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Making a DIY album if you’re an aspiring singer-songwriter or a new band is one thing, making a DIY album of 80s-style melodic hard rock that’s fit for radio is something else.

Yet David Arthur has fashioned just the kind of glossy-sounding record that, back in the day, used to require a lavishly appointed studio and a team of expensive producers and engineers.

It would still be a futile exercise if the songs weren’t good enough. But Arthur’s apprenticeship with producer Chris Tsangarides (Priest, Lizzy, Ozzy) has served him well, and there are at least five tracks on Making Legends that should tickle the taste buds of AOR radio programmers.

On top of that he’s a gifted, inventive guitarist. Definitely worth checking out.

Classic Rock 215: New Albums A-G

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Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.