Table of contents for Issue 155 in Prog

Giant Electric Pea (GEP) formed in 1992 when prog rock mainstay IQ began preparing their first post-major album, Ever, and were looking for a sympathetic label to release it. It quickly became clear that all the major record labels had lost interest in the progressive rock genre, so in response a team of devoted musicians, businessmen and technicians took matters into their own hands and founded GEP, the first truly independent label for progressive rock. With the success of Ever in 1993 the team thought, “If we can do it for IQ, maybe we can help other bands to reach a bigger audience?” Since then, GEP have worked with a succession of artists, from well-known names such as Spock’s Beard, Solstice and Big Big Train to classic performers John Wetton…

An Emerson, Lake & Palmer fan group has petitioned the BBC to recognise the late Keith Emerson with his own prom celebrating the pioneering keyboardist’s creative and compositional achievements. The ELPAG (Emerson Lake & Palmer Appreciation Group) have been in discussion with the BBC Radio 3 and BBC Proms Controller Sam Jackson and Artistic Director Hannah Donat to try to persuade the BBC Proms to schedule an evening of the music of Keith Emerson and ELP next year in 2025. “The BBC Proms, with its tradition of celebrating rich and diverse musical heritages, is an ideal platform to honour the music of Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer. It’s inarguably the perfect venue to pay homage to these iconic British musicians and powerfully decant their genre-defying works onto a…

Space rockers Hawkwind release their new live album, Live At The Royal Albert Hall, on double CD with a bonus disc of rehearsal takes via Cherry Red on December 13. A triple vinyl edition of the show follows on January 31 Recorded live on September 29, 2023, the 20 tracks include longtime favourites Levitation, Spirit Of The Age, Master Of The Universe and Assault And Battery. Not ones to rest on their laurels, Hawkwind also includes dips into their more recent albums The Machine Stops (2016), Into The Woods (2017), All Aboard The Skylark (2019) and 2023’s The Future Never Waits. The line-up of Dave Brock (guitar/vocals), Richard Chadwick (drums), Magnus Martin (guitar/keyboards), Doug MacKinnon (bass), and Tim ‘Thighpaulsandra’ Lewis (synths/keyboards) was joined by special guest Arthur Brown who makes…

Getting the band back together for one more time has been the dream for many wearing rose-tinted spectacles, but for Norwegians Kronstad 23 – that’ll be Øyvind Vie Berg (keyboards), Aleksander Tøsdal Tveit (guitar), Eirik Rømcke (bass) and Hans Christian Dalgaard (drums) – a chance pub conversation between two of the band proved to be a catalyst not only for a reunion but also an album of new music. “We used to play randomly together in Bergen about 10 years ago and then everybody moved to different places in Norway,” recalls Berg. “I met one of the guys and we had a few beers and we thought it would be nice to hook up again and just play. We sent some ideas to each other just recording stuff on our…

Every new beginning follows an end. Some more fractious than others. For the briefest of moments, before the crash that broke the band apart, Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors might have been a Marillion album, or the idea of it at least. “We were a band playing and selling out fucking Wembley and still rehearsing in a garage in Aylesbury – and not a nice garage, either. It was ridiculous. I hated when it was like, ‘Well, let’s meet in Pete’s [Trewavas] garage.’ It’s 1988 and we’re trying to write in this bog-standard space. That made me realise that eventually I’d have to invest in a writing and recording space. I thought that before I’d even thought about going solo.” “They were having a go at my lyrics, I…

Not content with releasing a reworked festive album for 2024, there’s a brand-new Jethro Tull studio album coming in 2025, the third in the sequence that started with 2022’s The Zealot Gene and continued last year with RökFlöte. “Tull gigs this year have been deliberately sparse,” explains Anderson, “because I had said last year to the record company, who had an option on a third album, ‘OK, let’s do one.’ I kept telling myself I would try and do that in the latter part of last year, but we were too busy with concerts for me to have a period where I could really settle in and concentrate. “Normally I would do that in the beginning of January, but this year I didn’t actually start work until the beginning of…

It’s a balmy morning in south-east London at the tail end of summer, and J. Willgoose, Esq is off-duty judging by his attire. Instead of a spivvy bow tie and blazer, he leads Prog into Public Service Broadcasting’s studio in his civvies. To expect him to be dressed up in his best bib and tucker on a day like today would be madness, and yet, Willgoose in his t-shirt and shorts is almost as disarming a sight as John Travolta’s Vincent Vega in a UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs t-shirt towards the end of Pulp Fiction. Do fans of PSB only recognise Willgoose when he’s dressed up in a dickie bow and suit jacket? “People don’t recognise me,” he deadpans. “Not an issue.” The four constituent members of PSB (Willgoose…

“Circumstances dictated that my life went absolutely tits up. I thought it was just going to be a fun little party record, but it ended up being so emotionally intense!” Take Devin Townsend’s 22nd studio album at face value and you’ve got one of prog’s most hardworking, tirelessly anthemic songwriters going gung ho at party metal anthems. But to scrape the surface is to pay PowerNerd a disservice. Its outer linings may have more in common with fist-pumping stadium rock anthems than King Crimson, but dig a bit deeper and you’ll find Hevy Devy at his most exposed after his plans for the record unravelled at the seams. The most extroverted of settings ended up being the perfect environment for Townsend to come to terms with his grief. PowerNerd is…

Trying to grab a moment with Tony Levin is an art in itself. He is, after all, one of the busiest musicians on the planet. Since September, the 78-year-old bass supremo – veteran of countless tours and recordings with Peter Gabriel and King Crimson; contributor to albums by Pink Floyd, John Lennon, David Bowie, Todd Rundgren, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Richard Thompson and scores more; paid-up member of Liquid Tension Experiment and Stick Men, to name but two – has been out on the road. “A busy musician is good,” he tells Prog over a video-call during a rare day off. “It’s when you don’t have any tours or shows then it’s a disaster. So this is fine.” The genial Levin is speaking from a hotel room in LA, partway…

Dark prog denizens revisit the past and pay tribute. One of the few truly radical rock bands of the 21st century, Crippled Black Phoenix have amassed a huge catalogue of music over the last 20 years. Understandably, given the harmonious efficacy of their current line-up, they have elected to re-record and rework a number of old songs, reclaiming them for the present day. What could have been a straightforward odds’n’sods collection is really a new studio album, albeit one with flagrant echoes from the past. CBP mainstays Justin Greaves and Belinda Kordic have navigated their way through many years of turbulence, particularly regarding personnel, and so The Wolf Changes Its Fur But Not Its Nature endeavours to establish fresh versions of these low-key classics, thus gently banishing any half-remembered bad…

Extensive repackaging of Greek trio’s apocalyptic double album. The concept album to end all concept albums has come again. Fifty-two years after its initial release, 666 by Aphrodite’s Child – a sprawlingly ambitious and bombastic sonic interpretation of the Book of Revelation – gets the kind of reissue treatment reserved only for the most revered of cult classics. As well as a double album and four-CD set, there’s also an exhaustive box set featuring the remastered original album, a 1974 Greek release mix, a 5.1 mix and an Atmos Up-Mix overseen by Vangelis before his death. And if that weren’t enough, there’s a Blu-ray interview with Vangelis from 1972 taken from the French TV show Discorama to get stuck into as well. “The Atmos mix makes Armageddon sound surprisingly inviting.”…

A fresh look at the prog mainstays’ divisive 1997 album. This Strange Engine was an end and a beginning for Marillion. Dumped by longtime label EMI after “disappointing” sales of previous album Afraid Of Sunlight (just the 400,000 copies), they were forced to downscale drastically, signing to independent Raw Power and watching as the needle hovered close to the financial danger zone. But it was also the album that led to a pioneering, fanfunded US tour, which itself mutated into the crowdfunding model that allowed Marillion to thrive and prosper. “It stands as an elegant outlier in their back catalogue.” On its original release in 1997, Marillion’s ninth album was dismissed in some quarters of their fanbase as too poppy, too lightweight, too lacking in the prog edge that had…

Scottish prog-metal starlets reissue their debut album. It’s been five years since Ihlo released their fabulous if slightly divisive debut album Union. After half a decade of waiting with just a couple of live session teasers for comfort, fans have been increasingly desperate for new music. The band have been working on album number two but for now we’ll have to settle for revisiting the debut, complete with a remastered makeover and a couple of live tracks. When Union first emerged in 2019, listeners were largely split into two camps. There were those who were immediately blown away by the consummate musical skill and songwriting of the album, while others dismissed Ihlo as mere copyists. The fact that TesseracT guitarist and producer Acle Kahney performs remastering duties here won’t be…

A comprehensive career overview of the ambient house ambassadors. Right from their inception, The Orb – led by Alex Paterson and joined by a coterie of collaborators – embraced the atmospherics of Pink Floyd as much as they did the German electronic pioneers of the 70s, Brian Eno’s ambient sweeps, the low-end throbs that emanated from the Black Ark Studios in Kingston, Jamaica and the wild west of 80s sampling culture. An incongruous recipe, perhaps, but the psychedelic thread that runs through these ingredients is precisely what bound them together. It’s been 35 years since the release of their audacious debut single, A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of the Ultraworld, and The Orb celebrate with this massive career-spanning collection of old, new, borrowed and…

Glorious visual celebration of Solstice in the present and an exploration of their past. Original neo-prog survivors Solstice took to the stage at Fairport Convention’s Cropredy Festival in 2023 almost exactly 25 years after they last appeared there. They’ve been experiencing something of a rebirth in recent years, but back in 1998, plans to record the set for a live album had to be abandoned when technical problems made the tapes unusable, so there seemed to be a certain closing of the circle in recording last year’s gig both for audio and video release. Already out on vinyl, Return To Cropredy now gets a fulsome CD and Blu-ray release, packaged with a documentary, New Light, looking at the band’s 40-plus-year history. “A warm-hearted tale of the power of music and…

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A 50th-anniversary super-deluxe edition of Genesis’s 1974 classic, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, is due for release via Rhino in March, although the exact date had still to be confirmed at the time of going to press. The expanded edition of the band’s sixth studio album – and the last to feature the classic line-up of Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins – will be available in multiple formats that include CD, vinyl and Blu-ray with Dolby Atmos and hi-resolution remixes. The bumper versions also feature a live recording and never-before-released material as well as a new book and reproductions of their 1975 tour paraphernalia. “This album was something new for audiences. It’s a Genesis classic.” The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway marked a…

Kaprekar’s Constant co-vocalist Dorie Jackson is set to return with her second solo album, Stupid Says Run, on January 17 via Talking Elephant Records. It arrives 17 years after the release of her solo debut, The Courting Ground. “That might sound as if it was terribly deliberate, but I don’t think it was,” says Jackson, chuckling at the gap between her releases. For her, The Courting Ground proved cathartic and the pursuit of other musical interests meant that her attention was focused anywhere but a solo release. “I think I got rid of my personal angst on the first record and I wasn’t really writing anymore,” she reflects. “I worked out that what I really enjoyed was arranging and organising other people’s songs. I spent a long time with Kaprekar’s…

“I think most of my records are concept albums,” says Maud The Moth’s Amaya López-Carromero as she considers her upcoming new album, The Distaff. It’s released on February 21 on vinyl via La Rubia Prodcciones, Fenny Compton on cassette and The Lavarium for CD and digital. “The main thing about Maud The Moth is that it’s an autobiographical project and it’s something that I’ve used to deal with life and exploring feelings and emotions,” she explains. “It’s kind of like an imaginary friend situation where you create a world in which to explore the stuff that I’ve been going through or which has been most active emotionally for me at that time in life.” For her latest release, López-Carromero challenges the patriarchal orthodoxies and ideals expected of women at the…

LEANING BACK ON a swivel chair in his studio stroking his hairless Devon rex cat, Peter Miles could easily pass for an evil genius hell-bent on world domination. The bearded West Country doyen of the studio is more interested in the underworld, however. i Häxa – his multimedia project with London-based singer Rebecca Need-Menear – is ambitious enough to conquer the infernal regions. Together they explore pagan rituals and the wars of antiquity with the music of the future, released via four EPs on Pelagic and culminating in a deluxe double album and a full-length film of i Häxa, directed by Daniel Broadley. It’s an incredible undertaking, so how did it come together? “I first met Rebecca in 2016 in my capacity as a producer,” explains Miles. “I’d swapped being…

They’re one of the most unique bands of the 20th century, and now Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band’s back catalogue is being celebrated in a very special collection. Still Barking is released on December 14 and we’ve reserved a copy of the box set to give away to one lucky reader. Curated over a seven-year period and with the band’s full co-operation, this comprehensive anthology comprises 17 audio CDs, crammed with remastered stereo versions of all the band’s studio albums, BBC sessions, live recordings and band rehearsals; three DVDs; a 148-page hardback coffee table book packed with photos, memories and interviews; art prints, posters and signed band photos. To be in with a chance of winning this treasure trove of goodies, just visit www.bit.ly/PROG_155 and answer the following question: In 1968,…

“I can do whatever the fuck I like, it’s my album,” declares Rosalie Cunningham, explaining her current outlook and the story behind the title track of her new record, To Shoot Another Day. On its vivid cover, she’s gazing down the viewfinder of a vintage camera, and she notes how the camera/film motif is her way of “breaking the fourth wall”, bringing the surreal into the real. She’s the filmmaker, director and, really, anybody she wants to be. “On that song I’m talking about the process of making an album, but through the lens of making a film, where I can be anything in my own play. That’s the way I wanted to open my album. The verses, which are like script notes, describe the scene, and essentially say, ‘This…

“We started by playing an old song, Without Saying Anything, from Mammoth, and it was basically a case of all the hairs standing up on your arm, that kind of feeling. I felt straight away that we were back and it felt like no time had passed.” The seeds for the great Beardfish reunion were sown in 2020. One of Sweden’s best-loved prog bands, they stumbled to an unsatisfying halt in 2016, less than a year after the release of their acclaimed eighth album, +4626-Comfortzone. Internal arguments had put paid to the chemistry that had propelled the quartet for 15 years, and the only conceivable option was to call it a day. But music has a habit of hijacking the emotions. Four years after going their separate ways, temperatures had…

“For me, art is expression,” says Mat Ricou, vocalist and guitarist of the Anglo-French power trio LizZard. “Personally, when I play music, I like to be touched, I like to have a real moment of, ‘Wow, that was a performance!’ And when the album or track is finished, I need a couple of minutes to be like, ‘Wow, that was good.’ It’s like a good meal or a good wine, it’s all about taste, I guess.” Based on their five albums, culminating in this year’s Mesh, LizZard’s tastes run towards exploring deep, dark emotions, grooves that are intricate yet powerful, and creating a remarkably expansive sound for a three-piece. For Ricou, bassist Will Knox and drummer Katy Elwell, the trio format enables LizZard to balance impressive heaviness with the dexterity…

“Black Midi was always meant to have an element of humour, but a lot of people didn’t get it. So I just thought, ‘Let’s make it as clear as possible.’” Talking with Geordie Greep is time well spent. Not only does his brain operate at a head-spinning pace as he ponders the creation of his solo debut, The New Sound; the role of humour in his music; the use of characters to explore the worst aspects of masculinity and the freedoms he’s now afforded in the wake of Black Midi’s demise, he also makes a damn fine cup of tea. With the last days of what has passed for a summer drawing to a close, Prog has been invited to Greep’s north London home. Making ourselves comfortable in his drawing…

prog.reviews@futurenet.com Rosalie Cunningham is having fun. It’s in every note, word and musical gesture on this, her third solo LP, the cinematically-styled To Shoot Another Day. This hasn’t always been the case She’s admitted that her 2019 self-titled debut and 2022’s Two-Piece Puzzle are trauma-inducing enough for her to give them the swerve until her courage is plucked up. Peculiar, as these are high-calibre works, but after leaving Purson in 2017 – the psych noir group that Cunningham founded in 2011 – she was finding her feet, having been mistakenly viewed as just the figurehead for the band and not its driving force. Six years on, she has a wealth of experience from composition to touring to music biz clout, and support and inspiration from life and work partner Rosco…

Melody-laden team-up for Transatlantic leader. In the 22 years since he underwent a religious conversion, Neal Morse – the keyboardist, singer and songwriter known for his work with among others Spock’s Beard, Transatlantic, Flying Colors and The Neal Morse Band – often relays his faith via the medium of music, a most extreme example being 2019’s spectacularly overblown, special guest-strewn rock opera Jesus Christ The Exorcist. “Rooted in the secular, with occasional Bible references.” By comparison, No Hill For A Climber (a line from Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Demon Copperhead) is more rooted in the world of the secular, with occasional references to the Bible: Judas, the Prodigal Son, the road to Damascus and, of course, Lord and Jesus pepper a lyrical approach that infers its message instead of…

Lush live album from prog-pop veterans, with four splendid new studio tracks. When Tears For Fears returned after a long absence with 2022’s triumphant The Tipping Point, that album reiterated their ability to go big without going over the top. It revelled in massive production, epic songs and copious emoting, yet pulled off the duo’s time-honoured trick of making music with colossal ambition easily digestible. Pop music, but in its highest form. “When treading the boards they know how to let rip.” Now re-energised, despite an increase in grey hair, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith have released a live album with four brand-new tracks. Such mix-and-match projects can feel a bit ungainly, as if the new songs are bolted on just to tempt hesitant voters. Such is the sumptuousness, however,…

Sublime five-disc set honours Ferry’s solo career. Just over a half-century ago, when Bryan Ferry found that even fronting the era’s most exhilarating art-rock band wasn’t enough to calm his restlessness, he decided to make more music under his solo name. From These Foolish Things onwards, that extremely successful side-hustle grew into a beguiling body of work, which is celebrated on this five-disc, 81-track box set. Curated by the welldressed man himself, it ranges from his default-mode cover versions to his long phase of obsessing over textures, layers and atmospheres to more recent detours into jazz and electronica. Throughout, Ferry’s passionately pursued sense of aesthetics ensures that immersion in his sound transports the listener to a wondrous place. The discs are themed, beginning with an essential ‘Best Of’, which gathers…

Jangling Jacks and mistletoe at the ready – Tull’s festive bonanza gets a glow-up. Originally released in 2003, and notable for being both Martin Barre’s studio swansong and the last album under the Tull name for 17 years, The Jethro Tull Christmas Album is viewed as a curio. A mix of re-recorded versions of old, festive-themed Tull songs, a handful of snow-dusted new tracks and fluteheavy versions of traditional classical pieces, it raised the question: had Ian Anderson overdone it on the eggnog? Quite possibly, but in truth it wasn’t that much of an outlier in their canon. Like the 70s ‘folk trilogy’ and even Aqualung, it drew on Anderson’s fascination with tradition, religion and myth. This box set – four CDs, plus Blu-ray – won’t win over the doubters,…

New two-CD remix for late-period Hammill classic When he sang ‘How can we be found if we’re lost for words?’ on the final track of Incoherence, Peter Hammill had no idea he would suffer a heart attack days after completing what was his 30th solo album. Originally released in 2004 while he was convalescing, it found Hammill pushing more than usual at songwriting’s boundaries. No stranger to long-form compositions dating back to 1970s VdGG and later solo epics such as Flight from 1980’s A Black Box, and the often overlooked A Headlong Stretch from 1994’s Roaring Forties, conceived as a continuous suite, Incoherence is a little over 42 minutes. A meditation upon the nature and use of language and its potential shortcomings, the 14 sections that make up the original…

Ex-Be Bop Deluxe leader’s near-visionary post-band solo release, much expanded. Though the skull-guitar cover art for Be Bop Deluxe’s 1974 debut Axe Victim once led US tour promoters to pair the band with Ted Nugent, Bill Nelson was never that guy. Yes, he was a guitar hero, but his art school background and love of jazz and surrealist polymath Jean Cocteau helped inspire a wider vision. After the sonically transitional LP that was Be Bop’s 1978 swan song Drastic Plastic, Nelson formed Red Noise, whose debut album Sound-On-Sound was hip to Kraftwerk, Talking Heads and Belgian synthpoppers Telex. Nelson was shapeshifting; a moving target. Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam was originally intended to be Red Noise’s second album, but major upheavals at Nelson’s then-label EMI led to him…

B-sides and rarities from rock’s trippiest era. Originally released on CD in 1998, this compilation from the vaults of Decca and their subsidiary Deram returns as a double album pressed on eyecatching pink vinyl. It spans the heyday of psychedelic rock from 1967 to 1969 and the stated intention behind the choices is to showcase deep cuts. Following that mindset, several of the featured bands only released one single over their brief lifetimes, and many of the songs are B-sides for added obscurity value. Even the contributions from the best-known artists avoid the hits. Al Stewart’s Turn Into Earth was the flipside to his debut single, while The Moody Blues are represented by Love And Beauty, a nonalbum track that failed to chart and was promptly eclipsed by their next…

VENUE O2 ARENA, LONDON DATE 20/10/24 Wow. Just wow! It’s been a typically miserable October Sunday, but the heat is certainly rising inside the cavernous O2 Arena as Dream Theater kick off their 40th Anniversary tour in London. And it’s a spectacle to behold. Venue-wise, it’s a considerable step up for a band who were doing one night at Hammersmith Apollo just two years ago, and, although not sold out, the O2 is more than respectfully busy. But then it’s not just the opening night of the band’s 40th anniversary, but their first gig with drummer Mike Portnoy for 14 years (5,177 days, if anyone’s really counting!). And although in reality you probably couldn’t claim just one man is entirely responsible for the increase in audience size, the promise of…

Where’s home? I live in Schiedam, a town near Rotterdam, Holland. Home feels like any time spent with my daughter or with my students. Being out there in the world performing, that’s my home. What’s your earliest memory of prog? When I was around 15, a friend’s dad had a record collection full of Canterbury bands – Soft Machine, Matching Mole, Wyatt, Nucleus, Gong. We loved it. What was the first prog album you bought? Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage, in the spring of 1987 when I was 12. I bought it at this second-hand record store called Disk, near my parents’ house in Schiedam. This was another world and it has captivated me ever since. It’s a treasure! And the most recent? Birth Of The Marvellous by UK duo Sermon.…

Gloucestershire’s beloved neo-proggers Pendragon will hold the 2025 edition of their UK VIP weekender in Exeter between September 6–7. It’s a change of location once again as the band look to bring their intimate affair to a new part of the country. First launched in 2023 in Morecombe before moving to Peterbrough last year, Pendragon’s annual event will next year take place at the recently refurbished Northcott Theatre, which is located on Exeter University’s campus. The venue is conveniently placed for easy access to the M5, Exeter St David’s train station and Exeter airport. Once inside, fans won’t go hungry either as the theatre will provide hot and cold food and refreshments at the bar, while Pendragon serve up an extensive triptych of sets. Saturday’s festivities feature a full-band set…

Modern vintage proggers Mostly Autumn will release their 15th studio album, Seawater via Mostly Autumn Records early next year alongside a special edition double album, available only as a pre-order exclusive. The record succeeds 2021’s acclaimed Graveyard Star, and it’s one that sees guitarist and chief songwriter Bryan Josh hyping up its “massive” sound. “Seawater is an instinct-driven album,” he tells Prog. “It has a charismatic energy that will pierce the heart yet illuminate it, but in the end totally overwhelm it.” The bonus edition – which is limited to 2,000 copies – features another album’s worth of the illustrious hard rock-tinged progressive songwriting they’ve made their own since 1995. Written and recorded at the same time as Seawater, the extra material demonstrates the band’s current creative patch. Currently, they…

Scottish post-rock quartet Mogwai have announced that they’ll release their brand-new studio album, The Bad Fire, through Rock Action on January 24. It’s the band’s first new record since their 2021 UK chart topper Love Conquers All and has been partly inspired by a number of personal issues that bandmembers had to deal with during the recording process. “After the high of putting out As The Love Continues the following years were personally hard for us,” the band reveal. “We’ve dealt with a lot of loss and in Barry [Burns]’s case a serious family illness with one his daughters. Getting back together to write and record this record felt like a refuge and with John Congleton we feel that we’ve made something special. We often hear from people that our…

“ELP’s Pictures At An Exhibition was an important album in my teenage years. My brothers and I used to club our pocket money to buy albums and this record came in as a result of [drummer sibling] Des’s interest in it. It’s a fantastic piece of music; it was that combination of being a rock band making a noise while doing an interpretation of classical music. That virtuosity was a fantastic thing for me to see and to aspire to at the time. I started out studying classical guitar and I went to the London College Of Music to do a classical music degree. The importance of the album came back later. Balaam were doing a gig at the Hammersmith Clarendon Ballroom around 1984, and because we’d been using some brass…

THE AGE OF ADZ (Asthmatic Kitty, 2010) Sufjan Stevens’ sixth studio LP proper was always going to be tricky. Having earlier vowed to write a series of 50 albums themed around each of the USA’s 50 states, Stevens now confessed that the conceit had been a “promotional gimmick.” True, he’d gotten as far as 2003’s Michigan and his brilliant 2005 chamber pop breakthrough Illinois, but now he was ditching the project. There would be no baroque Arkansas, no folky, banjo and brass-imbued Utah. Instead, we got The Age Of Adz – something else entirely. Artistically, Stevens was shape-shifting. He was also having a “wobble” and needed to re-set. His 2006 outtakes LP, The Avalanche, and that same year’s festive covers set, Songs For Christmas, were decent but stopgap releases, while…

“I’VE WAITED A lifetime to have this kind of band,” says vocalist and keyboard player Carola Baer, as she looks back on Ruby Dawn’s beginnings in 2022. “I’ve played with loads of people, but this band’s become significantly important to me.” The band crowns a long, sometimes challenging musical journey for Baer, a lifelong environmentalist and humanitarian, who imbues her songs with lyrics reflecting her personal beliefs and fears. Already, the past two years have yielded two Ruby Dawn albums. The first, 2023’s Beyond Tomorrow, is now joined by Blood On Water – of which Baer is immensely proud, especially the contributions made by her bandmates: guitarist Dave Salsbury, with whom she had previously worked, bassist/producer Ian Turner and drummer Adam Perry. “But we didn’t plan it this way!” she…

Back in April, Oceans Of Slumber released a new single called Where Gods Fear To Speak, and you could almost hear the prog-loving contingent of their fanbase cheering. The last time anyone had heard from the Texan progressive metal beloveds, they were releasing 2022’s Starlight And Ash: a markedly more episodic album than what was usual from their sweeping wheelhouse. Then, in the space of one song, the dense textures and avant-garde structuring were back. It wasn’t a one-off, either. Where Gods… preempted the announcement of the album of the same name, which arrived in September. Its other nine songs continued in the same mode, signalling that these experimentalists had found their former selves again. “We’re a band that’s incredibly in tune with our emotions and our experiences,” explains lead…

“It was a bit difficult to write this album,” VOLA’s singer and guitarist, Asger Mygind, tells Prog. “Witness fulfilled many dreams I had about making an album. I was extremely happy about the mix and, personally, I was in doubt about where to go next after that.” Witness came out in May 2021; it was a crushing sonic assault that perfectly demonstrated the quartet’s ability to experiment in a sophisticated yet daring way, bringing progressive tech metal, alt rock and electronica to the table before slamming anthemic choruses alongside its core elements. Although the band were eventually able to tour it almost relentlessly, their initial shows in support of it were all seated. “Many of the gigs we would have wanted to do that year were pushed to 2022,” Mygind…

Books, movies and popular song have always insisted it’s true: if you want something enough, it will happen for you. Then again, to suggest it’s all down to dedication and determination isn’t always helpful – doesn’t it inadvertently, insultingly suggest that musicians who are still struggling just aren’t trying hard enough? But any creative needing inspiration to keep plugging away could take heart from Cheshire-based songwriter John Holden, who launched his career in earnest well into middle age, managed to recruit some major prog names to play alongside him, and has now released his fifth album in six years. All without being able to hold a tune himself on the vocal front: “My voice would strip paint,” he insists. “Honestly awful.” His new LP Proximity & Chance might also be…

Epic yet non-essential reimagining from UK prog auteur Robert Reed. Before Magenta, Robert Reed led his first proper band, Cyan. Formed in the early 1980s, they released three albums between 1993 and 1999. Reed has revisited that back catalogue in recent years, re-recording and even rewriting their first two albums, 1993’s For King And Country (in 2021) and Pictures From The Other Side (in 2023), with the latter especially turning out to be an superb reimagining. “More of a bonus disc for fans than a standalone album.” There were two tracks missing from the updated Pictures… album, though. The original version opened with the 12-minute The Guardians, which Reed had subsequently reconstructed and expanded to a hefty 24 minutes for the new version, renaming it The Guardians Of Your Destiny.…

Previously unreleased album from 2009 by the late synth pioneer. Klaus Schulze died in 2022, and 101 Milky Way was discovered by his record label when they were going through his tape vaults. It had been commissioned as soundtrack music for Hacker, a film about computer hackers. And although only a fraction of it appears in the film as background music, Schulze had composed a suite of music for it, coming in at a shade under 80 minutes. “For those who enjoy the journey as much as the destination.” From the late 60s, influenced by Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix, Schulze was the drummer in Psy Free and played on the self-titled 1971 debut of Ash Ra Tempel, whom he’d described as “space rock”. He also played drums on Tangerine…

Unearthed ‘lost’ songs augment the 1984 Robin Of Sherwood soundtrack. One of those bands whose sound evokes the meteorology and physical geography of their homeland – what was Theme From Harry’s Game if not the aural equivalent of County Donegal’s spectral mountain mists? – Clannad are also one of prog’s great soundtrack acts. The Irish group had the versatility, vision and folkloric reach to score a more mystical vision of the Robin Hood legend in mid-80s TV show Robin Of Sherwood. It won a BAFTA for Best Original Television Music and, released in its own right as Legend, stayed in the UK charts for almost a year. Appearing on prime-time TV, the music needed to have a certain immediacy, hence Robin (The Hooded Man) conjures a hooky theme tune from…

A veritable Battersea Dogs’ Home of Bonzos. Being daft is something the British do very well. And there were few dafter than the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. They were certainly not stupid and, unlike many they inspired, weren’t always simply clever for cleverness’s sake. Their joyous daftness courses through the 17 audio CDs and three DVDs of this exemplary collection. For the superfan, Still Barking is the cherry on the cake, the best audio sources and collection of rarities of the band there will be; aside from the original albums, there’s BBC sessions, a demo at the Manor and some rough-and-ready live material. For the Bonzo-curious, it’s certainly a splash into the deepest water, but very much worth it. “A splash into the deepest water, but very much worth it.”…

Three-CD/two-Blu-ray box of space rock classics, including 5.1 mixes. Released at the end of 1972, in the wake of Silver Machine becoming one of the biggest and most unlikely hits of the year, Doremi Fasol Latido was the epitome of Hawkwind as purveyors of anarchic, drug-fuelled space rock. Its mix is notoriously fuggy and downright strange in places, the sound of a steampunk starship belching plutonium exhaust fumes into the cosmos. CD one of this latest in a series of deluxe Hawkwind box sets is a perfectly decent remaster of the original album, but it’s the other two CDs that will be of most interest to fans. After his amazing work on the recent Space Ritual and In Search Of Space reissues, Stephen Tayler returns to perform a new stereo…

Inside the modern prog standard bearers’ definitive album – and how it got there. In early 2006, Steven Wilson was 38, living in Tel Aviv and experiencing “a second adolescence”. Surrounded by noise, heat and confident people – including Blackfield bandmate Aviv Geffen – it was the closest thing the introverted muso had to a Bacchanalian Rolling Stones phase. During this time he wrote a lot of songs and read Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis’s visceral tale of disillusioned adolescence. “It’s the ultimate expression of their style.” As Wilson tells journalist Stephen Humphries in the engaging book portion of this reissue, it was a creatively fertile period that set the tone for Porcupine Tree’s ninth album. Running with Lunar Park’s themes of pill-popping, screen-gazing teenagers and modern day isolation –…

Expansive 10-disc set charting decades of Wetton’s live work. As in-depth as this 10-disc set – full band performances, acoustic sets, back-of-hall recordings – is, there’s still the promise of two more box sets to come celebrating the life and times of John Wetton, who passed away nearly eight years ago. And what a life it was. While his musical CV reads like the contents page of this magazine – stints in UK, King Crimson, Asia, Roxy Music, Wishbone Ash – the tracklisting for this collection, however, is a little more granular. “Wetton’s unique magic still echoes down the years.” It features seven of Wetton’s original live albums, from the mid-90s to the early 00s, including 1996’s Akustika: Live In America, as well as Live In Osaka and Live In…

VENUE THE DRILL HALL, CHEPSTOW, WALES DATE 03/10/2024-06/10/2024 It’s a busy Summer’s End this year and Chepstow’s Drill Hall is packed all weekend during the late-summer temperature rise, which always seems to happen at this time of year. The venue was originally built as a bobbin factory in the 19th century and was meant to endure the harsh weather of the time when central heating and, alas, air-conditioning, were but mere pipe dreams. This makes for an occasionally challenging environment during busy shows such as this, especially for those who haven’t bagged a seat. So much so, that one poor soul near passes out as Sunday draws to a close and is rushed to hospital, but thankfully discharged with the all-clear later that evening. A bit bobbins for the incapacitated,…

VENUE CADOGAN HALL, LONDON DATE 05/10/2024 Two nights ago, Big Big Train played a 300-capacity rock club in Belgium. It’s strange to imagine as we watch tonight’s crowd file into Cadogan Hall – upscale home of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – with beers and red wine (and, in some cases, T-shirts from the shows Big Big Train played here last year). In some ways, though, that club vibe carries over tonight. Now minus guitarist Dave Foster, and with a brass section of one – on-point trumpeter Paul Mitchell – Big Big Train’s sound is as tight and lush as ever, but it’s also very much a rock show. With Alberto Bravin hitting a commanding, charismatic stride as a frontman, all black skinny jeans and impish jumps, there’s an edge to…