Table of contents for Issue 142 in Prog

Discovering

Discovering

Spirit Of Unicorn Music was born out of the international music management company QEDG Management, home of Yes, Asia, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Focus, Martin Turner, Curved Air and Downes Braide Association. The label was initially formed as a vehicle for making the catalogue material from the estates of world-renowned artists Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and John Wetton accessible to music fans across the globe. However Spirit Of Unicorn Music has developed into so much more than that. The label team now comprises highly experienced music industry executives, each with a world-class pedigree and a passionate belief in the label’s artists and values. Through their partnership with Cherry Red, Spirit Of Unicorn Music now boast a vibrant roster of musicians from exciting new talent through to well-known, established bands, then…

Bloody Well Write

WHERE WORDS FAIL, MUSIC SPEAKS Thanks for the latest copy of my favourite magazine. Still so enjoyable, with just the right balance of old and new prog. I am getting increasingly interested in the wonderful world of instrumental prog, where pure melody can often be expressed, beyond the limited confines of a song. Whilst I am aware of many of the classic names of instrumental music – Mike Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, Rick Wakeman, Brand X, Soft Machine, Camel (The Snow Goose), etc – I am less aware of the more recent, new artists who are opting to focus on this enriching element of prog. Sometimes, the reviews of albums make it clear that a work is instrumental, often it is not so clear. Is there any chance that all new…

Bloody Well Write

DAVID LONGDON’S DEBUT SOLO REISSUED

DAVID LONGDON’S DEBUT SOLO REISSUED

Wild River, the debut solo album from the late Big Big Train singer David Longdon, is to be reissued in a remixed, remastered and expanded form through English Electric Recordings on October 12. Originally released in 2004, Wild River has been out of print for some time – although Longdon always had plans to remix and repackage the album, his tragic death in November 2021 meant this never happened. However, in a final act of remembrance by his longtime colleague and Big Big Train’s noted engineer Rob Aubrey, Longdon’s wishes have now been fulfilled. The album packaging has also been redesigned by the artist’s friend and collaborator, Steve Vantsis. “I am delighted that this beautiful album is being re-released,” says Longdon’s partner, Sarah Ewing. “This is the final wish of…

PSB TURN PROMS RECORDING INTO A LIVE ALBUM

PSB TURN PROMS RECORDING INTO A LIVE ALBUM

Public Service Broadcasting’s appearance at the 2022 Proms is being released as a live album. Out on September 8 via Test Card Recordings, This New Noise was recorded at the Royal Albert Hall and saw the band backed by the 88-piece BBC Symphony Orchestra. The show marked the centenary of the BBC. “We wanted to present how idealistic and full of adventure the BBC seemed in those early days,” says the group’s leader and mastermind J Willgoose, Esq. “It was about trying to recapture the wonder of it, which we’ve lost a lot of.” The album’s eight songs were written specifically for the Proms show, PSB’s second appearance after their 2019 debut. It features guest vocals from folk star Seth Lakeman, as well as spoken word appearances from BBC newsreader…

THE FLOWER KINGS TAKE A GOOD LOOK

THE FLOWER KINGS TAKE A GOOD LOOK

Swedish prog veterans The Flower Kings are set to return with their 16th studio album when Look At You Now is released through InsideOut on September 8. “I cannot really imagine a life without making music,” says founder member and singer-guitarist Roine Stolt as he explains his motivation for moving ever forward. “It’s been like this since I was a teenager when I started playing. Nowadays, I don’t even think much about it; this is what I do.” Following the stasis of the last few years, Stolt sees the new album and its subsequent 23-date European tour as something of a rebirth that brings The Flower Kings full circle. “We’re trying to build up and make the touring thing happen again,” says Stolt. “And it’s great that we can actually…

NUNO BETTENCOURT

NUNO BETTENCOURT

“As a kid I had a music library that spanned 10 brothers and sisters. You’d go into one room in the house and there’d be The Beatles playing, then Genesis in another. Probably 90 per cent of the music I was listening to in those first important years of my life was prog. I was in a band called Viking with two of my brothers! We were driven by UK, Yes, Kansas and Genesis. When we talk about progressive rock, the most important part of that is the ‘rock’. Bands like those, and Rush and King Crimson, still made you feel like you were listening to rock’n’roll. It was hard and heavy enough, but they took some risks outside the box too. Steve Howe was almost an outlier in Yes.…

EVERYTHING EVERYTHING

EVERYTHING EVERYTHING

RE-ANIMATOR (Infinity Industries, 2020) Although housed within the indie rock community, it always felt like Manchester four-piece Everything Everything lived on the weirdest outskirts of the genre. With their fifth album, Re-Animator, the band’s desire for a “less thinking, more action” approach resulted in something even further from the centre of town. If this is an unfiltered Everything Everything, it suggests that the band’s subconscious is more progressive than pop and hints towards something more abstract. They seem less concerned than ever about appealing to a wide audience – although plenty of big hooks certainly do no harm. Instead, they let the songs dictate their own fates, leaving no room for overthinking as they intrinsically veer left-field, a copy of Kid A gripped tightly in hand. Their previously frantic vocalist…

THEY WATCH US FROM THE MOON

THEY WATCH US FROM THE MOON

WHEN A BAND describe themselves as “cosmic doom opera” and call their members names like Nova 10101001, it’s clear that their music is going to be a trip. They Watch Us From The Moon live up to the billing on their debut album, Cosmic Chronicles, Act 1: The Ascension, a five-track concept odyssey lurching through spacey, Sabbath-esque riffs and a story fit for a sci-fi epic. Slathered on top of the Kansas sextet’s doom-mongering is an unusual twist of two soaring, melodic vocals – from both Nova 10101001 and Luna Nemesis. “There’s nobody that sounds like us,” guitarist The General Shane Thirteen proclaims. “There’s nobody in doom or metal or a combination thereof that has accomplished the sound that we have. The vocal ability of the ladies is just phenomenal.…

Now our turn…

The Editor Jerry Ewing TESSERACT War Of Being KSCOPE The Art Guy Russell Fairbrother HEDVIG MOLLESTAD WEEJUNS Weejuns RUNE GRAMMOFON The Deputy Ed Natasha Scharf VOYAGER Fearless In Love SEASON OF MIST The Musician Bruce Soord THE FIERCE & THE DEAD News From The Invisible World SPENCER PARK MUSIC The Writer Grace Hayhurst SCAR SYMMETRY The Singularity (Phase II – Xenotaph) NUCLEAR BLAST The Reader Graham Smith HASSE FROBERG & MUSICAL COMPANION We Are The Truth GLASSVILLE RECORDS…

Now our turn…

Q&A RAY ALDER

Besides fronting US prog metal pioneers Fates Warning since 1987, Ray Alder has his fingers in a number of pies, including Engine, Redemption and, most recently, A-Z. As he unveils a second solo set, suitably entitled II, Prog places a call to the singer’s home in Spain to find out more. After being a ‘band guy’ for so long, how did it feel to release your solo debut, What The Water Wants, in 2019? I like doing a lot of different things, which is why I’m involved in a few projects. A solo album just seemed like the next step. But if Fates Warning is no longer going to release material then I need an outlet. I don’t want to join another band, so a solo career seems the most…

Q&A RAY ALDER

ROGER THAT: FROM SHOEGAZE TO SHOWMAN

Fifty years almost to the month that Pink Floyd first played Earls Court, the Roger Waters This Is Not A Drill tour arrived at London’s O2 Arena, the 20,000-seat venue that effectively replaced the old exhibition centre, 13 miles to the west. A hall of this size is meat and drink to Waters, who now plays those venues with the ease of Sinatra in Vegas; he embodies the space with a showmanship that there wasn’t even a fleeting glimpse of in 1973. While not exactly ladding it up the way Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt do with Floyd’s legacy in Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, Waters is now showman provocateur, stalking the stage like an senior preening rock god, dressed in black with arms aloft to take his praise. His…

HAPPY OLD WORLD…

HAPPY OLD WORLD…

“Marrying a rock band to an orchestra was seat-of-the-pants stuff.” “The last time we played with an orchestra was in Athens five years ago,” says Barclay James Harvest guitarist and vocalist John Lees. “We played at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, an amphitheatre on the slopes beneath the Acropolis. It was fantastic. Standing there on stage looking up at the Acropolis in spotlight in front of an orchestra was quite surreal.” Although Barclay James Harvest might not have been the most flash and virtuosic of progressive rock bands, they were certainly one of the most ambitious and broke new ground, in early 1971, by touring with an orchestra. And, as their Acropolis concert demonstrated, they can still do rock and grandeur like no other group. But the road to Athens…

The Drummer’s Tale

The Drummer’s Tale

Drummer and composer Asaf Sirkis officially took over from John Marshall in 2023 – though he’s no stranger to the group, having previously filled in for him on recent tours. Described by Bill Bruford as a “master of creative surprise” and lauded by Robert Wyatt, who comments: “There’s nothing he can’t do when he puts his mind to it,” the first Soft Machine album Sirkis recalls hearing in his teens was 1975’s Bundles, featuring Allan Holdsworth. However, his favourite track is The Tale Of Taliesin from 1976’s Softs. “I just love the way this tune tells a story and the way that John Etheridge plays it.” Aged 54 and already busy with an international career, being part of Soft Machine is especially exciting, he says. “Obviously, I’m a relative latecomer…

EVERYONE’S A WINNER

EVERYONE’S A WINNER

“Take no shit!” vocalist Darran Charles yells at us through his webcam, pointing a finger. “That’s my one piece of advice,” he explains when we ask what he’s learned throughout his 14-year tenure as a member of Godsticks. “I actually never wanted to be in a band,” he says. The group’s formation was nothing more than a college project that Charles was forced into as part of the curriculum at the London Guitar Institute. As a module, he was expected to put together a performance with other members. “I didn’t like it at first because it was just nerve-racking,” he recalls, “I had to spend eight hours a day studying and practising and that.” Prior to this, Charles had had dreams of composing music for other artists and remaining behind…

IVAR BJØRNSON

IVAR BJØRNSON

When it comes to prog, Enslaved rhythm guitarist and synthesiser player Ivar Bjørnson wears his heart on his sleeve. Or more specifically, his love of Pink Floyd. Prog is seated backstage at the USF Verftet venue, an old sardine factory, situated on the dockside in their hometown of Bergen before the band perform a special launch show for their recent Heimdal album and their own brand of beer, when Bjørnson proudly points out his large The Dark Side Of The Moon tattoo among many other tattoos on his forearm. Bjørnson formed Enslaved with his friend Grutle Kjellson in 1991 during the heady days of the Norwegian black metal scene and the pair still lead the band to this day. While their roots are in extreme music, from the early 2000s…

BELBURY POLY

Hauntology pioneer returns with funked-up prog odyssey. Operating at the intersection between hypnagogic electronica, library music and forgotten TV themes, Belbury Poly is the solo project of Ghost Box mastermind Jim Jupp. The Path is, by some margin, their grooviest and most accomplished album to date. Author and poet Justin Hopper returns from 2019’s Chanctonbury Rings project to deliver a spoken-word antinarrative about the mysteries of the English landscape. But it’s bassist Christopher Budd and drummer Max Saidi who make the biggest difference to the sound, creating a supple and dynamic rhythmic foundation for Jupp’s woozy pastoral melodies. The funky jazz noir soundtracks of Roy Budd are a stated influence, but there’s also more than a hint of Gil Scott-Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised in the cool flute…

BELBURY POLY

CRACK THE SKY

A lacklustre acoustic collection from the legendary prog rock ensemble. Veteran American band released nearly two dozen studio LPs since their terrific 1975 debut, so it’d be foolish to expect something close to the same level of quality and freshness here. Even so, the all-acoustic From The Wood can’t help but disappoint due to its mostly mediocre songwriting and occasionally rough performances. Those issues are apparent from the jump, with generic rustic opener I Get High finding frontman John Palumbo singing banally about combating modern woes by, well, getting high. equally cringe-inducing Fun In Isolation (an on-the-nose blues/folk romp about corrupt politicians that features some surprisingly hackneyed instrumentation) and the superficially supportive Heart Of The Lion. There are some bright spots, such as heartfelt ballad Don’t Close Your Eyes and…

CRACK THE SKY

KARNATAKA

KARNATAKA

All-new line-up stick to the familiar. It’s been eight years since Karnataka’s last studio album and the core of the band seems to have been whittled down to founding bassist Ian Jones and mononymous new vocalist Sertari. Requiem For A Dream picks up the baton from 2015’s Secrets Of Angels and keeps running in the same direction. The album goes big on symphonic rock with grand, sweeping arrangements married to a melodic sensibility that draws on musical theatre dramatics and AOR. However, anything approaching musical surprises are scarcer. It feels like Karnataka are playing it too safe. Sertari possesses a comparable range to her predecessor Hayley Griffiths, but brings her own personality to her performance. Where Griffiths’ classical training lent an operatic quality to her tone, Sertari’s style is perhaps…

HELD BY TREES

Gifted musicians let the music Talk (Talk). This intriguing instrumental collective, led by David Joseph and primarily deploying musicians who worked with Talk Talk on the peerless Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock, improvised the album Solace last year, and the pleasant surprise was that it worked wonderfully. It paid tribute to the unique feel and shapeshifting abilities of those records while avoiding mimicry. It was gorgeous music – perhaps post-rock, perhaps atmospheric prog – in its own right. Evidently encouraged, they return with a pair of exquisite EPs. One sees them playing the bulk of Solace live, with just a hint more heaviness, at Real World Studios. It’s a lovely listen, with consummate guitarist Robbie McIntosh cut a tad more slack to testify as well as tease. The other,…

HELD BY TREES

L.O.E

British post-rockers artfully dissect the best and worst of mankind. On their stirring debut album, Halifax’s L.O.E take a holistic look at humanity. Each of its 10 songs set out to capture humanity’s best and worst achievements via a whirl of reverb-soaked guitars, atmospheric builds of vibrant crescendos, doing so with emotion and grandeur. Although an instrumental band, they weave spoken-word passages into their compositions to underscore their thematic intent. On Secret Societies Rule The World, John F Kennedy’s famous speech on subversion and free choice cuts above dark, droning guitars and sneering drum lines in between snapping riffwork. For People Like People Like Them, the iconic monologue from the classic 70s movie Network draws parallels with contemporary Britain, all to a bedrock of soundscapes that sound both dreamy and…

L.O.E

MATTEO MANCUSO

Italian virtuoso guitarist shows off diversity on debut album. Sicilian guitarist Matteo Mancuso has written a love letter to the guitar with this, his debut album. As The Journey sweeps through progressive rock, shuffling blues, delicate jazz, rocky peaks and sumptuous samba, the 26-year-old’s playing feels fluent and authentic in every scene he paints. For an instrumental record where the guitar is perennially the lead instrument – save for rolling piano solo on the sumptuous Polifemo – Mancuso has proved a supple, tasteful player. Open Field offers rich clean guitars atop minimalist jazz and Drop D delivers eloquent modern, virtuosic prog rock without ego. As the record progresses, its textures and tones slipping between genres and styles, each song has something unique to say. Samba Party is delightfully vivacious, its…

MATTEO MANCUSO

EXPERIMENTAL PROG

Longstanding Viennese trio Radian return after six years with intelligent dance music six-tracker Distorted Rooms (Thrill Jockey), which veers from dubby DIY on opener Cold Suns to gently pulsating, gonged improv on C At The Gates. Drums, guitar and bass crash, boom and scratch in-between like Tackhead and Aphex Twin co-mingling through a shredder. If the thought of scaling, or even looking at, a mountain provokes a sense of horror, awe or light-headedness then this is the right mindset for listening to Pauline Hogstrand’s drone two-parter, Áhkká (Warm Winters). The Swedish violist pays tribute to the legendary peak massif, dubbed Queen Of Lapland (also known as a holy mountain by Sámi natives), with the steady ascent of Herein and the darkness-turning-to light of Magnitude. Terrifying, sublime – and highly recommended.…

EXPERIMENTAL PROG

SCAPHOID

Prog, metal and much more from Texan multi-instrumentalist. The third album from Scaphoid – aka Austin, Texas native Matt Hobart – is a collection of enticing contrasts and broad sonic palettes. These instrumental songs often juxtapose heavy, drop-tuned riffs against melody lines played with a sparkling, clean guitar tone. There are math rock odd measures and intricate syncopations that can shift into expansive post-rock sections. Gloom boasts a terrific fat, hefty bass line that underpins some impressive soloing, but Hobart always keeps an eye on the underlying melody in his extrapolations. While the arrangements are rich and deep, there are big dynamic shifts in the music and an interest in opening out to explore different moods and textures. Hobart’s range is demonstrated in the space rock of Luna Sangre, the…

SCAPHOID

STEALING THE FIRE

Ideas aplenty from Norfolk prog trio. Norfolk’s Stealing The Fire – vocalist Saffron Paffron, guitarist Tim Lane and keyboardist Chris Bond – are in fine fettle on their third full-length album. There may only be five tracks on A Raven For A Dove, but even the shortest song is just under 10 minutes. Happily, this isn’t a case of overindulgence or a band chasing their own tails in perpetuity. Each track is packed with engaging ideas and shifts in mood and style. The Green Heart And The Summer Queen is a case in point: one of two instrumentals herein, it morphs between full-on prog rock and a swinging jazz feel. Budgetary restrictions mean the guitar and drum tones could be fatter and fuller, but the quality of the compositions and…

STEALING THE FIRE

STRAWBS

STRAWBS

Cousins switches personnel to lay down Cape Town album. With Dave Cousins recently explaining why the recognised line-up of his band don’t appear on this album (and receiving some pushback), it’s a relief to find it feels like – and exhibits most of the strengths and weaknesses of – Strawbs. There are disagreements ongoing with regard to who was asked to participate on The Magic Of It All and who declined. What is for sure is that South African documentary maker Niel van Deventer asked Cousins to record in Cape Town as part of his film about the band. Blue Weaver came over to produce, and John Ford added parts from New York. Strawbs remain well loved in South Africa since the resistance against “the resettlement”, half a century ago,…

LEAH WAYBRIGHT

Piano-playing Earth Mother’s very long-awaited sophomore release. While making a living as a “floral artist” and “storyteller”, this former fashion model from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania is also a pianist and songwriter specialising in Mike Oldfield-influenced instrumental reveries, and although it’s been 24 years since her debut album Beauty Gone Wild was released, she’s kept in touch with some notable musician friends, who assist her on Dreamed. The flute that decorates the Camel-esque opener Candlewink, played by erstwhile Steely Dan and Boz Scaggs sideman Gary Blu, enhances its bucolic feel. The lurched time signature that frames Waybright’s piano on Earth Rattle make for a beguiling sonic framework that’s increasingly enticing, then Blu’s clarinet adds welcome extra flavour. Elsewhere, Happy The Man’s Stan Whitaker and Rick Kennell fill out the sound and offer…

LEAH WAYBRIGHT

ZOPP

Brilliant must-have for Canterbury fans. A chance encounter as a teenager with his dad’s old Egg albums caused Zopp’s Ryan W Stevenson to fall down a Canterbury-shaped rabbit hole. On this follow-up to 2020’s audacious self-titled debut, he’s emerged as a composer of stimulating pieces which acknowledge their debt to the Canterbury scene but thankfully don’t suffer from being, ahem, over-Egged. Each of the seven tracks is crammed with constantly evolving themes, packed with surprising twists, none more so than the bonkers Reality Tunnels. Combining complexity with rich melodies, the album is immensely rewarding with You and Toxicity providing rousingly epic music that’s ambitious in scope and scale. Stevenson handles vocals, keyboards (including fuzzed-up Hammond and overdriven) plus bass, guitar and the occasional frosting of Mellotron, though he’s joined by…

ZOPP

ANDERSON/STOLT

ANDERSON/STOLT

Vinyl remaster for prog bigshots’ sole studio collaboration. On the face of it, this 2016 collaboration between prog pioneers of different generations promised everything and nothing. The project’s uninspiring, legal-firm name suggested a belief that just cutting and shutting two prominent musical figures together would automatically succeed, while the two men barely met during the making of Invention Of Knowledge, as California-based Jon Anderson sent demos for European counterpart Roine Stolt to work on. So what is it that made Invention Of Knowledge a success, and worthy of a slick remaster for this reissue (on transparent orange vinyl)? On the one hand, it’s Anderson’s irrepressible positivity as a writer and performer. In a musical landscape where dark and dystopian visions are routinely awarded greater value and perceived profundity than their…

ANDREW GOLD: THE FRATERNAL ORDER OF THE ALL

ANDREW GOLD: THE FRATERNAL ORDER OF THE ALL

Lonely Boy hitmaker’s love letter-come-pastiche of the summer of love. Just like a comedian delivering a killer punchline, timing is a commodity well prized when it comes to music. Released in 1997, it’s easy to see how singer and producer Andrew Gold’s pastiche of and homage to the sounds of the original psychedelic era fell down the back of rock’s sofa like a misplaced naughty sugar lump. The Beatles were enjoying a new lease of life in the afterglow of their Anthology documentary and attendant albums, the 90s Britpop kids were about to crash in with their own version of the swinging 60s while the neo-psychedelia of Spiritualized was about to peak with the breathtaking Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. With Mike Myers’ Austin Powers movies providing…

MAGNUM

MAGNUM

A ride back to the early days of the Brummie pomp rock veterans. Considering the often magical nature of their music, Magnum deserved better than being tied to hard-nut Black Sabbath manager Don Arden’s Jet Records. The label kept its purse-strings tightly shut, either sitting on their work for extreme lengths of time, as with 1982’s Chase The Dragon, or forcing them to self-produce their records before being quite ready to do so. Eventually, Magnum faked splitting up to escape the label’s clutches. Though an unspoken sense of ‘what if?’ clouds the atmosphere of their five Jet-era albums – four studio and one live – collected in this CD box set, the music itself is, for the most part, outstanding and sometimes even breathtaking. Released as punk waned, 1978’s debut…

STACKRIDGE

STACKRIDGE

Singularly kooky 70s prog-pop heads back. The only band to be described as “quirky” more times than 10cc, Stackridge were a big live draw in the early 70s, but never quite constructed their defining progressive pop album. The charming The Man In The Bowler Hat from 1974 is the closest they came, their manager having sweettalked George Martin into producing it at Air Studios. He decorates the string arrangements with customary elan and there’s a distinct flavour of Sgt. Pepperstyle experimentation to it, yet Stackridge, for better or worse, were never anybody but themselves. Seemingly keener on satire than straight-up rock, here they mix elements of folk, music hall and word games. Yet the precision of the melodies and Martin’s layers of warmth make it more accessible than much of…

THE ARISTOCRATS

VENUE MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, MANCHESTER DATE 17/06/2023 There’s no support act tonight for The Aristocrats, and the show is respectfully sold, but not packed out. Prog is glad to find a comfy spot near the front barrier to vibe to the dance music pounding through the venue for the few minutes before the band take to the stage, even if our pint is lukewarm. It’s difficult not to describe The Aristocrats as a supergroup, when the line-up consists of prog royalty: Guthrie Govan (guitar), Bryan Beller (bass) and Marco Minnemann (drums), but that seems the most apt way of describing what we’re about to witness. As the trio stride nonchalantly onstage, humbly waving and smiling at the cheering crowd, no one in the room has time to brace themselves for…

THE DEAR HUNTER

VENUE THE GARAGE, LONDON DATE 21/06/2023 SUPPORT REDWOOD With eight albums – including five with connected material – behind them, Rhode Islanders The Dear Hunter arrive at The Garage in London off the back of their 2022 concept record Antimai. Whimsical, creative, and funky – all aspects of the band’s personality are at the forefront of this performance, part of their 2023 UK & Europe tour. For those unfamiliar, The Dear Hunter formed in the mid-2000s and kicked off with 2006’s Act I: The Lake South, The River North, a multi-album concept story currently with five acts in total, with a sixth said to be on the way. Supporting the band tonight are Redwood, who are perfectly paired with similar levels of creative flair to the headline act. Theirs is…

What’s on your free Spirit Of Unicorn Music digital album

1 Tomorrow My White Bicycle Taken from Permanent Dream 2 Keith Emerson The Band Keeps Playing Taken from the box set Variations 3 Greg Lake From The Beginning Taken from Songs Of A Lifetime 4 John Wetton Battle Lines Taken from Battle Lines 5 Downes Braide Association Keep On Moving Taken from Celestial Songs 6 Davey Johnstone Melting Snow Taken from Deeper Than My Roots 7 Keith Emerson & Greg Lake C’est La Vie Taken from Live From Manticore Hall 8 Darryl Way Morpheus Taken from The Rock Artist’s Progress 9 District 97 Stay For The Ending Taken from Stay For The Ending 10 Keith Emerson Tarkus Taken from the box set Variations 11 Focus Focus 12 Taken from Completely Focussed 12 John Wetton I’ve Come To Take You Home…

What’s on your free Spirit Of Unicorn Music digital album

TWEET TALK

Follow us on twitter.com/progmagazineUK MARIUSZ DUDA @Marivsz_Riv Over a month off is really good for you. You can properly relax, unwind, go on holiday with your family, visit childhood places, quieten the mind, calm down, gain some distance, and then, with a smile on your face, go back to everyday life and… record a new album:) AVAWAVES @AVAWAVESMUSIC This week we had the last recording session for a project that we have been working on for the last 9 months – it has been such a journey and we feel lucky to have had an amazing team by our side. We can’t wait for you to hear (& see) the results! MUSE @muse Electric energy pulsating through the crowd, as our rhythm and 70,000+ Musers become one. Thank you for…

TWEET TALK

JETHRO TULL TO CONTINUE THEIR REISSUE PROGRAMME

Jethro Tull’s 14th studio album, The Broadsword And The Beast, is the latest of their albums to receive the 40th anniversary deluxe treatment with a new eight-disc CD/DVD version and a four-disc vinyl reissue to be released through Warner Music on September 1. The anniversary packages includes new mixes from Steven Wilson, demos, rough mixes, a 1982 live recording from Germany, and sessions from 1981 with five CDs and three DVDs forming the Monster Edition and the four-disc vinyl version. Also included is a 164-page booklet that tells the story of the album and attendant tour with the band and crew plus an accompanying reproduction tour programme from the 1982 tour. Originally released in 1982, The Broadsword And The Beast featured a distinctive blend of rock, folk and progressive influences…

JETHRO TULL TO CONTINUE THEIR REISSUE PROGRAMME

KEITH EMERSON SALUTED WITH 20-DISC BOX SET

KEITH EMERSON SALUTED WITH 20-DISC BOX SET

Variations, a career-spanning 20-disc box set celebrating the work of Keith Emerson, will be released by Spirit Of Unicorn Music on October 13. The set contains rare early tracks with The T-Bones, music from The Nice and of course Emerson, Lake & Palmer, all of Emerson’s solo albums, his soundtrack work, recent collaborations with conductor Terje Mikkelsen, and a host of live sets featuring previously unavailable material. The set has been curated with the full involvement and blessing of the Emerson family. Speaking of the collection, Aaron Emerson, Keith’s son, adds, “It is with great excitement that we can share all of Dad’s great work, expanding throughout his long career. I hope it gives you as much joy as it has done for all of us.” Variations will be housed…

PROGPOWERUSA RETURNS FOR ITS 23RD EDITION

PROGPOWERUSA RETURNS FOR ITS 23RD EDITION

ProgPowerUSA has announced details of its 23rd edition. Taking place between September 6 and September 9 at the Center Stage Theater in Atlanta, GA, the festival is offering an eclectic mix of prog rock and power metal. This year’s edition features a wide-ranging international line-up that includes Australian progressive metallers Caligula’s Horse, Norway’s Green Carnation, Poverty’s No Crime from Germany and the USA’s own Zero Hour. Also performing at the event are symphonic metal bands Ad Infinitum and Visions Of Atlantis. Co-organiser Glenn Harveston says, “Our festival has established itself as one of the most unique and exciting events for progressive and power metal worldwide.” His colleague Milton Mendonca adds, “This year’s roster calls back to the quintessential blend of genres that made our festival so successful to begin with.…

PROG IN BRIEF

Goat (right) have digitally released the soundtrack to Shane Meadows’ TV series The Gallows Pole. The album includes five brand-new tracks and three previously released songs. More details and information to be found at www.goat.bandcamp.com. Beatrix Players have announced two co-headline gigs with Amanda Lehmann. They play London’s The Water Rats on December 3 and Barlaston Village Hall in Stoke-On-Trent on March 16. Tickets are on sale now at www.beatrixplayers.co.uk. Moody Blues bassist and singer John Lodge has released Days Of Future Passed – MySojourn, his new version of the band’s 1967 classic that he’s recorded with his 10,000 Light Years band. To order a copy, go to www.shop.johnlodge.com.…

PROG IN BRIEF

MONG TONG

MONG TONG

The brothers Hom Yu and Jiun Chi who make up the Taiwanese experimental band Mong Tong are pondering the differences between local and western funerals. “I think some of the funerals here are actually not sad,” ventures Hom Yu. “Okay, somebody’s passed away, but it’s a celebration of a life, so we should be happy.” Mong Tong aren’t a morbid band. The duo, who formed in Taipei in 2017, revel in the many positive aspects of Taiwanese culture by recording them and using the results within their music. These elements include weddings, celebrations and funerals, all of which carry festive aspects about them. It’s not exactly musique concrète, and it does owe some of its technical execution to some other unlikely sources. “We’ve been influenced by the production of hip…

Official Progressive Albums Chart

The prog top 30 albums July 2023 Compiled by 1 MUSE Will Of The People (WARNER/HELIUM-3) 2 BIG BIG TRAIN Ingenious Devices (ENGLISH ELECTRIC RECORDINGS) 3 ROGER WATERS The Lockdown Sessions (SONY MUSIC) 4 SIGUR RÓS Átta (BMG) 5 SWANS Beggar (MUTE) 6 MIKE OLDFIELD Tubular Bells – 50th Anniversary Edition (UMC) 7 FRANK ZAPPA Funky Nothingness (UMC) 8 YES Mirror To The Sky (INSIDEOUT) 9 KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD PetroDragonic Apocalypse (KGLW) 10 PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING Inform Educate Entertain (TEST CARD) 11 PINK FLOYD Animals (2018 Remix) (PINK FLOYD RECORDS/RHINO) 12 JETHRO TULL RökFlöte (INSIDEOUT) 13 POLYPHIA Remember That You Will Die (RISE) 14 TAME IMPALA Lonerism (FICTION) 15 HAWKWIND The Future Never Waits (CHERRY RED) 16 MYSTERY Redemption (UNICORN DIGITAL) 17 HAWKWIND Warrior On The Edge…

Official Progressive Albums Chart

THE ANCHORET

“THIS WAS A ONE-MAN project in the beginning,” Eduard Levitsky explains, when Prog asks about the theme of loneliness that runs through The Anchoret’s debut album, It All Began With Loneliness. “I built the band to connect with other people through the internet and have a bit of collaboration.” Levitsky had just relocated to a new city in early 2020 when the world around him began to change, and it hit him hard. “I was in a new town,” he explains. “I still felt like a stranger in a strange world.” He had a vision of combining genres and creating a bridge between the prog world, which he enjoyed growing up, and the metal world. “With that vision, I started putting pen to paper, one thing led to another and…

THE ANCHORET

Filling The Empty Spaces – EIGHT YEARS THAT CHANGED PINK FLOYD FOREVER

Filling The Empty Spaces – EIGHT YEARS THAT CHANGED PINK FLOYD FOREVER

In 1980, Pink Floyd took to the stage at Earls Court, the cavernous 18,000-seater exhibition centre in west London. Booked for six nights in early August, the group performed a show that systematically parodied the very notion of an arena concert, introduced by an over-the-top MC, before sending four musicians onstage wearing Pink Floyd life masks; a surrogate band, proving that audiences at that distance could actually be watching anything. If that wasn’t enough to emphasise the dislocation, a physical wall was built between artist and audience made of 450 cardboard bricks. The Wall became Floyd conceptualist Roger Waters’ most complex idea, a reaction to the general isolation in his role as conflicted multi-millionaire socialist, but specifically at the dislocation he felt as his group played live to ever bigger,…

Dance To The Music

Dance To The Music

Progressive rock can take musicians to all kinds of unexpected places, but it rarely requires them to put on their dancing shoes. Back in 2021, Ring Van Möbius were contentedly beavering away in the studio in their native Norway, working on the follow-up to The 3rd Majesty, the band’s second full-length that was released the previous year. Then, from nowhere, opportunity knocked. “After we finished the last album, we figured we’d just continue with new material, which is always refreshing to do,” explains vocalist/keyboard maestro Thor Erik Helgesen. “You can start all over again and get creative, throwing the ideas out there. We were nearly finished with the sketches for the next album, when this guy Harald Beharie approached us, and he asked if we could make some music for…

Rebel Rousers

Rebel Rousers

“I suppose it will turn some people off. It’s not a typical prog album. It’s not Yes or Genesis. But it’s not a metal album either. The concept is the 70s!” Arjen Lucassen chooses his words carefully. But, as always, the towering Dutch prog rocker is spot on. We’re discussing The Golden Age Of Music, the debut album from Arjen Lucassen’s Supersonic Revolution, a new quintet Lucassen has put together to celebrate an era of music that has left an indelible mark on the musician: the 70s. However this time there’s a difference. Unlike the long list of projects that Lucassen has delighted prog fans with over the years – Ayreon, Guilt Machine, Star One, The Gentle Storm, Stream Of Passion, Ambeon – Supersonic Revolution feels different. True, as Lucassen…

Read All About It!

Read All About It!

A cancer diagnosis, that pandemic, a broken arm… the odds were stacked against The Fierce And The Dead’s new album, News From The Invisible World, from the get-go. “Everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” guitarist Matt Stevens reflects. “But in many ways it gave us a focus and gave us time to really put things under a microscope. And I think the music became a thing that gives a bit of hope for the future, and something that really meant a lot to all of us.” There was not just change in the genre-defying quartet’s personal lives, though. The album – their fourth – features vocals; yes, after more than 10 years of instrumentals, The Fierce And The Dead are now stepping in front of the microphone. That…

Stories To Thrill And Terrify

Stories To Thrill And Terrify

It all began with a book that, like a faded, wrinkled treasure map discovered in a dusty attic, inspired Michael Whiteman and I Am The Manic Whale to undertake their latest musical adventure. The quartet’s fourth and latest album, Bumper Book Of Mystery Stories, grew out of Whiteman’s love of tales of the uncanny, inspired by the 1963 The Boys’ Life Book Of Mystery Stories. “I found a copy of that in a spooky, dusty second-hand bookshop when I was a teenager,” says Whiteman. “It’s probably a bit dated now but I’ve always loved reading ghost stories and spooky stories. I found the book again a couple of years ago, re-read it and thought this would be a great theme for an album. We already had a couple of songs…

VOYAGER

VOYAGER

prog.reviews@futurenet.com Whether it’s serendipity at work or simply good planning ahead, the arrival of Voyager’s eighth album hot on the heels of their appearance at Eurovision seems like a case of striking while the iron is in the fire. So, is Fearless In Love the album that can help the band cross over to a wider, dare we say mainstream, audience? It certainly possesses plenty of qualities that should appeal beyond the borders of the prog world, with its big choruses and accessible melodies, but those are balanced out by fiery guitar solos and slamming breakdowns. One common criticism of progressive rock is that the genre has become retrospective, forever harking back to its heyday of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The birth of the form was a reaction…

BIG BIG TRAIN

Keepers of the classic prog flame mourn and regroup on five-track EP. Though this revisit of BBT’s much-loved, technology-themed epics – East Coast Racer, Brooklands and Voyager – might at first seem superfluous, Ingenious Devices is a completely valid staging post prior to the release of the band’s new album proper in 2024. Re-recorded from scratch save for David Longdon’s original vocals, these new incarnations of those three gems are ornamented with a 17-piece string section recorded at Abbey Road, lending an elegiac quality as the band pay tribute to Longdon, who died suddenly in November 2021. Also featuring Longdon’s successor Alberto Bravin on a stunning live version of Atlantic Cable from September 2022, Ingenious Devices signals that Big Big Train’s expressive, inherently musical virtuosity is not easily derailed (East…

BIG BIG TRAIN

DREAM THE ELECTRIC SLEEP

The prog trio’s fifth LP is a fun and fiery time. Dream The Electric Sleep’s terrific 2017 album Beneath The Dark Wide Sky was always going to be difficult to surpass, yet they do just that with American Mystic. Prelude And The Buried Rise delights by mixing the divine chants of Yes and Circa with the cosmic trickiness of Rush and Sound Of Contact. It segues seamlessly into Beyond Repair, too, combining those aggressive prog rock tendencies with pop-rock exuberance. While that formula steers some of what remains – particularly, the fast and melodic Love Letters – the band do a great job spicing things up as well. Forged In The Furnace and After The Fallout see the trio tapping into largely softer and sparser ballads, whereas The Lessons They…

DREAM THE ELECTRIC SLEEP

OUTLANDERS

OUTLANDERS

Tarja Turunen enlists A-list guitarists for electronic side-project. Eighteen years after her departure from Nightwish, people still have certain ideas about Tarja Turunen, reducing her to one character: the symphonic metal diva. But as the debut album from this largely electronic, often instrumental project co-masterminded with German EDM producer/composer Torsten Stenzel (Tubular Beats) reflects, there’s more to her than basques and bombast. A unique marriage of electronic atmospheres. Outlanders’ roots go back almost 20 years. Back in 2005 Turunen was invited to sing on a record by the electronic artist Schiller, from which an enduring relationship with electronic music began. A few years later, contemplating the lack of guitar solos in her own records, she came across Alan Parsons’ electronics-heavy album A Valid Path – specifically, the two tracks featuring…

THE HOLY FAMILY

A concentrated slab of psychedelic mysticism from ex-Guapo veterans. The second album from The Holy Family feels like both a distillation and intensification of their visceral, ritualistic trance rock. Yet there’s also a sense of emerging from darkness into light, and a journey having been completed by its end. Led by David J Smith, and featuring such luminaries as Kavus Torabi, Emmett Elvin and Thumpermonkey’s Sam Warren, THF are essentially a reconfiguration of Guapo, whose 2004’s Five Suns album is an avant-prog landmark – yet while Guapo could shoot off in multiple directions, THF are about developing a theme and building hypnotic layers of sound. Bad Travelling sets the scene, evil synth, bubbling elemental voices and dizzying arpeggios conjuring the advance of some dread forest army. The rumbling Iron Age…

THE HOLY FAMILY

LIFESIGNS

Contemporary symphonic prog maestros’ near-perfect live document. Lifesigns’ three contrasting, yet equally sublime, studio albums have set a high bar for 21st-century prog. But does the English band’s involved and multi-layered arrangements, entrancing melodies and top flight musicianship – all blessed with lush production – translate from the studio to the stage? The self-explanatory Live In The Netherlands proves that it does. And then some. Recorded on one night at De Boerderij in the Dutch city of Zoetermeer, this presents the full Lifesigns live experience. There are so many great moments and stirring tunes here that it’s hard to cherry-pick, but the jazz fusion-leaning intro of opener N, Dave Bainbridge’s guitar soloing on Altitude and Last One Home, the achingly beautiful early sections of Ivory Tower, the power prog-pop of…

LIFESIGNS

MAUD THE MOTH + TRAJEDESALIVA

Stunning musical biography of surrealist painter Remedios Varo. A concept album based on the life of exiled Spanish artist Remedios Varo, Bordando El Manto Terrestre is a stunning collaboration between Maud The Moth (aka Spanish singer and multi-instrumentalist Amaya López-Carromero), dark ambient duo Trajedesaliva and Scottish producer Scott McLean. Sung in Spanish, this is a deeply moving and affecting set of songs that overcome the hurdle of language barrier by way of incredibly creative instrumentation and López-Carromero’s mesmerising voice. Varo’s art was informed by an interest in psychology, science and the occult, and the beguiling music contained here recreates and reflects those topics. Cuerpo De Gato is built on layers of haunting drones as the spoken-word lyrics recount Varo’s claim of transmuting into a cat. Perdi Pie sees López-Carromero deploy…

MAUD THE MOTH + TRAJEDESALIVA

VIVIAN STANSHALL

VIVIAN STANSHALL

Long-lost final album from late national treasure. Vivian Stanshall has been dead for 28 years but he’s having a fine 2023 so far. In March, members of Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The Rutles and The Mekons marked what would have been his 80th birthday at Islington’s Union Chapel with an emotional bash filled with musical comedy. He’s on the radar again thanks to Tubular Bells’ 50th anniversary – Stanshall played the part of the MC on that album and inadvertently gave it its title when he intoned the titular words in his famously fruity delivery – a moment that clearly chimed with Mike Oldfield. And Rawlinson’s End – perhaps his finest creation – returns for a final instalment on a double LP, released in tandem with arguably something even more…

SOEN

Big sound but few surprises on Swedish prog metallers’ sixth album. Soen will be hurriedly hot-footing their way up more rungs of the ladder towards mainstream metal acceptance with Memorial, but what does that mean for prog fans? Their last studio release, Imperial, put clear water between those early Tool comparisons and lazy links to drummer Martin Lopez’s old associates Opeth. Memorial finds the left-leaning metallers in fine fettle, but adventurism feels at a minimum. Sure, the album wraps up with the surprise ballad Vitals, an expertly formed chunk of heart-tugging lucidity amid the distorted bombast, but elsewhere there are few surprises. Opener Sincere is a fun romp worthy of gracing an arena, while lead single Unbreakable is high on hooks as skilful singer Joel Ekelöf struts his stuff. Then…

SOEN

STELLAR CIRCUITS

US tech/prog metallers’ second album delivers on all fronts. Opening an album with a screamed rap over a tapped bass riff in 9/8 will prompt some to instantly hit the ‘stop’ button. But for those looking for something a little less abrasive, patience is a virtue. On their second album, North Carolina’s Stellar Circuits deliver a smörgåsbord of sharp, pointed riffs, aggressive hooks and, in equal measure, airy refrains and sugary, twisting turns. Their palette is broad yet effortlessly balanced. Pleasure Cruise takes a prog metal thump, all bass and kick grooves, and counterbalances it with an earworm chorus that draws from alt-rock and arena bands. Jesse Olsen’s snake-like bass grooves lead the way on an introspective For The Birds, offering a complex ballad that’s a world away from the…

STELLAR CIRCUITS

DEVIN TOWNSEND

The latest in the prog metal magus’ Devolution series. Even before its Covid-related derailment, the 2020 North American tour Townsend undertook in support of his 2019 album Empath was unique. Featuring a pared-down incarnation of his formidable Order Of Magnitude band, it was a raw, spontaneous affair, the nightly setlist partly assembled in real time according to audience whims, and performed with joyous gusto by Townsend and company. “Everything’s terrifying lately, right?” says Townsend at the top, before citing “listening to metal and telling your mom you love her” as possible cures. Between-songs banter is a speciality, but the main pull of this mostly Montreal and Boston-recorded LP is of course the dazzling, heavy-riffing theatricality of Townsend’s music: here including such firm fan favourites as Supercrush! and operatic sci-fi stomper…

DEVIN TOWNSEND

TUSMØRKE

Madcap Norsemen get back to winning ways on 11th album. Tusmørke are at their most effective when they’ve got their groove on. The prolific prog four-piece lost some momentum on last year’s Intetnett, which was packed with 21 unsatisfying vignettes. Lessons have been learned on Hestehoven (the Norwegian name of a hardy perennial that herbalists use to treat gout). Their 11th album is a bawdy, Norwegian-language concept record about randy sorcerers enjoying an orgy of Dionysian excess on tracks like The Wicked Ways Of Witches And Wizards, marrying frantic flute and harpsichord to a rhythm track undoubtedly influenced by Turkish psyche. Cycle Of The Gylfaginning is similarly ebullient, propelled along by a pinging ride cymbal and yet more enchanted flute ostinatos. There’s still room for silliness elsewhere – the title…

TUSMØRKE

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST

Veteran multi-instrumentalist/producer Max Hunt’s CV includes work with Steve Howe, Jon Anderson and Fish, and these elements and more come together on Music From The Void (bit.ly/maxhunt). His absorbing, proggy and regularly beautiful musical interpretation of Tolkien’s creation story Ainulindalë is also one for fans of Steve Hackett, maybe Chris Squire’s solo work. Hunt’s layered vocals are literally enchanting, and the mystical atmosphere – by turns ominous and celestial – is expertly evoked in cinematic style. He more than does right by his source material here. Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso founders Vittorio and Gianni Nocenzi contribute to Prog Will Never Die (Universal Music Italia/Progressivamente), the second album from The Divae Project. Featuring keyboardist Davide Pistoni and a host of high-calibre Italian prog musicians, this highly satisfying pure-prog set features a…

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST

KEVIN AYERS

KEVIN AYERS

Ayers’ long-unavailable 1988 LP remastered and reissued. Like many psych prog artists who came to the fore in the 60s and 70s, former Soft Machine man Kevin Ayers had a testing relationship with the 80s. He would subsequently disown solo LPs such as 1980’s That’s What You Get Babe and 1983’s Diamond Jack And The Queen Of Pain, works somewhat hamstrung by nascent digital tech, and which producers shaped according to their vision, not that of Ayers. Recorded in Madrid, Spain, with the great man commuting in from the remote farmhouse where he was living in Deia, Mallorca, Falling Up saw Ayers grasp the creative reins again after scoring a new deal with Virgin Records. Working closely with pal and former Patto/The Rutles guitar ace Peter ‘Ollie’ Halsall and gifted…

CARDIACS

CARDIACS

Lavish reissue of debut studio album by much-loved British misfits. Right from Cardiacs’ inception at the end of the 70s, listeners who inadvertently stumbled across their music could feel as if a wonderful, precious secret was being revealed. Operating in the margins of punk, prog and psychedelia, Cardiacs forged an absurdly unique path, both musically and aesthetically; their song shapes were obtuse, their melodic and harmonic approach extraordinary, their appearance grotesque. Anyone with an appreciation of British eccentricity would have been drawn into their orbit, and over a series of singles, EPs, cassettes and explosive live performances, their fanbase grew. By 1987, the secret of Cardiacs was becoming hard to keep. Perhaps, after nearly a decade of chaotic activity, it was time for them to make a proper album (whatever…

HAWKWIND

HAWKWIND

Steven Wilson’s emboldening 2013 remix gets a belated vinyl release. Much like the debate surrounding the inexorable rise of Artificial Intelligence, the vexed question arising from the remixing of classic and not-so-classic albums shows absolutely no signs of abating, or indeed the practice coming to an end any time soon. And with pretty much every band from The Beatles down having worked or are working their way through their back catalogue, this is one genie that ain’t going back into its bottle. Steven Wilson’s magic touch is in evidence in the mix. Steven Wilson’s remix of Hawkwind’s fifth album will already be familiar to anyone who bought the three-CD reissue 10 years ago and to a great number of people – this writer included – it’s become the go-to mix.…

RICHARD WRIGHT

RICHARD WRIGHT

Pink Floyd keyboardist’s underrated solo debut remixed. When it was originally released in 1978, credited to Richard Wright, Wet Dream was largely ignored by all but the most hardcore Pink Floyd fans. That’s a pity because plenty of the keyboard player and sometime vocalist’s debut solo album has much in common with so many familiar songs. Scattered throughout are numerous Floydian references including the uplifting chorus of Echoes, The Great Gig In The Sky’s gentle chordal embrace, and the doppler-shift notes Wright added so effectively to Dogs. Some of it has much in common with many familiar Floyd tunes. This musical déjà vu is no surprise, given his musical identity and harmonic sensibilities were an integral component of what made Floyd interesting. But his regular band were more than just…

PORCUPINE TREE

PORCUPINE TREE

VENUE CASTLEFIELD BOWL, MANCHESTER DATE 29/06/2023 SUPPORT MAGMA In the concrete of the Castlefield Bowl, beneath the shadow of timeworn railway bridges, tonight’s show carries a sense of celebration and relief. It’s been 13 years since Porcupine Tree’s conspicuous hiatus and 14 since they last performed in the city. Despite guitarist John Wesley and bassist Colin Edwin not being part of the reunion, and replacement bassist Nate Navarro forced away from the tour due to a family emergency, the joy of having the band back onstage, in any form at all, remains palpable. It’s difficult to gauge Magma’s set from the brief encounter that Prog gets, but talking to the crowd, the band remain as divisive as ever. Its 11 members close out with a thick slew of heady rhythms…

ROGER WATERS

VENUE THE O2 ARENA, LONDON DATE 06/06/2023 “Do your research, you…” Roger Waters pauses as he tries to find the word to sum up his feelings towards Bury South MP Christian Wakeford, who claimed incorrectly in the House of Commons recently that the former Pink Floyd singer and bassist had “dressed as an SS soldier” and used a Star Of David on the side of an inflatable pig at a recent concert in Berlin. Shaking with rage, Waters digs deep within himself for his counterpunch. “You cripple!” he spits. Oh. And there you have it. With just one simple word Waters adds ‘ableism’ to all the other ‘isms’, ‘ists’ and ‘tics’ that are regularly aimed at him from his many detractors. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. His…

ROGER WATERS

PAT METHENY

VENUE THE PAVILION AT RAVINIA, HIGHLAND PARK, IL, USA DATE 20/06/2023 It’s a cool spring evening in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. A respectable crowd has gathered under the outdoor venue’s pavilion, with more than a few others filling the lawn, snacking from their picnic baskets and enjoying a sip or two of wine. Regardless of positioning, we’re all about to spend the night in the presence of a legend. It’s hard to imagine guitarist Pat Metheny as one of jazz’s elder statesmen until one considers that he released his first solo album nearly 50 years ago. But make no mistake – he’s about to prove to us why he’s still relevant on the music scene today. Metheny makes his way to the stage right on schedule, takes…

Ed’s Letter

Hello, and welcome to the new issue of Prog magazine. I trust this finds you well. I don’t think there’s any doubt that 1973 was a momentous year for Pink Floyd. Not only did they release the groundbreaking The Dark Side Of The Moon, which would go on to sell more than 45 million copies and spend over 981 weeks on the US album charts, but they also performed two massive shows at London’s Earls Court exhibition centre in May of that year, changing the course of the band. Suddenly Pink Floyd were all about bigger and bigger live shows, more conceptual records and the ever-increasing influence of Roger Waters. By the time the band performed The Wall, also at Earls Court in 1980, they were a very different band.…

Ed’s Letter

THE RETURN OF TREVOR RABIN

THE RETURN OF TREVOR RABIN

Trevor Rabin has revealed the debt of gratitude he owes to his wife, Shelley May, as he prepares to release his new studio album, Rio, on October 6 via InsideOut. This, his sixth solo album, is the first collection of vocal-led material from the South African-born, multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer since Can’t Look Away in 1989. It also makes a marked detour from his celebrated film score work. His previous solo album, 2012’s Jacaranda, was an instrumental affair. “There was quite a lot of pressure to make a record like this, and those demands have bordered upon insult – largely from my wife,” Rabin tells Prog. “She told me, ‘Fuck the films, get your own record done.’ So I owe a lot of the credit to her.” Since leaving Yes…

TESSERACT’S NEW ALBUM AND TOUR

TESSERACT’S NEW ALBUM AND TOUR

British heavy prog favourites TesseracT have announced their first studio album in five years. War Of Being comes out on September 15 via Kscope and will be followed by an extensive world tour. Its lead single, the 11-minute title track, is currently streaming. “War Of Being is one of our most diverse records,” vocalist Dan Tompkins tells Prog. “We’ve learned a lot over the past few album cycles about finding an accessible and exciting way of writing songs for our audience, which is quite widespread. We don’t want to alienate anyone and we want to stay true to ourselves.” Lyrically, War Of Being is TesseracT’s first concept album. Its nine songs are about two characters, Ex and El, who crash-land on an alien world and embark on separate journeys. According…

POMEGRANATE TIGER ENDS HIATUS

POMEGRANATE TIGER ENDS HIATUS

Following an eight-year hiatus, prog metal fusion artist Pomegranate Tiger will release his third album, All Input Is Error, independently on September 8. The new record from multi-instrumentalist Martin Andres’ solo project follows a near-decade period of touring and writing as part of other people’s projects. As such, the 10-track sees Andres building on his experiences supporting Devin Townsend, Gojira and Children Of Bodom as part of Canadian prog metallers Oni, and working with Animals As Leaders guitarist Javier Reyes. Now Andres has returned to his own music with fresh energy. “Pomegranate Tiger has become my own selfish artistic fascination with myself and my most immediate interests,” says Andres. “Everything about this record is mine; I don’t have to deal with any other opinions, be that creatively or with the…

FAD GADGETS

AERODRUMS 2 We featured the first iteration of Aerodrums eight years ago. Our correspondent (me) was excited to convert his air drumming into real sound, thanks to a Sony Playstation 3 camera plugged into a Mac, fluorescent-tipped sticks and reflective footpads. My enjoyment was hampered by practical restrictions: you could only use it low light, or the camera couldn’t pick up the movement of the sticks. That’s been solved in this new version, which comes with a powerful camera and doesn’t even require a computer to work. Gigging drummers rejoice! It’ll fit in your glove compartment (although you’ll still look a bit ridiculous). www.aerodrums.com REBIRTH REBORN Back in the bad old days when your average PC or Mac struggled to process audio, the arrival of ReBirth was a thrill. A…

FAD GADGETS

OSYRON

OSYRON

CANADIAN PROGRESSIVE METAL quintet Osyron really didn’t leave themselves much wriggle room when they decided to call their fourth album Momentous. Fortunately, these residents of Calgary, Alberta genuinely seem to have struck upon a new, potentially game-changing formula. While owing plenty to the hallowed likes of Dream Theater and Symphony X, Momentous also harnesses the cutting-edge heaviness of post-TesseracT metal and a strong sense of old-school prog ebb and flow. As a result, Momentous lived up to its title with ease when it emerged in November 2022. “We’ve always tried to stay melodic and within the realm of hooks and melody,” says vocalist Reed Alton. “But then we’ve also tried to get darker and heavier. Over the last two releases [Momentous and 2020’s Foundations], we’ve really just focused more on…

PROG IN BRIEF

Norwegian prog jazz trio Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns (right) are to release their debut album Weejuns on September 8 via Rune Grammofon. Recorded live, the record will be available on double vinyl. See www.bit.ly/hedvig_mollestad. Prog metallers Soen will play London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire on October 13 in support of their new album, Memorial, which is released on September 1 via Silver Lining Music. The show is part of a 26-date European tour. See www.soenmusic.com.…

PROG IN BRIEF

WIN! EXCLUSIVE ASIA VINYL SET

WIN! EXCLUSIVE ASIA VINYL SET

When Asia launched in 1981, they become one of the biggest supergroups of the 80s. Featuring John Wetton, Steve Howe, Geoff Downes and Carl Palmer, they went on to score a massive hit with Heat Of The Moment and perform all around the world. Although their line-up fluctuated over the following years, the original formation reunited in 2006 and released Phoenix two years later. That first reunion album has just been released as a special-edition two-LP set and we have one of these, plus an extremely rare test pressing of the album, to give away to one lucky reader. This recent release finds Phoenix on vinyl for the very first time and this special edition contains the sprawling Sleeping Giant as well as An Extraordinary Life – also the title…

IHLO

IHLO

FEW BANDS CAN state that their origins lie in memes, but without these viral images, British prog metallers Ihlo may not exist. “Back in 2016 I was posting a lot of memes on Facebook groups,” says vocalist and keyboardist Andy Robertson, “and I was also using it as an opportunity to share some of my music. Phil [Monro, guitars] saw some of those posts – he liked both kinds – and after a few messages we decided to collaborate together.” “As soon as I heard Andy’s vocals on my demos, I knew we had something,” Monro returns. What was initially intended to be a two-man, studio-only project, quickly got serious. With the help of drummer Clark McMenemy, whom Robertson knew through social- and meme-based circles, the trio spent the next…

THE SPACE CADET GLOW: LIVE TOP 10

1. 14 HOUR TECHNICOLOR DREAM, ALEXANDRA PALACE, LONDON, APRIL 1967 Where the first tranche of Floyd fans felt they’d sold out, moving from the confines of All Saints Hall in Powis Gardens and the UFO in Tottenham Court Road to be part of the multi-artist happening in Muswell Hill. Captured on film by Peter Whitehead as part of Tonite, Let’s All Make Love In London, Floyd appeared at the end of the show, as the Sunday sun rose across the capital, and with it, their role as underground house band of choice was secure. 2. GAMES FOR MAY, QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL, LONDON, MAY 1967 Probably the group’s most famous early concert, Games For May was immortalised in song by Syd Barrett on the Floyd’s first Top 10 single, See Emily…

THE SPACE CADET GLOW: LIVE TOP 10

The Voyage Beyond Eurovision

The Voyage Beyond Eurovision

It’s early June when Prog video-calls Voyager frontman Danny Estrin, guitarist Simone Dow and bassist/singer Alex Canion, and the trio are midway through being smashed back into reality. This time last month, the Perth-based band (rounded out by drummer Ashley Doodkorte and Dow’s co-guitarist Scott Kay) were jet-setting in luxury. They were traipsing across Europe and getting interviewed by countless glossy magazines, all part of the run-up to them representing Australia to more than 160 million TV viewers live at the Eurovision Song Contest. Now they’re back home – and getting hammered by a storm so violent that it routinely wipes out their internet connection and freaks out Canion’s dog, Seamus. “We played the WA Day festival [in Perth] yesterday,” Dow tells us, camera off to put less stress on…

The Music Begins Here

It’s been five years since Soft Machine released their last studio album, Hidden Details. That’s a rather leisurely pace compared to back in the 70s, when bands signed to major record labels found themselves under a contractual obligation to put out at least one, sometimes two records a year. These days, operating in the independent sector, those kinds of external demands have all but disappeared. Nevertheless there are other pressures and considerations to take into account, according to John Etheridge, Soft Machine guitarist and de facto leader of the group. “I was personally very keen to get this album done because I really felt it was our last chance to have John Marshall in the studio,” he says, speaking about the drummer he first worked with in Soft Machine after…

The Music Begins Here

Mystery Lessons

Mystery Lessons

Michel St-Père is obviously a very happy man, thrilled to have finally released Mystery’s latest album, Redemption – which, despite the global events of the last three years, has exceeded all his expectations in terms of pre-sales and rave reviews. “The comments about it are all positive so far and the pre-sale went really well. It’s been our best ever, so I think the fans did not forget about us during the past four years,” enthuses Mystery’s founder, guitarist, composer and producer. “We’re very happy about this, especially as we have sold a lot of the records in the UK.” From beginning to end, Redemption is another Mystery masterclass in how to channel influences from classic British prog and US AOR, elevating them into panoramic symphonic soundscapes, full of moments…

Far Beyond The Lighted Stage

Far Beyond The Lighted Stage

“We were cognisant of the fact that this could get crazy,” says M Shadows about his band’s genrediverse new album. Despite their status as torchbearers for the next generation of heavy metal stadium-fillers, Avenged Sevenfold first revealed their interest in colouring outside the lines on 2016’s The Stage, which ventured into prog metal territory. However, Life Is But A Dream… goes above and way beyond anything they’ve done before. “As we started the writing, we were really attracted to the music that was making us feel uncomfortable or things that would throw you off-kilter,” says Shadows. The album moves from metal riffs to lullabies, techno and industrial to lounge music, often within the space of a single song. “We had this philosophy where we didn’t want to stay anywhere too…

HAUNT THE WOODS

HAUNT THE WOODS

UK four-piece deliver stellar, shape-shifting second album. The West Country has always felt like another world, in the best possible way. Its history, its dialects, its legends, its music – it sits in the UK geographically, but outside of it in many other ways. The second album from Haunt The Woods – formed by four self-professed “Cornish hippies” currently based across the Tamar in Plymouth – is imbued with that otherness. Not in a ‘which ley line did I leave my piskie on?’ way, but in the manner that it sits slightly apart from the influences of folk, prog and alternative rock that it draws on. A beautifully strange album, familiar yet different. Ubiquity is steeped in drama and grandeur, but it feels tethered to a very specific point on…

DORIS BRENDEL & LEE DUNHAM

British duo deliver classy album with some surprising twists and turns. Five albums into their recording partnership, Doris Brendel and Lee Dunham have carved a niche for themselves. By applying alternative/madcap/steampunk patinas to what’s fundamentally a catalogue of classic rock-inclined, prog-adjacent music that’s sometimes embellished with unexpected instrumentation and genre influences, they’re not too “odd” for good-time rock fans, yet not so mainstream as to alienate proggers. Pigs Might Fly continues in a similar vein to 2020’s well-received Mass Hysteria – great tunes with foundations solidly in hard and heavy rock such as Better The Devil You Know and Rock And A Hard Place, as well as slow and sultry – Good Deed Of The Day – and the spacious yet powerful ballad Still Waters, which showcases Brendel’s extraordinary, husky…

DORIS BRENDEL & LEE DUNHAM

CELESTIAL NORTH

The arrival of a major new talent. While most albums take a few listens to reveal their treasures or lack thereof, the debut record from Scottish singer and multi-instrumentalist Celestial North (which may or may not be her real name) is an instant joy. Ethereal, haunting and with a beauty shrouded by mystery, this is a statement of seductive intent. Her relocation to the Lake District is in full evidence, for this is an album that embraces both the splendour of nature and the danger that lies within it. It wastes no time in setting out its stall early as gloriously enigmatic vocals blend seamlessly with skittering rhythms and fully rounded synth pulses on the title track. This is music that takes flight and surveys the vistas surrounding it. The…

CELESTIAL NORTH

HEATWAVES

Norwegians bring the heady summer vibes on chilled debut. Jazz prog can be a wilfully knotty, tricky beast, but Bergen’s Heatwaves smooth out its thornier edges on their impressive debut album Kappa. Closer in spirit to late 80s/early 90s acid jazz than it is to Mahavishnu Orchestra or UK, it’s a languid affair that mixes deep grooves and breakbeats with gauzy psychedelia and the whiff of hipster folk (the title Kappa itself could equally refer to the Greek letter or the Italian sportswear brand popular with so-called ‘acid casuals’ and actor Samuel L Jackson). Like Tame Impala’s similarly frictionless The Slow Rush, there are no sharp corners here. Everything is wrapped in the kind of heat haze the band’s name suggests: Dirty Rats and Hercule Poirot ebb and flow, taking…

HEATWAVES

IO EARTH

Genre-straddling Midlanders’ sixth album fine-tunes the winning formula. IO Earth have long drawn on diverse sounds in constructing their music, the breadth of those sounds reflecting the ebb and flow of the songs’ moods rather than dictating them. Outside, the opening track of their sixth album, is a fine example, building tension with faintly new age Spanish guitar patterns before the imploring tones of returning Linda Odinsen (back after returning to her native Norway in 2016) become haunted by an increasingly menacing backing vocal whisper and malevolent guitar riffs, then the piece lifts off into pulse-racing bombastic territory redolent of symphonic metal. Similar levels of melodrama are employed on the title track, blended with crackling electronic drums. Then noodling, noirish slithers of synth suggest something weirder is afoot, and a…

IO EARTH

SIGUR RÓS

SIGUR RÓS

Icelanders return with surfeit of slow serenity. Górecki’s Symphony No.3 (better known as Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs), as played by the London Sinfonietta in 1991, was the best-selling contemporary classical record across the 90s. In 1994, Sigur Rós formed in Reykjavík, first signing with the Sugarcubes-owned label Bad Taste. Now that Sigur Rós have become a signifier of high-class good taste, their eighth album – Átta is Icelandic for eight – indisputably shares its mood and DNA with Górecki’s fusion of the avant-garde and the tear-jerking. It’d be daft to say it was on the same level, but structurally it whispers and murmurs, keeping its powder dry until, with a cathartic release, it lets out its tension like a storm breaking after much quietly stressful humidity. Which is, frankly, just…

PAT METHENY

Missouri guitar maestro goes solo. Touring involves long stretches of empty time between gigs and lots of ‘hurry up and wait’ on show days. Delving into a hard drive as he shuttled between cities and venues during 2020, Pat Metheny discovered a file stuffed full of tunes and ideas that he’d recorded over the years but had forgotten all about. Listening to them after all this time was a pleasant surprise. “I found that I had unintentionally gotten to a destination I had not planned for,” he says of his decision to release a compilation of that folder’s contents. Mixing original pieces and one or two standards, Metheny leans into his gentle side, conjuring a sequence of whispered tales, impressionistic twilights and thoughtful reflections that evince the ennui of long-distance…

PAT METHENY

EDWARD REEKERS

Ex-Kayak frontman delivers portentous concept piece. Best known for two stints as frontman with Dutch prog stalwarts Kayak, Edward Reekers has also popped up in many of Arjen Lucassen’s projects. His fourth solo album (and the first in more than 15 years) is the two-disc The Liberty Project – a full-on rock musical/concept album with a narrative built around a love story framed against a world in turmoil, with contributions from a range of weighty names including Damian Wilson, Steve Hackett and fellow Kayak alumni Cindy Oudshoorn. Although undeniably a rock tour de force, there’s much variety here. An effective juxtaposition is created by the lyrical Two Lifetimes, which features an impressive vocal from Oudshoorn and reveals Reekers to have an ear for big Disney-style ballads, and The Disease’s fantastic…

EDWARD REEKERS

SOM IMAGINÁRIO

Newly uncovered 1976 concert of cult Brazilian jazz/proggers. When this Brazilian quintet were busily sifting through an engaging mix of native folk, rock, psychedelia and jazz in the 1970s, they did so under the baleful gaze of a military junta who mostly viewed non-approved music as tantamount to sedition. Opening with a parody of an army march, they push at those limits to subvert the military two-step with a raucous solo tenor sax. The band feature Wagner Tiso, whose keyboards make a decisive contribution across Wayne Shorter’s Brazilian-infused solo album, Native Dancer, recorded two years before this live show. Unsurprisingly, Tiso’s supple playing is well to the fore on A Igreja Majestosa and the truly progtastic Armina, along with frantic guitar and rasping sax that sounds like an intense collision…

SOM IMAGINÁRIO

PROGRESSIVE FOLK

Nashville-based Spencer Cullum won admirers everywhere with his debut album, Coin Collection, a delightful condensation of rock and new wave influences from his improbable Romford upbringing, all made skilfully folky. Now there’s Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 2 (Full Time Hobby), created with spontaneous speed in his adopted American home city to equally beguiling effect. What A Waste Of An Echo, he purrs on its opener, like a folk-chilled Ray Davies, but there’s not a misused moment on a set that focuses less obviously on his inspirations and more on new ideas and collaborations. Contributors include Japanese singer-songwriter Yuma Abe, who adds a further layer of charm to Kingdom Weather, as well as Dana Gavanski, Erin Rae and Caitlin Rose. Holly Henderson has been creating her highly original baroque pop for…

PROGRESSIVE FOLK

RJ TROIKA

US proggers’ long-gestating but striking second album. This Boston trio put out an eclectic but scruffily promising debut album Plethora in 2013 under the name Ryan Jackson Troika, but their sound has matured considerably in the decade since. Where 10 years ago they could be found juxtaposing jerky-quirky alt-rock with funky grooves and metallically inclined moments, Megalomania aspires to a more emotionally resonant, widescreen sound. Foundation employs ghostly falsetto-laced vocal harmonies set to a slow-building synth-rock pulse, before the foreboding riff of Greasy Man sets up a dreamily melodic chorus. Further into the album, though, there are more complex instrumental passages, as on the stuttering time signature, meandering instrumental meditations and increasingly majestic synth figures that light up The Road and the choppy, riff-punctuated path through more epic prog-metallic territory…

RJ TROIKA

VONN ZANDUS

Norfolk percussionist turns synth leviathan in lockdown. Joe Burns is best known as the drummer for Norwich-based prog fivepiece Guranfoe, a group that have made a name for themselves for the impressive improvisational telepathy the members appear to have in the live arena. Burns is an intuitive musician and percussionist, and his new side-project Vonn Zandus proves that there’s more than one string to his bow. With time on his hands during the pandemic, Burns got busy with a Moog Sub 37 synthesiser, beginning to experiment and make home recordings of compositions. Organically that grew into Unimortal, his first solo record, featuring odd time signatures, marimbas, glockenspiels, tambourines and even a gong. Only Latrominu, which wraps up the first suite abruptly, bears another musician (Rob Baker on guitar). Although there’s…

VONN ZANDUS

ASIA

ASIA

Vinyl reissue for classic line-up’s aptly-titled 2008 comeback album. Asia’s career through the 90s and early 00s was marked by shifting line-ups, internecine strife and the occasional reunion between former members. But in 2006, after several false starts, the original line-up of Steve Howe, Geoff Downes, Carl Palmer and John Wetton finally got back together. After touring, they eventually set to work on a new album, belatedly following the stunning success of their version of the band’s 1982 debut and the underrated 1983 follow-up, Alpha. And while the commercial success of that era proved impossible to replicate, it was creatively positive. A proggier prospect than their original brace of albums. Phoenix was the first of the three albums the reconstituted line-up recorded, and as with their original album, it’s dominated…

ENVY OF NONE

ENVY OF NONE

Remixes and brand-new song from Alex Lifeson’s ‘other’ band. Alex Lifeson told Prog last year, “Suddenly I felt, ‘I’m a musician again!’” He was chatting about Envy Of None’s eponymous debut LP and his involvement in the synth texture-rich band – comprising himself, singer Maiah Wynne, former Coney Hatch bassist Andy Curran and producer/engineer Alf Annibalini. It was initially tentative, but Envy Of None’s dark, prog and industrial-goth world transpired to be an absorbing safety valve for Lifeson after Neil Peart’s passing negated Rush. This five-track EP brings trippy remixes of Envy Of None’s Dog’s Life and Dumb alongside Lethe River and You’ll Be Sorry, the latter two tracks previously only available on the deluxe edition of the band’s debut. The Der Dummkopf (translation: ‘thickhead’) remix of Dumb is especially…

LINDISFARNE

LINDISFARNE

Geordies’ brilliance shines on vinyl reissue of their breakthrough second LP. Though the bedrock of Lindisfarne’s appeal lay in the distinctive, politicised songwriting of charismatic frontman Alan Hull, it was Top 5 single Meet Me On The Corner – penned by bassist Rod Clements, and sung by the band’s mandolin/harmonica player Ray Jackson – which made them stars. A window onto Fog On The Tyne’s pointed Hull songs of northern pride and identity, …Corner’s skiffle-ish arrangement was arrived at after various permutations including a rocked-up Vanilla Fudge-style version. It also helped Fog On The Tyne become the biggest-selling UK album of 1972. Relocating to London had been a stipulation of Lindisfarne’s contract when signing to Charisma alongside such unlikely bedfellows as Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator. Hull, in particular,…

MELLOW CANDLE

MELLOW CANDLE

Sought-after sole release from deceptively feisty Irish prog-folk quintet. Early 70s progressive folk records are among the most valuable vinyl treasures out there – and the sole studio outing by this Irish five-piece can fetch £2,000 in its original vinyl incarnation. While many similar collectors’ holy grails from that era are valuable due to supply and demand – independent acts used to press up fewer than 100 copies of an album to avoid purchase tax, so there are barely any left in existence – Mellow Candle’s Swaddling Songs was well distributed through Decca’s Deram imprint, and it’s the quality of this record, appreciated by reviewers at the time and hidden-gem seekers more recently, that has made it so prized and worthy of this remastered vinyl reissue now. The focal point…

PETER GABRIEL

PETER GABRIEL

VENUE O2 ARENA, LONDON DATE 19/06/2023 When it comes to giving the people what they want, Peter Gabriel has always delivered musically, but in doing so he’s rarely opted for the easy path. Quitting Genesis for a solo career that melded (horror!) new wave and world music into his prog rock base, having one of the world’s biggest albums of 1986 in So and then waiting six years to follow it up, not to mention waiting a decade to follow that album up and another 21 years to, hopefully, deliver another new album on top of that! And then drip-feeding your new album as singles every full moon to a fanbase who very often want you to do things the way they want, not the way you want. It’s not…

DAVID CROSS BAND

VENUE TRADING BOUNDARIES, FLETCHING DATE 28/04/2023 The evening begins with a brief Q&A session with David Cross and Larks’ Tongues In Aspic lyricist and solo artist Richard-Palmer James. Cross is cryptic and evasive, and proceedings are truncated with a number of audience members’ hands still hopefully raised. Palmer-James then plays a solo acoustic set of intriguing, observational songs, including Cologne 1977. He throws in a version of Crimson’s The Night Watch from Starless And Bible Black and is joined by the headliners for In The Court Of The Crimson King, which is enjoyable despite a few uncertain moments. The David Cross Band deliver a short, dynamic set. The bandleader plays his five-stringed electric violin with intensity. Drummer Jack Summerfield and Mick Paul on six-string bass relish the time changes and…

GODSTICKS

VENUE FUEL ROCK CLUB, CARDIFF DATE 22/06/2023 SUPPORT TEMPLES ON MARS With sixth album This Is What A Winner Looks Like earning good notices, Wales’ Godsticks open their four-date UK tour in Cardiff’s cosy premier rock club, Fuel. In the coming days they’ll play Edinburgh, Newcastle and London too, where the support will be Leon Russell’s Warmrain. Tonight, that role’s taken by prog metallers Temples On Mars, who have made the trip down the M4 from ‘That London’ for a wall-shaking, fan-making six-song set. Cardiff can only offer them a modest audience – south of 30 people – but the quartet give their slot an arena’s worth of heart. From centre-stage and up on the speaker cabs and down in the pit with the crowd, affable, muscle-plated singer/co-guitarist James Donaldson…