This is the goods, one man creating some musical magic. Treat yourself (the jaw-dropping awesomeness begins around a minute in):

You can put some well-deserved money in the artist's pocket at his website, where you can download mp3 tracks at the price you think it deserves. Not sure I have *that* much money though...

Prog-metal band Mastodon's 2009 album Crack the Skye is a classic - created with a solid backbone of extended riff-a-thons, and decorated with lyrics laced with mysticism and mystery, it's one of my favourite albums of the past few years. Their new album, The Hunter, is due for release on September 27 - but to whet our appetites they've released the entire thing for free on YouTube a week early! So, for those that want some fresh music playing while they work today, here it is:

There are some sweet visualisations to some of those songs by the way, if you've got the time to watch while you listen. Don't forget to pick up the official album release when it becomes available next week, for the complete listening experience.

A short musical interlude before diving into a new week of Grailing: Keith Medley, Ancestors, on a 27-string guitar that he designed and built himself...

More about Keith Medley here.

Farewell to Gary Moore, one of my favourite ever guitarists - dead at 58. Here he is doing Hendrix's "Red House", live at Wembley. Oh that vibrato...

May he be chatting to Jimi and SRV as we speak.

Musical genius Frank Zappa would have turned 70 today. Here's a fun little song he wrote about fake gurus, "Cosmik Debris", performed live in 1974:

Happy Birthday Frank!

Prog and ambient music lovers rejoice: yesterday saw the release of the latest album from The Orb, Metallic Spheres, which features the genius of David Gilmour of Pink Floyd on guitar. Here's some 'behind-the-scenes' footage of the recording process:

Gilmour's contribution to Metallic Spheres comes forty years after this hour-long Pink Floyd performance for San Francisco public TV Station KQED in 1970 - the man has been making great music for a long, long time.

Yes, I am a Gilmour fan. Amazing guitarist and songwriter.

Very sad to note that one of the best rock/metal bands on the planet, ISIS, are calling it a day. From their blog:

ISIS has reached an end. It's hard to try to say it in any delicate way, and it is a truth that is best spoken plainly. This end isn't something that occurred over night and it hasn't been brought about by a single cataclysmic fracture in the band. Simply put, ISIS has done everything we wanted to do, said everything we wanted to say. In the interest of preserving the love we have of this band, for each other, for the music made and for all the people who have continually supported us, it is time to bring it to a close.

While I applaud the reasoning, there's a selfish part of me that thinks we need all the bands like ISIS we can get, to make up for the mountain of crap, plastic music out there. I personally believe that their most recent release, Wavering Radiant, was the best hard rock/metal album of the past decade (only Tool's Ænima stands as tall in my collection). While certainly extremely heavy, with repeated listens its beauty and subtleties become apparent, and there are numerous moments throughout the album that I can only describe as transcendent.

Needless to say, I'm gutted to think there'll be no more. At least they leave an inspiring back-catalogue of music to enjoy - anyone who appreciates good music would do well to take their time in listening to ISIS's albums. In 'memoriam', here's a taste from Wavering Radiant, the epic "20 Minutes/ 40 years":

About 6 minutes in is one of those transcendent moments I mentioned. Thanks for the music ISIS.

A weekend distraction - the excellent music video for the first single from Massive Attack's latest album Heligoland: "Splitting the Atom". Watch it all the way through for the full effect...

Samples from the rest of the album are available on Amazon. Massive Attack produce some wonderful albums, worth getting into.

For all the music-lovers out there, a glimpse of two of the best drummers around, playing together: Brann Dailor from Mastodon and Danny Carey from Tool at last week's Guitar Center Drum Off:

Massive.

Tonight I've posted my Darklore Volume 2 article "Occult Rock" here on TDG. Let's have some fun with the topic and do a poll on the band out there with the most occult/esoteric vibe to it - so who are the contenders? Tool definitely, perhaps Mastodon, probably The Tea Party. Coming from a more psychedelic-esoterica angle, Shpongle? Post a comment and let me know who you think should be on the poll, and then I'll add it to the site.