Table of contents for Issue 114 in Prog

Hello, and welcome to the new issue of Prog. I hope it finds you as well as can be expected. Reading Daryl Easlea’s fascinating cover story on Kate Bush’s 1980 album Never For Ever, I was most struck by one prominent fact: Never For Ever was the first studio album by a female artist to actually reach the No.1 spot in the UK album charts. Artists of the magnitude of Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand had both hit the top of the charts, but only with compilations. I find that quite astonishing given the wealth of amazing music that female performers have made over the years. Obviously things have moved on apace in the ensuing 40 years, but as last issue’s Greatest Prog Musicians Poll showed, attitudes towards female performers…

TesseracT revisit 2013 album Altered State, their only LP to feature singer Ashe O’Hara (right), with a deluxe vinyl and CD edition on November 6. “We always felt like we hit a perfect balance with the presentation,” they say. www.tesseractband.co.uk Psych-rockers My Octopus Mind will launch second album Faulty At Source on November 20. They say it’s a “full-throttle look at the current political and social climate” that also explores polyamory and masculinity. www.myoctopusmind.com…

Salvador Dalí was no stranger to the bizarre. The Spanish painter and self-appointed genius once appeared on the Tonight Show carrying a leather rhinoceros. Grasshoppers terrified the hell out of him. He routinely lugged around a piece of ‘lucky driftwood’ to ward off evil spirits. At a party in New York, he offered to pleasure Cher with an oddly shaped dildo. Yet all of this seems like Surrealist foreplay compared to his grand scheme to accompany the release of 666, the 1972 album from Greek quartet, Aphrodite’s Child. Dalí’s plan was to stage a ‘happening’ in Barcelona, witnessed only by a couple of local shepherds, who would later relay the wonder of it all to the people. There were to be loudspeakers in the streets, blaring out 666 for 24…

It’s not 20 miles from where Jacqui McShee was born in south-east London to where she now lives in Surrey. But in terms of the creative reach and influence of her work as a singer and songwriter across more than half a century, she’s certainly covered a long distance. As the guiding light of Pentangle, McShee has been (reluctantly) front and centre of some of the most important progressive folk recordings in history. For all her natural modesty, her voice is a constant across six decades of inquisitive exploration of the place where British musical tradition and experimentation meet. Across half a dozen albums in the late 1960s and early 70s, the original five-piece were an array of dazzling dexterity, developed with bandmates Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Danny Thompson and…

Bucolic futurism and alternative nostalgia from Ghost Box supremo. If Ghost Box’s aesthetic is based around the halfheard, half-remembered sounds and images of a childhood world where it’s always 1975 – a sinister Public Information Film on the television, a Pan Book Of Horror from the library – it’s appropriate that prog should creep in too. The sixth album from Belbury Poly – aka label co-founder Jim Jupp – embraces this idea on opening track Root And Branch, its monophonic synth lines underpinned by dreamy Mellotron and acoustic guitar. BP exists at the intersection where naïve melodies and novelty music from the past take on a more mysterious resonance in the present, and this is a beautiful, strangely moving example. Ffarisees and Sticks And Stones mine the hard electronic pulses…

Brief but fulfilling follow-up to 2019’s double disc debut. At only 30 minutes in length, DarWin 2: A Frozen War is a compact successor to last year’s Origin Of Species. Continuing the cosmic styles and environmentally conscious themes of the previous album, opener Nightmare Of My Dreams is a showcase for the project’s grand scale, combining the orchestral poppiness of ELO with the more metallic approach of Queensrÿche and Fates Warning – a mixture more compatible in reality than on paper. Future History covers much of the same ground, albeit more directly, whereas Eternal Life charts a different path via gorgeous acoustic guitar work and vocal harmonies. Even with the Van Halen-esque guitar solo midway through, the song is a cathartic gem that stays with you. The title track adds…

American soundscaper’s nocturnal musings, recorded in a Brooklyn church. Earth’s only satellite exerts a continuous yet physically imperceptible force on our planet, and its visibility and remoteness has perennially inspired musicians from Debussy to Pink Floyd to Brian Eno. It was under this influence that Laraaji recorded Moon Piano. It was tracked during the same sessions as predecessor Sun Piano but, whereas the latter was sonically spare and full of major chords, hinting at old hymns, parlour songs and the blues via George Gershwin, Moon Piano is more circumspect and meditative. The album comprises an improvised set edited down into mainly short, slow moving pieces, as exemplified by the hushed Stillness. Laraaji’s approach to the piano has a kinship with the gentle but finely articulated playing of Harold Budd. But…

Head-spinning soundscape from German jazz-metallers. How exactly do you follow up an album of jazz-metal Christmas songs? That was the conundrum facing Panzerballett’s Jan Zehrfeld after 2017’s wonderfully amusing X-Mas Death Jazz. And with Planet Z, he’s responded in some style. Planet Z is what you’d expect from Panzerballett: mind-bending, jazzed-up prog metal with humour in its beating heart. Opener Prime Time sets the tone, with flurrying guitar and saxophone making way for jazzy interludes, while Urchin Vs Octopus relinquishes the sax and sees Zehrfeld dial up the metal. The jewel in the crown is No One is Flying The Plane, a seven-minute sonic smörgåsbord where sledgehammer guitar slaps the listener across the chops one moment and eruptions of fusion send heads spinning the next. A reworking of a track…

Art-prog transmissions from the heart of the left-field. Best known as operatic co-vocalist with French art-metal crackpots Igorrr, Laure Le Prunenec released her debut album as Rïcïnn in 2016. On Lïan, she mixed classical, industrial, electronica, metal and avant-garde into an ornate, gleefully proggy cacophony. Although more succinct than its predecessor, Nereïd offers more of the same, but with an even stronger sense of stylistic anarchy. It’s Le Prunenec’s voice that takes the breath away: from fragile and warped on the unsettling Psamatäe to explosive and imperious on Doris, her range is astonishing and her ability to cut through an often disorientating din is genuinely impressive. But the breadth and perversity of Rïcïnn’s music is more than equal to her vocal exploits: the profoundly eerie title track and the Björk-like…

Post-rock linchpins Mogwai dropped a surprise live album in September. 2018 (mogwai.bandcamp.com) is a pay-what-you-feel download. The highlights are a fuzzedto-death take on Rano Pano, as well as ferocious versions of I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead and Helicon 1. At the more challenging end of the spectrum is Ana Roxanne’s Because Of A Flower (Kranky). Written over a five-year period, it incorporates spoken word, found sounds, and multi-layered vocal pads. It’s at its most accessible on the lush A Study In Vastness, though the slow burner Venus is a more satisfying cut. Poisonous Birds’ latest EP We Can Never Not Be All Of Us (poisonous.bandcamp.com), sounds like a winter release. It’s unnervingly intimate, and yearns for wide open spaces with its cinematic feel. We Move, Plastic combines sparse electronic sketches…

Aussie prog-metallers take their bow… and leave us wanting more. Bigger is better is prog’s eternal maxim, so Sydney trio SteelSwarm’s short, sharp 37-minute debut album feels like a breath of fresh air. Especially as it’s still crammed with ideas. Tracks such as Begin Simulation and Future Gods have such complex rhythms one feels a mixture of pity and awe for drummer Zac Stewart. They underpin scattershot metallic riffing wreathed in florid lead guitar patterns, while frontman Dane Simms sounds as if he’s battling with split personality disorder as his vocals flit between the yin and yang of metal screams and yearningly emotive top-line melodies. Then Simms’ brother Jamie’s hammering bass slaps on Future Gods create their own subrhythm, and it can all make the whole package a little overwhelming…

A master musician back on fine form. Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal’s music has always been at its best when snaring something wild and vast and distilling it down to a hushed intimacy. His compositions and the yearning aspect of his playing create an epic, almost mystical mix where notes delicately arrive, almost windblown, yet quickly wheedle deep into the heart and soul. Now in his 70s, in recent years his works for classical ensembles have veered into the ponderous, with overly elaborate settings diffusing his presence. However, this first studio album for ECM in two decades, fronting a quartet that includes Motorpsycho sideman Ståle Storløkken on empathetic keyboards, puts him front and centre, reconnecting him to his early 1970s masterpieces such as Odyssey. Rypdal’s echoing tones swoop and soar across…

English duo move on from the past with mini album. Former Enochian Theory drummer Sam Street and bassist Shaun Rayment are reunited in this new instrumental studio project, which has birthed the debut release Infinite Elbow – described as a mini album at 25 minutes long. Nabbing the atmospherics of post-rock and altmetal, the tracks often swell like a brooding ocean on a winter’s night, but prog fans’ eyes will sparkle that little bit more during moments where there are even more layers to peel back. F-Work’s!, one of the standout tracks, sees wonky synth dolloped on some grungy dirt, while Semo Entry sneaks in some hazy, Rush-esque positivity and resonating rock tropes à la Porcupine Tree. Juddering rhythms topped with free floating guitar will rouse anyone familiar with recent…

All Good People move Onward in America. Taken from their 2019 appearances at the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel The Royal Affair Tour sees the Steve Howe-led Yes energised by an enthusiastic crowd, with only two overlaps with last year’s 50 Live. (Roundabout and Starship Trooper, and Prog won’t begrudge them that.) The selection of earthier numbers from their catalogue allows Howe and the band to loosen up and let rip; Tempus Fugit, Going For The One, and Siberian Khatru positively swing. Jon Davison leaves his imprint as lead singer, even if the similarities with Jon Anderson are marked; his version of Onward from Tormato – a tribute to the late Chris Squire – works best, as it’s not overly linked to his predecessor. It’s also a deeply beautiful song.…

Giant career retrospective of misunderstood individualists. “Nobody cares when you’re gone,” sang Paul Draper on Legacy, from the second Mansun album Six. Well, somebody must care if there’s a market for a 25-disc box set gathering everything the Chester band ever did. It’s some legacy: their four albums, 10 live discs, EPs, edits, BBC sessions, demos and out-takes, as well as a book by Peter Doggett, photos and ephemera. Closed For Business is for fanatics, not those who vaguely recall Wide Open Space, Stripper Vicar and I Can Only Disappoint U – singles too inventive and physically elegant for an era in which such a complex band simply did not fit, despite storming early chart success. By the time of that second album, an inspired hot mess of Hendrix/prog tableaux,…

Quantum Years live sets reissued on coloured double vinyl. Before he passed away in January 2015, Edgar Froese gave wife Bianca his blessing to continue Tangerine Dream’s mission in new line-ups, without his magisterial presence but using his already drawnup blueprints. Since then, Bianca has worked diligently preserving her late husband’s legacy, bringing home his Force Majeure autobiography and overseeing his visions under musical director Thorsten Quaeschning (who joined TD in 2005), along with keyboardist Ulrich Schnauss (2014) and electric violinist Hoshiko Yamane (2011). Froese launched the Quantum Years series with 2014’s Malia Kunia, intended to revisit TD’s seminal mid-70s live improvisations around their trademark floating electronic meditations, star sailing melodic arcs and pulsating sequences. After 2017’s third volume (Particles) was released as the first post-Edgar set, The Sessions I…

Cornucopia of musical tricks and treats to delight and entertain. Frank Zappa’s Halloween residency at the New York Palladium was a perennial feature of his tours for over a decade and the six discs here capture three shows over two days of his stint there in 1981. With a band featuring wunderkind guitarist Steve Vai and newbies Chad Wackerman and Scott Thunes on drums and bass alongside longer serving Zappa sidemen, it’s a mouthwatering proposition. Almost seven hours of music delivers endless moments of wonderfulness, and it’s perhaps easiest to look at the versions of songs here in contrast to their better known counterparts: the funk-fusion slant of Disc 2’s The Blue Light; the reggae-tinged yet still jawdroppingly metrically dense The Black Page #2 and King Kong on Disc 4;…

Another Floyd book in the wall. The latest addition to the cottage industry of books chronicling Pink Floyd’s career explores their 1970s evolution from plucky experimentalists to imperial phase stadium giants. Unlike other books from this publisher, this is not a track-by-track account but rather an overview covering Atom Heart Mother to The Wall in just 128 pages. This means that, by necessity, it’s an enthusiastic thumbnail sketch rather than a detailed portrait. The writing style leaves little in the way of analysis beyond saying whether a track is good or bad in the author’s opinion, as he briskly marshals the facts and figures relating to a given album or time. While it provides a general outline of the band’s journey through that decade, if Georg Purvis’ account feels overly…

OCEANS OF CHANGE I just wanted to say thank you for the feature on Oceans Of Slumber in Prog 113. I think that the eponymous new album is their best yet, building upon and developing further what they began with the previous two releases. And that voice! There is nothing quite like it in progressive rock, or any other musical genre come to that. Cammie Gilbert is a remarkable woman. Elsewhere in the magazine you lament the lack of female prog artists, so Cammie’s emergence into the limelight is to be welcomed in more than one respect. Although it has always been obvious that there is a deeply personal aspect to her song lyrics, I must say that, until I read this article, I hadn’t quite realised the true extent…

The BBC’s Kate Bush Christmas Special, shown on Friday December 28, 1979, was another step on the path to Kate Bush’s future. Recorded that October at Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham and directed by Roy Norton, it featured four as-yetunreleased tracks from the Never For Ever sessions (The Wedding List, Violin, Egypt and Ran Tan Waltz – soon to be the B-side of Babooshka). In terms of ‘hit singles’, only Them Heavy People and The Man With The Child In His Eyes were included. It offered an opportunity to see the dance routines that Bush had worked out with her dancers Gary Hurst and Stewart Avon-Arnold, as well as premiering her festive song December Will Be Magic Again, which would remain unreleased until the following Christmas. With a sung introduction…

‘I’ve been out before, but this time it’s much safer in.’Breathing It was her 70s swansong, which opened up all manner of possibilities for her 80s explosion. Much as 1979’s The Tour Of Life remains legendary in the collective memory/imagination, afterwards Kate Bush avoided live concerts until her triumphant return with the Before The Dawn shows some 35 years later. She had been uncomfortable with EMI’s visual emphasis on her sexuality, and felt she’d been rushed on her previous album, Lionheart. So after the Christmas 1979 TV special, where she’d premiered some of these Never For Ever songs, she began to ease away from promotion (thus acquiring priceless mystique) and took control, with her family, of her business affairs. In the studio, she became an auteur. The success of Never…

Given the freakish sounds therein, many assumed that 666 was created in some kind of drug-induced state. It was a conclusion given further credence by a curious reference tucked away on the credits of the inner sleeve: “This work was recorded under the influence of Sahlep.” A Byzantine kind of acid, perhaps? A mystical herb? Eastern occultism? The truth was more banal. Sahlep is nothing more trippy than a Mediterranean health drink, made from dried orchid root and commonly supped in the morning instead of coffee or tea. Turns out Aphrodite’s Child neither craved nor required artificial stimulants to create one of the most lysergic-sounding albums of all time. Freaky. Drummer Lucas Sideras also remembers the time legendary Spanish painter Salvador Dalí stopped by the studio: “Meeting him was fantastic.…

“Any band that injects different influences and adds their own flavours into songs should be considered progressive. So in that regard Tears For Fears absolutely qualify. IMHO they are a jewel of British songwriters and have produced lots of brilliant progressive and popinfused material.” Darren Highman “Bloody brilliant band! That’s all that needs to be said.” Wendy Brooke “Ooh, yes! Broken, Badman’s Song, Year Of The Knife? Prog as you like!” John Merrick “Absolutely, definitely prog tendencies but also just a great band in their own right… I have a photo of Curt and Roland at Moles Club in Bath watching The ‘new’ re-generated King Crimson (Discipline) line up in 1982, so I guess they were fans.” Stu Nicholson “Prog. Pop does not give them the credit they deserve. Some…

Buckle up for a heavy, psychedelic ride into cosmic Americana. Light the incense, draw the curtains, get horizontal and turn on/tune in to the 10th album by San Francisco psychedelic trio Carlton Melton. The cover art gives a clue as to where we’re going; an impressionistic scene of redwood forest, higgledypiggledy fencing and a main road, signed with artist initials ‘LSD’. Hmm. Self-described as ‘dome rock’ – the record was created under a geodesic dome – there’s Carlton’s customary heaviness in sludge-fuzzer Waylay, the Bigfoot blues of Three Two Zero and the Hendrixy zip of Closer. However, there’s also plenty of space for jams and experimentation to breathe. The Stars Are Dying amplifies the cosmic cowboy theme, followed by a haunting and delicate Butchery. Dezebelle finds drummer Adam Duvall bringing…

Haunting lo-fi album from one man project. Emil Amos, the multiinstrumentalist from Om and Lilacs, has been releasing albums as Holy Sons for 20 years, aiming to capture the feel of 1950s pulp fiction in musical form. Raw And Disfigured carries on the process. Like previous Holy Sons albums, this one is the story of a lone figure huddled up against the avarice of a world out of control: in this case a Quasimodo-type figure coming to terms with the impending apocalypse. Amos uses musical motifs which draw from the indie and alternative scenes to illustrate the darkening impact of the inevitable crisis. But more than this, what he does is reflect Skip Spence’s remarkable 1969 solo album Oar. Like that cult classic, Raw And Disfigured is harrowing and painful;…

Old school vibes and prog luminaries keep the dream alive. Despite a multifaceted four-decade career as a film editor and director, soundtrack composer, music documentary producer, and solo artist with three previous albums under his belt, David Minasian isn’t quite a household name in prog circles. His profile can only be improved by The Sound Of Dreams featuring, as it does, a number of guests who all lend their talents to the album, including Steve Hackett and Billy Sherwood. It’s a long, often dreamlike and airy journey bookended by the companion pieces The Wind Of Heaven (Prologue), with Justin Hayward providing the warm and evocative vocal, and (Epilogue) for which Annie Haslam steps up to the mic. Much of the album is built around gentle yet expansive piano and guitar…

Oslo sextet’s sixth ups the instrumental grooves. Groovy, baby! Oslo’s Pymlico have the sort of name that suggests a fab gear, Swinging London mod band. But this is a completely different kettle of herring: a slick instrumental six-piece that have pulled together action film scores, jazz fusion and AOR to make an expansive, melodic and energetic progressive catalogue. On This Day takes all these elements and pushes more groove into the mix; early highlight Time-Turner brings expressive, bouncy jazz-rock into a cosmic rave sphere that plays out with bright saxophone and shimmering keyboards. Wear headphones for this, the production is fantastic. Later, Survival Guide goes more disco/acid jazz (perhaps with a little Sign ‘O’ The Times-era Prince?) and emerges as a brass-buoyed epic. There’s even some smooth jazz (Real People),…

Old-school Japanese experimentalists’ fifth long player. Tokyo quartet The Silence swear by an analogue approach to music-making, but Electric Meditations dispenses with rule books, in terms of the genres they explore. Tsumi To Warai resembles a garage rock band attempting an undernourished take on Sabbath-esque doom rock, before a squawking sax crawls across its creeping, portentous ascending power chords, making for a strangely hypnotic listen. The title track is a somnambulant zombie stomp with Tad Okano’s echo-drenched vocal spelling out a beguiling mantra as a bass sax honks rhythmically around it. As they change pace across this seven-track set, The Silence sound like several different bands. The nine-minute Meido Nisshi incorporates snatches of languid acoustic guitar, alongside a hypnotic central riff within a dizzy, clarinetsoaked reverie; I’m A Man is…

Norwegian metallers return with a vast and heavy second album. In the throbbing engine room of this Norwegian prog metal quintet are twin brothers Christian and Christopher Botteri (guitar and bass respectively). Both former members of influential black metal bands In The Woods and Green Carnation, they struck out as Strange New Dawn with 2015’s dark post-industrial debut album The Only One Planet System is a definite step forward, a melodic, muscular and moody set of songs that bring to mind everyone from Tool to Voivod to the band’s countrymen, Enslaved. New singer Roy Anderson helps deliver the record’s searingly urgent tone, and the confident band know how to pace things. Heartfull Of Stranger and The Symphony Of The Universe stride with slow, unstoppable purpose; elsewhere, they judiciously unleash battering…

Aussie prog metallers finally find their identity. Teramaze’s musicality has always been impressive. Moreover they craft quality songs. Yet, until now what they’ve failed to do is provide enough individuality to step out of the shadow of their key influences: Dream Theater and Opeth. With I Wonder, they’ve finally broken away from such comparisons. Listening to A Deep State Of Awake, with guest vocals from Jason Wisdom of Death Therapy, it’s clear Teramaze have an abundance of talent. Lyrically, it’s about the struggle someone has with their own demons, presented here as a dialogue. Add in the fact the music has depth and sparkle and the result is a high class, inspiring track. The same is true of Ocean Floor’s gentle momentum and the erudite drive of Only Daylight. There’s…

Playful live album from the prog maestro’s new band. Devin Townsend’s last album and video, Live At Plovdiv, marked the end of The Devin Townsend Project. This powerful live document picks up that thread, documenting his first tour with his new band. The setlist is heavy on material from 2019’s Empath, as you’d expect, with a few DTP songs in the mix. Deadhead is stunning, although Lucky Animals is a weird choice, given how many bangers he has to choose from. On longer cuts, such as Borderlands and the punchier Sprite, the band use the live format to experiment with arrangements. The looser live feel pushes the wall-of-sound production into an almost new age place, bringing backing vocal layers to the fore. Dabbling in that area is nothing new for…

Karda Estra man consults the tarot on his warped, wonderful third album. Kavus Torabi’s outré label Believers Roast is the ideal home for Richard Wileman. His first solo works, 2018’s Veil and last year’s Cabal Of A Thousand Souls, saw him relish his role as a skewiff goth-folk troubadour. Those records share much of their oblique musical language and outsider tone with his enduring, predominantly instrumental studio project Karda Estra, and so does his third. Arcana was inspired by the tarot deck, and Wileman takes us into a suitably esoteric soundworld. Like Peter Hammill, his voice is functional and authoritative with a laconic air of drama, well suited to delivering challenging melodies (the spooky After London, upbeat psychfolker Pilot). Co-vocalist Amy Fry adds colour, taking the lead on folk ballad…

Veronese singer/guitarist Kavee is a member of Galaverna and Slap Guru, but his debut solo LP is on another plane entirely. Metempsychosis (kavee.bandcamp.com) lives up to its billing as “an acoustic escape towards the dreamlike dimension of music”, with lulling guitars, gentle vocals and titles ranging from Indian Summer to Like Morphine. Akin to Hexvessel’s milder moments perhaps. But if it’s a full-on folkloric concept album about sexy sorceresses you’re after, look no further than Nine Witches Under A Walnut Tree by O.A.K. (Goodfellas). The brainchild of Rome-based multi-instrumentalist Jerry Cutillo, this is about a group of women who “befriended each other under a magic walnut tree in Beneveto” in the 16th century. Theatrical, mystical and obsessively delivered, this beautifully presented set of pure prog tunes is coloured with Tull-y…

Timely reissue for modern prog classic. Since its release in 2006, Pure Reason Revolution’s debut The Dark Third has been recognised as a modern prog classic. With Floydlike psychedelic flourishes, drums that echoed Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham and the harmonised lead vocals of Chloë Alper and Jon Courtney, there was something a little more old-school to PRR’s sound. On later releases, their synth and electronic influences would drive the band in a more visceral, industrial direction. The lushness of The Dark Third however, was more Canterbury than kosmiche. This reissue is of the 2007 European version of the record and not the original 2006 UK one. The European version is identical to the US release, with omitted tracks collected on a second disc. Disc 2 also has In Aurélia, a…

Follow us on twitter.com/progmagazineUK KAVUS TORABI @Knifeworld Music. Because honestly, at this point, what else is there? JAMES LABRIE @jameslabrie Started tracking a new solo album. This is not with Matt Guillory and company. That will happen but not at this point in time. This album is with another fine musician from Scotland. I’ll reveal his identity soon enough. We’re both very psyched with the tunes. Stay tuned. FROST* @Here_Be_Frost Needed a keyboard to work something out over the weekend while I was away… so courtesy of Argos Chichester, £38 later… a tribute to my first synth, the Casio VL Tone… played on its great great great great great great great great grandson – the Casio SA46! ROB COTTINGHAM @RobCottingham1 Sorry to read about Anathema. The music industry has been…

Voivod will release Lost Machines – Live on November 27. It was recorded in Quebec, Canada during their 2019 world tour. “We were obviously excited to play in our home province in front of family and friends,” they say. www.voivod.com Rhys Marsh and Mandala (left) will launch their second album, The Echoes Of Your Mind, on November 13. The trio say their “heavy, Middle Eastern-inspired psychedelia was influenced by the midnight sun as they worked in Norway. www.rhysmarsh.com Intervals return with new album Circadian on November 13. Aaron Marshall’s latest outing is described as “a singular piece, with obsessive attention paid to the flow of the record… every detail has purpose.” www.intervalsmusic.net…

In honour of this issue’s cover star, we’re offering you the chance to win a rare copy of The Kate Inside. First published in 2016, this lavish, 250-page hardback book celebrating Kate Bush is by Italian photographer Guido Harari, who worked with Bush from 1982 to 1993. Harari shot her official press photos for landmark albums Hounds Of Love, The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, and The Kate Inside is packed with more than 300 photographs from his extensive archives. They include all Harari’s classic images of the singer, a wealth of outtakes, contact sheets, unseen photographs and other materials, including test Polaroids and personal notes by Bush. The book comes in standard and deluxe editions – we have a standard copy of The Kate Inside to give away,…

Eight years after their debut Stellar Variations, Hawkwind Light Orchestra have returned with their second album, Carnivorous. As on that 2012 release, this sees Dave Brock teaming up with Hawkwind bandmates – this time it’s Magnus Martin and Richard Chadwick – on a selection of songs that were recorded during lockdown. As Brock explains, the subject matter deals with the lighthearted side of the current pandemic, as well as more serious subjects. Is it true this began as a solo album for you? It did. That’s the way I saw this album. Richard would come down to my place for three days a week, and we’d record bits and pieces with me on bass. Then, when he went home I’d add guitar and keyboards, and it built from there with…

“Although I was aware of Wuthering Heights, it wasn’t until I was at university that I started listening to Kate Bush properly. She had just come back with the Aerial album and I was intrigued by what had come before and why everyone kept mentioning her when they heard my demos. I’d been put into the studio with Jon Kelly and he said how much my song Waiting To Breathe reminded him of her early work. So, the deep dive began. “It wouldn’t have been long after this that I got my hands on Never For Ever. I recall those first chord hits of Babooshka, the balalaika and thinking I knew what was coming next and then… Bam! That explosion into the chorus. The glass Fairlight samples. Mind blown. And…

Arjen Lucassen has never been a man to do anything by halves. Since the arrival of Ayreon a quarter-century ago, this towering yet quietly spoken Dutchman has pieced together a bamboozling catalogue of releases. Lucassen is a storyteller, and stories require casts. To that end he’s seduced the great and the good of rock, metal and prog – from our genre this includes Fish, James LaBrie, the late John Wetton, Steve Hackett, Rick Wakeman, Anneke van Giersbergen, Within Temptation’s Sharon den Adel, Damian Wilson, Thijs van Leer, Neal Morse, Keith Emerson and Mikael Åkerfeldt – to step into his ever more elaborate, often otherworldly tales of electric castles, time travel, distant planets, post-apocalyptic civilisations and its most frequent characters, an alien race called The Forever. In 2017, Lucassen tangled with…

Australian prog metallers ramp up the melody on their fourth album. As their name suggests, there’s a duality at the heart of Chaos Divine. Here’s a band that can mete out pummelling, lushly metallic music with the best of them, but they also display a real appreciation of the power of melody. Having started as a more extreme metal proposition, Legacies is another step along the road towards more progressive sensibilities. Instincts establishes the album’s sound upfront, its clipped, chopping riff and body blow beats gesturing towards the epic, while David Anderton alternates between clean and growling vocals. No Saviour and Unspoken highlight the contrast between the wrought iron precision of the guitars and the human heart of Anderton’s soaring voice, with many of the album’s lyrics inspired by the…

Virtuoso signalling at its finest. From Roxy Music to Yes, Eddie Jobson has played on some of the greatest recordings of the 20th century, yet still seems strangely invisible to the wider world. This compilation of performances from Poland, Russia, Japan and the USA with his all-star U-Z Project, features guests such as Tony Levin, Billy Sheehan, Trey Gunn, and John Wetton; Live works as a both a breathless overview of his career and an affectionate tribute to prog in general. Jobson’s violin/stick duet with Levin evokes his own exhilarating solo on Roxy Music’s If There Is Something from 1976’s Viva!. Elsewhere, the group’s take on the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Awakening – with Jobson shredding the Jerry Goodman violin part – is a standout. Live also acts as an effective tribute…

Periphery offshoot’s arena prog debut. Periphery frontman Spencer Sotelo and drummer Matt Halpern’s King Mothership side project has been hovering since 2013. With their debut album The Ritual, it’s finally touched down. The duo and bassist Tal Wright cite Jamiroquai, The Mars Volta, Muse and Queen as influences, and Freddie/Matt Bellamystyle drama is evident in the calmbefore-the-storm vocal/piano intros of Cosmic Meltdown and Babby. The scope is wide, their songs pinballing between Death Machine’s crunching drama, Only You’s edgy pop and the lush balladry of Goodnight My Darling. Here, Sotelo largely favours his earnest higher register over the roar he frequently deploys in Periphery, while the Wright/Halpern rhythm machine shines throughout. The trio’s core strengths coalesce brightest on the title track, Queen’s shadow once again casting camp Freddie elements as…

Offspring of art rock royalty comes into his own on instrumental LP. It must be tiresome for the scions of famous artists to know every piece about them will be prefaced by a mention of their dad. Elliot Nelson’s pa Bill was of course the mind behind art rockers Be-Bop Deluxe, and his son has clearly inherited the family gene for musical creativity and experimentalism. Following his arty guise, The Wolf And The Ape, his first solo instrumental album sees him continue to mine an avant-garde seam with unflinching commitment. The title track sets the tone – sparse machine-like drum parts underpin a haunting, dark synth hook interwoven with meandering mandolin lines. Nelson’s palette is modern, minimal and often unsettling (witness the slowly shifting synth chords of Cats And Otherwise).…

Italian prog-metallers skilfully diversify. Having issued four albums on four separate labels, this Neapolitan five-piece are now with growing Dutch label Layered Reality and sound like a band who’ve struck a delicate but assured balance between structural and rhythmic complexity, instrumental showboating and ear-pricking songcraft. They come out of the blocks at a furious, almost hardcore-like pace with Opening Sequence, a spiky keyboard riff underpinning a bass drum barrage from. Blue Light Cage aims to constantly wrongfoot the listener: the title track resembles a sax-laced power ballad, albeit in ¾ time, while Lino DiPetriantonio’s tenor register outdoes many an AOR stadium belter. But after it reaches a windswept climax, we’re thrust into the urgent funkfired techno rock of Going Home which fizzes and froths over with manic 80s synth flourishes.…

Norfolk neo-proggers’ long, long-delayed return. Is there such thing as “a long time” in the longform genre of prog? The 21 years this East Anglian trio left between their two albums to date suggests so. But that time seems to have been spent collating a healthy set of musical ideas for King Of Shadows. While two of the five pieces here are instrumentals, it’s the vocal numbers that grab the attention first. The melodramatic AOR of Medusa is particularly immediate, thanks in no small part to the Stevie Nicks-ish tones of Saffron Paffron, as she vows, ‘If you catch my eye/You’ll turn to stone.’ Elsewhere the mood swings are more pronounced. Antsy chords dominate the instrumental soundscape of Out Of Nothing, before they break off into a soothing soft rock…

Norwegian newbies set out their stall. This debut from Norwegian quintet Taskaha has apparently been in the works since 2016 and the result is a confident, assured statement of introduction. With two guitarists but no keyboards, Taskaha don’t have the classic, vintage prog sound found in other Norwegian bands like Wobbler or Professor Tip Top. There’s a greater emphasis on riffing, although they throw in some curveballs. Nature Girl hops, skips and jumps through tempos and meters, while Eden is an energetic slice of neo-prog that sees the band flip into a brief burst of jazzy swing. However, it’s too short an interlude to allow the idea to lead anywhere – it would be interesting to see the band give fuller expression to such impulses. Singer Rick Holmen has a…

David Davidson is best known as guitarist and frontman with balls-out American metal merchants Revocation, but the self-titled debut album from his new band Gargoyl (Season Of Mist) reveals him to be an altogether weirder and more wilful creative force. Pitched somewhere between the wild, angular sci-fi prog metal of Voivod, the harmony drenched blues sludge of Alice In Chains and the scattershot virtuosity of Watchtower, songs like Plastic Nothing and Waltz Dystopia revel in discord and melodic wrongness, with wondrously warped riffs erupting from every atmospheric angle. It’s essential listening for fans of dark and wonky prog metal. If extreme metal vocals still set your teeth on edge, Skyfall’s opulent and ornate Sleeping Forest (Trüllpantor Productions) provides the perfect, growl-free entry point into the genre at its most ambitious.…

Beautifully varied album of rock and prog from some of New York’s finest. Despite forming in the early 90s, and boasting Fates Warning’s Mark Zonder on drums since 2016, Turning Virtue have yet to reach a much wider international audience. On the basis of Beautiful that deserves to change. It’s a hugely varied collection of quality compositions and performances, embracing symphonic rock, prog metal and even a bit of Portishead-esque ambient pop on One In The Same. Meanwhile, Trapped In The System possesses a distinct nu-metal edge, which in turn contrasts with Come To Me Azure a slow, reflective piece that speaks of lost love and yearning. The 10-minute centrepiece, Bridge Towards Home morphs from a gentle piano intro through muscular pop rock, quasi-choral interludes, and a Falling Into Infinity-era…

Where jazz, prog and punk collide. WorldService Project are fired up with righteous fury on their fifth album, blasting out a volatile mix of honking brass, knotty bass grooves and expressive, hard hitting drumming tied together by band leader Dave Morecroft’s keyboards. On Hiding In Plain Sight, they prove it’s possible to be thunderously heavy and even aggressively abrasive without a guitar player. Morecroft’s keys are pushed to the point of distortion on Where Am I, and saxophonist Ben Powling pushes way out into freeform jazz in Pomped Up Freddy before restating the melody at the close. Sex Lies Lies And Lies has Morecroft angrily declaiming in Italian as the band whips itself into a frenzy behind him, while The Kipper And The Pork grooves hard with bassist Arthur O’Hara…

Jewel in the crown of TFF reissues. Impressive, immersive, and featuring a wealth of previously unreleased recordings, this four-CD and Blu-ray box represents a truly jubilant celebration of Tears For Fears’ original, chart-topping 1989 album. Of this abundance of audio, Steven Wilson’s new surround sound mix is inevitably the most obvious mouth-watering treat to savour here, ushering the listener deep into the ornate, crafted soundworld Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith had painstakingly created in the four years following the runaway success of 1985’s Songs From The Big Chair. “A high wire between integrity and commercial pay dirt.” In the accompanying booklet, featuring penetrating interviews with all the principals involved in the making of the record, Wilson notes that compiling the mix from a bewildering array of multiple sources presented him…

Early US progressive rock supergroup charge again. Rhinoceros were assembled Monkeesstyle in 1967 by hot shot Elektra producer Paul Rothchild after his success with The Doors gave him carte blanche from label boss Jac Holzman. After auditioning some of LA’s finest, Rothchild brought together ex-members of Iron Butterfly, Daily Flash, Electric Flag, the Mothers Of Invention. Produced by Rothchild, 1968’s selftitled debut album – which heads up this three-album retrospective box – deftly straddled musical styles, fermenting US progressive rock, robust post-psych rock, strong dramatic ballads, funky R&B vamps and progpresaging baroque acrobatics. Organdriven instrumental Apricot Brandy scraped America’s Top 50 (and themed Radio 1’s Scene And Heard cultural news roundup). Despite positive reviews, Rhinoceros failed to give record buyers the horn although Rod Stewart loved You’re My Girl (I…

Excellent overview of a music scene that deserves to be much better known. It’s no longer a surprise to discover that just about every country had a thriving ‘underground’ music scene from the late 60s onwards. What is surprising, given the contents of this superb three-CD collection, is that there hasn’t been more focus on the bands coming out of Denmark during this time, because there’s a real consistency of both innovation and quality on display here. And while no overview like this can ever be entirely comprehensive, it does showcase an identifiable ‘Dansk rock’ sound, one that takes elements from American psychedelia, British blues rock and prog, and German krautrock, but is still its own thing. It’s noticeable how fluid this melding of elements is, with a kind of…

NYC proggers’ stunningly ebullient live presentation. For anyone who has never seen Circuline onstage, this DVD of the New York band filmed at 2017’s ProgStock in New Jersey will be an eye-opener. Musically, they draw from Yes, Rush, ELO and Gentle Giant, and they have the proficiency to make it all work within an epic cinematic style. However, that only tells part of the tale because this lot really do know how to ensure the crowd are held spellbound. Forbidden Planet, for instance, showcases the skills of drummer Darin Brannon, as he delivers the sort of performance that goes far beyond the normal drum solo. And there’s a piano duet linking Nautilus and Hollow, which sees Andrew Colyer and Brannon play off each other with big smiles on their faces.…

Intriguing examination of why Kid A was the new millennium’s first proper album. It seems strange now, but Kid A caused an enormous stir when it came out 20 years ago. Even as it went to No.1 on both sides of the Atlantic, it was pilloried as an artsy-fartsy indulgence and a betrayal of Radiohead’s rockist destiny. It was, of course, nothing of the sort. Instead, as Steven Hyden points out in his examination of the Kid A phenomenon, it’s been hugely influential on modern music making while also anticipating the dystopian tone of the 21st century to date. Hyden is interested in how Kid A was received at the time, why it’s achieved classic album status since, and what this tells us about how the music industry has changed…

British prog icons’ formative years documented. Anyone keen to delve into the backstory of neo-prog’s great perennials has been well served recently. Script For A Jester’s Tear got the full-blown super-deluxe reissue treatment this year (with extensive liner notes by Prog’s very own Jerry Ewing), Marillion superfan Paul “Mr Biffo” Rose is currently reappraising each of the band’s releases on his weekly podcast Between You And Me, and this very mag has delved deep into the making of Marillion’s early material and, more recently, Fish’s solo career. “It sheds new light on the band’s artistry, and how it works.” Readers can now add this paperback to the library of material on the band’s formative years. US Marillion fan and musician Nathaniel Webb dissects the band’s defining decade from their Silmarillion…