Racing the Clouds Home: Trollheart's Prog Rock Journal
 

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Anyone who knows me will tell you I'm a Prog Head. Progressive Rock was my first love, from the time I first heard Genesis and got their double live Seconds Out album. A quick glance at my History of Progressive Rock journal will show you that. But when I first opened my main journal I wanted it to be a little more varied. If I filled it with only prog rock it would not only be boring to most people but also show that I was somewhat one-dimensional in my music, or as Frownland likes to put it, close-minded. Some might say I still am, but over the years I like to think I have broadened my musical tastes a lot. But even back then I listened to a lot of different stuff, and decided to base my journal around not just prog but everything I listened to, as well as new stuff people here would introduce me to.

So there was and is a good mix: one entry might be about Black Sabbath, the next about Kylie. I might do a review of Gustav Holst's Planets suite and follow that up with Nanci Griffith or Houndmouth. I spent time exploring Boybandland and the music of David Soul, and delved deep into the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Something, in other words, for everyone.

The problem with this is that over the years my journal has become a little bloated, and now it's hard to find entries. So much of the better prog rock reviews and articles I wrote are stuck in there somewhere between the virtual pages of this massive tome, in danger of never being read again.

Which leads me to the creation of this, and my other, new journal. This one will concentrate solo on progressive rock of all shapes, with reviews, articles, features, the usual sort of thing you've come to expect from me, but exclusively prog. Don't come here expecting anything else, because you won't find it. Or to paraphrase the late Prince: if you didn't come to prog, don't bother knocking on my door. I've a journal about metal, maybe you'll enjoy that more.

I'm not setting out here to convert anyone to prog. Chances are, those who already hate it will not be swayed by anything I write, and those who like it will find a kindred soul here. It would of course be great if someone did change their mind on the subject, but it's not my aim and so if you're thinking “Okay, TH: what are you going to do to change my mind about prog rock, which I hate?” the answer is simple: nothing. I'm not here to convince anyone that prog is for you, in the same way that nobody will likely ever demonstrate to me that hip-hop or punk is the sort of music I should be listening to. As far as I'm concerned, to each his own. If you don't like prog, don't read this journal. Lord knows, I have plenty of other ones, and you may find what you're looking for there.

If you are a prog fan, then hopefully this will be a good place for you. As ever, I'm open to comments and suggestions and lively debate, but please, if you're posting, try to make sure you know what you're posting about. Pithy comments such as “prog sucks” are all very funny and clever, Batty, but they don't add anything to any debate and are ultimately disruptive. (Cue Batty's first post: prog sucks!)

Initially, the articles here will be transfers from my main journal; I'm moving all prog related material here – from this, and any other journals I may have written in – while still leaving the articles where they are. So that way, anyone casually perusing my main journal may stumble across a prog review or article they like, but here they will be able to search for them, as I will be, learning from the past, posting a fully-linked table of contents in the first post or few posts.

Question: what about progressive metal? Will I be featuring it here? Answer: most of the time, probably not, as I feel prog metal belongs more on the metal than prog side of things, and so will more than likely end up in my Metal journal. There may be occasions when, at my sole discretion, I decide to feature an album or even artiste here, rather than in the Metal journal. I may even do both! It's a tricky line to tread: is a prog metal band a prog band that has metal elements or a metal band that has prog elements? I guess I'll treat each one on a case-by-case basis and we'll just play it by ear.

So in answer to your question, I don't know. We'll see.

For now, I'll leave it up to everyone's favourite Sith Lord to put into words my feelings..
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Hmm. Let's see what we can do about that...

If you know me, you have my sympathy. I wish I didn't know me. But if you do, then you'll be completely unsurprised at where this journal is going to go first. And how could it not? The band who showed me that there was prog life after the seventies, the debut album from whom became one of the
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Maybe it's an overstatement, a simplification or a claim that can't really be supported, but I really do believe that there have been albums down through my life which have, if not actually changed that life, certainly provided important cornerstones and turning points along the path of development for me, both musically and personally. It's that point where, as a youth, you realised that there was more to music than what came out of “Top of the Pops”, or what they played on the radio. You began to see that the fact that certain music may not have been widely popular was not necessarily an indication that it was not worth listening to; in fact, as your awareness of the huge diversity of often unrecognised music out there grew, you began to understand that sometimes it's the music that isn't generally accepted, that wasn't played on the radio, that didn't get on the telly, that was more worth listening to than the lastest chart-topper.

For me, as I would say maybe a lot of people, though this is a personal account so I can only speak for myself, this realisation and diversification into certain genres or sub-genres of music around my late teens informed my later choices in music, and set me on a road towards appreciating, and for a long time, concentrating only on one genre. Well, two really: for several years I would listen to nothing else than heavy metal and progressive rock, even though before I encountered this album I was not even aware of what prog rock was. I was into Maiden, Saxon, Motorhead, Sabbath: anything loud and anything that was outside the accepted norms. I scoffed at my brother's interest in Madness, The Specials, Spandau Ballet, and my sister's often slavish devotion to the charts. I could not understand how my best friend, may he rest in peace, could be into artistes like ABBA and Barry Manilow! Ah, with age comes wisdom, eh?

But among the first albums I owned were most of the Genesis catalogue; the very first introduction I had to what I would later realise was characterised as progressive rock was their “Seconds out” live album, and though it certainly blew my mind and had me quickly collecting the rest of their albums, I have reviewed this before, in fact it was the very first album ever reviewed in this journal by me, and I think I said all I need to say about it there. But up until this album came along, and I began to read a little publication called “Kerrang!”, I thought the music Genesis made was in the past, great as it was. I believed I was listening to music that would in all likelihood never again be made --- Genesis had by now already shattered my illusions of them by releasing the dreadfully pop “Abacab” --- and had no idea that there was a whole new revival of British progressive rock about to be born.
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Originally published May 1 2012
Script For a Jester's Tear - Marillion - 1983 (EMI)
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Preface: I have to be extremely careful reviewing this album. It may seem silly to some people, but this is quite literally the album that changed my life, musically. I never, ever heard a better debut. It was hyped to the hilt and by god it lived up to that hype! It set me on a road to appreciation of progressive rock and more structured, epic and intricate songs, gave me an appreciation for melody and instrumentation that I had been lacking, and showed me how even the vocal chords could be an impressive and effective instrument in their own right. This was more than just someone singing the equivalent of “baby I love you” against guitars and keys or whatever: this was serious, deep music that meant something! These lyrics were to be read, listened to, discussed and if possible understood, and they were the delicate brushstrokes that completed the canvas masterpiece the music painted on my mind, heart and soul.

So it will be a gushing review, but that's not entirely because I don't want to recognise or admit any shortcomings on the album: it's because I truly believe it has none. Though it's short in terms of tracks, every single one is a gem; nothing is out of place, nothing is too long or too short, every song tells a story and every story paints a picture, mostly bitter and regretful as per the title of the album. I can't praise this album highly enough. It started a lifelong love affair with the work and music of Marillion, and pushed me towards other great prog rock bands like Pendragon, Jadis, Arena, Rush, Pink Floyd, Mostly Autumn, Twelfth Night and many others, and opened up whole new vistas of musical appreciation for me.

I therefore want to do the very best job I can, and so the review will also be probably longer than usual. As there are only six tracks to get through that should not really be the case, but I want to spend the proper amount of time on each that they deserve, give them the respect they have earned, and pay back a little to this wonderful album which quite literally, changed my life, almost thirty years ago.

This groundbreaking album starts off so innocuously, so low-key it's incredible: a hushed voice declares ”So here I am once more/ In the playground of the broken hearts” while one note is sounded on the piano, a few more following it and then a short run, almost a fugue, before it stops and flute (on the synth, presumably) takes over, then bass makes its entrance before drums and guitar pound into the song, setting it finally on its way. We're now one and a half minutes into a song that runs for eight and a half, and will go through many changes before it comes to its end.

The voice, that of lead singer and frontman Derek Dick, otherwise known as Fish, gets more animated and angry now, as Mick Pointer's drums pound out the rhythm and Steve Rothery lets loose on the guitar, the whole thing charging along in a great solo until Fish comes back in and another solo, with the keyboards of Mark Kelley, who was the first musician to be heard on the album, bar Fish's almost sotto voce tones, adding to the melody and keeping everything together.

At the four minute mark, half way through, everything drops away to gentle acoustic guitar, flute and Fish's agonised vocal, bass coming in with just the barest hints of percussion and some whispering as Fish declares ”I never did write that love song/ The words just never seemed to flow”, drums thundering in as he shouts ”Promised wedding/ Now a wake!” The song then goes into what would be seen as the third part, with keys taking over the main melody, Rothery's guitar taking a little of a backseat, the faster tempo now slowing down to a dirge-like march, the guitar crying along with Fish as he sighs ”I'll hold my peace forever/ As you wear your bridal gown”, and the song drifts along sadly to its end as he asks, without any hope, ”Can you still say you love me?”

After this magnum opus, the phenomenon of Marillion well and truly launched onto my consciousness, and that of thousands of other record-buyers at the time, things get sharper and harder with “He knows you know”, opening on jangly guitar from Rothery, swirling keys from Kelley then punchy drums from Pointer as Fish lets go, giving his voice its full rein as he sings about drug addiction: ”You've got venom in your stomach/ You've got poison in your head!” Very much driven on Rothery's guitar, this song is both the antithesis of the opener and title, and could indeed be seen as a direct result or follow-on from it, as the heartbroken man turns to drugs to dull the pain.

“He knows you know” contains one of Steve Rothery's most powerful solos, as well as amazing work from Mark Kelley, and absolutely showcases in no uncertain style the often vicious, cutting, angry vocal work of Fish, as well as giving full pride of place to his incredible lyrical talent, he being the writer of all the songs, lyrics at least. It was chosen as a single, probably because it's the shortest track on the album --- just under five and a half minutes --- but though it made a decent showing in the charts it was never going to be a big hit, with its lyrical theme and its harsh vocal style. Couldn't see the sheep buying this! But then, Marillion were never about chart success, but about creating the very best music they could, for themselves and for their fans, and remaining true to their musical vision.

Nowhere is this shown better than in “The Web”, which runs for almost nine minutes, and starts powerfully, with blasting guitar chords, then settles into a sort of introspective passage, as the protagonist hides in her apartment, trying to figure out what has gone wrong with her life, afraid to move on. ”Faded photos exposing pain/ Celluloid leeches bleeding my mind” --- such lyrical genius was something I had seldom encountered before, and even then, in bands who had been doing this for years, maybe decades. Here was a band only starting out, and already showing such tremendous promise. With a clear and almost unique understanding of the human condition in one so young, Fish painted nightmare dreamscapes and lurid pictures of addiction, isolation, fear, panic and despair that just cut right to the heart, his bitter claim ”I only laughed away your tears/ But even jesters cry!” a nod back to the title track, and indeed the figure of the jester was one that would characterise Marillion for years, appearing on the cover of their first three albums.

Another powerful section where keys and guitar join to great effect, then Rothery is off on another solo, and as the song reaches its six minute mark, the character realises things must change, and after a brief laidback guitar piece as Fish declares ”Now I leave you/ The past has had its say” there's a huge upsurge and a big instrumental piece as the tempo jumps, and for the next nearly two minutes we get a keyboard solo from Mark Kelley that is a delight to the ears. Then, just when you think it's going to fade out on the keys, Fish blasts back in with a final coda and the song ends powerfully on hard guitar and swooping keys.

There's little joyful about this album, in terms of lyrical content --- though it's a true joy to listen to it --- with themes from broken love affairs, loneliness and addiction to war and suicide, but if there's a light-hearted song on it, it's “Garden party”, where Fish pokes not-so-gentle fun at the glitterati, the high society, those who live for rubbing shoulders with the rich, the famous, and the royal. Starting with a hard guitar and swirling keys intro, Fish gleefully describes the scene as ”Champagne corks are firing at the sun again/ Swooping swallows chased by violin again” and those who believe themselves the cream of society “have a really jolly time”.

“Garden party” rocks along on a really upbeat, happy melody, which mirrors the insincerity of these people who declare ”Punting on the “cam” is jolly fun!” and live their lives in a constant state of vying for position and prestige among their fellows, always trying to prove themselves better than everyone else. Great keyboard solo from Mark Kelley, and a hilarious change of lyric from Fish, where he originally grins ”I'm wining, reclining/ I'm rucking, I'm ****ing” but the word had to be changed when this too was released as a single. Great fun, and Fish's savage satire comes across really well.

Bringing everything back to earth then with a jolt is the dour, bitter “Chelsea Monday”, which tells the tale of a young girl desperate to be an actress but who is afraid to take the steps she needs to make her dream come true. Carried on a beautiful bassline from Peter Trewavas, the song conjures up images of dark, grey streets, rain-lashed bus-stops and yellowed windows, smoke from factories curling up into the ash-choked sky. Rothery's guitar whines in the background as Fish relates the tale of the ”Catalogue princess, apprentice seductress/ Hiding in her cellophane world in glittertown” who waits for fame to find her. The first part of the song is carried on Trewavas' silky bass rhythm, with splashes of colour thrown in by Kelley on the keys, and Fish's keening voice presiding over all like a dark storyteller who knows how this will end.

This is also a long song (as most of the six tracks on the album are), over eight minutes, and at the two minute mark Steve Rothery pulls off a beautiful and agonising solo which takes us really into what would again be categorised as part two of the song. This is carried on a more restrained guitar part, sparkling keys and Fish tells of how the girl would ”Perform to scattered shadows/ On the shattered cobbled aisles”, Pointer's drums pealing out like the march of Fate. Another powerful solo by Rothery takes the song to its climax, as the parent promises ”Patience my tinsel angel/ Patience my perfumed child/ One day they'll really love you/ You'll charm them with your smile/ But for now/ It's just another Chelsea Monday.”

As the song comes to its end, Fish speaks as if to a mate, not singing, talking about the tragedy of the young girl's death at such a young age. ”What a waste!” he sighs. And Rothery's guitar takes the song to its sad conclusion, cutting off suddenly as we hit the closer, and indeed standout of the album.

Fast, powerful, savagely satirical, angry, brilliant, “Forgotten sons” must surely go down as one of the best anti-war songs to have come out in the last few decades. Expressly addressing the conflict in Northern Ireland (”He'll maim you, he'll wound you/ He'll kill you for a long-forgotten cause/ On not-so-foreign shores”) it became one of Marillion's best-known and loved songs, with its acid rejection of war and hatred, its graphic depiction of life on the streets of Belfast and other Northern Irish cities, and humanising the conflict through the eyes of those who suffered through it.

Mostly carried on Kelley's deceptively upbeat keyboard melody, it's peppered throughout with stabs of sharp and angry guitar from Rothery, and a great solo about a third of the way through, where his guitar seems to be crying with the massed voices of all those who have lost loved ones over the thirty-odd years of "The Troubles". Then, everything drops away to leave only Trewavas' lonely, insistent bass, standing like a sentry on duty, for a few seconds as the tension builds. Then Rothery and Pointer hammer the point home as Fish spits out his modified Lord's Prayer, which really needs to be reproduced in full. And here it is:

”Minister, minister, care for your children!/ Order them not into damnation/ To eliminate those who / Would trespass against you/ For whose is the kingdom, the power, the glory/ For ever and ever amen!” Just to underline the point, all instrumentation stops then, and we hear a voice cry shakily ”Halt! Who goes there?” to which the creepy, hissing reply comes, ”Death!” and the soldier then breathes ”Approach, friend.” Hard-hitting is not the word. But that's nothing compared to the litany Fish unleashes as Rothery and Pointer smash back in, the song reaching its powerful climax with Kelly's organ blasting out like the accusing voices of the dead, and Fish sings ”From the dole queue to the regiment/ A profession in a flash/ But remember Monday signings/ When from door to door you dash!”

Having been so impressed with the lead single (which isn't on this album) “Market square heroes”, I was eager to see if the album could live up to its promise. I remember having listened to it the first time, and I was so gobsmacked, my breath was literally robbed from me and I lay on my bed, just completely dumbfounded, unable to speak or breathe, just static in time. I was frozen like an insect in amber, and it actually took me several long minutes before I could move or do anything. What I ended up doing was flipping the record over, putting the needle down and playing the whole album through again, the entire thing. And then a third time. I have never done that with any album, before or since.

It might seem facetious to be saying this now, in a world where such opuses are perhaps a little commonplace, where people can record their own music in their bedrooms today and be on YouTube tomorrow, perhaps seeing a successful music career in a very short time. But back then, and even now, I think such genius --- and yes, it was genius, and nothing less --- was and is in short supply. There are of course great prog rock bands now, new and old, but I still believe no one album has ever truly affected me the way “Script for a jester's tear” did, that day in March 1983, when I realised for the first time that there was the pop chart stuff I had been listening to mostly up to then, and then there was real music.

There's no way I could ever deny that this album changed my life, in ways I could never even have begun to imagine. If it wasn't for Marillion and the discovery through them of progressive rock and other genres outside that, I might never have developed the true love for music that I have to this day, and I truly believe I would be a very different person in many ways. I owe those five guys a huge debt of gratitude, one which I will never be properly ever able to repay. I hope that in some way, this review will go a little of the way towards giving them back what they gave to me, the priceless gift of appreciation of true music.

TRACK LISTING AND RATINGS

1. Script for a jester's tear
2. He knows you know
3. The Web
4. Garden party
5. Chelsea Monday
6. Forgotten sons

Are you familiar with the Italian prog rock of the 70s

Some of it, yes, and will be getting moreso when I get into that era in my History of Prog journal, but if you have any suggestions...?

Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso - Darwin!

I was gonna ask if you were familiar with Jacula/Antonius Rex, but if not I didn't wanna suggest it because it's kinda hard to get into and relatively unexciting. I'd be almost positive you wouldn't be a fan but I dunno, some really dark/occult/gothic kinda crawling atmo-prog with evil organs for days.

I have things I'd rather suggest though that you probably would like, just gotta take my mind for a jog. Some Greek ****

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Originally published in "Bitesize", October 19 2013
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The Dream Harbour - Willowglass - 2013 (Self-Released)

The first word that will come instantly to your brain when you hear the opening track from this album is Genesis: there's just no getting away from the comparisons with that wibbly, uptempo, bouncy keyboard, which takes you right back to 1973 and the very best of Tony Banks. But Willowglass has only been around since 2005, though its driving force, composer and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Marshall, has been playing in bands since the early eighties. And when I say multi I mean multi: here he plays guitars (electric, acoustic, Classical and twelve-string), keyboards and bass! He's ably assisted by Hans Schmitz on drums and Steve Unruh helps out by adding flute, violin and more guitar.

It's all instrumental, so might be a little hard for anyone to get into who isn't a prog rock fan (but we love this sort of thing, don't we?) and the likes of mellotron, flute and woodwinds are prevalent all through the album. The opener is almost twenty-one minutes long too, so that will certainly do away with anyone who's not into prog. But if you take the time to sit back and listen you will hear a wealth of musical talent and gorgeous soundscapes here. Unruh's beautiful violin passages in A house of cards part 1 alone are worth the price of the album, and there's so much more than that on offer. Marshall's skill on the various guitars is virtually unparalleled in the sphere of current prog rock.

There's some nice Supertramp-style piano work going on in A short intermission then Arabic influences on A house of cards pt 2 with some really great guitar and violin and a very classical influenced approach, the tone getting a little darker. The album's over before you realise it, and it's been a hell of a journey.

Track Listing and Ratings

1. A house of cards pt 1
2. A short intermission
3. A house of cards pt 2
4. Interlude no. 2
5. The dream harbour
6. Helleborine
7. The face of Eurydice

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A few years back I attempted something pretty ambitious, and in the end impossible really. I looked at ProgArchives' top albums for that year and decided I would review them all, in order. It lasted up into the eighties I think (counting down from 100) before I had to admit defeat. This time I'm doing something a lot more realistic: picking albums at random from the list and reviewing those. Obviously, this year I'm doing 2016, so let's see what comes up.

They have only listed a total of 68 (I guess they're waiting for the year to end before finalising the list) so out of those I roll 21. That gives me this one:
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Evership – Evership – 2016

I'm always just a little wary of bands using the word “ever” in their name. There are so many – Evertale, Everfriend, Evergrey, Everon, Everwood, Everflame .. the list goes on. It seems to be one of the most popular prefixes for prog and power metal bands, conjuring up images of sword-and-sorcery, mythology and fantastic creatures. Reading up on this one however, there seems to be a pretty lavish history behind it, with composer and multi-instrumentalist Shane Atkinson having made music mostly his life during the eighties and nineties, then dropped it to concentrate on software production, at which he found himself extremely talented. The music in his head however, he says, haunted him during his success and he knew he had to get it out to the world. So making some major lifestyle changes and building his own recording studio, and indeed creating a company to finance his debut album, the Evership project was born. Ten years and more in the making, it's a little odd that the article on ProgArchives speaks of his hope that the album might be released in 2017, and yet here it is on their list, so I can only assume it made it ahead of time. Oh, I see they're talking about the vinyl album; the digital release has already hit.

In typical prog fashion, this debut album only has six tracks, with three of them broken up into suites. Even so, that's still just short of one hour of music altogether. We open on “Silver light”, with a rising guitar and orchestral sound, almost, but not quite, like an orchestra tuning up, and this stretches on for almost a minute before what I think may be theremin comes into the mix (though with the amount of instruments played here, including something that's called “experimental guitar” I could very well be wrong!) and then the vocal comes in. This really grabs your attention, a high, powerful mix of Benoit David and Justin Hayward as Beau West takes control of the song, which begins to rock under the powerful guitar riffs and insistent percussion. Apart from Atkinson and his brother, the latter of whom plays most of the guitars, there are two other guitarists here, and a full choir, so it's quite the wall of sound with yet a kind of progressive metal feel.

The opener itself is over nine minutes long, but never seems to drag, and is full of clever musical ideas, as you would probably expect from someone who has composed for film and TV for most of his life, some very seventies-sounding melodies which recall the best of Genesis and Yes, with lovely violin from Nicelle Preibe adding to the overall sonic mosaic being woven here. The next track is one of those multi-part suites, but as there are no timings shown it may be hard to know where one part ends and the next begins. The overall thing is called “A slow descent into reality”, and opens on quite Jonathan Cainesque piano, certainly more what I would call AOR than prog, but then Atkinson doesn't claim to play prog necessarily, just music he likes. After what I take to be the sound of a car crashing (Spock's Beard on Octane?) we get a more ripply piano more or less solo with the vocal, then some a good thick synth line as the vocal continues in a slightly softer vein before the keys run off on their own.

I definitely get flavours of Sean Filkins' solo album here, especially in the female backing vocals and the narrative of the song. About halfway through now and a big meaty synth line takes over before acoustic guitar joins in and the vocal returns; very Yes this, I feel. Powerful stuff. The choir adds its voice now as we head into the eighth minute and then a kind of Rushesque (circa 2112 or Hemispheres) guitar instrumental section followed by a real workout on the organ. Everything stops completely at just over the tenth minute mark as West screams ”There must be something beyond!” introducing another extended instrumental, which really allows Shane Atkinson to show what he can do on the drumkit. And so we move into the denouement of the piece, and it all fades away, after all that, very quietly and simply.

“Evermore” reminds me of nothing more than the very best of Tony Banks, especially on his solo album A Curious Feeling, and is another long track, just over ten minutes but this time only broken into two. It begins with an extended instrumental which breaks down into a single piano line as West comes in with the vocal, Josh Groban-like, very gentle but strong at the same time. Nice backing vocals too, possibly the choir although I don't think so somehow. Around the fourth minute it kicks up a gear, hard electric guitar coming in and rocking the whole thing, joined by keyboards. Sounds like my favourite, mandolin, in the seventh minute, though in general I would have to say I'm not as impressed with this as I was with the first two tracks. It's good, but somehow it just isn't quite grabbing me in the same way the other two did. “Utima thule” is also ten minutes plus, and it opens with a nice acoustic guitar with some ambient sounds, the vocal gentle and relaxed behind a peaceful piano line. Quite pastoral, and definitely the closest this album has so far come to a ballad, though with a length of ten minutes I guess it could easily change. And it looks like it's about to, as hammering percussion pulls in electric guitar and the pace is picked up.

Here's where the choir really shines, laying down a sumptuous vocal backdrop against which Atkinson plays some serious keyboard flurries before it all settles down again and Ncelle's violin takes us to the conclusion, and into the last, and longest, track we go. It's another multi-part suite, which goes under the umbrella title of “Flying machine”, and runs for just shy of fourteen minutes. A nice rippling guitar and keyboard line get us started, with angelic vocal harmonies coming in to supplement Beau West's singing, slight touches of folk about the melody. More serene violin and what sounds like uileann pipes (though none are credited; could it be the theremin?) then things begin to get more intense as we move into the fourth minute, the choir blasting out before we head into I guess the second of the three parts of the suite, opening with birdsong and muted voices and effects, distant violin and then louder, darker voices. A rising guitar pulls us in and then it's a building instrumental section up to the seventh minute, when it briefly explodes as West asks ”Are you sure it won't fall down?”, immediately followed by a soft guitar line and then expanding on the sung line and developing the theme on electric guitar with a rocky feel to it. We're now in the eighth minute.

Things slow down now on a kind of melancholy line, a certain sense of The Alan Parsons Project detectable in the melody, at least to me, and then it takes off again like the machine in the title, soaring and swooping through various instrumental passages as it heads towards its eventual conclusion. That leaves us with by far the shortest track on the album to close with, less than two minutes of the oddly-named “Approach”. Surely such a track would have been better at the beginning of the album rather than the end? As it happens, it's noting more than a sound effect really, synth or guitar feedback setting up the impression of something, well, approaching. A little disappointing to say the least.

TRACK LISTING AND RATINGS

1. Silver light
2. A slow descent into reality
(i) Everyman
(ii) A slow descent
(iii) Wisdom of the ages
(iv) Honest with me
(v) The battle within
(vi) Anyman
3. Evermore
(i) Eros
(ii) Agape
4. Ultima Thule
5. Flying machine
(i) Dreamcarriers
(ii) Dream sequence
(iii) Lift
6. Approach

I suppose I had expected, given all I've read about this guy, to be more impressed than I have been. It's a decent album and there are some really good ideas in it, and for a debut it is pretty good. I just didn't find myself blown away by it. Perhaps it's the old first-time-listen syndrome, and it will grow on me with repeated listens. If I decided to repeat the experience.

Still, a very competent album and on the strength of what's here, and given what Atkinson has sacrificed to be where he is today, I'd say it deserves its place just outside the top twenty. Definitely worth a listen. More than that? I really can't say at this time.

You certainly have to hand it to prog bands when it comes to names. They come up with the weirdest ones, both for albums and songs and also for the bands themselves. I mean: “A plague of lighthouse keepers”? A Trick of the Tail? Lark's Tongues in Aspic? Now we have the oddly-named Elephants of Scotland who, just to confuse you, are not Scottish at all, nor even British, but hail from the USA. Why did they choose this name for their band? Who knows? But they've been around since 2010 and are the project of yet another multi-instrumentalist, Adam Rabin. Anything to Yes's famous guitarist? I don't know, but his entry in Wiki doesn't mention any brother or son, so I'd assume perhaps not.

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Execute and Breathe – Elephants of Scotland – 2014
Since their formation the band, who tend to prefer the abbreviation EoS (not to be confused with the famous Canon camera!) appear to have been busy, releasing a total of three albums in four years, with their most recent only hitting earlier this year. This however is their second, and though I admit I have not yet heard it all the way through (until now, that is) I have heard the odd track while shuffling through my ipod, and what I've heard has certainly left me wanting to explore further.

So let's do just that.

An almost orchestral intro is quickly supplanted by a funky bass and then warbling keyboards of the kind our departed friend Urban Hatemonger always hated as “A different machine” gets the album underway. EoS seem to be one of those bands who switch up the vocals a la Alan Parsons Project and others, and here I find Dan MacDonald, who only sings on this and one other track, very reminiscent of Marillion's Steve Hogarth. A good rocky opener, slowing down in the middle before heading off on a super keyboard solo. Although I am only now experiencing the album for the first time as I say, it seems to be gaining favourable reviews, as ProgArchives have assigned it a four-star rating. The band also performed at the annual Marillion Weekend festival in Montreal and received a standing ovation, so they must be good.

The opener is good, but I'll admit I'm not salivating or anything. It's competent prog, certainly, but is it anything to get excited about? Well, not yet, not for me, but we've a long way to go yet. “The other room” has a nice guitar and keyboard line running through it, with a repeating guitar riff in the background acting as a kind of motif. It's a good rocky tune, but again I don't see it being anything terribly special. Adam takes the vocal here himself; not sure whether I prefer his singing to that of MacDonald. I do like “Amber waves”, with its soft then harder piano line and which I assume is the first ballad on the album. There's definitely something catchy about the melody, which is something I have not been able to say up to this point. There's kind of a sense of Deacon Blue about it in parts, I feel. Some very nice keyboard passages, courtesy of Adam, who also takes vocals here. This is the longest single track on the album, just over eight minutes, which is good in a way as there are no twenty-minute prog epics to contend with. They can be great, as in “Supper's ready”, or terribly boring, as in “The last human gateway”, so it's always something of a gamble when you see one on an album, and you do, more often than not. Nice to see EoS breaking the pattern.

“TFAY” has an atmospheric little run-in, crying guitar, honking synth, barely-there percussion before it powers forward on rolling drums and sharp guitar, kicking into a nice eighties Genesisesque run. The third and last vocalist on this is guitarist John Whyte, who has a vaguely more feminine sounding voice, slightly Anderson-like. The song is a nice uptempo rocker with some great guitar, good strong ending and we're into “Boxless”, which opens on phased guitar and a sort of ticking percussion with darkly ominous synth. Adam Rabin is back on vocals, the guitar betraying an early Police influence, with a certain sense of the east in the melody too. A slower track than the previous one, I still wouldn't call it anywhere close to a ballad, and there's some nice exuberant keyboard running through it.

Although I said “Amber waves” was the longest track, and it is, I qualified that by saying it's the longest single track, because if you add parts one and two of “Endless” together you get a total of over eleven minutes. Part one opens very like the closing section on “Forgotten sons” by Marillion; hard guitar, rolling keys, bouncy rhythm, and again it's Rabin who retains the mike for this song, though the first part is instrumental. It's his last stint on vocals as part two begins, this running for close to eight minutes and starting off on a very gentle acoustic guitar, everything slowing right down for a very reflective second half. Or not. Midway through rolling drums crash in and warbling keyboard kick up the tempo considerably before ending on a nice soft piano line. We come to a close then with the final vocal from Dan MacDonald as “Mousetrap”, another longish song at just under seven minutes – literally: one second under! - takes us out with a punchy rocker with a sort of tribal rhythm and very much a look back to Abacab in parts.

TRACK LISTING AND RATINGS

1. A different machine
2. The other room
3. Amber waves
4. TFAY
5. Boxless
6. Endless pt 1
7. Endless pt 2
8. Mousetrap

Yeah, it's decent but I don't find myself rushing to hear the rest of their material, which I have. This might take a few more listens to get properly into; there are certainly some nice ideas there, but whether they're executed (hah) as well as they could be I'm not so sure. I'm going to reserve judgement for the time being. Might come back to this.

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There are some prog bands I just don't get, and many I should but can't see the appeal in. This bothers me slightly, especially when the band concerned is a major one. And yet, there are huge gaps in my prog appreciation where I just simply don't like or can't get into a particular artiste. Here, I'm going to attempt to address this. The plan is to pick an artiste and listen to up to three of their albums, preferably those considered their best. If, after this, I have still not got into them I'm going to assume that for now at any rate I probably won't manage it, and will temporarily accept that and stop trying. I may give it another shot at some later date on my own terms, but for this section that artiste will be considered a failure for me.

Aristes I intend to cover (more will probably be added later) are: Spock's Beard, IQ, Pallas, King Crimson, Yes, Riverside, Van der Graaf Generator, Dream Theater, Gentle Giant, ELP, Gandalf's Fist, Enchant, Porcupine Tree, Pain of Salvation and Saga.

As I listen to each album I will rate it and assign it a Result, determining whether it leaves me in the same mind as I was before I listened to it, ie no change,
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or has had a positive effect on me,
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or even made me more reluctant to listen to more of their material.
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At the end, I'll know whether I've got into the artiste or still feel meh about them, or even if this experiment has turned me even further from them.

I'll start off with a brief intro to the artiste and what I know of them and have heard from them, and then dive into the review. First one up soon!

If you have any suggestions, feel free.

All right then, let's get this under way.
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A band a lot of people give credit to, and who apparently are one of those who often straddle the prog rock/metal divide, I have only heard one full album from Riverside, and that was, at the time, their latest, 2011's Shrine of New Generation Slaves, or SONGS. I seem to remember being reasonably impressed with most of it, but as usual when I listen to this band there's always something niggling me about them, like I can't quite enjoy them or say they're really great; it's like there's something missing? Never quite sure what it is. I've only heard tracks on shuffle playlists other than the album referred to above, but of those, well, some I've really liked, some I have not. A lot of the time it seems to rest on the length of the song, and Riverside tend to go with longer songs, evens suites, most of the time, or at least, most of the times I've heard them. This should not be a problem for a prog head, but I've mentioned the problem previously: a good long track is fine, a joy to listen to, while a bad long track can be torture. Sometimes Riverside's music has given me the feeling of the latter. Well, not quite, but I do recall skipping on after maybe three or four minutes of what I considered uninspiring music.

Current status: http://www.trollheart.com/smallneutral.jpg

Quick bio: Riverside were formed in 2001 in Warsaw, Poland by four friends, and are generally led by bassist and vocalist Mariusz Duda. Over their career so far they have released seven albums, and were hit in February with the sad news of the sudden death of guitarist Piotr Grudziński.

Albums I have heard: Shrine of New Generation Slaves (2013)

As it appears the first three albums comprise a trilogy, it makes sense I guess to make them the three I listen to, though I wanted kind of to stay away from debuts and also from consecutive albums. But this seems to be the best way to go with this band, so that's what I'll do. Therefore the first one up is
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Out Of Myself (2003)

First in the “Reality Dream” trilogy, there's only one really long track on it, the opener, and of the remaining eight there are two instrumentals, though both are longer than you would expect the average instrumental to be. The radio being tuned at the beginning of “The same river” harks back to the opening of Marillion's “Forgotten sons”, though I'm sure they weren't the first to do that, then it's a nice powerful dramatic almost Floydesque opening, actually kind of reminds me of Twin Peaks, oddly. A crooning, chanting voice but as yet no vocals as we hit the second minute, but then there are still ten left. Building up nicely on synth and guitar and Duda's bass bringing it all together. Definitely the sense of something about to happen. Four minutes in and still no recognisable vocal. Must say I'm enjoying it though. I can hear the metal influences leaking through now as the guitar gets harder and sharper, running into a soaraway solo that takes us into the fifth minute.

Seven minutes in and we finally get a vocal, though to be honest had it gone on like that to the end I wouldn't really have minded. Maruisz has a nice voice; I've heard it before of course. There's that little twang in it that denotes he's other than English. Settles down in the last two minutes into a kind of acoustic ballad style, which is nice after the intensity of the first ten. Oh, and now we get a super guitar solo. Great opening track. Twelve minutes just flew by. Colour me impressed. And hopeful. The title track is much more immediate and in your face, though it's less than four minutes long. Driven on a punchy guitar with a pretty manic vocal. Like this too. Very metal, as Vivian would say. “I believe” is more laidback, relaxing with nice gentle guitar but at times quite an intense vocal from Mariusz. Could probably do without the sounds of the crowd at the beginning, and they come back in around halfway through the track too. This is another short song, relatively: just over four minutes. Nice melody.

The first instrumental, however, is over six and I'm always a little doubtful of instrumentals that long. We'll see. The ticking clock at the start is less annoying than it could be, and then my god they get going with a big heavy keyboard run as the piece hits its stride early. I quite enjoyed that, and again it didn't seem six minutes long. “Loose heart” is nice, sort of a semi-ballad that puts me in mind at times of Gary Moore, some great guitar work there. Ah. It changes to something of a manic shout-fest near the end, little jarring but it doesn't ruin it for me, while the second instrumental, shorter this time, has more sound effects (phone dial then wrong number sound) but runs on a really smooth guitar line and has a lot of almost angry power. Yeah, I like this too. And we're more than halfway through the album. Going well so far.

“In two minds” has a lovely acoustic line before the organ comes in to shoulder the melody, and reminds me of the best of post-Fish Marillion, and things stay fairly low-key for “The curtain falls”, or so they? Seems like it's taking a left turn here on the back of Duda's almost hypnotic bass and some “Run like Hell” guitar riffs. Nice. Gets really driving and powerful near the end. Excellent. No problems with this. The album ends on “OK”, which as a descriptor of this debut is well below the mark. It's a really nice, almost trip-hop song that at times even reminds me of Norwegian popsters a-ha. I feel I may have heard this as one of the songs on one of those shuffles I was talking about. Nice addition of trumpet here, really gives the song something different. Great closer to a great album.

Track Listing and Ratings

1. The same river
2. Out of myself
3. I believe
4. Reality dream
5. Loose heart
6. Reality dream II
7. In two minds
8. The curtain falls
9. OK

Well if I had any reservations about Riverside this album has gone a long way towards putting those fears to rest. A very accomplished debut – even a triumph, I might say, and it's left me eager to hear more.

Result for this album: http://www.trollheart.com/smallhappy.jpg

Total Result so far: http://www.trollheart.com/smallhappy.jpg

A good start, so let's move on to the second in the trilogy, and indeed the second Riverside album.
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Second Life Syndrome (2005)

“After” gets us going with a whispered spoken word then the guitars slide in along with synth and the song seems to be fairly melancholic to start off with, quite dour but I do like it, then “Volte face” takes off from the start on a rocking guitar line and takes three minutes before the vocal comes in. The song runs for almost nine, so that's okay, and I can see here that things are that little bit heavier than they were on the debut. Some sweet laidback piano in the fifth minute though it then gets pretty intense with the vocals all but snarled and the keys going wild as it hits the eighth. Powerful stuff. Back to soft piano then for “Conceiving you”, a much shorter song which I'm going to say is a ballad. Some very expressive and emotional guitar here.

Another three-minute introduction but in fairness this is fifteen minutes long, and it's the title track. Great sense of urgency in it, riffing guitars and hurrying keyboards. I would say I do like this, though perhaps with a little caution, as it's beginning that kind of technical wankery I so dislike in many prog rock bands. I'll reserve judgement on this one though till I've heard the whole thing. No, actually I think all that was necessary and I did enjoy the track. Faster and more powerful then is “Artificial smile”, with a kind of angry vocal at times while “I turned you down” sounds like it could be a power ballad; certainly some stirring organ there at the start of it. Well it got pretty powerful but I don't know if I'd necessarily call it a ballad. I remember “Reality dream I” and “Reality dream II” on the debut were both instrumentals, so I wonder if ... yeah. “Reality dream III” is too. Very good I must say; quite dramatic with some energetic piano and snarling guitar.

“Dance with the shadow” is another epic, this one over eleven minutes long, and starts with an almost folkish chant against deep lush dark synth, then in the second the guitar really kicks in, taking the whole thing up a serious notch. The extended instrumental is not this time wankery of any sort, and I am quite enjoying this. The last track, “Before”, starts off very moody and low-key but kicks up with a lot of intensity later on. Good closer.

Track Listing and Ratings

1. After
2. Volte face
3. Conceiving you
4. Second life syndrome
5. Artifical smile
6. I turned you down
7. Reality dream III
8. Dance with the shadow
9. Before

Generally speaking, though this is a heavier effort than their debut, I pretty much still like it. It does tend to noodle and wander a little, particularly on the title track, though given that that's fifteen minutes long that's perhaps to be expected, especially with a prog band. I don't hear anything though that makes me think I would not like this album more on repeated listenings, so it's another score.

Result for this album: http://www.trollheart.com/smallhappy.jpg
Total result so far: http://www.trollheart.com/smallhappy.jpghttp://www.trollheart.com/smallhappy.jpg

Ok then, let's wrap this up before the year ends. We're two for two so far, let's see if we can make it three.
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Rapid Eye Movement (2007)

The final part of the Reality Dream trilogy, the album is split into two separate sections, the first consisting of the first five tracks and called Fearless while the second is called Fearland and covers the final four. The album opens with “Beyond the eyelids”, with a nice soft psych feel to the music before a big organ crashes in on the back of heavy guitar, and it really kicks up. A long enough opener, just shy of eight minutes, and much of the first half is taken up with an instrumental jam. Yeah again it's good but I can feel my attention wandering (probably doesn't help that I'm websurfing while doing this, but really, an album that's good enough should be able to divert me back to it, and, well, this ain't doing it) and on we go into the second track, which is again okay but I can't say anything really positive about it, other than that it doesn't suck. Completely.

Yeah, that one just kinda went by without leaving much of an impression on me. I feel I know “02 panic room” (why the figures in front of it? Is it sponsored by the big telephone company?) before, and yes, it's a good song, even a great song. A real cut above everything that has gone so far, though in fairness that's not really saying too much. Oh, thought that piano was starting a new track, but it seems we're still on “02 panic room”: almost the reverse of the last time, when I didn't notice one track had ended and the other begun. Best on the album so far, definitely. May have some competition though, immediately, from “Schizophrenic prayer”, a real slowburner, a kind of concealed menace in the song. Really like this one too. Maybe the album is taking an upswing? All right, the next track is also great. Opening with an acapella vocal before it explodes all over the place, “Parasomnia” is both a great slice of prog and yet another mixing of words to make a pretty cool one. The whispering voice over the piano in the sixth minute is very effective.

And so into part two, Fearland, we go, with a very soft and gentle opener which goes under the title of “Through the other side”, a very low-key, almost sotto voce vocal with a really nice understated acoustic guitar and just a little light percussion. “Embryonic” is also driven on acoustic guitar, and I find myself wondering if this second part is all going to be low-key, introspective, ballady material? This has the same almost muttered vocal, but then we get to “Cybernetic pillow” and it's picking up speed and power again. Some pretty crazy guitar there near the end. The closing track then is the epic, thirteen minutes plus of “The ultimate trip”. It's a good closer, though I would question its length, something that is often a failing among prog rock bands.

Track Listing and ratings
Fearless
1. Beyond the eyelids
2. Rainbow box
3. 02 panic room
4. Schizophrenic prayer
5. Parasomnia
Fearland
6. Through the other side
7. Embryonic
8. Cybernetic pillow
9. The ultimate trip

I worried when I began drifting as the album began, but like any good album should it quickly demanded my attention back from the third track and more or less held it from then on. I would say I'm still not totally sold on this band – they can ramble on at times – but on the basis of these three albums I'm willing to keep listening to them in the hope that that special album will hit.

Result for this album: http://www.trollheart.com/smallhappy.jpg
Total result: http://www.trollheart.com/smallhappy.jpghttp://www.trollheart.com/smallhappy.jpghttp://www.trollheart.com/smallhappy.jpg

Final Verdict (for now) on Riverside: http://www.trollheart.com/smallhappy.jpg

Someone I had not really expected to see here – but who was nevertheless very welcome – was Mondo, and he brought up an interesting topic, which was Italian progressive rock. To my mind, Italy is the only country outside of the UK to have essentially an entire subgenre named after and linked to them, and be, of course, exclusive to them. You can't play Italian progressive rock if you're not Italian, unlike the Canterbury Scene, where you could. But for all its influence over the genre, I've only heard very little of this music and that kind of in passing, with bands like Prognesi and to an extent Fabio Zuffanti, mostly through his work with Hostsonaten. So here's where I change this, as I go on a deep exploration of the world and music that is known as
Rock Progressivo Italiano

I honestly don't know where to start. This isn't going to be a history of RPI – that will probably unfold as part of my History of Prog journal anyway – but a chance to take a look and listen to some of the better, and perhaps less good, famous and less well-regarded bands, artistes and albums within the genre. I read that at the time when prog was in its most nascent form in the UK, bands like Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator and Gentle Giant found an audience for their music among Italian fans almost before they found fame at home, so if England could be, and is, seen as the wellspring and font of all things prog, then surely Italy must be regarded as one of the mighty river's greatest tributaries.

One of the first Italian prog bands to spring up appear to have been these guys, who went on to become, in fairness, more known for their work on film soundtracks, notably with horror/schlock maestro Dario Argento, but did put out some standard prog albums. This one, in typical prog style, is a concept, although if it's sung in Italian, as I assume it is, you're out of luck as I have no Italian beyond “Ay Giovanni! Where's-a my pizza?” (Note: any slights made on the Italian language are in jest only, and should not, I repeat NOT be communicated to or repeated within a hundred miles of any practicing members of the Cosa Nostra.)

Hey, maybe it'll be an instrumental album. Avanti!
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Il Fantastico Viaggio del Bagarozzo Mark – Goblin – 1978 (Cinevox)

No, there are vocals. Well, from what I read by quickly scanning other reviews of this album by people far better versed in RPI than myself, this is something of a maverick within the genre, as it would seem the usual RPI albums tend not to have any singing. Interesting. I also note that the translation of the title comes out as “the fantastic journey of (I could have translated that much myself, of course) the beetle Mark”. So is there some psychedelic weirdness mixed into the lyrics? We'll never know, as, as I say, I can't speak Italian, so that will have to remain a mystery, as we concentrate – as it seems we will be mostly or even exclusively doing all through this section – on the music.

It's not an epic by any standards, certainly not by those of progressive rock, having a mere eight tracks and clocking in at a very low thirty-five minutes in total, with no track overstaying its welcome, the longest being just under six minutes long. “Mark il bagarozzo” (Mark the beetle I assume) gets things going with a spacey synthy keyboard sound and some nice guitar; the vocals are strong but as I can't tell what's being sung I can say little more about them, and here at least I can see why some people seem to consider them more a distraction, as they sort of take from the music, which, once it gets going, is very impressive. You can see why these guys went on to have such a career in film music. Superb organ from Claudio Simonetti mostly drives this, though Massimo Morante, who also takes the vocals, makes his guitar heard too. It might be me, it might be him, or it might be the fact that this is a seventies album, but at times (mostly during the vocal parts it has to be said) the production, or at least the sound, comes across as quite muddy.

There's a fine guitar solo from Morante to take us into “La cascate di viridiana” (The green waterfall?) with a whistling keyboard accompanying a very thick bass, almost sounds fretless (?) ably wielded by Fabio Pignatelli, while soft, almost tribal drum patterns are laid down by Agostino Marangolo and we even hear some low sax, care of Antonio Marangolo (could be his brother I guess; he's a guest musician anyway so obviously not part of Goblin). I don't know if I guessed right about the title, but everything about the music (and there seem to be no vocals to this track) do suggest the idea of a waterfall, from the flowing piano to the haunting sax. I have to be honest: this is that longest track I spoke of, and I can really see the band stretching themselves and coming into their own now, and can agree that the vocal is a distraction, as these guys are really great musicians. This has film soundtrack written all over it. Lovely.

“Terra di Goblin” (anyone?) has a real Tony Banks sound to the keys, almost ethereal, but I have to say unfortunately, we're back to the vocal tracks, and it really is a disappointment, as this seems to be the kind of music that would survive so much better – thrive indeed – without the addition of singing, and it's not often I admit that. It's not just that I can't interpret the vocals; they almost seem to be tacked on, as if this is something the band feel they should be doing, but kind of don't really want to. I wonder how well this album sold? Once the vocals drop back in the second minute the band can really let loose, and the song is so much better for the absence of singing. A great militaristic drumbeat attended by fluting synth to take us out and into “Un ragazzo d'argento” (A silver something) where the music picks up pace and becomes almost boppy, whereas up to now it's been generally stately and grand; this is almost like electronic. Sadly the vocals are back, though this time they don't seem to be as bad. Perhaps it's the more slightly poppy tone of the song that complements them better. This is the first time I've heard the vocals and not wished they were not there.

Looks like “La danza” might be another instrumental, and a very good one too, in which Simonetti gets to really flex his ... oh. There are vocals. God damn it. They don't quite ruin it, but I was getting a certain vibe from the piece which now I kind of don't any more. The pace has increased too, with Morante's guitar taking a more active role. There's almost a toy piano feel to “Opera magnifica”, and there's no escaping the vocals as they're there from the start, but the almost commercial pop feel of the song again allows them to exist in harmony with, rather than despite, it, and it all works quite well. The mumuring vocal on “Notte” (night) reminds me of the opening to “I know what I like”, and the piano keeping the melody behind it is great. “... e suono rock” does however seem to be an instrumental, and a pretty rockin' one, good way to end the album.

Track listing and ratings

1. Mark il bagarozza
2. La cascate di viridiana
3. Tierra di Goblin
4. Un rqagazzo d'argento
5. La danza
6. Opera magnifica
7. Notte
8. ... E suono rock

Overall, I'd say I'm highly impressed with this album. I see why purists have mentioned that the vocals don't really work, though on occasions I would say they do. Mostly though this band plays to its strengths when they concentrate on just making music, and when they do that, they really shine. I'd be interested in checking out more of their work, but for now I'm going to move on to another artiste, as there are masses of them to choose from in this very specific subgenre of progressive rock.

And my journey has just begun.

You could give it a shot

Keeping in the seventies for now, and in fact, going further back, to 1973. Despite having their debut album released in 1972, Banco del Mutuo Soccoroso (Bank of mutual help? Don't ask me) were already on their third album by the following year, having released two in 1972 to widespread acclaim, at least in Italy. BdMS (whom we'll just refer to as Banco in future, due to the unfortunate connotations linked to that acronym, or one very close to it! It's also how they were known in later years, as they dropped the other three words) are seen as one of the “big three” of Rock Progressivo Italiano, along with Le Orme and Premiata Forneria Marconi, or PFM, and up to 1997 had recorded a total of fourteen albums. Although they still gig today, Nudo was their last official release.
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Io Sato Nato Libero – Banco del Mutuo Soccorso – 1973 (Ricordi)

Again, another short album, in fact only five minutes longer than the Goblin effort we looked at last, and with fewer tracks: five in all, though in fairness the first one is fifteen minutes long. The title apparently translates to I Was Born Free, which sounds like a cue for Matt Monro and Elsa the lion! No? Damn you youngsters! Anyway, what's the album like? Let's see. Sounds like an oboe maybe starting off “Canto nomade per un prigioniero politico” (Nomadic chant for a political prisoner”) and then the vocals come in. I immediately find Francesco di Giacomo perhaps a better singer, perhaps just easier on the ear than Morante from Goblin; somehow the music just seems to sit better with his voice. This is the fifteen-minute track I spoke of, and unsurprisingly it goes through several changes over the length of its run. Piano gives way to keyboards and organ, both ably played by the Nocenzi brothers, Vittorio and Gianni. There's not too much room for Marcello Todaro's guitar just yet, but no doubt he'll make himself known soon enough.

Slowing down now to an almost ghostly moan in the fifth minute before a big burst of piano takes the song forward, the sole accompaniment to di Giacomo's vocal, which at this point puts me somewhat in mind of Eric Woolfson, in style if not actual sound. Another dark, eerie sort of instrumental part, quite menacing in its way, as we hit the seventh minute and pass the halfway point, and now we have a sort of jazzy breakout on piano then organ, with the rhythm section keeping it all together. I really still don't hear too much of the guitar, but I guess it's in there. No solos yet. Oh, here comes the guitar in something of a star turn at the tenth minute, sounds either acoustic or Classical, never been able to distinguish one from the other. And now a drum solo of sorts, with the organ humming in the background. A really nice strummed guitar as we move into minute eleven, the only instrument playing now for the next minute or so, other than the bass, then the percussion storms back in and the keyboards leak slowly back to take the tune to its conclusion with a powerful jazzy outro.

As I often point out, it's quite brave to open your album on such an epic, though at this time, at least in their native Italy, Banco were pretty much established so I guess it wasn't quite as much of a risk as it could have been, and anyway, this is prog rock: the fans expect long tracks. Which is not what they get with the next one, “Nom mi rompete” (Don't bother me) which runs for a mere five minutes, and gives Todaro a chance to shine on the acoustic guitar, as it appears initially anyway to be a ballad. Gets boppy and happy there in the second minute, so maybe not. Good vocal from di Giacomo, and the guitar sounds almost flamenco? Definitely keeping the keys out of this one so far. Wonder if Todaro wrote it? No, seems he didn't have a hand in writing any of the five tracks. Still, it's a good vehicle for him to express his talents, which are impressive. Quite a hippy/psych vibe off this. Oh, there's some keyboard there near the end. Very nice.

A slightly longer track, “La città sottile” (the subtle town) takes us back to the piano, with a sort of neoclassical touch, and a very Alan Parsons Project vocal. Marcello Todaro, having been given his head on the previous track, is not shy about joining in quickly, and then one of the Nocenzis fires up the organ and away we go. I can hear echoes of early Supertramp here too. Some fairly what I suppose would be termed early experimental stuff here; quite surprising what these two guys could do with keyboards. The other relatively long track, just shy of ten minutes, is “Dopo...niente è più lo stesso” (Then ... nothing is still the same”) and it rocks considerably more than the previous ones have, much more uptempo and with a kind of urgent vocal, the piano creating its own sense of tension, and then I guess they somehow pitch bend it or maybe it's done in production but the piano goes all dark and warped for a moment, before flutes come in but even these sound a little frenetic and chaotic. The vocal is at times almost like a prayer, as if di Giacomo is chanting, carrying out some form of worship. Then everything explodes in a big keyboard instrumental in the fourth minute, the tempo kicking right back up even as the vocals return. Todaro gets a chance to rip off a proper electric guitar solo (he may have done this already but this is the first time I've been able to hear it, to point to it and say there it is) as everything slows down to a dark crawl again in the sixth minute with what sounds like cellos? Bouncy piano then takes the melody, aided by trumpeting keyboards and more guitar, with something of a jam developing in the eighth minute before it all slows down to a simple organ and piano line as the piece comes to a close.

And that leaves but one track, and it's a short one. They even failed to bother to name it, calling it “Traccia II” or “track two” (although here it's track five, three of the B-side of the album I guess). It's the only one not written by Vittorio Nocenzi, but in fact by his brother Gianni, and it has a very classical, fanfare-like feel. Unsurprisingly it's written for keys, and an instrumental, and it ends the album very well.

Track listing and ratings

1. Canto nomade per un prigioniero politico
2. Nom mi rompete
3. La città sottile
4. Dopo...niente è più lo stesso
5. Traccia II

Again, I'm very impressed. Vocals definitely work better here in general than they did with the Goblin album, but the music is I think as good as if not better than those guys. Having two keyboard players certainly makes a difference, and if that doesn't mark you out as a prog band, you have something of a problem. Vocalist Francesco di Giacomo sadly passed away in 2014, but the remaining members of Banco continue to gig, though no new material has as yet been recorded.

It's kind of odd. I wanted – want – to move away from the seventies and was checking out a band called Moongarden, then I find they're not really considered RPI, although they are Italian. So what is it about Rock Progressivo Italiano that makes it what it is? I assumed – apparently wrongly – that to be an RPI band you simply had to play prog rock and come from Italy, but that does not now appear to be the case. Well, returning to my other go-to source, progarchives.com, I read that RPI is not so much a genre or even a country-based phenomena (although you can't be an RPI band without being Italian; however just simply being an Italian prog band does not make you RPI. Huh?) but a way of thinking, playing, composing and paying your musical dues back to your seventies forebears. One writer compares the emergence of RPI to the Renaissance, when fifteenth-century Italy led the way in a resurgence in culture, art, literature and thinking as the Dark Ages receded.

So then I thought, well to be RPI you must be a band playing in, or at least formed in, the heyday of Italian prog, ie the seventies. But no: this band were only formed in 2008, and yet are supposedly accepted as being Rock Progressivo Italiano as much as PFM or Banco. I'm going to be reading up more on this idea, but for now I have from Progarchives a list of bands who most assuredly are considered RPI, and from this list I have plucked
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La Crudeltà di Aprile – Unreal City – 2013 (MRL)

Although he is not in the band, my good buddy Fabio Zuffanti, whom I mentioned at the beginning of this article, he who helms Hostsonaten among others, is credited with being the artistic director of this new band, whatever that may mean. It seems to be the baby of Emanuele Tarasconi though, as he sings and plays the keys (and there are a lot of them), while Francseca Zanetta is something of a rarity, not only in being a lady in prog but also the guitarist, and the hilariously-named Francesco Orefice :laughing: looks after bass duties. Although they only formed in the twenty-first century it seems Unreal City are afforded the tag of RPI due to their adherence to the old values of bands like PFM and Banco, and indeed are credited here (whether officially or not I don't know) with the extra tag of “modern PFI”. Hmm. This is their debut album, and it seems to have been quite well received. Good boppy start to “dell'innocenza perduta”, some fine organ and piano, vocals then come in around the second minute as the tune settles down into a nice relaxed piano run, and the singing itself is very pleasant. Not a clue what he's singing about of course, but nice to listen to. Picking up speed now in the fifth minute, crazy piano and organ run and some thundering drums from Federico Bedostri. Sounds like a fiddle there at the end. Could be; these guys seem to use a whole lot of instruments, including, I see, a Renaissance lute! Well, I see there's a guest appearance by Fabio Biale on the violin, so I guess that's him.

It's a fine guitar that gets “Atlantis (Conferendis Pecuniis)” underway, sort of a dark feeling to it, then it picks up nicely about halfway through, before falling into a sort of medieval folk thing. I guess that could be the Renaissance lute they were talking about. And the reliable old church organ heralds our descent into Hell, or “Catabasi (descenscio ad infernos)” with pealing bells and then a dark synth. In places this reminds me very much of Arena. Suddenly then that violin/fiddle is back, jumping the pace and bringing some light into the netherworld. “Dove La Luce È Più Intensa” has a powerful instrumental opening, which goes on for a minute and a half of the seven it runs for, while “Ecate (Walpurgusnacht)” opens on a beautiful classical piano line with attendant synth with some funky percussion and organ, and a sort of mix of reggae and blues, if you can imagine such a thing.

The epic though is the closer, “Horror vacui”, which runs for almost eighteen minutes and is split into four different sections. Opening on “Le radici del mare”, it's a soft, gradual introduction to the piece as it slowly coalesces on soft piano and bassy piano before warbling synth joins in as the rhythm section makes itself heard, and I'm going to assume the first part is an instrumental intro, as otherwise I have no breakdown of the suite and therefore no idea where one section ends and another begins. The vocals then bring in a more jaunty, upbeat tempo as “L'assassino” (yeah, who can translate that?) begins, but unless it's very obvious, I have no idea where this will move into part three. Nice keyboard solo in the tenth minute, could be part three, but no way to know for sure. Some lovely smooth fretless bass too. Powerful, almost jazzy at times, instrumental ending.

Track listing and Ratings

1. Dell'innocenzo perduta
2. Atlantai (Conferendis pecuniis)
3. Catabasi (descenscio ad infernos)
4. Dove La Luce È Più Intensa
5. Ecate (Walpurgisnacht)
6. Horror vacui
(i) La radici del mare
(ii) L'assassino
(iii) Nel sonno della ragione
(iv) Il baratro della follia

And another great Italian prog album, proving I guess that you didn't have to be recording in the seventies to be an RPI band. Unreal City certainly have an advantage though, as they are under the wing of Zuffanti, who has been playing and composing and producing music since the mid-nineties and certainly knows his way around the scene. A real case, I think, of “stick with me, boys, and I'll make stars out of you.” They've made a very good start with this debut.

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Oh my God! Progrocketal? Pentalist? Someone call an ambulance! Trollheart's having a stroke! Whaddya mean, just let the fucker die? Charming. No, as it happens I'm no more weird than usual: I'm making up words again, is all.

I got tired of saying prog rock and prog metal, so I've now decided to meld the two subgenres into one single word, so that progrocketal is just an amalgamation of prog rock and prog metal. Makes things easier, for me anyway. As for pentalist? Merely a playlist with five songs, my friends. No need to fear.

This, then, is the section where I will post my five favourite progrocketal songs, perhaps every day but I think that's unlikely; certainly once a week anyway but maybe more if I can do it/be bothered. I may write a little (or a lot) about all five, or one or two, or I may just drop the videos in and say nothing (yeah, like that'll happen!) :laughing: I'll be doing two specific playlists, one chosen by me and one chosen at random, just for the fun of it. Chances are I'll probably end up writing more about the random one, as it may feature songs I haven't yet heard.

So then: on with the first selection.
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“The shattered room” - Arena – from Pepper's Ghost.

I pretty much love every track on this album – not that surprising, as I'm a big fan of Arena, though some of their albums can be a little hit or miss sometimes: this is not one such case. From beginning to end it's all killer, no filler. The way the song opens on a soft piano and seems like it's going to be a ballad till it suddenly explodes into a claustrophobic, paranoid, raging rockfest (for a prog rock band) is really well handled, and there's a pretty superb solo from John Mitchell on guitar too.

Weirdly, the entire album is on YouTube except this track! As a result, I have to use this live recording, but it captures the essence of the song.


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“The losing game” - Verbal Delirium – from From the Small Hours of Weakness

Next up is a band from Greece I enthused about in my main journal before The Great Discography Project took it over. They're called Verbal Delirium, and this is from the second of their, so far, three albums. Definitely one of the better tracks on From the Small Hours of Weakness, though most of that album is pretty excellent anyway. This one really stands out though.


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Glass Shadows – Mostly Autumn – from Glass Shadows

One of my favourite recent prog bands, there was a time when I would quite literally listen to nothing else. I had all their albums on a shuffle playlist and for absolutely months I just played it over and over, with the result that though I didn't really sit down to listen to many full albums of theirs, I pretty much knew every song on every album by the time I finally dragged myself screaming away to force myself to listen to other music.

This album has never been a real favourite of mine, but I can pick out some real gems, and the title track is one. Ominous and dark, Bryan's voice is counterpointed by Heather's softer approach, and the song works really well.


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“Pilot in the sky of dreams” - Threshold – from Dead Reckoning

But I called this list a progrocketal one for a reason, so let's have some of that “-etal”, shall we? In other words, some progressive metal. Even though they shrink from being described as such, Threshold always come across to me as one of the archetypal prog metal bands, fusing heavy riffs and snarling solos with clever tempo changes, instrumental breaks and deep lyrics. I could have chosen any track, really, but this is definitely one of my favourites, and demonstrates how they can start with a really soft balladic tune and then just kick out the stays and rock the house, bringing it all back to where it began as the song comes to an end.


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“A broken frame” - Eloy – from Performance

This final track comes with the patented Trollheart Story of the Old Days. Having purchased I think Marillion's debut album, or some prog rock album anyway, I recall asking Tommy in the Sound Cellar, where I used to get all my imports, if he had anything in a prog vein I might be interested in? He suggested Eloy's Performance, and I trusted him. I remember being very disappointed with it. I guess it sounded like “newer” prog to me, not the organ/keyboard driven tales of dragons and such I had up to then been used to, and I assumed Eloy were a new band. Little did I know they've been around since the early seventies, and that this was their twelfth album!

Nonetheless, I didn't like it and I have never really had occasion to revisit it, but I do remember the closing track being very impressive, more of what I had been hoping for perhaps. Too little, too late, but at least I finished the album with a sense of satisfaction, if only for that one track, or at any rate a feeling that I hadn't completely wasted my money. Eloy remain something of a mystery to me to this day. But I still like this song. I think a lot of that has to do with the soaraway guitar solo at the end.

Well, why not? It's not as if almost a hundred discographies in my main journal is enough for me, to say nothing of all the movies waiting to be reviewed, as well as all of my other journals. Let's do a special discography project for just progressive rock and progressive metal albums, shall we? And let's call it, oh I don't know...
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Unlike the Great Discography Project, this will not take over my journal. I will do discographies as and when, in between other features, perhaps three albums at a time, perhaps not. I haven't quite decided. I'm unlikely to be taking suggestions for this one (you're unlikely be offering them, or even reading this anyway) so here is the list so far.

Artiste Name: Also Eden
Nationality: British
Timespan: 2006 -
Number of albums: 5
Notes: Differences as Light is actually an EP, but I'm including it as it was the first taste I had of this band.

Discography details:
About Time (2006)
It's Kind of You to Ask (2008)
Differences as Light (2010)
Think of the Children! (2011)
[REDACTED] (2013)


Artiste Name: Arena
Nationality: British
Timespan: 1995 -
Number of albums: 8
Notes: The review of Contagion[ will also take in the EPS Contagious and Contagium, as they are all meant to make up one unit.

Discography details:
Songs from the Lion's Cage (1995)
Pride (1996)
The Visitor (1998)
Immortal? (2000)
Contagion (2003)
Pepper's Ghost (2005)
The Seventh Degree of Separation (2011)
The Unquiet Sky (2015)


Artiste Name: Balance of Power
Nationality: British
Timespan: 1997 - 2003
Number of albums: 5
Notes:

Discography details:
When the World Falls Down (1997)
Book of Secrets (1998)
Ten More Tales of Grand Illusion (1999)
Perfect Balance (2001)
Heathen Machine (2003)


Artiste Name: Big Big Train
Nationality: British
Timespan: 1994 -
Number of albums: 10
Notes:

Discography details:
Goodbye to the Age of Steam (1994)
English Boy Wonders (1997)
Bard (2002)
Gathering Speed (2004)
The Difference Machine (2007)
The Underfall Yard (2009)
English Electric Part One (2012)
English Electric Part Two (2013)
Folklore (2016)
Grimspound: A Folklore Companion (2017)


Artiste Name: Edenbridge
Nationality: Austrian
Timespan: 2000 -
Number of albums: 9
Notes:

Discography details:
Sunrise in Eden (2000)
Arcana (2001)
Aphelion (2003)
Shine (2004)
The Grand Design (2006)
My Earth Dream (2008)
Solitaire (2010)
The Bonding (2013)
The Great Momentum (2017)


Artiste Name: Genesis
Nationality: British
Timespan: 1969 - 1997
Number of albums: 15
Notes:

Discography details:
From Genesis to Revelation (1969)
Trespass (1970)
Nursery Cryme (1971)
Foxtrot (1972)
Selling England by the Pound (1973)
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974)
A Trick of the Tail (1976)
Wind and Wuthering (1976)
... And Then There Were Three (1978)
Duke (1980)
Abacab (1981)
Genesis (1983)
Invisible Touch (1986)
We Can't Dance (1991)
Calling All Stations (1997)


Artiste Name: Jadis
Nationality: British
Timespan: 1989 -
Number of albums: 9
Notes:

Discography details:
Jadis (1989)
More Than Meets the Eye (1992)
Across the Water (1994)
Somersault (1997)
Understand (2000)
Fanatic (2003)
Photoplay (2006)
See Right Through You (2012)
No Fear of Looking Down (2016)


Artiste Name: Knight Area
Nationality: Dutch
Timespan: 2004 -
Number of albums: 5
Notes:

Discography details:
The Sun Also Rises (2004)
Under a New Sign (2007)
Realm of Shadows (2009)
Nine Paths (2011)
Hyperdrive (2014)


Artiste Name: Marillion
Nationality: British
Timespan: 1983 -
Number of albums: 18
Notes:

Discography details:
Script for a Jester's Tear (1983)
Fugazi (1984)
Misplaced Childhood (1985)
Clutching at Straws (1987)
Seasons End (1989)
Holidays in Eden (1991)
Brave (1994)
Afraid of Sunlight (1995)
This Strange Engine (1997)
Radiation (1998)
Marillion.com (1999)
Anoraknophobia (2001)
Marbles (2004)
Somewhere Else (2007)
Happiness is the Road (2008)
Less is More (2009)
Sounds That Can't Be Made (2012)
**** Everyone and Run (FEAR) (2016)


Artiste Name: Mostly Autumn
Nationality: British
Timespan: 1998 -
Number of albums: 12
Notes:

Discography details:
For All We Shared (1998)
The Spirit of Autumn Past (1999)
The Last Bright Light (2001)
Music Inspired by The Lord of the Rings (2001)
Passengers (2003)
Storms Over Still Water (2005)
Heart Full of Sky (2006)
Glass Shadows (2008)
Go Well Diamond Heart (2010)
The Ghost Moon Orchestra (2012)
Dressed in Voices (2014)
Sight of Day (2017)


Artiste Name: Mystery
Nationality: Canadian
Timespan: 1996 -
Number of albums: 6
Notes:

Discography details:
Theater of the mind (1996)
Destiny? (1998)
Beneath the Veil of Winter's Face (2007)
One Among the Living (2010)
The World is a Game (2012)
Delusion Rain (2015)


Artiste Name: Millenium
Nationality: Polish
Timespan: 1999 -
Number of albums: 12
Notes:

Discography details:
Millenium (1999)
Vocanda (2000)
Reincarnations (2002)
Deja Vu (2004)
Interdead (2005)
Numbers and Big Dreams of Mister Sunders (2006)
7 Years: Novelties, rarities .. and the best (2007)
Three Brothers' Epilogue (2008)
Exist (2008)
Puzzles (2011)
Ego (2013)
In Search of the Perfect Melody (2014)


Artiste Name: Pendragon
Nationality: British
Timespan: 1985 -
Number of albums: 10
Notes:

Discography details:
The Jewel (1985)
Kowtow (1988)
The World (1991)
The Window of Life (1993)
The Masquerade Overture (1996)
Not of This World (2001)
Believe (2005)
Pure (2008)
Passion (2011)
Men Who Climb Mountains (2014)



Artiste Name: Redemption
Nationality: American
Timespan: 2003 -
Number of albums: 6
Notes:

Discography details:
Redemption (2003)
The Fullness of Time (2005)
The Origins of Ruin (2007)
Snowfall on Judgment Day (2009)
This Mortal Coil (2011)
The Art of Loss (2016)


Artiste Name: RPWL
Nationality: German
Timespan: 2000 -
Number of albums: 11
Notes:

Discography details:
God Has Failed (2000)
Trying to Kiss the Sun (2002)
Stock (2003)
Worl Through My Eyes (2005)
9 (2007)
The RPWL Experience (2008)
The Gentle Art of Music (2010)
Beyond Man and Time (2012)
Wanted (2014)
RPWL Plays Pink Floyd (2015)
RPWL Plays Pink Floyd's “The Man and the Journey” (2016)


Artiste Name: Salem Hill
Nationality: American
Timespan: 1993 -
Number of albums: 11
Notes:

Discography details:
Salem Hill (1993)
Salem Hill II (1994)
Catatonia (1997)
The Robbery of Murder (1998)
Not Verybody's Gold (2000)
Different Worlds (2001)
Puppet Show (2003)
Be (2003)
Mimi's Magic Moment (2005)
Pennies in the Karma Jar (2010)
The Unseen Cord/Thicker Than Water (2015)


Artiste Name: Spock's Beard
Nationality: American
Timespan: 1995 -
Number of albums: 12
Notes:

Discography details:
The Light (1995)
Beware of Darkness (1996)
The Kindness of Strangers (1998)
Day for Night (1999)
V (2000)
Snow (2002)
Feel Euphoria (2003)
Octane (2004)
Spock's Beard (2006)
X (2010)
Brief Nocturnes and Dreamless Sleep (2013)
The Oblivion Particle (2015)


Artiste Name: Theocracy
Nationality: American
Timespan: 2003 -
Number of albums: 5
Notes:

Discography details:
Theocracy (2003)
Mirror of Souls (2008)
As the World Bleeds (2011)
Ghost Ship (2016)


Artiste Name: White Willow
Nationality: Norwegian
Timespan: 1995 -
Number of albums: 6
Notes:

Discography details:
Ignis Fatuus (1995)
Ex Tenebris (1998)
Sacrament (2000)
Storm Season (2004)
Signal to Noise (2006)
Terminal Twilight (2011)


Artiste Name: Within Temptation
Nationality: Dutch
Timespan: 1997 -
Number of albums: 6
Notes:

Discography details:
Enter (1997)
Mother Earth (2000)
The Silent force (2004)
The Heart of Everything (2007)
The Unforgiving (2011)
Hydra (2014)

One word of warning – or caution, let's say – before we get under way. Unlike many of the artistes featured in The Great Discography Project in my main journal, many of whom I really don't care too much about, these artistes all matter to me. In my main journal I asked for suggestions, which I was happy to take and will certainly review, but many of those suggestions are for me to listen to bands I don't really have too much interest in hearing, so the reviews have been, shall we say, shorter than normal? Here though, I intend to mostly revert to my “old” style of reviewing, ie going deeper into the album than probably most people would prefer, but as the likelihood is that a very small percentage of you are even reading this, and that the few who are may share my interest in these artistes, I make no apologies for that.

With all that in mind, the band I wish to kick this off with are these guys:
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When I first started getting into prog, particularly neo-prog, I would hear four bands mentioned in the one breath: Marillion, IQ, Pallas and Pendragon. Now whereas I became, as everyone knows, a huge fan of Marillion, I tried to get into IQ and failed (they will shortly be the subject of another feature of “Why Can't I Get Into...?”), loved Pallas's Arrive Alive but listened to none of their other albums, quite frankly I ignored Pendragon. It was only when I heard their 2005 release, Believe, that I realised what a fool I had been, as the album just blew me away. Still unwilling or unable to listen to albums purely for pleasure – I was reviewing so much that I couldn't take the time out, so if they weren't for review I had no chance to listen to them – and having downloaded their discography, I decided to load it into a shuffle playlist, and over the last maybe two years this is how I have come to know a lot, perhaps most of Pendragon's music. But until very recently, when I experienced their latest album, I had still not listened to one full album through, bar the above.

So it seems appropriate to start this new project off by doing just that. And as ever, we begin at the best place to begin, the beginning.

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Album title: The Jewel
Artiste: Pendragon
Year: 1985
Label: Decca
Producer: Scott English
Chronological position: Debut album
Notes: Clive Nolan, who would become a permanent member of this band and also Arena, among others, only plays on the two bonus tracks included here at the end.
Lineup: Nick Barrett – Vocals, Guitar
Peter Gee: Bass
Rik Carter: Keyboards
Nigel Harris: Drums
Bonus tracks (if any): “Fly high fall far/Victims of life/Insomnia/Armageddon”

It's a bouncy start as we kick off with “Higher circles”, the keys of Rik Carter meshing with the measured percussion of Nigel Harris before the soon-to-be unmistakable voice of Nick Barrett comes in. It kind of reminds me in tempo terms of It Bites's “Calling all the heroes”, and in fairness it's a little weak as an opener. It's also not very long, just over three minutes as we move on to the equally brief “The pleasure of hope”, with much more of a punch and a sort of seventies Genesis feel to the keyboards. Carter would in fact leave after this album, to be replaced by Clive Nolan. This song immediately has more about it, I can't quite put my finger on it, but now we're listening to a band who are going to go places and make their mark in progressive rock as it began to enjoy a resurgence in the early eighties. Barrett's guitar comes more upfront and there's definitely teeth in this tune with some reasonably extended instrumentals, given the brevity of the song itself.

From here, the song lengths start to reflect more what you would expect from a prog band. The appropriately-titled “Leviathan” reminds me in places of Pallas's “Queen of the deep”, some nice Hammond going on there but again it's the guitar that's mostly carrying the song. Even with Nolan on board, this would turn out to be something of a trademark with Pendragon: where other prog, especially neo-prog bands tend to fall back on the extended keyboard solo too often, Pendragon use Barrett's guitar to its max, which is not to say there are not keyboard solos – of course there are, and Nolan is a keyboard wizard – but the band doesn't rely almost solely on the keys. Of course, a band is only as good, really, as its vocalist (if they're not an instrumental band of course) and Barrett delivers on all fronts. Though the production is a little weak here he will come into his own on later albums. Nice example of the kind of thing he was and is capable of with a sweet little introspective solo halfway through, sort of acoustic. The song itself is pretty uptempo and powerful, with some great piano runs from Carter.

The first real epic comes in “Alaska”, which runs for just shy of nine minutes and opens on a lovely soft guitar passage as Carter joins Barrett on some humming synth. The song itself is broken into two parts, the first being titled “At home with the Earth” and the second “Snowfall”, but I can't see where the break between the two is. It starts very laidback but powerful, not what I'd call a ballad but certainly not a rocker. I'm going to assume that it's here, after about five and a half minutes and a really nice solo that part two comes in and it speeds up on Carter's jumping synth, Harris's percussion leaping after him and in a few short moment the frets are burning too as Barrett joins in to complete a really powerful instrumental close out. Kind of odd that the second part should be called “Snowfall”: I would have expected that to be much softer, maybe piano or gentle acoustic guitar, but there you go. “Circus” opens on some really nice reflective guitar with percussion sort of sidling in, and I hear elements here of tracks that would surface twenty years later on Believe.

Super extended instrumental section around the midpoint, and while I have before, and will continue to accuse certain bands of unnecessary showoff-manship, technical wankery, call it what you will, with Pendragon the instrumental breaks always seem to be an integral part of the song, never there just to satisfy any musician's particular ego. A sort of Beatles/ELO style takes the song in the fourth minute before it heads off on another instrumental voyage that takes the track up to the last minute, with a hint of Alan Parsons Project thrown in for good measure. Thought it was going to fade there at the end but they pulled it out at the last moment. “Oh divineo” again rides on a sweet guitar line from Barrett which takes it more than a third of the way into the song before Carter's piano takes over and the vocal begins. Nice sort of ballady feel to it, though it does rock up later on , while “The black knight” has an expectedly medieval feel to it, with what I have to admit is a rather annoying guitar riff repeating through it, which is a pity as otherwise it's a really good song. There's a lot of power and passion in it, with a very Gilmouresque solo from Nick. This is also the first song to evidence what I'm afraid would become something of a recurring theme in Pendragon songs, where the same lines/verses are repeated twice or three times, leaving me somewhat puzzled, as they really can write good lyrics, but sometimes they seem to take the path of least resistance. This is not the best closer I've ever heard.

Track listing and ratings

Higher circles
The pleasure of hope
Leviathan
Alaska (i) At home with the Earth (ii) Snowfall
Circus
Oh divineo
The black night

Afterword:

The ratings for this album on Progarchives mark it overall as “Good, but not essential”, and I would have to agree. If I didn't already know how good Pendragon were going to get as the years went on, I would probably write this off as a poor debut and be unlikely to explore any further. It's certainly not the strongest I've seen a prog band come out of the gate, and the use of “The black knight” as the closing track, and also the fact that it is way overstretched at nearly ten minutes, does not help. Thankfully, soon enough they would begin to hone their songcraft, and while Rik Carter is a competent keyboardist, it would only be with the addition of Clive Nolan that Pendragon would start to become one of the real powerhouses of prog rock. For now, it's a bit of a stuttering start – not terrible by any means, but no revelation. Not yet anyway.

Ratings
As I know these albums and artiste well (most of them anyway) I'm going to be a lot harsher with my ratings than I would normally be. Usually I'll give a rating of three as a basic medium score – not great, not terrible, basically ok or maybe even good – while ratings of four and five are reserved for efforts which are much better. This will still be the case, but whereas I would usually balk at awarding a two or even a one, now I'll be doing it this way:
1: Absolutely terrible. Avoid like the plague
2: Decent but could be a whole lot better. Potential to be realised.
3: A good album but fails to meet my high standards, or what I know or think this artiste can achieve
4: A very good album, well above average. Essential listening
5: Top marks, perfect quality, the pinnacle of this band's catalogue. Nothing bad I can say about it.

On that basis, all I can award The Jewel, which rather fails to live up to its grandiose title, is
http://www.trollheart.com/hphone.gifhttp://www.trollheart.com/hphone.gif

Three years later, and not a day wiser, I'm back. Miss me? No? Then fuck you. :finger:
Lockdowns have been fun. We're currently in our second, due to go on into December. People don't learn. How surprising. And what have I been doing, you ask? You did ask, didn't you? I'm sure I heard someone say... no? Well again then, up yours. I'll tell you anyway.

Getting back into prog. Yes, I'm regressing, some would say but hey, I'm getting older so I got to do some things backwards! I prefer to say I'm "returning to my first love". What do you mean, she died ten years ago? dammit I KNEW I should have poked air holes in that box! Oh well. Anyway, I'm actually talking about music of course. And being a prog head (I said PROG, not...):rolleyes: I thought I might as well catch up with the latest prog releases. And being me, I went for the best of 2019, as ranked by
http://www.progarchives.com/static-images/Headerv2.jpg
Yeah, I went through them all. Listened to every album (or most of them) at least three times, apart from some that just did not click. And here are my findings.

Note: if you look at the list now, you'll find it much different to how it was when I checked it out. This is because PA use an album rating system which is ongoing, so the higher an album is rated the higher it goes in the list, meaning others near the end of the list are moved down or even displaced entirely off the list. Basically the list is constantly updated and changing. If you want to check out the list as it currently stands, click here:

PA Top 100 Prog Albums 2019

To keep things simple, I'll update the OP here as I write about each album. Comments welcomed. Nazi GIFs allowed.


Oh yeah: if I'm back, they're back!
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...92/687/142.jpg


INDEX

100.
https://img.discogs.com/FPb5mPz_ykJ7...-5697.jpeg.jpg
Album title: A Tower of Clocks
Artist:This Winter Machine
Nationality: British (English)
Sub-genre: Neo-prog

This was the first one I listened to in the list, and it turned out to be the one that spurred me on to go ahead with this project, though for a while I couldn't really proceed, as I kept playing the damn thing! Oddly, other reviews have not been so kind, but I spent seven years here vainly trumpeting the music I like, pushing against the slings and arrows of outrageous musical fortune, defending my music and trying to show others what they were missing, what I saw in it that they did not, and I came to the eventual conclusion that it doesn't matter if others don't appreciate your music. If you like it, that's all that matters.

I was amazed to find this languishing at the very foot of the table (and a day or so later, using Prog Archives' rating system, it had been displaced by another album, pushed off the list entirely, so it was pure luck I heard of it) but then when I got nearer to the top I was pretty underwhelmed by some of the albums there, so it just shows you. Of course, it's all, as I say, based on reviewer ratings, and the more and higher ratings an album gets the higher it climbs the chart. Can't believe this wasn't higher.

I thought it quite brave that This Winter Machine, a band from the UK who were pushing out only their second album in a career spanning a mere four years (three at the time the list was compiled) would consider opening on an eight-minute plus instrumental, but that's prog for you, and "Herald" has all the hallmarks of great neo-prog. Warbling keyboards, intricate guitar passages, time signature changes, all that good stuff. A big, dramatic, orchestral-style opening gives you a real sense of portent and the first time I heard it, I was waiting for the vocals. They of course never come, as I found out soon enough. A clock begins ticking (geddit?) joined by chimes and then rippling piano slides in as the synth kind of fades out, Gary, sorry Mark Numan ushering us into the album on waves of keys before whining guitar from Graham Garbett and Scott Owens takes the tune.

We're now halfway into the piece and to be honest it hasn't really come to anything yet, but all that is due to change. Percussion kicks in thanks to Andy Milner and we're away. I like instrumentals, mostly, but I find the longer they are the harder it can be to keep them interesting. That's not an issue here, as This Winter Machine channel the best of Marillion, Yes and Pendragon to create their own nevertheless distinctive sound, and the result is a piece of music that, quite possibly, might have been spoiled by vocals, so it looks like they made the right call. Brave though, as I say.

Still, this is a band whose debut album, released in 2017, opened with a sixteen-minute suite, so I guess TWM are not exactly going for the pop single market! Compared to The Man Who Never Was, this album is shorter and snappier, with the longest track on it being the nine-minute closer "Carnivale", a minute shorter than the closer (but not, as I already said, the longest track) on their debut, "Fractured". It is, however, over ten minutes longer overall, with TMWNW coming in at shy of fifty minutes while ATOC runs for just over sixty.

After the epic opener we have two short tracks, "Flying" and "Spiral", both of which could have been released as singles, but I don't think were. The former quickly became one of my favourites, a soulful ballad which introduces us for the first time to the vocals of Al Winter (after whom, presumably, the band is named), led on the gentle keys of Numan, synth and piano meshing to form a beautiful backdrop to Winter's gentle voice. There's a gorgeous hook in the song, and I feel it could have been quite the hit had it been released, but as I say I don't think it was. One jarring thing is the sudden abrupt stops in the song near the end, then “Spiral” is a busier, more upbeat affair, again brought in on Numan's Mark Kellyesque romping keyboards, and it really ups the ante. The shortest song on the album, at just over two minutes, it's another instrumental (long instrumental, ballad, short instrumental? Taking some chances here guys) and leads into the seven-minute “Symmetry & Light” which almost continues the instrumental theme begun in “Spiral” and lets in some harder, almost progressive metal guitar from Owens and Garbett, though much of it reminds me of Genesis on their last outing but one, and the last with Phil Collins, We Can't Dance. Snippets, at times, too of It Bites.

I should also take a moment to speak about the artwork, courtesy of one Tom Roberts (no I don't know who he is either, but with work of this calibre I feel he'll never be short of commissions) which is a real prog rock album cover, reminiscent of seventies Genesis or Rush. That fox reminds me of a certain release from 1972 and the wings look like the owl off Rush's Fly by Night. Echoes, too, of certain album covers by Blind Guardian. Certainly leaves you in no doubt as to what to expect when the laser hits the CD. But back to the music, which is why we're here in the first place. Well, I am. I don't know about you. Maybe you're just here to read my flowing, overblown prose. Yeah. Well, you could do a lot worse than give this album a listen, I can tell you. So like I say, back to the music. Another sumptuous ballad in “Justified”, and yes, again it runs on the delicate piano lines of Mark Numan, who must surely be seen as an emerging talent in the admittedly crowded world of progressive rock keyboard players. I'm not saying he can stand beside a Clive Nolan or a Jordan Rudess, much less a Mark Kelly or (heaven forbid!) Tony Banks, but he's damn good.

The guitar lads are not forgotten here though, and add some really nice touches with some fine soloing, but it's the piano that makes the tune, that and the soft almost tortured vocal of Winter. “In Amber” sees the band continue in the same vein, another piano ballad, and if you don't like ballads, or pianos, or both, then this may not be the album for you, as though there is plenty of rocking out (prog style) and guitars, it's pretty replete with soft piano moments and yearning vocals. I, however, love all that stuff, so I'm in hog's heaven. “The Hunt” then has a vaguely folkish feeling, reminds me at times a little of Jethro Tull, a band I don't rate personally. It quickly punches up though into a slowburning rock cruncher, as I like to call them; one of those songs that kind of marches along with a sense of menace and determination. It does pick up speed later on though, and this rising power and energy informs “Delta” as the album heads towards its close.

Some very new-wave-ish keyboards here from (ahem) Numan, with the guitars really getting in on the act, growling along as Garbett and Owens exult in being let off the leash, while Winter himself does a very passable Gabriel as the song slows down on piano around the midpoint before the hook comes in, and it has been well worth waiting for, as Winter and Numan again show what a great team they can be almost on their own. Great flourishes added on the guitars, but the song here belongs to the two guys as Winter gives the vocal performance of the album. I'd probably have to choose, overall, this as my favourite from the album, though there's a lot to choose from, and it's not quite over yet.

One more supremely beautiful reflective ballad, this time for once driven on mostly the acoustic guitar of Scott Owens, some truly sumptuous synthesised flute from Numan and another fine vocal from Winter, on “When We Were Young”, the only caveat for me being a rather abrupt ending, then we hit the closer, which as mentioned, is the longest track, nine minutes and ten seconds of “Carnivale”, which, appropriately enough, opens on a carnival organ, reminding me of the best of The Dear Hunter before soft piano and crying guitar take the tune. Percussion kicks in and the whole thing ramps up on heavy guitar and synth, giving Winter a chance to really stretch his vocal chords. Rippling piano here reminiscent of “Raingods Dancing”, part of the suite “A Plague of Ghosts” from Fish's album, Raingods with Zippos. And speaking of Marillion, there's some very liberal borrowing from Steve Rothery and indeed Mark Kelly on Fugazi here in the sixth minute, before the whole thing comes to a very satisfying and powerful end.

Songs / Tracks Listing
1. Herald (8:48)
2. Flying (3:31)
3. Spiral (2:17)
4. Symmetry & Light (7:29)
5. Justified (4:39)
6. In Amber (3:57)
7. The Hunt (7:22)
8. Delta (8:26)
9. When We Were Young (5:16)
10. Carnivale (9:10)

Total Time 61:05
Line-up / Musicians
- Al Winter / vocals, producer
- Graham Garbett / electric & acoustic guitars, backing vocals
- Scott Owens / electric & acoustic guitars, backing vocals
- Mark Numan / keyboards, backing vocals
- Pete Priestley / bass, bass pedals
- Andy Milner / drums, percussion

I suppose it was inevitable that the top ten should be the usual suspects, the more well-known bands, the ones who have been doing it for years and consistently turn out great album after great album – your IQs, your Big Big Trains, your Devin Townsends and your Neal Morses – and I expect a band who have only been together for less than half a decade can't really expect to be climbing those dizzy heights, but still, I reckon this album deserved to be a lot higher than it was placed. The musicianship is superb, the songwriting excellent, the overall feel a mixture of seventies and modern prog, and I think if more people heard A Tower of Clocks they might rate this band more.

Still, it's early days yet. This is only as I say their second album, and while I haven't yet had a chance to sample the debut, I expect it to be just as good. This Winter Machine have set a very high bar for themselves, but I have no doubt that they will continue to reach it, and who knows, on future albums, even exceed it.

Rating: 9.5/10

99.
https://www.musik-sammler.de/cover/1...507839_300.jpg
Album title: Clocks That Tick (But Never Talk)
Artist: Grand Tour
Nationality: British (Scottish)
Sub-genre: Neo-prog


Is it a coincidence that the first two albums on the list both have clocks in the title? I guess so. They're certainly two very different albums by two very different bands. I'm aware of the work of Comedy of Errors, though I have to be honest and say I have never listened to a full album, and Grand Tour appear to have grown up out of that band, not from the ashes, as Comedy of Errors are still around, but as a kind of perhaps not side project in the vein of Pete Trewavas's Edison's Children or John Mitchell's various alter-ego bands (Kino, Frost*, Lonely Robot etc) but I don't know, project in tandem? Maybe this is why, despite being together for fifteen years, Grand Tour have released precisely two albums. In fact, when Comedy of Errors reformed in 2011 after a hiatus of nearly twenty years, they released an album called Disobey, followed two years later by Fanfare and Fantasy. All well and good. But in the year Grand Tour released their first album, Comedy of Errors also released their third, Spirit, following this up with House of the Mind in 2017.

So how that worked I don't know. You seem to have Comedy of Errors releasing an album in 2015 at the same time, roughly, as Grand Tour debuted their Heavy on the Beach. Guess they worked pretty hard, so like I say we can forgive them for only churning out the two (Grand Tour) albums in fifteen years, with the first only coming across ten years after they, um, formed. Right.

So, was it worth the wait? Well...

One thing I will say upfront about this album is that I did not like the vocals. Not one bit. There's something really odd about the vocal stylings of Joe Cairney, and while I can give the guy props for having been the driving force behind Comedy of Errors and obviously lasting through the neo-prog revival of the eighties led by bands like Marillion, Pallas and IQ, I just don't get his voice. I don't get it so much that for a long while I wasn't going to bother giving this a second spin. But if there's one thing my adventures with Black Metal, Death Metal and Doom Metal has taught me it's that just because the vocals may not be your cup of tea doesn't mean you should give up on the band. I've learned to appreciate superb shredding while ignoring or even laughing at high-pitched shrieks from a BM vocalist, or the low, animalistic gruntings that sometimes characterise Funeral Doom Metal. So where say five years ago I would have said if I don't like the vocals it doesn't matter how good the music is, I won't listen to it, I don't feel like that any more. Much.

So I was prepared to give Grand Tour a chance. Not, I hasten to add, that Cairney's vocals come close to a Steve Tucker or a Chuck Schuldiner, or even a Quorthon; I can listen to them without my ears bleeding or feeling like I should maybe bring the cat in before the neighbour's dog is let out. I just don't particularly like them, and unfortunately, in progressive rock, a good, melodious, mellifluous voice is often a real prerequisite. Even prog metal fails to benefit from indecipherable or unlistenable vocals. Threshold have had some great and very powerful vocalists (Damien Wilson, Andrew “Mac” McDermott (RIP), Glynn Morgan) but power is one thing, violence another. I can listen to Black Metal vocals or the growls on Doom Metal because the music complements them, sometimes even demands them. When you're singing about Satan (what a cool name for a Black metal band, huh?) you really need someone who sounds like they're screeching in pain, and you don't want to hear a soft crooner when he's growling about the bleakness of life and the absurdity of existence, do you?

But while both those sub-genres tend to focus more on the music (like Janszoon once helpfully advised me, think of the rough vocals as just another instrument) with the vocals either secondary or often almost superfluous, prog rock is all about the lyrics, and no matter how nice the music is – unless the band is instrumental, as some are – you need and want to be able to hear and make out the vocals. This is not in any way an issue with Grand Tour, but the fact that you can't as it were ignore the vocals and concentrate on the music – if you do, you lose a lot of the meaning of the songs – makes it imperative really to be able to enjoy the vox, and while I slowly warmed to Cairney, he would never be my favourite singer, in fact I have a hard time thinking of anyone in prog who I dislike more, in terms of vocals.

Anyway, now I've got that off my chest, let's get down to cases. Firstly, there are only seven tracks on this album. That might seem a problem, until you realise two (including the opener) run for over eleven minutes, two shade the ten-minute mark and nothing on this album falls below seven. So overall you're looking at an even longer runtime than the previous album, more than an hour in total. That's not too bad.

Now, as mentioned, the opener is over eleven minutes long. This isn't, as I said, a debut album but it is only Grand Tour's second, so I suppose given the fact that they could probably rely on their no doubt large and loyal fanbase from Comedy of Errors to support them, perhaps it's not as daring a move as our friends This Winter Machine, but it's still impressive. You'll probably be glad to know that it's not an instrumental. I'm not sure even I could take eleven minutes without vocals (though given what I said above, maybe that wouldn't be such a trial).



There is, however, a very slow and gradual fade-in, which makes you feel, for about a minute or more, that maybe you didn't hit the play button, or your headphones aren't plugged in. Eventually though you start to hear sounds, as we pass the two-minute mark (I kid you not!) and the vocals come in, kind of out of nowhere. I have no idea why they need such a long lead-in, making the song perhaps two or three minutes longer than it needs to be, but once it gets going the title track proves to have been worth waiting for. There are nice vocal harmonies in the style of maybe Lindisfarne, Fairport Convention or CSNY, and the song takes off at a nice lick by about the fourth minute. Again, I suppose GT can rely on their Comedy of Errors fans, but even so, I feel this has been something of a gamble. Most people, hearing nothing after a minute, might give up, either in frustration, impatience or bewilderment. Needless to say, I persevered, and was appropriately rewarded for it, and so will you be if you do likewise.

Good guitar work from Mike Spalding, sort of reminds me of the best of Twelfth Night's Andy Revell in places, and so far on this listen Cairney's voice doesn't seem to be grating on me as much as I remember. I do note though that he sounds distinctly foreign (German, Dutch, Finnish, something like that) and not at all like a Scot. He can certainly sing, to be fair. One thing I do find is that in a song of this length I struggle to find a hook, even a chorus. It's perhaps a little unstructured, reminding me of the weaker work of Polish proggers Millenium. Fades out as unobtrusively and unimpressively as it opened. Probably not the greatest way to kick off your album: compare this opener to the triumphant one from This Winter Machine. After this, sure, you're ready to hear more, but are you in two minds?

At just under seven and a half minutes, the next track is, believe it or not, the shortest on the album. “Don't Cry Now” seems to utilise some phasing on the vocals, whether that's an actual vocoder being used or just digital processing on the voices I don't know, but it gives a sort of alien feel to the opening of the song, which sounds like it could be a ballad. Is it too soon for a slow song? TWM certainly didn't seem to think so, though it can be a gamble, throwing one in so early in the album, especially after what came across as a somewhat disorganised opener. Hits into a kind of bluesy swing style half way through, and the song seems to follow the theme of “the show must go on”, the idea of an actor/singer feeling sad or upset but needing to complete the performance, with the warning “Don't cry now for the audience may be watching”. It's a better song, but for my money fails, so far, to lift the album from not quite mediocrity, but maybe banality. They'll need to try much harder.



“Back in the Zone” is another almost twelve-minute epic, with some nice keys from Hew Montgomery leading it in, and at least this time there's no faffing about with two to three minutes of ambient noise and sound effects as the song gets going quickly. There are echoes of Arena here, but I can't shake that folky feeling; it's definitely in the vocals, makes you expect to start hearing accordions and fiddles or something. It's a decent song, but again I must question the length. Does it need to run for twelve minutes? We're in minute seven now and I could see it quite happily ending here. I'd have to say it's stretched out beyond what it need to be. “The Panic” opens a little like “I Want to Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston (!) but quickly settles, after the odd percussive intro, down and becomes a, well, almost Duran Duran style song with squealing synths and a chakka-chakka-chakka drumbeat. Tres strange!

A third of the way into its slightly less than nine-minute run and no vocals yet, so I wonder if we're talking instrumental here? I really can't remember: I listened to this album a good deal the first time but it's been about two months since I heard it last and I've listened to a lot of prog albums since then. It's almost – though not quite – as if I'm hearing it for the first time again. But as we're now five minutes in and there's been no singing I think my original idea was correct. An instrumental, and quite an odd one for a prog rock album, very synthpop I feel. Not that it's bad, just unexpected, even to someone who has heard this album many times before. Maybe it wasn't that memorable, though I thought I remembered enjoying it. The next two are both in the ten-minute range, with “Shadow Walking” featuring a long, dramatic, marching instrumental intro which lasts for nearly two and a half minutes before Cairney comes in with the vocal. It seems to focus on the idea of a wasted life, hanging around doing nothing, perhaps pointing obliquely to street gangs and crime.

The hopelessness of a misspent youth come through in lines like “hanging out with faceless friends I've never seen before” and “crazy dreams when you find out life ain't all it seems”. Nice kind of vocal chorus going on there in the midpoint, perhaps a touch of paranoia (justified or not I can't say) and fear in the lyric. A very nice guitar solo then from Spalding, though I would have preferred it to have been longer, and it seems to be superseded then by violin and flute, though I see no credit for players of either so must assume Montgomery is synthesising these on his keyboard.

Seems the next track slipped in without my noticing, and “Game Over” I have to say really doesn't make any proper impression on me. It's not that it's a bad track, I just don't see anything special about it, and again it's far too long. I think the lyrical idea is grappling with conflating an addiction to video games with a broken or breaking-up love affair, but to my mind it's handled clumsily and does not come off. Nice soloing in the sixth or seventh minute, but other than that, not a whole lot to say about it. That leaves us with one before we end, and it's the ballad, “Slumber Sweetly”, and does at least close the album in style. Unfortunately, it can't paper over the cracks which have become more and more visible as I review this.


Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Clocks That Tick (But Never Talk) (11:41)
2. Don't Cry Now (7:27)
3. Back In The Zone (11:50)
4. The Panic (8:56)
5. Shadow Walking (10:14)
6. Game Over (9:48)
7. Slumber Sweetly (8:03)

Total time 67:59

Line-up / Musicians

- Joe Cairney / vocals

- Mark Spalding / guitar

- Hew Montgomery / keyboards

- Chris Radford / bass

- Bruce Levick / drums



I hesitate to keep comparing the two, but I can think of at least four songs I was humming (and able to hum, so able to remember) from A Tower of Clocks after I had finished it, whereas here there really isn't even one that stands out. It's odd really, because as I said I seemed to remember quite enjoying the album, but looking at it now for the first time through the cold dispassionate eye of the reviewer I can see its many flaws. As I mentioned, I'm not at all familiar with Comedy of Errors, but on the basis of this album I wouldn't be in any hurry to check them out.

It's not that it's a bad album at all, it's just it's merely okay, and for me, okay is generally not really good enough. It certainly pales beside This Winter Machine's effort, and if memory serves the one coming up next blows it away too. Perhaps it might be a little snide to say that there's more needed to make a decent prog rock album than a good pun in the title, but I do feel rather let down by this overall, and again, I'm surprised because I had relatively fond recent memories of it.

Rating: 7/10

98
https://img.discogs.com/RAiJPy1WIxMP...-8405.jpeg.jpg
Album title: All This Will Be Yours
Artist: Bruce Soord
Nationality: British (English)
Sub-genre: Crossover


So who is Bruce Soord, when he's not bequeathing all his earthly possessions to his children? Well, he has something of a penchant for taking pointy fruits from people without their permission. That's right: he's the founder, vocalist and guitarist for proggers The Pineapple Thief, who have skillfully avoided the Fruit Police for over twenty years now, and so remain at large, having turned out thirteen albums to date. Although I have all of their albums lurking on my hard drive – in company with about 4,000 others which have yet to be listened to – I have never heard a single chord, never mind a song by these guys, so I can't speak to whether this, Soord's second (technically third, of which more in a moment) solo album sounds anything like his music from the band, but if it does, then I need to check out the thieving ones post haste, because this is really impressive.

I intimated there was some debate as to whether this is Soord's second or third solo album, and that's because back in 2013 he took his first flight solo in concert with Jonas Renske, known from Katatonia among others, so the album The Wisdom of Crowds could, in some quarters, be seen as his first solo effort, but technically his first solo, as in, completely on his own and released under only his name album wouldn't come till two years later. I guess it's not that important, but it does make it difficult to decide where in his short solo discography this album fits. That being as it may, it's a stunning achievement and quickly became one of my favourite albums of that year (even if I was listening to it this year for the first time) which makes it annoying that I found it languishing at the foot of the table again, and, like the two previous artists, it has now been removed completely. But hey, that's just a list, right?

Before I listened to this album I had no idea who Bruce Soord was; I think I checked him out halfway through or maybe afterwards, I can't remember. But it does mean that even had I known the work of The Pineapple Thief, I still went in without any expectations or pretensions. The fact that I was so taken with the album perhaps speaks to the idea Soord can woo fans and newcomers such as me alike.

It kicks off with a short track, which, given the ponderous epics (good and bad) which have opened the last two albums, comes as something of a relief. It's basic acoustic guitar in a low-key opening; reading a little further I see this album is to celebrate the birth of his third child, and also to decry the poverty and despair he sees or saw in his hometown of Yeovil (England), so the title is actually something of an ironic jest, a sarcastic dig at how bad the world is. I read that Soord recorded things like children screaming on buses going to school, the sound of the shuffling feet of addicts on the way to meet their pushers, police sirens and other local sounds, so as to form a backdrop to his emotional, soulful music here. This I did not know when I originally listened to it, and it certainly adds an extra, and very important and personal layer to the album.

“The Secrets I Know” is pretty much gone before you can really get to grips with it (there's a female vocal in there somewhere but I don't know who this is), barely a chance to appreciate the soft and yearning voice before we're on to “Our Gravest Threat Apart”, with some of those field recordings in the background adding a real sense of atmosphere, pathos and reality to the song. It's a little more upfront, a little more in your face, with sharp piano and tight percussion, the guitar this time electric I think (information on the album is not easy to come by, which is to say pretty much impossible) and though I don't know his band, the artist that comes to mind when I listen to this is Antimatter, where Mick Moss creates soundscapes out of loneliness and despair and somehow manages to shoot them through with threads of beauty, love and hope. The overarching theme through this song – and most of the album – is the refrain “there has to be another way.”

More acoustic then is “The Solitary Path of a Convicted Man”, very introspective and emotional, with for the first time a really nice guitar solo, some sort of howling vocal which works very well in the context of the song, and I think it's probably unlikely you're going to hear any ten-minute keyboard solos or songs about dragons (yeah yeah, cliche I know) on this album, nor indeed do I expect Bruce to rock out at any point. It's not by any means a standard prog record – it may not even qualify as prog at all: certainly not in terms of song length. The title track, up next, is the second longest at just over six minutes. Most prog bands are often only getting going at this point. But as I say, not an ordinary album.



There's almost a soft indie rock vibe to this, the vocal again restrained, the music firm but never overriding Soord's plaintive voice, and another good guitar solo here. I also detect certain elements of the darker side of a-ha here, though that might just be me. “Time Does Not Exist” quickly became one of my favourites on the album with its earworm hook, its gentle acoustic guitar and its almost country sensibility, some really nice piano too. There's a feeling of drama and urgency about the melody, quite epic in its way for such a short track, running a mere three minutes and change. Proof that you don't have to extend a song to twelve minutes to make it work – Grand Tour, I'm looking at you!

Slightly longer by about thirty seconds, “One Misstep” comes in as the heaviest track, if anything here can be so described, with punchy but hollow percussion, almost like military drums beating out a slow tattoo, rising synth complementing Soord's low, tortured vocal, then the longest track is the six-and-a-half minute “You Hear the Voices”, with an instant hook in the melody from the very start, a recurring piano line that is really hard to get out of your head, should you for some reason wish to. Soord's vocal here is almost inaudible at first, crooning low and muted against slick bass and guitar, the soft percussion a heartbeat ticking away in the background. But it's a slowburner, and increases in intensity and power as the track goes on, with certain elements of the bleakest of Depeche Mode in there too.



“Cut the Flowers” sounds like the sort of gardening tip you might get on the BBC in the afternoon, but in fact it refers to wreaths on graves, Soord channelling the best of Gilmour and the Edge at their most introspective, and again I can't help marking the comparison to Antimatter, especially on Planetary Confinement and Lights Out. The song veers from soft and bitter to tough and angry, but never loses its edge (sorry), and again Soord knows the old adage of less is more, this fine piece of music lasting for a mere four and a half minutes, to take us into the closer, which could be interpreted as a warning to a lover, but actually is a meditation on the inevitable exit we all have to perform from the stage of life, and is most likely directed to his children.

“One Day I Will Leave You” engages the slow, plodding blues of Nick Cave at his darkest, with a very philosophical acceptance of the end. Mostly carried on simple strummed acoustic guitar, it nevertheless manages to insert its own little insidious earworm into the melody, and you can't help but hum this paean to the Great Beyond as the album ends. Quite darkly clever really; no redemption, no changing the world, no advice, just a simple thought: “don't mourn my passing, I was always passing through.”

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. The Secrets I Know (2:24)

2. Our Gravest Threat Apart (4:14)

3. The Solitary Path of a Convicted Man (3:44)

4. All This Will Be Yours (6:04)

5. Time Does Not Exist (3:33)

6. One Misstep (4:00)

7. You Hear the Voices (6:54)

8. Cut the Flowers (4:35)

9. One Day I Will Leave You (5:17)



Total Time 40:45


This album is labelled under crossover prog, but to be honest, were it not for Bruce Soord being the head Pineapple, I really don't think this would be considered prog at all. That's in no way a criticism; I don't think it should be put down as a prog album. There's very little progressive rock about it: it's got no multi-part suites, no intricate solos – keyboard or other – and the lyrics are all very earthy and mundane, with none of the exuberance or even attempts to avoid the real world that can characterise other prog bands and albums. What you do get is a very mature, straight-forward, frank testament from a man who has seen the underbelly of society at first hand, and worries what kind of world his children will inherit.

It's not quite the grinning-deaths-head nihilism of a Tom Waits or a Nick Cave, but it's dark, introspective, challenging stuff. If you approach this album correctly (as I had not originally, not having read up on it) it should really make you think. It should also make you sad, angry, bitter, and maybe, just maybe, want to change things for the better. But if not, that's fine: I don't think Soord is setting out here to be any sort of a champion, nor sending out a clarion call to other shining knights. He's just shrugging, sighing and saying this is how it is. I wish it wasn't, but it is. Maybe all he wants us to do is look.

And listen.

Rating: 9/10

97.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/a6_ER6fzXK0/hqdefault.jpg
Album title: Storm Warning
Artist: Andrew Roussak
Nationality: Russian
Sub-genre: Symphonic Prog


These next three albums, be warned, did not impress me on first listen. I say first listen, because at the time that was all I gave them. Hey, I had a list of 100 to do and the ones I did like were getting like 3-5 listens, and I'm no spring chicken, so I hadn't time to waste on albums that didn't click with me pretty quickly. Besides, who would care? It's not like I was, you know, reviewing them or something.

Well, now I am.

So it's time to revisit them and see if they were as bad, or as poor as I thought first time out. It's also only fair (to who? Me? Oh no: nobody thinks about the poor reviewer, do they?) that I make sure I give every album on the list a listen and a review, though I can tell you now, some of these made what little hair I have left stand on end, and I may still fail to make it all the way through some of them. If that's the case I'll note it, but I'll do my best to try to persevere. For my public. What do you mean? Lots of people are reading. Well, some people. Well, one person. Maybe.

Anyway, let's get the obvious joke out of the way before we begin, shall we? Yes, his name is Roussak and he's Russian so I'm sure he has never before heard anyone call him Russkie. Do you feel better now? Can we proceed? I'm so glad.

Reading up on him, Andrew Roussak should be someone I want to hear. He's a classically-trained musician who has an abiding love of progressive rock and plays in a few bands, composes film scores and a whole lot more besides. He's won awards. Really. Well, it says here anyway. But I just remember when I played this originally, if I recall correctly, it wasn't that I hated it; I think I was just bored by it. Maybe I didn't give it a chance. Well, now I will. We'll see how it goes this time.

This is Roussak's second solo album, but like Mr. Soord in the last post we have a difference of opinion here. See, his first was released in 2008, entitled No Trespassing. Cool. But then he recorded Blue Intermezzo in 2010, but that's a classical piano album, with things like tangos and nocturnes and, yeah, intermezzos all over the place, and nothing other than him and a grand piano. Nothing wrong with that: I love classical as much as the next guy. But it certainly isn't prog. So can we consider Storm Warning his second solo album, if we're talking only prog? Or is it even prog, because as we found with the Pineapple Chief, well, even his second (or third, depending how you view it) solo album isn't actually prog, as such.

Such topics could be debated till the end of time, but we don't have that long so let's leave it to our robot descendants to squabble over what constitutes a Roussak solo album and just say this is not his debut, and leave it at that. There are vocals on this, and guitars, and what looks like some sort of suite at the end, so we'll tentatively label it prog, and after all, it is in the list. Mind you, so was Bruce, but enough of that. I think I remember being bored by track two or three, so let's see if I feel the same way now.

A lot of sound effects and technical foolery taking us into the first track, “Enter Code”, and for a moment it's too avant-garde/experimental for me, then Roussak comes in on the piano and it takes better shape. Bass cuts in and we're getting a real Alan Parsons vibe now, with warbly keyboard straight out of the Rick Wakeman playbook, growling then introspective guitars. I'm reliably informed Roussak plays all the instruments here – bar guitars on one or two songs. “Bringing Peace and Progress” is not, as you might expect, a ballad, but another rocker, driven on guitar and with the sound effects mostly of jets flying low overhead. It's a long track – though not the longest – at just over eight minutes, and it looks to be, like the opener, instrumental, so let's hope there's enough here to keep the interest, as instrumental can be, as I mentioned before, tedious and repetitive. It's certainly got great energy, that's for sure, some rippling piano passages before the guitar takes control again then it gets quite funky in the middle, but I'm still reserving judgement. I'm not by any means won over yet, and I can definitely see why I stopped listening the first time. “Left Alone Outside” does seem to be a slower track, riding on acoustic guitar and almost using elements of the old standard “Classical Gas” in parts of the melody, but then it kicks up and gets heavier and reminds me of my old friend Plankton, who can make a guitar do just about anything he wants it to.



This is the first track to feature vocals, and they come courtesy of one Max Kottler as the song slows back down. So is it a ballad or is it not? At this stage I can't say; the music seems to want to rock out but the vocal passages stick to slower lines. Confusing. This is also one of the three tracks on which Roussak hands guitar duties to others (or at least, the solos) and in this case it's Oli Weislogel who does the honours, and a very fine job he does of it too, even if it's pretty severely truncated. Kind of makes you wonder why he bothered. With a name like “Regata Storica” you probably know what to expect, and it's another instrumental, very much more in the classical mode than the progressive rock one, to my mind. Well, the opening part is, but then it goes back forty years to the heyday of prog rock with a wibbly wobbly keyboard extravaganza. Hmm. I feel Roussak's devotion to, almost adoration of Emerson and Wakeman is leading him here to also indulge in their seventies excesses, and for me it's pretty much a case more of showing off in a Yes/Dream Theater style than music I can actually enjoy.

At least there's some more singing on “Chasing Shadows”, this time from Nadia Ayche, who has a nice almost operatic voice and was, I believe, one of Roussak's vocal coaches. Um. I don't think he sings, does he? Why does he need a... well, maybe she's just a vocal coach he knows? Anyway it's a nice ballad, pretty stripped down with really only piano and voice, then the title track brings back in the sound effects (hell, it's called “Storm Warning” so I guess he couldn't resist throwing in a siren) and there's a real sense of panic and frenetic activity about the keyboard here, but I'm finding it to be basically more of the same, and there's not, so far, any track here I will remember when this is over. Some nice jazzy piano, yes, but it's all towards the same end and I don't get any real sense of cohesion from the album.

I would definitely expect a song titled “Can She Excuse My Wrongs” to be a ballad, but it begins with a very medieval sounding harpsichord thing, which I don't interpret as a good sign. Now it's kicking into another organ/Moog fest but yawn I'm so bored now. At least there's only one track left to go, even if it is ten minutes long. Oh look! There are some vocals at the end of “Can She Excuse ah I'm too bored to even write the whole title out”. It actually makes the song worse, if that's possible. Just completely pointless. Choral vocal harmonies right in the last minute? Why?



Well now we're onto the closer, which is that suite of which I spoke at the beginning. It all goes under the heading of “Malta Sketches” and opens with “Hola Beach Boogie” which is, well, a boogie on electric guitar - at least that's different, and lively. Then “1565” slows it all down on piano and synth, with Oli coming back in for a solo in part three, “Sunset in Valetta”, which also features a vocalist, this time Selina Waidmann, another vocal coach. Right. Like Oli on the other track, not sure why she bothered, as all she seems to do is croon some kind of vocalise. Oh well, at least it's over now.

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Enter Code (4:08)
2. Bringing Peace And Progress (8:02)
3. Left Alone Outside (7:30)
4. Regata Storica (6:02)
5. Chasing Shadows (4:37)
6. Storm Warning (5:41)
7. Can She Excuse My Wrongs (5:22)
8. Malta Sketches (10:15) :
- a. Hola Beach Boogie
- b. 1565
- c. Sunset in Valetta

Total time 51:37


See, usually I know, pretty much, whether an album is going to be worth my time or not. People talk about “growers”, but I've never really believed in that concept. If you're going to get into an album I personally hold the opinion that you'll hear something – you may not love it but you'll hear something that will encourage you to come back to it. A “grower”, to my understanding, is an album you don't like at first but “grow” to like, or even love. remember Frownland telling me after I had rejected his favourite Captain Beefheart album, that it took about forty listens to get into it. Who the hell has that sort of time, and who would want to waste such effort getting into something you clearly don't like?

So it was with Mr. Roussak. I knew from about track two that it wasn't necessarily terrible, but it was not for me. And so it has proved. It's a decent album, but not one I'd recommend because I don't see anything much in it to recommend. For me, it sits right alongside “poor” keyboard albums such as Derek Shernihan's Oceania or All Out by Don Airey. Just because they're good keysmen does not mean they make good solo records. I find a lot of keyboard-only albums can be very boring. I haven't listened to much of Wakeman's stuff, but I feel it could be a case of Sleepman in my case. I love keyboards, but I like them as support instruments, not up front a la Mister Ego himself, Keith of the Emersons.

So by all means listen to this if it's your thing. It's not a bad album, but for me it's just too staid and boring in terms of content, and it's been hard to write even this review without falling asleep at the keyboard. Ah, that's computer, not synthesiser.

Original decision vindicated.

Rating: 5/10

96.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....C255%2C255.jpg
Album title: Spidermilk
Artist: The Mercury Tree
Nationality: American
Sub-genre: Heavy Prog


Fun (or not) fact: originally I thought the album title was the artist. Oh, Trollheart! You do make us smile! This was the album which more or less turned me against checking out future heavy prog albums, which may be its sin, or mine, or may be justified. I guess we'll see as we go through the list and check out albums I wasn't bothering with due to their being labelled as Heavy Prog. I do remember I didn't finish this and I really did not like what I heard, but again, we'll see how a listen to it with regard to actually reviewing it goes.

The Mercury Tree were formed in Portland, Oregon in 2004, but due to the many lineup changes that plague not only prog bands but most bands throughout their career, they seem never to have actually settled down to release an album until seven years later. Since then they've had five, of which this is the latest. They have some vague connection to Smashing Pumpkins – one of their drummers played with them, or something – but that's hardly relevant to this review. They're described as playing spaced-out shoegaze experimental and improvisational post-rock. Right.

The first thing I found, and it really annoyed me with this album was that the guitar was, presumably deliberately, out of tune, so as “I Am a Husk” begins I have already a sense of disorientation and an abiding dislike of this album. Other than the out-of-tune-ness the song isn't bad, but it's going to be hard to maintain my interest (if any) in the album if it all continues like this. I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies that there aren't any epics here: the longest track comes in at a shade over seven minutes. Even so, I can't say I'm particularly impressed by this and they're not making any friends here.

Okay, I see this is actually called a “17 note microtonal scale”, whatever that may be, rather than the music being out of tune, but it sounds the same to me as if everything is out of whack. I fully accept this is not incompetence or inexperience on the part of the band; it's all intentional. That doesn't make me feel much better. This microtonal nonsense continues (as I fear it may throughout the album) on “Vestments”, where it gets almost unbearable with a jazzy riff that just grates on my ears and sets my teeth on edge. I remember I definitely only lasted one track on this with the original listen, so I've already improved on that. How far I'll get this time is anybody's guess, but I don't expect to be finishing it. I have my thumb poised and ready over the button for the ejector seat.



It's very hard to write anything about this when it's so dissonant; the vocal is okay, but just okay, and the playing is fine I guess, but it's hard to concentrate on it when notes keep rising and falling and going all over the place, making it very difficult to get any sort of a handle on the music, which does seem to be broadly guitar-based – I have not yet, to my knowledge, heard any keyboards, but they could very well be in there for all I know. Or care. Yeah, apparently they are, not that you'd know it. Both of these tracks have been uptempo, brisk affairs that I could not hand on heart even call close to prog rock, but then maybe it's prog Jim, but not as we (or more specifically, I) know it. Or want to know it.

“Arc of an Ilk” is, where I think, I give up. There's piano I think, some sort of hollow bell sound, all microtonal or to me out of tune, a more falsetto vocal from Ben Spees, rippling guitar from Igliashon Jones and a steady percussive beat from the rhythm section but hell no this is where I bail. The only thing that's going through my mind as I listen to this is please, please for the love of Cthulhu and all the elder gods shut the hell up and go away!

Remember this?
https://i.chzbgr.com/full/8370684672...ant-to-do-that

Songs / Tracks Listing


1. I Am A Husk (4:48)
2. Vestments (4:39)
3. Arc Of An Ilk (6:35)
4. I'll Pay (6:22)
5. Interglacial (1:45)
6. Superposition Of Silhouettes (3:43)
7. Kept Man (3:15)
8. (Throw Up My) Hands (2:59)
9. Disremembered (7:07)
10. Brake For Genius (3:32)
11. Tides Of The Spine (4:33)


Total time 49:18

Line-up / Musicians

- Igliashon Jones / guitar

- Ben Spees / guitar, keyboards, vocals, mixing
- Oliver Campbell / bass
- Connor Reilly / drums

With:

- Tony Mowe / alto & baritone saxophones




I'm not crazy about the idea of not completing albums – seems a cheat somehow. But there's just no way I could subject myself to this for another forty-odd minutes, and I doubt I'd have anything good to say about the album were I to subject myself to such torture. So thanks, but no thanks.

Again, looks like my first instinct was correct and I should have left this well alone.

Rating: N/A

95.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FRt9_UBPo...Manuskript.jpg
Album title: KRÁSNÁ HORA
Artist: Blank Manuskript
Nationality: Austrian
Sub-genre: Symphonic Prog


Formed in Salzburg in 2007, Blank Manuskript have a grandiose idea of themselves, describing their music thus:

Typical long songs ornamented with a high level of symphonic density and elaborate polyphonic structures as well as extended improvised sections lead their audience through an entire musical adventure. Their compositional approach seeks to combine all sorts of different styles and traditions needed to serve the initial concept of their works. Hence, the arrangements are carefully structured with complex rhythmical patterns and establish a sound-scape that can hardly be found in music nowadays. The lyrical elements are picturesque with a worked out mystic touch and though at a first glance arcane, they always address current social issues in an implicit way. As the music always follows the narrated concept, one might label it contemporary rock program music

(copied verbatim from Progarchives)

They seem to want to concentrate solely on concept albums, and have released four to date, with their first hitting the shelves a mere year after their formation, though there was a gap of five years between that and their second. The title of this album, apparently, refers to a village in the Czech Republic, where it was written, and means “beautiful mountain”. I'll look into the concept if I last the course; not much point in reading all about the plotline if I'm going to ditch the book after one chapter, I think you would agree?

In typical concept album style, we begin with the “Overture”, which features hard, pumping, snarling guitars and heavy percussion before thick organ marches sedately and majestically alongside the other instruments, slowly pulling us in. Suddenly the organ falls out and the guitars kick in hard and fast, then the organ comes back in, a much peppier, upbeat and frenetic sound this time, some pretty decent histrionics on the keys behind a cool bass line, and I assume this will all be instrumental? It's just short of seven minutes, slowing down at the halfway point to an almost Sabbathesque grind, the drums punching out about a beat every three seconds, very slow and measured. Some nice slow piano joining what could be cellos or violins perhaps, a fairly dramatic backdrop being created here. Not really any complaints so far. Can't remember what I thought when I heard this originally, but I can't believe this track put me off the album.

Oh, I was wrong about it being an instrumental. We have the vocals of Peter Baxrainer coming in now, with some nice vocal harmonies too from the other guys. It's pretty impressive; nice sax break from Jakob Aistleitner and into “Foetus” we go, with some distant mournful sounds, soft synth and some sort of strings, very low vocal coming in after the first minute of the six it runs for, perhaps the overall muted sound meant to signify how an unborn child might, theoretically, hear outside sounds? Or maybe it's the foetus itself trying to make itself heard. Either way, it's pretty effective. Sweet little piano motif going quietly there in the background, the bass creating a heartbeat (cliched but it works here) then the guitar growls in hard, punching through the tune, maybe to signify the moment of birth/labour? All guesses of course, but as the guitar gets louder and more chaotic, some serious shredding going on and the organ joining in till it all ends in the sound of a baby crying, I think we've got it.



Next up is the epic. I have no idea what “Achluphobia” is – oh right: research tells me it's fear of the dark. Well, this is a fifteen-minuter so expect a lot of changes and different expressions I guess. It starts very quiet and muted, guitar feedback and violins maybe, ambient sounds, a few hollow cymbal beats, no real music to speak of yet and we're two minutes in, but there's plenty of time of course. A sort of spooky synth line begins to slowly come through, reminds me of some of the work of Waits, then a softly strummed acoustic guitar, sound of a door opening I think, and we're in the fourth minute as the guitar more or less takes the piece, though very gently and gradually. Gives the impression (gives me the impression anyway) of someone walking slowly along, maybe hanging onto a wall as they go, feeling their way in the dark.

Guitar becomes more electric and a little more forceful, a lot of running up and down the fretboard as we reach the halfway point, and I would definitely say this is going to end up being an instrumental, but as on the other track I was proven wrong, and there is still over seven minutes to go, I won't take anything for granted. Still, a fifteen-minute instrumental is pushing it I feel. It's very evocative, very ambient and conjures up stunning images, and I was of course again wrong as here come the vocals. This is in the ninth minute, so it's maybe odd that it took so long but there's still plenty of the song left to go. Some fine guitar soloing now, taking us into the twelfth minute when the piano takes over, presumably to the end. Well, not quite: there's a vocal chorus, low and gentle, to take us there.

Not quite sure what to make of that. I would have said minimalist, but then there was the vocal part and the shredding, which stops me calling it ambient either. Interesting certainly, though it gave me the idea it was heading towards a big climax it never reached. It's followed by the much shorter “Pressure of Pride”, in fact the shortest on the album I think, at three and a half minutes. It sounds a little too jazzy for me, brass and flute in a sort of staccato dance, and I think I can say without fear of contradiction that this one is an instrumental. And I'm wrong again. Voices kind of shout in a chant against the music, which personally I feel doesn't work. “Shared Isolation”, while sort of an oxymoron, does dovetail in with our current lockdown situation, and although this was written before anyone knew what social distancing was or had heard of Covid anything, I can see how such a phrase could work. People looking out of their windows (metaphorically or literally) at other people looking out of theirs, unable to touch or really communicate.



It has again a very Waits/Beefheart thing going, with abrasive instruments and a sort of staccato beat before it settles down into a nice swirling keyboard passage with a metallish sort of groaning guitar and bells in the background, then the vocal comes in on the five-minute mark, and it's quite gentle and soothing. Gets a bit wild near the end though, and I think it's hard to get a handle on with so many changes, many of them abrupt and unexpected. Almost like it doesn't know what it wants to be. Could have been a good idea but I feel it somewhat missed the mark. Whether “Alone at the Institution” is meant to follow on from that or not I don't know, but I'm definitely getting the idea of too many ideas crammed, not into one album, but into every song. It's hard to work out what any one track is going to be like, and it's a little disorienting. I know the blurb says the band don't like to tie themselves down to one style or genre, but trying to be all things to all men fails here I believe.

The words improvisational and jamming certainly apply here, almost free-form to some extent, and here is where I believe Blank Manuskript snatch defeat from the possible jaws of victory. In trying to please everyone – including, or possibly only thinking of themselves – they're making this too inaccessible to your average music fan who knows what he or she likes or wants. Generally, proggers are known for being amenable to changes in time signatures, themes, styles and so on, but as a pretty diehard prog head this is too disjointed for even me. I get the feeling almost of too much fusion and not enough actual genre music, and it's too confusing. There are only two tracks left so for the sake of it I'll try to get through to the end, but that bailout button is looking mighty attractive right now.

Even though this is now six minutes into its nine-minute run, I've learned enough about this band not to assume it's an instrumental, and indeed once again those vocals come in with barely three minutes to go. Don't get it: you're either going to write an instrumental or a vocal song, but they seem to want to shoehorn everything in together on every track. At least they can't do this with the penultimate track, only three minutes long. “Silent Departure” does, I'm afraid, reflect my own desires and wishes at this point, and I wish it was the last track but it's not. It is, at least, a nice slow reflective ballad, without all the histrionics of pretty much most of the other tracks, though I'm sure we'll be back to that for the closer. Nice violin/cello work here, soft guitar, very relaxing. Enjoy it, because then we're into “The Last Journey”, where it all goes to hell again with a whole lot of different styles trying – and in my view, failing – to mesh. It's not the worst attempt to tie it all up at the end, but I kind of really don't care at this point.

Songs / Tracks Listing


1. Overture (6:49)
2. Foetus (6:10)
3. Achluphobia (15:35)
4. Pressure Of Pride (3:38)
5. Shared Isolation (9:55)
6. Alone At The Institution (9:21)
7. Silent Departure (3:37)
8. The Last Journey (8:34)


Total time 63:39

Line-up / Musicians

- Peter Baxrainer / acoustic, Classical & electric guitars, vocals
- Dominik Wallner / piano, electric piano, synthesizer, organ, clavinet, celesta, Mellotron, vocals
- Jakob Aistleitner / saxophone, guitar, bass, flute, glockenspiel, percussion, vocals
- Alfons Wohlmuth / bass, flute, bottles, vocals
- Jakob Sigl / drums, percussion, vocals

With:

- Antonia Sigl / viola
- Wolfgang Spannberger / samples


There's no question that there's good music on this, and I expect the concept, if explored, is probably very clever and deep, but the constant switching from one to the other to the other to the other and back drove me yellow bendy fruits and I just lost interest about halfway through. To be fair, there was a point where I thought, maybe I was wrong about this, but as it went on I realised that my initial assessment had been correct after all. Just not for me.

Rating: 6/10