Table of contents for Issue 139 in Prog

Twelfth Night formed in 1978 and were mainstays of the early 80s prog revival, alongside Marillion, IQ and others. Since launching their own label in 1980 they’ve released many albums of their own, and more recently by former members and friends. After the instrumental Live At The Target, vocalist Geoff Mann joined for the 1981 Reading Festival. Mann recorded Smiling At Grief (1981) and the classic Fact And Fiction (1982). He left the band following a second appearance at the Reading Festival in 1983 and two unforgettable Marquee gigs, which were released as Live And Let Live. In 1984, with new singer Andy Sears, Twelfth Night signed to Hit And Run Music (who also managed Genesis), and recorded Art And Illusion with noted producer Gil Norton. All these albums have…

Welsh prog rockers Godsticks will release their sixth studio album, This Is What A Winner Looks Like, on May 26 via Kscope. It follows February 2020’s Inescapable (which contains the band’s most-streamed song, Victim) and pulls from more electronic influences than anything they’ve done before. “I really like the production values of pop music,” says singer, co-guitarist and principal songwriter, Darran Charles. “It’s really interesting what producers can create. Those soundscapes, synth sounds and drum loops are an art form in themselves, but often they’re frowned upon. Just because it wasn’t actually ‘performed’ doesn’t mean you don’t need musical intelligence to devise it.” According to Charles, writing the new record was a more collaborative process than usual. The band started in September 2021, following Godsticks’ return to the stage. The…

Kavus Torabi and Richard Wileman will release their latest collaboration, Heaven’s Sun, on Torabi’s label Believers Roast on June 2. The pair have worked together occasionally over the past decade, with Torabi contributing to Wileman’s albums as Karda Estra – such as 2011’s New Worlds – and Wileman returning the favour on Torabi’s 2013 LP The Exquisite Corpse Game. The two songs on Heaven’s Sun – Particles Of Light and Derelict Creations – are the psychedelic combination of fresh material and reworked parts of music they’d previously made together. “We ended up with four songs, three other pieces and some other fragments,” Wileman tells Prog, “but then Kavus called at the last minute and said he’d been experimenting, chopping up the pieces, merging them even more and adding found sounds to…

For Andy Jackson, 12 is the magic number. The illustrious Pink Floyd engineer’s upcoming solo record Twelve Half Steps is a concept album without a lyrical theme. It features 12 tracks, and each of these sees Jackson exploring one of 12 different ‘modal’ musical scales. “I liked the idea of setting myself limitations to work with,” Jackson tells Prog, adding that the idea was inspired by Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, which featured preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys. This may sound baffling to anyone without a working knowledge of music theory, but Twelve Half Steps – out on May 26 through Esoteric – is as accessible as it is experimental. Unlike 2014’s Signal To Noise and 2016’s 73 Days At Sea, the record is entirely instrumental. “I…

LAVISH, ADVENTUROUS AND unashamedly weird, Yemrot’s first album, The Sunken Garden, is one, as we used to say, for the heads. The brainchild of Margate-based multi-instrumentalist Jimi Tormey, it has occasional echoes of psych forebears like Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt, but Yemrot’s musical world is far stranger than that. Partly based around the escapades of the mysterious Dill Dandin and what happens when he dives into a giant sinkhole, The Sunken Garden has a mischievous twinkle in its eye. “I recorded this album during the first few months of Covid,” says Tormey. “During the recording I saw Elton John performing I’m Still Standing for a Covid relief thing on the BBC. He’d dragged a piano outside, in front of a basketball hoop, and sang, ‘I’m Dill Dandin!’ repeatedly. The…

The unlikely formation of Silver Moth sounds like a pitch for a reality TV show or maybe even a badly told joke. What do you get if you take seven (almost) strangers from across the UK – including Stuart Braithwaite from Mogwai – and put them on an Outer Hebridean island for a week? The answer is the album Black Bay, a stunning, post-rock, six-track odyssey out on the Bella Union imprint. As a punchline, it’s disappointing, though the album itself is anything but. Before we discuss the making of this mystical work of wonder, we need to go back to April 2021 where Braithwaite, his wife Elisabeth Elektra and members of Abrasive Trees, Burning House and Prosthetic Head are assembled in a car park at Ullapool, Stornoway, looking for…

prog.reviews@futurenet.com When Ian Anderson began treading the boards in the early 1960s, there was never any expectation that bashing out a few blues standards could lead to something like a proper career. Pop stars came and went – even The Beatles thought all the fuss would blow over soon enough. If they were lucky they’d make a few hits, meet a few stars, have a few laughs and bank a few stories to tell the customers frequenting the shop they’d probably open in their settled-down post-pop life. Well, that might have been the theory back then but somebody must have forgotten to pass the memo on to Anderson. Driven by a fearsome, unrelenting work ethic for more than half a century, the singing flautist and the current incarnation of Jethro…

Tempus Veritas SEASON OF MIST Radio-friendly accessibility with off-kilter twists from London trio. Black Orchid Empire offer groove and melody in spades on their fourth album. Their music is energised by watertight, syncopated riffs and anthemic refrains. Yet Tempus Veritas’ radio-friendliness is often cover for more interesting musical turns that nestle underneath. Deny The Sun’s rolling guitars flit between regular and irregular time signatures and Summit boasts spiky Tool-isms and staccato harmonised vocals that take their cues from Haken and even Gentle Giant. On Last Ronin, singer/guitarist Paul Visser steers the band through a catchy, explorative song that threatens to break free of the verse-chorus-verse format without ever going the full mile. Their mainstream tendencies are evident across the album – Weakness is more alt-rock than prog, and each song…

Black Medium Current PEACEVILLE Prog-friendly metal explorers uncover yet more new territory on sixth album. Often written off by prog noise, extreme metal was a training ground for the likes of Enslaved, Ihsahn and Ulver before they threw of the shackles and raised their experimental flag high. Norway’s Dødheimsgard should be added to that list. On 2015’s A Umbra Omega, the Oslo band fully embraced the avant-garde, with songs that were 15 minutes long and incorporated proggy bass leads and squealing horns. Their seventh album, Black Medium Current, continues this approach, yet its songs are even more palatable to those who blanch at extremity. sees simple, chord-based riff repeat over clamouring prog metal percussion, while frontman Yusaf ‘Vicotnik’ Parvez sings – not screams – the hook, only for everything to…

Fearless SPINEFARM They’re just like Rush but there’s only two of them. Crown Lands have never hidden their admiration for Rush. And while the blues-prog-rock of the hirsute Canadian duo’s self-titled debut album may have steered clear of outright impersonation, it’s fair to say that guitarist/bassist/keyboard player Kevin Comeau and drummer/vocalist Cody Bowles have since gone Full Starman. Indeed, Comeau has Rush’s iconic logo tattooed on his butt, such is his dedication to their illustrious forebears. “Cody Bowles drums like Neil Peart and sings like Geddy Lee.” Follow-up Fearless is so Rush-like it’s almost a surprise when the Rocinante herself doesn’t hove into view, swiftly pursued by By-Tor and a full pack of snow dogs. Produced by David Bottrill (who remixed Rush’s Vapor Trails in 2013), it’s an album of…

Hold Sacred NOSTROMO Quiet storms from deft progressive darkwavers. It was Larkin who wrote, “What will survive of us is love”, but it’s Esben And The Witch who close their sixth album with a song set in a post-apocalyptic ash-scape. Petals And Ash suggests that, as its authors explain, “when the end of the world is nigh, love is all that we take with us”. It’s both mournful and hopeful. Hold Sacred is a gentle, vulnerable work which exudes scale and scope despite its sparseness. Rachel Davies’ voice has never sounded better, or more rich with presence. Fourteen years into a cult career in which they’ve snaked between gothic chamber pop and industrial post-punk, the Brighton-formed trio, now split between the UK, the US and Germany, have retreated to a…

Sheol PELAGIC Avant-garde French quartet opt for serenity over savagery on sixth album. Four years on from A Distant (Dark) Source, France’s sharp-edged post-metallers Hypno5e have inverted the genetics of that album’s sound. Where mellow moments were rarities between crooked metal riffs, those evocative passages have become their richly satisfying focal point with works wonders. Lands Of Haze frenetic, polyrhythmic riffwork to add colour and energy to an otherwise larger, softer and more affable picture. Dust’s blend of sweeping strings and jagged, stomping math metal sees the two juxtaposed aesthetics tactfully counterbalancing one another. The song is loaded shifts, which prevent the with thrilling dynamic band’s more gung-ho moments scaring off any heavy-phobic listeners. Tauca Pt I shows Hypno5e can be beautiful without always needing to bruise and Lava From…

Downpour JANSEN Norwegian stoner mavericks take the scenic route. First impressions suggest that Kanaan are a fairly traditional stoner rock band. The instrumental trio’s fourth album begins with Black Time Fuzz, a blatantly post-Kyuss confection that leans heavy on the overdriven crackle of its loping riffs. But from then on, Downpour soars into the stratosphere. Hedvig Mollestad adds a scintillating solo to the heads-down space grooves of Amazon, and Kanaan generate a disorientating acid rock cyclone in response. In contrast, the title track’s mellow, skittering pulse carries things into psychedelic prog territory, simmering Mellotrons included. After the delicate interlude of Psunspot, Orbit makes a partial return to doom metal, albeit while slathering everything in Hawkwind-saluting electronic squiggles. The payoff comes on the closing, two-part Solaris. Kanaan display a gift for…

Cover Songs MONOTREME Cheeky little inter-album covers selection from Prog Limelight Award winners. Midas Fall’s recent gorgeous version of White Christmas proved that the Edinburgh duo are happy to bring their golden touch to other artists’ material. This EP emerged during a break from work on the follow-up to acclaimed 2018 album Evaporate, when vocalist Elizabeth Heaton and bandmate Michael Hamilton applied their imagination to a trio of songs they’re particularly fond of. Everyone from Korn to Kelly Clarkson has taken a crack at Radiohead’s Creep. Do we need another rehash? Not really, but Midas Fall’s waltz-time take is very nice indeed. Reverberating, post-rockguitars and synths couch Heaton’s dramatic vocal performance, which takes Thom Yorke’s original melody and imbues it with a new level of emotion. Big drums take it…

Natt EDGED CIRCLE Norwegians deliver heady avant art-rock at a snail’s pace. Bergen’s Natt are in no rush to hurry their music. Their self-titled debut’s three songs run to 45 minutes in total, their slow-burning compositions evolve to offer elements of post-rock, doom, psych and avant-garde noise melding, albeit with varying degrees of success. Multi-instrumentalists René Misje and Roy Ole Førland pepper the record’s sparse, open-ended landscapes with guitars, clavinets and weeping synthesisers. Joined in the studio by bassist Lord Bård and Enslaved drummer Iver Sandøy, the resultant music is a trifecta of beauty, agony and lethargy. Skillevei delivers an intoxicating range, continually reinventing itself before its repetitiveness becomes damaging. The dreamy Appell stacks zigzagging guitar lines atop one another as thick, memorable rhythms interweave with trippy, surreal textures. Unfortunately,…

Exotico ATO Sean Lennon-assisted return to form for Midlands psych rockers. Kettering has never exactly been an exploding hotbed of musical exploration, though the East Midlands market town is where James Bagshaw and Thomas Warmsley formed Temples in 2012, making a beeline for success shortly afterwards when their debut album, Sound Structures, peaked at No.7 in the UK album charts in 2014. Sadly, follow-ups Volcano (2017) and the tuneful but slightly inconsequential Hot Motion (2019) failed to scale the same artistic or commercial peaks as the band’s debut. More promising was their 2020 single Paraphernalia, a mélange of intoxicating Turkish psych and French touch influences, which was recorded after a propitious hook-up with Sean Ono Lennon. “They’re a long way sonically from Kettering now.” Lennon returns for this, the band’s…

Starlight’s Castaways WHATSTRANGEBEASTS.BANDCAMP.COM Stellar second selection from this under-heard Seattle prog outfit. What Strange Beasts’ debut The Maestro’s Tale was a concept album brimming with catchy tunes, proggy textures and psychedelic interludes. The Seattle quartet double down on all this on their highly likeable follow-up. Tunes and hooks abound over Starlight’s Castaways’ 26 tracks, and there’s an unabashed, American élan to their trademark three-part vocal harmonies, flowing melodies and musical melodrama here. Typical are the exciting, driving title track, joyous and spacey Meteor Bath and the prog/new wave blast of Plasticbrain. Imperfect Vision’s quality piano arpeggios come from classically trained keyboardist Ben Ruby, and Cat Eddie’s guitar lines are both tasteful and blistering (Second Sight). As with their debut, the songs are interleaved with instrumental interludes. A Call To Lights,…

Sunburst Finish ESOTERIC Canonical Stephen W Tayler remix reissued on vinyl with restored artwork. Generally referenced as the “best” Be-Bop Deluxe album, 1976’s Sunburst Finish is in fact their most solid, their most accessible. In truth, like the minor hit single it yielded, Ships In The Night, it feels a little restrained, with Bill Nelson phlegmatically curbing his more experimental urges to ensure a commercial foothold for the band. tend to lean on legible structures, his guitar solos where guitar solos volatile comets. None of this is to say the record doesn’t frequently dazzle: indeed the attack of Sleep That Burns or the Roxy-ish sigh of Beauty Secrets prog, which characterised their 1974 debut Axe Victim, are held in check, akin to when a politician hides their maverick tendencies to…

The Complete Studio Albums: 1965-2020 MADFISH Thirteen priceless vinyls from always-the-bridesmaid rock chameleons. The Pretty Things should have been far bigger than they actually were. Emerging from the early 60s R&B scene, guitarist Dick Taylor served as a founding Rolling Stone before bailing for art school. He was soon induced to form the Things by vocalist Phil May, who allegedly boasted ‘the longest hair in Britain’. The Things initially set outrageous for their own good. And too impatient. When success as the gritty blues hooligans captured awesome hit single Rosalyn) proved unsustainable, they embarked on a series of reinventions: some predictably ’67’s Emotions); some influential (the following year’s psych essential S.F. and some, despite maintaining quality, outwardly desperate. With the harmony-laced American Zeppelin endorsed near-glam swagger of Swansong label duo…

Permanent Dream: Remastered CHERRY RED Psychedelic buried treasure rebooted by Steve Howe. They delivered a song called Revolution a year before The Beatles, did one of the first ever John Peel sessions and were stars of the UFO Club, where they jammed with Hendrix. Vocalist Keith West went on to sing on A Teenage Opera for their producer Mark Wirtz, while drummer Twink joined The Pretty Things and Pink Fairies. And their guitarist, Steve Howe – well, yes, Prog readers may be familiar with his work. Yet some sliding doors moments – a delay in releasing their album until 1968, which meant psychedelia’s peak had passed, and being pipped by The Yardbirds for the gig in Antonioni’s Blow-Up – left Tomorrow largely consigned to yesterday. It’s Howe who’s the catalyst…

VENUE THE LONDON PALLADIUM DATE 22/02/2023 AND 23/02/2023 By the time the second night’s climax – a scorching version of Yes’ Starship Trooper – is wigging out wonderfully, these two shows celebrating Rick Wakeman’s preposterous, grandiloquent musical past have achieved something of a triumph. With a fine band, and oceans of music as vast and flowing as the renowned keyboard player’s capes, they’ve showcased why his untethered ambition and desire for scale dazzled so many in the mid-70s, taking his albums up the charts while insisting that nothing was impossible. Fashion may have taken umbrage against the records, but their best sections remain as inspired as they are faintly unhinged. Nobody is more self-deprecating than Wakeman, who introduces each set with customary jollity. As The Six Wives Of Henry VIII…

AS MUCH AS it pains us to admit it here at Prog, words aren’t always necessary. Bergen instrumentalists Natt have dispensed with the human voice and embarked on a fascinating, atmospheric journey on their self-titled debut LP. Three tracks and 45 minutes long, it’s a profoundly imaginative piece of work that muddies the waters between dark Floydian prog, noirish post-rock, woozy doom metal and a strangely alluring strain of stoner kosmische. “I had the idea for this project back in 2011,” recalls creative driving force René Misje. “I had the desire to create something for myself, and I really wanted to write instrumental music. I also wanted this project to be free from the way you would normally write music in a band. I made room to explore all of…

One of prog’s most iconic albums has been given a well-deserved deluxe makeover. To coincide with the 50th anniversary of The Dark Side Of The Moon, Pink Floyd have released this lavish set, and we have a copy to give away to one very lucky reader. This 50th anniversary deluxe box set is brimming with collectables. In addition to a new 2023 remaster of the full studio album – on both vinyl and CD – you’ll find a Blu-ray and DVD containing the original 5.1 mix and remastered stereo versions. There’s also a Dolby Atmos mix on a bonus Blu-ray, plus vinyl and CD versions of Pink Floyd’s Wembley Empire Pool show from 1974, two replica 7-inch singles, and a copy of the lavish Pink Floyd – The Dark Side…

“If you’re too much of a dictator in the studio you make yourself unpopular. You have to encourage everybody to pitch ideas, and you filter them to keep the good ones.” It’s a Thursday night in February and a slightly nervous Bruce Soord is about to chat to one of his musical heroes, Alan Parsons, over Zoom. Prog sits in to chaperone The Pineapple Thief producer-front-man and The Beatles/Floyd producer-performer legend in case either one faints, but once conversation has commenced – focusing on the 1980 Alan Parsons Project album, The Turn Of A Friendly Card, just released as a deluxe three-CD and one Blu-ray box set with book and poster – the pair are swapping trade secrets and away. As Alan holds up the latest issue of Tape Op…

Stu Mackenzie, the singer and guitarist at the head of Australian psychedelic rockers King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, shudders when he thinks back to the global events of 2020 that brought the planet to a standstill. “Your whole existence is called into question when something like this happens,” he says from his home in Melbourne. “It was an existential threat, because it was like, ‘What is my purpose if not to go play music for other human beings?’” Given the prolific nature of the band – they’d released a total of 15 albums in the seven years since their 2012 debut, 12 Bar Bruise – it’s hard not to sympathise with their predicament. But King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard are nothing if not hardy souls and so, despite…

The sun rises and the sun sets, the tide flows in and out again, but it’s been a long wait between albums from Todmorden instrumental trio Plank. Nearly nine years after the insect-themed Hivemind, guitarist and keys player David Rowe, drummer Liam Stewart and bassist Ed Troup reunite with Future Of The Sea. Plank have displayed an affinity for nature-themed concept albums, from 2012’s Animalism, about the exploitation of animals, to Hivemind two years later. “All my favourite albums are concept albums so it’s a nod to that,” says Rowe. “The third one was going to be about bacteria but I thought there was nothing we could really hang the names of the songs onto.” Instead of exploring the microscopic world, Rowe’s creative path led him into the waves. He’d…

Hologram ROCKOSMOS Mini album from stargazing Mancunians that bridges a six-year gap. The pandemic derailed the plans of plenty of bands, and Amplifier’s momentum seems to have been slowed more than most. While frontman Sel Balamir put out two low-key solo albums recently, there’s been a six-year interval between his main band’s last album, 2017’s Trippin’ With Dr Faustus, and this follow-up teaser. “There’s more focus on creating a sonic atmosphere.” There’s been no obvious attempt to rethink their robust, psychedelically charged power prog sound, though, and on reading the accompanying promotional material, there’s the sense that they’re doubling down on a musical approach that they see no reason to redirect. They talk of their journey as a band since their 1999 formation “without ever compromising our integrity, dedication to…

Catharsis TRIPLE CROWN Yvette Young reboots and revitalises her band and sound. The third album from San Francisco math rockers Covet sees the group return to a trio format, with drummer Jessica Burdeaux and bassist Brandon Dove joining guitarist/bandleader Yvette Young. Change is evident from the outset. Fuzzed-out opener Coronal is Covet at their heaviest, its post-rock vibe and processed vocals a departure for a predominantly instrumental group. Smolder inhabits similar territory, drenched in distortion and scuzzy tones. Young’s guitar work is as impressive as ever; cascading melodies tumble over each other against Burdeaux’s nimble, dancing drums. There’s effective use of contrasting moods in Bronco and Vanquish, moving between heftier riffing and Young’s fluid lead work. Trained in classical piano, Young has developed a style that seems sui generis –…

Wished Eye THRILL JOCKEY Inner space cadets deliver tuneful, exploratory psych on their fourth album. Over the course of four albums, Portland’s Dommengang have moved from tripped-out desert blues to a more nuanced take on modern freak rock. Wished Eye exudes a strong Ladbroke Grove-via-the-Pacific Northwest vibe, combining the jam band ethos of the early 70s with progressive-minded 21st-century psychedelia, and arriving at a sound that shifts between heavy skronk and cosmic Americana with lysergic agility. Runaway showcases their style nicely: some mystic Hillage-esque drift, an insistent bass line and rumbling drums, then yearning guitars stretching skywards over turbulent wah-wah. Society Blues is a pulsating space rocker with some mean, overdriven leads, but the arrangement is loose and never less than groovy. The album gets more dramatic and expressive as…

True Entertainment MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES The 1980s are writ large on Mancunian art-rockers’ sixth album. Equally in thrall to the electronic excursions of Yellow Magic Orchestra as they are to the sophisticated pop of The Blue Nile, with any number of 80s touchstones in between, Manchester’s Dutch Uncles return after an absence of six years. In contrast to the in-your-face dynamics of 2017’s Big Balloon, here Dutch Uncles plump for a sleeker and somewhat smoother approach. While the attack of the rhythm section has been dialled back, as on the wedge-flicking sleekness of Exit Row and the title track’s throbbing pulses – the lyrics throughout feel as if they’re the result of an unsupervised cut-up technique gone seriously awry: check out Dead Letter’s ‘Can you give up that cow?/The timing caught…

The Future Never Waits CHERRY RED Space rock stalwarts’ surprisingly sumptuous 35th album. Who could have guessed that 53 years into a career, the Hawkwind juggernaut still wouldn’t have run out of road? The Future Never Waits, the band’s 35th studio album, feels like a late renaissance work of wonder, where motorik-driven power plays like The End segue into dreamy passages of psychedelic whimsy on tracks such as Aldous Huxley. The Orb come to mind on the latter or, more controversially, Pink Floyd – arch nemeses from back when they were still calling themselves Hawkwind Zoo. “Motorik-driven power plays segue into psychedelic whimsy.” There have been surprises in recent times, including 2021’s Somnia, an acclaimed entry into the pantheon that now feels like more of a stepping stone. Moreover, there…

Retro WHITE KNIGHT RECORDS Somerset songwriter follows up debut with conviction. Having trodden the boards as a jobbing musician for years, Bridgwater-based guitarist, bassist and sax player Andy Foster launched Kite Parade as a creative vehicle only last year, but he’s making up for lost time, following up his 2022 debut The Way Home with a similarly vibrant attempt to frame radio-friendly rock tunes in agreeably knotty prog-informed dressing. Sometimes the big choruses have a familiarity to them (like the Foo Fighters-esque title track, before a synth riff diverts the attention), or try a little too hard to get hands stretched out to heaven, with whiffs of a Christian rock urging the faithful to testify. The strength of the top-line melodies can’t be denied, though, allowing Foster to punctuate them…

Black Bay BELLA UNION Post-rock-driven super-collective take flight. Asymbol of migration and transformation, the silver moth provides an apt metaphor for the movement and transmutation of seven notable UK musicians – Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite, left-field dance act Elisabeth Elektra, atmospheric gothic stars Evi Vine and Steven Hill, plus Abrasive Trees members Matthew Rochford, Ash Babb and Ben Roberts – into a new group. Headed towards the light, Silver Moth emerges from “the edge of the world”, the Isle Of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, with a debut album named after their waterside studio cocoon, Black Bay. “It’s quite the atmospheric headphones listen.” So far, so dramatic. And the music follows, created with dark ambient, post-rock, folk and psychedelia at its core. It opens with the brooding, ghostly Henry, voiced by…

The Montreux Years BMG/THE MONTREUX JAZZ FESTIVAL Cherry-picking the flamenco giant’s top Montreux performances. “Many superlatives have been written about Paco De Lucía and all of them are true,” writes his friend and sometime collaborator, John McLaughlin, in the sleeve notes for this beautifully designed CD package. The Spaniard was a regular draw at The Montreux Jazz Festival prior to his death in 2014 aged 66, and as this pukka, eight-tune selection underlines, De Lucía was a force of nature whether performing there in 2012 aged 64 or in 1984 aged 36. Accompanied by a shifting backdrop of astounding musicians, Paco brings all the jaw-dropping excitement of the Pamplona Bull Run to his playing: flamenco is a dangerous, untamed beast when unleashed via his fingers. His guitar-body-percussion-imbued 2006 performance of…

Prism COOKING VINYL Further close encounters with The Orb’s mysterious soundworld. Calling an album Prism and echoing The Dark Side Of The Moon’s artwork in its 50th anniversary year is surely no coincidence: it’s a statement of ambition and maybe a wink to The Orb’s sometime collaborator David Gilmour. As often, much of The Orb’s approach references their Floyd heroes without sounding too much like them: a certain spaciness; a tranquil-but-tense immenseness and a fondness for enigmatic, half-heard dialogue. Indeed, fragments of vintage broadcasts, seemingly heard after bouncing off some distant moon, are shot through Prism like ghostly images in a haunted stick of rock – both musical and confectionery varieties. Like all The Orb albums, Prism is best taken as a whole, but a few specifics stand out. Beginning…

Poil Ueda DUR ET DOUX Franco-Japanese hybrid blends ancient and modern forms. Junko Ueda, Japanese singer and satsuma-biwa player (a kind of multi-stringed lute), works within an ancient tradition of epic storytelling. Her sonorous vocalising, whose extended notes stretch and utilise Buddhist chanting, describes warding off ancient spirits and the trials of medieval warring factions. As unlikely as it might seem, Ueda’s vocal acrobatics somehow seamlessly mesh with French band PoiL’s brand of highly charged chamber rock, adding to the drama of this short but remarkable tour de force. Clashing metallic guitar riffs, quaking synths and air bursts of tangled polyrhythms are forged into knife-edge arrangements whose theatrical gusto and cumulative impact are not dissimilar to late-period Henry Cow and the acerbic sensibilities of the Rock In Opposition vocabulary. Their…

Strange Destinations HYPOSTATIC RECORDS Slick grooves and AOR polish from French-American group. This is the second album from vocalist and guitarist Ludovic Briand, keys player Julien Boursin, and producer Matt Rohr, following their 2020 eponymous debut. Where that record had a cast of all-star contributors, Strange Destinations sees Briand and Boursin joined by a smaller selection of players including drummer Christophe Briand, while bass duties are shared between Serge Arese and Francois Gomez. Musically, the album recalls the heyday of 80s AOR-prog, the latter part of that equation informing the conceptual lyrics and some of the more ambitious arrangements. High points include rockers Bad Neighborhood and Son Of Someone, with their catchy melodies, slick guitar lines and bubbling synths married to Briand’s classic rock vocal style. There are big, lighters-in-the-air…

Anyway ESOTERIC Leicester linchpins’ fourth album, expanded and remastered. A rare example of a single album comprising a live and a studio side (Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma was a double LP, pedants), Family’s transitional 1970 release Anyway leant towards a heavier, at times almost feral sound. The front cover’s reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Mortars With Explosive Projectiles was a record company choice, but it certainly chimed with the LP’s incendiary music. Relatively new recruits John ‘Poli’ Palmer (keyboards, flute, vibraphone) and John Weider (bass, violin) had already supplanted bassist Ric Grech and saxophonist Jim King. They also proved versatile foils for frontman Roger Chapman and guitarist John ‘Charley’ Whitney, even if the radical changes wrought to Family’s earlier sound took fans by surprise. The live tracks, recorded at Croydon’s…

VENUE USF VERFTET, BERGEN, NORWAY DATE 03/03/2023 SUPPORT JO QUAIL Rather like the country in which it’s situated, Bergen is a hotbed of musical activity. Not only was it a major part of the Norwegian black metal scene that provided plenty of gossip for music magazines in the early 1990s – the notorious Burzum hail from the area and the nearby Fantoft Stave Church was the first of more than 50 historic Norwegian Churches to be burnt down, allegedly by Burzum’s murderous Varg Vikernes, who was charged but found not guilty by jurors (it’s since been completely rebuilt) – more recently it’s prog and jazz rock that are more prevalent. Prog labels Karisma and Apollon are situated here, as are bands such as Wardruna, Shamen Elephant and Seven Impale to…

AS FAR AS debut albums go, few come as fully formed as Jan Rivera’s Existential Paranoia. For the Puerto Rican musician it’s the result of a lifetime obsessed with the guitar. “Growing up, our house used to be the happy place,” he recalls. “People would gather around, watch my dad play and have the best time. That really stuck with me.” As he began his own guitar journey, he looked beyond the celebratory music that echoed around his family home. Soon, he was enamoured by those with a weirdly wonderful approach to six strings. “When I started to listen to artists like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, I knew that guitar was something that I really wanted to do,” he explains. “But when I went to study guitar at 15,…

PATRIK BERGER’S NEW music represents something of a radical left-field turn though the Swedish record producer certainly doesn’t see it that way. “When I make stuff it’s all the same in my head,” says the man whose CV boasts collaborations with superstars Diana Ross, Kylie Minogue and Taylor Swift. Taking a moment to reflect on what he’s just said, he concedes: “But I mean, I know that this is different, obviously…” The Stockholm-based multi-instrumentalist’s eponymous debut album under the name Hög Sjö is a concoction of delightfully strange progressive jazz, recorded with some of the best session musicians Scandinavia has to offer. He’d planned to record the whole thing himself, but when he hooked up with his pals, pianist Jesper Nordenström and drummer Nils Törnqvist, it made sense to utilise…

“Progress is important to us. We always need to go somewhere else. We always wanted to evolve.”Alex Lifeson The launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981 was the biggest leap forward in the Space Race since the Moon landing 12 years earlier. This was the very first reusable spacecraft, able to orbit the planet and return safely to Earth in one piece after its mission was complete. Several NASA employees and a group of specially invited guests had gathered at 7am in a private viewing area within the grounds of the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida to watch billions of dollars’ worth of technology and two flesh-and-blood astronauts be fired into orbit. And among that group of onlookers were the three members of Rush. The…

Exploring Birdsong are about to release their much-anticipated second EP, Dancing In The Face Of Danger, when Prog catches up with them. It follows on from 2019’s acclaimed The Thing With Feathers, building on old foundations with new sounds. Though reminiscent of the young trio’s first extended player, the latest collection demonstrates clear progression. “Our first record was very true to the line-up but this one has a lot more meat on the bone,” says singer Lynsey Ward. “If you look at the record as a whole, it’s pop prog, but we’ve also included our heaviest song to date.” The blend of alt-pop and experimental sound on Dancing… places a strong focus on melody, something the band always try to do, as drummer Matt Harrison explains: “If the melodies aren’t…

Andy Edwards is the type of person who could engage in a lively debate on the virtues of prog for several hours. Indeed, it’s those opinions that have shaped the content of his burgeoning YouTube channel, and while delving into that would be an intriguing conversation, it’s Rain’s Radio Silence that’s our current focus. The album is the follow-up to their debut, Singularity, a recording that, despite being somewhat tricky to categorise, appealed to a significant number of fans, as Edwards explains. “We felt that we’d delivered a real full-on prog album with songs about magicians with odd time signatures and with a conceptual continuity,” he says. “When it came out, I think a lot of people found it hard to pigeonhole the sound of it and that’s something that…

“People have got brains; they should start using them instead of becoming like the machines that they’re trying to play.” Dave Brock is in a good mood. Actually, scrub that: Dave Brock is in a very good mood. Unlike our previous encounter (see Prog 124) with Hawkwind’s founder and sole constant member that found him bemoaning what passed for his 80th birthday, Brock is back where he belongs and who he belongs with. And he loves every minute of it. “We’re all here in the studio,” he says with no small amount of enthusiasm. And who can begrudge him that? With Hawkwind’s previous two albums being recorded remotely via the less-than-exciting method of file sharing thanks to the global event that brought everything to a grinding halt – that’ll be…

Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell walked out of his first job with Pink Floyd in April 1967. He’d driven their lighting rig from the Netherlands to London’s Alexandra Palace, where Floyd were headlining The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream. “I think we’d all been up for 36 hours,” he recalls. “Everyone was exhausted.” Pink Floyd were due onstage at dawn, and Roger Waters asked Po to fetch him a bottle of whisky. He reminded him that he wasn’t a gofer. “But Roger said, ‘Fucking go and find me a bottle of whisky.’ At which point I said, ‘Goodbye’, got in my van and left.” Fifty-six years later, Powell is employed as Pink Floyd’s creative director, a role he inherited after the death of his old friend, Storm Thorgerson. Throughout the 70s, he and Storm…

Live In GyÖr CHERRY RED Inspired union continues to reap rewards. Hackett’s rich and varied solo career – beginning with 1975’s Voyage Of The Acolyte, released while he was still in Genesis – has seen him explore blues, classical and prog with equal assurance. Here we have a welcome presentation from one of his most fertile collaborations, alongside jazz-rock fusion group Djabe. The history between Hackett and the acclaimed Hungarian stalwarts dates back to 2009, with Live In Györ the ninth album to capture their combined offerings. A superb-sounding two-CD (plus Bluray) set documenting a 2022 concert performed in a historic city in north-western Hungary, it covers solo Hackett material such as The Steppes and Last Train To Istanbul alongside Genesis favourites Firth Of Fifth, Los Endos and others, as…

The Old Ways Remain RISE ABOVE More of the old magick from Alia O’Brien’s Toronto collective. One song on Blood Ceremony’s fantastic new album is called Ipsissimus, a Latin word that roughly translates as ‘the most self’ or ‘self-est’. And while the Toronto weird-rockers have proudly drawn deep from the well of Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath et al over their 17 years together, they’ve never sounded more themselves than on The Old Ways Remain. “Grace Slick fronting The Doors doing Arthur Brown covers.” In the age of Uber Eats, ChatGPT and TikTok, it’s comforting to hear a band harking back to ancient goddesses, eerie places and 1970s sexploitation horror. This latter is Eugenie, inspired by cult 1970 Christopher Lee movie Eugenie: The Story Of A Journey Into Perversion. Here and…

The Last Kingdom – Destiny Is All A&G SONGS LTD Epic soundtrack inspired by Netflix Viking saga. After five seasons of Norse action, Netflix’s The Last Kingdom’s conclusion is being played out on the big screen. For its final two seasons and feature-length finale, Seven Kings Must Die, the show has brought together Faroese singer Eivør, BAFTA nominee John Lunn and Danny Saul to provide its sonic storytelling and this collection highlights the finest moments of an effective partnership. Most notable is the unification of traditional Scandinavian sounds with bristling synths, which accentuate rather than deter, the bold drama of the music and the atmosphere it evokes. Hair-raising kulning – a traditional Scandinavian vocalisation originally used to herd animals – and war drums play off one other on the impending…

Ineffable KLONOSPHERE French project balance light and shade on impressive debut. While there’s a weightlessness to HamaSaari’s reflective modern prog, that isn’t to say their menu is without spice. Featuring former members of Shuffle, that band’s Karnivool-inspired tonalities have been funnelled in an altogether more tranquil sound. Ethereal, oscillating acoustic guitars introduce Different Time, a song that grows incrementally towards a chorus that bursts out of the mix at full pelt before deftly dipping back down for its intervening passages. It typifies the band’s approach to songwriting, with coarse moments scratching at their sonic softness to heighten the effects of both. Be they short-lived like the lofty, rage-tinted eruptions of the otherwise melancholic Bleak or dominating the furore like on the rabid metal tones of White Pinnacles, they ensure the…

Flora Eallin IS IT JAZZ? Genre-defying suite blows in from Norway. The third album by the Tromsø duo of pianist Herborg Rundberg and guitarist Kristian Svalestad Olstad begins as a spectral, shimmering presence. But bolstered by the extra tonal colours of the brass-heavy, 10-piece group Nordnorsk Jazzensemble, events quickly thaw to become torrid in places. Originally commissioned to compose for the ensemble in 2021, Leagus crafted an interlacing suite of songs and pieces whose organic structures and empathetic arrangements are replete with an abundance of rich tones and stylistic directions that grow in all kinds of unexpected directions. With Flora Eallin translating as Plant Life, the music is variously ephemeral and vaporous, sometimes visceral and exotic. Leagus’ capacity to leaf between the bustling activity of Tendril, with Ola Asdahl Rokkones’…

Les Dunes APOLLON Norwegian instrumental post-rockers hit the ground running on debut album. Hailing from Haugesund on the western tip of Norway, Les Dunes may be a brand-new project, but guitarist Per Andreas Haftorsen, bassist Per Steinar Lie and drummer previously created audacious soundscapes as part of Undergrünnen, The Low Frequency In Stereo and Action & Tension & Space, among others. The trio’s nine-track debut album takes the forward-looking rhythms and complex arrangements favoured by their previous bands and reshapes them into something more stately and glacial. Opening song Mellow Skies and Spectral Lanes encapsulate the kind of stillness that other bands strive for but rarely achieve, yet their approach also allows the crisp off-kilter percussion of Keisarholi and the angelic call of Mayhem to hit like a ton of…

Heaven Vol. 1 PELAGIC Japanese soundscapers deliver uplifting new EP. When faced with darkness, search for the light. That sentiment has helped define and direct Mono’s musical output since they formed in Tokyo in 1999, and, with their latest three-track EP, they are looking for the light more than ever before. Heaven Vol. 1 belatedly launches a tradition that will see the band release a new EP every Christmas Day focusing on the hope that makes life so precious. A sense of wonder pervades the towering builds of 10-minute opening track Lucia, inspired by the birth of a close friend’s second child. The other two songs are shorter but no less impactful. The delicate, drifting three-minute Smile embodies the pristine glow of fresh snowfall in winter, while Silent Embrace’s gentle…

In Between Thoughts… A New World ATO The Mexican guitar sensations get spiritual – and electric – on album six. Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero earned rock kudos early on for their flamenco-flavoured covers of Metallica and Led Zeppelin, but 2019’s Mettavolution album, which hinged on their spin on Pink Floyd’s monolithic Echoes, and lockdown interpretations of Radiohead and Mozart, offered further proof of their eclectic range. Their sixth album came into being when Sanchez immersed himself in the Hindu practice of Advaita Vedanta while recovering from Covid. That philosophy’s ‘non dualistic’ view of the world inspired Quintero to write a ‘hero’s journey’-type story, in which a character comes into being and works towards transcendent bliss. their way via several stages The record serves as a soundtrack, of sorts. Quintero’s…

Overlords WECAMEFROMSPACE.BANDCAMP.COM Morse man’s freewheeling quartet return on their own terms. During the decade that he’s spent touring with NMB (aka Neal Morse Band) on keyboards, Bill Hubauer has also been ploughing another creative furrow closer to home with We Came From Space. On the second album he’s produced with fellow Pennsylvanians Dave Buzard (guitar/vocals), Dave Hawk (bass/vocals) and Tim Malone (drums), the focus seems to be firmly on fun. ‘We’ll play some happy chords from the robot overlords,’ they sing on the title track, with the wry demeanour of men who are no strangers to Randy Newman’s back catalogue, but who also like to cut and shut pop songs into more complex patchworks. So numerous piercing hooks emerge from between the staccato fusion grooves, as well as some satisfyingly…

Signals 40th Anniversary UME/MERCURY Trio’s first ‘keyboard album’ gets a deluxe reissue. Rush scored their biggest commercial hit with 1981’s more streamlined Moving Pictures, and the following year’s Signals saw them going even further down the road they’d set out on with its predecessor. It marked the moment when synthesisers became a major component of their sound, a development that caused friction as Alex Lifeson felt, quite reasonably, that Geddy Lee’s synths were taking up space rightfully belonging to the guitar. There’s even a keyboard solo on Signals’ closing track Countdown, which everyone later agreed was a step too far. “It remains unmistakably a product of its time.” The latest in the band’s series of 40th anniversary reissues – albeit a year late – is available in a super-deluxe edition…

The Age Of Science And Enlightenment KARDAESTRA.BANDCAMP.COM Richard Wileman has been making music as Karda Estra for a quarter of a century. Technology has advanced so much during that time that the Swindon-based multi-instrumentalist has seen fit to give some of his favourite past releases a contemporary polish. The Age Of Science And Enlightenment is a great choice for remastering and extra tinkering. Originally released in 2006 via prog imprint Cyclops, it showcased a more refined but increasingly fearless approach, wherein noirish chamber music and neo-classical creepiness collided with surreal atmospheres and any number of strange intrusions. Wileman’s new version is an enthusiastic reimagining. Opening three-part suite The Return Of John Deth lays out Karda Estra’s musical world, with strings, woodwind and brass woven into an ever-changing backdrop. Both the…

A Song For All Seasons CHERRY RED Orchestral prog classic re-released on vinyl with original artwork and poster. Renaissance recorded so much quality music in the 1970s, it feels odd to think that 1978’s A Songs For All Seasons was the group’s only UK Top 40 album. Even then they had to wait around for penultimate track Northern Lights to go Top 10 in August of that year before it charted, five months after its original release. But it wasn’t as if the group had made any radical changes. They had recorded concise and melodic songs before and Opening Out, the first track here, could have been single material too. With David Hentschel, who had produced Genesis since A Trick Of The Tail, behind the desk and Michael as acoustic,…

VENUE EVENTIM APOLLO, LONDON DATE 21/02/2023 It’s been less than a year since Dream Theater last visited London: the prog metal pioneers played Wembley Arena in April 2022, so that might help to explain the gaps in the audience at the Eventim Apollo. There are not only scattered empty seats among the crowd, but entire rows that remain unoccupied all night. Perhaps it was too soon for a return engagement? Or the vacancies may be the result of the fact that they’re still touring the same album, 2021’s A View From The Top Of The World. There’s also a fair bit of overlap in the setlist between this performance and the April 2022 Wembley date – five of the songs on the 12-song menu tonight were performed on their last…

VENUE 45 LIVE, KIDDERMINSTER/THE CIVIC, STOURPORT DATE 02/03/2023-05/03/2023 “Music without boundaries” is a fitting mantra for Fusion, a festival that’s rapidly expanded both musically and in reputation over four years. Now spanning four days and two venues, organisers Steve and Lou Gould have this year curated 20 eclectically diverse acts, although sadly only one’s from overseas. Launch night in Kidderminster sees energised, contrasting sets from Last Flight To Pluto, Ghost Of The Machine and Kyros. Ghost are the pick of the three, recreating most of their debut album, Scissorgames, with dramatic panache. Onward to Stourport for Friday and beyond, where Cornwall’s prog folk bard Davey Dodds enchants with mandolin and vivid tales. The Wood Demons evoke a Canterbury vibe, Naomi Belshaw’s fluid bow strokes coming to the fore, especially on…