At the end of the 1970s, progressive rock music, or symphonic rock as it was also known at the time, found itself in a difficult period. Partly due to their own fault (arrogance, delusions of grandeur) and partly due to…
View More SBB – Live Cuts Katowice 2012
Amare Theatre, The Hague, The Netherlands Thursday, 8th February 2024 I was somewhat surprised by the last-minute invitation from a good friend to witness a unique performance by legendary Dutch band Supersister together with the renowned Residentie Orchestra in their…
View More Supersister & Residentie Orkest
Looped Squares is a German-based band with roots from diverse musical and geographical backgrounds. I recently spoke to the band who gave an insight into their meeting, origin and the Looped Squares album. “We met when we worked at Thomann…
View More Looped Squares – Looped Squares
It’s a bit of a sad image: this elderly man attending a matinee performance alone in the tiniest room of an old cinema in his hometown. I went to the cinema with some degree of embarrassment, but luckily I wasn’t…
View More Anton Corbijn – Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)
I’ve declared my love for the ’80s on these pages before, some kind of guilty pleasure. I’m mainly talking about Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Simple Minds, Level 42 and others. But of course, there was more to this decade: what…
View More Francis Dunnery’s It Bites – Live from The Black Country
The release of a new Steve Thorne album always gives me ambivalent feelings: on the one hand, there is this great music and on the other hand those gloomy, depressing lyrics. This contradiction actually characterises the entire oeuvre of the…
View More Steve Thorne – Malice in Plunderland
Cadogan Hall, London Wednesday, 13th September 2023 As previously announced, a report on the last performance in a series of sixteen shows that would take British band Big Big Train (BBT) through nine countries, under the moniker ‘The Journey Continues’.…
View More Big Big Train
With a ‘new’ solo album, Virgin Grounds, due for release, TPA’s Alex Driessen welcomed the opportunity to speak to the maestro himself, Ton Scherpenzeel. The keyboardist and composer is leader and kingpin of the legendary Dutch progressive rock band Kayak,…
View More Ton Scherpenzeel – Kayak
Virgin Grounds, the ‘new’ album by Ton Scherpenzeel, best known for his work with Kayak, is an enhanced reissue of an instrumental album originally composed for a Dutch television series, Conquer the Arctic (1991). At the time, it was released…
View More Ton Scherpenzeel – Virgin Grounds
I Am The Manic Whale lynchpin songwriter and frontman Michael Whiteman talks to TPS’s Alex Driessen about the history of the band, the writing process and the strong element of storytelling in the band’s music. Some time ago, I accidentally…
View More Michael Whiteman – I Am The Manic Whale