Prog Rock

His solo records are pretty endearing too.

one thing I love is when you randomly find great obscure prog albums in the bargain bin, I picked up Refugee and Trace for five bucks apiece and they both rule

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTyFPnnnuL8

lmao I'm dying at the fact they put Weathers at the front of the line. might be the funniest prog music video ever made

Bill Bruford's coming to NYC, but unfortunately it's just for a talk - I guess he really is retired from performing. On the other hand, his talk is paired with a performance by ProgJect "featuring Stu Hamm, Mike Keneally, Alessandro Del Vechhio, Ryo Okumoto and Jonathan Mover performing the classics and epics from Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, Bruford, etc." Considering how many of the classic prog bands are no longer active (which may even include King Crimson), this may not be a bad way of seeing their music live.

https://sonyhall.com/events/bill-bruford/?id=17261

I've seen videos of those guys, they're pretty legit. Pretty sure Marc Bonilla was touring with those guys at some point too.

dunno if I mentioned it on this thread but I saw Steve Hackett live a few months ago. it was pretty amazing - that too was sort of an all-star lineup. despite having heard it a hundred times seeing "Supper's Ready" performed live was something else. I never thought I'd get the chance to see something like that. not gonna say I cried but I definitely got a little emotional

I saw The Music Box, who do Gabriel-era Genesis a few years ago (with costumes!), well worth the $25-30 I paid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxNw3G0TXPE

^^ that record just got reissued. I think all of IQ's albums are good (even the Paul Menel ones have their charms) but yeah The Wake is something special, neo-prog that actually rocks

got to DJ another prog set last night, this time I broke out some Magma and Area. I think it actually scared one of the bartenders because she told me afterwards "some of that music gave me a lot of anxiety"

I have the ridiculous 3 or 4 disc edition from years ago, seemed like the ultimate incarnation and someone asked in the dvd feature if it would be the last version and the singer said "until the next one".
Is it just the same version?

https://wizrd.bandcamp.com/album/seasons

forgive the band name. and the album title. these guys fuckin' rock. sounds to me like if Van Halen decided to become a prog band instead.

doing another prog night in a couple hours, just winging it this time :)

free tip for all the prog DJs out there when a tune has a long outro play the beginning of In Search of the Lost Chord over it, as soon as the poem ends and the drum kicks in for "Ride My Seesaw" hit the fader, its like a bolt of lightning

Did you just let it play then?

oh absolutely, it's a killer tune. think I got a good balance this time between prog epics everyone knows - Karn Evil 9, Yours is No Disgrace, Dance on a Volcano, etc., and my own esoteric stuff. but I think the key is to drop a lot of cool 3-minute psych songs in the middle of all that. I think I played 3 Dukes of Stratosphear tunes but there are lots of great ones for this. Brief Candles by the Zombies, Round and Round by Strawbs, Inside by Jethro Tull, and so on. also played "La Mela di Odessa" by Area as recommended above since I did need to get some funk in. also let me segue into Magma quite nicely. the guy who usually does this hates Magma but guess what?? he wasn't there so tough luck

I also brought Deluxe by Harmonia and I think played 4 different bits of it...but only like a minute or two at a time. makes a really nice transition piece!

frogbs if you remember the next time you do this -- here's a long-distance prequest for NOLAN POTTER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHu4NE3md-c

that sounds cool - always looking for neat modern stuff like this. its a good feeling when someone comes up and is like "what is this?". amusingly when I played "Gallarde" by Trace someone asked "is this Focus?" - it's a different kind of music but it has the same drummer and somehow he recognized it. so that was cool.

unfortunately I'm not sure when I'm doing this again since the normal guy is getting around a lot better. so he may retake the throne next month. I made sure to adjust my set accordingly, I think I got like 50 different tracks in there at some point

<3 the idea of Harmonia transitional pieces in your set, frogbs

Is this the thread where we talk about new prog bands?

Really digging Terrapath, the debut from the Brighton band, Plantoid. Jazz and psych influenced prog.

https://plantoidworld.bandcamp.com/album/terrapath

this is nice...wish more of these modern bands had female singers. great drumming too

Yeah, I also just love the ultra slick, jazz guitar.

This is pretty good! Doesn't have too much of that Radiohead thing all modern prog bands seem to feel is necessary.

The thread for new stuff is here
Prog V3.0 Discussion Thread

oops

new elbow album (audio vertigo) is allegedly proggy, maybe harkening to crane wife / "tain": "Self-confessed Genesis fans, this influence comes across very clearly in 'Her to the Earth', where even the mix on Garvey’s voice (and female backing vocals – Ella Hohnen-Ford, Kianja and Eliza Oakes) would impress Mr Gabriel. It’s a real departure for them and, even for someone who shudders at the very notion of Genesis, a blinding success"

https://theartsdesk.com/new-music/album-elbow-audio-vertigo

also impending decemberists (double!) album has a sidelong epic suite that progresses from beach boys harmonies through a long floyd stretch into finally a balls out iron maiden gallop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nhLuHWcTdo

Cautiously optimistic about both of those albums, both bands I've really loved in the past but had moved away from what I liked best about them.

Posted in the Uncool Music thread but gosh i love this band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2XS7pj8lAE

new elbow album (audio vertigo) is allegedly proggy

it's not, it's another real snoozer based on my one listen. I dunno, I loved this band up through Take Off and Landing but everything since has done very little for me.

Ugh, that's a bummer, but makes sense. I've found them to be pretty snoozy for awhile now.

It's got more life to it than the previous album but that's a low bar. (I'm pretty much with akm but liked Giants of All Sizes too).

Also worth noting that a couple of years ago their keyboard player mostly turned his Twitter over to transphobia before abruptly deleting his account.

I did give it a more fair listen last night and agree that it is less snoozy than the previous two records. It doesn't hit the highs of everything through Take off and Landing, but it's not terrible. I don't know that I'd call it extremely proggy though, despite them naming a song Lover's Leap. But they don't shy away from the genre the way they did early on (I swear I read somewhere that Elbow, when starting out, actually played a Marillion Weekend, but have been unable to find that documented anywhere, like they buried it after getting signed and told it was uncool).

Digging the first Cairo album, gives me nice science fantasy vibes

got to do another set yesterday, heard some guy was coming who was big into "German prog" so I brought Can, Faust, Amon Duul, and so on

turns out he was talking about Triumvirat. which I also brought, lmao

anyway favorite moment was going from the drum freakout part of Phallus Dei to the bit on the first track of Vision Creation Newsun where the drums kick in. some guy remarked "hmm you're a bit different than the other guy"

Van der Graaf are pretty good. At least Pawn Hearts.

(Which I posted about on ilx before but could not recall lol)

I despise the cover though. Needs AI redesign

do VdG have any good covers? godbluff is at least not embarrassing i guess

I guess you're talking about the photo inside the gatefold, but in general VdGG must win some sort of award for shittiest prog rock cover art. Other than Still Life, which is OK-ish, every album looks like it was knocked out on someone's tea break.

xpost!

The front album cover art, whatever you call it. Felt revulsed by it, and I usually never comment on that kind of thing.

i love when VDG gets all chessed out

I love Pawn Hearts but agree that the cover art is horrible. Also the gatefold is arguably worse, with the four of them goofin' around with Nazi salutes. Didn't age very well, that.

The live album has not a bad cover and "Still Life" is better than OK-ish.

WFMU's prog show "It's Complicated" (Monday evenings, next show in 35 min.) is a decent place to make new discoveries -- https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/GX

So this is the guy that designed the cover.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Whitehead

OK @ that wire sculpture of Lennon

young robert wyatt tardises into the super furry animals after gruff quits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNAiWrzomUk

Yeah, that Wizrd record is really good!

glad you like it, definitely my prog discovery of the year thus far

speaking of VdGG I'm revisiting the 1st album, kinda funny to hear them before they figured their sound out, especially since on "Octopus" they seem to figure it out all at once. what a monster of a track that is. but "Aguarian" is the best track I think

A recent and really excellent discovery, should maybe be on a Krautrock thread, but belongs here as well I feel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh8D0U-lfwY

Funnily enough I was listening to that album last week. I like the track "Big City" but that's it. Stretching the concept of Krautrock to breaking point there. Their second album is probably better.