More music links to come

Rise And Fall Of A Decade are my favourite French band of all. They did immensely elegant ethereal music with synthesized classical sounds and had a very light gothic touch. For great ethereal/dreampop sounds they deserve to be spoken of in the same breath as Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, This Mortal Coil, Chapterhouse, Cranes, Alison’s Halo, Lycia and Trance To The Sun. Sadly the singer died several years ago.
The first 3 albums are pure gold. Not a very great selection of their works on youtube but this is the best thing I could find to represent them...



My favourite King Of Fighters tune, from KOF2001.



My favourite Tiny Tim song.



I just discovered Vajra, a Keiji Haino band with a fascinating vocalist called Kan Mikami.



Ruins made a series of medleys. Firstly this their Prog Rock Medley which contains distinctive parts of 39 prog songs, including some slightly obscure stuff. Check the original page for details on each song referenced.



This is their Classical Medley.

...They also did medleys for Hard Rock, Black Sabbath and Mahavishnu Orchestra.

The first time I ever heard of Art Zoyd is when they did a soundtrack to Nosferatu on the first and only version of the film I have seen. It sounded almost too bizarre but the more I watched, the more the madness started to make sense. They did one for Faust that I have not heard. They are prog/rock in opposition.
I think the song below is one of the most irresistible things I’ve ever heard, gorgeous video but it has been cut short, it looks like it was made for something bigger than a regular music video.



It pleases me to see that people have been kinder to Yes in recent years, I’ve heard nice words from Battles(who have an obvious influence in their first album), Sonic Youth, Mark Eitzel (American Music Club), Keith Levene (Public Image Limited), Todd Rundgren, Ariel Pink and Nobuo Uematsu. Mark Kozelek did a cover in his Red House Painters days.

Stephen Thrower did a really lovely defence of them in an issue of Wire and on his blog he posts a slightly longer version. Some may know him as an alternative film journalist, others may know him from his Cyclobe and Coil music...
Thrower's short Yes tribute