Esoteric’s series of Renaissance clamshell boxsets – which began with Running Hard, covering the years 1974-76 – continues with Opening Out, and contains the albums that followed: Novella, A Song for All Seasons and Azure d’Or. If Running Hard could…
View More Renaissance – Opening Out: The Albums 1977 – 1979 (3CD Boxset)
Another day, another Renaissance release. It seems as if Esoteric has gone slightly bonkers with their treatment of the symphonically inclined prog favourites, but it’s no surprise that this extremely talented group are the darlings of their collection. Instead of…
View More Renaissance – Running Hard: The Albums 1974-1976 (4CD Clamshell Box)
Well, Skin Alley was certainly a surprise to me. The band’s name, coupled with the rather striking monochrome artwork of a copper sticking his tongue out, certainly evokes the image of a punk band like the Sex Pistols. But when…
View More Skin Alley – Sun Music: The Complete Recordings 1969-1973 (Remastered 4CD Boxset)
Much like the Alan Parsons Project, I only ever bought Kevin Ayers’s first solo album, Joy of a Toy, back in the days when I was exploring a lot of new prog. As an addendum to the essay in my…
View More Kevin Ayers – Shooting At The Moon (Remastered Vinyl)
It’s been a while since I was fascinated with Caravan. Their approach to prog was never too full-on, happy to mix pastoral pop-rock with longer jams that were loosely dressed up as suites. As a result, their music could sound…
View More Caravan – The Shows Of Ours… Live
Gentle Giant is a band that needs no introduction, so I won’t give them one. Instead, I’ll commend them for slowly getting me interested in their latter-day releases, as the series of remasters has caused me to venture beyond my…
View More Gentle Giant – Playing The Fool: The Complete Live Experience
There was a time when I was drawn to bands with outstanding technical ability such a Rush and Dream Theater; these bands that helped me to discover just how cool music could sound in odd time signatures with densely choreographed…
View More Panzerballett – Übercode Œuvre
It’s natural to think that prog fans wouldn’t be that interested in Eurovision, a contest centred around mainly pop music, where artists try to appeal to as large an audience as possible – quite the opposite of prog, really. But…
View More Basil’s Eurovision Roundup 2025
Cosmic Cathedral is a new prog supergroup consisting of Neal Morse (Transatlantic), Chester Thompson (Genesis), Phil Keaggy (Glass Harp) & Byron House (session player with Robert Plant, Dolly Parton, etc.). But don’t be fooled, this is still very much a…
View More Cosmic Cathedral – Deep Water
Gopass Arena, Bratislava, Slovakia Wednesday, 26th March 2025 It began with a friend of mine showing me a poster of Tubular Bells playing in his hometown of Bratislava. I initially thought nothing of it, as I had seen many other…
View More Robin A. Smith presents Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells