Table of contents for Issue 111 in Prog

Hello, and welcome to the new issue of Prog. As I write this, we’ve just passed the halfway point of the year. To say it’s been a strange one so far would be something of an understatement. Three months of anticipation slowly building for what 2020 had in store and then, wallop! The rug was well and truly whipped out from under our feet! Sometimes it’s difficult to take stock of what’s going on with new developments flying at us thick and fast. On the other hand, lockdown has given us all plenty of time to ruminate. Sometimes too much time. But music is a great leveller. And despite much of our everyday lives suffering severe disruption, we have the music of our past to keep us company, and music…

The Genesis article, Taking it All Too Hard [Prog 109], perhaps misses the main point about the disappointment many have felt about the upcoming reunion tour. It’s wonderful that Genesis are back on the road, but I am one of the many who was simply unable to obtain tickets, and the band must bear some responsibility for this. I was poised at the very moment tickets went on sale only to find, after waiting patiently in an online queue, that none were available. I tried several times, and indeed several different dates, only to find the same result. All of my Genesis-loving friends and family had the same dispiriting experience. Yet, within an hour, to my anger and dismay, tickets were appearing on fan resale sites at madly inflated prices.…

The Contortionist’s vocalist Michael Lessard has prepared a series of solo single releases, which recently started with the launch of Use The Rest. He doesn’t have any large-scale ambition with the songs and videos to come via Good Fight Music, but he hopes people will enjoy them as much as he’s enjoying the change of creative environment. “The Contortionist is very much a collaborative effort,” says Lessard. “Being able to have something that is 100 per cent my vision, unswayed, is a welcome change.” He believes listeners will detect a different style of writing in his solo work. “My main focus is on making the instrumentation and production play a supporting role to strengthen the lyrics and vocals,” he explains. “In The Contortionist, sometimes the vocals take a backseat to…

“Pigs is a fairly compa ssionate scream of abuse. If you can scream abuse in a compassionate way.” Roger Waters It was 1976 and Pink Floyd were a band on the brink of cultural obsolescence. In the wake of Wish You Were Here, the tills had kept ringing, but when John Lydon – recently rechristened Johnny Rotten – skulked across London that year in his mythologised ‘I hate Pink Floyd’ T-shirt, it caught the sentiment of British youth for whom the quartet were millionaire windbags, cosseted from life at the sharp end and representing all that punk had come to tear down. Ironic, then, that even as the new guard bayed for their blood, Pink Floyd were busy recording an album of such anti-establishment malice that it would make the…

Commotions NADGERS French three-piece set the intensity dials to maximum. Unfettered abandon and micro-dynamic vision charge the psychedelic jazzliberated onslaughts unleashed on this second album from Paris-based Baron Crâne, whose mission is to push the power trio format to maximum limits. Guitarist-leader Léo Pinon is joined by bassist Olivier Pain and drummer Léo Goize, plus guest vocalists, on five lengthy tracks that combine rare dexterity and refreshing lack of restraint. It evokes a range of early 70s outfits such as Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Grand Funk and even Magma. After Firmin’s darkly dramatic, light-and-shade instrumental churn sets the energy levels to stun, Acid Rains uncorks colossal block chord carnage after its eerie pulsing opening build-up topped with Arthur Brossard’s desolate, alternative rock vocal. Closing Doors invokes rapid John McLaughlin-style time signature…

Once Upon A Time STEAMHAMMER/SPV Articulate prog-pop from chameleonic Germans. German trio Cryptex aren’t an easy band to categorise. Their sound draws from the same wellspring as Nightwish, yet they also nod towards the heritage of Supertramp and ELO, offering intelligent pop bliss played with the acuity of prog masters Once Upon A Time, their third album, is laced with lustrous melodies without ever blossoming into over-indulgence. Because The Reason Is You and Body Language provide keyboard player Simon Moskon ample opportunity to display his orchestral ambitions and give his smooth vocals a chance to shine. Haunted is the closest Cryptex come to replicating the quirkiness of Supertramp during the Crisis? What Crisis? era, while Reptiles brings to mind Uriah Heep circa Demons And Wizards, featuring dramatic guitar playing from…

Homebound NEW JOKE MUSIC Rustic odes from former Pain Of Salvation bassist. Kristoffer Gildenlöw has spent the best part of the last decade proving himself an evocative songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. Homebound, the ex-Pain Of Salvation bassist’s fourth album under his own name, squashes any lingering doubts about those abilities. Eternal introduces the record with a mix of sounds from nature and evocative strings, ushering in the acoustic arpeggios and smoky verses of Holy Ground. It’s an atmosphere that Gildenlöw maintains until the end, with occasional backing harmonies fleshing out Like Father, Like Son and You Need Not Stay (Away). His take on Leonard Cohen’s stark ode to failed romance Chelsea Hotel #2 is right at home in this company. But that minimalism sometimes counts against Homebound. Infected and Snow…

Frankfurt ’86 MANIFESTO Late guitar visionary’s live set sparkles with fretboard brilliance. Allan Holdsworth’s death in 2017 robbed music of a true innovator. Stints with Ian Carr, Tempest, Soft Machine, Tony Williams, Bruford, and UK showcased a fiery and unconventional approach that acted as a musical accelerant wherever it was applied. This live set with bassist Jimmy Johnson, keyboardist Kei Akagi and Gary Husband on drums explores his extensive 80s catalogue. Spacious and loose-limbed, the tunes and themes perfectly suit Holdsworth’s legato technique and elastic tone. Bending scales and harmonies into impossible shapes his output as a composer is formidable. The dense intensity of his writing and work isn’t always easy to digest but it’s worth the effort, rewarding with scintillating layers of passion and complexity. Those often jaw-dropping imaginative…

How Do We Want To Live? INSIDEOUT Floyd-like concept sprawl from German experimentalists. Stalwarts of the European instrumental scene, German rockers Long Distance Calling return with their first concept album, a sprawling attempt to grapple with the implications of exponential technological progress. While thematically it doesn’t quite work, instrumentally it’s a coherent and compelling record. Sonically it’s a change of gear from 2018’s Boundless. Though some of the darkness and melancholy of that album remains, there’s more bombast and a sense of scale to How Do We Want To Live? that’s beyond even their past ambitious efforts. LDC clearly want this to be their version of The Wall, and tie the narrative together primarily using canned samples (including one quite cheesy clip from The Matrix). But the Floyd comparisons go…

Karmatrain AAA Sprawling conceptual debut from Auckland five-piece. It says something about Outside In’s headspace that the starting point for their first album was Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, a philosophical tract no selfrespecting hippy would be seen without as the 60s bloomed. Perhaps even more tellingly, Hesse’s meditation on the path to enlightenment and self-discovery was singer Mikey Brown’s holiday reading. It comes as little surprise that Karmatrain, though clearly in thrall to A Perfect Circle and Karnivool, isn’t afraid to let its freak flag fly with occasional blooms of harmony that recall the cool notes of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Like the curate’s egg, it’s good in parts. Though in fairness, when Outside In are good, they are very good: full of verve and promise on the colourful and spiralling…

Short-Haired Domestic CALCIUM CHLORIDE Talk Talk producer’s avant-pop pleasures. Here’s a novel concept: nine different songs sung in nine different languages including Latin, Yoruba, and Hindi, with each one revelling in splendidly literal titles such as A Song In Japanese About Trying Things Out Before Committing and A Song In Spanish Addressed To Men Who Drive Big Cars. The brainchild of Talk Talk associate Tim Friese-Greene and partner Lee, whose previous credits include Sidi Bou Said, this collection of short engaging tunes is built upon chunky breakbeat loops, growling synth bass and clipped scratchy guitar, whose time and place pulsates with a saturated, retro-90s vibe. For the most part mesmeric and jaunty, it’s a lusciously detailed album whose glittering lustre stands in stark contrast to the darker cogitations of Tim’s…

Live At The Baked Potato DYAD/PROPER MUSIC Full strength 21st century Softs blow hard. The Soft Machine reunion has been one of the most delightful musical events of recent times. After years of various amalgamations of the group’s myriad line-ups, bassist Roy Babbington, guitarist John Etheridge, drummer John Marshall and reedsman Theo Travis reclaimed the brand name and, in 2018, delivered the album, Hidden Details. It was extremely audacious and gave the band something to hang their impressive live performances around. Recorded at the legendary Los Angeles jazz club in February 2019, Live At The Baked Potato is a testament to their musical muscularity. Hazard Profile Part One (from 1975’s Bundles) demonstrates just how far jazz-prog can go, Hidden Details scorches just as it did in its studio incarnation, and…

Bestie, Uomini E Dèi AMS Italian prog merchants’ bellissimo epic. Marking their 20th anniversary with only their fourth album, Milanese five-piece Ubi Maior have crafted an emotionally-charged Italian prog masterclass to join classics made over the years by names such as PFM, Le Orme and Goblin. After the extended panoramas of 2014’s Incanti Bio Meccanici, the band have forged a more compact six-song theatrical concept work inspired by dark mythological figures, monsters and alien creatures (the title translates as Beasts, Men and Gods). Ubi Maior’s densely layered sound is bolstered by a rare maturity and depth born from the experience of playing together encumbered by only two personnel changes in more than 20 years. Cloaked in dramatic, relentlessly dynamic backdrops, singer/multi-instrumentalist Mario Moi sings in Italian but his operatic range…

Swiss quartet Marhold hit the Top 10 in their home country back in June with their high-quality, selfreleased debut album A Homemade World, which deserves to bring them to broader notice. Taking humankind’s place in the natural world as its theme, the record’s packed with strong, crunchy songs, and singer/violinist Aleksandra Poraszka is a natural, charismatic performer who fully commits to the Marhold cause. Ones to watch for sure. Formed in 2001, Alter3go are a five-piece prog metal outfit from Barcelona. Their second selfreleased album, The Effect Of Light offers plainer, less intricate fare than their heroes Dream Theater, but they’re worth Spotifying if you’re partial to spirited, melody-centric metal and ersatz Vai guitar histrionics. With a register akin to Agent Fresco’s Arnór Dan Arnarson, vocalist Guillem Mitchel adds some…

Maid In Ireland: The Best Of Fruupp ESOTERIC Short-lived mid-70s second stringers get their day in the sun. During the early 1970s, the UK gig circuit bustled with bands like Fruupp: solidly enthusiastic groups who commanded small, devoted followings but were eventually swept away by punk’s tsunami. This nine-track compilation, put together by lyricist/manager Paul Charles, shines a light on them nearly 45 years after they split. Named after the female ghost that haunted their rehearsal room (often pronounced as a strident belch), Fruupp were formed by Belfast songwriterguitarist Vincent McCusker in 1971 to perform the songs he’d been writing, some with lyricist Paul Charles. McCusker recruited singer-bassist Pete Farrelly, keyboardist Stephen Houston (replaced in ’75 by John Mason) and drummer Martin Foye. passages, the likes of the acrobatic Graveyard…

ENCOURAGING SOUNDS Thank you for producing Prog monthly. I grew up listening to (among others): Pink Floyd, Family, Captain Beefheart and The Grateful Dead (brilliant at Bickershaw) and, until reading Prog, did not realise that there were completely new bands developing this type of music. Since reading your reviews my life has been enriched by listening to the wonderful Blackheart Orchestra, unfortunately missed in Guildford due to the lockdown. Also Mostly Autumn’s excellent Sight Of Day and White Rainbow made me realise that progressive music is alive and well. Thanks so much for your role in encouraging this. James Whitehouse, via email THE SPICE OF LIFE I enjoyed your recent article presenting your thoughts on those albums that advanced progressive music over the last 50 or so years [The Most…

OPEN AI JUKEBOX Could a non-human entertainer enchant and enthral a human audience? The Microsoft-backed Open AI project is putting the theory to the test by training a neural network on a database of 1.2 million songs, giving it some lyrics (co-written by AI and some humans) and seeing what it comes up with across various genres from easy listening to hip-hop. The results, unsurprisingly, sound like an impersonation of music rather than music itself. You’ve got to pat AI on the head for having a go, but would you choose to listen to it? Nope. www.openai.com STRISO Many people have had an idea for a new instrument and put it on Kickstarter to see if the idea flies. Most of the time these projects go unfunded, unmade and unloved.…

Ebonivory 1. Patting The Black Dog 2. Explosions After Dark Taken from The Long Dream I Circles 3. Breaker. 4. Tether Taken from The Last One AlithiA 5. The Sun. 6. Empress Taken from The Moon Has Fallen Glass Ocean 7. Voyage. 8. Beyond Us Taken from The Remnants Of Losing Yourself In Someone Else James Norbert Ivanyi 9. The Matter Circumvention 10. Malevolent Taken from The Matter Circumvention…

Cambridge, mid-90s: to paraphrase the words of that bloody song by the Television Personalities, we knew where Syd Barrett lived. It wasn’t really very hard to find his house – a few phone calls, a couple of letters and there we were. It’d been a quarter of a century since Syd’s last disastrous stage appearance – with Stars, also featuring ex-Pretty Things and Pink Fairies drummer Twink – and since then all had been quiet. Too quiet… His absence had been maddening. In our arrogance, we’d come to seek him out, to doorstep him as though he was some dodgy company director or politician. To get him – force him, even – to explain himself. How dare he revolutionise rock’n’roll and then give it all up and just walk away…

Debuting in Dortmund, West Germany on January 23, 1977, Floyd’s biggest tour yet unveiled staging and lighting unprecedented for a rock show, alongside a fleet of inflatables. A reproduction of the pig from the Animals sleeve was detonated nightly as it sailed over the fans. To accompany Dogs, there was also the so-called ‘nuclear family’: grotesque blow-ups created by Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park. “I think the boys thought I’d gone the way of Syd [Barrett] when I said that we needed a giant inflatable family and a load of animals,” reflected Roger Waters in 1987. However, faced with the band playing to a click track in headphones, surrounded by airborne latex, NME’s Mick Farren wrote of a “depressingly hopeless journey through a menacingly sterile cosmos”. In Frankfurt, a dry-ice…

Redemption OPEN EYES Second album from well-connected prog upstart. Blurred Vision mainman Sepp Osley escaped war-ravaged Iran as a child, ending up in Canada and, eventually, London. Along the way, he’s crossed paths with Steve Hogarth and Peter Gabriel (who made guest appearances live and in a video respectively), as well as Rush producer Terry Brown, who Osley enlisted to produce this second BV album. Said album comprises songs that pulled Osley out of “a period of depression”. That state of mind is sometimes apparent, notably when Osley sings ‘My mind is like exposed flesh/TV is the salt’ on Inside Out/Collision Course. But largely this is an uptempo selection of songs, mixing electronic sensibilities with a Floydian sense of scale and emotion. One Day feel dips its toes into 80s…

Flown GRIM DAY Elegiac and beautifully dense post-prog from Norway. It’s not hard to imagine the three members of Dim Gray standing on a cliff overlooking a fjord somewhere on the Scandinavian coast, staring into the middle distance as choppy grey waves roil below them, a solitary tear starting to freeze as it makes the lonely descent to their chins. Those are the kind of images that spring to mind listening to this Norwegian trio’s beautifully realised debut. Flown is aptly titled. Referencing Sigur Rós, Radiohead and, on the aching Black Sun, fellow Norwegians Kings Of Convenience, it feels like music to lose yourself in as you drift off above the Earth. All very spectral and mellifluous, but the real joy to be found in Flown is that Dim Gray…

Dissonant Minds KARISMA A mélange of musical ideas from maverick Norseman. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on what Fatal Fusion do, the Norwegian five-piece take a left-field turn and leave you perplexed. But that’s what makes the band’s fourth album such a delight. There are only four tracks, but each one is a concerto in its own right. Coming Forth By Day is a 14-minute ride that twists from the verve of prog metal to beatific pastoral passages, and then into a more pop oriented avenue before finally fading away on a majestic organ swathe from Erlend Engebretsen. Quo Vadimus is half the length of its predecessor, yet provides equal variety, as Knut Erik Grøntvedt’s earthy voice dovetails with Engebretsen and guitarist Stig Selnes. Beneath The Skydome,…

Konkret Musik INSIDEOUT Highly focused sixth album from instrumental Swedes. Gösta Berlings Saga have been going for two decades already, but 2018’s ET EX saw a spike in popularity, with the Swedish band’s dense, widescreen dramas inviting comparisons to Goblin and King Crimson. Konkret Musik has a different emphasis. Its dozen tracks are more concise and less reliant on guitars. Under the guidance of producer/vintage synth collector Daniel Fagerström, the quintet explore the further reaches of electronica without quite sacrificing their default position. It’s a balance they achieve well. At the core of Vinsta Guldklocka sits a fat keyboard riff, surrounded by melodic babble and humming guitar, while the aptly-timed Basement Traps is a more minimal salute to Kraftwerk, in particular the late Florian Schneider. Closing Borders may or may…

Orphne MÚSICA MÁXICA Theatricality meets Greek myth courtesy of Madrid chamber-jazz ensemble. Founded a decade ago by singer and classical pianist Amaya López-Carromero, Spanish avantgarde quintet Maud The Moth come over like the more experimental and over-the-top siblings of iamthemorning. Their third album derives its title from a mysterious figure from Greek mythology, and it crackles with the kind of drama and theatricality that wouldn’t be out of place in an ancient world play. Opener Ecdysis sets López-Carromero’s striking multi-layered vocals to arresting percussion and atmospheric piano work, while the wails of The Mirror Door and As Above So Below veer towards the stark and haunting. Elsewhere, Mormo And The Well packs a more playful punch before Epoxy Bonds concludes the album with the kind of mournfully-orchestrated grandiosity that lingers…

ZeroZeroZero OST ROCK ACTION Scottish linchpins drop excellent new soundtrack LP. Mogwai have several soundtracks under their belt from the last decade, including Atomic, Kin and Les Revenants. This, a soundtrack to Italian cocaine trade drama ZeroZeroZero, is perhaps their darkest yet. Despite the format, there are plenty of song-length pieces, among them the pensive Moon In Reverse and electronic rager I’m Not Going When I Don’t Get Back. There’s an intense tautness to several songs that’s clearly inspired by the series itself, but rarely do Mogwai give in to the post-rock impulse toward easy crescendos. Of course, being a soundtrack there are tracks that are atmospheric to the point of aimlessness; here, Chicken Guns has a sinister Blade Runner vibe to it, but not a lot of sticking power.…

Tomorrow Is Delayed APOLLON A new voice for the psychedelic space explorers. Bergen, Norway has given the world everything from the trippy acid rock of Shaman Elephant to the progressive metal of Enslaved. By contrast Professor Tip Top have a Canterbury-inspired vibe and a sound as warm and comforting as a hot bath after a hard day. There’s a new face and voice fronting the band on their sixth album as German singer Sonja Otto replaces the departed Svein Magnar Hansen. This gender swap hasn’t impacted their approach, with Sam Fossbakk, Stein Høgseth and Charles Wise all still onboard and their penchant for sci-fi themes remains intact. Otto isn’t an excessively flashy singer: there are no dramatic, acrobatic vaults through the octaves, but her cordial style fits perfectly with the…

Grooves rule when it comes to Bananagun. Debut album The True Story Of Bananagun (Full Time Hobby) sees the Australian five-piece shape a dizzying spread of influences – Afrobeat, tropicalia, cosmic jazz, funk, garage rock and classic psychedelic pop – into something rhapsodic and pretty wonderful. Singer, flautist and guitar player Nick van Bakel leads his troupe through infectious delights like The Master, Out Of Reach and Bird Up!, the latter featuring animal hoots and chatter. There’s also plenty of exoticism in Mordechai (Dead Oceans), the latest from Texan trio Khruangbin. The band draw inspiration from afar – India, Pakistan, Korea and West Africa included – filtering disparate musical styles through the eclectic hub of their Houston hometown. The result is lush, woozy dream pop with mutable rhythms, from the…

Last Flight Home AQUA PULSE Styx drummer’s first foray into the solo spotlight. The drummer with Styx for the last 25 years, Todd Sucherman has scant history as a songwriter and none at all as a singer. Surprisingly, in Last Flight Home he’s produced an accessible and accomplished debut collection which finds him flexing his muscles on both fronts. Written with collaborator JK Harrison, the songs here sit somewhere between Flying Colors and Neal Morse’s more poppier output. There’s lilting AOR on the title track and a slice of Americana in It’s Perfection, multi-part harmonies in Do You Know Me and grittier workouts like The Damage. Given the impressive technical faculties he displays in Styx, Sucherman’s drumming is deliberately sparse throughout, focusing more on the songwriting and the groove and…

Skeleton Blush LIMITEDNOISE A heart of darkness beating out of time. The influence of Tom Waits looms large over World Sanguine Report’s third release. Bandleader Andrew Plummer has a voice summoned from the dregs at the bottom of a bottle of rotgut whiskey and a delivery that swings from yearning to anguish. Plummer’s instrument is the electric guitar, but the arrangements are dominated by brass, drums, and piano, while the music blends late night cabaret with the sort of avant-garde, disjointed melodic lines of John Zorn or Zappa. God Spat Human Blue Dance staggers along on a tilted groove as Plummer barks out: ‘Slow, slow, quick, quick, quick’ like a demonic dance caller and the title track is the theme for some frightening vaudeville of despair. Plummer’s regular collaborator James…

Pungent Effulgent/Strangeitude KSCOPE Classic Ozrics albums remastered and reissued on heavyweight coloured vinyl. By the time of Pungent Effulgent’s release in 1989 – their first vinyl album after a series of cassettes – Ozric Tentacles had become flagbearers for a burgeoning free festival scene that took its ethos from the underground of the early 70s, while paralleling the rise of acid house and outdoor raves. Cross-fertilisation resulted in a sound – freak rock and trippy vibes combined with utopian techno and repetitive beats – that the Ozrics made their own. With their tie-died crusty image, whimsical artwork, and, of course, that name, the Ozrics seemed to conform to every possible headshop cliché, a band invented by Neil from The Young Ones, and reviled by the indie mafia. Yet before long,…

Robert Ellis THE ROCK LIBRARY Genesis on stage and up close and personal. I like to think I know a bit about Genesis, but Phil Collins with a moustache? Now, Phil Collins with robust beard? Yup, seen that. Steve Hackett sporting a Zapatastyle’tache? Tick. Even Peter Gabriel’s own Amish-like facial hair shot at home in Bath in 1974. Yes. But Phil with a moustache? That’s a new one on me. (It’s from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway European tour in 1975, btw.) All these and more feature in rock royalty photographer Robert Ellis’ new photo book capturing Genesis from 1972’s Great Western Festival in Lincoln all the way through to 1982’s Six Of The Best show at Milton Keynes Bowl (Ellis’ previous Genesis book concentrated on The Lamb… tour…

The Pineapple Thief KSCOPE Bruce Soord and co, at their best, live in Islington in 2017 – now on CD+Blu-ray. By 2016’s game-raising Your Wilderness – and this sold-out show at London’s Islington Academy, captured here on film – The Pineapple Thief had finally established themselves as leading lights in modern progressive rock after almost 20 years of trying. Originally only available as part of the deluxe edition of the 2017 live album of the same name, this standalone Blu-ray/CD package offers the show in every manner you could desire (concert film interspersed with interviews, concert by itself, interviews in one block, a low-key backstage documentary…) plus a generous selection of extras including an acoustic EP, a pleasingly nerdy ‘making of In Exile’ video, bonus album and full Your Wilderness…

TOMMY ROGERS @tommybtbam If you truly enjoy live music, maybe take this virus seriously and wear a mask?? It’s not hard… you just put it on your face. Bands will never be on a stage again if this doesn’t get better. DAVE KILMINSTER @DaveKilminster I was originally scheduled to fly to New York this weekend to start rehearsals for the Roger Waters This Is Not A Drill tour, but instead I’m in England with a lot of extra time to work on my album… possibly too much time!! NICK DVIRGILIO @NDVMusic Um… I think this whole stay at home thing has done a number on my hair. Or maybe that was my wife… yep, it was her. I’m glad I can still bring her some amusement during these crazy times.…

Swedish multi-instrumentalist Rikard Sjöblom will return with a new Gungfly album, Alone Together, via InsideOut on September 4. The Big Big Train and ex-Beardfish man says it’s “the prog rock record I always wanted to make”. He explains: “It has all the little noodling and twiddly bits that I love, but it also has depth and purpose with its lyrics and feel.” The six-song follow-up to 2018’s Friendship sees him stripping back his sound in favour of a power trio set up. “We didn’t want a whole bunch of bells and whistles we didn’t need,” he says. “It was about making space for each other to really shine.” The line-up is completed by brothers Petter and Rasmus Diamant, who have been the backbone of Rikard Sjöblom’s Gungfly’s live band over…

Official Progressive Albums Chart The prog top 30 albums April 2020 1 RUSH Permanent Waves (UMC/MERCURY) 2 PINK FLOYD The Later Years 1987-2019 (RHINO) 3 TAME IMPALA The Slow Rush (FICTION) 4 NIGHTWISH Human. :II: Nature. (NUCLEAR BLAST) 5 HAWKWIND Road Hawks (ATOMHENGE/CHERRY RED) 6 TOOL Fear Inoculum (MUSIC FOR NATIONS) 7 KING GIZZARD & LIZARD WIZARD Chunky Shrapnel (KGLW) 8 AIRBAG A Day At The Beach (KARISMA) 9 PETER GABRIEL Flotsam And Jetsam (REAL WORLD) 10 JEFF LYNNE’S ELO From Out Of Nowhere (RCA) 11 DEVIN TOWNSEND Empath (INSIDEOUT) 12 BRIAN ENO Apollo – Atmospheres And Soundtracks (UMC) 13 HAWKLORDS Alive – In Concert (HAWLORDS) 14 FROST* Others (INSIDEOUT) 15 WIRE 10:20 (PINK FLAG) 16 KING CRIMSON In The Court Of The Crimson King (PANEGYRIC) 17 STEVE HACKETT Genesis…

He’s found fame as an actor in productions such as X-Men: First Class, Twin Peaks: The Return, Three Billboards In Ebbing, Missouri and Get Out, but the Texan-born 30-year-old’s lifelong passion has been music, which has led to a debut solo release of rare ambition and scope, The Mother Stone. Once referred to by New York Magazine as “Hollywood’s go - to weirdo”, his modern psychedelic style comes from a deep root of The Beatles, with lashings of Madcap Syd. You grew up around music. Was it your first love? Yeah. My grandfather was a drummer who made radio jingles and my mom was a singer-songwriter. We always had a piano, and my dad saw how important music was for my mom, so the two of them were in agreement:…

“I always wanted to be a solo artist but those ambitions took a back seat to family commitments and being in bands,” states Nick D’Virgilio. “I’m not complaining because I’ve done some amazing things in life, but now I feel I’ve found my voice and from this point forward there will be a lot more music from me. I won’t take 20 or even 10 years between albums.” Much has changed for this quietly spoken Californian since the release of a debut solo record, Karma, at the millennium’s turn. Having co-founded Spock’s Beard, Neal Morse’s departure in 2002 saw D’Virgilio quit the drum stool to become lead singer and, for the first time, a significant writer over a four-album spell. After moving on in 2011 D’Virgilio played with Tears For…

“I t’s not a concept album, no,” says Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad about her new release, Ekhidna, “but I also think it’s nice to have one thematic palette that I work within to find ways to attach this to something more concrete than just music.” It takes its name from the mythological Ekhidna, a half-human/half-snake being who was the mother of a host of monsters in Greek mythology, from the many-headed Hydra to Cerberus, who guarded the entrance to Hades. Mollestad is best known for the six riff-packed, heavy rock meets progressive jazz albums that she’s cut with her trio featuring bassist Ellen Brekken and drummer Ivar Loe Bjørnstad. However, Ekhidna sees her working in a new sextet playing music that she composed as a commission for the 2019 Vossajazz…

The idea was simple: you get the two foremost proponents of the idea of music as a force for personal and social change, sit ’em down together for a few beers, and see what happens. The potential problems were obvious: on the surface, polite, articulate Robert Fripp and acerbic, street-wise Joe Strummer don’t appear to be the most compatible duo in rock history. As musicians they seem to follow widely divergent paths, with the classically trained Fripp exploring the oceanic textures and laser-like solos of Frippertronics, or the fractured, geometric etudes of The League Of Gentlemen (his short-lived project with XTC’s Barry Andrews, who would shortly afterwards form Shriekback), while Strummer the street poet and musical innocent bashes out threechord symphonies, or heads further up the river into the dark,…

The Last Semblance ALIZARIN.BANDCAMP.COM Big music telling vibrant stories, now with added vocals. Fittingly for a band who hail from Tinsel Town, Los Angeles’ Alizarin style their output as “cinematic prog”, and the band’s second album develops this concept beyond their exclusively instrumental debut, Cast Zenith, as guitarist Josh Kay doubles up and provide vocals throughout. There are still sweeping, ambitious statements that shift musical moods and juxtapose atmospherics and space with chunky prog metal riffing like opener Elegy Simulacra and mini epic Attenuation. Kay’s voice, while perhaps not the strongest, adds another dimension to their songwriting – although it’s written mainly in 5/4, the fantastic Heirloom feels like it’s been shaped by the need to accommodate vocal melodies, and recent single, the slightly peculiar ballad Velvet Margin was written…

Modern Ruins BURNING SHED Art rock heavyweights’ first collaboration in 18 years. Tim Bowness and Peter Chilvers’ 2002 collaboration, California Norfolk, was centred around a metaphorical village perched on a crumbling coastline. Eighteen years later, this belated follow-up delves further into psychological landscapes Opening track Your Sleeping Face is a poignant song about ageing. Chilvers’ spartan piano evokes the dimensions of a cold bedroom with an ageing man looking at his wife and trying to regain his feelings for her. The protagonist of Blog Remember Me is trying to get perspective on his life by reading his accounts of the past, only to find they no longer seem important. Mixed by Peter Hammill, Modern Ruins bears both men’s characteristics. Chilvers has worked with Brian Eno and Underworld’s Karl Hyde, and…

Show Me Devon: Live At Kozfest 2019 SELF-RELEASED Brit mavericks live without any touch ups. Recorded at Kozfest in Devon last year, this official bootleg finds TFATD keeping their performance exactly as it was on the day. Resisting the temptation of using technology to fix mistakes has resulted in a flawed album. But that’s to be celebrated. Led by guitarist Matt Stevens, they storm through the set with a sense of power and intricacy that reels you in and holds the attention throughout. Their instrumental approach to progressive metal is entrancing with tracks such as Truck, Flint and Magnet In Your Face showing how the band neatly balance both sides of their personality. The musicianship is disciplined, yet bristles with a brusque fury. The best example is 666…6, a journey…

Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two) NDEYA Influential innovator and still fiercely original. Now 83, Jon Hassell continues to explore nuance and novelty in sound like an artist a quarter of his age. The trumpet player and conceptualist has been a demi-god of the avantgarde since studying under Stockhausen, and his legacy is less a career than a series of perpetual motion maps. Some will have come to Hassell’s “Fourth World” primitive/futurist blendings through the gateways of Terry Riley or La Monte Young; others through his work with Eno, David Sylvian or Peter Gabriel. A loose sequel to 2018’s Listening To Pictures, his latest reverie is both minimalist and loquacious, skewed electronica and subtle acoustica. Two eight-minute tracks bookend the brooding: opener Fearless clicks like Can but murmurs and shakes…

Essence KARIBOW Live and acoustic recordings on the German group’s new double album. Oliver Rüsing has helmed various incarnations of KariBow since the mid-90s, building up a healthy international following with a catalogue of solid AOR leaning albums. His stock-in-trade is thoughtful, unreconstructed and highly melodic songcraft; KariBow’s neo prog leanings are usually cleverly subtle, in the detail. Their latest release, Essence is a double album with each disc showing their highly listenable and likeable music in contrasting settings. Disc one, Essentially Acoustic, sees the group rework a handful of past songs, but unplugged, three-chords-and-the-truth stuff this ain’t – it’s as highly polished as any of their full-blown studio albums. The catchy Primeval and mournful 9/16 buff up nicely with piano, acoustic guitars, a sparse rhythm section, some strings, samples,…

American cult math duo Giraffes? Giraffes! have just released a single track, 15-minute EP, Rite Of Summer (self-released). The genius of Giraffes? Giraffes! has always been their ability to balance melody with sometimes gratuitous intricacy, and Rite Of Summer is in this regard one of their best realised works. The elastic tempo shifts, masterful use of looped layers, and eventual blow-out, guitar hero solo provide so much variation that it’s hard to digest in a single pass. Another instrumental two-piece that are back with a vengeance is El Ten Eleven, with triple-LP Tautology (Joyful Noise Recordings). There’s a grit and organic feel to the production that emphasises the shifts in register of the guitar and bass parts, while tying together the many looped riffs into a coherent whole. The new…

Cov3r To Cov3r/Cover To Cover Anthology Vol 1-3 INSIDEOUT Eclectic trio of covers albums from the busiest men in prog. Mike Portnoy says these are the CDs he gives to family and friends, and this anthology – comprising new album Cov3r To Cov3r (also out as a standalone) plus two previous volumes, which include covers of Jethro Tull, David Bowie, Squeeze, Tom Petty and many more – feels like a personal collection of classics, slickly recorded by three prog stars (Portnoy, Neal Morse and bassist Randy George). It’s is no soulless ‘hits’ selection. They nail Jethro Tull’s Hymn 43 with gusto. George Harrison’s What Is Life? retains the bittersweet looseness of the original. Current Yes vocalist Jon Davison guests on Richie Havens’ No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed (itself covered…

Palimpsest SPINEFARM Canadian prog metallers bring back the good times. Some six years ago, one user of the discussion website Reddit proclaimed Protest The Hero to be the “Best Canadian prog [band] since Rush.” Some statement, considering the country has birthed Devin Townsend and Voivod since Geddy Lee and co were in their pomp. But for fans of the heavy stuff, they might just have a point. Protest The Hero appear to have hit their stride again after a routine sixtrack EP a few years ago. Palimpsest is frenzied and fearless, but bloody fun too. At its best it’s a ferocious flurry of white-knuckle prog metal bombast, head-scratchingly adroit guitar riffs chucked around like fingercharring hot potatoes, and odd time signatures that manage to marry with towering, pop-friendly choruses that…

Volch’ya Yagoda THEO RECORDS Bastard by name, not by nature. Theodor Bastard may sound like the aristocratic bass player from a ropey 70s punk band, but the name is the reddest of herrings. The St Petersburg collective’s evocative music is pitched between countrymen Iamthemorning’s billowing romanticism and the otherwordly new shamanism of Wardruna and their ilk, adding subtle electronic touches to bring it into the 21st century. Their ninth album, and first in five years, Volch’ya Yagoda (translation: Wolfberry) is a work of frequently startling beauty and protean ideas. Where the slo-mo tribal pulse of Urzala sounds like it’s beamed in from another time and place, Skejgored bears the imprint of Björk in Yana Veva’s spiralling vocals – albeit a Björk who has divested herself of the trappings of modern…

2020 RELAPSE Electronic rock duo get doomy on first album in five years. Zombi might have hit the 20-year mark, but their instrumental electronic rock remains as vital as ever. And this is very much ‘rock’ we’re talking about, not electronica in disguise – multi-instrumentalist Steve Moore is a man in love with riffs while powerhouse drummer AE Paterra drives the music forward with an organic rather than programmed feel. Opening track Breakthrough & Conquer drops straight into the action: its synth arpeggio, galloping rhythm and chugging guitar are overlaid by orchestral string stabs. While there are nods to primary inspirations such as Goblin and John Carpenter, 2020 is notable for embracing more of a heavy doom rock vibe. Earthscraper churns away like an irresistible force, while the chewy riffs…

The Boy In The Sailor Suit ESOTERIC Strawbs leader’s second solo album from 2007, remastered with live tracks. The Boy In The Sailor Suit, Dave Cousins’ first solo album since 1972’s Two Weeks Last Summer, was recorded and mixed in a week and has a leanness and freshness about it. The band includes blues guitarist Miller Anderson – who played on its predecessor – and Strawbs stalwart Chas Cronk on bass, and it was produced by Chris Tsangarides, who is better known as a metal producer. Although there are a few big rock moments, like the sinuous riffing, Hendrixy rhythm guitar and wah-wah lead of Mother Luck, overall the music reflects the lyrical content of this particularly personal collection. It begins with Never Take Sweets From Strangers, a tale of…

The “Living Room” Concert ESOTERIC Sweet but slight at-home gig revisited. Given that Anthony Phillips left Genesis a full half-century ago, when Jimi Hendrix was still alive and Heath had just displaced Wilson as prime minister, it must be strange for him to be eternally referred to as “the former Genesis man”. Still, the other members always speak glowingly of the co-founder’s brief contribution to their history, and it’s certainly helped him find an audience for his work ever since. The “Living Room” Concert was recorded in 1993 for a US radio show and released two years later. Now remastered and with tracks which didn’t make the cut added, it’s an unplugged pleasantry from a man who disliked playing in front of live audiences. In fact he wasn’t keen even…

Paolo Carnelli SELF-PUBLISHED VIA KINDLE Extended essay on VdGG’s prog classic. In the 49 years since its release, VdGG’s Pawn Hearts has accrued the status of a benchmark in progressive music against those others in the field. Italian journalist, Paolo Carnelli convincingly sets out why this work is so revered by a diverse fanbase that famously includes Johnny Rotten through to Steven Wilson and Gary Lucas, who provides an enthusiastic foreword. Drawing upon press clippings, Christopulos and Smart’s The Book, the 2005 comprehensive account of the band’s career, and his own interviews, Carnelli does a good job conveying the time and place surrounding the creation of the record and its cultural impact. Conceived in the back of a van, rehearsed in a haunted house and expertly caught in the studio…

A Genesis In My Bed WYMER PUBLISHING The life and times of a modest prog icon. As guitarist with Genesis, Steve Hackett helped lay the foundation stone of prog. Yet his spectacular talents are in inverse proportion to his ego. Not for him the drama of some of his 70s contemporaries – he famously quit Genesis just as the curve of their success was about to hit a massive upswing, but you’ll not hear a word of rancour about missing out on their subsequent superstardom or bitterness towards his former colleagues. A reflective and engaging look back at Hackett’s life. That sense of humility pervades the pages of this autobiography. A Genesis In My Bed is a reflective but engaging look back at Hackett’s life, chiefly defined by its author’s…