Sommaire pour Issue 141 de Prog

Prog news updated daily online! progmagazine.com “We’re doing a load of Yes songs!” Jon Anderson will make his first live appearances in the UK since 2018 when he plays O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire on July 22 and 23. The shows are part of his 11-date European tour celebrating Close To The Edge’s 51st anniversary, and will showcase material from that classic album along with plenty of surprises. “We’re going to be doing a load of mash-ups,” the singer reveals. “For instance, we do a version of Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir, which goes straight into Don’t Kill The Whale, and then Lenny Kravitz’s Fly Away, which segues into Long Distance Runaround. “But we’ll also be doing a load of Yes songs. Two of the girls do a mesmerising version of Mood For…

Strawbs’ frontman, guitarist and longest-serving member, Dave Cousins, has revealed how the reverence held in South Africa for the band’s 1970s albums Grave New World and Bursting At The Seams led to the creation of latest release The Magic Of It All – out via Cherry Red on July 14. “I first went to South Africa in January 2020,” Cousins tells Prog. “I found out that we were actually very highly regarded at the time of Grave New World because it reverberated with the battle against apartheid. Singles like Lay Down and Part Of The Union [both from ’73’s Bursting At The Seams] were really popular with the anti-apartheid movement because of what they were saying.” Such is their legacy in South Africa that filmmaker Niel van Deventer approached Cousins…

AVKRVST’S NAME IS pronounced“Aw-crust”. Don’t worry if you ever get that wrong, though: the band have made the same mistake as well. “We pronounced the first V at first,” singer and multi-instrumentalist Simon Bergseth admits to Prog. “We used to say‘Av-crust’, but the band are named after a guy called Kjell Aukrust – we just swapped the‘U’s for the letter‘V’. Other bands have been doing that for ages.” Kjell Aukrust was a Norwegian poet and artist. The reason the band named themselves after him is that he had the same hometown as they do, Alvdal. Bergseth and AVKRVST’s other co-founder, drummer and synth player Martin Utby, grew up there together, then reunited in the same town to make what would become their debut album, The Approbation. “Martin’s dad is my…

As revealed during the new documentary Seasons Change, the recordings for Seasons End at Hook End Manor were occasionally interrupted by tomfoolery. For reasons unknown, Marillion’s downtime was spent making small hot air balloons. “Yeah, it was!” says Pete Trewavas. “We’re easily distracted as musicians. In the evenings, to wind down, I don’t even know who suggested it – it might have been Nick Davis, or maybe Mark Kelly – but there was something about how to make the kind of candles [lanterns] that the Chinese float up at New Year. So we’d use some balsa wood or coffee stirrers or whatever, and put a plastic bag and a tea light candle in the frame, and it would float away.” As is often the way in rock’n’roll, they subsequently got…

“Basically, this was almost for my sanity that I made this project. I could’ve left it in a vault and just done it for myself, but it’s exciting.” “That was scary, man. Really,” says Lars Fredrik Frøislie. As the keyboard wizard of Norway’s brilliant Wobbler, composer for film and TV, and a producer, Frøislie is a seasoned, accomplished musician. But with his solo debut Fire Fortellinger, he not only plays everything but the bass himself, he sings too. “I’ve only done backing vocals before,” says Frøislie. “Just to release a solo album under my name is scary. I had no idea what people would think so it’s rather frightening. It’s a completely different thing to a band where I’m hiding in the back. Here I am really in the front.”…

“During the lockdown, the insects regained power. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen so many butterflies, dragonflies, bees… like a rebirth, so it’s quite natural these bees came to take their place on the cover.” A bandoning a major European tour three years ago due to Covid, Lazuli retreated to their base in southern France, waiting for the world to re-open. During this protracted impasse, Dominique Leonetti wrote 11, a deeply personal collection of songs that appeared almost without fanfare earlier this year. In an ideal music cosmos, the stars would have aligned, enabling the French proggers to release 11, their 11th album comprising 11 songs, on November 11, 2022 (11 x 2). Sadly, due to global production delays, the universal numbers didn’t add up this time. “It was…

Rod Argent is a pretty satisfied man these days. The Zombies, the band he co-founded as a teenager in 1961, have recently returned from a sell-out tour of the UK, promoting their best album for decades. Different Game finds The Zombies doing what they’ve always done best: deftly orchestrated pop songs with exquisite harmonies, great melodies and heaps of musical invention. Almost exclusively written by Argent, and voiced by Colin Blunstone (the other mainstay of the original line-up), it’s better than anyone has any right to expect from a band whose core duo are now deep into their 70s. It’s hardly been straightforward getting here though. Having started out by gigging locally around St Albans in south-east England, The Zombies won a competition to find the “top beat group in…

An intriguing prog metal introduction. Every once in a while, a record comes along that fuses styles and techniques so gracefully and refreshingly that it creates something substantially new. Such is the case with The Anchoret’s It All Began With Loneliness. Although some of it taps into progressive metal theatricality – Stay recalls Haken at their most sophisticatedly eccentric – other tracks go to more surprising places. Prelude An Office For… matches the calming spaciness of Ayreon with the forlorn melodies of Sky Architect, whereas Until The Sun Illuminates and Unafraid juxtapose gentle harmonies and frenetic arrangements in thrilling yet cohesive ways. The biggest deviation comes with the intense Someone Listening, as it merges traces of jazz fusion and extreme metal and straightforward hard rock heft. It’s an unexpected combination,…

Welsh prog metal band show their class on sixth album. Five albums and one EP into their career, Godsticks have successfully carved out a space for themselves that sits somewhere between the energetic swagger of Faith No More, the questing drama of mid-period King Crimson and the dizzying mathcore pyrotechnics of The Dillinger Escape Plan. Yet over the course of 17 years, the Welsh band have transcended their influences, fusing them into a sound that’s their own. “Hits the sweet spot between adventure and melody.” Having settled into the expanded, four-piece line-up that’s been in place since 2017’s Faced With Rage album, their sixth full-length builds on what they were doing with that record and its follow-up, 2020’s Inescapable. Opener If I Don’t Take It All thumps and crawls from…

Beautifully realised Manic Mystery Tour of an album. Following up 2020’s well-received Things Unseen release, IATMW have created a collection of songs inspired by both fictional and factual tales of the strange, the curious and the bewildering. Ghost Train ushers us into this mysterious world and Nautilus delivers a glorious 14 minutes celebrating Jules Verne’s steampunk submarine creation, with bonus guest keyboards from Ryo Okumoto. Ernö’s Magic Cube runs from highly-charged, guitar-led rock-out to funk-edged quirkiness as singer/bassist Michael Whiteman’s lyrics hail the genius of Ernö Rubik and the dizzying mathematical permutations of his toy cube. The playing is marvellous, with guitarist David Addis and John Murphy on keys shifting and adapting to the demands of each song and everyone stepping up with multipart vocal harmonies. If midperiod Spock’s Beard…

Fusion-tastic fare from Iamthemorning’s live guitarist. Loam, better known as Liam McLaughlin to Ma and Pa, is a Scottish guitarist some readers may have seen performing with Iamthemorning. He’s also worked as a live guitarist with the likes of Scottish prog metallers Orynthia and fellow guitarist Sithu Aye, and here, on his new six-track EP, he conjures up a quite fusion-tastic blur of notes, twists, turns and melodies that also touches upon funk, blues and hard rock in the most engaging of manners. From the opening blast of Car Pool Tunnel, through to the closing laid-back funk of Druids, Loam covers plenty of musical ground, but the six tracks losenothing in cohesion, despite their diversity. Lettuce crams plenty of notes into its funk prog, with keyboards from Rohan Sharma and…

Norwegian prog psychonauts turn down the volume on their 31st album. Motorpsycho have always been inclined record, most flamboyantly on the 40-minute suite N.O.X. from 2020’s All Is One. But they have also always explored concision and melody and Yay! is almost entirely in this vein with acoustic guitars, mandolin, congas, zither, Mellotron, reedy organs and synths weaving their spell. There’s a waft of early Pink Floyd at Yes on the swooning vocal melodies of Patterns; and Sentinels sounds like something David Crosby might have composed for Crosby Stills & Nash. But if there’s a West Coast influence, Loch Meaningless comes, in the title at least, from the west coast of Scotland, although guitarist Bent Sæther actually sings a tale of triumph in love. The songs on Yay! might be…

Sweden’s Scar Symmetry have been a force for prog metal good for over 20 years now. The long-awaited second part of a planned three-album concept splurge, The Singularity (Phase II – Xenotaph) (Nuclear Blast) is an aggressive and intense affair, but prog-friendly harmony vocals and complex song structures remain key components. The result is an immaculate, intergalactic beat-’em-up. An instrumental quartet from Kimberley, British Columbia, Phaeton are skilfully blurring the boundaries between old- and new-school prog metal. Their second album, Between Two Worlds (phaetonband.bandcamp.com) covers a vast amount of ground, from intricate post-djent riffing to indulgent prog pomp, and no single idea outstays its welcome. The nine-minute title track is a particularly impressive display of showboating and smart songwriting. Over in France, one-man tech metal force Anthony Delmas kicks up…

Folk, jazz and grooves make for the musical equivalent of a Pimm’s on the lawn. Having backed any number of musicians including big hitters Peter Gabriel, David Byrne and R&B superstar Frank Ocean, the pastoral prog on offer from multi-instrumentalist and singer Ben Reed is ripe for discovery and delight as he takes the spotlight for himself. Bandaged – his fourth solo album – is a whimsical, sometimes head-spinning treat that finds him backed by Caravan contributor Jimmy Hastings and Steve Howe Trio’s Ross Stanley, as well as pedal steel master BJ Cole. With such luminaries on board, it should come as little surprise that from the Canterbury scene but also builds on those influences to maintain an identity that’s definitely its own. The instrumental opener Plea reveals itself like…

Norwegian retro proggers explore the art of dance. There’s never a shortage of bands attempting to recreate the fusty wonder of progressive rock circa 1971, but few, if any, have done it with such wild-eyed abandon as Ring Van Möbius. The brainchild of Thor Erik Helgesen – formerly known for several adventurous black metal records under the name Throne Of Katarsis – the Norwegians have released two superb studio albums to date, exhibiting rather more than a gift for mimicry along the way. “They’ve brought 1971 flailing and shrieking into the present again.” The band have never hidden their love of Van der Graaf Generator, but both debut album Past The Evening Sun and its follow-up, The 3rd Majesty, were bulging with mad ideas and a gleeful sense of musical…

Inspired musical settings of 19th-century French symbolist poet’s work. Susanna Wallumrød’s with Charles Baudelaire began in 2020 with the 10-song Baudelaire And Piano, but here she is accompanied by Oslo’s Norwegian Radio Orchestra. These sensual selections from Les Fleurs Du Mal embody, in the poet’s translated words, a “cold and sinister beauty”. Even in translation Baudelaire’s imagery is extraordinarily dramatic. He looks onto ‘the shrouded corpse of all love’ on Alchemy Of Suffering, and on Obsession he’s frightened of forests and hates the ocean: ‘…the bitter laughter insults, I hear resounding in laughter.’ But he also achieved a balance in his verse and Susanna avoids exaggerating these literary mood swings, and instead plots a steady course and gives space to the words. Jarl G Storløkken’s orchestration is beautifully judged, from…

Low-key interpretations of high-end tunes – a superior Waters set. Released digitally last December and now on CD/vinyl, this EP sees Roger Waters revisit tracks from Pink Floyd and his own LPs. Five were cut during the lockdowns of 2020-2021 with contributions from his touring band, while the almost funereal version of Comfortably Numb 2022 was recorded during his recent US tour. The Wall’s Mother gets a faithful rendering, enlivened by backing vocals from Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig. They also take up the higher registers on the downbeat Vera that Waters, 79, can no longer reach, with the brilliant Dave Kilminster adding some Brian May-ish guitar orchestrations. Ian Ritchie’s sax break is a welcome ray of light on The Final Cut’s Two Suns In The Sunset, and that album’s…

Four rare Yoshimi-era tracks make it onto a vinyl EP. Working with Miley Cyrus; coveringThe Dark Side Of The Moon; releasing countless boundary-pushing LPs and their own sci-fi B-movie, Christmas On Mars: Oklahoma’s lysergic voyagers The Flaming Lips zig while others zag, making them impossible to second-guess. It would take deep pockets to buy all of their wares and this pink vinyl curio has a slight ‘for completists only’ vibe about it, but The Lips’ relentless capacity for re-tooling their past while forging ahead has to be admired. Hypnotist features four tracks that originally appeared on a bonus CD in the expanded 20th-anniversary reissue of 2002’s Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. More than three-quarters of its length is taken up by 23-minute head-trip Psychedelic Hypnotist Daydream. A part-symphonic sound collage…

Steven Wilson burnishes art-poppers’ watershed 1982 album. By the time 1982’s Quartet had been released, Ultravox had evolved by some considerable distance from their angular and art-rock beginnings. While original frontman John Foxx had drawn on the influence of his stark Hackney surroundings as much as the nascent synthesiser technology that was emerging, his replacement, Midge Ure, brought with him a melodic sensibility that had been honed in bands as disparate as Slik, Rich Kids and Visage. The material released in the wake of his arrival found Ultravox taking up both an album and singles chart residency that almost felt like a land grab. And yet, as is pretty much always the case with commercial success that follows underground trailblazing, here Ultravox lost some of the mystique that initially made…

Nad Sylvan’s pre-Steve Hackett band worship at the altar of Genesis. From the tone of the guitars to the shimmer on the keyboards and the key changes, Unifaun sounded – to politely understate it – a lot like Genesis. That’s no secret, and singer Nad Sylvan, now an essential fixture in Steve Hackett’s touring band, wouldn’t deny it. They took their name from a line in Dancing With The Moonlit Knight, and Sylvan’s voice on this album is pretty much what would result if one asked artificial intelligence to offer a precise blend of Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins. The California-born, Swedish-raised performer’s love of all things Genesis began around the time of Wind And Wuthering, and when he saw tribute band The Musical Box play in 2003, the idea…

Two-CD/Blu-ray set captures neo-prog quartet on vibrant form. Given the average prog musician’s high regard for technical excellence and sonic perfection, there’s always a danger that a desire to achieve a note-perfect performance might take the edge off a live show, and any recording of said event might add a further layer of production sheen. Thankfully the 10 tracks captured here at Bath Komedia in November 2022 seem to be imbued with a striking extra urgency that makes Island Live an often exhilarating experience. Particularly breathtaking are the intensity of opener Day And Age and the techno rock avalanche at the start of Dead Days, but also impressive is the way the jazz rock angularities of Hyperventilate sound thrilling rather than just clever in this live setting. Visually, the Blu-ray…

VENUE O2 SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE, LONDON DATE 23/05/2023 They may have disappeared from the studio for a dismayingly long period earlier this century, but in case anyone was in any doubt, Jethro Tull never really went away. Even during the lengthy gap between 2003’s Christmas Album and last year’s The Zealot Gene, the line between Ian Anderson solo releases and Jethro Tull projects remained a rather blurred one – was Thick As A Brick 2 a non-JT release? Okay, your gaff, your rules, Mr A. Both The Ian Anderson Band and Jethro Tull have maintained a regular presence on the live circuit, with the core of the current Tull line-up in situ since the mid-2000s. Which may be why, from the moment the quintet emerge onto the Shepherd’s Bush Empire…

VENUE VARIOUS VENUES, LONDON DATE 05/05/2023-07/05/2023 It’s been eight years since Desertfest boasted a designated prog stage, and truth be told, the advertised weekend of doom, stoner and sludge metal probably doesn’t rank too highly with many readers. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t proggy gems to be found here. Progressive music’s tentacles spread far and wide these days and, even if the prog massive aren’t in attendance, there are bands from our world making new friends galore at the event. For the uninitiated, Desertfest is an annual weekender that takes place in various venues dotted around Camden, which attracts a wide variety of rock and metal bands, usually of the doom and stoner persuasion, but it occasionally features more interesting artists operating on the fringes as well. If ever…

Intergalactic proggers The Fierce & The Dead have announced details of their fourth album, due July 28. Releasing via Spencer Park Music, News From The Invisible World’s eight new tracks – including last year’s single, Wonderful – are the first to include vocals by bassist Kevin Feazey. The London-based band have, over the past 13 years, built a reputation as an innovative and immersive instrumental act through a blend psych rock, stoner, prog and metal aesthetics. On their fourth LP, their sound has evolved, with Feazey’s versatile voice adding a fresh dimension to the mix. “The album really digs deep into where we come from musically and sets up the path ahead,” he says of their stylistic shift. “We’ve always found ways to do things differently.” “We wanted to make…

Fresh from their appearance at this year’s Prognosis festival, Sweden-based prog metallers Soen will release a brand-new studio album, Memorial, through Silver Lining Music on September 1. The record again finds the band combining heavy guitars with their inherent sense of musicality and melody and is preceded by a new single, Unbreakable. Says drummer Martin López of the track, “It’s a song about how you limit yourself as a human, by blindly believing in something.” “Politicians and the media paint everything as black or white, entitling you to try to destroy your opponent instead of trying to find common ground,” adds singer Joel Ekelöf. “It’s key to be humble and open to different viewpoints to keep growing. Unbreakable feels like a marriage between classic metal and Soen.” Memorial will be…

Karnataka have announced a change in the release date for their highly anticipated new studio album, Requiem For A Dream. Originally due out in June, the album will now be unveiled on July 28 via Immarama Records. This marks the band’s first studio album since 2015’s Secrets Of Angels. Featuring the recorded debut of vocalist Sertari, guitarist Luke Machin, keyboard player Rob Wilshire and drummer Chris Allen, Requiem For A Dream is “our strongest work to date,” say the band. “A beautifully crafted production which weaves together ambitious, epic at times, arrangements, lush vocal harmonies, and soundscapes that envelop the listener in an otherworldly embrace.” The album includes a special guest appearance by Nightwish multi-instrumentalist Troy Donockley and was mixed by engineer Joe Gibb (Massive Attack, The Cure), and mastered…

FEW ARE THE musicians for whom sharing their instruments with members of other bands is a pleasure, but for Reto Mäder and Dahm Majuri Cipolla the request from the latter to the former proved fortuitous – they ended up forming the psychedelic industrial behemoth JeGong. “I was playing with Finnish avant-garde metal band Sum Of R on a European tour heading to the Roadburn Festival and, at the same time, Dahm was playing drums with experimental music ensemble Watter, touring Europe and heading to the same festival,” recalls Mäder. “Both bands played about 18 gigs on their tours, and in two clubs we were booked on the same evening. Dahm asked me if he could use the Sum Of R drums. So, on the one hand we got talking and,…

“If Francis found out there were Curved Air fans in the audience he’d sneak part of Piece Of Mind into his playing of Bach’s music with great feeling.” In recalling their founding member, keyboard and guitar player Francis Monkman, who died in May, UK prog rockers Curved Air perhaps answered a question that some fans may have wondered since he last featured in the band in 1990: whatever happened to Francis Monkman? In truth, the classically trained musician remained working with music, notably with his beloved harpsichord and the work of composer Johann Sebastian Bach, but stayed out of the public spotlight, something that always seemed to be more comfortable to the musician than hogging the limelight. And yet ironically, thanks to Monkman’s involvement in scores of some of the…

“We weren’t messing about. We knew that we were trying to, quote/unquote, ‘make it’.”Andy Powell By the early 70s, under the management of Miles Copeland, Wishbone Ash were two albums into their career and gradually rising, but nobody could have predicted what was to come. Officially formed in 1969, the British blues rockers came into being when former The Empty Vessels vocalist/bassist Martin Turner and drummer Steve Upton hired guitarists Andy Powell and Ted Turner to complete a quartet. They released their self-titled debut in 1970 and Pilgrimage in 1971, but it was 1972’s extraordinary Argus that propelled them to new heights. “We’d done a couple of years touring the clubs and the town hall circuit in the UK,” recalls Powell. “Then we started playing bigger venues and travelling across…

As another Periphery album makes its way into the world, the prog and metal communities find themselves polarised once more. This is a record defined by a heady mix of sparkling pop hooks, aggressive heavy metal mathematics and complex structures that unravel like a whodunnit. But, in what must feel like Groundhog Day for the Washington quintet, the internet is inconclusive about what to make of it. “We chose to be a progressive metal band because it meant that we could do whatever we want,” says guitarist Misha Mansoor. “We love really heavy stuff. We also love really poppy stuff. It’s all kosher in this band. We have so many critics, but no one can agree on why they hate it.” To some, when vocalist Spencer Sotelo sings, the band…

prog.reviews@futurenet.com The phrase “growing up in public” is an ever more appropriate description of many acts’ career arcs in the 21st century, as they are snapped up by management after only a few gigs, signed and hyped before even releasing their debut single, with little room to develop away from the spotlight. The result can often be short-lived, firework careers, so The Pineapple Thief were perhaps fortunate to avoid that fate after Bruce Soord adopted the name in 1999. By then he was already in his late 20s and, as he explains on the illuminating book of sleeve notes housing this retrospective, he had also released a couple of albums on prog-loving indie label Cyclops as Vulgar Unicorn, with school friend Neil Randall. As Soord and Randall diverged creatively, TPT…

Assured debut from Tapio Ylinen’s new Finnish prog quartet. Guitarist/singer Tapio Ylinen has released albums under his own name and as part of jazz group Mortality. On this self-titled debut, his new quartet 5th Season dive into the pool of golden-era prog and classic rock. Ten-minute opener In Memoriam sees Ylinen, bassist Mikko Löytty, keyboardist Arto Piispanen and drummer Jani Auvinen navigating a dramatic, melancholy instrumental landscape. Ylinen’s pleasant voice suits bright, driving pop-rocker In Daylight and the fragile Moodies-like acoustic moment I Am The Waves, enhanced by gorgeous Hackett-esque lead playing. The second part of the courageously titled On The Dark Side Of The Moon is pretty proggy, but the first is less Floyd, more Fleetwood Mac. Ylinen throws in a Frampton-evoking talk-box guitar solo and the album’s guest…

Dark folk explorations with a post-rock spirit. After three albums of pitch-black alt-folk, Dávid Máko has made a giant forward leap on Vidékek Vannak Idebenn (translation: ‘There Are Landscapes Within’). While the bruised, shadow-bound essence of the Hungarian’s songwriting remains recognisable, the musical backdrop has blossomed into something far more progressive and absorbing. It begins with Máko’s disembodied presence floating on a sea of feedback and synth drones, before easing into the shimmering guitars and stately, postrock pulse of Flashing Through The Lack Of Light. These are big, resolutely melancholy songs, fuelled by their creator’s infernal fervour. The title track’s incremental build, from deathly quiet to windswept bluster, is an eight-minute goosebumps machine. Liminal is a haunted, drawn-out howl of anguish. The closing Új Hajnal Már Nem Jo starts as…

Creative team-up travels unfamiliar terrain. Intricate, exploratory and a little trippy, this is a fascinating three-track release from the Marillion frontman and the sound designer/keyboardist best known for his work with Porcupine Tree and, previously, Japan. The pair worked together on 2012 album Not The Weapon But The Hand, and again on 2014’s Arc Light. This new music has emerged from sketches they began a year after that, and which they felt didn’t then fit with any plan. Having revisited and reworked them, they’ve found the playfulness within the atmospheres, and those cygnets have become swans. “It follows a journey to curious, compulsive places.” That element of play is key: darkly dramatic as these pieces are in parts, there’s a sense of two musicians ignoring boundaries, and letting instinct interject…

A convincing case for collaboration. Having bonded over a love of 70s kosmische musik, film soundtracks and heavier experimental sounds, Sum Of R’s multi-instrumentalist Reto Mäder and Watter/Mono drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla return for a second collaborative album. Unlike their debut, I, which was recorded remotely, The Complex Inbetween finds the pair working eye-to-eye. The result is a heavier and more active experience and is all the better for it. Clear The Way is akin to a black hole that sucks all attention into its centre, compresses what it’s fed on and then ejects the contents from the other side with supernatural force. Conversely, the linear and forward motion of Focus DeFocus incrementally increases its power with all the subtlety of an early dawn sunrise. That Mäder and Cipolla are…

Unpredictable genre-hopping to mimic the chaos of life. It’s taken genre-fluid Tel Aviv troupe Neolia 10 years to release this record. Personal and professional obstacles have all contributed to a disjointed creation process for the band. The scattershot result ultimately feels like a representation of the unpredictability of life. Stylistic changes come sharply and unexpectedly throughout, for better or for worse. Your Prophecy snaps from jazz-tinted salsa to panged yet energetic alt-rock with ease, yet at other moments its transitions feel stapled together. Neolia’s production does occasionally feel a little rough around the edges, but as the chaotic screams of Dance Of Violence and the ever-contorting Rise And Fall attest, the rawness of their emotions often turns that into a positive. The slow-burning Anchors builds on moody tension, jarring textures…

Electro post-proggers deliver seamless immersion on fifth album. North Atlantic Oscillation have been steadily finessing their combination of post-Kid A nu-prog and modern electronica since their 2010 debut, Grappling Hooks – but here on their fifth album, it sounds like a genuine man-machine singularity has been achieved. It’s sure to become a cliché – if it isn’t already – but there’s definitely a sense of some kind of AI-enhanced mind-meld having taken place during the creation of United Wire. Even the title seems to allude to an active collaboration with the complex networks that our social interactions are increasingly encased inside. “An album for a world where reality is being reconfigured.” However, that’s not for a moment to take anything away from the flesh-and-blood project or suggest that they’ve got…

Prog supergroup’s joyous return to the stage captured. Many bands talk about the euphoria of being able to play gigs again post-pandemic, and exactly that sense of elation surrounds The Neal Morse Band’s latest live album. Recorded on their 2022 tour at Hamburg’s Markthalle, An Evening Of Innocence & Danger exudes unbridled joy. At three discs and two-and-a-half hours in length, this is certainly VFM. The first two-thirds of the set focuses on last year’s Innocence & Danger album, including heavy-on-theemotions versions of The Way It Had To Be and Waterfall (though there should be a moratorium until the end of time on covering Bridge Over Troubled Water). The final 30 minutes is a medley of tracks from 2019’s The Great Adventure and 2016’s The Similitude Of A Dream, carefully…

Jazzy yet accessible debut from star-studded transatlantic combo. The pairing of US drummer Keith Carlock (Steely Dan, Toto, Sting) and Jacob Holm-Lupo of Norwegian art-rockers White Willow may seem an unlikely one at first glance coming, as they do, from somewhat different places geographically and musically. However, with this debut collaboration they create a synthesis that’s both cohesive and convincing. Sitting very much in jazz fusion territory, this is an instrumental collection that relies less on flash and unnecessary displays of virtuosity than it does on tunes and feel – more the accessible end of Herbie Hancock and Pat Metheny than the inscrutability of Mahavishnu Orchestra or the quirk of Brand X. There’s a deep groove to Intersection and Hamada, in the ambience and atmosphere of The Night Owl and…

Dutch veterans wrestle with contentious real world subject matter. Although their members have many years of experience behind them individually, Crossing Borders is the debut release under the Sound Of Strangers banner. Quite bravely, given the often divisive nature of the subject matter, this is a concept album built around the story of one family’s experiences as refugees and the struggles and danger faced by the displaced and the desperate. They wear their influences openly throughout. Ocean Sky hints at both Pink Floyd and the lighter side of Rush. Vocalist Serge Mannee’s delivery brings to mind Fish on Endless Night and Fire And Ice, and the title track similarly evokes the neoprog of the likes of early IQ and even Twelfth Night. It also provides some Middle Eastern flavours…

As if music stopped in 1967. Coming on like a lo-fi version of US art-rock dandies Foxygen but with fewer of The Lemon Twigs’ more irritating aspects, the Canadian-American duo Vanity Mirror are a band for whom the resurrection of the Austin Powers franchise can’t come soon enough, if only so they can replace Ming Tea as the titular hero’s backing band. Touting titles such as Talkin’ Walkie-Talkie Rice Crispies Blues might give the impression that they’re picking up on Bob Dylan’s trail, but really, this is more a case of cack, crackle and slop. Indeed, in Vanity Mirror’s DayGlo world, Dylan never made it to Nashville while The Beatles got caught up in an endless loop of the E-major chord that brought A Day In A Life to a…

Both Deram albums by the American heavy psych-rock quartet and more. Decca Records signed The Rolling Stones in 1963, but passed on The Beatles, The Who and The Kinks, and gained a reputation for being a bit square. And so, in late 1966, they formed a hip subsidiary label, Deram, which hoovered up all manner of psychedelic, underground and progressive acts, a surprise hit with their fuzzed-up version of House Of The Rising then already something of an old chestnut. Sometime Motown producer and artist Michael Valvano produced their 1970 debut album Frijid Pink, but made them sound like a garage band, exciting but very rough and ready. While some of the bluesier offerings such as I’m On come across as rather generic, lengthy, episodic I Want To Be Your…

Revealing insight into a musical genius at work. The tantalising narrative being pushed about this latest exhumation from the Zappa vaults is that it contains within it what could have been the unreleased sequel to 1969’s Hot Rats. Of course, in reality, it’s actually a comprehensive dive into the genesis and archaeology of the actual follow-up, 1970’s Chunga’s Revenge. Putting aside the dubious marketing tactics of inventing a ‘new’ or ‘lost’ album, there’s more than enough reason to be excited by this latest raid on the archive. “A comprehensive documentation of a musician in full flow.” The three-CD release is a truly bountiful package. With 23 of the 25 tracks previously unreleased, there are nearly three-and-a-half hours of never-before-heard music for hardcore fans to pore over. Topped off with a…

Vinyl reissue of unruly second album from Swindon’s finest, now with added dub. XTC were always more experimental not lost on Steven Wilson, a devoted fan who remixed their music in 5.1 surround sound a decade ago. Andy Partridge in particular grew up on an eclectic ranged from The Monkees to the European avant-garde, which manifested itself in such a way as to make these Swindonites inveterate outliers of the post-punk movement. After baffling plenty of people with their debut album, White Music, 1978’s picked up where that left off, taking disorientation up a level by coming on like the bastard offspring of Elvis Costello and Captain Beefheart. Furthermore, the competitive tensions between the two main songwriters, Partridge and Colin Moulding, created all sorts of interesting places, even if it…

Want to see Geddy Lee in a Stiff Records T-shirt? Look no further. Rufus’ Portraits series reproduces iconic band images in a high-quality, 230mm-square book packaged in a slip case. Each book features work by photographers synonymous with the act in question, plus supporting photos shot by others. As any discerning Rush fan knows, esteemed Irish snapper Fin Costello was trusted by the band, and his images, shot between 1976 and 1981, will be familiar to Sounds readers and/or those who bought programmes on Rush’s early UK tours. Featuring lots of platform shoes and chest hair, Costello’s mid-to-late-70s shots of the band in their full prog pomp will delight aficionados. As one would expect of Rush, there’s plenty of goofing: images this writer hadn’t previously seen include one of Alex…

VENUE ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL, LONDON DATE 28/05/2023 It is, as the T-shirts on the merchandise stand read, “A Farewell To Touring”. At 76, John Lees has decided that it’s time for a well-earned rest from the rigours of the road. There will, he’s stated, still be occasional dates and a new album, but nonetheless tonight carries an air of pathos as one of the staples of British progressive rock begin to rein in their activities. Lees wants to “go out on a high”, and does, especially when the encore of Hymn raises a previously sedate Sunday night audience to their feet with some hollering and air-punching. At the same time, a heart of stone would be required to not hear the poignancy as the band’s characteristically gentle classic Galadriel offers…

UK post-rock quartet L.O.E (Last Of Eden) have just released their debut album, The World & Everything In It via Hopeful Tragedy Records. Following on from 2020’s acclaimed self-titled EP and a series of singles across the last 12 months, it’s a record that takes a holistic look at humanity. “The album aims to capture our greatest achievements and biggest failures. Not as a political stand but merely as a reflection of us all and the world we share,” say the band. “We all have different views and experiences in life. This album is about sharing the things that bond us and make us human.” L.O.E have already garnered accolades from Prog and BBC Radio 6, and shared stages with Pg.lost and Hubris. A full live session of The World…

Italian prog legends Le Orme have announced they will release a brand-new double album, Le Orme And Friends, on October 13 through Orangle Records. It’s to be their last studio recording and will feature contributions from former members Francesco Sartori (piano), Fabio Trentini (bass and vocals) and singer Jimmy Spitaleri among others. At the same time they’ve also revealed that they will undertake a farewell tour after 57 years of making music, on which the current line-up of Michi Dei Rossi (drums), Michele Bon (keyboards), Luca Sparagna (bass and vocals) and Aligi Pasqualetto (piano and keyboards) will be joined by former keyboard player Tony Pagliuca and guitarist Tolo Morton. The band are currently playing live dates in Italy, celebrating the 50th anniversary of their fourth album, 1973’s Felona E Serona, which…

US proggers Dream The Electric Sleep have announced the release of their upcoming studio album American Mystic, which is scheduled to hit the shelves on July 14. This marks the band’s first long-player in seven years, following their 2016 release, Beneath The Dark Sky. The album has been produced by the renowned Michael Beinhorn, recognised for his work with acclaimed acts such as Soundgarden and Red Hot Chili Peppers. “This is the most personal record we’ve written, I think,” says vocalist and guitarist Matt Page, who is joined on the new album by bandmates Joey Waters on drums and Chris Tackett on bass. “We started writing this in 2017 and it felt like each month brought some new social, political or personal upheaval. Politics fell apart, I became a new parent,…

PUT LEIPZIG-BORN GUITARIST Martin Miller’s first album side by side with his second and you wouldn’t believe it was the same artist. But a lot has changed in the 10 years since The Other End. Namely, Miller has spent a decade honing his craft with his covers band on YouTube. More than 200 posts, ranging from 26-minute 80s medleys to teaming up with fellow guitarist Paul Gilbert for a romp through Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, have garnered him over 700,000 subscribers and tens of millions of views. For Miller, it was a way to distance himself from that debut record. “With that album,” he says, “I felt there was an unspoken peer pressure to prove myself as a guitarist. There was a disconnect between the music I was writing and the…

“When I joined the band I thought it might last for two or three albums, you know, with a bit of luck.”Steve Hogarth As surprising as it seems, for the last five months of 1988, Marillion were an instrumental quartet. After the acrimonious departure of frontman Fish that summer, Aylesbury’s finest were faced with the unenviable task of deciding what to do next. They were still working on new music, of course, because that’s what they’d always done (and still do nearly 35 years later), but the spotlight that had illuminated their former singer was now hitting an empty centre-stage. “There was a sense of relief when Fish left, to be honest,” says guitarist Steve Rothery. “It was like a huge weight was lifted off our shoulders, just because things…

Seasons End was a transitional record for Marillion, right down to their decision to stop working with longtime collaborator Mark Wilkinson. The new album cover was created by artist Bill Smith and stood in stark contrast to previous Marillion artwork, albeit with a few knowing self-references to keep the fans happy. “Looking back at the art, as it was originally, it was a bit of a compromise, a kind of hotch-potch,” says Mark Kelly today. “We were trying a bit too hard to have that continuity between the old and the new Marillion. Mark Wilkinson was up for working with us, but he also wanted to work with Fish, and because things were so awkward and difficult between us, we just thought it would be a bit too close. We’d…

“When we make music, we’re depending on every member of the band to do his part. It would feel wrong if three of us got together and made half a record and then waited for the rest of the guys.”Tormod Fosso “I don’t think it was our intention to wait seven years,” says Seven Impale saxophonist Benjamin Mekki Widerøe as he ponders the considerable gap between the band’s album releases. “Our last album, Contrapasso, was made at a point where we had more free time, I think. Most of us were studying or working part time. And there were no children involved. So yeah, we had more time then to make music and just record albums and keep the ball rolling.” Almost following to the letter John Lennon’s famed observation…

For the reviewer whose pointed words inspired the name of Folie À Trois’ opening track, The Parallax Method’s debut album will be a bit of a disappointment. For readers of this magazine, however, it beautifully summarises what makes the joyously obtuse yet refined Derbyshire outfit so appealing. “We’ve Learned Nothing is a reference to a review we had,” bassist Ben Edis explains. “The person didn’t like the first EP and recommended we put vocals in and started following more normal song structures. So when he reviewed the second EP he said, ‘They’ve clearly learned nothing from my last review.’ And he’s right. We have clearly learned nothing, because now we’re doing more of the same. So we thought it would be funny to open with that statement; we’re doing what…

Prog faves in fine voice on fourth album. Is it really 13 years since a new band going by the name The Fierce & The Dead released Part 1, a long, sprawling cosmic jam on once-popular website MySpace? Astonishingly it is, although while that particular social networking site may have fallen into obscurity, the same cannot be said for the London-based quartet who play a bespoke brand of invigorating instrumental alt-rock. “Taut songs with glorious, air-punching choruses.” Their last full-length studio release, 2018’s The Euphoric, was viewed by many fans and critics alike as their finest album up to that point. However, in the five years since that record, a lot has changed within and without the band. There was Covid, of course, and, more personally, guitarist Matt Stevens’ cancer…

Prog metal powerhouse delivers another knockout. Four years on from his solo debut What The Water Wants, Fates Warning vocalist Ray Alder returns with a second impressive album under his own name. II reunites Alder with FW touring guitarist Mike Adbow, alongside guitarist/bassist Tony Hernando and drummer Craig Anderson. Where the previous release felt like a conscious departure from the prog metal territory of Fates Warning, II embraces a darker, heavier vibe. Alder himself combines the heartfelt delivery of Steve Perry with the iron-throated power of Graham Bonnet. Lyrically, however, he’s in a distinctly sombre mood. He sings of ‘sinking into emptiness’ in The Hands Of Time, ‘crawling through the nothing’ in Waiting For Some Sun, and laments ‘I am already broken’ in My Oblivion. Despite the melancholic subjects, the…

US studio progger raids the vaults for inspiration. Sometimes it takes looking back to go forward. Ethan J Matthews, the one-man show that is Portland, Oregon’s Echo Us, has returned to a trilogy of his early albums to source material for his seventh long-player. Inland Empire uses musical ideas that never made the cut on 2009’s The Tide Decides, Tomorrow Will Tell The Story (2012) and 2014 release II: XII, A Priori Mamoriae. But as such it sounds more like what it is – a clutch of promising musical ideas that only intermittently gel together into coherent pieces. Beguiling passages will make the listener prick up their ears: digitised voice, symphonic swells and sprinkles of tingling electric piano make for a bewitching introduction on Across The Star, before the spoken-word…

Unhinged retro-futurism from another dimension. Henge are curtain-chewing mad and proud of it. Ostensibly from Manchester, they’re really four interplanetary beings known as Zpor, Goo, Grok and Nom, and their third album is a mind-boggling serving of their self-styled “cosmic dross”. While its predecessors were equally barmy, Alpha Test 4 comes across as a more focused exercise in boundary-spurning songcraft. Opener Get A Wriggle On is an unapologetic Cardiacs tribute, but played on some souped-up facsimile of a broken Casio keyboard. Similarly, Self Repair Protocol has a strong whiff of Tim Smith’s much-missed genius about it, but here those chordal twists and melodic turns are performed by a cross between mid-80s Devo and Kraftwerk on helium. Despite the fidgeting, goggle-eyed quirkiness of it all, Henge have an insidious gift for…

Metal and psych collide on the Australian collective’s 24th album. Melbourne’s King Gizzard are one of the most prolific and stylistically diverse jam bands on the planet. Last year alone they straddled metal, rap and psych on the monolithic Omnium Gatherum and explored modal harmonies on Changes and Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, And Lava – just three of several releases on their 2022 slate. Infest The Rats’ Nest (2019) showed their affection and facility for prog metal, and they channel that vibe on their heavy, hugely enjoyable 24th album. PetroDragonic Apocalypse (subtitled Dawn Of Eternal Night: An Annihilation Of Planet Earth And The Beginning Of Merciless Damnation) once again came together from hours of improv in the sextet’s studio space. From opener Motor Spirit it harks back to early…

Fêted fusionists come knocking again with 12th studio album. Soft Machine laboured under the augmented Soft Machine Legacy title in the early part of this century, something they quite rightly put a stop to with 2018’s Hidden Details – the group’s first studio album since 1981’s Land Of Cockayne. Five years later, Other Doors does a fine job of balancing the past with the present, and also what’s to come. “Balances the past with the present, and also what’s to come.” Soft Machine are, after all, less a band and more an organism which is constantly evolving. The line-up never stayed settled for long, with the Softs averaging one major regeneration per album, and so it goes with this recent incarnation. Bassist Roy Babbington went into retirement with Hidden Details…

High-spirited hijinks from genre-fluid trio. The Parallax Method’s debut album has been a long time coming. These instrumental miscreants released two EPs, The Owl and The Squid, in 2016 and 2017. Six years later, Folie À Trois continues where they left off. The trio of guitarist Danny Beardsley, bassist Ben Edis and drummer Dave Wright inhabit the same musical dimension that The Aristocrats call home, as well an enthusiasm for unconventional time signatures and mashing together musical styles, although The Parallax Method have the edge in memorable song titles. The Pope’s Personal Saxophonist demonstrates all of those qualities, with its twisting guitar lines, wonkily funky groove, and detours into jazzy breaks. Daniel’s Bed In A Field morphs from crunchy riff into a minefield of weird syncopation. Batman Broods Over Gotham…

Exquisite fifth from Jeffes Jr and his multi-limbed troupe. As ever with all things Penguin Cafe, rhythm rules on Rain Before Seven. Yet there’s a renewed sense of freedom on these instrumental pieces, due to the album being conceived while central force Arthur Jeffes was stuck in Tuscany during lockdown. The emotional release of his eventual return to the UK is pressed deep into the cinematic swells of Welcome To London. The racing Find Your Feet is flooded with much the same thing, as Jeffes and string arranger/musical director Oli Langford inject various flavours into the mix (balafon, cuatro, ukulele and viola included). This playfulness extends to Galahad, a tribute to Jeffes’ late dog, delivered in 15/8 time signature, and In Re Budd, which moves with a Latin feel, buoyed…

English prog metal trio’s adventurous second album. The follow-up to 2019’s apocalyptic Cataclysm, Laws Of Entropy improves upon its predecessor in virtually every way. Opener Birth establishes the album’s prevailing style and concept (the trials and tribulations of an entire life) with evocative songwriting, hypnotically frenzied musicianship and a mixture of high-pitched singing and guttural screaming. It clearly borrows from the symphonic complexities of Dream Theater and Symphony X, but fact that it’s still imaginative and appealing is a testament to how compelling the trio can be even when they’re overtly borrowing from their influences. The delightfully wacky Entropy, with its irregular rhythms, zany horns, spoken narration, quirky singing, and off-kilter piano work, unashamedly owes a debt to Mr Bungle and Between The Buried And Me, while Discovery’s emphasis on…

Quebec’s finest revisit their deepest hits. Re-recording old material is hardly the most original idea in the world, but if one band can make it worthwhile, it’s Voivod. Celebrating 40 years of wonkiness, their current line-up have taken one song each from 10 of their studio albums and given them a robust update. Aside from confirming (again) that guitarist Chewy was an exquisite replacement for the late, great Piggy, Morgöth Tales highlights how absurdly ahead of their time Voivod have long been. By largely focusing on deep cuts, they have conjured a fascinating standalone album. Early thrashers like Condemned To The Gallows and Thrashing Rage sound remarkably current, particularly with a muscular modern production. Lost gems like Nuage Fractal (from underrated major label dalliance Angel Rat) and Rise (from 1997’s…

Their 1976 album gets a new Steven Wilson makeover. Feeling the burden to not only turn out another record but to make it more commercially appealing than the last is never the best place for a group to start from. Yet this was precisely how Gentle Giant felt for most of their 10-year existence. Lacking the luxury of being able to take stock in order to have material and ideas evolve naturally, in this instance, they created a concept album about a subject and situation they knew a lot about, namely themselves. “A lesson in risk-taking, as restless as it is inventive.” That gruelling rinse-repeat cycle of touring, promotion and recording probably accounts for the expressions of ambivalence made in the past by band members regarding Interview, Gentle Giant’s eighth…

Expanded reissues of Brit proggers’ first two albums. The backend of the 1960s was a very good time to be forming a band that wanted to do their own thing. The spirit of originality was exceedingly generous during this period and Bristol-based Stackridge set about creating their own musical identity. Popular on the live circuit, while never strictly aligned to what in retrospect would be seen as mainstream underground or progressive rock movements, they were nevertheless infused with that same eclectic propellant fuelling the period. In today’s terms, their nearest equivalent isn’t too far removed from the polymath pop that Andy Partridge and company perfected in later-era XTC, albeit heavier on the flute, brass, violin and acoustic guitar. Of the shorter, snappier tracks from their 1971 debut, Marigold Conjunction and…

Five hours of quality prog from a key year in the genre’s development. Astonishing to think that all the dazzlingly inventive music compiled for this four-CD clamshell box was made in the same year. Naturally, journalist and label-catalogue consultant Mark Powell’s informative sleeve notes are careful not to suggest 1974 was anything like prog’s year zero, however. Rather he holds that it saw a growing appetite for lengthy, conceptual songs made by questing folks who knew their way around a fretboard/keyboard. He also notes that the year in question saw some of prog’s most diverse influences coalesce. “The more obscure inclusions are often buried treasure.” Lapped up by a vast student fanbase of ardent gig-goers, prog music was by then often outselling rock and pop. Round And Round acts as…

Revealing tribute to a prog rock icon. This is not a conventional biography but rather a broadly chronological sequence of memories from over 70 people with first-hand knowledge of Wetton’s career. Although lacking in context-setting framing, the interactions with loved ones, friends and colleagues recounted here cover all the big names he’s associated with such as Family, King Crimson, UK and Asia, as well as lesser-known bands like Ginger Man and Tetrad. Often deeply personal and moving, all, are of course, appreciative and generous in their assessments of John’s qualities and talents. Though some are diplomatic when covering Wetton’s problems, others, such as his manager, Martin Darvill, unflinchingly detail his dark days and long battle with John’s alcoholism and the winding path to his eventual recovery. Through the many narratives,…