Table of contents for Issue 152 in Prog

Discovering Spirit Of Unicorn Music was born out of the celebrated international music management company QEDG Management, home of luminaries such as Yes, Asia, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Focus, Martin Turner, Curved Air and DBA (aka 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 since 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 their artists and values. The label has perhaps become best-known for releasing impeccable box sets from some of the greatest progressive rock artists of…

This autumn sees the release of 50 Years Of Music, the first career-spanning collection from Roxy Music guitarist, Phil Manzanera. Issued by Universal on October 11, the 11-CD box set features all 10 of his solo albums – spanning 1975’s Diamond Head and 2015’s The Sound Of Blue – alongside a bonus disc of rarities from Manzanera’s personal archive. Its arrival comes in the wake of his recent autobiography, Revolución To Roxy. “The box set is sort of like a musical memoir,” he tells Prog. “Obviously, there was Roxy Music, but there was also this other parallel musical world, which I wanted to explore. I would offer stuff each time we got together to make an album, but of course it was only one or two things. When you’re in…

Public Service Broadcasting’s J Willgoose, Esq has explained why pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart who, in 1928, became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, has become the focus of the band’s new album The Last Flight, which is released on October 4 via So Recordings. “Because so much of the historical archive is male-focused and male-recorded and male-stewarded, I was looking for an inspiring female-focused story,” Willgoose tells Prog. “And as soon as I started investigating Amelia Earhart and started looking at the story of her final flight in particular, it just clicked. It made perfect sense.” Earhart went missing somewhere over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 as she attempted to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world, and it’s this adventure that forms the basis of…

Northumberland-based melodic prog rockers Stuckfish release their fourth studio album via Rob Reed’s White Knight Records in September. Stuckfish IV is their most ambitious yet, promise the band. “There are lots of new things on it we hadn’t tried before,” co-founder, composer and guitarist Adrian Fisher, tells Prog. “It’s very much an experiment, but we think it works.” Stuckfish IV comprises nine songs, all co-written by Fisher and vocalist/fellow co-founder Philip Stuckey. Conceptually, it features previously untried elements including new vocal arrangements and a three-minute pop song. “We thought, ‘How do we equal or even top [predecessor] Days Of Innocence?’ Every time we came up with a new piece of music, we asked ourselves, ‘Have we done this before?’ If we had, I ditched it. The whole Stuckfish ethos is…

(Fantastic Plastic Records, 2011) Formerly with 90s indie act The Auteurs, then art-pop trio Black Box Recorder, Luke Haines has long enjoyed journeying off-piste. A misanthropic provocateur whose 2009 memoir, Bad Vibes: Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall, ruffled feathers, he’s written songs about English motorways, 70s pop act The Rubettes, and a badger named Nick Lowe, but his sixth solo album was outré even by his standards. An unnerving love letter to British wrestling, the trippy, tragicomic 9½ Psychedelic Meditations… is a concept LP celebrating the tough, marginalised lives of such famed British grapplers as Kendo Nagasaki, Giant Haystacks and Catweazle. “I think it would have taken a lot of courage for Catweazle – who was really called Gary Cooper and from Doncaster – to assume that character…

Best known as the bassist for the Electric Light Orchestra from 1972-1974, Michael de Albuquerque has far more strings to his musical bow than you might think. Not only does he have a splendid 1971 jazz fusion album, First Wind, with percussionist Frank Ricotti under his belt, but also two much sought-after solo albums, both of which feature Patto guitarist Ollie Halsall. He was also the guitarist in Violinski with ELO compatriot and violinist Mik Kaminski. Beyond that, he played on soul singer Maxine Nightingale’s 1976 debut Right Back Where I Started From, the title track of which hit the UK’s Top 10, and his own songs have been covered by Tim Hardin and the Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian among others. In the early 80s, he also featured in Sundance…

Back in the days when we naïvely imagined that musicians might do something as conventional as retire once they reached a certain age, it was comforting to think that they might all do so together. Perhaps, we pondered, they might relive their glory days together in some sort of rest home for ageing prog folk. As it has turned out, few are taking that option, and instead many are playing, recording and touring well into their 70s and beyond – with their fanbase only too happy to support them. At the time of writing, Thijs van Leer, generously sideburned founder-member of Dutch prog trailblazers Focus, is preparing to tour the US supporting Asia as part of the July ’24 Heat Of The Moment shows, alongside former Wishbone Ash man Martin…

In the history of prog, there’s never been a band quite like Gryphon, and in the history of Gryphon there’s never been a year like 1974. Across 12 months, the group released not one but two fantastically ambitious albums; they also embarked upon a spectacular North American tour as the opening act for Yes. But the band’s genesis goes back even further. Co-founding guitarist Graeme Taylor explains, “I always thought the seeds were sown at Tiffin’s [boys’ grammar school in Kingston upon Thames in Surrey] where I met [fellow founding member] Richard Harvey.” Taylor had begun playing at an early age. He was nine when he first heard The Beatles and describes the feeling as “like a cannonball [that had] hit me”. His parents promised to buy him a guitar…

As time passes, progressive rock bands come and go. A small handful scale the dizzy heights of significant album sales and extensive international tours, performing sell-out shows in decent-sized, reasonably salubrious venues and making a comfortable living. But that’s not the experience of the majority of prog acts, many of whom are active for a few years before beating a retreat and calling it quits, hopefully with their creative ambitions satisfied to varying degrees, albeit usually to the detriment of their bank balances. Somewhere between those two extremes, there are the stalwarts who plug away decade after decade, never giving up, always doggedly persevering. Only eight years short of racking up half a century as a going concern, Jadis epitomise this last category. Gary Chandler, the band’s lead vocalist/guitarist and…

Powder Dry KSCOPE Stunning change of pace from maverick crooner. ‘A damaged one-trick pony, whose trick is known too well,’ croons Tim Bowness on the haunted and haunting This Way Now, from his eighth solo album. His lyrics have never, across an expansive 37-year musical career, shied from grandiose self-flagellation. If, however, anybody has him pigeonholed as the master of epic melancholy, they’re in for a shock. Because Powder Dry is like nothing he’s done before. Perhaps it’s signing to a new label; perhaps it’s just a rush of fresh inspiration. Even Steven Wilson, longtime pal and No-Man colleague, has said it’s “the best and most creative” album the singer’s made, emphasising that (while mixed by Wilson) it was produced and performed entirely by Bowness. He’s shown off a flock…

It’s been 10 years since Glasshopper sprung to life, a trio led by saxophonist Jonathan Chung and a Scots-Anglo collab bonded by indie rock chops and free-jazz. The indie bop A New Thing (Clonmell Jazz Social) sets up their second album I’m Not Telling You Anything with a nod to Radiohead/The Smile, tempered with bouncy math rock, but elsewhere there’s the time-sig tottering of Major Hit, the textural, smoky wash of Take Out The Sun or the light-footed jazzy shuffle of Music Stands. The best is last, though, and the fun, ballsy, I Go To Bed At 10pm – a cuter cousin to Hedwig Mollestad’s gnarly jazz-rock excursions – that winds up in a Hawkwind-esque Brainstorm frenzy. Belfast’s Córas Trio present something really interesting and original with their self-titled debut (Coracle).…

Stalagmite Steeple GIANT ELECTRIC PEA Sublimely produced collision of melodic art-rock and existential reflections. Returned To The Earth may have flown under the radar for many people. Yet the Warwickshire band – centred around singer and guitarist Robin Peachey – have released a steady stream of quality albums, Stalagmite Steeple being their fifth in eight years, and their second for the fiercely independent prog-friendly Giant Electric Pea label. Staunchly unhurried, often atmospheric and melancholic, occasionally dark and sombre and with a consistently dreamy undercurrent, Stalagmite Steeple’s six tracks weave together studied, smooth instrumentation and the warm, yearning intonation of Peachy’s voice. Although the music paints suggestive sonic portraits, Peachy does much of the heavy lifting in terms of tone and emotional impact with a voice that sits somewhere between Steven…

Psych! British Prog, Rock, Folk & Blues 1966-1973 DECCA/UNIVERSAL Sprawling three-CD/two-LP Decca/Deram retrospective. By 1966, something was happening in the British music scene, but the record industry didn’t know exactly what it was. The Beatles had evolved from cheeky moptops topop pioneers, proving with every release that the format was infinitely malleable, and groups all over the country took note and followed. It was the beginning of what would become known as ‘underground’, and latterly ‘progressive’, music. Scrabbling to market these new sounds, record companies began creating ‘hip’ subsidiary labels, with Decca first off the blocks when Deram was launched in September 1966. “A fine overview of Deram’s underground credentials.” Despite its catch-all title, and the fact that many of the songs here were actually released on Deram’s parent label,…

VENUE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, LONDON DATE 29/06/2024 Let there be more light! Seriously, more light please! Saucerful Of Secrets have just kicked into their second number, Pink Floyd’s debut single, Arnold Layne, following their now expected opener Astronomy Domine, which has been a blaze of multicoloured lights and liquid movies on a huge two-storey backdrop, and now they’re plunged into darkness. At first no one, audience or band, seems too sure if this is actually part of the show, but as the song progresses the sense that something might be awry sinks in and we start wondering if the band might even quit the stage. Then, flash… let there be more light, indeed. And so, summoning their cosmic powers, Nick Mason and his Saucerful Of Secrets let their psychic emanations flow. “Without…

VENUE THE BEDFORD, LONDON DATE 04/07/2024 SUPPORT CHAS CRONK & FRIENDS. The Bedford’s regal, circular, galleried gig room seems apt for a line-up connecting branches of the British rock aristocracy family tree: Chas Cronk was a longtime member of prog progenitors Strawbs and has also performed with Rick Wakeman; Dave Bainbridge is a current member of contemporary symphonic powerhouse Lifesigns and a sometime one of the Strawbs, which explains the presence of Lifesigns’ mainman John Young (himself a Strawbs alumnus) in the audience. Bainbridge and Cronk are in veteran British rock luminary Colin Blunstone’s band and the latter also watches intently from the back of the room. Sally Minnear adds to the tapestry, being the daughter of Gentle Giant’s Kerry Minnear. Such talent and legacy in one place feels rather special. Kicking off…

Danish-Swedish prog metallers Vola will release their fourth album, Friend Of A Phantom on November 1 via Mascot. Following 2021’s hugely successful LP, Witness, guitarist-vocalist Asger Mygind says the band were both buoyed and a little pressured to pen the breakthrough album’s follow-up. “I tried to tell myself that there wasn’t pressure, but I think we felt it subconsciously,” he admits. “Of course, the most important thing was that we could satisfy our own desire to create something just as good. There was no headline of what the songs should be; we just wanted to be entertained and affected by the music we wrote.” He continues, “It reminds me of [second album] Applause Of A Distant Crowd in terms of how broad the spectrum is. It’s heavier and more direct,…

Chris McMahon of South Yorkshire prog-folk evergreens Haze has told Prog how the use of a top-class studio has taken their sound to new heights on new album, The Water’s Edge, while keeping the band’s essential spirit intact. “We always recorded at home, layering each part on top of the other, with unlimited time,” he says. “This time we just had 10 days, recording all together, and to me, it sounds alive and much more natural sounding.” It also emphasises the dynamic range of their sound: “Live, we’re much more Deep Purple than Pink Floyd.” A strong topical theme is evident on the anthemic call to arms, You’re Not Alone and the ominous The Waters Rising. “We’ve always had a strong green ethos,” says McMahon, “but the lyrics aren’t dictating; they’re…

Yes guitarist Steve Howe, who is set to release his new album Guitarscape with his son, Dylan, on September 27 via his own Sound record label, has likened the recording process to a game of tennis. Engaging in file sharing, the pair bounced ideas to each until the tracks took shape. “It was a bit like that,” he says with a laugh. “I’d get the bulk of the track together and put a decent bass on it or something of a guide and send it to him. And then he heard it and would suggest a rough guideline on the drums, which he plays in his own unique way. It certainly helps to make the final thing great, and it by adding and taking away, it’s a process that’s so fluid…

“BEING IN MAGIC Fig brings out the jester in me,” says Inna Showalter, the frontperson with this brand-new psychedelic prog act who’ve been together for not quite a year. This is evident in her costuming for recent video PS1, where she and the rest of the band are sporting their best ren faire garb, evoking The Incredible String Band and Circulus while playing the prettiest jangle-pop prog tune. In a video-call with us today, there are three reps from the San Francisco band, with gregarious guitarist (and sleeve artist) Muzzy Moskowitz beaming in from a holiday in Madrid, bright-eyed synth boffin Jon Chaney, and Showalter, the shyest presence and most recent recruit. Before Showalter joined, the band were simply called Fig and made up from musicians in various San Fran…

“This album is the best album I’ve made in all those years since 1973, when The Dark Side Of The Moon came out.”David Gilmour “I over 50 years now since The Dark Side Of The Moon,” says David Gilmour firmly. “My feeling is that this album is the best album I’ve made in all those years since 1973 when The Dark Side Of The Moon came out.” A pretty bold statement, for sure, and it’ll certainly add fuel to those that dwell in the darker recesses of the internet, intent on spreading scurrilous wildfire, but when the man whose voice and guitar tone went a long way to making said album the enormous success it was says suchlike, maybe they should sit up and take notice. It’s been nine years…

If Steven Wilson is the busiest man in prog, then his longtime No-Man partner Tim Bowness might well be the second. As well as playing in a ridiculous number of bands, including Plenty, Henry Fool and the aforementioned No-Man, Bowness is also a serial collaborator (Peter Chilvers, Richard Barbieri, Judy Dyble) and a solo artist to boot. Moreover, when Prog meets him in a Central London pub one Saturday in early summer, it’s the day after he and Wilson have recorded their podcast, The Album Years, before a live studio audience, another facet to an impressive partnership that stretches back to the late 1980s. The pub, as it happens, is full of Warrington Wolves fans on their way to lose the Challenge Cup to Wigan Warriors. As someone from the…

“Although Alcest’s music is introspective, I think that like many musicians, I need stimulation from the outside world.” “In my mind I still see myself as that awkward kid, living at my parents’ house, making strange and ethereal music about my experience in a past life, and I wonder why people would listen to that,” says Neige, aka Stéphane Paut, frontman and mastermind behind Alcest. The humble French duo have recently released their seventh album following an unplanned hiatus. Having overcome the stasis caused by a worldwide lockdown and Neige’s self-confessed writer’s block, the new album, Les Chants De L’Aurore, takes the listener back to Alcest’s original path – a journey into singer Neige’s childhood memories of a past life in an otherworldly paradise. “Although Alcest’s music is introspective and…

‘I’m done pleasing the crowds,’ croons Leprous frontman and chief songwriter Einar Solberg on Silently Walking Home, the opening track on Melodies Of Atonement. Which is surprising as it wasn’t apparent that he had been. Even in progressive circles there are those who would prefer a band to carry out variations on a theme for the rest of their career and there are plenty who yearn for a return to Leprous’s earlier work – pre-2017’s Malina, essentially – when they could still be accurately described as a prog metal band. Solberg’s pre-release chatter around this album will be music to those people’s ears. It’s being trumpeted as the heaviest thing they’ve made in some time. At the same time, like some of his peers – Riverside’s Mariusz Duda among them –…

The IQ Weekender 2024 GIANT ELECTRIC PEA Neo-prog survivors’ gathering of the clans captured. Just as stag and hen nights have inflated into whole days, weekends and two-week odysseys to Ayia Napa, it’s no longer enough for prog acts with loyal followings to celebrate milestone moments by simply performing a show or two. IQ are among several bands who have latched onto the idea of a ‘weekender’, offering, as frontman Peter Nicholls quipped onstage on the Bury edition back in January, “two nights for the price of two”. “It acts as a vibrant showcase for newcomers to IQ.” Joking aside, it was a value-for-money event. This four-CD collection gathers together recordings from another Friday-and-Saturday-night affair, in Aschaffenburg, Germany, and unlike many box sets retailing into three figures, won’t set punters…

Wheels Within Wheels KARISMA Norwegian prog-pop perfection. When progressive ideals and pop sensibilities collide, the results can be variable, but Norway’s Meer seem to have found the perfect formula. Their second album, 2021’s Playing House, was almost overburdened with great melodies and tumultuous, theatrical arrangements, and frothing, elated critical responses followed. Led by brother and sister duo Knut and Johanne Nesdal, Meer’s distinctive sound that achieves new levels of drama, bombast and melodic elegance on Wheels Within Wheels. A sumptuous, hour-long stream of enormous hooks and fizzing ensemble chemistry, it reaches several goosebump-inducing, emotional peaks, powered in part by the siblings’ startlingly powerful vocals, but also by a production that wrings every last drop of grandeur from each song. “It frequently sounds like a band built for enormodomes.” As razor-sharp…

Fragile (Super Deluxe Edition) RHINO Prog landmark gets an LP, four CD and Blu-ray bonanza.. With a new keyboard player and each bandmember contributing a solo track, Yes’s fourth album, 1971’s Fragile, could have been a real mish-mash. But those short, imaginative pieces fit together and serve as effective links. After Roundabout– Yes in excelsis and the single most brilliant amalgam of pop melody and 70s prog exploration – Rick Wakeman’s contribution, Cans And Brahms, 90 seconds of Brahms played on various keyboards, is a pretty, if inconsequential confection. It was chosen because he was still under contract to a different publisher, which is also why he has no writing credits on the album. “Steven Wilson looks at Fragile from a different angle.” Similarly brief is Jon Anderson’s We Have…

VENUE KEY THEATRE, PETERBOROUGH DATE 01/06/2024-02/06/2024 Well, what a weekend this is! Set within the delightful Key Theatre, the second Soundle Weekend, now moved to the more transport/accommodation-friendly Peterborough, is nothing short of an absolute triumph. Great music, great facilities, amazing venue staff. This is how to treat your audience. There is, however, but one small elephant in the room. Although certainly no criticism of Soundle, nor the bands themselves, it’s noticeable that over half of this bill have pretty much become staples for almost every boutique prog event in a packed calendar. Yes, these are good bands that people love seeing, but there are other bands out there, too. Everyone booking similar bills at a time when fewer people are prepared to put their hands in their pocket, as one event…

VENUE O2 ACADEMY ISLINGTON, LONDON DATE 01/06/2024 SUPPORT THE HIRSCH EFFEKT, FOUR STROKE BARON This year will surely go down as the resurrection of Caligula’s Horse. The pandemic brought the prog rockers to the brink of implosion, forcing the exit of rhythm guitarist Adrian Goleby, which resulted in the remaining members questioning if their band had a future. Though the Aussies bounced back with some shows once restrictions had lifted, it was January’s Charcoal Grace album that signalled the now-quartet could still shine despite the setbacks. Tonight continues the Caligula’s Horse comeback, the last date of their European tour taking place in Islington’s 800-capacity O2 Academy: the biggest venue the band have ever played overseas. One day after the release of their fourth album Data Diamond, Four Stroke Baron open the evening. The…

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Renowned prog-adjacent label Pelagic Records have confirmed the line-up for Pelagic Fest 2024, and they’re also moving the event to a new location. Following a six-year break, the festival will no longer be held in its original Berlin base and instead will take place on August 25-26 in the Dutch city of Maastricht, across the two rooms of the Muziekgieterij venue. Headlined by label founders and core team The Ocean, other acts confirmed to perform include And So I Watch You From Afar, Ihsahn, Oh Hiroshima, A Swarm Of The Sun, Psychonaut, LLNN, Årabrot as well as more from the label. The organisers have also curated the bill so as to avoid any line-up clashes, ensuring that every band can be seen in full. Speaking of the event, label founder…

Held By Trees, the instrumental prog supergroup featuring musicians who backed Mark Hollis either with Talk Talk or in a solo capacity in the studio, have announced their first collaboration with vocalist Martin Smith. The Held By Trees & Martin Smith EP is released via Tweed Jacket on September 27. The release marks the first time Held By Trees have worked with a vocalist. The collaboration came about after former Delirious? singer Smith supported the band in Brighton and was invited by band leader David Joseph to work together. Comprising seven tracks, the EP was recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios and also features contributions from Delirious? guitarist Stuart Garrard. “I’ve loved the sound of Held by Trees and leaped at the chance to collaborate with them,” said Smith.…

Ozric Tentacles and Soen are set to headline the Progressive Circus 2024. The two-day festival takes place at Babel in Malmö in Sweden on September 28-29 and is being billed as “a real prog extravaganza” by the eponymous organisers who are celebrating their 10th anniversary as the country’s leading progressive gig promoters. The first day of the event has been orientated towards “a vintage vibe.” Joining Saturday headliners Ozric Tentacles will Bossebandet – an all-star band paying tribute to Swedish prog artist Bo Hansson – as well as folk-proggers Agusa, Green Asphalt and Egentligen Giant. A heavier musical approach has been scheduled for the festival’s second day in the shape of Soen, Moon Safari, Paatos and Soniq Circus. Say the promoters, “This will be talked about as a great weekend…

SINCE DAY ONE, Reliqa have been underscored by camaraderie, passion and evolution. Their debut album, Secrets Of The Future, their first release with major label backing, marks the end of a musically rich eight-year journey as well as the start of a brand-new one. The band were unofficially formed in 2016 when four Sydney teenagers joined forces for a school project they “poured way too much into”, according to vocalist Monique Pym. “I know it’s cliché,” she says, “but we all fell in love with writing music and the kinship it creates. As we got into our senior years, that energy only grew stronger – our music tastes became more sophisticated and we started to understand ourselves as songwriters.” Those maturing tastes helped turn what was ostensibly a metalcore band…

DAWN CHORUS AND The Infallible Sea make meditative electronic music with edge, and for good reason. Their soft ambient textures evolved from the hard, distorted lacerations of Indianapolis post-rock outfit Pillars. Zach Frizzell and Marc Ertel of Pillars formed DCATIS in 2017, with Texan musician Damien Duque joining them for their second album, 2020’s Liberamente. That record was largely assembled remotely during lockdown, with Duque adding his ambient guitar lines as a full member despite him never meeting the others. And that, it transpires, is still the case. “We have yet to do a show together,” says Frizzell aka Zakè, “and we’d love to meet up with Damien because we’ve been working with each other for a few years now. That’s definitely on our bucket list.” The trio’s dream is…

“I GET ASKED by people what we sound like, and I just say, ‘It’s weird, man!’” says Dara Tohill with a laugh. He’s one-half of Irish duo A Burial At Sea and his assessment isn’t inaccurate: they are weird, but amid restless time signature shifts and densely layered chaos is beauty in abundance. Tohill met Patrick Blaney while studying at the Liverpool Institute For Performing Arts, where they were classmates with fellow proggers Exploring Birdsong. A mutual love for fellow Irishmen And So I Watch You From Afar quickly sparked a lasting friendship, but it wasn’t just their music that they admired. “They work hard,” Blaney underlines. “They’ve played stadiums, which is unheard of for a DIY math rock band. That’s inspiring.” Consequently, a tireless work ethic has accented their…

“I think I’m quite lucky that – like ’em or not – my voice and my guitar playing are distinctive. They’re me and recognisably so, and that ties everything together,” observed David Gilmour in conversation with Prog in 2016. That somewhat modest assessment might be something of an understatement. While it may be wilfully provocative, and sure to irritate a certain irascible bass player, there’s a strong case to be made that David Gilmour’s guitar is the defining ingredient in the sound of Pink Floyd, an instantly identifiable signature that sets them apart from their peers. In terms of contributions, that’s not bad going for a musician who originally joined the band in the capacity of support guitarist to the ailing Syd Barrett. Gilmour’s influence on Floyd’s development is undeniable,…

Close to Brighton’s bustling city centre is a church graveyard that Christopher Sampson and Galen Stapley consider the perfect peaceful place to discuss with Prog the finer points – and there are many – of Azure’s third studio album, the seismically dynamic Fym. The pair are exhausted but elated. It’s been three years since Of Brine And Angel’s Beaks helped them scoop the Best Unsigned Band accolade in our annual readers’ poll and it’s not hard to understand why it’s taken this long. Fym hopes to build on that success with a serpentine storyline that sees the title character – an introverted, learned historian living in a jungle – embarking on a perilous quest to retrieve shards of a shattered mystical weapon. Mythical creatures, sorcery and dungeons lie in her…

“Dream Theater were a huge influence on Tom’s vision. When I heard Dream Theater for the first time, it was like, ‘Oh, they listen to all my heroes – Marillion, Queensrÿche, Metallica – and put them together.’”Rikard Zander It’s just gone 10:30am when Prog sees Evergrey keyboardist Rikard Zander outside our hotel in Gothenburg. The tall, dark-haired and black-clothed musician has met us in the centre of his hometown to give us a tour of the city, the Evergrey way. While most visitors to this gorgeous hub of south-western Sweden spend time at Liseberg, a theme park, or Slottsskogen park, our itinerary is entirely different. Evergrey have been offering progressive power metal from here for 31 years as of 2024, and today we’ll be seeing the sights that have mattered most…

Norwegian prog metallers Rendezvous Point describe their third full-length album, Dream Chaser, as an “epic” sound with Hans Zimmer-style arrangements, and “harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically interesting”. Formed in 2010, the band’s core trio of keyboardist Nicolay Tangen Svennæs, bassist Gunn-Hilde Erstad and guitarist Petter Hallaråker all studied at the Conservatory of Music in Kristiansand, Norway. Svennæs and Hallaråker had been friends since they were 15, and bonded with Erstad over a love of prog music. Hallaråker was the one responsible for introducing Svennæs to prog music in the first place via Dream Theater and Tool, even covering the former’s Erotomania in an earlier band, but Rendezvous Point deviate from those more classic prog metal sounds, with Svennæs calling their sound “more melodic prog rock with some fast guitars and odd…

Megafauna PELAGIC Soaring seventh long player from the Northern Irish instrumental art-rockers. And So I Watch You From Afar have come a long way since they formed in Belfast almost 20 years ago. Their self-titled debut, released via independent Derry label Smalltown America in 2009, proved to be the first baby steps on the way to becoming the big beast that they are today. What that early release has in common with Megafauna, their seventh album, is the intrinsic understanding of the futility of language in conveying emotion. And so while they’re routinely labelled post-rock, it’s an oversimplification that does them a disservice; on songs like the progressively expansive Gallery Of Honour and Me And Dunbar, ASIWYFA have developed their own language where they dance between dexterity and nuance, transcending…

Collapse The Wave IZZMUSIC.BANDCAMP.COM New York prog collective return with moods swinging wildly. When the pandemic hit soon after this previously fairly prolific bunch released their ninth album Don’t Panic in 2019, and plans to tour went awry, their core members looked elsewhere for a while to flex their creative muscles. Vocalist Laura Meade released two solo albums, helped by partner and Izz producer John Galgano alongside contributions from bandmates Tom Galgano and Brian Coralian, while John Galgano re-released his own set of songs and guitarist Paul Bremner took the opportunity to do the same. “It has a sharp sense of contrast between light and shade.” Meade’s longtime co-vocalist in Izz, Anmarie Byrnes, isn’t listed as a contributor to Collapse The Wave, which might be one reason why this album…

Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors/Internal Exile CHOCOLATE FROG Circle-closing reissues of the big man’s first two solo albums. Viewed with hindsight, Fish didn’t have a solo career so much as an endless stream of label struggles, lawsuits, near-bankruptcies, heartbreak, divorce(s), hospitalisations and near-death experiences, punctuated by the odd album. That the [almost]-retired singer didn’t chuck in the towel and move to the Outer Hebrides years ago is testament to his stubbornness. Either that or he was the world’s biggest glutton for punishment. “Vigil… remains the best thing to bear his name as a solo artist.” These reissues of his first two post-Marillion albums are where the joy and the pain started (and fittingly, as the last-ever releases on his Chocolate Frog label, where it ends, too). The deluxe CD…

VENUE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, LONDON DATE 04/06/2024 Annoyingly switching the start time of tonight’s gig so late the information can’t be relayed to reviewers in time isn’t the Royal Albert Hall’s finest hour, but fortunately this writer’s usual time keeping has been blessed by the gods, and although we miss opener Machine Messiah, Yes are thankfully only just into The Ladder’s It Will Be A Good Day (The River) as we enter the main arena. Neither might be obvious choices to start a Yes show titled Classic Tales Of Yes, but they show a thoughtful approach to a set that manages to blend expected classics with deeper cuts that are welcomely received. Steve Howe steps up to the mic to introduce a sprightly Going For The One. He’s not a natural live…

Where’s home? Norfolk. What’s your earliest prog memory? Walking home from junior school in 1968, and my older brother Royse shouting from his friend’s bedroom window for me to come and listen to something. He had just bought In Search Of The Lost Chord by The Moody Blues, an album that I still love to this day. What was the first prog album you bought? Soft Machine’s Six. I’m a fan of all their numbered albums – both before and after Robert Wyatt’s departure. And the last? By a strange coincidence I have just ordered [Softs live collection] Høvikodden 1971. What was your first prog gig? Peter Hammill, promoting A Black Box at The Venue in London, in August 1980. The first of many of his (and VdGG) that I…