I was in Oslo recently and came across 2 lovely Norwegian guys who claimed (ok, they actually were, but 'claimed' sounds more intriguing) to once have been in a 'Cardiacs' tribute band called 'Piffol'. No record of 'Piffol' seems to exist online, but a few of you out there will understand the respect due to these guys for doing such an extraordinary 'laudatory' thing. Multi-talented Swedish musician Martin Månsson Sjöstrand, the founder of his trio creatively called, erm, 'M

I try to avoid looking at artist Press Releases before writing a review for fear of inadvertently writing something which the record label / PR people want me to say, but sometimes this kind of messes things up somewhat. The new 'Folke Nikanor' album is a really enjoyable listen, and one of the biggest compliments I could think of when I first heard it is that in places it reminds of Christian Gabels amazing '1900' project, so of course the fact that it turns out that it is a

Well we’ve covered 'Steve Buscemi’s Dreamy Eyes', so it feels only right to move on to the equally brilliantly named ‘Lauri Porra Flyover Ensemble’, who’ve recently released a new instrumental based album ‘Dust’, including a single ‘Matter’, which particularly caught our attention. Finnish readers in particular may be aware of Lauri Porra, as he is a well established musician, composer and collaborator, with an extraordinary musical mix of musical experiences behind him. Not

Hopefully July will be a better month than June. So we'll try and catch up with 'In Brief' mentions to as many bands as possible, and we'll start with 'Star of Heaven', a Swedish instrumental band that we featured back in 2016 when they released their post rock / progressive influenced album 'Vinter 2015'. Anyway they're back with a new single called 'Kino', and the good news is that it's the first from a new album which is due to be released in Autumn - which will be called

So to (almost) wrap things up before our annual May Vacation, we're delighted to introduce you to a brand new project from Norway that play cinematic instrumental music - or possibly instrumental cinematic music. Called 'Husmo Hav' they contain members of 'Highasakite' and indie band 'The Switch', and they've intrigued us so much with their debut single called 'East in North'. that we've decided to speak to the 4 members, Thomas, Marte, Tore and Stian, to find out more about

We featured the Swedish improvisation outfit 'Trio Ramberget' yesterday, and we'll keep with the 'trio'; theme with a few words about another 'hot off the press release', this time by Danish instrumental band the 'Vestbo Trio', who feature Michael Vestbo on guitar, supported by Eddi Jari and Jesper Smalbro on drums / percussion and electric / acoustic bass respectively. We wrote about these guys back in 2015 when they released an album entitled 'While You Were Gone' - still