Arabs in Aspic Strange Frame of Mind – 2010 Continuing the theme of prog bands who don’t take themselves too seriously, Arabs in Aspic were firing on all cylinders when they produced their good-natured second album at the beginning of…
View More The Decade in Review – Basil Francis
Sometime in 2011, just before each of Fruupp’s albums reached their respective 40th birthdays, I happened upon two interesting looking CDs in an independent music shop in Leeds. They were the middle two albums from Fruupp’s sadly short-lived career, Seven…
View More Fruupp – Wise As Wisdom: The Dawn Albums 1973-1975
IQ, a band both loved and reviled by the prog community: loved for their part in relaunching the progressive rock movement in the early 1980s and arguably bringing some epic tunes with them; reviled for sounding like a pastiche of…
View More IQ – Resistance
At E.G. Records offices in 1979… Record Executive: So, I hear you have a new prog-rock album for me? Band Manager: Yes sir I do. It’s a follow up to U.K.’s debut album U.K. RE: I don’t understand, isn’t the…
View More U.K. – Danger Money
Since the dawning of the new millennium, Christian Vander has been quite content to rest on his laurels, only re-entering the studio to re-record pieces that never made it to the studio back in the ’70s (and even some that…
View More Magma – Zëss
For a little over a year, I was fortunate enough to live in a flat at the edge of St. John’s Wood, living less than half a kilometre away from the famous Abbey Road zebra crossing, which I’d pass daily…
View More The Beatles – The Beatles: 50th Anniversary Box Set
In a stunning coincidence, I just threw out some mouldy banana bread during the writing of this review… Joey Frevola himself assured me that the new Edge of Reality album would be far-removed from his orchestral if somewhat twee solo…
View More Edge of Reality – In Static
Let me start by quoting the last couple of sentences from my review of 2016’s The Astonishing: “While it’s definitely the band’s most solid and consistent work for a long time, one wonders if this album is indicative of future…
View More Dream Theater – Distance Over Time
Oh boy, I just did some band research to become a little more informed about this group before I put fingers to keyboard, but I seriously wish I hadn’t. It seems just about everything the musicians involved have done since…
View More Reale Accademia di Musica – Reale Accademia di Musica
Choosing January 1st as your release date has always seemed a peculiar artistic choice to me (if it is indeed an artistic choice at all). Firstly, won’t too many people be suffering from hangovers from the night before to get…
View More Joey Frevola – Gone