Seemingly available digitally for the past two months Zone now arrives in a physical form.

11 albums in 15 years is no mean feat and probably enough to lay some heavy stress on many an artist but the Orrall bothers (Jamin – drums, Jake – Guitar & vocals) successfully set their own pace so it’s plain sailing at every turn. Indeed they appear to manage an enviable work/life balance at home in Nashville when not recording or on the road and were one of the event highlights when caught live at Incubate last year.

Zone makes up the final part of the trilogy started on 2009 release Heavy Days and continued in 2011 with We Are The Champions. Its dozen songs (all succinct single word titles) transport you further down the spiritual road set out upon by its predecessors.

The opening (& titular) track is a bit of a pounding plodder, setting the scene that its central figure is in the zone through being “too fuckin’ stoned to know the difference between a good time an’ stayin’ home”. Funkadelic come to mind. Thankfully ‘Energy’ lives up to its name, at least in the Dinosaur Jr.-like bursts of distortion and expressive vocals which make up the bulk of the track.

Things kick fully into gear on ‘Punishment’ – a song whose distorted solo passage and the driving rhythm beneath it conjure up thoughts of ZZ Top. That driving pace is maintained on the short but sweet ‘Juice’, by which time you know you have a seriously rocking record on your hands.

Summer themes (‘Idiot’) in a Weezer fashion and all manner of other good, less than serious, stuff follows on to make up the second half of the album, rounding out a pleasingly listenable and well balanced piece of work, yet one with more depth to be found with each listen.

Zone is available from amazon & iTunes.

We like an urban festival here at Musos’ Guide so when a new one turns up practically on the doorstep it’s only fair to head West and see what’s going down. Freakender (the branchild of Fuzzkill records, Eyes Wide Open & El Rancho records)took over Glasgow’s The Old Hairdressers for two nights and a day & played host to 20+ international acts for barely noticeable ticket prices.

The overall organisation was spot-on and sound-wise you could only quibble about a couple of acts suffering less than clear vocals over the course of the event. Friday’s programming was possibly a bit unfortunate in that the melodic but also punchy at times Home Slice and the spiky afrobeat of Rapid Tan fired folk up but were followed by the slower paced The Pooches, Wedding and Spinning Coin thereby giving a bit of anti-climax (although that shouldn’t be read as comment on the latter acts’ actual performances, all of which were roundly and rightly applauded).

Saturday afternoon brought a 3pm start and the introduction of bands on the building’s ground floor. Mercifully the possible crowd congestion from folk moving en masse between the two performance spaces never seemed to materialise so it was possible to easily enjoy the propulsive Electric Gardens, Domiciles (think pre-disco Tame Impala), the jazz leanings of Lylo & the jazz fusion of Velvet Morning, Virgin Kids debuting a couple of new tracks, The Bellybuttons packing out the upstairs hall with Thee MVPs being similarly popular immediately after downstairs.

Fruit Tones brought a good dose of levity to the start of the latter part of the day whilst Feels were an absorbing example of music as scream therapy. Last on downstairs were the ever excellent Breakfast Muff, displaying it seemed a newer & more mature version of themselves. The Cosmic Dead crowned the whole thing off with a return home after 8 weeks of touring and theirs was the full-on, organised chaos and all round towering madness that you would expect from a band that remain one of the most exciting in the world today.

Confession time – due to tiredness and lack of ideas on how to fill the time (we know there’s plenty to do, just nowt appealed) until the Sunday night performances we bugged out early so apologies to the acts not covered here. We certainly though hope the event was a success as all involved can be deservedly proud of the results of their efforts & a return in 2017 is only just.