Music Monday: Gary Stadler

The Wordless Wednesday post on fairy gardens that I made a couple of weeks ago has been surprisingly popular with random readers, so here’s a bit of follow-up. Gary Stadler is a faery composer if there has ever been one.

Wordless Wednesday: Saxton Freymann’s Food Art

Wordless Wednesday: Ephemera

Music Monday: Old feeling, new beginning

I know purists pull out their hair over the treatment that early music gets from groups like these, but as far as I’m concerned, purists can get over themselves.

Music Monday: Dream Theater side projects

I’m on a major progmetal kick at the moment – it happens once or twice a year, though there’s no knowing which bands I’ll plumb for each time. Last time I couldn’t get enough of Fates Warning and Shadow Gallery. This time I gravitated towards Dream Theater, then swerved aside to bypass the main band in favour of their side jobs.

The most famous/successful one is arguably Liquid Tension Experiment, which includes Mike Portnoy, John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess (who wasn’t with DT at the time, but joined later, the success of LTE acting as incentive). Transatlantic is Portnoy again, banding up with friends from other bands, while MullMuzzler is in fact James LaBrie, before he was allowed to record solo under his own name. For some reason, none of those side projects gets as pompous as DT could be. Must be the balancing influence of other people.

Wordless Wednesday: Butterfly Soul

Music Monday: Loreena McKennitt

At the time when this goes up, I will be roaming around Saltburn and its environs (if weather permits). It’s glorious this time of year, so I can only leave you with an exhilarating piece of music clothed in glorious images.