Table of contents for Issue 160 in Prog

Discovering Tigermoth Records Tigermoth began in 2010 as a vehicle to release the musical and visual output of producer and keyboard player Robert Reed. Initially Reed’s main priority was the band Magenta, but Cyan (now fronted by Camel and Tiger Moth Tales’ Peter Jones), Kiama and the successful Kompendium album, Beneath The Waves, soon followed. Alongside these projects are Reed’s successful Mike Oldfield-inspired Sanctuary and The Ringmaster albums. There have also been releases by Ommadawn collaborator Les Penning and Tubular Bells producer Tom Newman. Reed even side-stepped into electronica with his Cursus 123 430 album. The label has since gained a reputation for the high standard of music and presentation of their releases. So far, this year has seen a new Sanctuary album and new releases from Reed’s electronic crossover project,…

American post-rock proggers Hiroe (pronounced‘Hero-way’) have announced the release of their debut album, Wield, which is out via Pelagic on June 20, and arrives three years after their calling card EP, Wrought. Hailing from Philadelphia, PA and formed and led by guitarist Eric Kusanagi, the five-piece include guitarist Brian Kong, bassist Jon Seiler, and Dan Sagherian on drums. Former bassist Jill Paslier has switched up to third guitar to add greater harmonic depth. The new album finds Hiroe expanding their sound and reuniting with producer Mario Quintero. “We wanted to show a larger range of musical themes on this record,” says Kusanagi. “You’ll hear us dive into some synth work, some piano work, and some really interesting effects that Mario helped us dial up.” See www.hiroe.bandcamp.com for more information.…

Having released three albums sung in Welsh and Cornish, singer-songwriter Gwenno’s new album, Utopia, which is released on July 11 via Heavenly Recordings, will be her first to be recorded principally in English. “I feel as if I’ve written a debut record, because it’s a different language and it’s a different part of my life,” she says. Referring to the inspiration behind the album, Gwenno reflects back to when she played the lead in Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance in Las Vegas. “It’s about that point where I go out into the world on my own, which people generally write about first, and then get on with their lives. But it’s taken me so long to digest it – I needed 20 years just to make sense of things,…

DUSK Occupying a musical hinterland that’s reflected by his name, the multi-talented Saudi Arabian is on the up. As a musician, producer, promoter and occasional manager, Dusk is an artist of many talents. But which role feels closest to home? “I’m more of a songwriter and producer, as managing takes up too much energy!” says the man born Meshari Sangora in Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 1994. “Managing is a pain in the neck, but it’s worth it when you step onstage and see the audience in front of you. But sitting in the studio and making music, that’s the hat that fits me best.” Now living in Riyadh and with a couple of EPs (To Where I Belong and Ascension) and an album under his belt (2023’s Spectrums), his self-described “one-man…

Best known as an acclaimed film director and writer, Sally Potter has made nine feature-length movies, including Orlando and The Party, which have starred numerous Hollywood A-listers and received critical acclaim and prizes at various film festivals around the world. She received an OBE for services to film in 2012, but has also pursued a lifelong interest in music. In the late 70s and early 80s she was a member of FIG (Feminist Improvising Group), whose personnel included Centipede vocalist Maggie Nicols and Henry Cow bassoonist, Lindsay Cooper. Having previously collaborated with musicians on some of her film scores, she composed the soundtrack to 2020’s The Roads Not Taken starring Javier Bardem and Elle Fanning, and her 2022 short film, Look At Me. In 2023 she released her debut album,…

“I’ve gotten in trouble occasionally because my background has been so varied. It’s like, ‘What are you? Are you a jazz guy? Are you a rock guy?’ But I get it. If I go to buy a box of cornflakes, I want cornflakes. I don’t expect something else in the box.”Chester Thompson Rock music is now in its eighth decade and no longer exclusively the province of the young. As we’ve seen with the longevity of many progressive artists in recent years – including the surviving members of Yes, King Crimson and Caravan among others – age is no longer an impediment to creativity and virtuosity. Such is the case with Cosmic Cathedral, a new collaboration between Neal Morse and erstwhile Genesis drummer Chester Thompson, with veteran guitarist Phil Keaggy…

“I personally want to play on proggier bills and I generally consider that, by now, Jinjer has become one of the biggest prog metal bands without even being a part of the prog metal scene!”Eugene Abdukhanov (Jinjer) Progressive metal is evolving at a rate of knots. Four decades on from the pioneering efforts of Savatage, Queensrÿche and Fates Warning, the ostensible divide between progressive rock and heavy metal has been obliterated like never before, resulting in some of the most mind-bending and deliriously imaginative heavy music ever committed to tape. It wasn’t always this way, of course. Not so long ago, the phrase ‘prog metal’ was generally agreed to apply to a very specific sound. Dream Theater’s rise to glory and subsequent dominance of the scene in the early 90s…

prog.reviews@futurenet.com After 34 years of quietly going about their business, Katatonia finally succumbed to the lure of drama earlier this year, when co-founding guitarist Anders Nyström announced his departure. A respectful, but melancholy announcement by the band was followed by a slightly terse statement from Nyström, in which he bemoaned singer and decades-long songwriting partner Jonas Renkse’s reluctance to revisit earlier, heavier parts of their catalogue in the live arena. “That door has been kept shut,” he mused, “and left everything we did pre-Millennium in a void.” Old-school fans may be inclined to see his point. Their ongoing evolution has nudged 90s records like the bleak and doom-laden Brave Murder Day and the icily gothic Discouraged Ones out of the picture. But as great as it would be to hear…

South coast concept spinner broadens his themes. Cosmograf’s Robin Armstrong has seen his profile in the prog world rise slowly but surely over the last decade and a half on the back of nine albums that have tended strongly towards the conceptual, most recently 2023’s Heroic Materials, related from the viewpoint of a former World War II fighter pilot. “It benefits from explosions of dynamic hard rock.” On The Orphan Epoch – Cosmograf’s 10th album – there’s no connecting theme as such, but his strongest suit continues to be a talent for forlorn songs imbued with a palpable sense of loss. The feelings of softly desperate longing and desolate resignation that are shot through the opening bars of Empty Box and bittersweet contemplations of We Are The Young (redolent of…

Captivating instrumental intrigue from erstwhile Japan man. It’s somehow 46 years since Japan first released Life In Tokyo, and like all ex-members of that elegantly epochal band, Steve Jansen has long since moved on to an admirable career of new creations. This remarkable instrumental work, however, is born of an unabating fascination with the Japanese capital, a metropolis of singular, distinctive atmosphere. The Space Between was originally conceived as a sound installation to accompany Jansen’s photography exhibition there earlier this year, where he displayed shots of the Shibuya area. Artfully combining found sounds – the shuffles, rumbles and reverberations of central Tokyo – with a master musician’s gift for subtle harmonious underlays and rhythmic invention, it’s an audio journey that places the listener both in its specific primary setting and…

A lost psychedelic gem is unearthed from the vaults. The concept of the Great Lost Album is one that’s fuelled by tantalising notions of clues and evidence that fill in the gaps of a back catalogue or flesh out an existing historical and biographical narrative. Artists of certain stature seem to pluck these obscure works from their past like change from the back of the sofa while others reluctantly open their vaults to reveal their creative secrets and processes. And then there are those whose careers remain a footnote in music history despite offering an alluring view of what might have been. “Savarin colours tastefully with his impressive Hammond.” A case in point is Dominican-born Julian Jay Savarin, keyboardist and leader of Julian’s Treatment and, later, a well-received author of…

Where’s home? Swindon, for every second of my 54 years so far. What’s your earliest memory of prog? Listening to Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds in 1978 when I was seven. My dad borrowed it from a mate at work and played it most evenings. I’d sit there, gazing wide-eyed at the booklet’s late Victorian/early Edwardian artwork, reality and fiction blurring. What was the first prog album you bought? Sonic Attack by Hawkwind, bought around 1982 from the Our Price on Canal Walk in Swindon town centre. It has songs about sonic weaponry and discarnate beings – what’s not to love? And the latest? Rio by Trevor Rabin, which is mind-blowing, and Songs For Lost Voices by Goodbye Mountain, which is beautiful and meditative. What was your first prog…

KING CRIMSON’S JAKKO JAKSZYK RETURNS WITH NEW SOLO ALBUM AFTER FIVE-YEAR GAP Inspired by his family’s history, the LP features contributions from drummers Gavin Harrison and Ian Mosley, as well as singer-songwriter Louise Patricia Crane and son Django on bass. Former King Crimson guitarist/vocalist Jakko Jakszyk will release his first solo album in five years via InsideOutMusic on June 27. The album, titled Son Of Glen, is a companion piece of sorts to his acclaimed 2024 autobiography Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair?, which found Jakszyk – who was adopted as a baby – attempting to track down his birth parents. He began working on the record after co-producing his partner and fellow musician Louise Patricia Crane’s 2024 album Netherworld. “After King Crimson ended [in 2021], there was a…

Pelagic Records are bringing their artist-celebrating event, Pelagic Fest, back to the Dutch town of Maastricht on August 23-24, having relocated from Berlin for 2024. Co-sponsored by Prog and Metal Hammer and headlined by genre-bending prog maverick Ihsahn and postrock heavyweights This Will Destroy You, the event’s organisers have curated an impressive 20-band bill. “The line-up showcases the breadth of our roster,” says label founder Robin Staps, also of The Ocean. “From very quiet, peaceful music, like Hungarian post-rock band Törzs, to the absolute aural ferocity of Bear, it has something for everyone who’s into post-rock, prog, and heavy-duty psychedelic music.” He adds, “Emotionally, it’s covering a lot of territory. Walking between the rooms, you will get to see a lot of very different but interconnected artists.” Bruit <, You,…

Rob Reed and Steve Balsamo’s project Chimpan A have announced the release of their third studio album via Tigermoth in August, with a series of four EPs preceding it on CD and streaming platforms in the coming months. The Magenta mainman reconnected with singer-songwriter Balsamo to make a follow-up to Chimpan A’s 2006 debut in 2020 with The Empathy Machine, and this time they have created a record that they view as“an old-fashioned response to the TikTokification of music”. Hence a title, M.I.A. Vol 1 – an acronym for “Music Is Art” – that both unashamedly describe as“pretentious”. “But in the best way,” says Balsamo with a smile. “It’s another word for‘ambitious’.” That ambition manifests itself in a number of ways, such as the sequencing of the album. “It’s the…

GAMERS MAY RECOGNISE that Ash Twin Project – a band underpinned by the duality of hazy, meditative post-rock and the intricate snap and crack of modern progressive metal – have lifted their name from the cult sci-fi videogame Outer Wilds. But the vision of a group, originally brought together by drummer Thibault Claude for his graduation recital, dives far deeper into those far-off realms than simply name alone. “I was immediately struck by a powerful sense of nostalgia while playing [the game],” Claude explains. “The music, the environment, the lore – everything left a deep mark on me, and very few works, even in music, will remain as strongly ingrained in my memory. “It also came at an important time in my life. It’s an ode to curiosity. It represents…

IF CHANGE IS as good as a rest, Phil Mercy must be fully rejuvenated. The musician behind Blind Convergence has switched from the Canterbury-inspired songs of Thieves Kitchen – the British-Swedish group, now on hiatus, which featured his wife Amy Darby – to full-on experimental electronica. His bold mixture of synthesised loops, ambient sequences and spoken-word samples with guitar textures is impressive, and it all came about thanks to Thieves Kitchen keyboard player Thomas Johnson. “I spent ages after the last album [2019’s Genius Loci] wondering what to do next, and I decided that the only answer was to try to grow as a musician somehow,” says Mercy. “But Thomas understands the texture of sound like no other human I ever met. He has this wise and advanced approach to…

“He was an amazing musician; funny and a little crazy in the best way. I miss his antics. He was a true rock star.”Jon Anderson Chris Squire’s passing on June 27, 2015 was a massive shock to the progressive rock community. Squire was an icon – a genuinely larger-than-life figure from an era that produced so many musicians of great character and virtuosity. Although Yes co-founder Peter Banks had died two years previously, Squire was also the first artist of that stature to leave us, although his contemporaries Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and John Wetton would sadly follow within a couple of years. But when Squire died, we realised that our heroes are mortal. It was a moment of existential crisis for many of us. During the course of his…

By October 1980, The Police were fast becoming the biggest band on the planet. Already hugely successful across Europe and the Southern Hemisphere, the trio’s major breakthrough in the States was triggered by new album Zenyatta Mondatta, housing infectious singles Don’t Stand So Close To Me and De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da. Yet conquering the mainstream also brought a degree of frustration for Andy Summers. When their tour hit Munich, the guitarist sat down in his hotel room and wrote a letter to Robert Fripp. “I’d been in the band for a few years and I wanted to try something else, musically, just to prove that I existed outside of the framework of The Police as a musician,” Summers explains today. “I’d really loved the Roches album…

The old Nietzschean aphorism “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” has certainly been proven by Black Country, New Road over the last seven years. The Cambridge six-piece have weathered their fair share of tribulations since forming out of the ashes of their previous band in 2018, most notably when singer and BCNR cynosure Isaac Wood exited just as they were readying their second album, Ants From Up There, in 2022. The tour they’d planned had to be jettisoned, making that two cancelled tours in as many years. Somehow, 2025 marks the first time they’ll be going on the road with a brand-new album. “We’ve never toured a studio record before,” confirms drummer Charlie Wayne, calling from his childhood bedroom in Cambridge where he’s returned to celebrate his mum’s 60th.…

Firehose of falsehood is a propaganda technique credited to the Russians, where a flood of messaging – including disinformation – influences the public narrative. It’s also – just about – the name of O.R.k’s fifth album, and with all that’s going on in the world, it feels pretty apt. “Especially now in the information overload age that we live in, it’s very difficult to know what is actually true and what isn’t,” bassist Colin Edwin says down the line from his studio. At the core of Firehose Of Falsehoods is the dichotomy between disinformation and artists, such as musicians, who seek to tell the truth. “We spend all our time expressing ourselves and trying to be true to our art, and trying to get across situations and emotional stuff that…

Norwegian duo embrace the darkness on second album. AVKRVST’s debut, 2023’s The Approbation, made quite a splash for an album recorded by two childhood friends in their cabin out in the back of the Norwegian beyond. It was testament to the sheer quality of songwriting and execution that such a low-key release resonated through the prog world and beyond. The duo were soon being mentioned in the same breath as masters of the craft Opeth and Porcupine Tree, from whom they borrowed a bit in terms of tone and composition respectively. This new album comes with a far greater weight of expectation, but it doesn’t disappoint in the slightest. “Certainly not an easy album to listen to, but superbly realised.” It isn’t for everyone, though. No one who accompanied the…

Wobbler’s keyboard king strikes gold on solo album number two. Two years after his solo debut, the impressive Fire Foretellinger, Wobbler’s Lars Fredrik Frøislie steps out again with Gamle Mester. The title translates as ‘Old Master’, which feels apposite. Whether with Wobbler or his solo project, no modern artist captures the sound and spirit of prog from the pre-digital era with greater fluency than this keyboard wizard. No doubt it helps that he has a dazzling array of vintage instruments at his disposal, including but not limited to the Hammond C3, Mellotron M400, Minimoog Model D and Hohner Clavinet D6. “It could have been dug out from the vault of forgotten prog.” The album reunites Frøislie with Elephant9’s Nikolai Hængsle, who played on Fire Foretellinger. Toting a Rickenbacker 4003, Hængsle…

Exceptional work on an exceptional album. Loving Gentle Giant is the ultimate sign of a progressive rock insider – there may not be many fans out there in comparison to other groups of their era, but by heavens, how they are loved. They were always one of those bands that people would earnestly lean in and state that the LPs were good, but live was where it was at. This buffed-up and slightly renamed reissue of 1977’s Playing The Fool – The Official Live proves it. “An incredibly warm, immersive experience.” After their one-time US support artist Peter Frampton helped popularise the double live album with 1976’s Frampton Comes Alive!, Gentle Giant decided that their tour to support the same year’s Interview album should be captured for posterity. Recorded across…

Revisiting the hometown blues with The Pineapple Thief’s main man. Given Bruce Soord’s role as founder and bandleader of The Pineapple Thief, the news that he was making a solo record raised eyebrows aplenty in 2015. The Pineapple Thief was his baby, and he recorded TPT’s three earliest releases by himself anyway. Soord made the original self-titled album to fill a gap in Kscope’s schedule. It’s testament to the quality of the music that despite The Pineapple Thief’s ongoing success, he’s subsequently released two more studio records and a live album of solo material. “There are sides of his creativity that demand an outlet.” Available on vinyl for the first time in a pearl blue pressing and with a half-speed remastering at Abbey Road, this 10th-anniversary edition offers a great…

“If you listen to a lot of their music, especially the earlier albums, I think that their influence on other artists is there for all to see,” says Esoteric’s label manager Mark Powell. He’s preparing to oversee Popol Vuh’s reissue programme, which will be spearheaded by vinyl remasters of 1971’s In Den Gärten Pharaos, Nosferatu (1978) as well as Hosianna Mantra from 1972. Other albums will follow throughout 2026 after the label secured the rights to remaster and re-release the recordings from founder member Florian Fricke’s estate, which is looked after by his son, Johannes. Unreleased material is likely to emerge at a later date as well. “The whole thing has a timeless sound,” Powell adds. “The soundtrack to Nosferatu set the standard for evocative film music. And [Popul Vuh]…

“Where do you start? That depends,” says Eiríkur Hauksson, the Icelandic-born frontman of Magic Pie. The Norwegian band drop their sixth studio album, Maestro, this spring and it’s bookended by the two halves of Opus Imperfectus, the tale of a composer struggling to find the perfect yet elusive final chord for his greatest work. As explained by the singer, there’s a clear division of labour within the band – guitarist Kim Stenberg composes the music, then delivers it to Hauksson to craft the lyrics, sometimes with a suggestion for a line or two, but not always and not this time. “The title of the album was my idea and this crazy composer who can’t find his last chord, it’s all mine,” says Hauksson. “I just got in this Renaissance mood…

Ahead of the London première of his live orchestral epic Requiem Mass this July, Judge Smith issues The Overstayer on his own Masters Of Art label on July 4. The 18-minute piece is the latest songstory from the maverick veteran and finds him revisiting his association with Van der Graaf Generator, the band he co-founded in 1967. “It’s scored for pipe organ, saxophones and vocals, and I’ve been lucky enough to corral a trio of very exceptional musicians to breathe life into it,” Smith explains. “Robert Pettigrew, the organist, is a classically-trained keyboardist, arranger and theatrical musical director who I first worked with in 1976. However, even earlier than that, I was friends and collaborator with saxophonist David Jackson, the iconic instrumentalist of classic-period Van der Graaf. His daughter, Dorie, who…

DAN HAWKINS The Darkness guitarist cautions against meeting your prog heroes, especially if it happens to be Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull. “When The Darkness split in 2006, our then-bass player Richie Edwards and I formed a band called Stone Gods. He’s a big Jethro Tull fan, and he was like, ‘I think you’d like them.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ I think it was because I’d started getting into stuff like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. So there I was in my Norfolk farmhouse, on my own because I was single at the time, and Jethro Tull just seemed to fit my surroundings. And that was my soundtrack to a good couple of years. I loved the folk element to it straight away because I was into Richard Thompson and…

(Warner Bros. 1985) Forty years ago, three Norwegian boys burst onto the pop landscape with the interminably ubiquitous hit single Take On Me. Keen to please, these exotic pop creatures with healthy translucent skin and chiselled good looks were only too happy to model for Jackie or Look-In magazines in an array of fetching Scandi knitwear and white muscle vests, becoming Blu-Tacked fixtures on teenagers’ walls up and down the country to the consternation of their parents. While the trio largely remained the domain of teenyboppers, at the core of A-ha was something darker and more musically profound, as evidenced on their debut album Hunting High and Low from 1985. Indeed, heavy rock was the first love of A-ha guitarist and songwriter Paul Waaktaar-Savoy and keyboard player Magne Furuholmen, while…

INSPIRATION SPRINGS FROM many unexpected sources but for John Murphy, it came from regular domestic exposure to Minecraft’s mesmeric theme tune. Coupled with his love of classical and choral music, Murphy, I Am The Manic Whale’s keyboardist and composer, has drawn together these influences in Songs For Lost Voices, the debut album from his new project, Goodbye Mountain. The album comprises seven interconnected chill-out, instrumental compositions, all a far cry from his work with Manic Whale and acoustic trio Merfy. “I did stuff with Merfy but was looking to do something different, as I’d hit a bit of a wall with that,” Murphy explains. “I then got this weird compulsion to listen to classical composers like Fauré and Mozart which made me realise there was this whole part of what…

ON THE SURFACE, doom metal and prog seem to be from different worlds. Sure, there have been bands that have bridged both – Anathema, Swallow The Sun and Pallbearer spring to mind – but, by and large, the groups whose sound can largely be defined by“side one, track one of Black Sabbath’s debut album” are hardly known for their progressive qualities. But Divide And Dissolve aren’t like other doom bands. If anything, they’re to doom what Black Sabbath were to the blues. “The words ‘heavy resonance’ come to mind,” muses D//D multi-instrumentalist and mastermind Takiaya Reed, when asked how she defines her sound. “But there’s an element of neoclassical in there, too. I’m classically trained and it’s something I’ll always draw from.” There are certainly shades of that on latest…

“Chris was an inspiring bandleader who played bass like it was a lead guitar. He came up with iconic phrases that stick in the memory forever.”Steve Hackett “In my opinion, Chris was the greatest rock bass player that ever lived,” declares self-confessed mega-fan and Squire’s Conspiracy bandmate Steve Stevens. It’s a sentiment repeated time and again from the friends, collaborators, and fans that Prog spoke to in assembling this tribute. A decade after his passing, Chris Squire remains the giant on whose shoulders stands every bassist in prog’s expansive pantheon. “Aspiring young bass players will forever use his wonderful playing as inspiration, and as a musician I can truly say that you couldn’t ask for more,” says Gentle Giant’s John P Weathers, for example. Squire was the only Yes member…

Robin Armstrong has been delivering Cosmograf’s fine music for the best part of 20 years. Now he’s back with an exciting new approach and The Orphan Epoch – an album that’s set to shake things up and reset the balance. “I do have a bit of a subversive spirit,” says Armstrong, with a wry smile, “in terms of ruffling the feathers of the sometimes dusty prog rock world.” We’re talking about one particular song on the new album, Seraphim Reels – a wonderfully atmospheric downtempo number that periodically explodes into bursting clouds of emotion. It’s a beautiful example of the joy to be found in matching different tones against each other, in this case delicate piano, soaring guitar and, strikingly, smoky saxophone. “The track itself is a bit of a…

Glass Hammer burst onto the scene out of left field back in 1993 with their debut, Journey Of The Dunadan – a concept album based on the story of Aragorn from The Lord Of The Rings, which was unexpectedly well-received. For bass player and co-founding member, Steve Babb, it marked the realisation of a long-held ambition. “Oh, yeah, I was a prog fan!” he enthuses. “We could hear it on the radio when I was a kid. I bought Rush’s Fly By Night and was hooked.” With the 80s dominated by new wave, synthpop and hair metal, Babb had to wait for his chance. “It probably began as an act of defiance,” he explains, of Glass Hammer’s origins, “I’d been in a band two years previously that had lost a…

Stewart Copeland keeps moving. Professionally, creatively, behind his drum kit and, as it turns out, in interviews, too. Over an hour or so, as we chat via video-call, he does circuits of his expansive Sacred Grove home studio in Brentwood, Los Angeles, stopping only occasionally to flop down on the sofa. His flow of conversation only pauses when he thinks how to frame an answer or recall some minor historical detail. He’s a great advert for getting to 72. We’re here to talk about his Wild Concerto classical album and a new Police picture book due later this year, charting the band’s very earliest days living hand-to-mouth as squatters in London, called The Police Lineup. Though both simply act as jumping-off points for conversational diversion: his one‑man spoken-word shows, his…

Rare solo outing from former Tangerine Dream luminary. Peter Baumann is very much an artist who does things in his own time and on his own terms. While music seemed to pour out of his erstwhile bandmate Edgar Froese until the latter’s death in 2015, Baumann – a member of the most influential iteration of Tangerine Dream – has enjoyed long periods of musical inactivity since leaving the group in 1978. “A layered canvas of sound that emits beauty and intrigue.” This is his first solo album since 2016’s Machines Of Desire, and only his sixth solo LP since Romance ’76 (released in 1977), although he did collaborate with fellow Tangs refugee Paul Haslinger under the name Neuland, releasing an eponymous album in 2019. Not that the Berlin School pioneer…

Dazzling return of Norway’s foremost rock/jazz/prog power trio. After a number of extra-curricular releases – including albums with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra and improv unit Weejuns – guitarist extraordinaire Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen returns with renewed vigour to the Trio comprising herself, bassist Ellen Brekken and drummer Ivar Loe Bjørnstad. From the skronky, livewire debut of Shoot! in 2011, the band are now a formidable proposition, seamlessly combining the heft and riffage of classic metal, the darkness and drama of avant prog, and the boundary-scorching attitude of modern jazz: Black Sabbath, King Crimson and Terje Rypdal incarnated as a single entity. “A fearsomely kinetic yet accessible album.” Bees In The Bonnet – the latest in a series of quirky, oddly apt titles – offers another refinement of the Trio’s sound, with…

Tenth-anniversary edition of a visionary rapscallion’s last stand. It’s been a decade since Daevid Allen left us to take up a new cosmic address, and it’s technically been 11 years since this, Gong’s 13th studio album and his final recording on this earthly plane, was released, though the band never were ones to yield to the dictates of time. Invariably, figures of Allen’s stature have left their best material in the distant past, but I See You stands defiant as a work of towering vitality, a raised fist and even a raised finger on tracks like This Revolution – a denouement fitting for a man who occasionally went by the characteristically bonkers epithet Divided Alien Bert Camembert. Indeed, perhaps the nicest touch on this 10th-anniversary edition is the blackened circular…

VENUE CAMDEN CLUB, LONDON DATE 06/04/2025 The new album by modern prog mainstays Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate is an expansive, polystylistic release centred on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. With today’s double album launch, HOGIA and co-headliners Ghost Of The Machine have addressed a much more important kind of uncertainty – whether or not you’re going to make the last train home – by booking a lunchtime show. But before “an hour of very educational stuff about quantum physics”, Ghost Of The Machine dive into Empires Must Fall. It’s an ambitious concept album that acts as a sequel to their acclaimed 2022 debut, Scissorgames, filled to the brim with metallic influences and some complex, extended compositions. Despite a couple of early issues with tightness and tuning, it’s clear that GOTM can…