ANANDA MIDA – LIVE AT DUNA JAM
On June 20th, 2023, Ananda Mira performed at Duna Jam, Italy’s stoner festival. The sun was setting, and there were sandstorms across the coast.
In that context, their laid-back, warm, psychedelic blues would have made perfect sense.
With German stoner king Conny Ochs on vocals, “Swamp Thing” is the least swampy thing ever. “Blank Stare” injects energy, but there’s no doubting the centerpiece of this. “Doom And The Medicine Man” is like a journey in itself, and around part 6, Ochs sounds very much like Jeff Buckley.
“Lunia (Ear, Scolaro, Leonardi)” rumbles on. and rattles its way through, and maybe the trip gets a bit nightmarish at this point, but tune in, turn on, and drop out to this. If it washes over you, then it can take you to many different places.
Rating: 7/10
PALACE: RECKLESS HEART
The key to “Reckless Heart” comes right in the middle of this.
“Back to ’85” is all you need to know. I’ve just watched the new Beverly Hills Cop on Netflix, and this could have been on the original soundtrack.
We shouldn’t be surprised, though. Lithuanian-born Swedish artist Michael Palace has been doing this stuff for years, and he reckons this is the album he’s been after all that time.
Put simply, if you like AOR, you’ll like this. The title track is like the ’90s never happened, and that’s a compliment.
Keyboards parp, and harmonies are stacked as high as you like, and that’s true throughout, not just “The Widow’s Web”.
If “Girl Is an Angel” were any more ’80s, it’d be wearing shoulder pads, and of course, “You Give Me a Reason to Live” is a ballad. “Stronger By The Day” is so steeped in the past that it takes me back to school discos, and it’s pleasing as a huge FM fan to hear their influence extending to “Turn This Car Around”. It’s not a cover, but Palace simply must have named the song as a homage.
The whole record feels like that, to be fair. A new take on the thing that Michael Palace loves most of all.
Rating: 7/10
SPEKTRA – HYPNOTIZED
Brazil’s Spektra are back with their second album, and as soon as “Freefall” races into view, it’s immediately clear that it’s the type of classy hard rock that its label, Frontiers, is famed for.
Singer BJ has played with Jeff Scott Soto for years, but Leo Manchini’s guitar is a class above, giving “Taste Of Heaven” a Winger-ish vibe.
The ballads are best showcased by “My Voice For You,” and when “Against The Wind” soars, it soars high.
“Our Time Is Now” is the type of thing you imagine will be a cover, so certain are you that you have heard it before, and FM thought they’d cornered the market with the likes of the title track.
The last one, “Different Me Outside,” could be on a soundtrack, but it lacks the bombast of the rest. Gently making its point, but that’s not a vibe that Spektra often searches for, and before the end, it explodes one last time.
Spektra means business here, and “Hypnotized” is quite the progression.
Rating: 8/10
