With the onset of a new year my intention is to try, as far as I can anyway, to listen to and feature the newest prog albums as they come out. For my guide I’m using this site
New Prog Releases: 2020-2021 and will watch as each week and month goes by to see what comes out. Obviously, I can’t and won’t attempt to feature every album, because even when you’re only talking about prog albums there are a lot of them released every month, so the plan would be - and this is, as ever, open to change brought about by a sudden, ill-conceived confidence in my abilities, boredom, home circumstances or any other factor whatever - to try to pick one each week, and if possible to try to feature it on the week it’s released.
Obviously this will not be possible with this month, as we’re already heading into its last week and a bit, but for the future this is what I will be aiming for. As for January, I will try to feature four albums from this month over the next days; as not every album I want will be available to me when I want it I may decide then to run into other months, ie look at January albums in February and March and so on, depending on how many are released that I want to hear. At least this way I can keep up with some of the latest prog albums that come out. At the end of each month, insofar as I can, I’ll choose my best of the month, and then at the end of the year I’ll have a better idea of what might be my favourite albums of this year.
Here is the list of what was, and is scheduled to be, released in January.
January 2021 Cloud Over Jupiter "They're Here With Us" (Progressive Rock) (CD)
January 2021 RLND "Zealand" (Instrumental Progressive/Post Metal) (vinyl)
January 2021 Oracle Sun "Machine Man" (Progressive Power Metal) (CD)
January 2021 Raven Sad "The Leaf and the Wing" (Progressive Rock)
January 29, 2021 Syrinx Call "Mirrorneuron" (Progressive Rock)
January 29, 2021 Gaspard "Vertiges" (Instrumental Progressive Rock/Metal)
January 29, 2021 Asia Minor "Points Of Libration" (Progressive Rock) (Europe)
January 29, 2021 Needlepoint "Walking Up That Valley" (Retro Prog, Canterbury, Jazz-Rock, Fusion)
January 29, 2021 Soen "IMPERIAL" (Progressive Metal)
January 29, 2021 Steven Wilson "The Future Bites" (Progressive Rock/Pop)
January 25, 2021 Home Brewed Universe "Fear of an Obtuse Earth" (Instrumental Progressive Post Rock/Metal)
January 22, 2021 Steve Hackett "Under A Mediterranean Sky" (Instrumental Acoustic Progressive Rock)
January 22, 2021 Red Cain "Kindred: Act II" (Progressive Power Metal) (digital)
January 16, 2021 Humanity Gone "The Seven Deadly Sins" (Progressive Metal)
January 12, 2021 Need "Norchestrion: A Song For The End" (Progressive Metal/Rock)
January 11, 2021 The Flying Caravan "I Just Wanna Break Even" (Progressive Rock)
January 10, 2021 MFTJ "My Mom's Getting a Horse" (Instrumental Eclectic Progressive Rock)
January 08, 2021 Exodus to Infinity "Archetype Asylum" (Progressive Rock/Metal)
January 08, 2021 Sithu Aye "Senpai III" (Instrumental Progressive Metal)
January 08, 2021 Roland Gassin "Born In The Seventies" (Hard Rock, Progressive Rock)
January 07, 2021 ProAge "4.Wymiar" (Progressive Rock)
January 06, 2021 Stewart Clark "Let's Go There" (Progressive Rock)
January 01, 2021 Mark Wingfield with Jane Chapman and Adriano Adewale "Zoji" (Progressive Rock, Fusion)
January 01, 2021 Glass Kites "Glass Kites II" (Progressive Rock)
January 01, 2021 Soniq Theater "Time and Space" (Instrumental Progressive Rock, Electronica)
January 01, 2021 Neon Heart "temporaria" (Psychedelic, Progressive Rock) (CD)
January 01, 2021 Like Wendy "The Fisher" (Progressive Rock) (CD)
January 01, 2021 Geof Whitely Project "Luna Ad Insanian Convertant" (Progressive Rock)
So with all that in mind, the first one I want to look at was indeed released on the first day of this month, the first day of the year, and is from an artist of whom I have never heard, as many of these probably will be.
Title: Glass Kites II
Artist: Glass Kites
Nationality: Canadian
Sub-genre: Crossover Prog
Release date: January 1 2021
Album number: 2
Familiarity: Zero
RYM Rating: 3.21
ProgArchives Rating: 3.70
These guys certainly don’t believe in rushing out the albums! Inadvertently, one would suppose, reversing the year numbers on their debut and next albums, they put out their first offering way back in 2012, leaving a gap of nine years before this hit. Has it been worth the wait? Has anyone been waiting? I’ve personally never heard of them, but when you come from the land that gave us Rush and Mystery, well you have to take notice don’t you? The opener is a nice soft little instrumental, mostly driven on piano, that gets bouncy as it nears its end, and then “In the Night” introduces us - well, me anyway - to the vocals of Leon Feldman, who doesn’t only sing but plays guitar, keyboards, piano, synths and does sequencing too, so probably the creative engine of the band? I would say tentatively though that his voice, while certainly competent, lacks the power needed to really focus you on him, at least on this track. And there are only five on the album in total.
Sort of a tubular bells introduction with rolling percussion to “Leviathan”, one of the longer tracks at just shy of nine minutes, with some good synth work but I’ve yet to hear the guitars make their mark in any significant way; they seem to be sort of riffing around the edges as it were. Piano is very front and centre here again. This is not that surprising: Glass Kites have, in addition to Feldman, another piano player in Daryn Cassie and Nate Drobner, who takes bass duties, also plays keyboard and synth, so this is of necessity going to be a very keyboard-heavy album. There’s a certain sense of minimal jazz fusion in the music too I feel, keeps it light and breezy. I would like to hear the guitar get its head though - poor Curt Henderson sounds a little left out, while even Kyle Araki on the drums is having a fine time. Hear a lot of ELO’s “The Whale” from 1978’s
Out of the Blue here, and the use of the vocoder certainly adds to that comparison. I didn’t realise how many prog bands seem to be using vocoders, but I’ve come across two now, other than Threshold, who I thought were the only ones.
Despite the slightly frenetic drumming of Araki, it’s still coming across as fairly laid back, relaxed and I’ve yet to hear Glass Kites rock out, if indeed they do. I have two more tracks on which to see if this happens, and once again bright piano takes us into “Idealogue”, which, given its less than three minute length, I assume will be another instrumental. There’s some nice strummed guitar here; maybe Henderson is a believer in the “less is more” theory. It works pretty well here. But the closer is the longest track, ten and a half minutes of “Discworld/Projector.” I don’t know if that’s Terry Pratchett’s famous comic fantasy world in the title, but I guess we’ll find out. Or, you know, not, as I can find no lyric sheet. No surprise by now to find it’s a big synthy opening, quite dramatic with a whispering vocal before the actual singing begins, putting me in mind of The Alan Parsons Project in some ways.
Picks up now about four minutes in, though again it’s the piano and the keys that drive the song, a nice little almost apologetic solo from Henderson before he’s shunted aside by the banks of keyboards again. Probably the most uptempo of the tracks on the album, and finally Henderson gets to let loose and to be fair goes completely wild on the frets. About bloody time. The track ends on what appears to be thirty seconds of empty silence, which is something that always annoys me. Maybe there’s something going on very low in the background?
Track Listing
1. Intro (Soviet) (8)
2. In the Night (7)
3. Leviathan (7)
4. Ideologue (8)
5. Discworld / Projector (8)
I’d say this was certainly an enjoyable little album, nothing wrong with it but I can’t see anyone who would have been breathlessly awaiting its release. Worth a listen all right, but I don’t think I could go out of my way to recommend it.
(This is all YouTube has, sorry…)
Bandcamp:
https://glasskites.bandcamp.com/album/glass-kites-ii