Riverside’s frontman Mariusz Duda is a man brimming with ideas and creativity. Since 2008 his main side-project has been the rather different sonic worlds of Lunatic Soul, characterised by widescreen soundscapes infused with either folk or more electronic inflections, and…
View More Mariusz Duda – AFR AI D
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
Midas Fall have released their fifth album, the ethereal Cold Waves Divide Us, six years after their well-received Evaporate won the PROG magazine ‘Limelight’ award in 2018. Some may not be familiar with the atmospheric soundscapes of this post rock…
View More Midas Fall – Cold Waves Divide Us
In the past, I’ve been critical of Nektar’s merits and made anything I actually liked by the group seem like some sort of a guilty pleasure. The snide remarks stop here. Loosely hanging my expectations on the albums’ ProgArchives ranking,…
View More Nektar – Recycled [5CD Remastered Boxset]
The ‘P’ in PAKT is Mrs Jones’s lad Percy, the virtuoso fretless bass player on all the Brand X albums from Unorthodox Behaviour in 1976 to Manifest Destiny 21 years later. On one of those albums – I think 1982’s…
View More PAKT – No Steps Left to Trace
Well, this is a fascinating little nugget I’ve been playing a lot since it arrived, and I’m still discovering parts I seem to be noticing for the first time. A 3rd Ear Conversation, sub-titled The Justification of Reality, Part II,…
View More Lind – A 3rd Ear Conversation
The Pineapple Thief have been beguiling listeners since its roots as a Bruce Soord solo project in 1999. Bruce is clearly a busy man; aside from his burgeoning career in producing and remixing, he also released the diaphanously fragile solo…
View More The Pineapple Thief – It Leads to This
Quoting myself from my review of Greg Lake’s Magical career retrospective box set: “I’ve never listened to the Emerson, Lake & Powell album for much the same reason I’ve never listened to any of Lake or Emerson’s solo stuff before,…
View More Emerson, Lake & Powell – The Complete Collection [3CD Boxset]
Words to the Wise is a gorgeous album. Signalling the beginning of a new project from Peter Rand (keyboards), Kevin Hartnell (drums) and Stefanie Kisamore (vocals, guitar), this absorbing debut release offers us seven engaging musical vignettes rich with elegant…
View More Imperial Measures – Words to the Wise
Here Comes the Rain is Magnum’s twenty-third studio album, released on 3rd January this year, just five days before the death of the band’s co-founder, guitarist, and songwriter Tony Clarkin. In these sad circumstances, this review will inevitably pay tribute…
View More Magnum – Here Comes the Rain