One of the highlights and surprise albums to come out of the slow US economic melt of 2011 was Temporal Chaos Project’s (TCP) Fantastic Dreamer which became one of my favourites of that year. It was also a critic’s favourite…
View More Temporal Chaos Project (TCP) – Temporal Chaos
Ah, Jazz-Rock, my old friend, so nice to see you alive and well and thriving in Chicago. As a refresher for the uninitiated, Jazz-Rock was one of the countless experimental sub-genres that exploded from the big bang of musical creativity…
View More Marbin – Aggressive Hippies
Remedy Lane has long been lauded as Pain of Salvation’s finest hour, it’s their Close to the Edge, if you like, and as per the latter, there was often the question asked, “why don’t they do something like it again”.…
View More Pain of Salvation – Remedy Lane Re:visited (Re:mixed & Re:lived)
In such strident and turbulent times it perhaps timely to consider this album of gentle pastoral and whimsical calm by one of the founding members of Genesis, Anthony Phillips. Wise After the Event, released in 1978, was Anthony Phillips’ second…
View More Anthony Phillips – Wise After the Event (Deluxe Edition)
An album long anticipated by this particular scribbler, Italian avant-prog band Yugen’s fourth studio album, Death By Water, arrives in a year already blessed by several high quality releases, and it would be in danger of being lost in the…
View More Yugen – Death By Water
Johanna Elina sings her stripped-back songs of bared souls and mystery to a soundtrack of sometimes gentle and minimal backing containing electronica and found sounds, alternating with more edgy palettes of modern rhythmic clatter and thrum. Finnish by birth, she…
View More Johanna Elina – Belonging
The coming together of two greats of progressive music, Jon Anderson and Roine Stolt, for this their album Invention of Knowledge has stirred up a storm of anticipation across the progressive rock fan base. This is supported by social media…
View More Anderson/Stolt – Invention of Knowledge
‘Melancholy’ seems to be the new trope of prog music; songs of emotional despair and stories of lost lovers have replaced dragons and spaceships as the subject matters of progressive rock in the Millennium. The rising popularity of bands playing…
View More Our Oceans – Our Oceans
Dancing Plague Rats in a Melody Jus… Serves as many as you want it to, a satisfying meal, that akin to the finest arrabiata will be fiery and full of flavour, but subtleties will not be lost in the heat.…
View More Panzerpappa – Pestrottedans
Continuing my occasional penchant for jazz rock in a “big band” style, viz-a-viz Gavin Harrison’s Cheating The Polygraph and The Nathan Parker Smith Large Ensemble with Not Dark Yet, both fine and fairly recent examples of this seemingly resurgent sub-genre,…
View More The Ed Palermo Big Band – One Child Left Behind