Prog band – arriving on the scene in 1976 with the stunning ‘Black Noise’ album and the Prog-hit ‘Phasors on Stun’. But it was not until 1996 that I got to work with FM and produce ‘RetroActive’ live with the original three-piece. Moving forward a few years I knew that a new FM album was in the works, but when I got the call to mix ‘Transformation’ in December of 2014, I knew it was going to be Christmas with a difference. And what a difference!

The line-up is now a four-piece, but with Cameron’s distinct vocal styling, keyboard wizardry and rock-solid bass playing, the sound is classic FM. Paul DeLong has brought his astounding drum chops to the mix along with Aaron Solomon and Edward Bernard who are sharing the violin, viola, string sections and background vocals.

All the tunes on ‘Transformation’ are written with an energy that is contagious, they all have very strong melodies delivered with passion, use cleverly veiled time signatures and, save for some brief ethereal moments, are brought home with a driving edge. This is a must-have album for your collection – I hope you enjoy listening to FM Transformation as much as I did during the mix sessions!

Terry Brown [2015]

Don’t miss this spectacular album.

Truly, Rush’s loss is FM’s gain!

This concept song on a jazz album, discussed by Mark Judge, sounds intriguing:

Recently jazz saxophonist Mark Turner released The Lathe of Heaven, an album which takes its title from a novel of the same name by science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. The book describes the life of a man, George Orr, whose dreams actually become reality. He is encouraged by his psychiatrist, Dr. Haber, to start improving the world. Yet Haber’s utopian dreams end up making things worse. Le Guin has called The Lathe of Heaven “a Taoist novel” rather than a utopian or dystopian one. But many reviewers see in the book a Hayekian warning about liberal social engineers. It’s telling that no matter what good conditions are conjured by George Orr’s dreams, it’s never enough for Dr. Haber. He simply can’t be happy.

This is an intriguing confluence of artistic projects — an acclaimed jazz musician produces an album based on a noted science fiction novel with anti-utopian overtones. Yet because conservatives, unlike liberals, don’t have a decades-old infrastructure to publicize such a work — never mind a bright cultural mind to engage with it — The Lathe of Heaven will most likely go unnoticed by the conservative media. And the same conservatives who ignore it are the ones who next week will be bemoaning the fact that the left “owns the culture.”

If the left does own popular culture, it’s because they worked hard for it, employing the conservative values of perseverance and creativity. There is a chasm that separates the infrastructure that the left has erected over the last 50 years to celebrate and interpret popular culture and the tiny space that establishment conservatism allocates to popular culture. It is for this reason, more than any claim that American popular culture is irredeemably decadent and leftist, that the right seems lost in the world of movies, music, and bestsellers. Every month, if not every week, important works of popular culture go unnoticed by the right. These are often things that speak to people’s souls — films that wrestle with questions of honor, novels, like Le Guin’s about the meaning of sex and politics, music that explores the limits of self-sacrificial love.

A week ago, I reported on the impressive concert antics of our local legends, Bend Sinister.

Since then, there has elsewhere appeared a fine review of the same night, but accompanied by a plethora of extremely well-executed, high-quality photographs that perfectly capture the joyful musical intensity of that hard-rocking evening.

Check out the review but soak in the photos, preferably while you put on a copy of Bend Sinister and listen to it as loud as you can…

Spectral Mornings 2015: video

Premiere: View charity single promo as Steve teams up with Magenta, Big Big Train and Steven Wilson band members for Parkinson’s disease.

Magenta mastermind Rob Reed has launched a video to accompany Steve Hackett’s charity release of Spectral Mornings.

It was recorded to support Parkinson’s Society UK, featuring Reed and bandmate Christina Booth alongside Big Big Train’s David Longdon and Nick D’Virgilio plus Nick Beggs of Steven Wilson’s band.

Reed decided to cover Hackett’s 1979 solo album title track because he’d always admired the piece. He recently said: “I thought it would be amazing to re-record with the addition of lyrics.

“David wrote them and we did a demo, which sounded fantastic. I had the idea of a duet, so we asked Christina. Steve kindly agreed to play guitar on the track, which was wonderful.

“I really think we have been respectful to the original piece and hopefully brought something new to it as well.”

This new version of the song is absolutely superb!!!

Last night at the Hard Rock Vancouver there was a most excellent concert by the supremely talented Bend Sinister.

If you haven’t listened to this fine prog-indie band yet, be sure to grab one of their amazing albums, like Animals (2014) or Small Fame (2012).

The top-notch show featured a terrific selection of cuts from these jaw-dropping albums, plus some super-fun covers of Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” and Queen’s “We Are the Champions” (and the band even doodled around with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin” during sound check as they jokingly played along with the canned tunes piped in on the casino’s house music system).

As a special treat, they added an extra band member to play trumpet for the evening and to add her voice to the gratifyingly thick mix of vocal harmonies.

The band said they were currently working on new material to record. We can all look forward to their next release and the subsequent tour.

Recently they have been touring Canada, the US, and Europe in support of Animals. Check out the epic prog-length opening track from the Animals disc, “Best of You,” with which they closed last night’s show (before doing Queen as the encore).