REVIEWS FROM MY VINYL COLLECTION

Day: February 12, 2022

OZRIC TENTACLES – Jurassic Shift

It’s great to see Ed Wynne going back and remastering all of the early Ozric albums as lot of them were only cassette releases at the time. This has always been one of my favourite albums of theirs, and it sounds even better with this 2020 remaster. If you like groovy and trippy instrumental music with a killer guitar player, then go and empty your wallet at your local record establishment immediately.

I love every micro second of this album, and I’m sure a lot of the tunes are extended jams and improvs. I would have loved to have been in the room when they recorded this. Ed Wynne just rips on the guitar on this album, and he is up there with the best for me. Mix that with ambient and atmospheric keyboards and this is a Prog fans wet dream.

As I have mentioned, I love it all, but Sun Hair, and the title track Jurassic Shift, just melt my face! So good! They have that knack of adding a killer groove that you just can’t ignore. Another one in the every home should have one department.

10/10 from The Grooveman.

VARDIS – 100 M.P.H

One of the reasons I went out and bought this was a review (I think) in Sounds magazine – the headline was “The longest guitar solo in the world”. I think it was a Geoff Barton piece and I seemed to like a lot of things that Geoff reviewed, so money was exchanged.

I have seen the band quite a few times, and they are definitely a Live act as the energy does not come over so much on their studio albums. This was the band’s first release, and to release a Live album as your debut was a brave thing to do, but a stroke of genius. This album is pure stripped down high energy rock and roll with a very punk attitude. Lots of guitar provided by band leader Steve Zodiac, who was obviously a fan of Gerry Anderson’s kids puppet shows with his name taken from the show Fireball XL5.

Being the guitar freak that I am, it’s those tracks with the elongated solos that do it for me like Let’s Go and 100 M.P.H where it’s a solo fest. This is definitely one to shake the dandruff loose.

9/10 from The Grooveman.