Monthly Archive: July 2018

A new Mark Wingfield album is always one to have both great anticipation and expectations for. ‘Tales from the Dreaming City’ is so exceptional it cannot be fully appreciated or taken in with one listen. A heavy weight trio, plus guest Dominque Vantomine on keyboards (tracks 3,5,9,10), Mark Wingfield (guitar, soundscapes), Yaron Stavi (fretless bass), and Asaf Sirkis (drums) create a wonderful world of starlit jazz fusion that Allan Holdsworth would have been absolutely proud of.

A simply beautiful second release from Texan progressive rock/ambient/fusion and soundscape artists Spoke of Shadows. More of what their first release had, but a bit more expanded, the band is primarily two members (Mark Cook, famous for his work with Herd of Instinct, Hands, and Liquid Sound Company, on Warr guitar, fretless bass, guitars, keyboards, & programming, and Bill Bachman from Neal Morse, who is a first class drum author & educator, on drums/percussion). This release includes Bob Fisher / flute (2,3,8), Michael Harris (Vitalij Kuprij) / guitar solo (4), Mike McGary / synth (6), and Shannon Wickline / piano (6). A very nice collection of musicians.

From the promo sheet “Soul Redemption is a harmonious blend of modern adult rock and traditional world music” one might be a bit misled. The harmonious modern adult rock is exact but the traditional world music is limited to latin and Italian pop and folk. The other surprise for some might be the fact of this not having a single stitch of progressive rock style, seeing that Peter Gabriel’s old rhythm section (Jerry Marotta – drums/percussion and Tony Levin – bass) are on it throughout. Flav Martin wrote all the songs and Jerry produced the album. Also backing up the duo are their long time friends Peter Primamore (piano), Thor Jensen (guitar), Marc Shulman (guitar), and Gary Schreiner (harmonica/accordion).

A very high level live recording on a limited edition CD (200 only for sale at bandcamp MoonJune store), by four piece jazz fusion outfit led by Serbian born composer and guitarist Dusan Jevtovic. From the early minutes there is a crisp clear no hurried sound, which allows time to be used with great advantage.