King Crimson-Red

King Crimson Red:

If not for John Wetton this might have been the best album ever. Fripp’s guitar playing and composing is at its heaviest, most lyrical, and most direct.  He flirts with metal, Stravinsky and jazz, but still manages to add something that is definitely him to the mix. Bill Bruford’s drumming is tasteful, but  powerful. Its  just Wetton. His lyrics and vocals are terrible, and his bass playing isn’t anything to write home about either. Worth it for the incredibly powerful instrumentals.

Rating: 11/15 Fallen Angels

Faust-Patchwork

Faust Patchwork:

A seemingly randomly edited together mash up of unreleased material ranging from dissonant noise to folk songs. The random editing works for a few tracks, but for an album, it takes away from the potential of an archival Faust release. If there were a couple of tunes that got from the beginning to end without interruption, it would make this release infinitely better.

Rating: 10/15 try not being so weird points

Trey Gunn-Music For Pictures

Trey Gunn Music For Pictures:

Short dark pieces of modern progressive rock. Heavy on droning synthesizers and polyrhythmic electronic percussion, Gunn decorates these pieces with his absurd collection of string instruments, including his beloved bajillion string tapping guitars. An interesting disk of short pieces, but the album suffers for lack of cohesion.

Rating: 11/15 Crimsos

Hawkwind-Electric Teepee

Hawkwind Electric Teepee:

As with most aging progressive rock acts the lure of corny synthesizer sounds and laughable vocoder drenched vocals seems inescapable. Fortunately the couple upbeat rock numbers, are actually quite good, and most of the forays into ambient textures are pretty decent to. Though theres quite a few moments that sound like rejected themes for Dr. Who. I have to hand it to these guys for trying something new, and actually putting together an album thats pretty listenable.

Rating:10/15 Lemmy Kilmisters