Table of contents for Issue 165 in Prog

Multinational prog collective Big Big Train have shared details of their 16th studio album, Woodcut, the follow-up to 2024’s The Likes Of Us. They’ve described it as their first-ever full-length narrative concept album and it’s released via InsideOutMusic on February 6. “There’s a linear story we’re telling, and the music goes with it,” says Alberto Bravin, now fronting his second BBT album and also serving as co-writer and producer. “It’s a collection of songs, but building into one big suite of music.” “We’ve done concept-style albums before,” band bassist and co-founder Gregory Spawton admits, “but not really a complete story from top to bottom. And in the year that The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was reissued, it seemed like there was something in the air – although if I…

The saying goes that chaos breeds creativity and the forthcoming album from veteran British prog outfit Gong is no exception. Bright Spirit, the band’s 15th album – that’s if you don’t include the dozens of other LPs they’ve recorded in various spin-off line-ups – will be out in early 2026 via Kscope. It would have been here sooner, had guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Kavus Torabi not endured a breakdown while they were making it. “I sound like a sappy rock cliché, but I couldn’t deal with the pressure,” says Torabi, fortunately now recovered from his experience. “We’d been touring constantly, and I just thought, ‘God, I can’t do this anymore.’ I was trying to finish the lyrics and getting increasingly worked up, so I said to the band, ‘I can’t…

While the past can’t be changed, it can be remixed. Retracing Our Steps, which is out on December 12 via Kscope, is an eight-disc box set collecting The Pineapple Thief’s output from 2007’s What We Have Sown through to 2014’s Magnolia, remixed and remastered by Bruce Soord. “Psychologically, it’s really a weird thing to do for my brain,” says Soord about giving his back catalogue a nip and tuck. “It’s not just the songs you remember. When you go back and open these sessions, you remember what your life was like in 2007 when we were just starting to poke our heads above the underground, but it was so tough because we all had days jobs. The big thing that we all spoke about – me, [bassist] Jon Sykes, and…

It usually takes a lot to throw Porcupine Tree for a loop, but watching a stripper gyrate to one of their songs in a club called Paradise Found managed to do just that. It was May 2005, and the band were playing Club Tundra in Syracuse, New York a couple of months after the release of their eighth album, Deadwing. “Next door to the venue was this strip club, like a Bada Bing!/Tony Soprano-type of place,” recalls PT drummer Gavin Harrison of the gentlemen’s club the band found themselves in. “After we finished playing, they invited us in. So we go inside and they put on Shallow and some girl came onstage and stripped to it. We were encouraged to put five dollar bills into…” He mimes slipping money into…

When it comes to coverage in Prog, timing and circumstance were never friends to Atomic Rooster and it’s truly dumbfounding that this is our first interview with them since the magazine began back in 2009. Then again, over the last half-century or so, the existence of Atomic Rooster has been deeply fractured, and a new studio album, Circle The Sun, is the first in a whopping 42 years to bear the group’s name. Case dismissed, m’lud. Formed in 1969 by keyboardist Vincent Crane and drummer Carl Palmer following the pair’s exit from The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, the latter’s tenure lasted just a year. Fuelled by Crane’s Hammond dark and eerie organ technique, Atomic Rooster went on to make some of the most dramatic and fascinating music of the…

It’s an album that should probably have never happened. But now, against all odds, it has finally arrived. The new Cardiacs LP, LSD, has been greeted with a fervent passion that few other acts could conceivably generate. The cult band to end them all, Cardiacs could easily have been laid to rest alongside their erstwhile leader and resident genius, Tim Smith, who tragically passed away back in 2020. Instead, the remaining members of the band’s last functioning line-up have joined forces with a dazzling cast of friends and affiliates, and completed work on a mind-bending double album that began life way back in 2007. As Tim’s elder sibling, Cardiacs bassist Jim Smith, correctly notes, LSD really does have Tim’s stink all over it. “Now that it’s out, I’m not relieved,…

“When I first heard In The Court Of The Crimson King, it changed my life – literally! – because it was such mind-blowing stuff. It was catchy, it was beautiful, and yet it was still really complicated and progressive.” As anyone who has been to Finland will tell you, there’s no other country quite like it. Its native language has little in common with that of its neighbours Sweden and Russia; its topography is bizarre, with more than 180,000 lakes to fall into after too much liquorice vodka; and it’s the most heavy metal country per capita in the world. “Why are we so metal? Actually, I’ve thought about this a lot,” says Olli-Pekka Laine, bassist with the Helsinki-based prog-metal sextet Amorphis. “Finland is such a metal country, I think,…

Progressive metal royalty celebrate 40 years on the throne. When Dream Theater named their 2008 compilation Greatest Hit (…And 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs), it was with a knowing wink. In mainstream terms they’d only once broken the surface, with 1992’s MTV and radio hit Pull Me Under, but in the more rarefied pool of progressive metal, this unassuming band from Boston, Massachusetts were already the big fish. Chart-bothering singles may be a thing of the distant past these days, but they have long been arena-packing behemoths in their own right, with the recent 40th-anniversary tour touching down in venues including London’s O2 Arena and the Adidas Arena in Paris. The latter venue was where this, the 10th live album of their career, was recorded. “A fitting monument to a…

Veteran Americans return triumphant with British collaborator. Spock’s Beard’s new album will come as a huge relief to those who feared the pause since 2018’s Noise Floor wasn’t a good sign. Things have certainly changed: the band have a new label, they’re joined by new drummer Nick Potters, keyboardist Ryo Okumoto appears as the de-facto bandleader pushing forward the album’s development, and they’ve welcomed a new writing partner into the fold. “Complex and multilayered without being bewildering.” External songwriters aren’t a new phenomenon for the Beard, and for The Archaeoptimist, they’ve reached out to British musician and driving force behind the excellent I Am The Manic Whale, Michael Whiteman, who proves to be an inspired choice with shared music and lyric credits for almost every track on this album. The…

Smooth 80s prog-folk given a new lease of life. Originally released in 1984, Solstice’s debut album Silent Dance was the culmination of four years of writing and touring. More accomplished and mature than many might have expected, it became a much-loved record for those embedded in the era’s prog scene. However, bandleader and guitarist Andy Glass was never entirely happy with it – limitations and lack of experience meant that it didn’t capture the sound Glass was hearing in his head. “A collection of mostly unhurried and sophisticated music.” This new reissue features a remaster of the album which, with modern technology and software, Glass has preened and polished to a point where he can finally actively enjoy it. Available on both CD and vinyl, the CD version also features…

VENUE THE FILLMORE PHILLY, PHILADELPHIA, PA, USA DATE 05/10/2025 Art-rock maestro Steven Wilson has long been revered for playing concerts that are as equally enthralling visually as musically. That’s become more apparent in recent years – with the expansion of both his catalogue and technical prowess – and this evening’s stop on The Overview Tour is no exception. Beyond recreating his latest LP in its entirety (alongside classic older tunes), the band enhance the show with thematically rich imagery, resulting in the sort of unforgettable multi-sensory experience that only Wilson could provide. He’s joined by several prior collaborators – most of whom also appeared on this year’s The Overview – including Adam Holzman (keyboards), Randy McStine (guitars, vocals), Nick Beggs (bass, vocals), and Craig Blundell (drums). They all do a…

VENUE THE DRILL HALL, CHEPSTOW DATE 02/10/2025 – 05/10/2025 It’s the 20th anniversary of Summer’s End and there’s much love in the room, most directed towards organisers Huw Lloyd-Jones and Stephen Lambe, especially the latter, who is stepping down from his role in both Winter’s and Summer’s End to devote more time to other projects, including writing for this very magazine. The applause that greets both men at the culmination of the weekend’s events is truly something. Given such a momentous occasion in the festival’s long-running history, this weekend we are treated to a full day’s programme of bands on the Friday, with the Thursday evening (normally given over to cover acts on pre-party night) kicking things off with two more bands, and Summer’s End really couldn’t have got off…

A new book exploring the life and career of Genesis co-founder and keyboardist Tony Banks will be out on February 19 via Kingmaker Publishing. Titled Tony Banks: Man Of Spells – The Magician Of Genesis, the biography is written by long-time Genesis biographer Mario Giammetti and offers the first in-depth account focused solely on Banks. Drawing from exclusive interviews with the musician and those closest to him, Giammetti traces Banks’s journey from the early days of Genesis through his solo projects and film scores. “While there have been various books about other members of Genesis, there has never been one focused exclusively on Tony,” says Kingmaker’s Greg Spawton. “We felt it was important to shine a brighter light on his life and career.” It includes over 100 images, with many…

Thesolo career of Van der Graaf Generator frontman Peter Hammill is celebrated in a new 20-disc box set entitled The Charisma & Virgin Recordings 1971-1986. We have a copy to give away to one lucky reader this issue. Collating all 13 of the musician’s solo albums released by Charisma and Virgin over the 15-year period, the 18-disc CD/two-Blu-ray collection also includes rare BBC sessions, live recordings and a 78-page booklet with photographs and Hammill’s own notes about each album. VdGG remixer Stephen W Tayler has been brought in to bring new life to each album with remasters from the original tapes. Stereo and 5.1 mixes and previously unreleased European TV performances are spread across the Blu-rays. To be in with a chance of winning this amazing prize, just visit www.bit.ly/PROG_165…

When is a concept album not a concept album? When it cherry-picks ideas from an existing story, but doesn’t provide much else in the way of explanation or structure. That’s the case with Deadwing, a record inspired by a mooted film script co-written by Steven Wilson and Mike Bennion that never quite turned into a full-fledged story.“I met Steve around 1989,” Bennion tells Prog. “My background was in graphic design and I’d just started directing TV commercials. One day I got a knock on the door and it was Tim Bowness from No-Man, who had briefly gone out with my sister. They hadn’t got a record deal and they needed a little help.” Bennion ended up doing some work for No-Man, and got to know them socially. He and Wilson…

“A Gazpacho song would never have a Zoom meeting in it; it almost exists in this sort of timeless place, and certainly not in the world where Leonardo DiCaprio makes Hollywood films.” The best art often involves some sort of sacrifice, but for Thomas Andersen and his bandmates, it seemed to border on self-harm. And “it hurt like hell,” he says. And maybe one reason it was so painful was because it’s hard to imagine many other artists making the same decision. Rewind to the end of 2021. The band’s 11th album, Fireworker, had been enthusiastically received the previous year, and they were all but ready to wrap up recording on its follow-up. While the rest of the music world was still trying to restart stalled operations after Covid, keyboard…

“The guitars on Ritual II are a lot more angular and arpeggiated like King Crimson’s Discipline and Beat. They were really big inspirations for me.”Kevin Comeau Canadian multi-instrumentalist duo Crown Lands have been granted something of a resurrection. InsideOutMusic have signed them after two albums with Universal Music Canada/Spinefarm where they, in their own words, rebuked the sound on which they were signed to explore far more progressive universes. Kevin Comeau (guitar, bass, keyboards) says the musical landscape shifted in the period between putting pen to paper and issuing second album, Fearless in 2023. When they expressed a desire to release Starlifter: Fearless Part II, the album’s near 20-minute opening track as a single, it was clear to the band the label they’d signed to – one pushing accessible Led…

An October morning finds Steve Morse – arguably the guitarist’s guitarist par excellence – at home in Ocala, central Florida. He’s promoting Triangulation, the first Steve Morse Band album in 16 years and his first release since leaving Deep Purple – the iconic band with whom he initially committed to four shows but ended up staying with for 28 years – in 2022. Having stood down from Purple to care for his late wife Janine, Morse has teamed up with his regular crack team of bassist Dave LaRue and drummer Van Romaine for Triangulation. “With the Dregs, everybody’s scattered to the winds,” he explains. “The most manageable project was the trio stuff, and Van or Dave said we should do something. I have been playing with them for close to…

The third in the duo’s triptych is a triumph. Rightly or wrongly, many associate Brian Eno with minimalism. Yet there’s nothing minimalist about releasing three albums in under six months, as he’s done with the recent Lateral and Luminol. “It’s a strangely warm, inviting space.” The final work in the trilogy recorded with conceptual artist Beatie Wolfe (a very effective, understated singer) is a remarkable conjuring trick. Firstly it completes that trilogy, subtly referencing elements of the previous two works and casting them in a new light. But it has an individual soft power beyond this. Without ever doing anything so gauche as straining to be emotive, it somehow conveys all manner of emotions, and takes the listener to spellbinding, half glimpsed, half-recognised places. The pair have explained that if…

Texan prog-jazz collective hang out with some old friends. It’s been 10 years since Snarky Puppy first collaborated with the Netherlands-based jazz and pop orchestra Metropole Orkest on Sylva, leading to the first of the Texan fusion collective’s five Grammys so far. A lot has changed since the last time these two crews hooked up, with the band leader Michael League relocating to Barcelona a few years ago in an attempt to escape the grind of US politics. New album Somni, largely written by League in an Airbnb in rural Japan over the course of a month, implicitly comes to terms with the fact there’s little to no hope of escaping The Trump Show. The simple title comes from the Catalan word for ‘sleep’ and if League isn’t getting much…

TD’s best in a 50th birthday box with two entire concert recordings. The most effective way into this five-CD box set is to start with the four live CDs. Tangerine Dream were essentially an improvisation trio and founder member Edgar Froese claimed that he sought “transparency” in their music. Although that idea was never fully explained, it was realised in Rubycon’s spatial ambience and panoramic spread. “At one point it feels like they’re going to collectively take off.” Rubycon was released in March 1975, and the live recordings come from London’s Rainbow Theatre from October 1974, and the Royal Albert Hall from April 1975 (with Michael Hoenig depping for Peter Baumann). The excitement generated by 1974’s breakthrough album Phaedra is reflected in compère John Peel’s introduction at the Rainbow. Tangerine…

VENUE THE KESWICK THEATRE, GLENSIDE, PA, USA DATE 09/10/2025 Yes have been a progressive rock institution for nearly 60 years, so the only thing they need to prove at this point is whether their current lineup – vocalist Jon Davison, guitarist Steve Howe, bassist/backing vocalist Billy Sherwood, keyboardist Geoff Downes, and drummer Jay Schellen – are capable of doing justice live to their incredible catalogue. For the most part, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” as the quintet’s current tour finds them masterfully replicating all of their landmark fourth studio LP – 1971’s Fragile – alongside a selection of other classic material. There are a few shaky moments along the way, but overall, Yes are more than up to the task of recreating their timeless and influential works for their…

VENUE TERRACE THEATER, LONG BEACH, CA, USA DATE 05/10/2025 It’s rare enough for a band to endure for more than four decades. It’s rarer yet to find one still making music that ranks among the top tier of their catalogue, and for whom it wouldn’t rate as a disappointment if they devoted nearly half of their concert performances to spotlighting fresh material over the classics. Then again, Dream Theater have never done things by the book, so why start now? The path of least resistance after reuniting with drummer Mike Portnoy would surely be to roll out Pull Me Under and The Spirit Carries On every night and ride off into the sunset together. Instead, the group – currently in the midst of their 40th-anniversary tour – not only released…

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Hawkwind guitarist and co-vocalist Magnus Martin steps out on his own with his solo album Everything Is Singing To Me. Released on December 13 via Rocket Surgery Sound, the record had been inspired by lockdown isolation, mythic storytelling and a seemingly unlikely source. Written largely while Martin was recording Hawkwind’s Somnia, the album expands on the myth of Alcyone, a theme that first surfaced during those sessions. “We were locked down in Pembrokeshire, which was an empty paradise,” Martin recalls. “Fragments made it onto Somnia and I just wanted to get the tale done and dusted.” The album features a rare guest appearance from Hawkwind’s Dave Brock, who encouraged Martin to go at it. “Dave kept saying, ‘Magnus, why don’t you make a solo album?’ I don’t know if he…

Dutch progressive metal pioneers Textures have returned from a seven-year hiatus, and will release their latest album, Genotype via Kscope on January 23. The band, a huge influence on the likes of TesseracT and Periphery, credit increased parental responsibilities, being “surpassed” by the acts they paved the way for and “not having enough things to say musically and artistically,” for their 2018 split. Keyboardist Uri Dijk says the break allowed them to “find ourselves again” and write what he calls a “bombastic and modern” sixth LP that refreshes their musical template. Before their split, they’d promised a conceptual counterpart to 2016’s Phenotype, making for two records that look at the world through intro and extrospective lenses. Although most of that record was written nearly a decade ago, it was axed in…

Six years after their last release, British proggers The Gift return with their fifth studio album, Seven Seasons, out November 21 via Gifted Music. Inspired by William Shakespeare’s The Seven Ages Of Man, the record explores life’s passage from birth to death through seven songs that span orchestral grandeur, folk intimacy, blues grit and even a 1940s-style torch song, while combining the band’s prog roots with accessible melodies. Frontman Mike Morton traces the album’s genesis to a conversation during sessions for 2019’s Antenna. “Our old guitarist said a song I’d written, Back To Eden, which dealt with loss of spirituality as we get older and reviving it when we die, was too big a concept for four minutes,” he recalls. “He pointed out that it was like The Seven Ages Of…

“My wife Hilary always says, ‘You start writing these nice songs, and then you spoil them’,” says Peter Hammill, clearly amused at her assessment. “There’s an element of truth. In one way or another I spoil them by running in a manic guitar or by having a rather too complicated lyrical map. I’ve always thought some of my songs could have been quite successful if somebody else had done them.” But it’s this “spoiling” that gives Hammill’s songs their singular character, and is demonstrated throughout the recently released 20-disc CD and Blu-ray box set, Charisma & Virgin Recordings 1971-86, which dates back to the beginning of his solo career. On his Sofa Sound website, Hammill announced it as “really quite an exciting thing”, and it would be churlish to disagree.…

“Snooker isn’t a very musical world. I know that Neal Foulds likes a bit of Talk Talk, but otherwise they all think I’ve lost the plot!”Steve Davis “It’s a simple choice,” says Michael J York, one third of The Utopia Strong. “You can make weirdo music on your own, or you can hang out with your mates and make weirdo music. It’s a no-brainer.” When York joined forces with Gong frontman/Cardiacs alumnus Kavus Torabi and six-times world snooker champion Steve Davis to form a band in 2018, even its members had limited expectations. Seven years on, the trio have just released their third studio album, Doperider, and have wrapped up the latest of several UK-wide tours. All three men have plenty to be getting on with, but The Utopia Strong…

“You can’t suppress emotion. It’s no good for your health. You have to sit with it. Look it in the eye. That’s the only way to move through it.” Cate Le Bon’s return to Cardiff after nearly a decade living in California felt less like a culture shock and more like an overdue homecoming. “It’s been really lovely,” she says warmly from her home in Wales. “I was back and forth anyway, but living in the States made me feel more Welsh than I’d ever felt before. People couldn’t understand what I was saying because the corners of my accent never got knocked off.” It’s difficult to shake the feeling that her return home gave Le Bon the grounding needed to face the heartache she’d been running from since the…

It may have become one of the most iconic albums ever, but Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here remains as beguiling and mysterious as when it was first released 50 years ago. Blindsided by the success of The Dark Side Of The Moon, the band had struggled to produce a follow-up, with at least two major false starts and several frustrating months spent in the studio waiting for inspiration to strike. Yet what eventually emerged in September 1975 was extraordinary: an album which somehow managed to channel the inertia and torturous dislocation of the recording sessions to create music of an otherworldly poise and execution. In particular, the slow-motion intensity of David Gilmour’s guitar and Rick Wright’s glacial synthscapes possess a haunting, almost mechanical beauty, yet many critics at the…

Einar Solberg holds the attention in grand live performance. Recorded in February 2025 at the Poppodium 013 in Tilburg, Netherlands, An Evening Of Atonement is the most expansive live release in Leprous’s catalogue to date. Released as a three-vinyl LP set, or two CDs, or two CDs and a Blu-ray, this is a marathon listening experience containing 21 tracks. The setlist favours their most recent albums, with six songs taken from 2024’s Melodies Of Atonement, and three each from 2021’s Aphelion and 2019’s Pitfalls. The decision to omit any selections from early releases like Aeolia from 2006, and 2011’s Bilateral lends credence to the idea that the Norwegians have evolved in a direction that’s leading them away from the prog metal of their formative years. “Everything seems to shine a…

Bush’s B-sides, exhumed from deleted 2019 rarities box set, The Other Side. Since November 2011’s 50 Words For Snow, autumn has often been the season during which Kate Bush sends smoke signals. October 2024 saw her release animated short Little Shrew, an anti-war film soundtracked by 50 Words… track Snowflake. Now, against a backdrop of Army Dreamers igniting social media with the same verve as Running Up That Hill when it was used in Netflix’s Stranger Things, comes The Best Of The Other Sides, a deeper, journey into Bush’s wonderfully enquiring mind. “A deeper journey into her wonderfully enquiring mind.” Traditionally, B-sides are where artists put less commercial, more esoteric stuff. But for Bush, whose A-sides are often unconventional, B-sides have either tended to be more of the same in…

Prog icons’ 20th album revisited with souped-up mixes. When Fly From Here was released in 2011, progressive rock had yet to undergo its mainstream rehabilitation. With their capes, concepts and cosmicity, Yes were an easy target for those outside the castle walls, and they seemed out of step with the rest of the world on their 20th album – a record that embraced what had made them so special in their prime, namely a side-long suite and beguiling folk-pop songs dressed in gaudy robes. “It embraces what had made them so special in their prime.” In reality, Fly From Here is up there with the group’s greats. Another example of Yes’s musical chairs, much was made of newcomer Benoît David’s vocals – the first time someone other than Jon Anderson…

VENUE POBLE ESPANYOL, BARCELONA, SPAIN DATE 26/09/2025 – 27/09/2025 After a successful comeback in 2024, Be Prog! is expanding carefully. Now set in a sci-fi-styled corner of the Poble Espanyol museum, organisers have added four extra bands and upgraded the food and chillout zones. Across 12 colourful sets, the atmosphere at Catalonia’s premier prog gathering is joyous. Basque instrumentalists Lampr3a launch headfirst into barraging guitar acrobatics and jagged grooves galore. Their technical prowess transcends their extreme metal roots for an attention-grabbing opener. Dry River are more traditional proggers. Originally a Dream Theater/Queen/Van Halen tribute band, that triptych of influences blends seamlessly with their own camp razzamatazz, smart musicianship, and commanding stage presence. Beneath Threshold’s 90s prog-metal shtick, there’s a progressive undercurrent, but it feels like painting by numbers. Glynn Morgan’s…

VENUE ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL, LONDON DATE 02/10/2025 A Peter Hammill live show isn’t for everyone. From the moment he takes to the Royal Festival Hall’s sprawling stage, with just a grand piano and an acoustic guitar for company, the audience are thrown into a surreal, disjointed world. As always, the Van der Graaf Generator frontman, ageing gracefully with wisps of white hair matching his white outfit, declines the comfort of a predictable setlist or familiar arrangement. There’s minimal audience interaction, no light show and certainly no fanfare. Without a band to anchor his wandering piano style, his performance is untamed; apocalyptic, even. The slow, monophonic melodies found in Just Good Friends feel like a precursor to the eruptions of dissonance and intensity in Curtains. Easy To Slip Away and VdGG’s…

Where’s home? Northamptonshire. What’s your earliest memory of prog? Being 13, with a few friends in my parents’ garage late one night. We must have known this record called for some kind of rite of passage ritual so candles were lit, the lights turned off and an LP reverently placed on the turntable. It was The Dark Side Of The Moon. What’s the first prog album you bought? Supertramp’s Crime Of The Century. And the last? The Overview by Steven Wilson. The most moving moment on first listen was the Theo Travis play-out. Theo got up with us at a recent show – sublime! What was your first proggy gig? As a 14-year-old, a friend took me to The Capitol Theatre, Cardiff for my first-ever gig. I knew nothing of…