“We’re all at church, right?” Hendrix says at the start of this concert, which might explain the possessed nature of an audience that needs police restraint to stop them from rushing the stage. Hendrix himself, the high priest of psych-rock, is, however, in a largely laidback mood, the overall vibe being that he can deliver his Foxy Ladys and…

From a ruined mansion in the Hollywood hills, Arthur Lee cast his gaze across the Los Angeles skyline. He saw the world had gone to hell and was convinced he was about to die. His vision of an imminent holocaust was the antithesis of the flower power Utopia envisaged by his youthful contemporaries. Lee, only 22, was bombed on acid and heroin much o…

Now that £150 box sets like this one are the bread and butter of physical media sales, standards have become exactingly high for compilers and curators of these items. Even so, this comprehensive summing-up of pretty much everything to do with Queen’s 1989 album The Miracle – whether audio, visual, lost, rediscovered or reordered – is a triu…

It’s hard to tell if Richard Dawson is actively trying shed listeners or simply following his muse. Perhaps his muse is fleeing the pint-swigging enthusiasts who talked all the way through a gig I saw of his in 2019. Released too late in the year to make some publications’ best-of 2022 lists and opening with a song that lasts 41(!) minutes, The…

The mastermind behind Hello Skinny, a one-man-band that mashes up jazz improv with trippy electronica, Skinner was recently heard playing drums on the debut album by The Smile, a side-project of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood. Here, though, he moves into a different sonic realm with this immersive cache of yearning spiritual jazz wher…

What to do when this drained husk of a planet on which we busy ourselves is showing bin fires how it’s really done? When lives are put on hold while viruses stalk the Earth? When those who have elbowed their way to power betray us so routinely that scandalous behaviour barely raises an eyebrow? Well, if you’re the prodigiously talented Natalie …

On his 2017 release White Knight, Todd Rundgren’s many collaborators were invited to help him complete pieces of music he’d instigated. Space Force (not to be confused with the Steve Carell comedy series on Netflix) flips that concept on its head by asking his guests to provide the initial inspirations, i.e. unfinished songs which, for one reas…