Table of contents for Issue 134 in Prog

Enduring Bournemouth proggers Galahad release their 11th studio album on October 24. Available through the band’s Avalon label, The Last Great Adventurer is their first release since 2018’s Seas Of Change. It was produced by Threshold’s Karl Groom, and is their first to feature long-term live bassist Mark Spencer as a full-time member. “This is definitely a Galahad album,” vocalist Stuart Nicholson tells Prog, “but it’s got a few little musical twists and turns to it. The title track finishes very quietly – the idea was to get the atmosphere of a jazz club, with a sax and piano.” That 11-minute epic was inspired by Nicholson’s father, who himself had an intrepid streak. The album’s cover features an impressive photograph of him scaling Grossglockner, Austria’s highest mountain, back in 1958. “Dad…

Berlin-based heavy psych rockers Elder have unveiled details of their sixth full-length album. Set for release on November 25 via Stickman Records, Innate Passage builds on the template of 2020’s acclaimed Omens, which was a notably sprawling and progressive work. Vocalist/guitarist Nick DiSalvo says that the new, five-track record “channels the surreal world we live in from a fantastical point of view, and how we as humans processed that. Everyone is on their own passage through time and space and whatever version of reality they chose for themselves.” DiSalvo says the title came to him while writing in the wake of the pandemic: “Passage and transition are necessary in the human condition, and this process is intrinsic to us. All the growth and introspection we underwent in the past few years…

On March 23, 2020, AA Williams uploaded a video to her YouTube channel. Shot in moody black and white at her London home, the musician sat at her piano and performed a skeletal cover of Radiohead’s Creep, silhouetted against the pale light coming through her curtains. It was the first in a series of covers the singer-songwriter uploaded to social media in the early stages of lockdown, putting her own glacial, neo-classical spin on songs requested by her fans, including The Cure’s Lovesong, Into My Arms by Nick Cave and Deftones’ Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away). Looking back, she says the project, which eventually became 2021’s album, Songs From Isolation, gave her “something to do that wasn’t staring at the news and being upset at everything that was happening.…

“I didn’t want to sing in character as if the album were a musical, but I wanted to get some of the fragility and tenderness of a 99-year-old man as he looks back on his life.” “The first album was a demo that sort of escaped, really.” Prog is reminiscing about the development of the Cosmograf project in the late 2000s with its sole creative force, the multi-talented Robin Armstrong. We’re discussing 2009’s End Of Ecclesia, though he also notes that there was an even earlier record that remains largely unheard called Freed From The Anguish, which, like his latest album Heroic Materials, has a World War Two theme. Starting with 2011’s much-praised When Age Has Done Its Duty, Armstrong slimmed down from a ‘cast of thousands’ to become something…

The links between music and archery are not often discussed. Intriguing, then, that Conrad Keely believes his band’s current album, XI: Bleed Here Now, benefited from him accessing his inner Robin Hood. “It was fun to set up an archery range outside the barn where we were recording,” he says down the line from his home in Austin, Texas. “It’s a very meditative thing that requires calmness and a careful breath response; great things to access when you’ve just been stressing over a take. I’d go outside, take aim, and loose the arrow. There are all sorts of metaphors that can go along with that, of course.” Today he’s chipper as he reveals…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead have just been filming a promo video for…

prog.reviews@futurenet.com Jean-Michel Jarre achieved global recognition with his 1976 album Oxygène, selling 12 million albums at a time when progressive music was supposedly in retreat. Forty-six years later, he brings us Oxymore, which suggests we’re in for more of the same – or at the very least, we’ll be treated to some motifs from across the decades. The title turns out to be a red herring. It’s a play on ‘oxymoron’ rather than a declaration of more Oxygène, an obvious semantic correlation that Jarre claims he didn’t notice initially. If Oxymore has an antecedent then it’s 1984’s Zoolook, a record that used the Fairlight CMI to build sonic worlds, festooned with manipulated voices spouting 25 different languages. But the listener needs to go back further still to 1968 to identify…

VENUE FERNHILL FARM, COMPTON MARTIN DATE 17/08/2022-20/08/2022 The UK’s premier post-rock, math rock and prog festival is finally back! It’s been three years since ArcTanGent has graced Fernhill Farm, but thankfully the now four-day get-together is making up for lost time with its biggest capacity yet: a stellar 10,000 people. Everyone’s all smiles as the festival opens for a warm-up on Wednesday, and the joy refuses to fade until long after the entertainment wraps up on Saturday. For prog fans, there are countless acts to catch across the weekend. Headliners Opeth bring their 70s-inspired grandeur to close the final day, and there’s also the psych-prog of Boss Keloid, Caspian’s fluttering post-rock, TesseracT’s off-kilter anthems, and Emma Ruth Rundle and AA Williams with their gorgeously experimental dark rock. The bill’s so…

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It was almost as unbelievable as a storyline on one of their early albums. In October 1982, Genesis reunited with their mercurial co-founder and original lead singer Peter Gabriel for a one-off concert in an act of generosity that underlined the group’s inherent grace. Possibly the most successful school band ever, Genesis, by this time, were well on their way to a level of stardom that could not have been imagined when Gabriel had left them after the troubled The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway album and tour in 1974/1975. In fact, many had simply written the group off, thinking that they were Gabriel’s backing band, without realising he was merely part of a collective. After stepping out of the machinery of Genesis, Peter Gabriel had carved himself a niche…

“It’s really nice to be in a band that doesn’t just sound like another band. It has its drawbacks, of course, but overall we’ve been pretty lucky.” With drummer Jerry Gaskill suffering a pair of near-fatal heart attacks and guitarist Ty Tabor developing an unspecified illness that required “vigilant monitoring”, causing the second axing of a visit to Europe and the UK, the past few years represented a tumultuous era in the history of King’s X. Bassist and frontman Dug Pinnick, too, was twice hospitalised. On top of everything else, the idiosyncratic Texas-based trio were forced to delay entering the studio after a big fall-out with a record label. Don’t forget to throw in a pandemic that devastated the world of music. However, despite their previous album, XV, being released…

“It has ended up being more like Subsurface, which had elements of political commentary, talking about propaganda and censorship.” A revolving door’s been in operation at Threshold HQ throughout the veteran prog metallers’ 34-year history, most notably in the lead vocals department. The last revolution in 2017 saw singer Damian Wilson leave for the third time and the return of other erstwhile vocalist Glynn Morgan for their 11th studio album, the epic Legends Of The Shires. Five years later, studio album number 12, Dividing Lines, was handed to the record company in January, heavy CD and vinyl pressing schedules delaying its release. The hold-up frustrated Karl Groom, Threshold’s founder member and lead guitarist, who was hoping for a summer release. But, as he tells Prog, it’s only because he’s so happy…

There is a song on Heilung’s new album Drif that comes from the oldest surviving complete work of annotated music. This music was found carved into clay tablets dating back 3,400 years ago, in the Canaanite city of Ugarit, in the northern part of what is now known as Syria. “It’s the oldest song in the world,” says Heilung vocalist Kai Uwe Faust excitedly of the music that would become Nikkal. “It didn’t only have lyrics and notes, it also had plates that described how to tune a string instrument. That’s just incredible – you can’t go deeper.” Given that Heilung, completed by Danish multi-musician and producer Christopher Juul and Norwegian vocalist Maria Franz, describe their music as ‘amplified history’, such a find was like discovering gold. Formed in 2015,…

BILL BRUFORD’S EARTHWORKS Random Acts Of Happiness SUMMERFOLD Welcome return for the dazzling, long out of print, live album. Bill Bruford has always maintained that his drumming style fell somewhere between rock and jazz. And with regards to his departure from prog supergroup UK in late 1978, he explained that he had a jazz mentality in that he hoped an audience would pay to see him playing something that they maybe hadn’t heard before rather than producing a polished, yet predictable, rock set. “Bruford was pushing himself further into polyrhythmic areas.” And this 2004 album, recorded at San Francisco club Yoshi’s, has a lot of jazz about it both in the music and that mentality. Bruford’s playing may lack some of the audacity and cliffhanging excitement of his work with…

VENUE WATERSIDE THEATRE, AYLESBURY DATE 02/09/2022 SUPPORT DIM GRAY When Big Big Train played a triumphant end-of-tour show at Hackney Empire in November 2019, all seemed set fair for their continuing rise, with dates scheduled for Europe and the US in 2020. But then came the pandemic and in a brief window between lockdowns they recorded 2021’s Top 40 album Common Ground, and this year’s excellent Welcome To The Planet. But the biggest calamity came in November 2021, with the tragic death of vocalist, co-lyricist and multi-instrumentalist David Longdon, an event that could have finished the group. Their decision to carry on was deemed by all concerned something that Longdon would have wanted. And so, with the recruitment of vocalist-guitarist-keys player Alberto Bravin, that resolution is vindicated by tonight’s emotionally…

VENUE THE GARAGE, LONDON DATE 29/02/2022 SUPPORT VOYAGER, FOUR STROKE BARON Prog is a universal language, and it’s hard to think of a recent line-up that demonstrates it more clearly than tonight’s. North London’s 600-capacity rock club The Garage is being graced by a trio of bands that hail from the US, Australia and Denmark respectively. That’s three different continents uniting under one roof in the name of forward-thinking music. Representing the States are opening act Four Stroke Baron. Despite jerking the curtain, they already have serious prog rock pedigree: 2021 album Classics was mixed by Devin Townsend and 2018’s Planet Silver Screen featured Shining leader Jørgen Munkeby on saxophone. The Townsend connection is especially obvious when the trio take the stage: opener Friday Knight heralds a near-operatic vocal turn…

Where’s home? I live where I was born – Nijmegen [The Netherlands], which is near the German border. Earliest prog memory? I saw a video clip of Rush around the Power Windows period, I was something like 16 years old, and they were great. I borrowed Caress Of Steel from the local library, then went through their catalogue from there. The first prog album you bought? Voivod’s Dimension Hatröss [1988]. I was always into metal, but the progressive side of metal, and Voivod are incredible. And the latest? The Snow Goose by Camel! I found a second-hand vinyl copy so I bought it. It’s a very important album, a good one to have on vinyl. Your first prog concert? Pink Floyd on their Momentary Lapse Of Reason Tour, here in…

Magenta’s ninth studio album will be unveiled on October 31 via Tigermoth Records. Over a year in the making, The White Witch – A Symphonic Trilogy is a three-part orchestral suite and, as such, it’s a departure for the Welsh band. “I do so much music for TV,” band linchpin Robert Reed tells Prog, “that when I had [orchestral] players working on a TV session I got them to play some parts for me too. So it’s a mixture of real players and top-of-the-range orchestral samples. It’s all orchestrated, with Tina [Booth] singing and Chris [Fry] playing classical guitar. It was a challenge – I’ve done shorter classical pieces before, but never a 50-minute symphonic work.” Reed drew inspiration from his movie composer heroes John Williams, Hans Zimmer and Ennio…

Heavy-hitting Brit proggers Haken will join forces with US prog metallers Between The Buried And Me next year, on an extensive co-headline tour. With support from New Yorkers Cryptodira, the bands’ Island In Limbo tour will see them play 36 dates across Europe and the UK, with the opening show on February 21 in Hamburg, Germany, and closing in Gothenburg, Sweden on April 5. The wide-reaching trip will see them play countries including Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain and Finland. The four UK gigs include a night at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire on March 26, which will be Haken’s biggest British show to date. “After three years and two tours cancelled due to the pandemic,” says singer Ross Jennings, “our return to the European stage is…

Cumbrian prog rockers Gandalf’s Fist will issue their eighth album, Widdershins, on November 21 via their own Nightkeeper Productions. It’s the band’s first new music since 2019’s The Clockwork Prologue, and Fist frontman Dean Marsh tells Prog that each track“explores various aspects of how the human condition can be shaped through superstition – everything from burning witches at the stake to gazing wondrously at the stars. There’s an interesting comparison between how superstition shaped the lives of ancient civilisations and how similar behaviours manifest themselves in the digital age, so the album very much dives deep into that. But with lots and lots of tasty riffs!” Lead track Sacrament is out now, and the special edition, white double vinyl of the album will be available via specialist label Plane Groovy…

“It was the difficult second album all over again.”Mark Kelly The tipping point for Marillion came with ‘Mexican Night’. It was late summer in 1990, and the band had spent several increasingly frustrating weeks holed up in Stanbridge Farm Studios, a residential facility outside the English seaside resort of Brighton, attempting to write their second album with new singer Steve ‘H’ Hogarth. The breezy mood surrounding the band as they entered Stanbridge had evaporated as the weeks dragged on. Marillion’s unhurried, jam-based approach to songwriting clashed with Hogarth’s more traditional modus operandi. Tensions were rising, and the atmosphere was getting fractious. “No one hit anyone else, but we did have a few words,” says bassist Pete Trewavas. “Steve was getting pissed off: ‘What’s the point of me being here?’ I…

During Prog’s chat with Arena about their latest album, The Theory Of Molecular Inheritance, new vocalist Damian Wilson veers the conversation towards the time he got pulled over by police for speeding at more than 100mph en route to sing at a Rick Wakeman gig. But there’s a deeper meaning behind the slightly alarming anecdote: his experience at the subsequent court appearance reflects what he believes is the “secret to life”, and also how feels about the future of Arena. “I thought: Okay, it’s going to cost me a lot of money, I’m going to lose my licence, it’s going to be a disaster, so I’m going to go and enjoy it,” Wilson says. “The judge, we had him laughing; we had fun, the whole court had fun. And when…

The song Vienna might have been held off the No.1 spot by a novelty song about a rebellious Italian boy, but its huge success gave Ultravox carte blanche to experiment for as long as it took with a bearlike German. Conny Plank, the éminence grise of krautrock, was rehired to oversee Ultravox’s fifth studio album, and this time it would take more than three months to come to fruition at his converted pig farm in Wolperath, near Cologne. The band went into the studio with nothing, and opened themselves up to the whims of inspiration. The result of that gamble was 1981’s Rage In Eden and, for Ultravox fans (of the new testament variety), it’s the pinnacle of the band’s creativity. Furthermore, it’s a cornerstone of progressive pop, and became…

While other keyboard players of the late 1960s and mid-1970s have lugged their instruments about the stage, hurled cutlery at the keys, or appeared as a caped magician encircled by a towering array of technology in a swirl of dry ice, Hugh Banton has sat sphinx-like behind his modest bank of keyboards since beginning his association with Van der Graaf Generator in 1968. He’s been a resolute and unflappable presence, providing much of the instrumental power driving the unorthodox, turbulent sounds crackling from the band. Having learned piano from the age of four, Banton grew into an accomplished organist, but left performance behind to become a trainee engineer at the BBC. However, the creative explosion in pop music in the 60s, particularly with the Arthur Brown group, pulled his professional…

VENUE AUDITORIUM THEATRE, CHICAGO, USA DATE 20/09/2022 Late last year, progressive behemoths Porcupine Tree announced their big comeback. After being apart for more than a decade, they’re finally back on the road, on their first tour in 12 long years, promoting the acclaimed Closure/Continuation. The energy in Chicago’s beautiful Auditorium Theatre is palpable as they take the stage. Porcupine Tree receive the sort of welcome that’s usually reserved for the gods. Opener Blackest Eyes, from 2002’s In Absentia, sets the tone for what’s to come: fans rise from their seats and don’t sit back down for the entirety of the two-set performance. Frontman and guitarist Steven Wilson says he hopes they’re ready for a long night of music and we all rowdily approve, much to his satisfaction. Although Wilson confesses…

VENUE THE DOME, LONDON DATE 07/09/2022 Justin Greaves – he of luxuriant flowing hair, voluminous beard and enough ink on his arms to have once satisfied Leo Tolstoy’s scribing needs – is in no doubt about tonight’s agenda: “We’re gonna play some new shit, some old shit and some bullshit!” One suspects he might have overstated here. In fairness to Crippled Black Phoenix’s leader and sole constant member, a potential two out of three ain’t bad given the chutzpah of presenting new material that won’t be getting a release until a few days after the event in the form of Banefyre, the band’s 12th studio album. What’s beyond doubt is Crippled Black Phoenix’s passionate following. There’s an intensity burning in the eyes of those that have made it down tonight…