Innehållsförteckning för Issue 116 från Prog

NEXT ISSUE FEB 09 ON SALE Hello, and welcome to the new issue of Prog, our final issue of 2020. I think we can all agree, it’s been quite a ride… although maybe not quite the one we were expecting back in January. But, as we end this strange year, there certainly seems to be more than a hint of positivity with the rolling out of the vaccines. Here’s hoping things continue to get better throughout 2021. As is tradition with our end-of-year issue, not only do we present our annual seasonal graphic – courtesy, as always, of John Langton – but this issue also features the Readers’ Poll. Looking at the results, it suggests to me that the adaptability of bands and their fans has been paramount in maintaining some sort…

The new Greg Lake anthology [The Anthology: A Musical Journey, reviewed in Prog 115] is a really good intro to Greg Lake but the ELP work does open one mystery: how on earth did Oh, My Father fail to get on any of ELP’s albums? Okay, it may not have suited Tarkus but could easily have fitted in on Trilogy (instead of The Sheriff?), or Works Volume 2 which was full of material left over from other album sessions. It outshines Show Me The Way To Go Home. It not only highlights Lake’s voice at its finest but has a guitar solo that the likes of Gilmour, Blackmore et al would be proud to have produced! What it highlights too is that if Lake really wanted a solo career, with…

Irish post-rockers God Is An Astronaut launch new record Ghost Tapes #10 on February 12 via Napalm Records. Guitarist Torsten Kinsella says the band faced a “difficult decision” over whether to release the album without a tour, but they concluded, “It’s important for the band to put out material while it’s fresh.” He adds, “I don’t believe in holding back material. It’s relevant to me now, and it might not be relevant in, say, two years’ time.” He says their planned 15th anniversary shows for classic album All Is Violent, All Is Bright contributed to their raw approach, as they jammed the material before recording it – a first for them. They’re joined on the recording by cellist Jo Quail. While 2018’s Epitaph was dark and pensive, Ghost Tapes #10…

Former Hawkwind saxophonist Nik Turner and Killing Joke bassist Youth have created jam album Interstellar Energy together. It’s released on February 12 via Youth Sounds, and the pair say it contains six tracks where “space rock meets motorik kosmische”. The project has its roots in two live jams at the Glastonbury Festival – one in 2017 and one in 2019 – instigated by snooker icon and prog fan Steve Davis. “I first met Youth at a do for a record where we’d both done tracks,” Turner explains. “He asked me round to his house, then asked me to play along to a piece. I said, ‘What key is it in?’ We eventually found the key and off we went!” He adds that the experience of laying down six tracks with…

John Holden’s new album Circles In Time arrives on March 26, with an extensive guestlist recruited as a result of their downtime. Vocalists Marc Atkinson, Peter Jones, Sally Minnear, Jean Pageau and That Joe Payne; drummers Nick D’Virgilio and Henry Rogers; guitarists Zaid Crowe, Oliver Day and Eric Potapenko and violinist Frank van Essen are among the contributors. “Luckily, I had all new recording equipment delivered right before entering the first lockdown,” Holden says. “The circumstances really accelerated the process. Everything was completed almost a year ahead of time!” He adds, “I love to travel but the inability to do so safely meant that some songs were inspired by memories of places. New York, Cadiz and Egypt’s ancient history are all represented on the new album. The title refers to…

Therion (right) say their 17th album Leviathan will be a crowd-pleaser when it’s launched on January 22. “We have done the only thing that was left: the first album we have deliberately packed with Therion hit songs,” they assert. See www.therion.se. Canadian veterans Saga will go acoustic with next album Symmetry, released on March 12. It features “offside interpretations” of some older tracks, and comes as a result of their 2017 self-supporting sets in Europe. See www.sagagen.com. Canadian veterans Saga will go acoustic with next album Symmetry, released on March 12. It features “offside interpretations” of some older tracks, and comes as a result of their 2017 selfsupporting sets in Europe. See www.sagagen.com. Tim Bowness sideman Brian Hulse has launched his debut album, Cotton Mills And Shoes, which features Bowness’…

The prog top 30 albums November 2020 Compiled by 1 TAME IMPALA The Slow Rush (FICTION) 2 PINK FLOYD The Later Years – 1987-2019 (RHINO) 3 DREAM THEATER Distant Memories – Live In London (INSIDEOUT) 4 BRIAN ENO Film Music 1976-2020 (UMC) 5 LUNATIC SOUL Through Shaded Woods (KSCOPE) 6 FLAMING LIPS American Head (BELLA UNION) 7 KING CRIMSON The Complete 1969 Recordings (DGM/PANEGYRIC) 8 RICK WAKEMAN & THE ENGLISH ROCK ENSEMBLE The Red Planet (R&D MEDIA) 9 TREES Trees (EARTH) 10 STEVE HACKETT Selling England By The Pound And Spectral Mornings: Live (INSIDEOUT) 11 NIGHTWISH Human. :II: Nature. (NUCLEAR BLAST) 12 KATATONIA Dead Air (PEACEVILLE) 13 TOOL Fear Inoculum (MUSIC FOR NATIONS) 14 FROST* 13 Winters (INSIDEOUT) 15 RUSH Permanent Waves (MERCURY/UMC) 16 FOCUS 50 Years - Anthology 1970-1976…

Fifty one years ago, four expatriate Africans and three Caribbean musicians came together in London as Osibisa. Flying their “crisscross rhythms that explode with happiness”, UK audiences had never seen anything like the seven smiling figures in African robes harnessing highlife brass fanfares and explosive percussion breaks to supercharged progressive rock, igniting an unfettered joy and cavorting rarely seen at gigs before. Osibisa’s euphoric celebration of African culture, cross-pollinated with rock, jazz and soul, was a whole new thing, laying crucial foundations for world music live and on record. The band’s roots go back to saxophone-playing leader Teddy Osei’s childhood in West Africa. Born in 1937, he was introduced to traditional instruments at school, taught himself sax to jazz records at college and formed ‘highlife’ band The Star Gazers with…

Indian trio sometimes captivate, often frustrate. A lot has changed in the world of Mumbai’s A Mutual Question between the release of their last EP in 2015 and this debut album, chiefly a shift in sound from impressionistic noisescapes redolent of Mogwai to a more complex, overtly prog-centric approach. This is largely down to the fact that multi-instrumentalist and producer Siddharth Chopra is the only remaining member from that period. On Connect, he’s joined by new drummer Naman Sachdev, whose convoluted polyrhythms underpin Chopra’s glacial, piano-led meditations. They lend an intriguing anxiety to the soft dreampop textures of Elude and the title track, but after a while it seems to stop the songs finding their flow, as if someone’s banging on the wall next door distracting our attention. AMQ regularly…

Emotive prog metal given a melodic sheen. Sequestering themselves in a fjord-side cabin to write their sixth album amid a pandemic may explain why Communic settled on Hiding From The World as a title. As with previous outings, this release owes much to power metal and the band inject infectious vocal and melodic hooks throughout while exploring the psychological and emotional aspects of their subject matter. Alongside plenty of crunching downtuned guitars, the blasts of 7/8 in Scavenger’s Await and the slightly portentous delivery of My Temple Of Pride, there’s also balance and contrast – the Opeth-like acoustic passages of Born Without A Heart, the sombre instrumental interlude Soon To Be and the title track with its lovely twin lead lines. Recurring themes of regret, loss and desperation get very…

Veteran medieval prog minstrels as eclectic as ever. Gryphon have never been ones to follow others’ guidelines. The veteran British band have always dug their own furrow, jumped gleefully in and flipped the proverbial finger at any thought of commerciality. It’s why they remain a resolutely cult name, yet can always be relied upon to offer up music that’s never less than fascinating. Get Out Of My Father’s Car – the title apparently an in-joke relating to an incident that happened way back in 1972 – is the follow up to 2018’s Reinvention, itself Gryphon’s first studio album in more than 40 years. While there are obvious stylistic similarities to its predecessor, this one stands on its own inspirational merits. There’s something almost hypnotic about the jaunty title track, with…

Belated solo debut from the former leader of 10cc’s art wing. Kevin Godley’s very first solo album grew out of a single track, Expecting A Message. French EDM producer Luke Mornay approached the ex-10cc man to add the words and melody to music he’d written. Energised by the experience, Godley put out an ad asking for others to “write and record” with him. Of the 286 tracks he was sent, Muscle Memory is the result; it’s a splendidly varied set of collaborations linked by Godley’s unique voice and take on things. The Bang Bang Theory looks at America’s gun culture, The Ghosts Of The Living (‘they’ll never practise the art of forgiving’) is a melancholic take on those once held dear; Periscope is astonishing, almost as if David Bowie has…

British trio show their jazz fusion and pop roots. On the follow-up to 2017’s well-received debut album Delta-V, Kepler Ten have invested in considerably more jazz fusion mechanisms, layering on deft melodic touches, thereby showing they’ve an appreciation for intelligent pop. This is evident on Weaver, where James Durand’s sensitive vocals dovetail brilliantly with a musicality that sweeps across the spectrum from volatile complexity to easy listening. The same is true on These Few Words, where Durand and Steve Hales’ keyboard motifs and Alistair Bell’s guitar surges bring 80s Rush to mind. First single Falling Down and the title track both dip into the Muse book with the way they merge sumptuous sounds with tough riffs. A New Kind Of Sideways is a semi-conceptual album, preaching that as human beings…

Troubled songwriter’s ambient-tinged return. The Last Dinosaur’s 2010 debut Hooray! For Happiness and 2017’s The Nothing dredged up painful memories of death and divorce for mastermind Jamie Cameron. “I lost my job. I lost confidence. I lost my mind. I made this record,” he says of this third album. But his suffering is our gain. This time the gently evocative orchestral decorations of his most striking previous work are turned up further, but also offset by captivating ambient backdrops, reminiscent of Jon Hopkins’ atmospherics that bubbled under his King Creosote collaboration, Diamond Mine. The brass-laced, string-shivering Wholeness And The Implicate Order sees woodwind wriggle down its vistas like droplets down a windowpane, before the sounds of actual rain and distant thunder get louder. The Wheelbarrow loops a toddler’s mutterings over…

Five years ago this column hailed Flowers And Ledges, from the criminally under-acclaimed Philip Kane, as a grand folly of heartfelt genius. Five years on he returns with Book Of Broken Things (Corrupt), which seems, rather gloriously, to have decided that more, not less, is more. A sumptuously produced gallery of songs, lurching from baroque ballads to subverted soul to rococo rock, it’s driven by a singer whose twisted, misanthropic worldview covers politics, Catholicism, education, dysfunctional relationships, alcoholism and an intimate chat with Leonard Cohen. Imagine if Scott Walker had “gone weird” while still delivering great tunes. Guests among all the strings, brass and passionate testifying include Boz Boorer, Steve ‘Japan’ Jansen and Fiona Brice. The world has caught up with Kane’s internal bonfire and might listen this time. Perhaps…

Collective improvisations from the stratospheric octet. The raw material for Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere’s fifth album comes from just two days of studio playing. The group – which includes Andy Peake on keys and bass guitarist Todd Terry, two former members of Sheffield postpunk pioneers Comsat Angels – features a number of multi-instrumentalists but their music is remarkably uncluttered. On Zyxomma and Obsidian (Overture) the rhythm section get funky, with additional double bass. Jan Todd’s wordless vocals drift in and out while Martin Archer’s eerie Mellotron looms up in the background. Their approach has a kinship with Miles Davis circa Bitches Brew, Amon Düül II’s Yeti or Ummagummaera Pink Floyd. At 42 minutes, Pillared Space is an album within an album, a vast landscape with tom-tom patterns occasionally racing…

Outstanding live document honours the band’s late guitarist. Previously available as a fan club-only treat, this 2015 two-hour live set from Polish melodic proggers Riverside now comes as a CD/DVD pack that confirms their class. Since forming in 2003, they had by this stage learned how to temper the off-putting primal screaming and be more weathered yet welcoming. Those not familiar with the band might be surprised by how strong their rueful and robust songs are. There’s a sleight of hand to their flow, whereby it dances on the brink of Coldplay but veers away to something more sincere and sinewy. As this cruises from opener Lost to closer Found, it taps into a transformative optimism, earning it by not shying away from moody and even neo-metal moments. Under The…

SW serves up an OK Computer for the Amazon age. Steven Wilson is allergic to expectation. The multitude of musical twists Hemel Hempstead’s favourite son’s career has taken have been matched in lockstep by eruptions of disgruntlement from fans taking umbrage at the fact he’s not made In Absentia for the 137th time. The fulmination levels shot off the scale when Wilson sprang Personal Shopper on an unsuspecting public as a taster for his sixth solo album. Here was a pulsing, strangely sexy 10-minute hymn to modern consumer culture that sounded like it had been manufactured in some chrome-walled electronics lab, while a passing Elton John reeled off a long list of lavish but unnecessary items that he’d probably bought off the internet that morning. Slave To The Algorithm, if…

Dystopian sci-fi drone with Voivod’s Away on drums. The first collaboration between Montreal oneman drone/ambient project Thisquietarmy (aka Eric Quach) and Voivod drummer Michel ‘Away’ Langevin, The Singularity, Phase I brings together a shared love for sci-fi and boundary pushing sounds for this multifaceted soundtrack to an ominous future. With two equally adventurous musicians at the helm, it’s no surprise that the five tracks on this release stretch out and veer off to encompass a variety of sounds, from expansive, synth-tinged soundscapes to colossal post-rock, with a mesmerising, droning core that’s punctuated by Away’s commanding and hypnotic rhythms. A sense of darkness permeates throughout, a feeling of unease that something disturbing lurks around every corner: the sinister slow build of Beta 0000 0100 could visualise the decay of a dystopian…

US mavericks in full euphoric flight onstage. Over the course of his band’s four studio albums, The War On Drugs’ Adam Granduciel has located the sweet spot between rock’s classicism and its freakdom. That marriage is never more evident than during their live shows, when the Philadelphians take off on one of their transcendent wig-outs. Despite its title, Live Drugs reins in those lysergic urges in favour of straightforward renditions of nine studio tracks plus a faithful cover of Warren Zevon’s Accidentally Like A Martyr. Of course, The War On Drugs’ ‘straightforward’ is a world away from that of every other band: the coruscating beauty of The Strangest Thing is disrupted by a fuzzed-out solo, while the urgent Red Eyes sounds like The E Street Band trying their hand at…

Ex-Tull guitarist plays his favourite songs from former band’s classic era. Originally only available at gigs during Martin Barre’s 2019 tour, this double-CD compilation has now been repackaged for general sale, with four bonus tracks appended. It’s a collection of live and studio cuts that Barre describes as celebrating some of his favourite Tull tunes. Despite going solo in 2011 and releasing his own material since then, Barre understands that his long tenure as JT’s guitarist is ultimately what keeps the audiences coming. It’s also no surprise that the song listing is drawn almost exclusively from Tull’s classic late-60s/70s period. The live tracks are delivered for the most part with a confident swagger, mining a very 21st century classic rock sound – these are modern interpretations rather than recreations, singer…

Early Fist, retooled and remade. A lack of ambition or imagination is definitely not something that Gandalf’s Fist could be accused of, as attested to by the vast convoluted sweep of their collected five-disc The Clockwork Fable/The Clockwork Prologue behemoth. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise to learn that they started as they meant to continue. The (Re)Master And The Monkey revisits the band’s first release. Very much a homemade, independent demoquality endeavour originally, Gandalf’s Fist spent lockdown reworking and completely re-recording this bizarre tale of a legless frog named Pierre who craves world domination, and his journey through a fantasy land populated by islands floating in the sky, dragons and other mythical beasts, and a pathfinding bat named Maurice. As might be expected, the band haven’t limited their…

Aussie proggers stick to the middle of the road on expanded second LP. With their first new album in almost a decade on the way, Unitopia’s 2008 release The Garden has been expanded from a double LP into a triple. Their second album, and their first for InsideOut, it boosted their profile and shone a light on Australian prog. Although the scene now favours bands at the drop-tuned end of the spectrum, Unitopia feel like a bridge between what their countrymen Sky were doing in the 70s and neo-prog. The first two discs in this new set contain a remastered version of the original album, while the third features a collection of live performances and one new song. Unitopia dip their toes into a variety of styles when the mood…

Epic account of krautrock from a German’s perspective. As a German, Jan Reetze introduces fresh new angles for those who first encountered the country’s anarchic innovations through John Peel or via the music press. Over 536 pages, Reetze explains krautrock’s disparate origins through a potted history of West German society and culture since World War Two: events, politics, public attitudes and (lesser-known) pioneers are joined by forensic descriptions of TV, radio and technology (including synthesisers), often cruel music business and scenes including free jazz, first rock bands, Hamburg’s Star Club, Stockhausen electronics, psychedelia and even the much-disparaged easy listening style of schlager. As a post-war baby, Reetze can also convey how the aftershock of the Nazis and Holocaust affected Germans standing in the rubble, including the krautrock royalty who appear…

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Geoff Downes and Chris Braide will release their fourth Downes Braide Association studio album, and fifth album overall, on February 5 via Cherry Red. Halcyon Hymns is their response to the lockdown blues – an attempt to reflect the sounds and feelings of the “bucolic halcyon summer” very few of us got to enjoy in 2020. The duo had been basking in the glory of two successful live shows at Trading Boundaries in East Sussex when lockdown was announced in the UK. While Yes, Asia and Buggles keyboardist Downes was happy enough to keep himself busy with various projects in Wales, songwriter and composer Braide found himself more frustrated in California. “Marc Almond suggested I get stuck into another DBA record to lift the malaise,” he recalls. “Somehow it was…

YAMAHA EZ-300 Barely a month goes by without some musical instrument being launched which seeks to aid beginners via the means of flashing lights. Rather like a hi-tech version of the amusement arcade game Whack-A-Mole, when you see a light you put your finger on it. And via a process of muscle memory you start to gain some kind of proficiency. Yamaha is jumping on the bandwagon with this cute 61-key keyboard, and if it makes piano any easier to learn than the way I did it (stern disapproval from an angry looking woman every Wednesday afternoon) that has to be a good thing. www.yamaha.com JAMSTACK It won’t have escaped readers’ notice that electric guitars don’t make much of a noise unless they’re plugged into something. This can prove to…

Cult of Luna’s (right) new EP The Raging River features one of their heroes, Mark Lanegan, on Inside Of A Dream. “Hearing his voice is feeling that we’re inside of a dream,” they say. It’s out on February 5. See www.cultofluna.com. Stearica mark the centenary of cult silent horror movie Der Golem with their album Golem 202020, which arrives on March 19. The band’s Francesco Carlucci says their music reflects the moral that “salvation is a team game.” See www.stearica.net. The “long, strange trip” of 60s and 70s duo Nirvana is depicted in six-disc vinyl box set Songlife, which arrives on February 26 and includes remasters of all five of their albums plus the previously unreleased LP Secrets. See www.madfishmusic.com. BirdPen’s sixth album, All Function One, released on March 5,…

It was one of 2019’s most anticipated shows and now you can enjoy Yes’ The Royal Affair Tour, Live From Las Vegas from the comfort of your own home. The album includes a selection of classics taken from the band’s 1970-1980 period and reworked with their current line-up. Featured are: Starship Trooper, Tempus Fugit and Siberian Khatru, and there are also rare live performances of Paul Simon’s America and a uniquely Yes interpretation of John Lennon’s iconic Imagine, with guest vocals from The Moody Blues’ John Lodge. But this prize is far more than just a copy of the live album. We’ve compiled an exclusive Yes package for one very lucky Prog reader. The winner will receive: 1. A rare vinyl test pressing of The Royal Affair Tour live album…

Actor-director – and experimental prog fan – Catz’s new documentary is an imaginative approach to musician, mathematician and Radiophonic Workshop visionary Delia Derbyshire, the creator of the greatest piece of avant-garde music ever heard by families at teatime on a Saturday night: the Doctor Who theme tune. Delia Derbyshire: The Myths And The Legendary Tapes is finally completed. How does that feel? I’m so relieved [laughs]. It’s overwhelming to go back through the process. When I last spoke to Prog in 2019 I’d done some interviews, we’d got our commission [from BBC’s Arena] and I was about to start filming. I’d been working on the music with Cosey [Fanni Tutti] for about a year before that, so it’s been a long time coming. When did you decide that you had…

Few images sum up the change in progressive music as much as the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals. The heavily treated picture of Battersea Power Station with an inflatable pig was, at once, a joke, but also a statement against the bloated plutocracy that seemed to be ruling the UK at that point. Before, there were sleeves that could be pored over for meaning; but here, in the gatefold was a rubbish tip, a puddle, a washbasin… very 1977. It was, of course, Roger Waters’ idea, and realised by Hipgnosis, helmed by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell. Battersea Power Station was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and J Theo Halliday; it was comprised of two power stations joined together – Battersea ‘A’, completed in 1935, and ‘B’ in…

In 2018, Roger Waters talked openly about a new edition of Animals coming our way by the end of the year. “I’ve just been working with Po [Aubrey Powell],” he said. “There’s a reissue of Animals, a 5.1 mix of Animals, so I’ve been working… Well, I haven’t been working, he’s been working. He came up with some new photographs of Battersea Power Station to use as a CD cover for the new 5.1 mix. It’s beautiful.” Three years on, we have yet to see this thing of ugly beauty. There are reams of web pages (121 of them on the Steve Hoffman Forum alone) surmising where it’s gone, what could be included, and what may have happened. There are supposedly alternative versions of all the tracks, the unedited Pigs…

“This album is definitely outward looking and full of despair. The next one is going to be cheerful, I promise!” The last time Prog spoke with Crippled Black Phoenix founder Justin Greaves, everything seemed to be going extremely well. It was the summer of 2018 and his band were poised to release their seventh full-length recording, Great Escape. The album was widely hailed as containing some of their best work; a development Greaves attributed to having “the right people playing the music” after years of turmoil and unsettled line-ups. Two years on, Crippled Black Phoenix are about to release a new studio record, but with yet another line-up. Seemingly out of nowhere, vocalist Daniel Änghede and synth player Mark Furnevall decided to leave the group late in 2019, just as…

More songs for the damned from the master of horror. Not content with scaring the pants off cinema audiences with Halloween, The Fog and The Thing, John Carpenter added to the terror of wide-eyed teens everywhere with his distinctive, synth-heavy soundtracks, filled with foreboding and gloom as Michael Myers filleted his way through the cast of the Halloween series. His directorial star might have waned, but Carpenter’s musical prowess is on the rise. The success of 2016’s Lost Themes II introduced him to an audience who didn’t need to see a serial killer spearing a teen to be thrilled by his creeping soundtracks, and Carpenter oversaw the music for Halloween’s 2018 reboot. This latest collection picks up where that left off, albeit without the movies to hang the music from.…

A stunning live set from one of Chicago’s latest genre masters. Recorded at New Jersey’s ProgStock festival in 2019, Forging Nations LIVE! illustrates why The Cyberiam are among the most promising new progressive metal acts around. Most of their selftitled debut LP is replicated here, including opener Alice In Afterland, whose seamless blend of soft and heavy arrangements recalls the catchiness and poignancy of Rush in their prime. There’s also the radio-friendly The Fall, the simultaneously sinister and majestic The Historian, and the hyperactive funk of My Occupation. However, it’s 2019’s 21-minute epic The Butterfly Effect that steals the show. Broken into five movements, it’s a thoroughly compelling voyage that shuffles through hectic and spacey passages with ease. Along the way, it channels mainstays Fates Warning, Tool and Dream Theater…

Icelanders revived by curious collaboration from their archives. It’s been a challenging few years for those idiosyncratic Icelanders Sigur Rós. Drummer Orri Páll Dýrason left after allegations of sexual assault and then the band were charged with tax evasion (the case was dismissed a year ago). Such matters sit uneasily with the perceived image of them as otherworldly creatures inhabiting a dreamscape of gorgeous sounds and imaginings. It’s odd, too, to think that in their 26 years of existence, they’ve gone from left-field obscurities to global success and gold discs, collaborations with Radiohead, and their music being used in World Cup coverage and Game Of Thrones. Mysterious music, rich with necromancy and enchantment. It only takes a few seconds of this collaboration with veteran Icelandic musician Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, to…

Mostly acoustic introspection from the former Genesis man. Steve Hackett has not, unlike the rest of the planet, spent the last year in quiet contemplation. As the world slowed and travel stopped, Hackett found himself with tours cancelled, some rare time on his hands and thinking of better times and faraway places. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then this is the most eloquent of love letters to days idly spent in balmy Mediterranean climes. His first acoustic album since 2008’s Tribute is a more muscular proposition than Hackett merely settled on a stool in the studio picking at his guitar until it sings. Combining the expansive, international palette of 2017’s The Night Siren, Hackett lets fly, be it with nylon, steel string, 12-string guitar, or an instrument like…

Melbourne’s finest look between the notes for inspiration. There’s something rather disconcerting about the melody played by the acoustic guitar and flutey keyboards on KGLW, the short, stately opener on King Gizzard’s 16th album in just eight years. A return to the quarter-tone tunings that they first used on Flying Microtonal Banana in 2017, these scales colour their songs with an unspecified exotica with a Middle Eastern vibe. Ontology evokes the approach of American psychedelic group The Kaleidoscope on their 1967 tune Egyptian Gardens allied to a 21st century take on raga rock. It also echoes the group’s own Nonagan Infinity from 2016, in that many of the songs seem like variations on each other, but that album’s relentless rhythmic drive is replaced here by drummer Michael Cavanagh’s skipping syncopated…

US duo’s dauntingly diverse second outing. The second album from two of the US prog scene’s most in-demand hired hands comes barely four months after their eponymous debut. II is also an audible step further along the same genre agnostic path: its moods swing so sharply it’s positively unnerving. I Don’t Feel sets out Randy McStine and Marco Minnemann’s schizophrenic stall, periodically breaking into a big, breathy AOR chorus between uncompromising dives into the weed-strewn depths of jazz-rock, while Tired offsets Latin-tinged acoustica with hollering hard rock hooks. But then the plot thickens. After the furious prog metal battering of The Flame and Old Sparky, comes Quarantine Sex Slave, setting out like The Cardiacs on crack before climaxing with a robot voice vowing, ‘I am going to be part of…

Spirit-walking and deep mythology with Norwegian animists. At first glance, you’d be mistaken for thinking that Norway only represented black metal, burning churches, restaurant prices that will make you drop your dessert spoon, and, naturally, Vikings. Which could be where you might have first discovered the music of Wardruna, as part of the haunting soundtrack to the unrelenting brutality that was the Vikings TV drama. In moments of quiet contemplation, the broken countryside around them looking like the moon had somehow sprouted grass, and in the contemplative idyll between bloody battle, Wardruna’s evocative songs played. Kvitravn is wrapped up in the ribbons of their country’s past. From a distance, Wardruna, dressed heavily in furs, as if returning from a three-day-long hunt, could be mistaken for the Scandinavian Manowar. Thankfully, the…

Washington DC prog metallers in strong form in the capital. It’s surprising Periphery have taken so long to release a live album, given the strength of their onstage performance. Live In London was recorded at the 2,000-capacity O2 Forum on November 15, 2019, and opening track Reptile immediately sets the tone, with a combination of viscous riffs and intricate interplay. More than half the set comes from that year’s Periphery IV: Hail Stan, though that never overbalances this album. Led by charismatic vocalist Spencer Sotelo, the band immerse themselves in compositions such as CHVRCH BVRNER and Follow Your Ghost, with the mix of guitars and synthesisers proving to be both atmospheric yet also combative. Older tracks Marigold and Psychosphere glide neatly into the performance, clearly getting the warmest reaction, but audience…

Brutally beautiful debut introduces extraordinary new talent. Modern music rarely comes so fearlessly intimate or emotionally evocative as this gripping debut set from London-based singer-songwriter Anna B Savage. The daughter of two classical singers, her 2015 EP unleashed a richly expressive voice, earning tours with Father John Misty and Jenny Hval, but uncourted acclaim and the end of a debilitating relationship sent Savage into the mental tail-spin she confronts here. Uncoiling her mesmerising guitar confessionals against subtly hewed band or dreamlike electronic backdrops, Savage invokes those birds to escape toxicity on A Common Tern. Elsewhere, she reveals, ‘I first came when I was 18’ on deeply felt orgasm chronicle Chelsea Hotel #3, offset by Tim Curry in lingerie punchline displaying a humour that underscores the album’s love and trauma. Questioning…

Drama and riffage to bring down an empire. Sweden’s Soen are on strident form with their fifth album, with struggle and overcoming oppression serving as the main themes on Imperial. Musically, the group blends power metal theatrics with slick prog metal flourishes in the vein of Queensrÿche or Fates Warning. Vocalist Joel Ekelöf is the star of the show, his belting range recalls the iron lungs of Rainbow singer Graham Bonnet, and he has a knack for imbuing every line with maximum drama. There’s certainly plenty of the latter herein. ‘There is a fire burning inside of us all, tearing down every wall,’ he declares in Dissident. There’s a strong balance between heavy sections where guitarist Cody Ford locks in with drummer Martin López – formerly of Opeth – for…

The redoubtable Mr Jones sings with strings. A spirit of romanticism suffuses the new album from Tiger Moth Tales, aka Peter Jones, as he walks in the footsteps of Coleridge and Wordsworth. In a departure from his previous works, on this occasion Jones decamped from his home studio to Fieldgate Studios in Wales. There, in another first, he worked with a producer, Magenta’s Rob Reed alongside engineer Andrew Lawson, and instead of playing all the instruments himself, Jones’ piano is accompanied by a string quartet. The album explores themes of appreciating the beauty of the natural world, memory and loss, and the promise of renewal that comes with every dawn. Jones is a sensitive and astute lyricist, unafraid to bare his heart while remembering absent friends in Sweeter Than Wine.…

Enforced geographical isolation wasn’t an obstacle for Iamthemorning, (iamthemorningband.bandcamp.com), who recorded four-track EP Counting The Ghosts remotely, with singer Marjana Semkina stuck in the UK, keyboardist Gleb Kolyadin in Russia and guitarist Vlad Avy in Canada. Featuring two original songs and two adapted traditional Christmas pieces, it’s typically gorgeous and atmospheric stuff. They’re self-releasing it with profits intended to fund their much-anticipated fifth full album, which is due out next year. John Hackett spent lockdown at his laptop recording his first entirely solo album. The Piper Plays His Tune (hacktrax.co.uk) is an elegant, sophisticated pop-prog selection with an 80s retro synth palette. Hackett’s sweet voice and songwriting style is evocative of troubadours like Al Stewart, with a dash of the Moodies’ romance in here too. His flute playing remains world-class,…

Raleigh prog rebels’ breakthrough record remixed. It was already fairly obvious that Between The Buried And Me were destined to be a truly great band when they released their second album, Alaska, in 2005. The band’s wildly ambitious approach set them apart from just about everything in heavy music at that time. Two years later, they released Colors and fulfilled all that promise, noisily proclaiming their prog credentials in the process. Newly remixed and remastered, Colors is an irrefutable benchmark for progressive metal in the 21st century. While BTBAM were still firmly rooted in the aggressive vocals and tooth-rattling blastbeats of extreme metal, as demonstrated most during The Decade Of Statues, their development was audible. The syncopated, fusion-fuelled trickery and moments of lush, melodic restraint that had crept into their…

Swedish prog-metallers’ millennial landmark revisited. Everyone likes to think they’re immune from the influence of musical trends, and musicians are particularly prone to claiming they exist in a cultural vacuum. But the zeitgeist seeps into their creative juices more significantly than they might realise. Listening back to the opening bars of this 20th anniversary reissue of Pain Of Salvation’s third album, it’s hard to miss the sensational sounds of 2000 resonating across it. Most strikingly are the traces of nu metal, whose rap-rock hybrid was sweeping all before it at the time. The fact that sound hasn’t aged gracefully (it was none too pretty at the time) perhaps makes the rap injections and electronic frills on Used and Idioglossia jar more noticeably than they did at the time. But while…

There’s a sturdy case to be made for Olias Of Sunhillow, but of all the mid-70s solo albums made by Yes members in the productive period after the Relayer tour, Squire’s has perhaps endured as the best loved. Reissued in 2018 in a seven-disc special, it’s now offering the bait again as a Blu-ray-only edition, with hi-res mixes and original promo footage. It’s fair to declare that most of this was included in that set two years ago: this specific version will please those who really, really care about a faintly discernible difference in sound quality. As an album, regardless, Fish Out Of Water remains startlingly good. It’s an album that begins high and keeps on elevating. Squire eagerly teamed up with Andrew Pryce Jackman, who’d been a colleague in…

Two eras, two live sets from the famed Scottish rockers. Although they finally called it a day in 2018 Runrig’s 45 years of activity brought with it rich rewards, even if, in the UK, their inherent Scottishness was too much for some. The Germans clearly had no such hang ups. These two Rockpalast sets, one from 1996, the other from 2001, play to packed and adoring fans. What One Legend – Two Concerts does give is a post-career chance to investigate at close quarters the differences between the Donnie Munro-fronted Runrig with the band featuring his replacement, Canadian singer Bruce Guthro – a move that ignited much debate among fans when the former left within two years of 1995’s Mara album, celebrated on this first live set. It’s not difficult…

MARJANA (MARIANA) SEMKINA @marjanasemkina You know what feels really weird? My solo album was also released this year. Feels like another life. MIKE PORTNOY @MikePortnoy It’s been an AMAZING year for music… these are the 2020 essentials that are sitting on my turntable @MrBungle @tallah__ @Haken_Official @DizzyMizLizyy @thetimchristian @ stevendrozd @theflaminglips ADAM WAKEMAN @Wakemanofficial I had an email today threatening me that unless I pay a significant amount of money to a Bitcoin account, my business would be destroyed. I thought about it, but remembered that my business has already been destroyed by the pandemic, so fuck it, I’ll have another gin. PETER HAMMILL @Sofa_sound This day last year was the last time I was onstage, in Halmstad with @ IBExpo [Isildurs Bane] CLIVE NOLAN @operafanatica I couldn’t go to…

The lockdowns that have characterised this wretched year have presented us with some unexpected benefits. With additional time on their hands, what self-respecting music fan hasn’t gone through their record collection to see what still stands the test of time? Or tried to decide which of Rush’s myriad live albums is the best? (Exit… Stage Left, since you ask.) And then looked at other media through the prism of prog? The time spent on the sofa armed with a remote control for extended bouts of channel surfing has revealed one particular gem in the shape of BBC Three’s reality competition show, Glow Up: Britain’s Next Make-Up Star. Hosted by the ubiquitous Stacey Dooley and judged by seasoned behind-the-scenes professionals Val Garland and Dominic Skinner, this eight-part search for the next…

LILTING MELODIES, REMINISCENT of the sea, roll from Mary Lattimore’s harp in her new album Silver Ladders. Released in the autumn, it bridges the gap between classical harmonies and experimental rock; it’s a style the musician has been perfecting over the last decade since her stint with psychedelic folk band the Valerie Project. Lattimore’s musical journey began when she was a child. Her mother was a harpist and it’s clear that passion laid down the path for her own career. “My mum wanted me to learn how to play and I started taking lessons when I was 11,” she reveals. “I didn’t really want to do it at first, but I went on to love it. I’m really lucky to have that role model.” Many artists gain creative inspiration from…

In some ways 2020 will forever be tagged with the epithet of ‘the year we’d rather forget’, what with Covid-19 running rampant and impacting our lives in ways many of us had never previously imagined. And yet it’s also been a year in which we’ve seen artists adapting to the ‘new normal’ by connecting with fans via a slew of online events, and, in a lot of cases, releasing albums just as they would in any ‘normal’ year. So then, this is the annual Prog Magazine Readers’ Poll. Owing to the cancellation of most live shows, we’ve dropped the Venue category (although I sincerely hope we’ll be voting on venues and gigs this time next year), and your response to those cancellations is reflected in the obvious winner of the…

“Animals was the first record I ever spent my own money on. It would have been 1978 and I was 11 years old. I absolutely adore it. For me, it’s Gilmour’s party; the guitar work on the album is the greatest of all, which is saying something. It’s an example of an album in the progressive rock tradition; long modular pieces with a sense of journey and narrative to them, but there’s nothing about it that’s stereotypically progressive rock. A sense of anger pervades. Pink Floyd’s songs are deceptively simple; the musical vocabulary is accessible and straightforward. They didn’t often work in clever time signatures and there’s never anything particularly technical about what they’re doing. The art and the genius was in the sense of storytelling that you get through…

“I think that it’s going to be the instrumental record of the year.” Derek Sherinian is a born salesman. Possessing a persuasive quick-fire patter, there’s a sense that if the mood took him, he’d offer an eloquent argument to convince you that The Beatles were abysmal or that David Bowie was merely a poor man’s Gary Numan. Predictably then, the keyboard player is effusive about the qualities of his latest solo album, The Phoenix, describing it as “the best work that I have ever recorded and I think that it’s going to be the instrumental record of the year.” It’s the type of PR guff that every artist utters when promoting a new release, but mercifully, there’s enough to suggest in the material gathered on this album that his bold…

Canada’s kings and queens of woozy psych conjure a masterpiece. Death looms large over every note of The Besnard Lakes’ sixth studio album. But this is not the morbid outpourings of a band lost in despair: instead, The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings is a colossal, reassuring blanket of a record. The always unpredictable Montreal crew elegantly explore “the darkness of dying and the light on the other side” via some of the most effortlessly psychedelic and bewitching music since, let’s face it, the last Besnard Lakes LP. The Besnard Lakes are operating on a higher plane than most. Opener Blackstrap is almost comically great and may make listeners wonder exactly how things could get any better. With thick, wobbly synth noises, an irresistible Ringo…

Tales of mystery and manifestation. On Cobalt Chapel’s 2017 self-titled debut, Jarrod Gosling and Celia Fage combined pensive musical landscapes and folkloric imagery with a contrasting sci-fi retro-chic aesthetic. Here, the pair have again built an intimate, immersive, and occasionally disquieting environment to explore. With sensual melodies drifting through a haze of reverb, these songs often emerge as if through a dreamy fog, only just landing a foothold in the waking world. Fage enunciates lyrics that hint at some ancient ritual or people going adrift on the moors with a deadpan languor. Yet there are moments when her overdubbed incantations rise up, adding a ghostly halo to Pretty Mire, while the eerie choral swarming during Our Angel Polygon evoking the swirling coda to Pink Floyd’s Echoes or the bleak moonscapes…

Widescreen prog metal with a poet’s soul. As wistful, windswept and epic as their name suggests, Dawnwalker have evolved hugely since their 2018 debut. Ages is an album designed for total immersion, as the London four-piece explore the outer reaches of progressive metal, post-rock and a strain of dark, lysergic folk. There are moments here that owe a debt to Opeth and Enslaved, but the overall impression is of a band with ideas pouring from every pore. The production has a shoegaze-like warmth and density to it; the perfect way to present songs like sprawling opener The Wheel, with its brutal metal detours and moments of woozy ambience. Everything is shrouded in reverb, but played with punch: the fast, furious black metal sections in 13-minute tour-de-force Ancient Sands are startling…

Classical recitalist gets back to nature on album of intricate instrumentals. Richard Durrant is a renowned classical guitarist with years of concert recitals under his belt, but recently he’s concentrated on composing and recording his own material. His latest album contains a series of instrumental fantasias inspired by the idea of rewilding the natural world – letting nature “reverse the damage caused by mankind”. Featuring the woodwind playing talents of Gryphon’s Brian Gulland, Durrant conjures intricate musical settings that reflect the mythic English landscape depicted by ‘unrealist’ sleeve artist Jon Everitt. Admirers of Anthony Phillips, Mike Oldfield and Clay Pipe Music’s more pastoral releases will find much to enjoy. The wandering but confident acoustic theme of Aurochs is joined by the strings that swoop and loom like night birds at…

The best bass, drum, string quartet and orchestra album of the year. For those unfamiliar with the work of Canadian virtuoso bassist Antoine Fafard, this collaboration with Gavin Harrison is a fabulous place to start. Six tracks are with a core quartet comprising Harrison and Fafard with Maria Grig on violin and Jonathan Gerstner on cello. Transmutation Circle has an appropriate measure of drama and showmanship, with Fafard’s improbable bass solos and the dizzying complexity of Harrison’s fills. Elsewhere, guest Jerry Goodman makes the sound only he can on violin on Singular Quartz, underlining the influence Mahavishnu Orchestra had on progressive rock. Yet nothing here is overdone. On Holding Back The Clock and the title track, Harrison and Fafard are supported by the 65-piece JanáƉek Philharmonic from the Czech Republic.…

Ex-Oceansize man delivers an ominously titled but redemptive album. Since pulling the plug on Oceansize almost a decade ago, Mike Vennart has been building a new space for himself in the post-grunge/post-rock/post-prog category, tempering the weight of his sound with a growing lightness of touch. But while In The Dead, Dead Wood – released with little advance warning – doesn’t lose sight of his melodic sensibilities, this feels like a much darker album than 2018’s To Cure A Blizzard Upon A Plastic Sea. As Vennart himself says, “This is less of a poppy endeavour than previous outings ’cos I’m feeling less Dave Lee Roth, and more Nick fucking Drake just now.” He also talks about his “unquenchable thirst” for drone music and ambient metal, and that certainly informs this album…

Enigmatic neo-prog/modern rock fusion from veteran British band. Multi Story returned from a three-decade hiatus with 2016’s warmly received Crimson Stone. Four years on, this follow-up continues the good work. CBF10 is built around distinct themes and appears to share some narrative threads across songs without strictly being a concept album. Explorations of individualism and freedom and the point at which these become self-defeating and destructive lead to a rather dark denouement in the shape of the title track at the end of the album, while dropping clues about the abstract album title itself. Musically, it runs from the Deep Purple meets early IQ vibe of Freeway Army through to the languid Floyd-esque Last Man Standing with its rousing mid-section crescendo. Keyboard player Rob Wilsher adds some terrific sounds and…

Greek prog metallers up their originality game On Need’s previous four albums, they were content to live in the shadow of such prog metal influencers as Evergrey and Nevermore, their talent outstripping their individuality. But Norchestrion: A Song For The End steps away from such restrictions. Opening track Avia has a sedate pacing, allowing singer Jon Voyager to display a sensitive side to his vocals. It’s a calm start that’s continued on Beckethead, before Nemmortal dives into heavier territory. So far, so standard-issue prog metal. But the subsequent Bloodlux offers convoluted jazz appeal, while Vadis has an unsettling poetic eeriness. The band continue down that latter pathway on the title track, with themes drawn from Greek folk motifs, before the hefty, near 20-minute Ananka offers glimpses of Transatlantic’s The Whirlwind…

Adventurous Aussie guitar virtuoso shows off his chops. Plini Roessler-Holgate is a master guitarist, as showcased on 2016’s impressive debut album Handmade Cities, but I’ll Tell You Someday, the first track on his second album, brings a frown to the face. It’s all about fretboard technique as opposed to any musical message. Could this gifted young Australian have succumbed to the lure of indulgence? Thankfully, no. Papelillo and Perfume soon have him back on the rails, as the jazz rock applications, so crucial on that first album, spring back to prominence. Last Call sees Plini complemented by piano work from Dave Mackay, as Chris Allison provides effective drum patterns. For the most part, the album finds Plini, Allison and bassist Simon Grove working in harmony. Naturally, the guitar is to…

Best known as a founder member of US post-rockers Trans Am, guitarist Phil Manley now unveils his latest venture. Terry Gross is a vehicle for Manley, bassist Donny Newenhouse and drummer Phil Becker to test the limits of their joint-owned recording space in San Francisco (El Studios) via a series of improvised jams. The resultant Soft Opening (Thrill Jockey) finds the trio delving deep into heavy space rock with all the punishing intensity of Wooden Shjips or White Manna. Space Voyage Mission blasts away for 20 exhilarating minutes, offset by the relatively compact, more melodic Specificity (Or What Have You). For those seeking a more krautrock-inspired trip, Flying Moon In Space might be just the ticket. On their self-titled debut (Fuzz Club), the Leipzig septet refine their live improvisations into…

Can legend Networking in Brighton in 2013. Damo Suzuki was in the right place at the right time when Can enlisted him on hearing him singing in a Munich street in 1970. His three years with the band including Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi and Future Days served him well as he travelled the globe presenting Damo Suzuki’s Network with local musicians who joined him as that evening’s “Sound Carriers”. Recorded during a sizzling appearance at Brighton’s Green Door Store during 2013’s Willkommen Echo Festival, this album sees Damo joined by synth player Danalogue, synth/cornet player Alistair Strachan, bassist Patrick Lawrence, guitarist Martin Hamblett and drummers Betamax and Thomas Heather. Dynamic spontaneity charges nine untitled pieces (and three encores), while Can’s shadow is inevitably present as grooves scuttle and Lawrence clips…

TesseracT singer completely overhauls his debut solo album. Last year, TesseracT vocalist Daniel Tompkins released his synth-led debut solo album, Castles. Now he’s releasing a version with new, amped-up interpretations of the songs written by producer and progressive metal luminary Paul Ortiz (aka Chimp Spanner), fittingly titled Ruins. The seven tracks have also been reordered, and given new names mostly culled from the song’s lyrics, which have stayed the same. What it means in practice is faster tempos, djent riffs, guitar solos, big crescendos and the inclusion of aggressive vocals – a fuller, heavier, darker sound. Opening track Wounded Wings (formerly Black The Sun) features a dynamic spot from Australian guitarist Plini, while the intimate-but-monotone bridge of Castles’ title track takes on a new urgency in its new incarnation here…

Artful, post-industrial mavericks’ anti-hits compiled. Originally released nearly 20 years ago to commemorate Coil’s debut performance in Russia, and out-of-print for nearly as long, A Guide For Beginners is simply the ultimate introduction to one of the strangest bands of all time. Coil were ostensibly part of the nebulous, artsy postindustrial scene of the early 80s, but nothing John Balance and Peter Christopherson did ever sounded remotely like anything else that was happening, either at the time, before or since. Relentlessly unsettling but always unpredictable, the duo’s music glitched and shimmered at some alien midpoint between electronica, noise, experimental rock and the wildest corners of the avant-garde. A carefully compiled retrospective, this two-volume set encapsulates the deranged fearlessness of Coil’s first two decades quite perfectly. It encapsulates the fearlessness of…

Selected retrospective of the ambient overlord’s soundtrack work. Tangerine Dream and Vangelis might be more renowned for their soundtrack work, but Brian Eno was also in the vanguard of electronic composers challenging the dominance of traditional orchestration in film and TV. Yet what sets his work apart from those other artists is the humanity he injects into his music; rather than presenting electronic textures and atmospheres as signifiers of modernity or the future, he uses them instead as channels for emotion and abstraction. After all, Eno’s concept of ‘ambient music’ is perfect for the movies – sonic mood pieces that enhance what’s happening onscreen rather than overpowering it. With hundreds of pieces of his music used in films and TV programmes, the 17 songs included on Film Music 1976-2020 really…

Stellar entry point to the unique world of Christian Vander and co. Magma are a group that one has to graduate to. With their own language from the planet Kobaïa (where they have escaped from Earth) and their own genre of Zeuhl (alien space rock opera), there really is no band quite like them. Standing somewhere on a ley line between Can, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Parliament-Funkadelic, the sound they make is forever impressive. Outside their fervent fanbase, they will always be remembered as being the band that Magma-obsessed snooker legend Steve Davis promoted for three nights in London in the late 80s. By the end of the 1970s, the French experimental outfit had been through a great many personnel changes, with only visionary drummer/leader Christian Vander and vocalist Klaus Blasquiz…

Whip-smart fusion from Bruford’s supergroup. It takes a certain chutzpah to have your band’s debut concert captured for prosperity, but that’s just what happened with Bill Bruford’s eponymous group in 1979. Filmed by the BBC at Oxford Polytechnic in front of an enthusiastic crowd, most of the tracks are drawn from Bruford’s solo album Feels Good To Me, with three cuts taken from One Of A Kind, unreleased at the time of the performance. It’s a cracking set of energetic fusion and the band – Allan Holdsworth, Jeff Berlin and Dave Stewart – are impressively tight given that they hadn’t toured at all. Holdsworth was a shredder before anyone ever coined the term, his solos equally fast and adventurous while Berlin’s fat basslines bring the groove, with the shapeshifting Forever…

Authoritative account of a remarkable career. My desires are simple,” Frank Zappa announces to camera halfway through Bill & Ted star Alex Winter’s engrossing two-hour documentary. “All I want to do is get a good performance and a good recording of everything that I ever wrote so I can hear it and if anyone else wants to hear it then that’s good too.” An engaging portrait of an innovator whose loss is still keenly felt. Just how much of that goal he achieved, how much there was still left to do and what it cost him and his family on a personal level is powerfully detailed in an affectionate narrative that explores Zappa’s many artistic triumphs but doesn’t shy away from discussing the fallout from his relentless pursuit of getting…