Table of contents for Issue 119 in Prog

ENTROPY, THE THEATRICAL and deeply personal second album from Melbourne power prog rockers Acolyte, has been three years in the making. Rewind to the start of 2018, the band were riding high. Having come together in 2014 through a shared love of Pink Floyd, Opeth and early Porcupine Tree, they’d spent the two years since their 2016 debut, Shades Of Black, gigging around Australia and carving a foothold in their home country’s buzzing prog scene. In January 2018, they even played Progfest alongside Leprous, Voyager and AlithiA. Itching to get back in the studio, the band settled back into songwriting mode, writing the album’s commanding title track early that year, but suddenly, vocalist Morgan-Leigh Brown found herself struggling. “My body was just giving up on me and I didn’t know…

Yossi Sassi And The Oriental Rock Orchestra have released the new album Hear And Dare. The ex-Orphaned Land guitarist calls it “a homage to music, musicians and the moments of synergy they share.” See www.yossisassi.com The first three Arabs In Aspic (left) albums will be reissued on June 18 via Karisma Records. Progeria, Far Out In Aradabia and Strange Frame Of Mind will be available digitally, on CD, and on black and coloured vinyl. www.arabsinaspic.org Bad Elephant Music will launch a reissue of Spirit Flying Free, the 1996 album by John Carter and Martin Barre. The guest-studded LP was designed by Barre to showcase the talents of Carter, who never turned pro. music.badelephant.co.uk Australians Teramaze release their fifth album, Sorella Minore, on May 11. It includes the recent single Between These…

Due for release later in 2021, In Disequilibrium is the second collaboration between Peter Hammill and Swedish experimental rock ensemble Isildurs Bane. The follow-up to 2019’s In Amazonia was pieced together remotely last year, with Hammill writing lyrics and vocal lines to the band’s complex instrumentals. “They’re such a unique band,” he states. “When you first hear their music, especially as a singer and lyric writer, it’s hard to sort out which bit is a chorus and which part is a verse and so on. The new album doesn’t have a lead instrument like the koto, which was effectively providing an alternate voice on In Amazonia. So it’s much more an ensemble performance with a vocalist this time, and maybe a bit more dense musically. It’s complex band playing, lots…

“Please purchase directly from us to support our independence,” Lifesigns requested via an advert in Prog a few months ago. “No terms and conditions apply.” The prog rockers’ collective tongue was firmly in cheek when they took out the ad – “we offer solutions to a wide a range of musical yearnings,” they added – but the underlying message was sincere. Lifesigns’ third studio album, Altitude, is intrinsically independent in nature: it came to fruition thanks to another crowdfunding campaign. This has led to some tagging them as the ‘new Marillion’, who of course pioneered asking fans to pay up front. The eight-track is what many have come to expect from Lifesigns: thoughtfully written prog rock, which is happy to flirt with major chords, earworm melodies and dexterous playing. It’s…

In 2021, Gojira find themselves with the world at their feet. Releasing their seventh album, Fortitude, on the back 2016’s Magma – their best-selling record to date – and the host of festival headline slots they earned as a result, they have become one of the biggest metal bands on the planet. Yet they haven’t found their success commercialising their metallic stomp. Instead, Gojira are still as weird, experimental and avant-garde as ever. “We’re not blind to our success. We want to be the next big metal band,” says drummer Mario Duplantier. “In Gojira, we’re very attracted to the catchiness of metal, but we also love the experimental aspect of our music. So now we have this double approach because we want to make the step up and become a…

“Not everybody can be astronauts exploring space, but our music is our way of exploring ourselves and different possibilities.”Torsten Kinsella In a dark year of downtempo albums, Irish rockers God Is An Astronaut are bucking the trend with their new LP. Ghost Tapes #10 is in-your-face, intense and promises to be explosive when they play it live. Their elegiac 2018 album, Epitaph, saw them mourning the passing of their seven-year-old cousin, but their latest release is a different beast. Even before the pandemic, the band, led by Torsten and Niels Kinsella, were looking to move forward, and start a new chapter. It’s fitting because God Is An Astronaut have gone through a rebirth of sorts. Rounded out by drummer Lloyd Hanney, their new album sees the return of musician Jamie…

Intense French outfit serve up first-class post-rock. On first listen, BRUIT <’s album The Machine Is Burning And Now Everyone Knows It Could Happen Again may not come clearly into focus. It’s cinematic, ambitious art rock meets post-rock of the first degree, and it’s almost too big, too expansive, to take in on a single listen. Successive spins reveal that, for all its grandeur and bombast, not a single element is out of place. There’s careful attention to detail not only in the sound design – as is commonplace in post-rock – but also in the melodies and structures of the songs. “Thematically, it’s rock solid; musically, it’s close to flawless.” Opener Industry may toy with some of the tropes of crescendo-core, but the French band manage to avoid a…

Former Supertramp guitarist showcases his diversity. Carl Verheyen’s back catalogue is scattered with a variety of styles, from blues to improvisational jazz, and the ex-Supertramp guitarist’s latest solo album will appeal to those with similarly wide-ranging tastes. Every track has an individual feel, from the pop rock pulse of the title track to the tribal beat of Kaningie, the funk undercurrent of Clawhammer Man and even the hint of reggae on People Got To Be Free. It all has the joyous ring of someone celebrating his love of music, and no song offers more than Garfunkel (It Was All Too Real), which tells of the time the teenage Verheyen got to perform Bridge Over Troubled Water with Art Garfunkel. Aptly, the song radiates with the sort of folky colouring that…

Jokey, bonkers playfulness from prog ‘supergroup’. Anyone who’s heard Deckchair Poets’ previous two albums will know what to expect here – amusing unpredictability. Led by vocalist Lynden Williams, the Poets (who include members of Yes, Spock’s Beard and Big Big Train) revel in their barminess on every track. It begins with Deckchair Poem, a pastiche of 60s rock, before Beam Me Up slips into Joe Meek territory. A cover of The Rutles’ Unfinished Words is chortlesome, as is their version of The Humblebums’ Joe Dempsey (written by Billy Connolly). Dictators Poor Image Projection is out of the Bonzo Dog playbook, while Sheepless In Seattle is an excuse for all manner of farmyard noises. Roobaron is an Australian jig, while Mr Future has Williams crooning and Shadows nicks from The Beatles…

Post-rock soundscaper’s extended stage show captured. What a beautiful, long-lost sound: a crowd. When this 2019 live performance from Alex Henry Foster is introduced with roars and whoops, it’s a reminder of what the world is sorely missing right now. We join Foster in Montreal performing his debut album Windows In The Sky, a contemplative post-rock meditation inspired by the loss of his father. Here, it’s expanded to nearly two hours in length, prologued by a slowbuilding new song. The Son Of Hannah offers prayers for those we’ve lost with Old Testament references, and the vibe only gets more apocalyptic from there. A 19-minute reading of Shadows Of Our Evening Tides is shrouded in swells of guitar noise before Foster, his voice cracking with emotion, reaches the heart-wrenching conclusion: ‘Oh…

US post-hardcore band dip their toes into prog waters. Hail The Sun are now five albums in, and the spunky mix of posthardcore and math rock on New Age Filth is a fresh tonic for the weary among us. They may cite Yes as an influence, but this is music most definitely rooted in the 21st century, with the sweet-then-shouty vocals of drummer Donovan Melero – who also plays with outward-thinking collective Sianvar – oozing modern flair. A classic case of a band not quite prog by name but progressive by nature, Hail The Sun’s sucker punch is their knack for going off-track where some of their contemporaries might keep it simple, sharing DNA with the likes of Coheed And Cambria and Protest The Hero. Highlight Slander is a fine…

Another stellar instalment from Holland’s premier pomp proggers. For many, a strong memory from the mid-70s is that of listening to the title track of Kayak’s third album Royal Bed Bouncer on transistors late at night on the newly refloated Radio Caroline, and especially its Dutch counterpart, Mi Amigo. The song’s strange, off-kilter tale was simply intriguing. Keyboard player and co-founder Ton Scherpenzeel is still part of the band who made that record (his partner in Kayak, Pim Koopman, died in 2009); and although the personnel has shifted greatly across their 20 or so albums, Kayak’s production values and quality of intriguing writing and playing remains exactly the same, if today it is somewhat less off-kilter. “Strident pomp rock packed with melodic flourishes.” With the Kayak class of 2017 –…

Cinematic sci-fi cloaks multihued invasion courtesy of Hawkwind-esque Italians. Named after Italy’s first sci-fi film, 1958’s Death Comes From Outer Space, Milanese quintet La Morte Viene Dallo Spazio’s frequently stunning followup to 2018’s Sky Over Giza presents eight densely wrought yet widescreen mini-movies as likely to change gear into guitarist-producer Stefano Basurto’s black metal riffs as billow into singer-keyboardist Melissa Crema’s whirring theremin attack. The diverse flavours teeming deftly within the towering walls of sound add to their heady evocative onslaughts, from the motoring krautrock of Cursed Invader to the title track’s avant-garde metal clamour. Their love of horror and sci-fi manifests in Crema’s sparsely deployed vocals, but mostly through her interstellar electronic arsenal, ranging from twinkling musique concrète over Spectrometer’s doom chords to Oracollo Della Morte’s cacophonous Middle Eastern-tinged…

French maverick’s beguiling debut. It’s always tempting for talented multiinstrumentalists who enjoy dabbling in different sounds and styles to include them all on the same record. Marseille-based dilettante Lewis Feraud seems to succumb to that temptation on his solo album, but thankfully, he’s keen to create a vivid, heady atmosphere whatever genre he’s dipping into. Entrance stumbles elegantly in with drowsy horns and dizzy woodwind, as if by way of a warning that straights need not apply, before teleporting the listener from Canterbury to Cambridge as Time, Money And Fear Part 1 creates a Floydian vista laced with sweetly psychedelic organ. On Fox a jazzy organ sashays around before being enveloped in a fuzzcaked stomp. Contrast that with Again, an acoustic lament whose simple charms are suddenly joined by haunting…

Anderson’s electronic 80s epiphany rarely stops moving. Jon Anderson enjoyed a state of independence in the early 80s, throwing himself into a productive first hiatus from Yes. His work with Vangelis bled into this 1982 solo album. If his prog visions had entered more accessible terrain on its predecessor, Song Of Seven, then this was where he embraced the then newfangled electronic technology. It has that contemporaneous quality of trying out every new toy in the box whether creative or counterproductive, and there are spells later where it all gets rather shrill and frenetic. Yet the irresistibility of Anderson’s joyful worldview blasts its sunbeams through any reservations. With a wealth of giltedged musicians, that evergreen Jon’s joie de vivre abides. “It has the quality of trying out every new toy…

Ozrics’ abled 80s cassette albums remastered in box set reissue. Since forming at 1983’s Stonehenge festival and naming themselves after an imaginary alien breakfast cereal, Ozric Tentacles have operated below the radar and outside the music industry. As UK free festivals embraced their Gong-influenced sets, the band supported themselves through the 80s selling cassette albums at gigs, thousands purchasing rainbow label C60s that gained collectible mystique. To satisfy demand, all six cassettes were gathered on 1993’s Vitamin Enhanced CD box set (withdrawn after Kellogg’s objected to the cover’s similarity to Corn Flakes), and since been reissued in different combinations. This latest incarnation marks the first time mastermind Ed Wynne has personally remastered them. Drawn from untitled tracks recorded over three years, 1985’s Erpsongs surprised anyone expecting endless crusty jamming with…

Kevin Parker’s Aussie psych project’s first big noise revisited. Is it really a decade since InnerSpeaker came out? The very thought of it sends this writer straight back to when this multicoloured gem, with its trippy Drost-effect sleeve, landed on the editor’s desk. It was our first encounter with the Perth-based ‘band’ (who we now know is just one person – writer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker) and it instantly became a Prog office stereo favourite. “Warm, psychedelic pop oozes from each groove.” InnerSpeaker followed Parker’s self-released debut EP, which landed him a deal with hip Sydney label Modular and found him and his housemates/Impala contributors Jay Watson (drums) and Dom Simper (bass) relocated to Wave House, a gigantic beach pad by the Indian Ocean, where Parker strived to make…

Where’s home? Southampton, born and bred – I’m a long-suffering Saints fan. What’s your earliest prog memory? When I was about eight my dad sat me down in the lounge, turned all the lights off and we listened to The Dark Side Of The Moon, from start to finish. The first prog album you bought? Pink Floyd’s Pulse from Our Price, with the flashing LEDs. I was an apprentice at the time [in 1995] and it nearly cost me a full week’s wages! And the last? Swans’ Leaving Meaning [2019], which is superb. I think they’re one of the most brilliantly progressive bands around. What was your first prog gig? Floyd at Earls Court, the Division Bell tour [in 1994]. Dad bought me the ticket, but he could only get…

Amorphis guitarist Esa Holopainen is set to release his first solo record under the moniker Silver Lake. Soilworks’ Björn ‘Speed’ Strid, Leprous’ Einar Solberg and Katatonia’s Jonas Renkse are some of the guest vocalists who appear on Silver Lake By Esa Holopainen, which is released via Nuclear Blast on May 28. Holopainen describes the work as “versatile”, spanning folk, pop and heavier elements, as well as possessing a “Dire Straits vibe”, all tied together by his intricate guitar performances. “I didn’t want it to be a weird compilation of different vocalists singing different types of songs,” he says. “I wanted the whole album to have a dynamic feeling.” He wrote the first three songs – Sentiment, Ray Of Light and Promising Sun – several years ago, but it was only…

Soft Machine saxophonist, flautist and composer Theo Travis plays an Armenian wind instrument, the duduk, on every track of his 11th solo album, Songs From The Apricot Tree, which is released on June 1 via Ethersound. It features guest appearances by King Crimson’s Jakko Jakszyk, Big Big Train’s David Longdon and Soft Machine’s John Etheridge. Its tracks include a Gong favourite and a jazz standard, as well as original compositions, while the title comes from the wood from which the instrument is made. “I love the duduk,” Travis says. “It’s so different from saxophone and flute – and it does something really special: it touches the soul. It’s actually a simple, ancient instrument, literally a piece of wood with holes in it and a large double reed; no keys or…

THE EARTHSHAKING DEBUT single from Lewis doesn’t shy away from the big stuff: Time, Money And Fear plunges straight in at the deep end. Given the breadth of these concepts, it’ll probably come as little surprise that the multi-instrumentalist and singer is a clinical psychologist by day. Does Lewis Feraud – to give him his full name – channel his work into his songs? “Indeed,” he says. “I explore certain themes that I encounter in psychiatry, and I meet people who are fascinating and who, in each moment, make me discover different perspectives on the human condition in all its great complexity. I get a lot of love from the people I meet and I also experience a lot of misery.” It’s not just psychiatry – geography plays a part…

HER EXTRAORDINARY ALBUM A Common Turn may be attracting rave reviews but Dublin-based art rock singersongwriter Anna B Savage is unlikely to be reading them. Praise for her 2015 debut EP ignited an internal blizzard of self-doubt and writer’s block, so it’s too risky. Charged with vivid brutal intimacy that often feels like eavesdropping, Corncrakes, Baby Grand and Dead Pursuits capture Savage confronting, battling and triumphing over her inner maelstrom and self-terminated “shit” relationship, pinballing emotions channelled through her mellifluous voice that’s enhanced by William Doyle’s intricate electronic backdrops. She still remembers, “this terrible writer’s block, trying to get stuff to come out. Hotel took over three years. I just kept going back to it. That song is like a microcosm, also testament to the way my brain works. A jigsaw…

Maverick. Visionary. Prog’s perennial Renaissance Man. Punk-approved eccentric. After more than 50 years of active service in progressive music, Peter Hammill has earned all these titles and more. Always positioned to the left of the prog mainstream and seemingly impervious to the passing of time and trend, he’s amassed an extraordinary catalogue of music, both as a solo artist (36 studio albums and counting!) and with the legendary Van der Graaf Generator: the band he co-founded in 1967 and that currently exists as a trio, with Hammill alongside Hugh Banton and Guy Evans. By any sane reckoning, he’s one of the most important and influential figures in the history of prog. But what’s less frequently acknowledged is that Peter Hammill’s music, whether solo or with Van der Graaf, sounds like…

“In Asia I had a great writing relationship with John Wetton, and I’m lucky to have another writer to work with. It’s a very delicate thing, but you want to please the person you’re working with.”Geoff Downes Chris Braide’s chartered jet touched down in the UK back in October. Ten years (almost to the day) after his LA adventure began, he, his wife/manager Olivia and their two children were finally coming home. The Lancashire lad had done very well in the US. Over that decade Braide built up a successful career as a go-to songwriter for big stars including Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey, Christina Aguilera and, notably, left-field Australian pop star Sia. But as 2020 did its worst, the pull of home became irresistibly strong. “There were a few reasons…

Asked if he considers he’s been prolific or not since the long Porcupine Tree hiatus began in 2010, Richard Barbieri answers in the affirmative. “In the last five years or so, sure. In truth it all began when I tore the cruciate ligament in my knee playing tennis, which ended my tennis career! So I was there at home, and only then got into social media, and started seeing there were a lot of people out there still very interested in my music. So I began working on what became Planets + Persona, finishing that in 2017. That album was a real step forward for me. “Porcupine Tree haven’t split up as such. I know it might be one of the longest hiatuses ever, but I wouldn’t rule a reunion…

Since vocalist Jon Davison arrived in Yes in 2012, bassist Billy Sherwood estimates that he’s spent around six months annually away from his LA home, either rehearsing or touring around the world. There’s been no new Yes studio album since the much-maligned Heaven & Earth was released back in summer 2014. Following 2019’s Royal Affair tour, which crisscrossed North America, Yes have inevitably been off the road involuntarily. However, the Yes camp hasn’t been idle. In the last 12 months, Davison has recorded with The Moody Blues’ John Lodge – the single, In These Crazy Times, was released last July. Keyboardist Geoff Downes has recently teamed up with songwriter Chris Braide for a fourth Downes Braide Association album, Halcyon Hymns (see page 44), and guitarist and de facto band leader…

“I’ve been doing this job for over half a century and all of a sudden I was unemployed,” says Al Stewart of the effects of recent events. “But I rather liked having a year off because I’ve worked in a straight line since I was 19.” On his 1973 autobiographical song Post World War Two Blues, Stewart sang that this all began when he travelled to London in 1965, ‘With a corduroy jacket and a head full of dreams.’ He soon established himself as a singer-songwriter in the capital’s folk scene. In the 70s, together with artists such Roy Harper, Ralph McTell, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson and Michael Chapman, he helped create a golden age of progressive folk rock, using imaginative arrangements and expanded structures. Stewart developed a signature style…

Lovingly recreated retro sounds from Greek proggers. There’s something ethereal about Ciccada. The Athens band’s third album beautifully melds a multitude of vintage influences, from Jethro Tull, Gryphon and Gentle Giant, to traditional Greek music. The introduction of the latter could easily have resulted in a disjointed sound, yet the combination of Yorgos Mouchos’ guitar work and Nicolas Nikolopoulos’ flute and keyboards give this a balance and a sense of place. The twin vocals of Dimi Spela and Evangelia Kozoni – imagine Sonja Kristina and Annie Haslam in tandem – add both a sensual sophistication and an earthy dimension to the dreamscape instrumentation. The six tracks here each have their own flavour. Enenia is a haunting introduction that eases into the genteel Open Wings, before The Old Man And The…

Fusion guitar star puts her songwriting in the spotlight. It’s been a six-year wait for new material from Jane Getter, following her last studio release, On, in 2015. With a career spanning jazz and progressive fusion, Anomalia finds the guitar hero showcasing her voice and songwriting alongside her always impressive playing. Getter shares vocals with Randy McStine and gospel singer Chanda Rule, who appeared on 2017’s On Tour live album. “It shows Getter’s evolving strengths as a writer.” Given the events of the intervening period, much of Anomalia feels like a riposte to the Trump years. Dissembler never names the recently removed occupant of the White House, but as Getter uses the lyrics to attack a narcissist for their greed and lies, it’s easy to imagine her intended target. Similarly,…

Dead Can Dance partners dream up diverse soundscapes. Lisa Gerrard is best known to art-indie fans as the gifted singer of Dead Can Dance, the Australian 4AD duo who for years were overshadowed by Cocteau Twins but by 1993 were the label’s biggestselling act. After the late-90s, Gerrard worked with Hans Zimmer on the Gladiator score, gaining an Oscar nomination, which probably put the influence of eulogies in the inkies into perspective. Having since worked with Morricone and on Grammy-nominated new age music, she’s still with Dead Can Dance but takes a sidebar here with composer/keyboardist Maxwell (who joined DCD in 2012) and producer James Chapman (aka Maps). It’s a gorgeous blend of calmly constructed, gently building soundbeds and astonishing improvised Gerrard vocals. In one sense it’s what listeners would…

LA troupe’s hip and inventive hodgepodge of vintage styles. Compared to their 2018 self-titled debut, Water For The Frogs scales back Hooveriii’s avant-garde psychedelic madness in favour of a simplified and digestible post-punk/prog rock experience. This is especially clear on Hang ’Em High and Erasure, both of which conjure Iggy Pop and Television via raucous guitar work, straightforward percussion and appealingly messy singing. Cindy has a stronger melodic focus that makes it feel like an early Todd Rundgren gem. That’s not to say that there aren’t greater flights of fancy or moments of vibrant dreaminess elsewhere, as Control and Gone pack plenty of artsy arrangements (complete with cosmic sound effects and disorderly horns). The krautrock fun of instrumental We’re Both Lawyers demonstrates Hooveriii’s playfulness while providing an appreciated change of…

Nordic prog psych with a brilliant mind of its own. Norway’s best kept prog secret for a while now, Jordsjø share many of their Scandinavian peers’ love for the warm, analogue rush of the early-70s, but as with each of their previous four records, Pastoralia exists in an idiosyncratic mini-universe of its own. Fans of the overzealous use of Mellotron and wonky, jazz-inflected Canterbury melodies will feel immediately at home within the hazy but eventful ambling of Skumring I Karesuando. But Jordsjø are an inventive bunch and the familiar is nearly always interrupted by something deliciously odd and unexpected, whether that be detours like acoustic instrumental Fuglehviskeren, or moments of bullish, protometal riffing. The prevailing atmosphere is one of slightly stoned tranquillity: breezily psychedelic but structurally symphonic songs such as…

Left-field psychedelia from American quartet. One thing Magnet Animals showed on their 2016 debut Butterfly Killer was a penchant for embracing surprising detours in their musical journey. The same is also true of their second album: Fake Dudes keeps the listener constantly on edge. A psychedelic heart beats at the core of their sound that brings to mind the 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola, yet they have a style all their own. Nothing proves this more than the atonal atmosphere of Man And Machine. Mainman Todd Clouser narrates rather than sings, using a megaphone-style effect as he gets the listener to think about the fractious relationship between humanity and technology. Behind him, the music gasps and burps on the edge of losing total control. It’s unnerving yet also so…

Scandi art rockers deliver heavy music for heavy times. An abstract image dominates the cover of VOLA’s third album, Witness. An inky black circle sits dead centre, a vast empty hole of ominous nothingness ringed by spidery grey lines radiating outwards like spokes or tendrils. It could be an image of a distant star or a close-up of a flower, rendered in negative. Given the album’s title and its overarching theme of watchfulness on both a societal and a human level, it’s most likely a dilated pupil, vigilant and unblinking: who’ll look away first? “Witness is an album that’s easy to admire but harder to love.” The blackness at the heart of the image mirrors the music on Witness. While the Danish-Swedish four-piece have always skewed towards the heavier end…

More songs about umlauts and Zeuhl. An obvious first step when encountering any band with a discography as vast as Magma’s might be to go back to basics, heading directly to such landmark releases as their 1970 self-titled debut breakthrough epics, Mëkanïk Dëstructïw Kömmandöh and Köhntarkösz. Yet this sparkling remaster of the live set Retrospektïw I–II–III should provide the curious with a pretty definitive guide as to what Magma are all about. Recorded at a series of concerts in Paris in 1980, when Christian Vander convened the ensemble in a celebration of their 10-year anniversary, the recording shows just how well jazz fusion, pop and rock are all distilled into a sequence of suites whose contents burn with an intensity that’s nothing short of incandescent. While the original studio versions…

Late-period live double makes its vinyl debut. The final album to emerge during the art prog giants’ lifetime, Octane Twisted was released in 2012, essentially a live document of Porcupine Tree’s last studio album, 2009’s The Incident. Originally a two-CD/DVD package, it’s now on vinyl (in a four-LP box set) for the first time. While there are several different brushstrokes, the simple fact is if you liked The Incident you’ll like this; if not, you won’t. With the bulk recorded at Chicago’s Riviera Theater, it includes other fan favourites from that show (including Hatesong and Stars Die) plus three tracks from the Royal Albert Hall swansong, notably the stirring Arriving Somewhere But Not Here. It’s a solid souvenir of a band who, as Gavin Harrison has put it, were “well…

Follow us on twitter.com/progmagazineUK STEVE HACKETT @HackettOfficial Blue skies and blossom on a weekend walk… MISHA MANSOOR @mishaperiphery Writing some new @periphery tunes with the boys. @thespencersotelo matching my guitar so vibes are sick. DR. CATHERINE ANNE DAVIES @CatherineAD When someone tells you to smile more but the only chance of them seeing your teeth is in that fleeting second before you bite their head off… NEAL MORSE @nealmorse While MorseFest21 sales are going on (going great, thank you!) I am listening to mixes of the new NMB album. Unbelievable! Wait ’til you hear! AMOS WILLIAMS @MrAmosWilliams Finding it interesting that sometimes a song goes somewhere you never expected. And you are presented with the choice: change the course to suit your ego, or own where it goes no matter…

NINETY MINUTES’ DRIVE north of Oslo and on the shore of Lake Mjøsa lies the town of Hamar, where six of Meer’s eight members attended the same high school. Seldom does a band make as much positive progress between its first and second albums as Meer. Five years ago their eponymous debut showed promise but made barely a ripple, leaving guitarist Eivind Strømstad downhearted. “We got some positive feedback, but the album was dead on arrival really,” he now admits. Nevertheless Meer persevered, spending four years making follow-up Playing House and retaining all their members. Remarkably, since evolving from Ted Glen Extended, which was founded by Strømstad and vocalist Johanne Kippersund Nesdal in 2008, Meer’s line-up has remained unchanged since 2012. “We like to think of ourselves as a calm…

Not content with delivering a new solo album this year, Peter Hammill has also been involved with the forthcoming Van der Graaf Generator reissue campaign. Later in 2021, the band’s classic albums will be given a new stereo remix treatment and released on vinyl. There will also be a colossal 20-disc box set, The Charisma Years, containing lots of previously unreleased material alongside the new versions of Pawn Hearts and Godbluff. While most of prog’s more notable bands have plundered their back catalogue and released it anew at least once in recent times, the Van der Graaf catalogue has remained largely untouched until now. “It hasn’t been in our power, really,” Hammill explains. “The Charisma catalogue went to Virgin and then to EMI and now it’s come to Universal and…

“We were in the black, but it could have gone either way. I figured that if this was going to be my last hurrah then we should really go for it and make something that would be astonishing to listen to.”David Longdon Big Big Train do detail like few others. In repackaging their sixth album the group’s goals were twofold: to make a ‘coming of age’ release available on vinyl for the first time and, coincidentally, to commemorate its 10th anniversary. Alas, BBT became so consumed by the minutiae of their objective that the deadline came and went. Two years later than planned, a deluxe reboot of The Underfall Yard is now ready to be wheeled out. “We’re a fussy band,” admits bassist, guitarist and keyboardist Greg Spawton with a…

“I thought that Keith was this crazy, mad genius who would be talking in equations, but he was the funniest and easiest guy to talk to.” In the mid to late 80s, Robert Berry was viewed as progressive rock’s great successor. Guided under the tutelage of renowned A&R man John Kalodner, circumstances led to him being lined up to replace John Wetton in Asia and Steve Hackett in GTR before effectively supplanting Greg Lake in Emerson Lake & Palmer. Astoundingly, these opportunities arose within a few short weeks of each other. “John Kalodner was really on my side,” says Berry. “Carl Palmer was in his office one day and they were having trouble in Asia. Carl called me and said they were either going to replace John Wetton or start…

prog.reviews@futurenet.com As openings go, it’s arresting. Drop the needle on Frost*’s first studio album for five years and the bewildering voice of a child prompts a double-take: ‘Sit back, relax, and enjoy yourselves… you scum.’ Charming. Yet the blend of toxic positivity and open contempt in that statement sets the tone for a recurring lyrical theme. Keyboard player/co-vocalist/mastermind Jem Godfrey described 2016’s Falling Satellites as his “midlife crisis album”, urging us to live life to the full as our time is limited. Day And Age resembles the work of someone who’s decided positivity only goes so far. Yet rather than representing a grand, over-arching ‘concept’ uniting this record, it’s backed up by a distinctive emotional feel. Several tracks were recorded in the “bleak, isolated oppression” of a converted coastguard tower,…

Scandinavian soloist delivers difficult subject matter and delightful classic sounds. Singer/guitarist Ole Michael Bjørndal may be familiar from his work with Airbag and Oak, but Magnified As Giants is the debut outing for his Caligonaut project. With help from musician friends including members of Wobbler and Airbag, Bjørndal creates soundscapes redolent of the sounds and textures of classic 70s prog and folk rock. This collection contains just four songs, with only the achingly delicious title track (which could pass as a Trespass-era Genesis outtake) dropping below the 10-minute mark and there’s still quite a lot of music to get to grips with. An airy melancholy pervades as Bjørndal taps into issues of loss, feelings of inadequacy and his grapples with inner demons. Even when things take a turn for the…

Merseysiders’ tribute to a bygone seaside universe. It’s surprising that The Coral haven’t previously attempted a double LP, or indeed anything resembling a concept album. On this 10th outing, though, the Scousers have come up with an idea to thread their new songs together: the rise and fall of a seaside funfair isle – something that suits their talent for sepia-toned, faintly psychedelic folk-pop. Interspersed with narration from “The Great Muriarty” (aka frontman James Skelly’s granddad Ian Murray), the evocation of the Island’s good times on part one (Welcome To Coral Island) is full of sunny-dappled harmony pop, while the rich harmonies and gentle acoustica of Mist On The River begs the question, “What if Crosby, Stills and Nash relocated to New Brighton?” They strike just as resonant a chord…

A collection of cover songs made new and bold. As tour dates fade further away into a still uncertain future, Peter Hammill, like other artists whose live work has been put on hold, has busied himself in the studio. Recorded between March and December 2020, In Translation is unusual for a PH record in that its material is written by other composers. “This isn’t Hammill knocking out old faves like Bryan Ferry.” Hammill took up these cover versions partly as a means of maintaining some artistic equilibrium in the face of the pandemic overwhelming the outside world. However, this isn’t simply the Van der Graaf Generator linchpin knocking out a few old faves like a latter-day Bryan Ferry. A fair portion of the material looks to the darker corners of…

French metal pioneers play big prog hand. Metal bands throwing in their lot with progressive music isn’t a new phenomenon – Opeth, Katatonia, Enslaved and more spring to mind – but when an act rightly hailed as one of heavy metal’s more extreme forerunners crosses the divide it does make you sit up and take notice. Signs have long hinted there’s more to French quartet Gojira than crushing brutality, and on Fortitude they throw caution to the wind, not just embracing a far proggier approach than before, but also aiming for the mainstream in a similar manner to Mastodon on Crack The Skye. Not only are the likes of Sphinx, Amazonia and Into The Storm festooned with twisting, tricky prog metal riffs, but the elegant Hold On sounds like a…

Gong spin-off pulls off Buddhist concept work. The Invisible Opera Company Of Tibet was conceived by Gong founder Daevid Allen in the 70s when, feeling a higher intelligence guiding the band, he started a global network of likeminded artists. After forming the first line-up in Australia in 1986, Allen gave his blessing to TIOCOTs in Brazil, America and this UK branch formed by Glissando Orchestra guitarist Brian Abbott in 1992. Reading Kalu Rimpoche’s Buddhist tome, Luminous Mind, inspired Abbott to demo this album in 2012, only to leave it marinating for several years until recording with his wife, singerpoet Jackie Juno, and keyboardist Julian Veasey, bassist Philip Whitehouse, drummer Tracey Austin and flautist Vivien Goodwin-Darke. Kicking off with Dissolution’s hushed drone and Song Of The Bardo’s acoustic English folk, the…

Derbyshire prog-pop eccentrics’ enjoyably off-kilter return. Unlike some musicians featured in these pages, Scott Milligan can’t play 16 instruments while conducting a choir. But Kitten Pyramid’s chief songwriter makes up for his technical limitations with a surfeit of ideas and a singular world view that makes his band a unique proposition. On this follow-up to 2013’s equally bipolar Uh-Oh!, the shimmying harmony pop of the title track is punctuated by daffy bass sax as Milligan gently relates a tale of bees escaping a Jacuzzi. Leggy Friend is more direct, as a gentle acoustic thrum asks the listener to ‘Take my hand and jump off a cliff with me.’ While we’re not yet quite that invested, by the end of the song we’ve come round to the notion that this is…

Rampaging rifferama from prolific Norwegian shapeshifters. On the opening bars of The Waning (Pt.1 & 2) the chugging riffs and dual lead guitars winding around Motorpsycho’s trademark harmony vocals sound like a cross between Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple. And even though there are some oddly timed chord changes thrown in to wrong-foot the listener, this song signals the fact that Kingdom Of Oblivion finds Motorpsycho at their rockiest, and that’s very rocky indeed. But typical of the group it’s a lengthy collection and the whole story reveals itself to be even more complex than that. “It finds them at their rockiest, and that’s very rocky indeed.” It comes as no surprise to find out that the album is largely constructed from riff ideas that didn’t quite fit the more…

Japanese post-rockers 20th anniversary show, with added orchestra. MONO’s signature style is based on heavily FX’d guitars, producing sheets of sound with a steadily unravelling grandeur that’s invited comparisons with Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, while the band would like to add Beethoven and Górecki to that list. Beyond The Past, recorded live at the Barbican to mark the Japanese band’s 20th anniversary, shows how vast MONO’s dynamic range is, from the delicate mesh of spacey, echoed guitars and voice on Breathe to surges of enormous power. Across its two hours, the drolly-named Platinum Anniversary Orchestra – in fact a 10-piece string section – don’t strive for classical complexity as such, but their long flowing lines bolster MONO’s dual guitars, creating some astonishing textures. The…

Superb edition collects neo-prog duo’s literature-inspired keyboard onslaughts. More than 20 years ago, Clive Nolan (Arena, Pendragon) and Oliver Wakeman (a future member of Strawbs and Yes) teamed up to produce a musical interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky, followed in 2002 by a similar release that took Conan Doyle’s The Hound Of The Baskervilles as its source material. A mouthwateringly talented troupe of performers joined them, including original Yes guitarist Peter Banks, Magnum’s Bob Catley, singer Tracy Hitchings and Arjen Lucassen, with actor Robert Powell providing narrative links for …Baskervilles. Fans of quasiclassical bombast, the sort of musical storytelling found in Rick Wakeman’s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, portentous vocal delivery, big rock balladeering, oodles of keyboards, nods towards both old-time British music hall and musical theatre…

Live set and Slipstream video included in box set of Tull’s 1980 album. A is arguably the most controversial album in Jethro Tull’s extensive back catalogue. In what seemed like a pretty radical “Tull into the 80s” move, it not only heralded a spikier, more synthetic sound, but also a significant – and sudden – change in line-up. Out went long-serving members John Evans, Barrie Barlow and Dee Palmer, in came Roxy Music/Zappa/UK keys and violin player Eddie Jobson and American drummer Mark Craney. The reasons why have subsequently been well rehearsed, though even now the details seem a little strange: A was originally to be an Ian Anderson solo album, but at some point Chrysalis insisted it should be a Jethro Tull record, and thus the new band was…

The ergonomic design of Flares® JET 2 means fitting is quick and easy. They come supplied with three sizes of silicone tips, providing superb sound isolation. Precise pressure balancing reduces distortion levels and boosts volume. Mic and control capabilities are included, as is a handy pouch. www.flareaudio.com WORTH £39.99! RRP CHOOSE YOUR SUBSCRIPTION PRINT ONLY £27.50 EVERY SIX MONTHS (SAVING 37%)* or PRINT & DIGITAL £30 EVERY SIX MONTHS (SAVING 54%)* FREE CD WITH EVERY ISSUE EVERY NEW ISSUE IN PRINT, AND ON YOUR IPAD AND IPHONE HUGE SAVINGS, THE BEST VALUE FOR MONEY INSTANT DIGITAL ACCESS WHEN YOU SUBSCRIBE TODAY TO ORDER ONLINE VISIT… www.magazinesdirect.com/prg/bc14 or call 0330 3331113 and quote BC14 *Terms and conditions: Offer closes July 2, 2021. Offer open to new subscribers only. Direct Debit offer…