Can we really have reached the end of January without an instrumental track feature? Seems so, and that doubtless explains why January has been such a drag – I mean, not even a few minutes to tune out, get mindful and escape all those endless words. All that comes to an end with today’s contribution to what we like to call Americana UK’s Grooveful Mindquest of Instrumental Mindfulness And Consciousness Awakening.
‘Reds for a Blue Planet‘ weaves many strand together – there’s a psychedelic blues base, there’s a hypnotic almost drone that recalls the true Desert Rock of the likes of Tinariwen, and there are elements of a country ambience and all this is fused together to make a cosmic vision. It’s taken from Bobby Lee’s third album ‘Endless Skyways‘, which features the percussion of Slowdive/Mojave 3’s Ian McCutcheon and the sinuous bass of Mark Armstrong. The album is out this spring, when the shoots rise and the stars are right..
Kosmiche Country from Sheffield. Bobby Lee’s third album finds this Sheffield based musician diving further into the outmost reaches of cosmic Americana music, taking on the fledgling tag of ambient Americana and just about shredding it on the nine instrumentals on display here. Lee might cite the likes of J.J.…
Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Days’ opens with the question: “What are Days for?” Being presented with an album of instrumental tracks might prompt a similar, ostensibly ingenuous question, such as, ‘What are instrumentals for’? In the case of ‘Shakedown in Slabtown’, Bobby Lee's debut album, these instrumentals serve a variety of…
Yorkshire artists pay tribute to fellow Yorkshire artist Michael Chapman with mixed results. Michael Chapman was a British singer-songwriter and virtuosic guitar player who passed away in September 2021. He has released over 50 albums, but it would be fair to say his most well-known ones were recorded for the ‘Harvest’…
Sure, I could climb high in a tree, or go to Skye on my holiday. I could be happy. All I really want is the excitement of first hearing The Byrds, the amazement of decades of Dylan's music, or the thrill of seeing a band like The Long Ryders live. That's not much to ask, is it?
