"Twilight in the crystal cabinet", My Brother the Wind's purported "live improv album" commences with "Karmagrinder", a ten-and-a-half minute psychedelic workshop that, with its silky electric guitar swoops and jazzy, repetitive, two-chord exploration, suggests a sonic cross-breeding of Pink Floyd's "Breathe" (albeit with some extra prog juice in the rhythm section and a tad more noise) and Talk Talk's majestic "The rainbow". It's entirely too long, but it works, pummeling the listener into a dizzy, euphoric numbness. Ditto the title track, a chilling exercise in moody atmosphere, maneuvering heavily effected guitars over mallet-grazed toms (and little else). Luckily, it's not all endless texture -- the brief, atonal "Precious sanity" whirs by in under two minutes, surging with a borderline-frightening King Crimson-esque hubris. Formed as a quasi Swedish prog supergroup (with members of Anekdoten, Makajodama and Magnolia), My Brother the Wind certainly has an excess of technical skill (and, obviously, all the right reference points). While their debut might be a tad aimless in stretches, it certainly suggests plenty of reasons to keep listening -- perhaps a bit of studio discipline next time out will foster a more fully realized sophomore epic. - Ryan Reed
Here's the playlist for this week's radio show Sirius XMU:
01. Håkan Hellström - Kann ingen sorg för mig Göteborg
02. TALK 1
03. Enforcer - Katana
04. Existensminimum - 1993
05. Ludwig Bell - Kärlek slutar alltid med bråk
06. TALK 2
07. Karla-Therese Kjellvander & The Rockridge Brothers - New season
08. Lapko - Summer nights
09. CEO - No mercy
10. Night Minutes - Lord I can never be your mirror
11. TALK 3
12. Dungen - Marken låg stille
13. My Brother the Wind - Electric universe
14. Rigas den Andre - W.A.S.P. (R2 remix)
15. TALK 4
16. Waklevören - Oslo spy
17. Okkultokrati - Tail of the snakewind
18. Haust - Vomiting
19. TALK 5
Reminder: my show airs every week on Sundays and Mondays at 11pm ET on Sirius XMU. That's channel 26 on Sirius, 43 on XM and 831 for DirecTV subscribers.
01. Kent - En plats i solen
02. Robyn - Body talk pt.1
03. Lasse Stefanz - Texas
04. Meduza Eddie - Rockabilly rebel
05. Timoteij - Längtan
06. Kalle Mmoraeus - Underbart
07. Eric Saade - Masquerade
08. Håkan Hellström - Samlade singlar 2000-2010
09. Oskar Linnros - Vilja bli
10. Anna Bergendahl - Yours sincerely
11. Lisa Nilsson - 20 - En jubileumssamling
12. Sabaton - Coat of arms
13. Melissa Horn - Säg ingenting till mig
14. Erik Grönwall - Somewhere between a rock and a hard place
15. The Ark - In full regalia
16. Emmy & Ella - Emmy & Ella
17. Salem al Fakir - Ignore this
18. My Brother the Wind - Twilight in the crystal cabinet
19. Titanix - Drömmar får liv
20. Kent - Röd
Members from the Swedish prog acts Anekdoten, Makajodama and Magnolia have formed a new band called My Brother the Wind. The band recently recorded a six-track live improv album called "Twilight in the crystal cabinet" which will be released via in May. More info and samples at myspace: http://www.myspace.com/mybrotherthewind
My Brother the Wind