Various Artists – Album Roundup

This album, originally released in 1989, was for a long time the definitive answer to the question ‘what do Thinking Plague sound like?’ It was ten years before In Extremis presented a new line-up and a changing sound to the record-buying public (sans legendary founder-member Bob Drake) – and let’s face it, bands as daring and un-commercial as this tend to communicate with their audience more by the medium of recordings than by live performance. Cuneiform Records, with whom Thinking Plague have been since that follow-up, characterise this album as the band’s ‘stylistic coming of age’, and that certainly seems a fair …

Present – Triskaïdékaphobie (avant-rock)

If there’s one thing reviewing this album has taught me it’s this: always scroll to the end of the email. When I went back to the message in which this was submitted for review, I discovered that I had also received a link for Present’s second album, Le Poison Qui Rend Fou, which was re-released at the same time. I’ve now downloaded it (thank you, nice people at Cuneiform Records), but I won’t be reviewing it with this one; I probably wouldn’t have done anyway, as that’s not really how I roll. I prefer to concentrate on the sound, and ignore the seminal reputation (or otherwise) of the release; and there is …