After sold-out shows in Europe, Asia and America, the tremendous success of Avantasia‘s ‘Ghostlights World Tour 2016/2017’ culminated in a headline show at Wacken Open Air, which was broadcast live on German national TV. Next year, Tobias Sammet‘s Avantasia is getting back on the road to present their new album MOONGLOW, due to be released in January 2019. Their unique […]
via AVANTASIA announce 2019 world tour + new studio album Moonglow — The Rockin’ Chair
Happy Star Trek Day! I’m a doctor not an escalator! …Let’s see what new releases are out on this glorious day. Ihsahn – Ámr New releases from the prog/black metal wizard are always big news. But I’ve grown a bit wary. I really enjoyed 2010’s After and subsequent releases have been good but I’ve rarely […]
A great DJ is just a step below a great producer and sound engineer.
From time to time, I’ve considered joining a streaming service permanently. I’ve toyed around with Spotify, Pandora, and iTUNES.
I just can’t understand the attraction.
There was a time in my life, I really loved radio. From the years between late grade school and the end of high school (class of 1986), I listened faithfully to Wichita’s KICT-95. The station introduced me–rather gloriously–to album rock radio, back when radio actually played entire sides of albums. I got to know the DJs, the music, and their various programs. I knew when to expect a full album side, and when to expect the latest news in the rock world. I knew when T-95 broadcast concerts, and I knew when the radio station sponsored bands to play live in Wichita. It was a golden age of rock. I was always far more taken with prog than I was with acid or hard rock, but T-95 presented all as a rather cohesive whole, thanks to the quality of the DJs.
But, streaming? I just don’t get it. It’s bland. It’s tapioca. There’s no personality, no matter how great the music is.
|
|
|
|
|
Sonny Sharrock’s Ask the Ages (1991), with its depth-defying groove and meet-up of ambition and gravitas, is the portrait of a maturing artist hitting his stride. Sharrock was 51 and riding a creative wave — one foot in the free jazz he brought his guitar to in the 1960s, one in the “collision music” envisioned by musical partner and producer Bill Laswell — when he made this record with a sympathetic band of jazz leaders: drummer Elvin Jones, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and bassist Charnett Moffett. A pleasurably melodic challenge, Sharrock’s last record before his passing in 1994 manages to be both a ripping rock guitar album and an American jazz classic, steeped in themes of race, religion, and identity.
The participation of Jones and Sanders is key to creating this mood, their link to John Coltrane making for that ghost’s heavy presence, but Sharrock’s post-Hendrix tone and attack works a territory not dissimilar to Pete Cosey’s and Reggie Lucas’s contributions to Miles Davis’s live records in the 1970s, or Eddie Hazel’s Funkadelicisms. There is a lot of satisfying growl here.
The penultimate tune in the set, “Many Mansions” takes John 14:2 across a droning chord sequence, a woozy blues backgrounding Sanders’ shrieking solos and Sharrock’s responses. The deft touch of Jones and Moffett keeps us wading in the water, moving towards an undertow of deep meditation. Original album version here as well as an incendiary performance from Frankfurt in 1992.
Powerful, spirited, spiritual.
Note: the image of Pharoah Sanders and Sonny Sharrock is in all likelihood from a Sanders-led tour in the late 1960s, when the two initially collaborated. It’s just too good an image not to use in description of the music.
soundstreamsunday presents one song or live set by an artist each week, and in theory wants to be an infinite linear mix tape where the songs relate and progress as a whole. For the complete playlist, go here: soundstreamsunday archive and playlist, or check related articles by clicking on”soundstreamsunday” in the tags section.
Everyone’s beloved Zee Baig–master of all things prog in Chicago–has released a new video. Enjoy!
Not a huge amount out today, compared to last week’s madness anyway, but there are a couple of important new releases at least! Voices – Frightened This is the one I’ve been waiting for. Comprised mostly of ex and current Akercocke members (with links to other great bands like Shrines and The Antichrist Imperium), Voices’ […]
Third time’s charm. . . or, so says the wisdom of old wives. Just moments ago–after two shipping mishaps–my personal copy of Jerry Ewing’s WONDEROUS STORIES arrived safe and sound at progarchy HQ. I’m just about to take the cellophane off and enjoy some true beauty.
Thank you, Jerry, master of all that is prog.
To check out the official progarchist review of Ewing’s masterpiece, go here (thank you, Rick!).
To order Ewing’s masterpiece in the U.S., click here.
Back in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a superstition developed in the classical music world that prophesied the Ninth would be a composer’s last symphony. Arnold Schoenberg summed it up in an eloquent fashion, stating that “he who wants to go beyond it must pass away. 825 more words
via Gustav Mahler and the Curse of the Ninth Symphony — The Imaginative Conservative
Progarchy 