BURNING TREE ‘S/T’
TAKING THEIR cue from late sixties Blues boomers such as Cream, Mountain and the Jimi Hendrix Experience Burning Tree cooked up a musical soup by showboating a number of golden elements, including hard rock, psych, soul and blues.
The power trio approach was, for the era, something of an exception, and focused the spotlight not on outrageous antics but squarely on the music. Marc Ford’s guitar work was pivotal to the band’s sound; a sinewy stylist with a carefully executed sound that placed the emphasis not on how many notes he could squeeze into each track but more on how much space he could leave for the song to breathe. No wonder the Black Crowes snapped him up immediately after Burning Tree’s demise. Four bonus tracks.
CIRCUS OF POWER ‘VICES’
DURING THE late 1980s New York played host to a number of crucial hard rock contenders, including the Throbs, Smashed Gladys, Raging Slab and, of course, Circus Of Power. The latter’s debut album, although failing to set the charts on fire, had blown the proverbial roof off with its brazen mix of low-slung guitar worship and a surly attitude to rival the best of West Coast rivals Guns ‘N’ Roses.
Produced, like the debut album, by Daniel Rey and titled ‘Vices’ (for obvious reasons), Circus Of Power’s sophomore release is finely hewn from a similar block of tough granite. Big riffs peppered with throat ripping vocals atop huge blasts of guitar are the order of the day, all expertly inserted into some of the most combustible songs the band ever penned. Five bonus tracks.
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