The latest releases reviewed

PIERCE TURNER The Song for the Year hankwicklow.com ****

Turner is one of those musicians who has a fervent fan base but has never really crossed over to big mainstream success, despite such acclaimed albums as Now Is Heaven.

Fan and film director Colin Murnane followed Turner around for a year to make this DVD, and the result is beautifully engaging piece of work that gets into places other similar biog- style DVDS can't manage.

From Wexford and now based in New York, Turner is filmed recording his new album in Woodstock and then going on to what can only be described as a tour of Irish front rooms.

This is all the more fascinating for avoiding the usual cliches of music film- making, presenting instead a detailed work that is much is keeping with Turner's own approach to music. - BRIAN BOYD

JOHN MAYALL Live from Austin Texas New West ***

Once a bluesman, always a bluesman? Cheshire's John Mayall was, for a time in the 1960s, mentor to the likes of Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor.

But he tired of running (via his band, The Bluesbreakers) what was effectively a finishing school for ambitious young blues guitarists, so he upped sticks and relocated to America.

Mayall remains something of a blues legend, and this recording of a live show from 1993 sees him in fine form, a 60 year old jamming with the best of them and still ripping out rippling guitar solos.

There isn't much to say about the performance (Mayall is hardly a dynamic showman), but the music (culled mostly from his 1993 album, Wake Up Call) is streamlined, classy blues.

No extras. www.livefromaustintx.com  - TONY CLAYTON-LEA