Prog Issue 136

Say “yes” to great Norwegian music! Jansen Records is a leading independent record label based in Oslo, Norway. The label was started by Erik Jansen in 2009, and he still runs it today, alongside his friends and colleagues, Andreas, Eivind and Maria. With a common background of working in different record stores in Oslo and collecting all sorts of records, the team’s musical bond is quite strong, which the roster at Jansen demonstrates. The label’s mix of genres runs from psychedelic rock to indie pop via Americana and country. They even hang with the metal crowd once in a while. Although the selection might seem quite eclectic looking at it from the outside, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. And there’s more! Check out their specialised imprints, Pekula Records…

Stream the Prog 136 playlist at https://spoti.fi/3iF2Ooh SCAN HERE TO GET OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTERH Hello, and welcome to the new issue of Prog magazine. Always a strange issue, this one. It’s officially out in 2022, but already we’re looking to 2023. A celebration of the 12 months passed, if you will, and the building of excitement for what the next 12 months will bring. We have the results of the Readers’ Poll in this issue to reward those artists that have found favour with so many of you over the last year. There’s some expected and some very unexpected results, so thank you to the masses of you all who voted. You can see wh0 has won what on p28. Hawkwind grace this month’s cover and we tell the story…

AN AIR OF PERFECTION Thank you for the years of pleasure you have given me with your magazine. Is it possible to write a piece about Curved Air? This band started in the 70s and made some terrific albums but don’t see them often in your magazine with exception of album reviews. I think they deserve the limelight because they meant so much for progressive music. Further of interest is their first keyboard/guitar player Francis Monkman. He went on to form Sky and after that he made a couple of solo albums but seems to have vanished. Could you possibly look into the band’s history and their important members? Hans Sloot, Hoorn, Netherlands We’ve written a fair bit about both Curved Air and Sky over the years, Hans, and will…

I have been a prog music lover for 50 I years now, buying thousands of vinyl and CDs and attending gigs. But it still ceases to amaze me when reading Prog mag how many new releases come out by bands I have never heard of. Prog 135 is a plethora of very interesting things, of which I check out as many as I can and buy what I can. The music scene is currently so interesting and varied and not standing still. My latest discovery was Quantum Pig, who supported the fantastic Frost* in Bath. Great talent and I met them afterwards and bought the CD for tenner which they signed. On the subject of cost. I know of people who moan about the price of vinyl these days, but…

Rick Wakeman’s latest studio album, A Gallery Of The Imagination, will be officially released by Madfish on February 24, but when Prog caught up with him three shows into his recent one-man Grumpy Christmas Stocking tour, copies were already available to fans at his merch stand. “We just pressed up about 1,000 CDs for the tour,” the keyboard player says, “and they’re nearly all gone! I’ve been playing the two piano pieces from it [The Creek and Just A Memory] at the shows and they both work nicely, they’ve been getting a really good response.” Those two piano instrumentals are just part of the 12-track album’s broad, emotionally evocative palette. After his classic-progressive 2020 LP The Red Planet, Wakeman found himself with a pile of songs he’d written that bore…

Glimmer is the upcoming new album from the Dave Foster Band. Due on April 21, it will be the first release since the DFB signed to English Electric Recordings, the label founded by Big Big Train, another band on Foster’s current, crowded CV. The record will be previewed in January through the single release of its opening track, Dive In. “The chorus of that song is so instant,” Foster tells Prog. “The album is very song based, so we didn’t want the first release to be something like [album track] Stigma, which is quite weighty and proggy.” Guitarist Foster and Dutch vocalist Dinet Poortman are both still at the outfit’s creative core, and once again they’ve surrounded themselves with elite musicians, including bassist Neil Fairclough (Queen + Adam Lambert) and…