New Releases and Albums "In the Works"

There are a few new releases for which I only just recently discovered. First, there's Steve Hackett's Out of the Tunnel's Mouth. Watch a video of Fire on the Moon from that album on YouTube. On a related note, Kim Poor recently launched a blog. It was interesting to find out that Kim was Steve's wife. I knew they had been friends for a long time, but never knew they were married.

Peter Gabriel has released an album called Scratch My Back. It's a covers album in which Peter rearranged a number of popular songs, some new and some old, for orchestra. The album features the voice of Peter and an orchestra. No drums. No guitar. While it is not new material, I think it's worth checking out. The plan is to ultimately have the bands whose songs he covered return the favor with an album called "I'll Scratch Yours".

Although there's no release date yet, Duran Duran has been working on a new album with Mark Ronson. This is quite interesting to me because I've heard some of Mark Ronson's music and was impressed. With Mark's influence, I think the album might sound a little bit like Notorious. It's been roughly 25 years since that album was released and the band has grown a lot since then. So, don't count on it being too reminiscent. I'm just saying that some horn players might be involved.

Next up is a band for which many out there might not be familiar. I referring to the Italian prog rock band called The Watch. They are heavily influenced by 70's prog rock; Peter Gabriel era Genesis in particular. Their 4th studio album, Planet Earth? is slated to be released on February 20. They don't have much of a fan base in the States yet. So, let's show some support for this new talent. From what little I've heard of them thus far, they're a great band. I only just read about this band a few days ago and thought I would share the knowledge.