Film and television composer Nashaat Salman has concocted a sensuous blend of world music and electronica on his latest EP Universal Melodies Vol. 1. With study of orchestration and film scoring at Boston’s eminent Berklee College of Music under his belt, the Swiss artist has been composing music for radio, television and other multimedia for over two decades.

Universal Melodies sees Salman indulge in an exotic soundscape. Having composed, produced, orchestrated, arranged and played all instruments himself, this record is Salman’s own playground for experimentation. However, he hasn’t let these tunes stray into the avant garde, a tempting idea for many composers with full control of their music. Instead, this short and sweet three-track EP serves as a soothing easy-listener, resulting from Salman writing in the vein of accessibility.

Opening track, ‘Summer Night Joy’ enlists a Spanish guitar alongside lively horns and a string section to create a Latin-influenced number, one that bops along at an infectious, upbeat tempo. The track’s latter half introduces a sexily smooth saxophone to the mix before ending with plinking keys. Salman’s musical palette is full of variety and demonstrates his borderline virtuosic ability to not only work with a plethora of different instruments, but also to blend them together with cohesive finesse. ‘Dancing Star’ leans more on the electronica side, adorned with strings and sitars to create an Eastern vibe, before segueing into final track, ‘Chasing’, a synthesizer and keyboard-heavy number which offers up Salman’s most Western sound on the record. 

Universal Melodies is the kind of record that deserves a few listens before you take a final opinion about it. Not to be dismissed as bland instrumental music, there are some beautiful melodies interwoven in these tracks and Universal Melodies is one entrancing compilation.

Universal Melodies Vol. 1 is available from iTunes.

If you were to ask Sean Sennett (The Incredible Strand) on how he and Rob Hirst (Midnight Oil) got together to collaborate on their forthcoming debut album, Crashing The Same Car Twice, you are likely to be told about how they “…met 100 years ago on a mountain”. It’s a sentiment that substantiates the album distinctively with its ‘let’s move on, plug in and play’ perspective.

He’s telling us that it doesn’t matter. What does, is that when you give Crashing The Same Car Twice the once over and Hirst elects for an “Okay” instead of a count, we’re off into a two-noted, distorted, guitar riff bass drive on opener and lead single ‘When The Darkness Comes’ and immediately the tempo for the whole album is set.

This is an album that employs a lot of old school '60s styles that sparked the rise of garage rock and a helping of newer techniques that led to the genres revival in the late eighties, early nineties before The Strokes, The Hives & The White Stripes commercialised it for the more recent times.

Radio Birdman’s Deniz Tek joins the collaboration on second track ‘Call To Arms’. Hirst’s drum stomp sets an ardent pace and his patterns that follow from the stomp give rise to a well crafted track that gel dominant guitar melodies and vocal harmonies.

‘Who’s Sorry Now?’ seems to brood over a bitter relationship and the title line is vocally delivered in a Bowie-esque manner. It’s by no means a Bowie song though, as the verses are driven along by palm-muted guitars before breaking the restraint with an outpouring of melody to change the song up.

For the most part, the album is musically uncomplicated and simply melodic. The record's title track exemplifies that in a way that would convey comparisons to proto-punk rockers The Saints, albeit with Sennett & Hirst being a touch more refined but still tough and impassioned.

They also don’t like to overdo things either. Their lead single clocks in at just less than two minutes. It could have looped around to the four minute mark and it would have still been a great track because it does leave you wanting more. ‘The Thing That Gets Me Down Is The Boredom’ is just over two, but there is a sense that when it’s done it’s done and they're moving on.

Religion and war are the topics in question on ‘White Phosphor Fireworks’. A track that benefits from its '60s jangle and chime approach that floats somewhere between The Byrds and The Yardbirds. It’s the approach that breaks up the brutish ‘Beautiful Girl (She Sleeps On Her Breath)’ and takes it to the brink of a more psychedelic sound.

‘Jane Asher Said’, an ode to a lady who famously kicked Paul McCartney in the can publicly on T.V, is another of the album highlights. The mix of drums, bass and guitar instantly grab your attention and although the track is about one man’s crushed heart, it’s hard not to crack a wry smile until the song comes to a close with an improvised heartbeat monitor that was lurking in the background as Sennett sings “In her heart you meaning nothing”.

What the duo have delivered on, however they got together, is a great garage rock album, where Hirst’s hybrid pub rock drum kit with '70s Drouyn toms and Sennett’s trusty Telecaster through some vintage amp will be welcomed in pubs and venues alike, and whilst it may not be considered the most vital album of its genre, it certainly isn’t lacking vitality.

Crashing The Same Car Twice is available from amazon and iTunes (Australia).

There is one thing about the new live album, Eleusia Live, recorded in Tottenham by the Medway four-piece Eleusia, which is not greatly similar to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ style: the lyrics. Those of opening track ‘Romance’ stand out and arguably top Anthony Kiedis’ free-flowing, often nonsensical poetry of recent times, if not his better songs of yesteryear. That said, fans of Red Hot Chili Peppers - particularly those who know of the band’s early and mid-nineties output - will love Eleusia’s new release. Almost all of this album sounds infected by Flea and company’s funky workouts and chilled jams, including a cover of ‘Breathe’ by Pink Floyd. That last song is an indication of the only other clear influence on the band: psychedelia, possibly including Jimi Hendrix and/or the weirder moments of Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam, as well as David Gilmour‘s spaced out guitar. There are plenty of sharp, hard riffs and frantic solos to go along with the elongated trippy material, meaning the music bears as much similarity to their main influence’s hit ‘Can’t Stop’ as it does to their 1991 title song ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’.

Just because a band’s style is derivative and thus arguably lacking in creativity - indeed, it would be good to see a more ambitious and eclectic melting pot of music - that does not necessarily mean that the musicianship on display is not as good as that of a more “original” band (if such a thing as true originality in music exists). While it would be harsh to dismiss Eleusia as a group that are “ripping off” the Chili Peppers, this band’s ability is so great that one could say they have, on this live album, created a fitting tribute to the funk-rock giant’s legacy. More importantly, they have made a collection of engaging, skillful, and at times, all-engulfing songs in an age of musical monotony.

Lou Reed's 1973 album, Berlin, is a concept album which chronicles the tumultuous relationship between two lovers against a highly orchestrated and emotionally evocative musical backdrop. It's the musical equivalent of a John Cassavetes film and regularly appears in serious critic's all-time great lists.

The fantastical lyrics and string bending riffs of Kadavar's third album, Berlin, pretty much guarantee it's exclusion from any critics end of year list. And those lists will be poorer for its absence.

From the opening bars, Berlin packs the type of riffs that punch you in the gut, make your pelvis thrust and your neck pop. It's impossible to hear it and not think of Black Sabbath's early albums. The similarities are too obvious not to be deliberate. The bass sound which is pure Geezer Butler, the drumming style which owes all to Bill Ward, and even the old school stereo mix all combine to give the full effect of early ‘70s hard rock and metal. Christoph "Lupus" Lindemann's vocals are so like Sabbath's original singer that he sounds more like Ozzy Osborne than the man himself has for 20 years.

There are shades of Led Zeppelin and The Who in the guitars and stoner rock licks that could sit comfortably alongside the likes of Kyuss or Monster Magnet. But one must imagine that for Kadavar, every practice session takes in at least one rendition of ‘Sweet Leaf’ or ‘Never Say Die’.

‘Lord Of The Sky’ opens the record and sets the tone with a lush and sleazy single note riff pattern from Lupus before easing down into the aforementioned gut punching groove. Lupus’ smooth, melodic vocals paint dreamscapes amid the stomping rhythms. ‘Last Living Dinosaur’ and ‘Thousand Miles Away From Home’ are rich in power chord pummelling, vocal hooks, and splashy cymbals.

Berlin is an album of two halves. The first half is a kind of rock 'n' roll jukebox offering straight up rockers and stomping bluesy tunes. The second is more experimental, with the feeling that the band have done the hard work of crowd pleasing and are ready to unleash their progressive, psychedelic side. It gets very ‘Planet Caravan’-y and super trippy. All of which means that listening to the album the whole way through is quite a schizophrenic experience; making it all the more authentically psychedelic.

The band look very much like they sound; all long hair, long beards, and air- guitar faces set to stun. They are barely visible in their promo pics through the thick fug of smoke and you can nearly smell it coming out of the speakers as the record plays. Last year's tour with fellow hard-rockers Wolfmother seems to have spurred the Germans on to new heights. Kadavar have taken the baton from Black Sabbath and run it into new territory. Auf geht's!

Berlin is available from amazon & iTunes.