Prog V3.0 Discussion Thread

I get up, I get down....

What is the "v3.0" for?

y

I kinda wanted to start a thread (almost certainly doomed) about Prog 3.0 and the monthly Prog magazine that comes out, to see if anybody else scours it to try and extract any good modern progressive/whatever bands. So far, for me, Regal Worm, Kitten Pyramid, Cranium Pie and a few others spring to mind.

I like a lot of Prog and I enjoy reading articles about Caravan and Stackridge, but so much of the new music they cover is poor, the cover mount CDs can be particularly hilarious with amazing sub standard bedroom demo artists.

― MaresNest, Friday, September 4, 2015 8:38 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The announcement of the chart coincides with the annual Progressive Music Awards, at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London on Thursday night.
Among those being honoured is founder member of Genesis Tony Banks, who will receive the 2015 Prog God Award.
lol

― soref, Friday, September 4, 2015 9:55 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

last year's winner Peter Gabriel with his Prog God Award:

*PICTUR OF PETER GARBULE*

― soref, Friday, September 4, 2015 9:58 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The absurdity of this chart is to be expected given an overly broad definition and the list being based solely on sales figures.

FWIW I like the new Tim Bowness record well enough although not as much as his earlier recordings, either solo or with No-Man. Top prog for me so far this year include Echolyn's I Heard You Listening and Vespero's Fitful Slumber Until 5AM.

― doug watson, Friday, September 4, 2015 10:26 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2016 Prog God Award - Steve Hackett
2017 Prog God Award - Mike Rutherford
2018 Prog God Award - Phil Collins
2019 Prog God Award - Anthony Phillips
2020 Prog God Award - Ray Wilson

― Fields of Fat Henry (Tom D.), Friday, September 4, 2015 10:29 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2021 Prog God Award - Jonathan King

― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Friday, September 4, 2015 10:59 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like a lot of Prog and I enjoy reading articles about Caravan and Stackridge, but so much of the new music they cover is poor, the cover mount CDs can be particularly hilarious with amazing sub standard bedroom demo artists.
How much do you have to pay to get a track onto those covermounts anyway? Most bedroom prog guys work in IT I think so they can afford it, however much it is.

― めんどくさかった (Matt #2), Friday, September 4, 2015 11:16 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

MaresNest i could get behind a prog 3.0 thread since this revival has been one of the more interesting musical developments over the past few years. you're totally right about how frustrating it is to sift through the new stuff since a lot of it sucks. (feel the same way about punk rock.) those low points (and there are a lot of them) are dreadful, and the high points are rarely noticed outside of place like progressiveears. it takes work to keep discovering good new stuff, and the mainstream press pretends that 'good new prog' doesn't exist, in favor of detailing every nuance of development in indie rock, metal, hip hop, and dance music, no matter how mediocre or fleeting. somehow unlike those other modes of creativity prog is defined by and dismissed because of its worst elements, or like there's a game of musical chairs going on, and prog can never have a seat at the table, or something. and then an album like the new IRON MAIDEN will come out and it's like come on people, there's something happening here!

― reggie (qualmsley), Friday, September 4, 2015 11:33 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I haven't heard any proof that a prog-revival is any good but I haven't been listening. The folk-rock revival that went mainstream a few years ago was sooo bad. There are songs on the radio that I can't picture without the worst hamboning (imagine the shoryuken hand configuration and alternating leg blasts to a beat)

― The Once-ler, Friday, September 4, 2015 12:11 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Reading the magazine is kinda interesting as it simultaneously deals with the 70s stuff, the 80s revival and the more diffuse idea of what's going on now, which takes in a reasonable amount of genres from Freak Folk to Cinematic Goth Metal, what's certain is that it's hard to tell if there is any unified kind of revival or dialogue, or perhaps that's not the point and it's just the magazine's own dialogue that is imposed on a bunch of disparate bands.

― MaresNest, Friday, September 4, 2015 12:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It would be nice to have a breezy, here-check-out-this-band, youtube thread on Prog V3.0, however like punk-rock, there's the endless möbius loop of discussion about what *is* Prog? are they Prog? what does progressive music mean?

― MaresNest, Friday, September 4, 2015 12:41 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the all-over-the-placeness of 'Prog' is a feature for me, not a bug, as with 'MOJO' and 'The Wire'. but reading 'Prog' is nowhere near the same experience as 'MOJO', 'The Wire', or even 'Uncut' -- the quality of the writing (and editing) doesn't come close to comparing; it's almost more like a lost of press releases strung together . . . but at least someone's finally acknowledging that proggy stuff is being released, and that's there's a lot of good stuff that got overlooked in the past, and collating a lot of this information in one place

i'd be into that thread . . . there've been attempts in the past i'm too busy at the moment to pull up from the archives, but not a dedicated 'rolling prog 20xx' like with psych or tompkins square. i think that would be cool. prog is so stigmatized that acknowledging its existence in and of itself feels like work, so i could very well see that thread facing an early demise of attrition

i think the stigma clouding prog in part fuels the endless mobius loop of discussion of what it *is*. aficionados proceed from a defensive posture because for whatever reason it's one of the few underdog modes of expression it's okay to pile on. just putting together for the sake of discussion a loose canon of neo-prog -- RUINS, MARS VOLTA, MEW, STEVEN WILSON, SIGUR ROS, GUAPO, RADIOHEAD, MOTORPSYCHO, BATTLES, etc. -- is potentially a fraught exercise because even people inclined to listen to prog without prejudice might take offense that a band they feel vicariously cool listening to could be considered 'prog'

― reggie (qualmsley), Friday, September 4, 2015 1:04 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Van Der Graf Generator did 9/11

― Hammer Smashed Bagels, Friday, September 4, 2015 1:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think it's coming,
All signs are very near, all signs are that
Pain shall come
And change shall run
Down through my heart
And shake my knees
And now it is coming,
All around is the humming
Of the World.

Too late, with my balance gone,
Dead-eyed doll,
I'm falling, falling
Back to where I began...

― Yul Brynner playing table tennis with a deviled kidney (imago), Friday, September 4, 2015 1:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd have a few alterations to that neo-prog canon tbh. Generally I despise canons, though, so maybe that is accurate

― Yul Brynner playing table tennis with a deviled kidney (imago), Friday, September 4, 2015 1:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Singer Steven Wilson crowned prog rock king

― anthony braxton diamond geezer (anagram), Friday, September 4, 2015 1:21 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So, based on this list (and especially based on that list of bestselling 21st Century prog albums)...is prog just whatever someone decides to call prog? Because I thought I knew but guess I have no idea what prog is.

― Fancy Fantasies (Old Lunch), Friday, September 4, 2015 1:39 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm with you louis, hence the "loose" in the bad pun "loose canon"

steven wilson is a king of rock period, an ENO of the now, with his own stuff, producing OPETH, and remixing reissues of KING CRIMSON, YES, JETHRO TULL, and GENTLE GIANT. i wonder when he can get any sleep

seems like they're (whoever 'they' are) are trying to pry 'prog' away as a designation for just symphonic prog and classic prog rock -- yes, floyd, crimson, supertramp -- and stretch it to fit contemporary bands who are openly emulating those bands or at least owning up to the influence of symphonic prog and classic prog rock

― reggie (qualmsley), Friday, September 4, 2015 1:43 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm going to have to post this again, aren't I?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-cKxcUt7X8

^^^this is prog, Old Lunch. This is prog.

― Yul Brynner playing table tennis with a deviled kidney (imago), Friday, September 4, 2015 1:43 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

THAT is prog! dan britton is a genius (birds & buildings is a pretty great band of his, too). guys like this make awesome music and it just sits there, almost totally unnoticed and unheard; there's no frisson or cachet to discovery, like there is say in the psych underground . . . which i love with equal tragic ardor, hearing the two as very much related

― reggie (qualmsley), Friday, September 4, 2015 1:53 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dan britton is definitely at the good-at-composing & forward-thinking end of the prog revival and i will boost him whenever i can. there's a lot of reactionary or unimaginative cheese (or, worse, instrument wank) in the neo-prog canon but if you know where to look there are also brilliant works and stuff that just wasn't being done a while back

but this is limiting ourselves just to prog qua prog - there's all sorts of progressive or modular songwriting going on across the board, whether metal, pop, avant-garde, indie, electronic or all of the above

― Yul Brynner playing table tennis with a deviled kidney (imago), Friday, September 4, 2015 1:57 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, that sounds like what I think of as prog. I think I just may have missed the memo that definition of prog had grown to encompass the likes of Air and Faith No More and Kate Bush.

― Fancy Fantasies (Old Lunch), Friday, September 4, 2015 1:58 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It is kind of hilarious that Black Holes & Revelations is the 'bestselling prog album' of our time when it only has one vaguely prog song on it (tbf, more or less the greatest - and i use that term guardedly - thing that band ever did)

― Yul Brynner playing table tennis with a deviled kidney (imago), Friday, September 4, 2015 2:01 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've never thought of AIR or KATE BUSH as anything other than prog or 'proggish'. david gilmour discovered kate bush, she sings on peter gabriel's 'so', and she's released 40 minute songs!

and louis you are totally right. what i'm saying is the stigma clouding 'prog' limits apprehension and appreciation of the inter-genre modular songwriting going on. all these people coming out of the prog rock closet (so to speak) helps clear up reception, i think

― reggie (qualmsley), Friday, September 4, 2015 2:03 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

never heard Deluge Grander before and am not overly impressed tbh. far from being "forward-thinking", it sounds like it could have been made at any time since the early '70s. that's why I love Wilson, because he's doing something fresh and exciting w/the prog genre. can't hear anything remotely innovative in that clip.

― anthony braxton diamond geezer (anagram), Friday, September 4, 2015 2:05 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I just bought that Deluge Grander album this week along with the Birds And Buildings debut.

Where's Frogbs been? Is Algerian Goalkeeper totally gone?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, September 4, 2015 2:08 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is prog just whatever someone decides to call prog?

If ILM is anything to go by, yes.

― Fields of Fat Henry (Tom D.), Friday, September 4, 2015 2:09 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Deluge Grander is kind of subtly contemporary. It's like prime-era Canterbury-scene keyboard prog with a hefty dose of metal or indie songwriting. The innovation is in the songwriting rather than the sonics.

― Yul Brynner playing table tennis with a deviled kidney (imago), Friday, September 4, 2015 2:11 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And the outro is...well, if you get that far YOU'RE IN FOR A TREAT

― Yul Brynner playing table tennis with a deviled kidney (imago), Friday, September 4, 2015 2:12 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But you wanted forward-thinking? You wanted postmodern? You wanted completely fucking demented?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE2ulYKK56U

You got what you asked for.

― Yul Brynner playing table tennis with a deviled kidney (imago), Friday, September 4, 2015 2:14 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Prog V3.0 Discussion Thread

We can move over now if we like, can some kind soul cut and paste the last bits of discussion from here? (at work and my attention to the net is spotty)

― MaresNest, Friday, September 4, 2015 2:16 PM (8 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What is the "v3.0" for?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, September 4, 2015 2:17 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because idk ,Neo Prog was used in the Eighties and I can't think of a better term, it's the third act imho

what bands fall under prog 3.0? i remember listening to a bunch of neo-prog back in the late 90s/early 00s and it mostly sucked in retrospect, was that still part of 2.0? 2.5?

SYD ARTHUR is prog 3.0, no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsuB4IXEJz8

Certainly, it's just a thread title though, it doesn't have to be too stringent, it's more a way of saying that the stock is risen again, there's devoted press and which bands newish are in the (possibly) momentarily available spotlight.

dammit, which *newish* bands

there's always a bunch of prog on RYM top albums of current year chart but i don't know how much i trust that site's userbase at Prog Liking. its led me astray before

i think my tastes run to more Psychedelic stuff, but occasionally I'll hear an on-point progressive band that I like.

I really quite liked the Big Big Train record from a couple of years back, but I was totally amazed at the very blatant, wholesale lifting of certain very well known themes by Genesis and nobody in the press or on the net called it, which I thought was weird/interesting.

i enjoy that Mondo Drag record from this year, it's in just the right spot between psych and prog for my liking

ugh I'm sort of into this new Dear Hunter album

been wanting to check that out

i'm way into the new NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS double

Prog is a hard qualifier for me anymore. In the 70s, "progressive" started out vague, but came to mean the kind of stuff that Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Gentle Giant, etc were doing. Once that happened, backlash started, because it was obvious "progressive" was a "style" and not a state of mind. If you label stuff "prog" now, it's like you're conceding the point, and just looking for stuff that conforms to some aspect of progressive rock from the 70s. And really, if I can say a record is "psych prog", the likelihood of me actually considering it a "progressive" piece of art is slim.

So what to even call prog 3.0 then? Is it just artful, technically-interesting rock? (or is "technically interesting" merely a backhanded compliment?)

if it doesn't have acts it's not prog

got it

Prog doesn't have to be Progressive any more than IDM has to be Intelligent

conceding the point to whom?

"progressive" is a state of mind, though, just like "blues" and "dance" are. there's an impatience with impatience, a longing for expansiveness and discovery that's every bit as legit as wanting to shake your ass (and isn't necessarily mutually exclusive!) even while there's a respect of practice and technique, an appreciation that dumbing everything down isn't necessarily the best thing to do all the time, a longing to escape and overcome disadvantage, limitation, and doubt instead of making jokes about them or romanticizing them, and a concern about social justice that's no difference from the "punk" and "blues" states of mind

xpost

Anyone else a fan of the Monks of Doom? It's essentially everyone from Camper Van Beethoven except David Lowery. They existed pretty much at the same time, and when CVB broke up Lowery claimed (and since retracted) that it was because everyone else was into prog and he was into country or something. Which you can certainly hear in the last two CVB records, that push and pull, and definitely in the Monks of Doom, who have some really cool playing in the vein of ... maybe Brit folk-psych-prog is a good comparison? Plus, they recorded the occasional long suite, like this one (based on an Edward Gorey story):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an8yaBELH84

that's awesome, like a missing link between COMUS and USA IS A MONSTER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wuQ-EaVCo

there's an awful lot of love that's gotta make a little difference

Prog doesn't have to be Progressive any more than IDM has to be Intelligent

disagree. This is why a "prog" chart isn't very helpful to me. I already know the Flaming Lips and Muse are popular -- what I'm after is rock music that sounds like it's trying to go places we haven't been before. I do believe this is actually what the original prog bands like Yes and King Crimson were trying to do (however close they may or may not have approached that ideal).

conceding the point to whom?

Conceding the point to people who view music through the narrow lens of "genre" and "style" -- admittedly, this is probably most people. It is *certainly* people who are trying make a lot of money from music like concert promoters and record labels. I don't concede this point.

"progressive" is a state of mind, though, just like "blues" and "dance" are.

I do agree with this, I just don't see it reflected a lot in music that gets labeled "prog". Most of the time I see that label, it's applied to new bands who sound like old ones (and are easily marketed to people who probably just want to hear the old stuff anyway). See also blues or punk for that matter. Who is the biggest "blues" artist of our generation? John Mayer. It's because he really stands for the state of mind that is the blues, right?

good. don't ever concede that point. fuck them

i don't experience john mayer's music as touched by "blues". he's a white dude with cover model looks, unlike 99.9999% of the listening public. the biggest blues artist of our generation as far as i'm concerned is d'angelo

both definitions have their uses

progressive rock as neverending forward moving continuum vs a style that goes in and out of fashion and gets more codified and formalized with every revivial

john mayer did several straight up blues albums, didn't he?

and by blues i mean, the style of electric blues as propagated by t-bone walker, john lee hooker muddy waters blah blah blah

progressive rock as music made by people who love drugs and guitars and brains and jazz and symphonies and rock music vs a basic three chord style that goes in and out of fashion and gets more codified and formalized with every revival

what?

sorry, i meant "both definitions of progressive rock have their uses"

i can't keep up with most so-called "prog" these days because way too much of it sounds like fucking starcastle to me. when i was young i hated neo-prog but god at least with the digital keys they made some token attempt to sound contemporary. yes and genesis weren't even that good in the first place that their music bears infinite retreads. the less said about elp, the better.

there are a couple of oddball groups i liked ok. jack o' the clock's "how are we doing and who will tell us?" was an interesting record. sometimes there are some okay bands at the rio fests (and even at the frank zappa festivals they have in europe)- they're usually a little short on melody, but i do find groups like "ni" and "mirthkon" entertaining. or, let's see, bangladeafy, they're not bad. accordo dei contrari had a decent record with richard sinclair guesting a couple years back. i love alamaailman vasarat, but i haven't heard any of their stuff in years.

the big problem i have with a lot of this stuff is that it seldom has vocals, and when it does have vocals, they're often not very good (i'm looking at you, motorpsycho). i like instrumental music, but there's a thin line between this and jazz fusion, which it seems like cuneiform, which was my favorite label in my '90s proghead days, has gone over to almost exclusively. if you want to do this stuff, you have to be damn good, and most of the bands that dos instrumental music well people don't necessarily think of as prog. the new jaga jazzist record is supposedly "nu jazz", whatever the hell that means. secret chiefs 3's "perichoresis" is either "experimental rock" or "arabic jazz", depending on who you ask.

genre means less than it used to, and to the extent that it does mean something, any remotely talented 21st century band is going to avoid being called "prog" like the plague, which it basically is.

both you and dominique are right, basically - people like dan britton are the exceptions when it comes to those making self-conscious prog in that their music is sometimes really exciting

& yet

there is an absolute cataract of music i would call 'progressive' or 'modular' or 'unconventionally structured' or 'symphonic' that either avoids the label or combines it with a less damaging signifier (avant-garde, metal, indie, folk etc) and which essentially comprises my entire music taste

i would be very happy to assist you all in a tour of this music. somehow i suspect this thread is more for the stuff that rubber-stamps the four-letter word across its caped back. or the six-letter word now that it's ye olde, reactionary 70's-worship as well as daring plunge into the future

that's the thing, sometimes i feel like my music tastes haven't actually changed at all since my '90s prog-head days. the stuff i listened to used to be called "prog" and now it is called "symphonic black metal" or "nu jazz" or "chamber folk" or "abstract hip-hop" or "microhouse" or one of a thousand different things, but honestly, who the hell do the people who come up with these names think they're fooling? it ain't me.

yes and genesis weren't even that good in the first place that their music bears infinite retreads.

wouldn't say the same about genesis but yes at their peak are as good as it gets, and their influence is every bit as grade-a as the beatles, stones, who, velvets, and zeppelin imo

Yes are definitely up with my all-time greats. Wish there was more Art Zoyd fans.

Dominique: disagree. This is why a "prog" chart isn't very helpful to me. I already know the Flaming Lips and Muse are popular -- what I'm after is rock music that sounds like it's trying to go places we haven't been before. I do believe this is actually what the original prog bands like Yes and King Crimson were trying to do (however close they may or may not have approached that ideal).

I haven't heard everything (or even that much at all) that the early prog bands were into but I'm very sceptical when people say "(x) classical composers and (x) jazz gods done all this before". Such evaluations seem very reductive. I doubt listening to all those influences is going to get me something that makes Tormato redundant (fooking love that album).

I tend to look for prog because I like the symphonic structures, complexity, bonkers sounds, lots of odd mixtures/contrasting elements and often imaginative themes that other rock genres are less likely to use. There's a lot you can do with all that. And some of the stuff that isn't particularly ambitious or innovative is just beautifully done. Who can say that everything they like is innovative and brilliant?

Rushomancy: avoid being called "prog" like the plague, which it basically is

Don't know what you mean by this. Most of the bad/mediocre prog music for the core audience doesn't really have any larger impact, it just stays in obscurity.

You guys should check out the Doors

Haha!

The early Emperor and Immortal albums definitely hit my prog buttons as hard as anything. Oddly enough Ihsahn said a few years ago he was trying to learn about prog but I thought they were always doing it well enough.

"But isn't this ambition and innovation something that all music should ideally do?"

no. i think the fewer bands that have the "ambition" or "innovation" found in bands like the flaming lips and muse, the better.

here's the crux of the problem: at some point, on some level, chart music is going to be about appealing to the lowest common denominator. that's not a criticism of the charts, but "prog" music is, in theory, about the opposite of that (even if we know in practice it is more often, like any other hidebound genre, like hitting all the right cultural signifiers to appeal to a certain subgroup- here's a mellotron patch, here's a section in 7/8, etc., etc.)

that's not to say music has to be original to be good- i do really like anglagard, who on their first album lifted entire passages from schicke fuhrs frohling- or that i insist on music being original- i don't. merely that far too much of the music which proclaims itself to be "prog" these days is neither original _nor_ good.

best case scenario starting a "prog" chart is about as meaningful as when the grammys started awarding a "jazz fusion" grammy in something like 1980. as i recall, they wound up giving pat metheny a dozen grammys or so over the next decade and then quietly packing up shop.

robert: what i mean is that if you make good music, and it is stylistically "prog", you will do anything possible to avoid being labelled that, because the wider cultural assumption, which i'm starting to think is well-earned with moves like "prog" magazine, the "prog" hall of fame, etc., is that "prog" is a bad form of music. it's sort of the confederate flag of music genres.

I wasn't referring to the bands in the chart but I agree with the problem of a chart, I just think the "progressive" ethic is a universal thing that can be applied to any creative medium. It's doubtful there's ever going to be the kind of constant flow of good prog like there is with something like metal (although I don't know what state the metal charts are in). Although there's a handful of Flaming Lips tracks I really enjoy.

it's sort of the confederate flag of music genres.

Hardly seems like that anymore. I would have agreed back when "shoegazing" began to stop being a dirty word but the only time I see the stigma is older fans who're still overly defensive about past abuse. Maybe it's one of the genres that gets overly associated by it's worst examples but it's a damn long way from nearly being as disrespected as nu-metal or 00s emo, I'd say even goth still has more stigma. Aside from the odd jokey sneer popping in threads probably mostly by people whose music taste was formed from the late 70s to the late 90s but younger music fans don't care about those prejudices. A lot of the newer fans seem to have come through metal, of course it's always been in metal and they're far less likely to give a shit about being uncool than indie fans.

I understand why some modern ambitious bands wouldn't want to be pigeonholed like that for the reasons they wouldn't want to be stuck with any rock music subgenre tag. Bands like Battles, Mew and Field Music (dunno if you care about these bands but they are fairly successful but not through the core audience to the extent of Steve Wilson) don't seem to mind being stuck with it as long as it doesn't dominate peoples expectations for them (Wilson even said just as much). Newer high quality Rock In Opposition type bands aren't going to resist because that's probably where their fanbase will come from in the first place.

this constant refrain of 'of course everyone agrees 'prog' sucks' is wrong and really really stale. 'shoegaze' is a great comparison. there was a time when people considered slowdive a joke which is about as wrong as wrong can be. lots and lots of people 'get into' music in part because they are seeking shelter from the wages of being social underdogs or outcasts. the silver lining of critics turning against prog in the mid-70s and keeping that prejudice up 40 years later still is prog has become a sort of 'refuge genre' (one among many) that people can take comfort in

For me the benefit that Yes (apart from one hit) and a few other big bands were a totally fresh experience for me. It felt like this big blast of energy came out of nowhere or an alternate reality where they a big band. Even though the bands were and still are famous it was near enough like exploring Projekt goth music that you never see in physical shops.
Ideally I'd like this music to be very famous for the quality but never played in adverts and only relatively scant radio play. I know there are bands like that but I'm blanking on them.

I've got mixed feelings about that Prog magazine. I find Malcolm Dome's tireless enthusiasm kind of fascinating. I like that they give long overdue coverage to lots of great bands and talk about reissues of more obscure 70s bands.
But magazine cover/lead feature conservatism that plagues Mojo and Uncut is there (though not as bad as the same 10 or 15 genuine stadium filling megastars over and over again). The newer bands they tend to focus on are just too weak most of the time (and most of them just sound more like overly shiny classic rock revivalists rather than retro-proggers) when they could easily use more space on Ruins, Mew and Battles, who they have covered but it doesn't make sense that they didn't give them even more coverage. The magazine is so damn expensive too but I'm kind of tempted to get the new one now.

The best song by new band I ever heard on those cds was Fierce And The Dead with "On Vhs"
http://thefierceandthedead.bandcamp.com/album/on-vhs

I quite liked "Shadow" by Touchstone, kinda poppy gothy power metal. I don't expect many of you would be into it but I thought it was fun.

But hands down the best thing I heard was The Enid, a 70s band but a new song. Amazing.

But anyway, new bands Anyone?

Also, I'm not sure what can realistically be expected from those magazine compilations, dunno if it's a complicated thing to secure rights to good music on a regular basis.
Terrorizer is a really good magazine but the few cds I heard from them were mostly average c-list extreme metal.
I listened to all the Mojo, Uncut and Word compilations for a few years and most of the good music was by firmly established bands or already very successful new bands. All the newbies seemed to be Dylan and Springsteen wannabes.
This was one of the compilations!
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/comp/various_artists_f2/uncut_presents__fill_your_head_with_prog___11_mind_bending_classics/

Just been listening to a few tracks by José Luis Fernández Ledesma Q from Mexico. He's been in a few bands starting in 1995 with Niagra Vallis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiO0_kyuDZY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPgSv3VbGJI

As Brian Eno once suggested, the concept of “pretension” is just a hangover from the British class system, with its deep suspicion of anyone attempting to rise above their station. “I’m very happy to have added my little offering to the glowing mountain of things described as pretentious,” Eno wrote. “I’m happy to have made claims on things that I didn’t have any ‘right’ to, and I’m happy to have tried being someone else to see what it felt like.”

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/days-between-wheelhouses-growing-and-getting-f%E2%80%8B-%E2%80%8B-%E2%80%8B-ed-up-in-public-with-miley-cyrus-and-her-dead-petz/

sing it miley

MaresNest i could get behind a prog 3.0 thread since this revival has been one of the more interesting musical developments over the past few years. you're totally right about how frustrating it is to sift through the new stuff since a lot of it sucks. (feel the same way about punk rock.) those low points (and there are a lot of them) are dreadful, and the high points are rarely noticed outside of place like progressiveears.

This is really OTM, it's sad that a band like Birds & Buildings gets so little press anywhere else even though they've gotten great reviews across the board. There are so many bands started by dudes who just grew up loving prog and decided to start a band themselves even if they didn't really know how to write or play. Hell some of these bands even wind up being really good after a couple of albums. But Britton feels like a natural talent, both in writing and in playing, he's the sort of guy I worry is just gonna hang it up some day because he struggles to sell 100 copies of an album he worked a thousand hours on.

Also I have to point out that I don't see a problem with bands that sound retro or are overly influenced by Yes or Genesis or Rush, as long as they can do it right. So many bands take the genre really seriously and make music that's so long winded and un-fun *cough cough...looking at you Flower Kings* - that's why I don't have an issue with Glass Hammer even though they lift a ton from their influences, their music can really be a blast and you can tell they really have fun making it. Or take this song by a band called Druckfarben that I've previously posted in a Yes thread - I don't care that it so clearly apes Steve Howe's style, it just rules and that's all it really needs to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBgEmgWzLf8

damn there are some hot licks there! thanks for posting that

i've been coming around to flower kings, after having a really bad reaction to discovering them immediately post-college, when i was an overt corny indie fuck but secretly, unbeknownst to friends, searching for bands who sounds like YES. part of listening to prog is coping with an imaginary tribunal of robert christgau, lester bangs, and sundry other smug types making fun of you. overcoming that emotional handicap in part involved appreciating glass hammer (especially 'chronometree') which melted away my neurotic misgivings enough to allow time for other old school* revivalists, not just flower kings, but that other 'shameless' roine stolt band, transatlantic, along with wobbler, astra, diagonal, and anglagard

*why is 'old school' "good" in country, hip hop, punk, and jazz, but "bad" in prog? why is prog so often judged by double standards? are people really so shallow they don't realize they're doing it, or is there some weird pleasure (status marker) in sticking it to the prognostic?

I think "old school" prog is accepted in context, as a product of its time. But I find that contemporary (or at least post-heyday) prog tends toward the cheesy, or often does. Possibly because the focus on musicianship so often manifests itself in solos and long songs, both of which are pretty much out of favor or at least a matter of taste, especially if said solos are silly. I suppose that's why I've always glommed on to the slower, post-Talk Talk sort of indie prog. The arrangements and songs are really interesting, but the temps tend to damper show-offery. I'm thinking of bands like These New Puritans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftvICVWLBKY

Otherwise, the punk/metal side of prog remains pretty compelling, whether Tool or Opeth or other technical stuff, maybe because it's got a discordant edge that I think a lot of prog (flights of fancy and all) can lack. Like that nutzo band Shining, which clearly (see below) leans prog but otherwise doesn't sound indebted to the '70s stuff at all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0j4WkoDrtg

that's sick

sick jazz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN3PLKDQZQI&index=4&list=RDDXDBDktSRa4

oh man, I bet King Crimson themselves would've been proud of that

wonder how much the 'cheese factor' (in this as elsewhere) is the continental europeanness of prog -- it never really died down far as i know in italy, and it's still vital all over scandanavia. what might sound effete or weak in manchester and oklahoma maybe makes more sense in like venice or krakow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2REetE6JJ0Y

a lack of facility with english probably doesn't much help either with self-conscious anglo-americans, who'd make fun of even neil peart's lyrics and song titles

I don't know about weak or effete, but my prob with a lot of prog (even much I like) is it can sound like interstitial music, or the kind of polished pomp you might hear while, say, a magician does his trick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcoSfjjkcjY

stuff like that is sort of the price for the payoff sometimes like cookie monster growls in death metal, though, or cartoon violence in hip hop, no? and for sure the NECKS and ART ZOYD and TALK TALK can go off on 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 minute long jams without any illusionist anything, so i think of 'prog' in terms of them too not just the worst offenders kind of for balance / silencing the bangs voice i'm otherwise glad is there with me when listening to the stooges say

that magician stuff sounds more like michael nyman than prog rock to me

I really didn't mean that one specifically, just a general neo-classical symphonic pomp-prog. Plus, fuzak and Mannheim Steamroller new age haven't done prog any favors either. Or, you know, Dream Theater.

I was wondering if things had gotten to the point that there might be bands that were undeniably influenced by Porcupine Tree, then after some googling..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zejmxtjpOY

ELP-esque carnival keyboard vibe doesn't always come off that well either. defining this type of music by valleys instead of peaks is an interesting phenom; i do it too. i wouldn't dismiss like electric wizard because of warrant the way i would radiohead because of marillion (no offense marillion!)

xpost

I was wondering if things had gotten to the point that there might be bands that were undeniably influenced by Porcupine Tree

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOzRzoE-F5Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkbYGWbJd2s

has steven wilson ever done anything that's transcended his influences?

Not in my opinion. No matter what kind of style or feel he's attempting go for ends up this slick, bland mush. Everything sounds too half-arsed and safe but that's a general symptom of modern so-called prog.

He's done some great work behind a mixing board though but as for his own music: nah.

prog 3.0 master = Bob Drake. Taking sometimes obvious influences like Yes and Henry Cow, but coming out utterly his own thing.

Yeah I love Bob Drake! Twisting 50s RnR/bluegrass/whatever else into avant-prog shapes but remaining absurdly catchy. So good.

Bob Drake > Steven Wilson = crazy talk

more prog 3.0 masters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCrTWajDlsc

Bob Drake > Steven Wilson = crazy talk

not even sure I've heard Steven Wilson's music. what's an album to check out?

any of them really but The Raven That Refused to Sing is his masterpiece imo

"if you make good music, and it is stylistically "prog", you will do anything possible to avoid being labelled that" ― rush0mancy

serious? you think prog musicians give a fuck?

" yes and genesis weren't even that good in the first place that their music bears infinite retreads"...
" the stuff i listened to used to be called 'prog' and now it is called 'symphonic black metal' or 'nu jazz' or 'chamber folk' or 'abstract hip-hop' or 'microhouse'" ― rush0mancy

are you in the right thread?

Tones Of Town is not bad but Plumb is the really prog Field Music album.

Measure is their masterpiece IMO

and screw Wilson, what we really need to sort out is Bill Drake vs Bob Drake

I stopped caring for anything labeled prog when the majority became symphonic black metal. So if there is actually any good modern prog bands, I wouldn't know about it. Maybe there is something to 'prog' getting fucked over by having all the metal thrown in... but it's easy to ignore it because the metal is usually labeled something like 'prog-metal'. Actual prog music stopped being made imo (just like the Cantebury scene) and anything labeled plain old prog nowadays is an exclusively different genre than prog 1.0 (except for solo acts from old guys that were part of the original movement)

I'd like to expound upon something I've noticed in a lot of prog which frankly puts me off

The other night I went to a gig, involving Thumpermonkey (who are FUCKING AMAZING and whose new stuff sounds genuinely wondrous - I will link some of their stuff here, probably) and two other nu-hard-prog bands. And as good as Thumpermonkey were, the other two did not cut it in the songwriting or the interplay departments. They made a lot of noise - one with a saxophone, which was nice - but it didn't amount to much.

Worse, though, was their attitude and their approach to lyrics. Both had songs about oral sex. One in particular was just cock-rock gone modular. Lumpen AND pretentious, if you'll allow. The band was fucking leaking testosterone everywhere, exuding contempt for women and worship of their own penises as they prattled their nonsense.

Now, while the band with the saxophone had genuine promise (and their oral sex song was weird and dentistry-related enough to be excused), not to mention humility, the other band really made me reflect upon the lineage of ultra-masculine prog and its idiotic, lascivious approach to sex. From ELP to Gentle Giant and then later to the guitar-pranging morons of today, you have these contemptuous lionised fuckwits inflicting their sexual supremacy onto the audience, whether on their album covers or in their lyrics. It's fucking tiresome!

What I'm saying is NOT that I want all prog to be super-sensitive Steven Wilson 'oh I'm such a nice guy' nice-guy-ness. I like music and lyrics with a bit of edge. But I fucking hate the maleness of quite a lot of prog. Does anybody else find themselves having a problem with this?

Oh, and the cock-prog band were from Manchester, obviously.

listening to the Steven Wilson record now. I've only really heard the first song, listening to the second. Pretty clearly indebted to 70s classic prog, particular Yes, which the bass, drums and lead guitar tone seem to use as the primary (only?) sound template. The vocals I'm not sold on, but the backing vocals (also very Yes-like) aren't actually far from how Bob Drake's sound. The energy is good, and the playing is good (I think this is Marco Minneman on drums, and he's an interesting player).

Compositionally, I would say this is a lot more straightforward than someone like Bob Drake. It's got a big, symphonic form, though is actually a little simpler in construction that something like Close to the Edge or Awaken by Yes. In truth, this strikes me as a good example of the kind of prog I was writing about above, regarding music that sounds like its influences to the extent it would most appeal to listeners looking for, say, a long lost Yes track. Admittedly, not my thing really (at least in the prog realm). Anagram, I'm actually surprised you don't like Bob Drake, because he definitely has his Yes moments (particularly vocally). But, writing-wise, they are not very similar I guess.

xposts: It's not something I've noticed (though I don't listen to much current prog) but that confirms my view that prog bands should only write vague pseudo-mystical gubbins that I don't have to pay attention to.

Slightly embarrassingly I've only heard one Bob Drake song *ever*. And it was on a CD that doubled as a game of musical Consequences. Dominique himself gets the second slot after Bob! Oh it's good fun

(Dominique, ending your track with precisely 20 seconds of beeeeep was brilliantly evil, you evil man!)

never heard bob or bill but something i appreciate about steven wilson is he can cut it in the songwriting department. his first two solo albums aren't just revival exercises; they're dynamic anthemic rock albums packed with killer hooks even on songs that run past 10 minutes. 'the raven that refused to sing' is a neo-prog clinic, i think, an homage to the artists that pioneered the whole vibe, every bit as compelling as the DECEMBERISTS' 'crane wife'. new one is still sinking in. it's the most self-consciously experimental/'sui generis' of his four solo albums. i dunno. PORCUPINE TREE never really did it for me but to use a stupid analogy, wilson on his own is a 'standing on the shoulders of giants' proposition, and reminds me of the CLIENTELE 'refining' FELT and the SMITHS, or PAVEMENT 'refining' the FALL and SWELL MAPS. good tones are good tones; why not make use?

Worse, though, was their attitude and their approach to lyrics. Both had songs about oral sex. One in particular was just cock-rock gone modular. Lumpen AND pretentious, if you'll allow. The band was fucking leaking testosterone everywhere, exuding contempt for women and worship of their own penises as they prattled their nonsense.

Now, while the band with the saxophone had genuine promise (and their oral sex song was weird and dentistry-related enough to be excused), not to mention humility, the other band really made me reflect upon the lineage of ultra-masculine prog and its idiotic, lascivious approach to sex. From ELP to Gentle Giant and then later to the guitar-pranging morons of today, you have these contemptuous lionised fuckwits inflicting their sexual supremacy onto the audience, whether on their album covers or in their lyrics. It's fucking tiresome!

This really shocked me (not in an "oh, my stars!" way, but in a "wtf, didn't see that coming" way) when I accidentally paid attention to King Crimson's lyrics, particularly the '72-74 lineup. It's not that I'm offended by it, it's more like...haven't you got something better to talk about? You spent all that time working out the key changes and time signatures, you couldn't do a second pass at the words?

I also dislike swaggering macho boner music but ELP's "Brain Salad Surgery" is one of the only examples in prog I can think of. I've never heard that infamous King Crimson song.

well I love Bob's music obviously. Here's a track that I think puts his Yes influence on its sleeve, but somehow also doesn't sound like any Yes song I know:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojPOPDnz47w

I've honestly never noticed much 70s prog in Steven Wilson/Porcupine Tree (heard In Absentia, Fear Of A Blank Planet, The Incident, Insurgents). I definitely see the Radiohead influence though.

that bob drake song slays

i would recommend to people never listening to the FACES if groupie jokes rub you the wrong way

don't feel like crimson ever recovered after pete sinfield split until belew started writing lyrics

robert, 'the raven that refused to sing' sounds like a synthesis of the best strawbs, yes, gentle giant, and crimson to me way more than radiohead

Whoa, that's exceptional. It seems that really short songs is his thing. I'll definitely have to hear more.

(Does he do the whole xenharmonic thing? Certainly sounds like it!)

yeah I hear all of the best bits of Crimson, VdGG and Genesis in The Raven. The Radiohead influence is more pronounced in Insurgentes and Grace for Drowning I would say.

xp

DEERHOOF is prog 2.5?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayZEA1QMnKc

I'll listen to that Steven Wilson album and tell you whether it's got all the best bits of VdGG in it, yeah

I quite like Deerhoof. Never heard that song though, is that a new album?

Does he do the whole xenharmonic thing? Certainly sounds like it!

I don't think so, he basically just does stuff that sounds good to him -- almost stubbornly non-educated about music theory, etc. He's an incredible musician tho, esp on guitar, but is a great bassist and drummer too. Also, like Steven Wilson, has huge background in recording and engineering -- very simple analog setup (tho started using pro-tools fairly recently), but he can basically put to record any sound that's in his head.

imago, are nu-hard-prog bands the same as progressive metal? I didn't care for that one Dream Theater album I bought and I don't like any metal

@corbynjokes ‏

Yo mama so dumb she thinks Quantitative Easing is a Yes album

This really shocked me (not in an "oh, my stars!" way, but in a "wtf, didn't see that coming" way) when I accidentally paid attention to King Crimson's lyrics, particularly the '72-74 lineup. It's not that I'm offended by it, it's more like...haven't you got something better to talk about? You spent all that time working out the key changes and time signatures, you couldn't do a second pass at the words?

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, 9 September 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Give 'em a break - after all those time signatures they just want to relax with their groupies!

I always felt the lyrics were playing second fiddle in King Crimson and no one except the singer gave a fuck about them. I could be wrong but just the fact that some really lame lines were still being produced in 4th gen King Crimson really makes me think no one wanted to make a big deal in order to get them changed. So either apathy or passive-aggressiveness could be to blame.

Or maybe like you, 誤訳侮辱, the other band members just didn't pay attention LOL

palmer-james has pretty bad lyrics, but to be wholly fair sinfield had enough groupie songs in his work ("cadence and cascade" as well as "ladies of the road").

I mentioned this track previously on the Time Travel thread,

my favourite prog track of the year:

Lethe - Forever
https://open.spotify.com/track/2CAWfdQylMK0Y4ew4Q6wuw

https://dmp666.bandcamp.com/album/forever

"Forever" is not a exactly what we could call a first glimpse of the eagerly awaited second LETHE album. This astoundingly good song is just a little pleasure, generously offered by the magical duo formed by Anna Murphy (ELUVEITIE) and Tor-Helge Skei (MANES, MANII). A short moment of pure genius containing all the precious elements which have forged this unique and exceptional self-identified style and very specific self-created approach, dedicated to anyone who enjoys fresh music and experimental Artists.

Listening to the Steven Wilson album. It does not contain 'all the best bits of Crimson, VdGG and Yes'. That is a lie.

It does not contain 'all the best bits of Crimson, VdGG and Genesis' either. (Whoops!) Although it comes a little closer to Genesis than the other two, sure. Still a lie.

imago, are nu-hard-prog bands the same as progressive metal? I didn't care for that one Dream Theater album I bought and I don't like any metal

― The Once-ler, Wednesday, September 9, 2015 6:28 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a massive shame because the best prog album I've heard this year is the new Dodheimsgard, which is basically an electrosymphonic neoclassical recording masquerading as a black metal album. it's extraordinary. here it is in case you renounce your ways:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCFEETZX3SY

As for nu-hard-prog, well, you MIGHT like Thumpermonkey! But are they metal? Who cares!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCT7kioyXSU

strawbs, yes, gentle giant, and crimson in 'the raven'?

djmartian how crucial that piano riff is to "forever" makes me think you might dig "empire of the clouds" on the new IRON MAIDEN album (which i feel like voluntary street team for at this point, it rules that much -- up the irons!!!). lady/dude duet reminds me a little of AINUR, one of the hardest of hardcore current italian prog rock bands. all of their songs are based on 'the silmarillion'! not even zeppelin went there

that song 'forever' is approximately as boring as this steven wilson album

everyone listen to the things i posted

regarding Iron Maiden - it's not something i would normally check but i have added that track to my private to listen list on spotify.

Ainur - i looked them on rateyourmusic.com - not previously listened to them

the closest in spirit to Lethe that i have come across in 2015, is this album: (that i recommended on the rolling metal 2015 thread earlier this year)

Amiensus - Ascension
http://amiensus.bandcamp.com/album/ascension

re: steven wilson,

his best stuff is always, always the poppier material, the stuff that embraces its own softness as a primary component

― Ƹ༑Ʒ (imago), Monday, October 6, 2014 2:22 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a whole album of ambient pop a la Glass Arm Shattering wd be good

― Ƹ༑Ʒ (imago), Monday, October 6, 2014 2:23 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agreed - his longform stuff is sometimes alright but his real "spaced out" compositions sound like a dude who listened to a lot of Floyd at The Orb and just wanted to connect the dots. When I first heard "Lightbulb Sun" (the song, not the album) I was floored by it because I didn't know he could write songs like that so well.

Thus far not much mention of two of my favorite working prog groups, Echolyn and Motorpsycho, both of which have been around for over two decades at this point but still are producing some real top-quality work. Echolyn may be one of my favorite prog groups of any era, just astounding how well these guys write and play together. Nothing particularly wild or innovative about 'em but they make really great albums that hold up over many many listens. Definitely influenced by classic prog but they sound modern; some songs even have a bit of twang or some funk to 'em that you don't associate with prog rock. Some songs I've particularly been into:

The End is Beautiful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gnnFfpLh8E

Human Lottery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgUsnR9_1ro

MOTORPSYCHO albums poll

Recently saw one of the new Battles music videos. Really loved it.

valuable classic discussion

Prog-Core Is Sweeping The Nation!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=bMgFI84X5PA

^^^yes

came up in the time travel thread to hearty acclaim

extremely great

that's perhaps an exaggeration

i'm listening to the full album now and it's a little bit dull in spots, but the highs (opening track + that one, chiefly) are very high

hells yeah

the opening track is my favourite i think ('babel') - check it out ppl

http://thequietus.com/articles/18778-john-stanier-battles-favourite-albums-interview?page=12

weather report and rush. maybe that's why i don't like battles!

I took you for a Rush fan because of your name.

nah, my username is a joke that ceased to be funny probably a decade ago, if it was ever funny at all. i don't hate rush anymore, but i also don't really ever listen to them.

The most 'prog' new bands I'm into right now are Mammatus and Perhaps. Mammatus is more spacerock than anything but the music is intricate enough that I think it passes muster. After the discussion, I'm a bit worried they might be too cheesy for this thread but imo they are a total blast:

https://youtu.be/M4ksZet5P0k

(Dont know why the Youtube volume level is so low though)

MAMMATUS kills it. EARTHLESS and ASTRA are up their space alley if you haven't checked them out

V2.65?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp2mem73WKY

suck it, non-believers

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/news/a38266/pope-prog-rock-album/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LiW6OKHLaU

prog v2.82?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEdLMkyeoJ4

anyone into those Deluge Grander tracks above, check out "Aggrendizement" from Form of the Good - absolutely bonkers (the whole album is great, but this is the centerpiece)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsi8Iy7Zah8

Interesting Quietus piece on 80s UK prog. Kinda makes me want to hear Twelfth Night. The rest, I'll skip.

never really got into most of that stuff, though IQ can be pretty decent . . . except for the dude's singing sometimes, when he sounds like the british sea power guy's hectoring knowitall older brother, deserving mention here

Problematic vocal styles

Good article, made me interested in Twelfth Night/Geoff Mann and Pallas.

I really like IQ. Had no idea about that film based on their album or that the keyboard player retired (from music altogether). Wonder what their new album sounds like without him.

That whole ripper act Pallas done onstage sounds nuts too, the song is genuinely unsettling.

Well Progarchives has the new IQ in their top 50 of all time, and I've read a lot of overwhelmingly positive reviews - I ought to get a copy myself.

"ten out of ten for clearly not giving a shit what anybody thought"

Also didn't know about Niadem’s Ghost having Peter Nicholls. He actually left IQ because of a really bizarre misunderstanding. Wishbone Ash's manager (possibly Miles Copeland) told the other members that Peter wanted to leave when he'd never said such a thing. I don't know why it taken them years to straighten that out.

hah, never heard that. those two interim IQ discs get slammed but Nomzamo is pretty good even if it's not really prog. Menel really was the Collins to Nicholls' Gabriel.

curious why joe didn't include discussion of CAMBERWELL NOW, even if discovered later on

Camberwell Now were really from more of an experimental / improv background (This Heat connections etc). I can't imagine anyone in Marillion would have even heard of This Heat - most of these bands were pretty mainstream in their influences (IQ and Twelfth Night excepted maybe). It was mostly cup-of-tea prog rather than absinthe-psychosis prog a la VDGG, Magma etc.

CAMBERWELL NOW were an amazing british neo-prog band active from the early to late 1980s. whether or not MARILLION listened to them is neither here nor there; inclusiveness is a goal in the canon formation of other musical nooks and crannies, no?

meanwhile keith levene -- steve howe's erstwhile roadie -- played "poptones"

if camberwell now are neo-prog then the cowsills are space rock.

well then set the controls for the heart of the sun, captain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xTpYB3FgiY

that is not neo-prog

Lovely track, thanks.

would you feel better if it were called "avant-prog"? let's pretend charles heyward wasn't in QUIET SUN or GONG either

charles hayward was in gong for approximately 3/5 of a second, and by that standard genesis is jazz fusion. yes, i would prefer it if it was called "avant-prog". genre labels are generally stupid and meaningless and i don't have much use for them, but when they do have use it's for describing bands that sound similar. since camberwell now's records sound roughly as similar to pallas as, say, scott walker's "climate of hunter" does, it is actively misleading to imply that they exist as part of the same genre.

he was the drummer of QUIET SUN for all of QUIET SUN's existence, and so by that standard yes, genesis is jazz fusion. it is actively misleading to suggest that 'climate of hunter' sounds more like PALLAS than CAMBERWELL NOW does. in the mid to late 60s, all sorts of bands sprang up all over america, playing in their garages, few of whom knew each other. we call it "garage rock". there are similarities and differences among all of these bands. in the mid to late 70s, all sorts of bands sprang up all over america and england, with torn shirts and short spiky haircuts. we call it "punk rock". there are similarities and differences among all of these bands. in the early 80s, all sorts of bands sprang up after punk rock that were less frightened of "prog" / unashamed of their instrumental virtuosity. PALLAS and CAMBERWELL NOW were two of them. there are differences and similarities between them. this pedantic rant of mine stems from a desire for more knowledge about these bands and prog in general, since they have been effectively written out of official rockist/popist history of the culture of the last four or so decades, or when mentioned, reflexively dismissed, which is a phenomenon interesting in and of itself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvXH6ycOtzE

i listened to that camberwell now track and it was amazing

iq sound like porcupine tree, this sound just makes me queasy now

the Quietus article was very specifically about the growth of a subculture/community, not just a list of bands. at the risk of sounding presumptous, given I was a toddler when this stuff was kicking off, I'm confident that the Venn diagram of ppl who liked Pallas (etc) and ppl who liked Camberwell Now is basically an eight

there's a lot of value in eking out the secret prog (or whatever) influences in music that sprang up in other scenes, I think ILM does or can do that v well. not really a failing of the piece that it doesn't get into that too much, though

not saying it's a failing. the piece was great. i wish there were more like it. i was genuinely curious why CAMBERWELL NOW wasn't included, because of the chronology, not that they ape IQ or whoever. ILM has a very active 'balearic revival' thread where hey, if it sounds vaguely balearic, then great. meanwhile the resistance to all things prog in 2015, to the point where saying anything at all about it is liable to provoke discipline of some sort or outright dismissiveness, is a confounding phenomenon. 1977 was a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time ago

I don't really see the IQ -> Porkie resemblance

I don't really know what you're talking about, there is plenty of love for prog of all kinds on ILM, not least this very thread. But to complain about the exclusion of a very obscure avant prog/improv band from an article that specifically focused on another sub-genre of prog altogether is .oO

xp

there was zero complaint about the exclusion. there was genuine curiosity after having enjoyed a really nice refreshing article. how the two are conflated is as oO to me as not hearing how proggy CAMBERWELL NOW are

why people still act like prog is some aesthetic prion disease that needs to be quarantined is beyond me

is there some detail everyone else is missing that explains why it's "curious" they weren't included? like do you know the writer irl or whatever

is there some reason my motives seem curious?

because they weren't part of the fucking scene! nobody is questioning the aesthetic value of camberwell now or even whether or not they qualified as "prog", for some definition of "prog". what people are questioning is why on earth camberwell now would belong in a chronicle of bands whose main aesthetic principle was sounding like gabriel-era genesis, but with modern digital synthesizers. really, if the writer had for some reason decided to include camberwell now in the article that would be far more curious than their exclusion.

Yeah, I'm not getting it either Reggie. I don't think they sound enough like the core neo guys. Maybe if there was a lot more brit prog in the footnotes.

I really enjoyed hearing that track from IQ's The Wake again. I tend to hate sterility but IQ often have that sort of superclean sci-fi sound that works for them most of the time. I've got three of their albums (The Wake, Dark Matter, Frequency) and it's mostly good. I played "Sacred Sounds" a million times. Apparently the do very well in Germany. Oddly I see them in metal sections, possibly because metal magazines used to cover them. There's a Japanese tribute band too.

because they weren't part of the fucking scene!

so? why are you shocked by discussion of other british bands from the same era that were recording prog, in response to an article that talks about mid-80s british neo-prog? this is an open music discussion board, last i checked. maybe mention of CAMBERWELL NOW will lead to mention of some band from that era i've never heard of, i might want to check out, in addition to those others? or would that be offensive too somehow BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT PART OF THE SCENE?

xpost

if we talk about kraut rock don't dare mention ACHIM REICHEL because he wasn't part of the scene!

i'll be glad to talk about camberwell now related bands you may not have heard of- how about lifetones, charles bullen's post-this heat band? they're good. just don't try to tell me they're neo-prog, because they're not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljfbuLCWIXc&list=PLE163783F9570F588

or maybe we can talk about radar favourites, charles hayward's pre-this heat supergroup with geoff leigh, cathy williams, gf fitzgerald, and jack monck from stars? very little material exists and is of uneven quality, somewhere between henry cow and red balune (one of the tracks showed up on the red balune ep later on).

wow, didn't see any of this until now, but have to agree w rushomancy and others regarding Camberwell Now. Totally not a part of any group that would include Marillion or IQ. Not musically, ideologically, certainly not popularity-wise. Camberwell Now was more than just This Heat connections, it was basically the next evolution of This Heat (as CN bassist was actually in TH before they folded)-- political avant-prog (or just avant-rock), that was FAR more in step RIO bands like Henry Cow than neo-prog (or likeminded bands such as Red Balune mentioned above, or their label mates Kontakt Mikrofoon Orkest and the Black Sheep).

Neo-prog always seemed kind of a joke to me. Granted, I wasn't old enough to appreciate bringing back of the old prog guard in the 80s, so by the time I heard, it just seemed pointless and sad, especially compared to bands I actually did like from the 80s....like This Heat and Camberwell Now! Don't get me wrong, there is something to be said about finding threads in genres/scenes that most people don't hear/acknowledge (my pet thread is between Magma and minimalists like Meredith Monk) -- but on this one, to me, there's too much a gulf in not just the way the bands sound, but in their approaches/reasons for making music in the first place.

agree - I'm way, way more into stuff like Camberwell Now but for better or worse this thread was started for prog qua prog, the dubious effete cape-wearing wacko stargazing nonsense that people still make for baffling reasons

MIND YOU

stuff like Deluge Grander rises above the majority of neo-prog by using techniques inspired by the likes of Magma and other avant-prog groups - there is a grey area and I think the grey area belongs here

and then I do wonder which other threads we have for RIO or Zeuhl V3.0…I can't think of many…

I am basically down with qualmsley's attempts to redefine prog as the Fiery Furnaces or whatever, but I am concerned that this thread might have a narrower remit. What do you all think - free-for-all or keep it Marillion?

I always lean towards more inclusive.

But why on earth is "effete" or "wacko stargazing" used as in insult?

I have very few horses in this race, seems like this thread's open-ended format would serve an inclusive free-for-all bent that invites weird juxtapositions like reggie's whereas the publication/periodical nature of tQ articles (and the necessarily self-containdness of their structures) probably benefit from a more focussed, less encompassing approach

Martin Orford from IQ has repeatedly said he hates that people changed the name of New Wave Of Prog Rock to Neo-Prog, that you shouldn't be able to rename a genre a decade later. I think he's probably right in that the "new wave" part is important because the new wave influence is obvious.

But why on earth is "effete" or "wacko stargazing" used as in insult?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, October 31, 2015 2:10 PM (33 minutes ago)

tis affectionate

rushomancy that is a rad jam, thanks for posting

i am not trying to claim here that "Neo-prog" doesn't / didn't exist as a category of discrete groups -- marillion, pallas, IQ, etc -- or that Neo-prog groups are 'good' in the same way that CAMBERWELL NOW is 'good'

i'm thinking not of Neo-prog exclusively, but of "neo-prog" -- no capital N -- a much larger tent . . . sort of the way we talk about "neo-psych" (no capital N) -- which includes everything from the paisley underground, to elephant 6, to freak folk, to comets on fire and six organs of admittance and ghost and billions of other bands that formed after 1969 which involve in some awesome way a psych influence . . . the discussion of which doesn't seem to provoke as much strict border talk, but tends to be more expansive and inclusive, and is all the more informative (to me) for that

i say we go free-for-all because i have very little to say on the topic of marillion. i do think orford otm in that nwopr or nwop seems a more appropriate name for the music than "neo", here apparently used in its traditional context meaning "not", in that trying to assess iq, pallas, etc., without reference to the preceding nwobhm denies the movement its proper historical context, and if you're going to talk about genre at all you really ought to bring in historical context.

the idea of a "big-tent" prog certainly massively appeals to me, but the issue is that you're trying to redefine an existing word that has significant cultural baggage to describe this larger movement, and my feeling is, you know, why can't we just call it all "prog" and be done with it?

Hurrah!

Now, here's a little prog selection from a sports legend…

http://www.teamrock.com/features/2015-10-10/the-10-best-prog-rock-songs-by-steve-davis

Obviously it's full of Genesis and Floyd

steve davis otm

The next Thumpermonkey album is going to be fucking amazing btw, based on what I saw live a while back

I guess that brings us back to 3.0.

little more into the GRAILS / MASTER MUSICIANS of BUKKAKE spaghetti western noir vibes of the first song on the new TEETH of the SEA than the WIRE drilling of the second song, but digging how it settles into something mellower / LIARS-like for "field punishment"

I discovered Baron via a recommendation from Wolf People. Those of you into new psych prog, other favorites include Spirits Of The Dead, Syd Arthur, Messenger, Fuzz Manta, Fellwoods, Amplifier, Knifeworld, Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, Kama Loka, Electric Orange, Atavismo. I did a rundown of Baron and others in my crassly named piece below.

http://fastnbulbous.com/progasms-progressive-rock-rundown/

http://fastnbulbous.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/proggasms-2015.jpg

xp frogbs, I'm sorry I didn't check out Echolyn before I did my piece. Them being a favorite next to Motorpsycho certainly perked my ears up.

This is a good thread. I've been gradually catching up on modern prog in the past couple years. Favorites so far are Anekdoten, Änglagård and Gazpacho. I have much more listening to go on these, still on the fence -- Kingstom Wall, Riverside, Transatlantic, IQ, Haken, Birds And Buildings, The Pineapple Thief. I like Porcupine Tree, but haven't been feeling solo Steve Wilson so much.

have you heard the new gazpacho, molok? it hasn't quite captivated me yet. there are nice folk vibes going on but sometimes i want the music itself to be more intricate

ah, just clicked on the link now. really interesting run down. i'll give that gazpacho another go or two

So no one is feeling the Baron album? I understand, you're all distracted by the excitement of this release:

http://bravewords.com/medias-static/images/news/2015%20II/wizardsalbumoct.jpg

What do we think about the retelling of very obvious Genesis passages by Big Big Train so audacious that they make early Marillion sound like Neu by comparison?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czgRIvcnTeE

Well, BBT vocalist Dave Longdon almost replaced Phil Collins in Genesis, while drummer Nick D'Virgilio played on the Collins-less tour. Shame that Calling All Stations wasn't anywhere near as solid as English Electric (or Far Skies Deep Time or Underfall Yard for that matter.)

never been big into BIG BIG TRAIN or GENESIS but holy shit at NORTHWINDS and ROUNDTABLE! proceed the weedian! haven't spent time yet with BARON but I am looking forward. thanks for the tips!

how do upsilon acrux, eiko ishibashi & mats&morgan fit in here?

yowie, too, come to think of it

Upsilon Acrux album from early this year (I think) is good

Just started listening to Deluge Grander - August In The Urals. Sounds pretty jam packed, which is promising.

Anyone who liked the Upsilon Acrux album should check out Ahleuchatistas latest album Arrebato, it is really good shit.

The couple of Eiko Ishibashi solo albums I've heard are really good, as well as the one with Tatsuya Yosida. Cursory listens to her latest stuff tell's me she's gone more "indie" but it might be worth investigating more.

ok, have been trying to listen to gazpacho's new one, and that brings me to today's complaint about prog rock. either it is instrumental, or it has really bad vocals. i don't mean that they're particularly bad in a technical sense- whoever it is that's singing can carry a tune all right, i guess. it's just that most "mainstream" prog vocals are so totally lacking in personality i can't listen to it for more than five minutes on end. it's like, prog vocals today seem to combine the worst aspects of "classic rock" vocals and the keening insignificance of landfill indie. when you're going to put out a record with a sense of instrumental variety and, dare i say, adventurousness, why kill it with bland and lifeless singing? seems like these days every prog record i listen to makes me just like father damian more.

I'd agree for the most part but I can usually get along with it if the music is good enough.
I feel most metal vocals are pretty uninspired too, but there are plenty of good vocalists partly due to the sheer number of metal bands.

The current v3.0 vocalists I like tend to be outside the core "we are a prog band for prog fans" type.
I adore Mew's ultra sweet boy vocals.

I agree - definitely an issue with modern prog as a whole. We don't really have a lot of "dedicated singers" anymore like Jon Anderson or Peter Gabriel, instead you get a lot of people who are the creative or instrumental center of their band having to sing because no one else is going to. I think anyone can will themselves into being a good instrumental player but if you can't sing, there's only so much that can be done. Luckily most do get better over time, or there are bands like Glass Hammer that just hire singers as their popularity increases.

a lot of prog vocals is europeans singing english in weird accents, like MEW and AINUR. but yes, there are some singers lacking in personality in contemporary prog, like there are in R&B and country etc; not everyone is thom yorke, mary timony, or jim o'rourke, that's for sure

fastnbulbous finally getting around to listening to BARON. good call (and good vocals!). they kind of remind me of BARONESS; people who go apeshit for GHOST (not batoh's) and GOAT should be all over this though it's less kitschy/b horror movie and way more authentically mystical. dude was in DIAGONAL, right? this is lots dirgier, not as much a virtuoso contrapuntal workout sesh

i listened to baron earlier and those comparisons are self-evidently pure word-association

hey you know who MEW sound like? MUSE! and MÚM!

also fastnbulbous you do god's work but i found precious little in that prog list to really excite me. do i just not like prog as much as i used to

MEW sound nothing like AINUR (an italian RPI band) nor MÚM (pronounced "miooyyuujm"), at least to me, though maybe a little like MUSE at MUSE's best?

BARON have more than a bit of the space-dirgey neo-classic rock vibe BARONESS, GHOST (not batoh's), and GOAT are all delivering, at least compared to the straight up intricate neo-prog of DIAGONAL (a band which current BARON members alex crispin and luke foster used to be in), i'd say. maybe though prog (besides CARDIACS and the like) just isn't self-evidently cool enough anymore, and it should be collapsed into one overarching category, like people do with jazz and metal! all hip, even ‎MC dälek (pronounced "die-a-leck"), sounds the same too!

this is gonna be some proper prog wizard harry potter wands out zing war isn't it

CIRCULUS!

Sundays & Cybele is the only neo-prog thing that FnB mentioned tgat really caused me to double-take, but I havent gotten around tovlistening yet

I really don't listen to much in the way of contemporary prog, it all sounds like lame retreads of music that's decades old. I'd rather listen to the real thing at the end of the day. Saying that though one big problem I have these days is that a lot of groups sound more influenced by neo-prog rather than the proper stuff and come across as too polished and insipid. The one hypocritical exception is Anekdoten, who are sort of borderline bland and definitely retrogressive, but they've got the depressing Scandi vibes which I enjoy.

Oddball metal seems to be scratching my prog itches almost exclusively these days. Can't find much in the way of decent avant-prog these days either. OK I'll stop moaning now.

^p much this

deluge grander's 'inaugural bash' is doubly phenomenal when you consider how it succeeds where so much else fails

I liked that quietus article; I've always been a big marillion fan but for whatever reason never checked out Twelfth Night; they certainly are the VDGG to Marillion's Genesis.

Can't find much in the way of decent avant-prog these days either.

Rhùn aren't bad for a Zeuhl act:
https://rhunmusic.bandcamp.com/

I'm glad I'm not in a position of searching for good new bands in whatever genre. It taken me too long to realise that since I hadn't exhausted the earlier classics and high points then there wasn't much reason to look too hard for new stuff. Obviously it's great when there's an amazing new band but it doesn't feel necessary unless they're really brilliant.

To be honest there's a load of older stuff I've never got around to hearing yet. I only started listening to Yes last year!

Rhun are fine, I've heard them before and they colour inside the lines somewhat zeuhl-wise but thanks.

I doubt anyone here has heard all the 70s stuff they wanted to hear.

xelab otm. "power with" could be BATTLES

been thinking about it, and still not exactly sure what I would classify as prog 3.0. If I'm going in for the concept, it helps me to chart out what would constitute prog 1 & 2--

1.0 - Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, ELP -- basically all the first wave of prog

1.5 - stretching out a bit to include stuff like Soft Machine, krautrock, Brian Eno-related stuff

2.0 - prog that either reacted against the first wave, or did something that made it fundamentally different (albeit still prog): Henry Cow/Art Bears, This Heat, Albert Marcoeur, Etron Fou, Univers Zero, Magma, Cardiacs (a lot of this is just commonly called "avant prog" today, or RIO)

2.5 - stuff that extended prog 2.0 (esp incorporating elements of punk) like Ruins/Koenjihyakkei, Flying Luttenbachers, Zorn/Naked City/Mr. Bungle, math rock, maybe Bob Drake

3.0 - prog that either reacted or fundamentally changed prog 2.0. So that means... probably music that arguably isn't even "prog" in the same way as prog 1.0 was. This could include avant metal like Jute Gyte (but also going back to stuff like Gorguts, and also Orthrelm's OV which is IMO way more prog than metal), wonky electronic stuff like the more outrageous Rustie stuff or bands like Knower, noise/prog hybrids like Zs. Others?

This is how I tend to approach this topic, and the development of prog in general. From my experience, most people duck out at some stage of the game, and settle on their brand of prog (the vast majority of prog fans probably not even venturing into the 2.0 area). Weird outliers are people like Frank Zappa, who might conceivably fit anywhere in prog 1-2, or even King Crimson, who seemed to develop w the times well into the 80s.

on Battles -- definitely prog, but almost like neo-prog 2.0, as I don't think their approach is fundamentally different than what lots of avant prog bands were doing in the 80s (or even 70s, with This Heat)

Where do you include late '70s/early '80s arty pop-rock (frequently made with the help of prog-aligned musicians)? Thinking specifically of Bowie's Berlin albums and Talking Heads' Fear of Music and Remain in Light.

i don't think genres "die" as such. i think they just diffuse. i think that's what's happened to prog- all of the different things that made up "prog rock" in the '70s have gotten chopped up and reconstituted by all kinds of different bands, from uncle acid to death grips. most of the bands who openly identify as "prog" seem to have gotten stuck with the worst bits- "see, we're prog, here's a 20 minute song with a guitar solo in 5/4!"

xpost

imo Bowie and Talking Heads are particularly important for prog, but not because I consider them prog per se, but as major influencers. (If we were doing a pop 3.0 thread, I might consider Bowie some kind of pop 3.0 figure, after Elvis (1), and the Beatles (2)). Some of Bowie's records aren't prog at all, while others might arguably fit in the prog 1.5 -2.0 bunch. Talking Heads less so, but obv a big influence for any forward thinking rock band playing in the 80s and beyond.

i'd bet most people into ORTHRELM would appreciate some STEAMHAMMER and vice versa, same with say MAGMA and OPETH?

or SUFJAN STEVENS and PETER HAMMILL even

oh fie!

oneida!

COMUS and MOMUS

except, brave threadslayer, while both culturally appropriate the theonyms of hellenic godlings, MOMUS (unlike) COMUS is a practitioner of analog baroque, not prog, while COMUS recorded some of the best acid prog-folk of the 1970s, up there with FAMILY, AUDIENCE, BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST, and the STRAWBS, blazing trails for more recent acid-prog folk jams by the likes of SPIRES THAT IN THE SUNSET RISE, AKRON/FAMILY, and CIRCULUS

The new Aluk Todolo is aggressive instrumental rock that I wouldn't call metal; also, the album (called Voix, out in February) is one long piece divided into six sections. Pretty prog if you ask me.

reggie don't take this the wrong way but it seems like all of your posts consist of you name-dropping completely random bands with no further explanation.

i hear affinities among the names being dropped. in disagreement with tuesday's (false binary) complaint "either it is instrumental, or it has really bad vocals" i pointed out that a lot of prog is being made by europeans whose english isn't native, like the danish band Mew and the italian band Ainur. names -- yorke, timony, o'rourke -- were dropped as counterexamples of native english speakers who have recorded excellent prog and whose vocals don't suck. i brought up Baroness, Ghost, and Goat as examples of bands who like Baron are making a kind of proggy neo-classic rock; Diagonal's name was dropped because two of the Baron guys used to be in Diagonal (a more trad prog band). i mentioned the Cardiacs (spazz prog) and Dälek (prog hop) sort of to affectionately mess with louis (sorry louis), because i've noticed he likes both. i mentioned Battles because i appreciated xelab's suggestion to listen to Ahleuchatistas (as i had fastnbulbous's suggestion to check out Baron) and the song "power with" on their latest album sounds exactly like Battles, for the first few minutes at least. moving along, mention was made of Steamhammer because i hear an affinity between how extreme they were for their time and how extreme Orthrelm is for ours, same as i do between Magma and Opeth, in a way that qualifies dominique's smart attempt to come to terms with 1.0 / 1.5 / 2.0 / 2.5 / 3.0. i suppose GOBLIN would have made for a better affinity with Opeth, since there's a song called "Goblin" on the recent Opeth album in direct homage, but dominique brought up Magma so i went with that. i also hear an affinity between Peter Hammill and Sufjan Stevens as extremely ambitious prog / orch pop dudes from different decades, so that's why they came up. Comus, Family, Barclay James Harvest, the Strawbs, Spires That in the Sunset Rise, Akron/Family, and Circulus are all bands that in some way shape or form play an acid prog folk that can be celebrated for how out it is (or derided for its ren faire overtones, depending on the ear of the listener). i hope that this guide to my recent posts helps! again i think it's interesting how resistant people are to discussing prog and how the stigmas associated it with foster suspicion. compare for instance the discussion in the tompkins square thread, where no one would ever complain that everyone sounds like john fahey and robbie basho. it's almost impossible to imagine a similar congeniality here. i'll even blame myself, take the fall for wanting the discussion to stay as wide-ranging and inclusive (rather than exclusive) of reference as possible, if that means there can be more posts like fastnbulbous's, xelab's, dominique's, and 誤訳侮辱's that mention bands i've never heard that i would like to check out, rather than the endless loop of the past however many decades of how horrible or at least dated all prog* is

*except the prog "i" like

I'm totally glad you liked that Ahleuchatistas album reggie, the math rock tag will probably put a lot of people off but no doubt they are a fearsome band.

late shout out to Robert Adam Gilmour for linking the José Luis Fernández Ledesma tracks earlier. I checked out the Nirgal Vallis album because I've read about it in passing and it's really great, very much on the prettier side of the genre, almost as if there's a big Popol Vuh influence in there somewhere. I definitely recommend it.

According to Discogs the first half of the album is actually from 1985. Shame nobody was paying attention.

anyway my take on the whole 1.0/2.0/3.0 thing is that it has to do with the era and not necessarily the type of music. like I would consider a band like Wobbler to be "Prog 3.0" even though they probably only use instruments made before 1973. though Dominique's breakdown is very interesting. I would argue that stuff like Max Tundra or Dan Deacon fits in the "3.0" tier, I mean Max Tundra at least is clearly aware of all those 2.0 bands and in some sense emulates them a little.

for me 1.5 would be stuff like Starcastle, Kansas, or even Rush, 2.0 is Neo, 3.0 is everything 90's and beyond. really reductive but hey. maybe you could argue there's a 4.0 going on with bands like Battles. I have no idea.

Cool. I had sorta forgotten about Ledesma after putting him on my shopping list.

I had thought the romantic cover art to Deluge Grander - August In The Urals was ill fitting but actually there is a lot of lushness coming through on further listens. Love the watery flowing piano.

I just started listening to Haken - generally I stay away from things tagged "progressive metal" but I hear a lot of Mr Bungle in these guys, they're all over the place. In a pretty cool way that is.

http://teamrock.com/news/2016-03-17/jon-anderson-roine-stolt-join-forces-on-invention-of-knowledge

new EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY might interest groovers & shakers, as well as the new TIME IS A MOUNTAIN ~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kPxhwjOMNE

Time is a Mountain was suggested to me by Spotify, but aren't they more jazz than prog? Great great stuff

i'd say they play a pretty jazzy prog, somewhere between THE SOFT MACHINE and KING CRIMSON. i'm a big fan of dude's wiggly keybs. with all its sci fi sound effects and spacy meanderings, "sepian" also kinda sounds like one of the improvs from one of the ecent VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR albums

Yeah I spose it's such a fine line, I guess the review of it I found after hearing it was on a jazz site so I kinda filed it there in my head

a fusion, as it were

this drummer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=238&v=htZLjRqOu5I

anybody heard this new italian group "the winstons" (no relation to "amen brother")? trio making new music in the style of robert wyatt era soft machine. good!

i will check em out

my own city's Hardcore Crayons are like a good post 90s underground rock type of prog

https://hardcorecrayons.bandcamp.com/

some relative newbies working the masters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPdoWp-PHFU

Hardcore Crayons are pretty good. I bought their CD.

I think these dudes from Louisville are pretty cool.

https://ohlm.bandcamp.com/

I don't know if this is the right thread, but the latest Three Trapped Tigers album is fantastic. It's on Superball so might be appropriate. They're an IDM-influenced mathrock three piece but it's basically prog.

The title track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMr5ZWPBEhM&ab_channel=superballmusictv

when i saw them live with liturgy they were a bit dull but it might work much better on record

jerry!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkVyzD-IBPs

Okay, that cover of Terrapin Station is excellent. Hoping this might inspire Daniel Rossen to further explore his prog tendencies.

it at least coincides with progressive tendencies, rallying for bernie the other day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZQP4xG6Txc

rufus is bringing it ~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccP6mI1GMS4

might hit too close to home for too many ~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNBfo4IIoG0

it is too bad that no new good prog rock has been recorded since punk made it obsolete (cost ineffective) ~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g05yCAF-qgc

I don't know if this is really prog v.3.0 since it's a follow on to their last album from 1978 but Argentinian legends Bubu released an EP not long ago from out of nowhere:

https://bubuprog.bandcamp.com/releases

saying that it's a completely different lineup of musicians with the same composer. In any case it's really good.

Anyone listen to German band Dark Suns? Their upcoming album Everchild (June 3) seems very promising, continuing their turn from prog metal to psych prog with some jazzy bits along the lines of perhaps Motorpsycho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLWbQHa4UZ4

Listening to Haken - this is unexpectedly nice and weird. I really like their whole early computers aesthetic too.

Aaah the massive track in the middle is amazing!

I had thought the romantic cover art to Deluge Grander - August In The Urals was ill fitting but actually there is a lot of lushness coming through on further listens. Love the watery flowing piano.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 27 December 2015 13:22 (5 months ago)

Love the first two tracks of this. The first is a monster and the second has these really lovely idyllic ethereal parts. I actually think just these first two would have made a better album than the 5 that stand. The remaining three all have good stuff in them but they get decreasingly interesting. The third is really quite good most of the time though.

How about their other albums?

I think it's kind of set up that way - I don't have an issue with the last two tracks ("The Solitude of Miranda" is especially good) but they do feel like bonus tracks in a way.

The Form of the Good is pretty great though it's maybe tougher to get into. It's entirely instrumental (outside of some faint backing vocals) and really dense at times. "The Tree Factory" is pretty cool, kinda Zeuhl-ish, though it goes through a number of cool movements (one definitely sounds Zappa-inspired). The key track is the 20-minute "Aggrandizement" which is totally insane - not like any prog epic I've ever heard, it's just one steadily rising instrumental part that keeps piling on and on and on. It's the sort of thing you have to listen to at ear-bleeding volume.

The last two tracks really dampened my enthusiasm for the album.

The Mercury Tree are pretty good - new album is kind of lovely. They're like a weirded-out occasionally-microtonal Yank take on Thumpermonkey. Discovered by snooping on ultros' RYM profile, which I'm sure is acceptable behaviour

Hey stay out of my stuff, you

Glad you liked it anyway, I probably should have brought it up here but I forget these things. Here it is if anyone else is interested:

https://themercurytree.bandcamp.com/album/permutations

The Quietus and ultros' rym page are p much the only two music sites I read in 2016 (apart from the obvious, of course)

new Deluge Grander is up and running. headfirst I go!

Cool.

I'm going to listen to this only cuz one of them pm'd me and I said I would... the samples seemed decent enough.

Also this may be of interest, it's modern chamber music that's barely prog but it kind of sounds like Univers Zero and it's on AltRock Productions. And it's really quite good.

https://altrockproductions.bandcamp.com/album/night-en-face

it's...........ok. like, there are good moments. i'll definitely listen to it again. really though (and i know frogbs will come in and yell at me for thinking this) the whole Deluge Grander project existed to make the first track on their first album, and everything since hasn't quite matched that half-hour slab of brilliance

will listen to this though thanks!

me and my 50 socks all FP'd you for this, see you in a month asshole

i guess 'aggrandizement' is quite good as well. they should just release albums with two 20+ minute tracks on them

seriously though I can understand that. I think DG's music has gotten more difficult on each album, like it's kind of steered from a fairly recognizable Zeuhl-prog hybrid to something more resembling classical music. that 20-minute track on Form of the Good still sounds like nothing I've heard, it's like he took the massive instrumental finale of a traditional suite and made that the epic. pretty cool. Heliotains completely passed me by the first couple times I listened to it - could not remember a single thing about it until I really sat down and concentrated, after which I realized it's as brilliant as the others, just harder to grasp. I've only heard some samples from the new one (it's not on Bandcamp yet) but it feels like it's kind of the same.

Been listening to the Birds And Buildings debut, it's good but it really does just sound like Deluge Grander, I know it only has two members from DG but I think maybe they'd be better off just keeping the DG name and changing the members when they want to be the "other band".

Cheer-Accident/Polvo vibes + Bob Drake cameo

https://starperiodstar.bandcamp.com/album/daylight-spending-time

cool!

cheer-accident themselves have a new one soon, featuring a couple of former gorilla museum employees (among others)

this sounds p cool though!

whoa the Star Period Star is really good

:D

And I didn't know Cheer-Accident had a new one, that's really exciting! I never liked SGM unfortunately but the bandcamp blurb has got me seriously hyped

Actually you knwo what

I actually like the Birds And Buildings debut better overall than the Deluge Grander debut. There seems to be a couple of parts from the first track repeated in later tracks but I wasn't sure.

i need to listen to B&B again but my impression was that it was interesting and varied

The last track has clip of Kenneth Clark's Civilization documentary series! I get a feeling that this guy's music is a lot about upheavals throughout history but sometimes the lyrics are hard to grasp.

"Chakra Khan" sounds like a username here.

glad star period star have a new one, good to know bob drake's involved. liked them a lot but it was hard to find any info about them on the internet for a very long time.

ni combined with another band i haven't heard of called poil and they put out this record. it's pretty proggy.

https://piniol.bandcamp.com/album/bran-coucou

SPS are obscure even by avant-prog standards, I was surprised to learn that they'd been going since the mid-90s.

Piniol looks interesting, added that to my to do list

yea that first B&B album is an all-timer. the second album is a bit less accessible but it's just as good. lotta curveballs in that one.

still digesting Oceanarium, it's just so damn thick and difficult to parse if you aren't giving full attention. but it's sounding better every time I hear it.

Piniol album very nice.

koenjihyakkei has a new one coming out next month, i know they've been working on it for a while - i have an earlier digest video from jan 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L358RmKgN0

oh fuck yeah

New The Mercury Program someone just alerted me to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9ScTcdo1CA

Microtonal tunings!

The Mercury Tree I mean, oops

White Willow anyone? Online store samples of the albums don't sound that interesting.

This track is great but it's more akin to Tim Bowness solo than White Willow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHohhvLLb8o

There's a new Regal Worm coming soon, the lead track is lovely.

https://regalworm.bandcamp.com/album/pig-views

Miasma And The Carousel Of Headless Horses - Manfauna

Coolest band name ever, music is nice enough but I never got deep enough into it. Sounds like Guapo and there are two members from that band. Cant believe how old this release is, it seemed like only a few years ago this band was getting hyped and they only put out two things. I might try Perils sometime but I'm a little disappointed.

Guapo released so much more than I knew.

Early Guapo was/is fantastic, especially live, like a British Ground Zero, ex-member posts here on the reg too.

Only one I got was Five Suns. The second track was totally incredible but other otherwise couldn't get into it.

behold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3SS27wGjq0

I heard English Electric Part 1 when it came out and was appaled at the brass balls nerve they had, lifting big chunks of Genesis songs and tweaking them slightly while the vocalist sings a Wikipedia page over the top, then it grew on me and I really started to like it.

i sorta felt the same way about the second Feelies album and the Velvet Underground (and Pavement and the Fall (and Interpol and Joy Division)) but i got over that. for sure there's a major cheesiness to some Big Big Train songs which can be a huge turnoff but when they're on they do legit neo-Genesis better than Elbow does

This new Regal Worm record sounds pretty great on first listen.

https://regalworm.bandcamp.com/

ex-member posts here on the reg too.

― MaresNest, Friday, 27 July 2018 19:29 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

;)

Oh, do you think I'm referring to myself LJ? Goodness no! I fucking WISH I was in Guapo circa 2000.

"I really quite liked the Big Big Train record from a couple of years back, but I was totally amazed at the very blatant, wholesale lifting of certain very well known themes by Genesis and nobody in the press or on the net called it, which I thought was weird/interesting."

I can't get into a single thing this band has done. like flower kings before them. it just sounds generic and dull to me.

also their name is dumb

I tried to get into Big Big Train a while back but the albums I got were their earlier ones before they'd really gotten hyped up. What's a good starting point, or should I just not bother?

Flower Kings are another group I tried to get into...I mean, they sounded like a dream come true, with double-disc albums every year, tons of epics, and a bunch of musicians whose names I recognized even without knowing the band. And then I heard 'em, and...yeah. I actually think they do okay when they go more pop, but when it comes to the proggier stuff they write themselves into corners over and over again. And that voice! Christ. I had one called "Stardust We Are" that was kinda nice. It's 2 hours long.

for me all of these bands fall down when the compositions aren't interesting enough. Porcupine Tree was great because Wilson is an excellent songwriter. It's not enough to follow prog templates if you can't write an interesting melody or aren't doing something really interesting and experimental.

What's a good starting point

my favorite three are grimspound, folklore, and the second brightest star. all way better than anything i've heard by flower kings (even roine's album with jon anderson), on par with vintage kaipa

yea that's the long and short of it. FKs definitely have a few memorable tunes but they usually tend to be the more novelty-oriented stuff that draws from "Harold the Barrel" or "Benny the Bouncer". BBT on the other hand, I listened to the one album I've got nearly a dozen times and I remember like, two small vocal melodies. it was Gathering Speed, dunno how representative that is of their other work. I assume they got better.

those three i listed are all new-ish

alright I'll check 'em out. some people are absolutely nuts about the band so I figure I owe it another try

the only bands like that I really have time for are Glass Hammer and The Tangent. GH is the first "Christian prog" group I've ever heard of, which is actually kind of neat since they take a lot of influence from church music and the like. They definitely try to make their music sound as "big" as possible which is neat. The Tangent have a lot of the same issues as the FKs (Roine Stolt was a member for a while) but I think Tillison is a much more interesting songwriter. plus his lyrics are way better.

i've never taken to the tangent but i haven't heard much, either. there are moments in glass hammer as good as classic yes imho. also don't wanna overhype big big train; if you dig the strawbs' vibe you might hear something in them too

the only bands like that I really have time for are Glass Hammer and The Tangent. GH is the first "Christian prog" group I've ever heard of, which is actually kind of neat since they take a lot of influence from church music and the like. They definitely try to make their music sound as "big" as possible which is neat. The Tangent have a lot of the same issues as the FKs (Roine Stolt was a member for a while) but I think Tillison is a much more interesting songwriter. plus his lyrics are way better.

― frogbs

wait you've heard of glass hammer but not, like, kansas?

was gonna say yes but it turns out I was thinking of Camel

I do have one Kansas album though.

I need to get Frost's third album someday. I thought they might have more so I'm slightly relieved.

you should, it rules. the opening track has a pretty unique reference point - "Synchronicity I" by the Police. really wish there were more bands like that out there.

Have just discovered Major Parkinson. Based on their latest album, wow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvMPkt_ZFss

^^^Ten-minute song called Baseball that can fairly be described as early Cardiacs and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum fighting over who gets to cosplay Muse

i don't know that i've ever heard muse but i do like it!

grohl grows up?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=e05H80-k0mY

https://www.loudersound.com/news/voivod-the-wake-is-one-of-the-most-intricate-albums-weve-ever-done

“It’s definitely one of the most intricate albums we’ve done. The songs are pretty long, very complicated and have lots of prog rock moments and a bit of psychedelia. Of course the punk/thrash metal signature is still there."

y'all the new bubu record is the bomb, and i don't even really _like_ the first bubu record

https://bubuprog.bandcamp.com/album/bubu

I had a fear the EP Bubu released was ghoing to be some kind of anomaly, really pleased they have a new one out. I do like their first album too though!

It took me years to get into Voivod and still haven't heard anything they've done after '97 but this new one sounds cool

folks,

folks,

it's nearly Thumpermonkey time

https://thumpermonkey.bandcamp.com/album/make-me-young-etc

dauntingly kickass opening track previewing

look, it has a video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4GKEoaq6ig

nice. friday neo-canterburyexpialodocious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKOjOqbHpY4

i was wondering to myself when the new guerilla toss record was coming out. turns out it's today! i liked "gt ultra" but i think they've hit a new high on this one.

another Glass Hammer album coming soon, this time focusing on a time traveler who started a prog band in the 80's and tried to go back to the golden age of prog, a de-facto sequel to their 2000 record Chronomotree. gotta say that concept is quite fitting for a band like this.

the time traveler himself appears to have materialized

http://www.progressiveears.org/forum/showthread.php/22697-Glass-Hammer-Chronomonaut-Tapes-Tom-is-back-or-at-least-he-was

good call on that bubu album. i had no clue. new guerilla toss slays. magic is easy indeed. the edge of the ice cube . . .

new Vennart album worth a mention here too

Seen a poster for a band called Free Salamander Exhibit. Was intrigued by the "rock in opposition" tag.

Sounds quite funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo4mftLYgHo
Some of the other tracks have metal in them.

I think they're a band made up of former Sleepytime Gorilla Museum members - a band worth checking out if you haven't

yeah, free salamander exhibit is nils' new(ish) "metal" band. i saw them on a triple bill earlier this year with faun fables and cheer-accident. they're pretty good, of course a fine live show, really into the druid thing, but i don't know, they don't grab me the way sgm did. lately i'm definitely more into faun fables.

this is dope (note: not the vintage british band)

https://thedruidofficial.bandcamp.com/album/the-seven-scrolls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxzLU7UvkrE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZm2QIIo-JE

bob drake has a new one !!!

https://bobdrake.bandcamp.com/album/lisola-dei-lupi

Anyone a fan of Beardfish? Overlooked these dudes the first three or four times but I'm listening to Destined Solitaire right now and it's pretty much everything I want out of a 'retro' prog record. Their lead singer is charismatic and actually quite funny which is quite rare in this genre. Great voice too.

Let's shout out Sterbus on this thread too - https://sterbus.bandcamp.com/ new record is rather lovely guitarry Prog Pop

:)

i'm waiting for the Thumpermonkey to come out properly so I can advertise its title track to all ILX's progheads - some of the best prog of this century so far

I'm currently in the process of selling off a mega CD collection for someone on Ebay, large amounts of which is contemporary prog. It's been an eye-opener! Here's the prog-related acts I've encountered to date I'd never even heard of, there are massive worlds of this stuff filled with people like Billy Sherwood and Christian Bruin who release uncountable numbers of records:

Believe – Brasse – Blind Owl – Cliffhanger – Canamii – Casino – Cosmograf - Comedy Of Errors - Combination Head – Chris - Alex Carpani – Cairo – Collage - Different Trains – Discus – Edith - Egdon Heath – Fonya - Fatal Fusion - Final Conflict - Fission Trip - For Absent Friends – Galleon – Jeremy - A.C.T. - Ad Infinitum - Adventure - Alpha III - Ancient Vision – Aragon – Ayreon – Circa – Conception – Cyan - Cryptic Vision - Crystal Maze - Different Light - Echo Park - Dr Coenobite – Karfagen – Maestoso - Steve Adams - Lands End – Legend - Shadow Merchant – Phaesis – Overdrive – Abraxas – Arion – Atlantis - Chimpan A - Jack Foster III – Harvest - The Winter Tree - Nice Beaver – Eurhybia – Fields - Sean Filkins - Flamborough Head – Glacier – Jupiter - K2 – Morild – Tunefish – Wyzards - Leap Day - Solar Project - Tempus Fugit - This Oceanic Feeling – Synesthesia - Sky Architect - Perona Non Grata - Persephone's Dream – Darling – Silhouette – Satellite - Unbroken Spirit - Tea For The Wicked - Nad Sylvan – Shakary – Tantalus - Moria Falls - Josh & Co Limited – Sahara - Ergo Sum - Dave Bainbridge - Cloud Atlas – Cavalli / Cocchi / Lanzetti / Roversi – Darius - Tea In The Sahara - Fabio Liberatori - Alfonso Vidales – Octopehra - Violeta De Outone - Seasons Of Time - Light Damage - Fossil Evolution - Hasse Froberg - Red Sand – Eyesburg - Fish On Friday - Rikard Sjöblom - Tiger Moth Tales - The D Project

i like violeta de outono

most of the rest of it i've heard of isn't my cup of tea

frogbs, care to recommend a destined solitaire jam?

title track is pretty good. here's a live version - its great if you can get past the fact that they look and sound like Jack Black fronting a prog band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-KYaBQGRY

A good quarter of Tenacious D is kind of prog tbf

THE ASTEROID HAS LANDED

https://thumpermonkey.bandcamp.com/album/make-me-young-etc

The title-track is one of the most breathtaking prog compositions of the century so far in my extremely cool opinion

Oh I said that already. That must mean it's super-true

is the title-track as good as "woadscrivened"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4goBiAGYyQ

thanks frogbs for that beardfish. super-dope. could care less what "good" musicians look like tbqh!

Woadscrivened was a stunner but this is even more ambitious imo

xp well most of their albums have at least one "Tenacious D gone prog" track so I was pretty amused to see the singer did actually resemble him

thank you for recommending this because otherwise there is no way in hell i would listen to bands with names like "beardfish" or "thumpermonkey"

Can I tell u about the Flower Kings

no

I don't know much about them but I am digging these guys a great deal at the moment -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEzWPMflmdw

this is so good

https://www.orgaan.ch/storkk/

there's a new anglagard side project out, "all traps on earth". this one has more of a zeuhl flavor. but what i love about it is that that they're _still_ copping riffs from schicke fuhrs frohling in 2018. i don't hold it against them at all, there's obviously way more to anglagard than "pictures" imitation, but it made me laugh so hard.

Kinda scratchy, angry stuff, hard to pin down really, but dead good - https://themmooserush.bandcamp.com/

Deluge Grander - Oceanarium

Very nice, very well sustained for a near 80 minute album. One of those rare albums that has pauses between tracks but feels very much like one large composition. Sleeve notes say that the ideas are used in the previous album and forthcoming album (guessed release date was 2018).

The way the fifth track repeats the main part of track four is gorgeous.

it's probably the densest prog album I've ever heard - I can't really wrap my head around it. there are a LOT of callbacks to Heliotians (the 2014 album).

Oi, you two had best get on this as well https://lostcrowns.bandcamp.com

lol within the first 30 seconds I could pretty much guess who was in that band

Some more gritty stuff - https://slunq.bandcamp.com/

these look incredibly cool but lol @ those prices

https://www.hionerecords.com/product/wood-box-set-birds-and-buildings-bantam-to-behemoth/

https://www.hionerecords.com/product/wood-box-set-deluge-grander-august-in-the-urals/

I did wind up getting one of those limited edition Heliotains LPs with hand-painted cover art and lyrics - it's a really cool item, a lot of people who've come over to my house have asked me about it

I'm a bit miffed you have to buy the expensive Heliotians LP to get the CD.

good news, both Wobbler and Echolyn appear to be in the studio again

Supersister - Retsis Repus

Features the two surviving Supersisters, all the main Nits, Freek De Jonge and more.

"I Am You Are Me / Transmitter" and "For You And For Nobody Else" are my favorite tracks because they do what I consider the band's fast signature sound. There's some deliberately retro fuzzy guitar sounds here and there but for the most part, it doesn't sound like they're trying too hard to recreate the old band. "Hope To See You There Again" is unlike anything from their 70s music, one of the melancholy tracks that I imagine are reflecting on the death of two Supersisters.

It's a nice album. As much as I love the band, I never felt any of their original 5 albums were slammers (usually a few songs were slamming good), so it doesn't have to be more than nice but I would have liked a bit more from it.

A few songs per album were slamming good, I should have said.

No idea if there's been a discussion of The Tea Club before, but I am enjoying these guys, it's squiggly in a good way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQRfyEs1D0

enjoying Deluge Grander - Heliotians

Now loving Heliotians. Great stuff.

I know this is 90s stuff (which seems like a strange era for prog, with trends less easy to distinguish? Or much sense of them being part of one larger thing?) but I have to once again praise Cairo's track "Angels And Rage" again, it makes me feel like I'm darting, spinning and whirling at great speed in a gigantic tall maze made by Robert Venosa. Love it so much.

I talked about Marge Litch on the power metal thread but now I think they'd be more appropriate here maybe. They've got quite an even mixture of power metal, prog metal (but not dark or remotely brutal), opera, neo-classical and sometimes the synths sound like 90s JRPG music. My initial reaction was that it mostly sounded like power metal but on english websites they seem to be mostly going over well with general prog fans.

Fantasien 1998 is the only thing that's easy to get a hold of outside japan, sadly. It's a remake of their first album (from 1991) and at least one reviewer says that on the earlier version they weren't able to pull it off nearly this well.

It sounds to me like a fast futuristic, big science fiction adventure with occasional visits to stately fairy tale gardens and opera singing demons visiting once or twice. Junko's spotlighted vocal moments are gorgeous, particularly the sweet vocals on "Dealing With The Witch".

Only weaknesses are that the last two tracks aren't on the same level as everything before and that the John Howe cover art was used without permission (I saw him complaining about it on his blog).

This was their last album but they continued on with some different members as a live act and other members formed Alhambra and joined Galneryus (who seem to be really popular). I'll be buying Alhambra albums soon and keep an eye out for rare Marge Litch albums. I totally love this album and wish I could have gotten much more mileage out of it. Terrific fun and brought me close to crying a few times.

Look at them here! Who dressed that guy at the front?
https://www.last.fm/music/Marge+Litch/+images/2f8b8638d60b451688c334b757f9ba47

I'm loving Frost's Falling Satellites (which came out in 2016), I waited far too long for this. I've probably said it a few times but a lot of the surface aspects would normally be turnoffs but I love them.

they're great!! the new EP (called Others) is really nice as well and has a few neat "how is this the same band" moments

if you don't have Milliontown you'll want to pick that up too. I dig Experiments in Mass Appeal too though its kinda like, I dunno, a good take on Linkin Park?

I have Milliontown and Experiments in Mass Appeal. The track "Milliontown" is one of my favorite songs ever, wonder if they'll ever top it?

Never knew about the EP, I'm sad there's no CD version.

I've never checked out the related bands but I did hear Lonely Robot in shops once and it had lots of nice familiar sounds.

I learned about them because Chris Squire bigged up Frost as a particularly good modern prog band and initially I was mortified by how poppy it sounded (this is over a decade ago) but it won me over shortly.

the pop elements are really why I love 'em, I'm kinda surprised that there aren't a bunch of other bands going for that sound

I also felt that way about Porcupine Tree, Opeth and other modern prog bands to start with, I thought they sung like boybands and my first Todd Rundgren album might have been Liar and that is super poppy in many ways.

new WOBBLER album may be all that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpOQp9gCfQA&feature=emb_logo

Deluge Grander - Heliotians

This seems a short album for the band but I ended up liking it just as much as the others. Only 3 tracks and "Saruned" is probably my favorite, so rousing. I love their style, like they are doing a soothing series of documentaries about the history of the universe.

yea its pretty good, took a lot of spins to really get into it though

Oceanarium is still kind of impenetrable to me, there's just...so much of it

wonder what they're up to now. that 7-album pyramid thing gonna be finished in 2035 at this rate

What is that?

i know frogbs disagrees by 1 track and i do keep saying this but they are the best example in all of music of a band who will never, ever, ever beat album 1 track 1. i mean king crimson were heading that way and then they knocked out 'starless'. do DG have a 'starless'?

apparently they were gonna do a series of 7 albums, 4 "base" albums (in which Heliotians was one) which would be reworked into two albums which were combinations of two of them (Oceanarium uses some music from Heliotians plus one yet to be released), then one "mega" album that combines elements of all them

he used to have an explainer on the Emkog site but it's gone now. I wonder if it's still in the works or if he got bored of the idea

What is that?

their sorta shot at a Magma-/Gong-like multi-album epic theme

The first thing was to come up with 7 album names that would each sound good on their own, and for which the titles could be combined in ways that also sound good and reflect the design of the seven album pyramid. I thought about this on and off for about a year before finally coming up with “Heliotians”, “Lunarians”, “Creek”, “Din”, the combination titles “Oceanarium” and “Cretin” (though maybe I should use “Creaked In”), and the title for the top of the pyramid “Creationarium.” The concept for “Heliotians” is the theory that the Earth is a hollow shell, with a small sun floating in the middle, and lands, oceans, and people living on the other side of the crust. This is actually a real theory, but it’s almost certainly not true. “Ulterior” is sort of about people digging their way to the other side, “Reverse Solarity” is about people flying in through holes in the north Pole, and “Saruned” is more about the concept in general. The seven albums aren’t intended to have any lyrical themes in common. Actually I haven’t put much thought into singing on the next two albums to be released, even though musically, they’re well underway.

http://www.arlequins.it/pagine/articoli/corpointerviste.asp?chi=317

review of the upcoming Wobbler!

https://www.velvetthunder.co.uk/wobbler-dwellers-of-the-deep-karisma/

very much looking forward to that one, From Silence to Somewhere really does feel like a great lost prog LP that would've slotted right in with the best of Yes

Thanks for all that about the concept and Heliotians explanation.

I never much liked "21st Century Schizoid Man" to be honest.

In a track for track sense, Falling Satellites is definitely Frost's best album. "Tower Block" is just so amazing. Fantastic album, deserved a much bigger audience.

was fun to read discussion of that on the Proggressive Ears forum which is primarily made up of old men..."wait is this what dubstep is?"

the final suite is pretty nuts, really love the gnarly metal riffs they come up with

Just found out that tracks 12 and 13 are bonus tracks, makes sense. The vinyl has an extra instrumental.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05AFHeSk5N0

Frost have a new album out!

Just listened to it yesterday, it’s very good but like their others it’s kind of an endurance test.

The Police clearly seem to be an influence here, particularly Stewart Copeland. It picks up where “Synchronicity 2” left off. Definitely gonna cop the vinyl if I can

Been trying to sample some Frost on Spotify, it's just not clicking for me at all. I love Wobbler though, def one of my favorite more recent prog discoveries.

The drumming on the track about the invisible boy is really fantastic. Is this the first time they've used so many different drummers? 3 different people.

Recent (old) discovery, kinda what 90s Porcupine Tree would have sounded like if SW was a better singer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAHP1Ivb4fY

Don't know if anyone around here still listens to Haken, they've moved pretty far from pure prog by this point, but the new one is... interesting. Some of the best songs they've written since The Mountain, imho, but others that are just flat out embarrassing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBz9V0ZTfrE

Have I posted this elsewhere? I have no idea how many of the bands mentioned are actually prog, I only know who a few of them are but the channel is mostly about that kind of music.

Thank god, I thought this was going to be the "jazz isn't black music actually" prog youtuber guy

I was really annoyed when Clor split up after just one album, in retrospect I think they were one of the best bands to come out of all that 00s NME approved indie landscape, and wondered if they could have evolved into something even more prog. Just looked to see what the members have done since and I'm very gratified that the lead singer has a band that sounds very similar called Barringtone. They formed not long after Clor split up (apparently it was an injury and not musical differences that broke the band) but there wasn't a full album until 2020. Need to track all this down and the Clor ep + singles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAqJI2Xkr4Q