Boards of Canada	Inferno
Allies	The River
Stuart Copeland	The Rhythmatist
Ike White	Changin’ Times
The Carpenters	The Singles
Boards of Canada	Trans Canada Highway
Mashmakhan	Mashmakhan
Lacy J. Dalton	16th Avenue
Oxbow	Thin White Duke
Ian Gomm	Gomm With The Wind
Modest Mouse	An Eraser and a Maze
Black Midi	Schlagenheim
Richard Wright	Wet Dream

I have had an interesting week of tunes. I started the week re-listening to the new Boards of Canada album, Inferno. I was in love with it on the first listen, a bit less on the second listen, and a bit more than a bit less on the third, but a bit less than the first. It’s a good album overall and does break some new ground for the band. I listened to Trans Canada Highway later in the week to give me some contrast to base my opinion on, and I like where the band has gone on Inferno. There is a definite fresh approach to Inferno, and they are not just rehashing their former sounds. Boards of Canada get a solid 4.5 out of 5 from me for Inferno. As a bonus, I like the nod of appreciation to Canada, where I live. The brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin were brought up in Cullen, Moray, on the northeast coast of Scotland, but from 1979 to 1980, they lived in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, while their father, who worked in construction, helped build the Saddledome, which is being replaced as we speak.

I have seen Stewart Copeland live, and Sting. No Andy Summers, yet. I have a lot of respect for the percussion work of Stewart Copeland. He has an immense knowledge of the science behind percussive sounds and an immense love for making music with those sounds. I will admit that I haven’t listened to Copeland’s back catalogue, but I have listened to The Rhythmatist, and I like it. Following the breakup of The Police, their drummer, Stewart Copeland, undertook a musical odyssey through the heart of Africa in search of the roots of rock & roll. The Rhythmatist, 1985, came out a year before Paul Simon’s amazing exploration of African sounds on Graceland, 1986. The Rhythmatist was a 2026 Record Store Day release and will no doubt be overpriced, meaning I can only listen to it on YouTube Music. I will keep an eye on Record Collectors Paradise to see if any copies pop up; either original or repress is fine with me. I confess, I love bin diving.

Mashmakhan. Be honest. Did you know about this band/album before now? I bought this album in 1970 in Montreal, where the band were living at the time. Mashmakhan debuted with the single “As the Years Go By,” which became a smash hit and was released in an edited form. The single sold 100,000 copies in Canada, 500,000 copies in the United States, and over 1,000,000 copies in Japan. The only number I could find for album sales was “This disc sold over one million copies globally, and received a gold disc.” – https://citizenfreak.com/artists/99111-mashmakhan The album has aged quite well, and I enjoyed the trip down memory lane when I played this album.

Oxbow was an American experimental rock band from San Francisco, California. Founded in 1988, the band released eight studio albums, disbanding in 2024. According to Pitchfork writer Zoe Camp, the album “envision[s] a world domineered by disorder, a carnivalesque arena where music’s most intimidating, grandiose genres (free jazz, high-concept chamber pop, noise, neoclassical, metal) can duke it out like gladiators one minute, and come together for a grotesque group hug the next.

Thin Black Duke by Oxbow was met with critical acclaim upon its release. The album received an average score of 87/100 from 9 reviews on Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim”. In a positive review with The Quietus, Sean Guthrie wrote, “By rights no group should be peaking after 30 years of making music together, yet that is the situation in which Oxbow find themselves. Will they ever transcend Thin Black Duke? Such are the ideas and attention to detail on this record, only a fool would bet against them. Zoe Camp of Pitchfork was positive on the album, but she did not see Thin Black Duke as Oxbow’s “definitive show of force”.

To my ears, Thin Black Duke is an album that lives in the genre of experimental music. Yes, there are elements that Zoe Camp lists in her assessment of the album, but for simplicity’s sake, I will only call it experimental. This is an album that needs more than one listening session. It also works better with focused, attentive listening; there is a lot going on. I enjoy Thin White Duke more each time I listen to it. As a matter of fact, I am going to listen to it again right now.

Ian Gomm, Gomm With The Wind, is a favourite throwback to the golden age of New Wave music. I love it!

Modest Mouse have dropped a new album, An Eraser and a Maze. I generally like Modest Mouse and have a couple of their recordings; Strangers To Ourselves is my favourite. An Eraser and a Maze sounds like Modest Mouse; it has their familiar feel working around the cadence of Isaac Brock’s vocals. It is the band’s first album since the death of founding drummer Jeremiah Green in 2022, and the band’s first to feature new members Simon O’Connor (guitar), Damon Cox (drums) and Keith Karman (keyboards). The new members bring new flavours to Modest Mouse, but the album still retains the familiar sound that longtime fans will recognize. While not straying too far from their tried-and-true sound, the album still offers enough new material to appeal to both new fans and longtime listeners. I think I may have to acquire An Eraser and a Maze on vinyl, since I like it more with each listening session. Good music start to finish.

I saw a video of the song “bmbmbm” and was blown away by Black Midi’s manic energetic performance. I bought the album Schlagenheim, and it has become a regular listen over the years. It has aged well and is a good example of a great debut album. If you want to see Black Midi in performance, I recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc3LSW_XTwI for the song “bmbmbm” (boomboomboom). Unfortunately, the lead guitar for Black Midi, Matthew Antony Kwasniewski-Kelvin, took a sabbatical from the band after the release of Schlagenheim and, in January of this year, passed away from complications related to mental health issues. Apart from the song bmbmbm, the rest of the album is a solid listen.

I ended the week with the album Wet Dreams by keyboardist/vocalist Richard Wright, a co-founder of Pink Floyd. He appeared on almost every Pink Floyd album and performed on all of their tours. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 as a member of Pink Floyd. Wright died from lung cancer at his home in London on 15 September 2008, aged 65. At the time of his death, he had been working on a new solo album, thought to comprise a series of instrumental pieces.

The surviving members of Pink Floyd paid tribute to Wright. Roger Waters said it was “hard to overstate the importance of his musical voice in the Pink Floyd of the 60s and 70s”, and he added that he was happy they had reunited for Live 8. The drummer for Pink Floyd, Nick Mason, said Wright’s contributions were underrated, and that his playing “was the sound that knitted it all together”, comparing his “quiet one” status in the band to George Harrison of the Beatles. David Gilmour called him “my musical partner and my friend” and praised Wright’s ability to blend his voice with Gilmour’s, such as on “Echoes“. Gilmour reiterated that it would be wrong to continue as Pink Floyd without him. In the updated edition of his memoir, Mason wrote that “the distinctive, floating textures and colours [Wright] brought into the mix were absolutely critical to what people recognize as the sound of Pink Floyd … He once summed up his musical philosophy by saying, ‘Technique is so secondary to ideas.’ Many fine keyboard players could and did emulate and recreate his parts, but nobody else, other than Rick, had the ability to create them in the first place.”

Following Barrett’s replacement by David Gilmour, Wright took over some songwriting, but gradually became less involved. His keyboard playing remained an integral part of the band’s live set, particularly on “Interstellar Overdrive“, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” and “Careful with That Axe, Eugene“. He contributed themes for Pink Floyd’s film scores for More, Zabriskie Point and Obscured by Clouds. He made significant contributions to the arrangement of longer compositions such as “Atom Heart Mother, “Echoes” (on which he sang lead vocals with Gilmour) and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond“. On 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, he composed the music for “The Great Gig in the Sky” and “Us and Them“. He also contributed to the composition of tracks such as “Time“, for which he sang lead on the bridge, “Breathe“, and “Any Colour You Like“.

I have the feeling that a lot of fair-weather listeners, who may only be familiar with Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, don’t realize the extent of Wright’s contribution to the band. He wasn’t just the keyboard player; he was an essential part of Pink Floyd and contributed significantly to their success.

While Wet Dreams isn’t my favourite solo album from the members of Pink Floyd, it is still a good recording. Listening to his solo work gives an opportunity to hear his “sound” and to appreciate how good he really was. He had a unique style of keyboard playing and a fine voice. Wet Dreams is a good way to end my listening week.