Exposé Online

Soft Machine - Fourth / Fifth

Support for the Soft Machine catalog and its movement to the digital age has been excruciatingly slow, to put it mildly. English label Big Beat did some excellent re-work to place Volume One and...

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(Posted by Jeff Melton 1999-11-01)

St. Mikael - Visions of the Unknown

Amateur psych, like the two reissued titles here by Swedish musician St Mikael, is not flattered by the CD medium. The effect-lavished, drivel-through-a-tunnel sound that these types of garage...  » Read more
(Posted by Mike McLatchey 1999-11-01)

Steve Hackett - Darktown

Come on, let’s get funky and rip this joint! That appears to be Steve Hackett’s updated credo on his new album of vocal-based songs in five years. Far gone are the obvious links to the...

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(Posted by Jeff Melton 1999-11-01)

Steve Hackett - Darktown

Who is Steve Hackett? To a progger his name is legend, but what is extraordinary is that for nearly 22 years he has put out a body of work that has rivaled or surpassed his peers. While Genesis has...

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(Posted by Dane Carlson 1999-11-01)

Strawbs - Ghosts

At long last, the Strawbs catalog is given proper treatment by the band’s first label, A&M, as one of five albums getting a much needed overhaul, Ghosts was the seventh album...

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(Posted by Jeff Melton 1999-11-01)

Sylvan - Deliverance

Here's a well-recorded album by an obviously polished German group filled with interesting ideas. I'm sorry to say that those ideas don't always work, such as "A Fairytale Ending," but I appreciate...  » Read more
(Posted by Willow Polson 1999-11-01)

Terra Firma - Earthbound

Climbing out the morass of thrash bands and Pearl Jam clones ascends a new Seattle area group with its feet rooted in Terra Firma and its head in the cosmos. Forget your preconceived notions of space...  » Read more
(Posted by Henry Schneider 1999-11-01)

The Dark Aether Project - Feed the Silence

The second release by this Maryland-based quartet is a major leap forward from their debut; first of all, they now live up to the ‘dark’ in their name — most of this stuff is...

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(Posted by Peter Thelen 1999-11-01)

The Dark Aether Project - Feed the Silence

Featuring an inviting Canterbury-meets-80s-Crimson sound, The Dark Aether Project has produced a competent if unspectacular second outing. Both the 8-string Warr Guitar (the kind brought into the...

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(Posted by Steve Robey 1999-11-01)

The Dark Aether Project - Feed the Silence

The Dark Aether Project is a collective group of musicians led by Warr guitarist Adam Levin. They are representative of modern American groups like Djam Karet, who approach their rock...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 1999-11-01)

The Reptile Palace Orchestra - Iguana Iguana

With the same globe-hopping disregard for genre exhibited by labelmates Boiled in Lead, Reptile Palace Orchestra...

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(Posted by Jon Davis 1999-11-01)

The Tunnel Singer - Inner Runes, Ravens in Moonlight & Water Birth

The Tunnel Singer is Lee Ellen Shoemaker, a vocal improviser who has been actively performing in the San Francisco area for almost a decade, singing in tunnels, stairwells, parking garages, and...

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(Posted by Peter Thelen 1999-11-01)

Threshold - Clone

Given that this is a Karl Groom project, and that it's on the GEP label, and that the first tune is called "Freaks," you would be pretty safe to assume this is another tired and unwanted neo-prog...  » Read more
(Posted by Dan Casey 1999-11-01)

Tortoise - TNT

A friend who has the broadest range of musical passions, from classical to reggae, from progressive rock to Brazilian music and beyond, thinks of Tortoise as one of the most progressive groups...

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(Posted by Dean Suzuki 1999-11-01)

Various Artists - A Cat-Shaped Hole in My Heart

I love cats, and this compilation CD led by Black Tape for a Blue Girl member Sam Rosenthal is a very nice tribute to the feline species. With the help of some of his friends, Rosenthal creates a...

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(Posted by Carol Hammett 1999-11-01)

Various Artists - A Homage to Neu!

There have been far too many of these tribute albums over the past five years or so. Many of them have featured no-name bands performing pale imitations of their heroes from the days of old. After...

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(Posted by Dan Casey 1999-11-01)

Various Artists - Desde el Otro Lado & Eleanor Hovda - Ariadne Music

These two released by the witty label OO Disc are good representatives of the label's overall sound directions. The compilation begins with an ‘electroacoustic samba’ which puts in...

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(Posted by Jerome Schmidt 1999-11-01)

Vidna Obmana - Landscape in Obscurity & The Shape of Solitude

Vidna Obmana has been prolific this year, collaborating with various musicians and continuing to reissue his early albums on the Memories Compiled series. The two titles here are recent...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 1999-11-01)

Zapotec - Alpha Centuri

When I first listened to this disc, I quickly categorized it as jamming space rock. The first track builds from quiet ambience to a throbbing jazzy thrash, consisting almost entirely of an...  » Read more
(Posted by Jon Davis 1999-11-01)