What I’m trying to do with the new album is to come at something from different angles, not like a big New York tenor player or an English eccentric.”The English eccentric reference is important. Ballamy, who is now 36, has long been associated with British jazz’s eccentric-in-chief, Django Bates, with whom he played in big bands Loose Tubes and Delightful Precipice, and also in the small group Human Chain. Despite the remarkable inventiveness of Bates’ writing, and the brilliance of Ballamy’s playing, such was their reliance on genre-parody and musical jokes that it was often difficult to restrain an urge to climb up on stage and beat them about the head.With the new album, though, Ballamy has decided to indulge his abiding interest in melody relatively unironically “I’m really old-fashioned, in a way,” he says “I like hymns and church music and I love melody. There’s just not enough of it in the world, especially as most of the music we hear now is made by machines; melody is essential to life, like garlic in your dinner.”It’s also about finding out what makes you want to continue playing.

A lot of musicians hate making music and a lot of jazz is like stamp-collecting: you know, ‘we’ve got that one already’ People can smell a fake a mile off. Now I’ve started this thing with Dave, the most important thing is to get on with the work.”It’s also important that the work belongs to the artist. Ballamy’s first solo album, the impressive Balloon Man, which came out on Editions EG in 1989 when he was just 25, has been unobtainable for years. He’s looked into buying the master-tapes, but as they now belong to whatever conglomerate currently owns the defunct label’s catalogue, and because the album never recovered its original costs, he can’t get them back without paying far more than they’re worth.The small but perfectly formed Feral, like the whole honourable history of unprofitable jazz artists’ labels that precedes it, looks an ever more attractive proposition. If you want to put pasta in the packaging, you can.’Pepper Street Interludes’ is out now on Feral Records.

The years pass slowly in heavy metal. Whereas most contemporary music is required to assimilate new ideas and modify its sound, this essentially conservative genre has remained locked in a timewarp for decades. It has the advantage of being a source of constant appeal to mutinous adolescents – as one generation grows up and moves on, there is always another waiting inthe wings. And whether it’s Kiss, Ozzy Osbourne or Monster Magnet, the blueprint remains the same: big hair, ghoulish greasepaint and lashings of attitude

The years pass slowly in heavy metal. Whereas most contemporary music is required to assimilate new ideas and modify its sound, this essentially conservative genre has remained locked in a timewarp for decades. It has the advantage of being a source of constant appeal to mutinous adolescents – as one generation grows up and moves on, there is always another waiting inthe wings.

And whether it’s Kiss, Ozzy Osbourne or Monster Magnet, the blueprint remains the same: big hair, ghoulish greasepaint and lashings of attitude.
Alice Cooper, for one, knows his popularity would plummet if he didn’t comply with the formula. Kiss’s attempts to play it straight in the Eighties were, after all, met with a frosty reception. And to be fair, Cooper blazed a lasting trail in the early days, staging wildly theatrical shows the likes of which had never been seen before Nowadays, he can afford simply to relive past glories. If Slipknot and Marilyn Manson are the upstarts of the genre, Cooper is the grand dame whose enthusiasm for playing dress-up is showing no signs of letting up after 30 years.Subtlety has never been part of the heavy-metal vocabulary, though, and if Cooper’s show were any hammier, it would be a side of pork. An elaborate, Gothic-style set comprising an upturned car, a sci-fi pod and fascinating instruments of torture is grandly unveiled.

Before Cooper’s arrival, a disembodied figure warns us to flee before it is too late. The gig has it all: whips, chains, skeletons, girls dressed as nurses, sub-fetishist torturers, even a guillotine. Such shows are less an exercise in nostalgia than part of a 30-year-old tradition, not unlike Thanksgiving or pantomime.Cooper’s classics are wheeled out in all their sing-a-long glory, from “No More Mr Nice Guy” and “Billion Dollar Babies” to “It’s Hot Tonight” and “Poison”. Cooper is a spectacular showman, acting out each song to the last detail.