Full disclosure: I am a sucker for both symphonic Italian prog and concept albums. Kim, by L’Estate di San Martino, satisfyingly scratches both itches. Formed in Perugia in 1975, the band has had an unconventional journey to this point. Following…
View More L’Estate di San Martino – Kim
I discovered Freedom To Glide relatively recently following some air-play on Shaun Geraghty’s excellent The Prog Mill show on Progzilla Radio. It immediately hit the spot, not only through its musicality but also its subject matter (given that I am…
View More Freedom To Glide – The Chronicle of Stolen Souls
This is the first time that this album has been released on vinyl, originally released in 2005 on CD and DVD as a live document of the concert played at Mannheim’s Rosengarten during 2004. This two LP set in black…
View More Ian Anderson – Plays The Orchestral Jethro Tull
Having recently reviewed the debut release from Rafael Pacha & Kimmo Pörsti I find myself back-tracking to The Samurai of Prog’s The Spaghetti Epic 4, released in the summer of this year, a couple of months prior to Pacha &…
View More The Samurai Of Prog – The Spaghetti Epic 4
Hailing from the heel of the boot of Southern Italy comes the band Crianza. The beautiful white limestone cliffs, the blue-green Adriatic and sun-kissed beaches are reflected impressionistically, if not directly, in the breezy watercolor sailboat that adorns the cover…
View More Crianza – Suoni a Sud
I will not hide the fact that I am a big fan of Big Big Train (BBT). That doesn’t prevent me from being critical; for example I was not really pleased with their performance at the Cadogan Hall in London…
View More Big Big Train – Summer Shall Not Fade: Live At Loreley
UK prog-metal stalwarts, Threshold, have returned with their much anticipated follow-up to their highly acclaimed 2017 album Legends of the Shires with the impressive Dividing Lines. Legends of the Shires was one of my top albums of 2017 and effortlessly…
View More Threshold – Dividing Lines
The rather oddly named WIZRD are another interesting bunch from Norway who are hard to pigeonhole, and that’s nearly always a good thing in my book. Sonically they employ retro-sounding instrumentation, but what they do with those instruments is more…
View More WIZRD – Seasons
There are many recordings of Soft Machine’s French tours in late 1969 and early 1970. Both official and unofficial, some come from hopelessly unreliable audience recordings and really poor bootlegs. Cuneiform Records have taken a different approach. Using the best…
View More Soft Machine – Facelift France & Holland
Oh, my goodness me, yes! I haven’t rocked out to an Arena album since the truly magnificent The Seventh Degree of Separation (2011). It’s not that The Unquiet Sky (2015) and Double Vision (2018) don’t have their moments, but The…
View More Arena – The Theory of Molecular Inheritance