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BLACK SABBATH: BEYOND METAL (A JAZZ ODYSSEY)

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EVER HEARD BLACK SABBATH SOUND LIKE THIS?

On July 6th, the day after Black Sabbath’s Back to the Beginning sign-off at Villa Park, Stuart Maconie broadcast a Sabbath special Freakzone on BBC Radio 6 Music.

It was an inspired slab of radio – a wild selection of Black Sabbath covers, bands inspired by Sabbath and, of course, Sabbath originals. But it was the covers that really made it work because none of them were rock or metal. Not a single one.

Instead there was fictional jazz (eh?), medieval folk, Ethiopian brassy scuzz, Scandi-fied indie pop, contemporary classical and plenty more … countless left turns in a fascinating trip that hints at just how far and wide Black Sabbath reached.

The programme is no longer available on BBC Sounds but, because it’s too good not to rave about, here are a few words on some of the tracks that blew my tiny mind, followed by the tracklist for your fullest explorations.

RIP Ozzy Osbourne. Long live the Summer of Sabbath.

Far beyond metal

What, no guitar? Better get used to it with French/Ethiopian hybrid uKanDanZ because they lead into War Pigs with a screaming sax blast and it RIPS. After that, they lock down a tough keys-bass-drums groove punctured with brassy bursts.

Soreng Santi throws out a very loose take on Iron Man. It’s a track that’s always lumbered in the best possible way but here the sticky fuzziness of the riff stumbles and wavers and just about stays upright. In contrast, the drums dance with clarity and full command of spacial awareness. If you watched White Lotus, this track appeared in an episode somewhere. Apparently.

Hearing some radical reworks of Paranoid makes you realise that the chugging riff captures the paranoia of the title – it’s a bit nervy, edgy, restless. Take that signature element away and the song can be transformed, as Black Bossa Sabbath Nova show with a gentle, swinging shuffle that glides so smoothly it barely touches ground. Beautiful vocal too.

Sticking with Paranoid, Hellsongs do a similarly non-monolithic breakdown. Like Susanna and the Magic Orchestra’s minimalist, heartbreaking version of Love Will Tear Us Apart, Hellsongs strip a robust original down to its barest essence and redress it lightly – here with whispered gusts and string-backed Americana. Hellsongs Paranoid is roomy and calm, the very opposite of Sabbath’s anxious riffing. And while we’re on a Paranoid reimagined trip, check Type O Negative’s version for a transcendent goth metal overhaul.

If the idea of Jazz Sabbath (listed below) excites more than the lighter-touch music delivers then Iron Man by The Bad Plus is the place to get a proper jazz-does-Sabbath experience. THIS is jazz Sabbath. Piano chords take the place of Iommi’s riff, the tempo is slowed a fraction and the inventive combined muso talent makes more notes, more melodies and more dimensions without ever losing the heavy essence of the original.

Keeping it jazz, Brad Meldhau‘s Sabbath is not a cover but a tribute. Doom piano and shit-hot drumwork conspire to fashion a downer earworm from Sweet Leaf’s cloud. Bulletproof and nicely weighty.

At the risk of turning this into a jazz odyssey, the final highlight – for now – is more jazz. From a metal legend. War Pigs by The Alex Skolnick Trio. Swingy as fuck. Do not expect Testament-al thrash riffage. Do expect clean, warm tones, sublime phrasing, blistering jazz runs and a drum masterclass … how much musicality? Unreal.

As promised, below is the full Freakzone tracklist minus the Black Sabbath originals. Sleep and Electric Wizard are familiar enough but all the covers here are, to me, a new adventure and every single track is worth checking. Credit to Stuart Maconie for putting it together – radio at its best.

Let the Black Sabbath story continue.

Freakzone: Black Sabbath Special

Cindy und Bert – Der Hund Von Baskerville. Ultra catchy German pop-psyche Paranoid via Haight Ashbury

Les Baxter – Main Title (from the film, Black Sabbath)

uKanDanZ – War Pigs. See above

Jazz Sabbath – Electric Funeral. Soft shuffle and brushes from Adam Wakeman’s invented concept. If the nightcap fits… drink it. Late-night bar vibes

Rondellus – Rotae Confusions. Wheels of Confusion, sung in Latin, haunting and medieval

Soreng Santi – Kuen Kuen Lueng Lueng. See above

Vitamin String Quartet – Into the Void. Strings, innit?

Cardigans – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Light and dreamy retro drift-pop with incredibly cool funk drums. Genteel detachment you can almost dance to.

Black Bossa Sabbath Nova – Paranoid, see above

Sleep – Holy Mountain. No description required

Apocalyptica – Spiral Architect. Full bodied orchestral instrumental

Hellsongs – Paranoid, see above

Brad Meldhau – Sabbath, ditto

The Bad Plus – Iron Man, ditto ditto

Electric Wizard – Funeralopolis. See Sleep above

Free Nelson Mandoomjazz – Black Sabbath. Melancholy sax, horror scream squall sax, max-tension dynamics – this song was destined to be doomjazzed

Meatdripper – Homegrown. Blackened stoner with Pigsx7 slam riffage and questionable vox, you decide

Alex Skolnick Trio – War Pigs, see above and listen and weep

Black Sabbath Vol 4
Back to the Beginning, back to the font: Vol 4

A WORD FOR OZZY

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This post was meant to be a celebration of Black Sabbath‘s monumental Back to the Beginning metal-thon and all the Sabbathian goodness and rekindled love it inspired. Who hasn’t been on a Sabbath bender of late?

Following huge media coverage of Glastonbury and Oasis in the previous few days, Back to the Beginning could not have been timed better: the festival spirit was already overflowing but this time, July 5th, it was for heavy rock and metal. The historic aspect of BTTB was never in doubt but once you got into it and started watching and reading more about it, it really sunk in just how big a deal this actually was.

It was on-stage closure for the people who started it – in their home city, supported by the bands who drew on their influence and came back to pay tribute. Poignancy played a huge part in all this. It was so much more than a final gig by a legendary band. It was a moment that will go down as one of the great events in rock.

Then Ozzy passed away just days later. And it’s knocked everything sideways.

Instead of being a celebration of music and legacy, Back to the Beginning has rapidly become something else – not just a send-off for a band but a send-off for a life, too. No wonder our thoughts have stalled and become blurred … it’s too fast a transition from loved-up afterglow into shock. In some ways, Black Sabbath have been pushed a little further back within the memory of this event and Ozzy – understandably, right now – is up front and centre. We’re in Ozzy mode.

Unlike Black Sabbath’s back catalogue, Ozzy’s solo music isn’t enough my thing, despite some awesome tunes. But his OTT Hammy-horror videos and album covers, shred-glam guitar sounds and widescreen wild man personality were so integral to growing up in the 80s that it might as well be. He helped define what rock sounded like in that decade and for anyone who spent time programming the video recorder for The Power Hour, Raw Power and Noisy Mothers in the deep, dark small hours on ITV, Ozzy was inescapable. We grew up with him. We knew and got to know the musicians he picked. We knew the bands he toured with. He’s always been there, a connector of souls.

The only Ozzy records in my stash* are Tribute and the Just Say Ozzy live EP so they’re being revisited right now. Suicide Solution and I Don’t Know always, always work. Records like this are inseparable from teenage memories, even down to the way they feel – the Tribute record cover is oddly grainy.

Funny to think that Geezer Butler played on Just Say Ozzy. The rotation and crossover of band members in the post-70s Sabbath/Ozzy orbit blows your mind, as does Ozzy’s ultimately short-sighted approach towards playing his former band’s tracks. In the sleeve notes, he wrote, “The Sabbath songs – to have recorded them one last time with Geezer Butler, Zakk and Randy, says it all for me. It’s a chapter of my life I can now close.”

That was 1990. But the chapter didn’t close – not until July 2025.

Farewell, Ozzy Osbourne.

*adding a couple of CDs now though. Diary of a Madman and No Rest for the Wicked are the chosen ones

Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads - Tribute album cover
Double tribute

JEHNNY BETH – Obsession: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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RAW INDUSTRIALS FROM BETH, BLACK METAL FROM EGYPT AND … A VIDEO OF GLOWING SHOELACES

It’s been a big few weeks for big names and big media coverage. Glastonbury dominated the BBC but if you weren’t screen-bound at the time Neil Young actually played, his set remains elusive bar whatever scraps you can sweep up from YouTube (here’s an Old Man clip that’s quietly hypnotic despite – no, because of – being filmed miles away from the stage from by someone who totally gets it… thank you BrainRotRebellion. Great laces).

As if Glastonbury all over wasn’t big enough, Oasis got us giddy for communal anthems less than a week later and then BLACK FCKN SABBATH reunited for a celebratory all-star last-ever show at Villa Park: Back to the Beginning. Massive. Sabbath are dominating the sounds round here but, to balance all that enormity and nostalgia, here are some new tunes – and it’s a noisier bunch this month.

Converge have not put out anything new but Mary Anne Hobbs played the ferocious Dark Horse on her new Sunday evening 6 Music show last month. Why? Seems that Jehnny Beth is a fan – and Hobbs had just given Obsession its first ever radio play.

Unsurprisingly, Beth aces it. Obsession grabs the wracked emotions and desperate aggression of early Nine Inch Nails and makes fresh industrial chaos for 2025 – here’s the video and her new album You Heartbreaker, You is out in August. Obsession bodes very well.

Meanwhile … Manchester for Maruja, anyone?

MARUJA – Look Down On Us

For Maruja first-timers, like what I is, Look Down On Us starts out like punk-noise bass with sax and rage. So far, so grit. But there’s more to it as this is a track (and video) of many parts, moods and movements, where anger slows to calm, calm swells to hope, and hope gets hit with headbanger intensity and a squalling free-form crescendo. Explosive, cathartic and very possibly ascendant, no doubt this is a beast when played live. Video right here.

STRATFORD RISE – Gunshow

Can you call this stuff prog? It’s two and a half minutes short so probably not. But then again, length isn’t everything … is it? In Gunshow, Belfast’s Stratford Rise mangle blackmidi/Geordie Greep quirk into a dense, churning chunk of artsy metallics that doesn’t quite go where you think – and stops before you find out.

WITCHCRAFT – Burning Cross

Very timely, given the music retirement news of the moment – a pure retro crawl from a descendant of a descendant of Black Sabbath. Absolutely nothing about Burning Cross screams ‘2025’. Nothing screams ‘summer heatwave’ either, but this Witchcraft tune is definitely at the quality end of any Sabbath devotion you might stumble on, especially the non-metal (jazzier?) breaks and ever so slightly stank-face wah. Check it here and file away for some appropriate autumn drizzle.

LYCOPOLIS – Mesektet

Feeling the need for raw dirt? An anti slick fix, a hot shot of sonic filth? This’ll do it. Sounding like it was recorded inside a tomb, Mesektet by Egyptian black metallers Lycopolis does to black metal what Entombed did to death metal – gives it swagger, gives it groove, gives it fucking ROLL. Atmos conjured, arrestingly unique.

TAKKAK TAKKAK – Garang

Cultures clash, but which ones? Who knows. Percussion-heavy chants and beats make for an underground cult where the ancient and the modern mix it up while metallic one-chord chugs pin you down. Subterranean club music, without borders, outside of time, impossible to describe. A spirited antidote to barriers and boundaries. Take a hit of Garang from Takkak Takkak and make your own mind up.

BLEETH – Echoes of Doubt

Bass alert: prepare to be steamrollered. Echoes of Doubt employs an absolute wall of it to bulk up its post-desert stoner anthemics so if you’re partial to the late Caleb Scofield’s four-string MO for Zozobra and Cave In, Bleeth are worthy. With thick, catchy riffs, super melodic vocals and a neat little tempo pick up, what more do you need for the summer?

’til next time!

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TAKAAT – Amidinin: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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PIGSx7 LIVE IN MANCHESTER, HEAVY FOLK FROM SHEFFIELD, BLAZING POWER-TRIO ROCK FROM NIGER AND MORE

When you step into Manchester’s New Century Hall for a Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs gig on a Friday night, your first thought is:

Marc Riley must be in here somewhere.

Didn’t see him, but he was there – confirmed it when the band were in session on his 6 Music radio show three days later. Tucked away at the back for ear protection. Nice.

Non-sightings of Mr Riley aside, what can you expect from Pigsx7 live?

Oversized doomy bouncing howling slamming ear-ringing max volume euphorics with pink shorts and a workout vest, that’s what. If you’ve seen them before, you’ll know the score with Matt Baty’s onstage kit – it’s a self deprecating pop at the genre’s aggro-macho hardman vibes, shot through with ritualistic stage moves summoning some sort of communion with the heaviness gods. Launching the set with a shamanically extended The Wyrm (I think) and signing off with shit-kicking tarmac tribute A66, it’s a good-times ruckus start to end.

With short mid-tempo tracks like Detroit and The Glitch getting plenty of exposure ahead of Death Hilarious being released, it’s easy to forget the wrecking-ball breakdowns in Pigs’ music and it’s these slow dooming slams that really leap out live. Caught me off guard a bit – it’s been a while – but in the best way. Other highlights include a non-competitive Headbanger of the Night award, plenty of anti-Download patter (it’s a Venga Boys thing) and the perma-seismic bass of John-Michael Joseph Hedley.

Walking back down Oldham Street around 10.45pm, there were loads of people sitting in a line on the pavement. What in the name of cold arse cheeks is going on?

Queue for Record Store Day 2025. At Piccadilly Records. The night before…

Did you go RSD-ing? Was it worth it? Having moved to a town where there is no record shop, that Piccadilly Records queue was the nearest I got to any RSD action.

Slight fomo at that point. Still haven’t written up last year’s RSD find, which is a shame because it’s fckn ace. Even better, it was a CD. Cop for that, vinyl fetishists.

Just before we hit some killer new sounds, can we once again praise the Melvins and their now pathological consistency? After Tarantula Heart formed a stalwart noise rock trilogy of excellence in 2024 alongside Jesus Lizard and Shellac, they’ve only gone and put another one out already – well, Melvins 1983 have. Done it in the same month, too: April. Having squeezed a couple of listens of Thunderball so far, the first impressions are more than promising – a twisted, heavy Melvins 1983 shorn of the jokes that thinned the quality of Working With God. They play Sheffield in August. Cannot wait.

Right then, off we go with some single track highlights.

JIM GHEDI – Sheaf & Feld

David Eugene Edwards plopped onto the radar recently with a project with Al Cisneros, which is uncanny and timely because there’s a 16 Horsepower air to this dense, metallic, ensemble folk shanty by Sheffield’s Jim Ghedi. With its one-two swing, Sheaf & Feld is built for movement and group action – a communal, earthy hymn to keep spirits high while bodies battle or toil. And it’s a bit like this Archie Bronson Outfit cracker from 2006.

TAKAAT – Amidinin

Immediate Mdou Moctar vibes come flying off this unpolished electrified attack. When you find out that Takaat is in fact everybody in Mdou Moctar’s band who isn’t called Mdou Moctar, it’s so obvious. The energy is up, like Funeral for Justice, the triple-time rat-tat rhythm – check those deft beats by Souleymane Ibrahim – drives hard with no time to catch breath and the guitars are saturated with distortion. Amidinin is very much a live-action jam. Scintillating stuff.

THE OTOLITH – Glimmer

When Myrkur goes full blend between blackened metal and ethereal Scandinavian folk, it’s a killer combination for reasons you can’t always place. It just works. Glimmer by The Otolith gifts us a similar genre-blending deal that feels so organic you wonder why it’s not the norm. With sea-siren vocals and viola symphonics, it’s a seductive, enchanting trip that soon becomes darkened by brief but transformative visitations from Riff Lord and Hell Voice, aka the post-metal deathly sludge bit. Hauntingly beautiful and brutish, Glimmer beguiles and intoxicates.

MCLUSKY – People Person

Confession: despite knowing the name, this is the first mclusky music I have ever heard. But if their early noughties heyday was anything like People Person then shame on me for missing it – and thank Ipecac for spreading the word because this simmer-to-boiling-point fist fight is right up the piss-damp alley of anyone with a bent for slab rock physicality, predatory bass and caustic wordage. Ipecac is a good home. Want to see office workers lose their shit and beat each other with keyboards? Watch mclusky’s People Person video.

FUCKED UP – Disabuse

Dropping all notion of melodic hookery or progressive art-punk structures, Disabuse sees Fucked Up channel their name more literally to throw up a cathartic hardcore speed assault. Save it for when you need … a cathartic hardcore speed assault. To bang your head to. Blowtorch rock, check it here.

’til next time!

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PROJECT GEMINI – After the Dawn (Large Plants remix): TRACK OF THE MONTH

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Check this Rewind – no chitchat intro. Not through choice, more of a time pressure thing because life has got in the way AND the ‘unable to save draft’ tech hiccup only made things worse so here we are, rewriting and cutting and hurtling to hit publish just to get it done.

And breathe.

Calm.

Oh …

HIGH ON FIRE – The Beating

Never a truer title, and a deserving one, too – haven’t bothered with High on Fire for a few years. No great reason, just … haven’t. They’ve slipped off into a parallel slipstream but a track like The Beating whips them right back, demolishing all complacency in a two-minute rager that burns like a cosmic fireball and leaves a middle-finger shaped trail in the sky. Yeah. The High on Fire template hasn’t been fiddled with so you know the rough drill but the drums here really, really cook – and it’s new drummer Coady Willis, ex Melvins and trusted Melvins live stand-in, who’s driving the band these days. It’s not a brand new track because the album’s been out nearly a year, but having only recently caught it, The Beating makes it in for sheer good time brutality. No mercy.

WALDO’S GIFT – Malcolm’s Law

Instrumental, hard hitting new/post jazz crossover? Whatever this stuff gets called (if anything), Malcolm’s Law by Bristol-based Waldo’s Gift is it. See Run Logan Run for another.

The great thing about a track like this is you can zone in on any element and make a different listening experience for yourself. Want some jazz fusion with metallic edges? Put your receptors on the guitar, my fiend. Chasing a subsonic shakeout? Drop into that bass, man. Spicy beats? YES. Gilles Peterson played this on the radio earlier in the year and if you check Worldwide FM online, you can hear Waldo’s Gift in session last week. Haven’t heard it myself yet and you never know, Malcolm’s Law might be wholly unrepresentative. Then again, so might these words – after all, they’re just an attempt to capture a first impression. Check the track, then check the session.

JESUS LIZARD – Westside

Rack was a 2024 highlight. Did we expect such a resolutely Jesus Lizard-like outing after such an absence? Hard to say but it was a welcome return. Now we have new tracks and Rack’s high bar means expectations have been set …

Westside offers no real hook and doesn’t so much flow as lurch, stop, start and stumble while never quite losing balance … it staggers on. Prime Jesus Lizard, then, if a touch lighter. We’re lucky to have them. Submit.

[if Record Store Day is your thing, look out for Westside and the other two post-Rack tracks on vinyl next month.]

PROJECT GEMINI – After the Dawn (Large Plants remix)

Some classy psyche rock here – not the free-form brain-fry stuff but a more considered, groove-oriented take. There’s a history to Project Gemini but it’s all new to me, as is the news that Wolf People’s Jack Sharp is in Large Plants – which explains the impeccable prog/psyche devotion throughout. The riffs switch to extra fuzz midway through, floating vocals bring Dead Meadow to mind and there’s a classic lead guitar flourish to finish, all anchored by a tumbling, propulsive funk beat. After the Dawn right here.

VELVETINE – Miss Together

Glorious slab of dank quiet-loud here from London’s Velvetine, twisting a gothic edge – the Killing Joke, other-world edge – into an art-punk frame. It slams hard. Shades of late 80s Sub Pop. Squalling guitar abrasion owns the high ground, noise-rock bass bulldozers the low and Mia Scarlet channels Beth Gibbons to both soar and pull us down into the darker recesses. Meet Miss Together.

‘til next time!

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MUSIC FOR CAT & FIDDLE 4: Michael Chapman

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MICHAEL CHAPMAN – 50

Driving under fog – or so it seems. Cloud skims the roof of the car until the incline takes us up and at it. Into the milk.

The soundtrack to this journey through trapped daylight is Sometimes You Just Drive by Michael Chapman. With its loose, locomotive rhythm and pedal steel tints, it echoes the wide open American west … by way of long, deep Yorkshire roots.

Chapman was 75 or 76 when he released 50. Backed by a bunch of younger players from the folk/roots/experimental scene, Steve Gunn among them, it’s a vital, honest sounding album. The voice might be weighted by mortality but the finger-picking remains ageless.

Let’s not pretend that I know anything about Michael Chapman, though. This album was my first encounter, followed by True North – the last album he recorded – and Americana. So, there’s quarry-loads of Chapman yet to mine but since first hearing 50, it’s become a winter fixture. Memphis in Winter shows why – and it’s not just for the title.

“We’re past the end of nowhere, all along the worn-out plain
Where the devil lies in waiting
And it gets too dark to rain.
It gets too dark to rain.”

If we submit to music’s potential for seasonal and environmental appropriation (which is pretty much the point of these Cat & Fiddle posts) then the busker’s stomp of a beat in Memphis takes on a quickening air, like it’s trying to outrun a biting chill. Electric guitar, sliding in late with frayed distortion and lived-in experience, delivers the flickering licks of much needed heat.

And that’s where we’re going to leave 50. The loping lilt of The Prospector and the electrifying flourishes over Rosh Pina‘s hypnotic picking are among the many riches, but this isn’t meant to be a review. Instead, it’s an association, an evocation of a sound and a spirit that lives up to the surroundings – which, on this drive, look something like this:

Michael Chapman: moor reflections

Cue it up while it’s still cold.

Note:
Ryley Walker played Sheffield a few days ago at the Sidney & Matilda. Solo set, wholly acoustic, stunning as you’d expect. He mentioned Michael Chapman. Said Chapman liked this song of his, which he then played. Think it was The Roundabout. Don’t quote me, but do go check Ryley if you haven’t already.

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A WORD FOR JOHN SYKES

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RIP TO THE GUITAR TONE THAT DEFINED A COMMERCIAL ROCK COLOSSUS

Some guitarists take us home.

They might not be the ones we listen to the most, we might not even have played them for years – but they’ve been in our lives the longest, on those played-to-death records from formative teenage years. That kind of exposure doesn’t just vanish, no matter how cutting edge we think we are. It’s hardwired into the unconscious. Play that music again and the strength of connection hits hard, sometimes unexpectedly so. It takes you into yourself and, crucially, back to yourself.

Home.

And this is why the news of John Sykes passing away – cancer, age 65 – is hard to take.

1987 was an album I played the life out of as a 14 year-old. The ballads were tolerated (no skipping with the record/tape format) and the keyboards mostly stank but the monstrous stop-start attack of Still of the Night was, and still is, a hard rock thrill for all time. Same for Crying in the Rain and deep-cut favourite, Children of the Night. And the thing that made the best of that album sound the way it did – the speeding rhythmic riffing, the shred-melodic solos and incomparable guitar tone – was John Sykes. He WAS 1987. His sound defined it and mega millions got sold on the back of period piece (cough) videos he never appeared in. Sykes has an exalted place in 80s rock history.

Credibility-wise, Whitesnake get short shrift – no surprise. For me, they were an adolescent band of a moment, but that moment put John Sykes out there. When his Blue Murder debut came out in 1989, firing out all the best bits of 1987 and far fewer of the worst bits, that album got played to death too – until the 90s took hold and both records got ditched without sentimentality as hair rock relics.

Wrong move.

You can’t shake that stuff. Many years later, realising that I needed that Sykes attack close to hand, I repurchased 1987 and Blue Murder. And in the past few years, I’ve been keeping gentle tabs on John Sykes activity – which is another reason why his passing away last week shocks.

There always seems to have been the promise of new music and a return to business. Fans were well up for it. Interviews with Tony Franklin and Carmine Appice said they’d been touch with him and the door was open so the rumblings were positive. Sykes himself said in 2019 that he had stuff ready to go … and each year passed by without. So everyone waited for further word, hopeful that one day something would appear.

A Carmine Appice interview published on YouTube in 2024 threw out the same Blue Murder question but where there was optimism before, now there was resignation. Appice said, “John…. know no-one knows what he’s doing.”

All too sadly now, I think we can guess.

So, this week has seen many riffs raised to a guy who made some of the best and made it all look so easy. Great singer too, the complete hard rock package. Watch the live version of Billy by Blue Murder on The Big Al Show – link below – from 1989 (?) and see. It comes with a Mullet Warning but the music and the performance is astonishing. The whole band smokes, every beat and note. And how Sykes sings, plays and peels off a screaming solo so effortlessly is something else. Favourite bit? Possibly the super-tight post-pause riff that explodes into the first solo. Or the casual intro.

Actually, all of it.

He was missed when he was alive. What more can you say now?

Not much, really. Better just pick a track, riff or solo, celebrate the gift of Sykes – and share it.

Some Sykes clips:
Thin Lizzy, Cold Sweat – The Tube, 1983
Whitesnake, Children of the Night audio, 1987
Blue Murder, Billy – The Big Al Show
John Sykes, Dawn of a Brand New Day, 2021

Blue Murder - Blue Murder
Blue Murder repurchased

MUSIC FOR CAT & FIDDLE 3: Catherine Graindorge & Iggy Pop

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CATHERINE GRAINDORGE – THE DICTATOR EP

Storm Darragh made this drive a wild one. Moors and skies packed with portent – a glove-like fit for The Dictator.

Everyone knows Iggy has a voice for the spoken word. You hear it with Death in Vegas on Aisha. You hear it on Avenue B with She Called Me Daddy. You hear it every week on BBC 6 Music, grizzled as hell but warm as hell too, inviting you in hearth-side for anecdotes and insights on music. It’s a voice to sink into. And here, set to music that follows the contours of the peaks outside, it’s a voice to feed your imagination.

The music is far from Iggy’s riotous past, though not unexpected given his later output. Belgian violinist and composer Catherine Graindorge is the visionary, crafting four tracks of string-driven moods, shimmering electronics and haunting atmospherics. No percussion, no signposted beats – just surges, pulses, drifts and searing trails of light. Iggy relays poetic warnings in The Dictator, then takes an introspective turn on Mud I and Mud II:

I walk along the river
in a thick fog.
You tell me about a book your father once gave you.
In my head turns this melody – no words.
And you read me a princess story
from a distance.

Pop’s words with Graindorge’s soundscapes? WIN. The instrumental last track of the EP, named Iggy in honour of the voice, echoes the violin-bow taps Jimmy Page did on Dazed and Confused live but here the mood is ethereal, not theatrical … a foundation for a symphonic swell which, like everything else, matches the land and the season.

Storm Darragh meets The Dictator

Try it. Add this EP to your cold weather listens, maybe even pair it up with Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack – and not just for the Pop connection. There’s a rustic, earthy spirit running through both.

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MUSIC FOR CAT & FIDDLE 2: Low

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LOW – HEY WHAT

F*CK. ME. This is it.

Then again: it’s Low so what do we expect? And when do you listen to Low?

They’re a band I can’t play any time or too often because they’re just too intense, too special – especially those last two albums. Low seem to have a direct line to something way deeper than the rest of us. After pressing play on Hey What in the car, I become aware that the opening track White Horses builds in noise and distortion completely in sync with the incline and the gradually emerging, slowly unfolding landscape. Urbanity receding, wild moors welcoming. Beautiful. No, more than that: awesome. This happens to be an ultimate convergence of emotive music and scenery.

But if that wasn’t enough – and it would have been, easily – there’s a divine intervention from the goddess of good timing. White Horses hits peak distortion and noise saturation around 2 minutes 15 seconds – the exact moment a turn round a blind bend reveals the top of the world in full, unending glory.

Breath taken? Damn right. The combination of sound and vision is huge, which explains the F bomb earlier. Rendered speechless.

Low’s fragmented, techno-glitch density opens portals to a parallel universe. But the effect that comes from wrapping their fragile/euphoric harmonising within and around such sonic manipulation is unfathomable and unexplainable. It’s why Hey What and Double Negative transcend so much other music. It’s electro-noise gospel. Those albums just cannot be played in casual conditions that lessen the mystique. They need to be played with intent: night darkness with volume cranked, wild walks in storm force gales, the deepest of snows and winter freezes

or a moody overcast drive on the Cat and Fiddle.

More Music for Cat and Fiddle here.

MUSIC FOR CAT & FIDDLE 1: Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

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PLANT | KRAUSS – Raise the Roof

Entry #1 of Music for Cat and Fiddle scenic soundtracks … and there’s something about the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss pairing, and Raise the Roof especially, that really lifts in this kind of space.

Which is no surprise given the general love/unfettered worship of all things Plant that I’ve been carrying forever, but even allowing for such fanatical tendencies, there are times of year when his music touches even higher levels. The Carry Fire album begs for a misty autumn or winter morning – play it one day when you’re up before the rest of the world awakes and tell me it doesn’t belong right there in that cool, quiet, open-to-reflection moment. Raise the Roof carries a similar torch for dawns and dusks and half lights, to my mind. Darker in tone than the also excellent Raising Sand, it’s tailored for the barren beauty of the Cat and Fiddle road drive

even when you can’t see shit:

Cat and Fiddle fog all around

And it’s those opening two tracks that do the business here. The gentle desert shuffle of Quattro (World Drifts In) reveals an existential reckoning while The Price of Love slows the beat to countrified lilt dripping with lyrical truths of love ended. You don’t need to know the Calexico and Everly Brothers originals to feel something but, as we said with Midwife, dusty Americana works in conditions that elevate the remote. It’s the very opposite of urban. And in the hands of Plant and Krauss, these songs touch on the devotional. They did for this drive.

But I guess I would say that.

[if you missed the link above or are just confused by the music words and fog picture combo you fell into, here’s the background to this music-as-soundtrack thread]