Category: progressive rock

Guest Post: Michał Pawłowski on Labels and Steven Wilson

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock4 Comments
Steven-Wilson-To-The-Bone-Banner
Love it or hate it, it’s Steven Wilson!

The following came in as a comment on a post regarding the media and fan reaction to the new Steven Wilson album, TO THE BONE.  It’s so good, though, that I don’t want it to get lost in the shuffle of comments.  So, without permission!!!, I’m posting it as its own post. Michał Pawłowski is founder and lead of the astounding art rock band, newspaperflyhunting.  He’s also a really brilliant and good person.

***

A very very good point Brad! Strangely enough (or not) the comments that jump on me on social media are more along the lines of ‘Wilson betrayed prog, if you like the album, there must be something wrong with you! Bring back PT!’

“What the?????” First of all ‘prog Wilson’ for me is: 1) “The Sky Moves Sideways” and “Signify”, 2) More importantly: prog is all his output taken together. ‘Prog Wilson’ is not “Grace for Drowning” and “Raven” as I don’t really count retro as progressive and those people on social media I quoted above somehow see this direction (a fraction of SW’s overall output) as THE Wilson. I do not – it was a phase in his career (probably caused by his remixing King Crimson et al. at that time) that seems to have passed (or abated) as all phases in his career do. This is the very thing that makes him TRULY progessive, now culminated in a self-proclaimed ‘pop’ album released after the retro of “Raven” and the wonderfully eclectic “H.C.E.”.

The position you descibe, ‘you must like his new album or you betray prog!” is equally daft. I don’t listen to genres. I use genre names so that I can communicate ideas (like this post), they have no qualitative value for me. I don’t like “Raven” not because it’s retro (prog) but because when I listen to it I’m bored. It doesn’t resonate. The label doesn’t change anything either way. I heven’t heard “To the Bone” in full yet (I’m waiting for the CD), but I like the tracks I heard a lot and Pariah is one of the best things SW has ever done.

Pop or not, prog or not I like what I hear and this is what ultimately matters. One should not like a poor record any more or less because it is a poor record in a genre they happen to like. And no album should be forced down my throat because it’s prog or Wilson or classic or whatever. People should grow good sets of ears and an anti-social media shield 😉

The Albums That Changed My Life: #3, This Year’s Model by Elvis Costello

On By kruekuttIn progressive rock2 Comments

by Rick Krueger

“The songs are lyrics, not speeches, and they’re tunes, not paintings. Writing about music is like dancing about architecture—it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” — Elvis Costello, 1983, apparently quoting Martin Mull.

Ouch.

On the other hand, would I have ever even heard of Elvis Costello if it hadn’t been for the rock press?  Let alone listened to This Year’s Model?

Continue reading “The Albums That Changed My Life: #3, This Year’s Model by Elvis Costello” →

Leave The Anger Out of It: Let’s Just Enjoy

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock5 Comments

Steven-Wilson-To-The-Bone-Banner

There’s no doubt, it’s fun to be self-righteous from time to time.  Well, “fun” for the writer, if not for the reader.

I’ve been patiently waiting for my deluxe box set of TO THE BONE to arrive in Michigan.  It finally arrived today, and it’s a thing of beauty and wonder, at least in terms of packaging.  It’s now my fourth such Steven Wilson deluxe box set, and I assume the deluxe edition will always be my default purchase option when it comes to any thing new Wilson releases.

Our own beloved Richard has already reviewed the new album rather nicely and objectively.

I’ve only given the album a listen or two.  It’s pretty neat, but it’s not grabbed me in the way that the previous solo albums have.  Such is life.  I’m going to let my like or dislike of it grow organically.

Still, I must write this.  Not liking the album is an OK position to hold.  I saw several folks today on social media claiming that if you don’t like the new Steven Wilson, you’re betraying the prog tradition.  What the ????????  Let me repeat that: What the ????????

One more time: What the ??????

There are days I simply need to detox regarding social media and, especially, Facebook.  For some reason, the new Steven Wilson has become a lightning rod in the way Donald Trump is a lightning rod.  One either hates or loves him.  No via media.

If I choose not to decide, I still have made a choice.  So once spoketh Neil Peart.  And, I agree wholeheartedly.

Thumpermonkey ‘Electricity’ EP – Q4 2017

On By russellclarkenzIn progressive rock2 Comments

Quirky progsters Thumpermonkey have announced their new EP ‘Electricity’, coming to a pair of ears near you some time in the last quarter of 2017 (that’s October, November, December).

It’s now available for pre-order on Bandcamp.

They’re also gigging! Official launch of the EP is October 6th where they will be joined by the delightful The Fierce And The Dead.

More information here.

New Release From Johnny Unicorn

On By russellclarkenzIn progressive rockLeave a comment

Johnny Unicorn just released The Johnny Unicorn Archive (2004-2016).

You can indulge your Unicorn fetish (or your innocent-and-in-no-way-fetishist curiosity) at the link below.

https://johnnyunicorn.bandcamp.com/album/the-johnny-unicorn-archive-2004-2016

To the Bone by Steven Wilson

On By kruekuttIn progressive rock9 Comments

by Rick Krueger

“Rain all the truth down, down on me/Rain down so much you make a sea/A sea we can sail then sink like a stone/Down to the truth, down to the bone.”

To the Bone isn’t any sort of “prog turned pop” betrayal.  I don’t think it’s Steven Wilson’s masterwork either; Porcupine Tree’s In Absentia and Deadwing and the stunning Hand. Cannot. Erase. remain my favorites, along with the compelling concert video Get All You Deserve.  I do think that To the Bone is pretty special, though.  An accessible yet ambitious set of songs that compels repeated plays, it ably showcases Wilson’s immersive grounding in rock and pop of all stripes, his ongoing quest to extend that tradition, and his continued lyrical growth.

Continue reading “To the Bone by Steven Wilson” →

The Thrill of Fresh CDs

On By Bryan MoreyIn progressive rock2 Comments

Look what showed up yesterday! Cheers to Lasercd for the prompt delivery.

I originally wasn’t going to purchase Big Big Train’s Stone & Steel Blu-ray because of the supposed issues with it not playing on some American Blu-ray players. Thankfully, it works perfectly on my home player, and I’m glad I was still able to get a copy before they ran out. The packaging is beautiful, much like everything Big Big Train does. I should have bought it a year ago.

My intro to BBT was English Electric: Full Power, so I still haven’t heard the English Electric albums in their original format. I figured I’d add these to my BBT collection before they too are unavailable. I may be young, but I despise the whole streaming thing. When I can afford it, I love to buy actual CDs. Even though I typically use iTunes to listen to music, I love having the physical CD with great packaging and a booklet. If the artists are going to go to such lengths to make a beautiful product, I want to experience it the way it was meant to be experienced.

Thank you to all the wonderful progressive rock bands out there making excellent music and caring enough about your craft to keep going. You make life for the rest of us a little bit easier.

Bruford, Seems Like A Lifetime Ago, 1977-1980

On By kruekuttIn jazz rock, progressive rockLeave a comment

Bill Bruford re-releases the music of his marvelous 1970s “rock group with a jazz sensibility” on October 27.

Titled Seems Like A Lifetime Ago, 1977-1980, the 8-disc box set features Bruford in collaboration with Dave Stewart (Egg, Hatfield & the North, National Health) on keyboards,  Jeff Berlin (a fine American jazz-rock bassist) and Allan Holdsworth (Soft Machine, UK) & ‘The Unknown’ John Clark on guitar.  Mostly instrumental, the music featured occasional vocals by Annette Peacock and Berlin.   The limited edition box will include:

  • DVD 1: Feels Good To Me: 5.1 surround sound and original 1978 mix remastered
  • CD 1: Feels Good to Me: 2017 remix from original masters
  • DVD 2: One of a Kind: 5.1 surround sound and original 1979 mix remastered.
  • CD 2: One of a Kind: 2017 remix from original masters – previously unreleased: outtake of Five G
  • CD 3: Gradually Going Tornado: Remaster
  • CD 4: The Bruford Tapes: Remaster: Bonus track: Manacles
  • CD 5: Live at the Venue: Previously unreleased. Recorded in London 1980.
  • CD 6: The 4th Album Rehearsal Sessions: Previously unreleased: 18 rehearsal sketches of new material.
  • 16-Page 12-inch booklet
  • Sid Smith essay with new interviews with producer, engineer, band members, eyewitnesses and others.
  • Previously unseen archive visual material.
  • Complete band date sheet with contemporary critical reaction.
  • 2 x black and white 10” x 8” band photos.
  • 1 x A3-size colour poster accompanying Live at the Venue
  • 1 x signed numbered certificate of authentication

The only thing not included in the box is the Rock Goes to College video of the band with Peacock on vocals, still available here.   Following the collapse of Bruford the group, Bruford the drummer rejoined Robert Fripp for the 1980s version of King Crimson.

This is exhilarating music from a band that burned, driven all the while by Bill Bruford’s elegant polyrhythms.  30 years on, Bruford was still playing in 19/8 and making it look easy:

Seems Like a Lifetime Ago, 1977-1980 is available to pre-order at Pledge Music and Burning Shed.   More about the box set, including interviews with Bruford, other band members and remixer Jakko Jakszyk, at TeamRock.

What does eternity sound like? 16th-century PROG!

On By Time LordIn progressive rock1 Comment

Prog goes back at least to the sixteenth century. Here’s proof:

From “Can Synthesized Music Touch Eternity?“:

The scholastics, typically dated from St. Thomas Aquinas in the late Middle Ages, believed in the unity of all truth. Not that all truth was knowable, but it is potentially integratable. Whatever was true in one discipline had also to be true in every other discipline; one truth, stretching infinitely vertical but also horizontally to infinite applications. Similarly, whatever was true in the course of time in this world is a reflection of a truth that God ordained to be so outside of time.

The model went as follows. There is the forward march of time, which is the world you and I know, experience, report on, and it is defined by struggle, triumph over nature, and a sad ending that comes with mortality, dust to dust.  On the other side of life, there is new life in a complete world that lives outside of time, birth, and death. It is the transcendent realm, a kind of place where we can live at one with God and in full knowledge of all that is true. This was Heaven.

This model implies a certain well-known geography, which is metaphorical but aids in understanding. Time is what you experience in life. Heaven is ascendant and transcendent. It is a realm somewhere up there that is out of time. And of course there is also Purgatory (which exists within time but is only known after death) as well as Hell, the eternal foil to paradise.

The highest goal of life on earth – and this goes for art, liturgy, learning, technology, science, commerce – was to reach outside of time and touch (or see or feel) that heavenly realm. Doing so, it was believed, would inspire us toward better lives because it would fire the imagination toward the goal of all our mental and spiritual actions, to love God and others ever more perfectly. Also, it’s psychologically and spiritually awesome to gain a glimpse of God or even to touch the Presence.

Eternity to Taste and Hear

This sensibility is embodied in Eucharistic theology, in which the faithful are granted the privilege of literally consuming the body of Christ. It is a way for time to touch eternity in the most tangible possible way, literally draw on the transcendent as a source of life and salvation. The art created in light of this sensibility was structured to achieve this very Eucharistic effect, to create visuals and sound that permit us some slight hint of access to the eternal.

What does eternity sound like? This was the task of the 16th-century masters to discover. And this task – which is not so much didactic as experiential – inspired vast creativity all over England and the Continent. There was Victoria in Spain, Tallis in England, Josquin in France, Palestrina in Italy, Di Lasso in the Netherlands, Isaac in Germany, and literally thousands of other musicians who contributed to the task. And their legacies are remarkable. Their music can still today transport your mind to another realm, exactly as the Scholastic model suggests.

The Albums That Changed My Life: #1, Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson Lake and Palmer

On By kruekuttIn progressive rock4 Comments

by Rick Krueger

I’ve been seriously collecting recorded music (on vinyl, cassette, compact disc, DVD and Blu-Ray) for just over 40 years.  As you do, I’ve organized my collection in various ways.  For about the last 15 years, I’ve separated my favorites, regardless of genre, out into their own storage unit.  It looks like this as of today:

IMG_3523I used to refer to what’s on the top shelf — my very favorite recordings — as “the music I would save if the house caught on fire.”  Never mind that: 1) people matter more than stuff, and; 2) there’s no way that, if the house caught fire, I could actually pull it off.

Ultimately, it occurred to me that a better name for that top shelf’s contents is “the music that changed my life.”  In retrospect, every one of the albums perched there set me off in fresh musical directions and shaped what I listen to most, what I choose to collect, and even my vocation as a professional church organist and volunteer singer.  Sounds like a blog series in the making …

I plan to focus on one album in each post, starting with what I heard earliest and working forward.  I hope to distill what I love about the album, and reflect on how it’s influenced my listening (and my playing) over the years.  I’ll also list my other favorite albums from the same artist, along with selected faves in the same vein from other musicians.

Given how much I’ve written about Emerson Lake & Palmer here, it’s probably no surprise that, while Works Volume 1 was the first ELP album I bought, Brain Salad Surgery was my real gateway drug into progressive rock.   For starters, I’d already heard “Karn Evil 9, First Impression, Part Two,” “Jerusalem” and “Still … You Turn Me On” over the Detroit airwaves.  What was this stuff?  Utterly bizarre titles, a giddily deployed spectrum of musical colors colliding with each other, seemingly at random (harpsichord, accordion and wah-wah guitar in the same ballad?) and more keyboards in five minutes than in some bands’ entire recorded output — after assimilating the bombast of the Works 1 material, I had to check it out!

I was flabbergasted.  Brain Salad Surgery defined eclecticism for me, sweeping up an astonishingly broad range of styles. On the first four tracks, ELP attacked a hymn (“Jerusalem”), a contemporary classical concerto movement interrupted by an extended tympani cadenza (Alberto Ginastera’s “Toccata”), a lyrical ballad with oddball instrumental touches (“Still …”) and a 12-bar boogie with music hall lyrics and an utterly wild piano solo (“Benny the Bouncer”).  And that was just the warm-up for the epic “Karn Evil 9.”  Over the course of three impressions, split into four tracks by the side change, the band garnished their core sound with rare solo electric guitar from Lake, manic piano trio jazz, Emerson’s steel drum synthesizer (quoting sax giant Sonny Rollins’ “St. Thomas,” as I later discovered), gonzo military marches powered by Palmer, and a loose anti-war narrative that castigated modern politics and religion, only to succumb to absolute rule by sentient supercomputer.   Mind.  Blown.

I later came to understand why Brain Salad Surgery was where some longtime ELP fans got off the bandwagon.  Compared to more direct albums like their debut and Pictures at an Exhibition, this one goes over the top without looking back.  The dizzying musical whiplash, the often-obscure lyrics, knockabout and messianic by turns (Lake’s first collaborations with original King Crimson wordsmith Peter Sinfield), the aggressive high-velocity playing — it could all seem like Keith, Greg and Carl had taken the hype too seriously, and were about to vanish up their own backsides in their pursuit of world domination.  Given the arc of their career after the massive Welcome Back My Friends world tour, you could even argue that’s what happened.

But for me, the reckless abandon of Brain Salad Surgery is the secret of its appeal.   ELP’s music here is a mite undisciplined and overstuffed, sure — but it’s also virtuosic, tightly structured, fearless, and exhilarating.  Those qualities, held together in suspension by the trio’s undeniable musical chemistry, have made this album compelling listening for me for the last 40 years.  Not only do I play it again and again, I’ve grabbed almost every CD re-release over the years (including Jakko Jakszyk’s oddly askew 2014 remix). Plus, instead of settling into the status of beloved novelty, Brain Salad Surgery whetted my appetite for more music like it — not just prog, but jazz, jazz-rock, modern classical music — even folk ballads!  And every once in a while, when I need a particularly powerful organ prelude or postlude for Sunday morning, it’s still a blast to pull out all the stops and dive into “Jerusalem.”

Listen to the latest re-release of Brain Salad Surgery here:

More Faves by ELP: Tarkus, Trilogy, and Works Volume 1.  Plus Encores, Legends and Paradox, a Magna Carta tribute album from the 1990s; this features Robert Berry, John Wetton, Glenn Hughes and James Labrie on vocals, with members of Dream Theater, Yes, King Crimson, Magellan and Emerson’s buddy Marc Bonilla laying down backing tracks.

Still There’ll Be More: I have 100+ prog and prog-related discs on my favorites shelf, from proto-proggers like The Nice and Procol Harum to 21st-century giants such as Neal Morse, Steven Wilson and Big Big Train.  Here are the ten albums that are probably the closest to my heart, and that opened the doors widest for future exploration:

Bruford, One of A Kind

Robert Fripp, Exposure (combined with RF’s 1979 in-store Frippertronics concert at Peaches Records in Fraser, Michigan)

Genesis, Foxtrot and Wind & Wuthering

King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King and Red

Porcupine Tree, Deadwing

Transatlantic, SMPT:e

UK, UK

Yes, Close to the Edge