Yesterday, I had the grand privilege of introducing the The American Conservative audience to the joys and delights of Big Big Train. This morning, I’ve had an equal blessing in introducing Steven Wilson to The Imaginative Conservative audience. It’s prog week in the Birzer house! Then again, when isn’t it prog week in the Birzer house?
For this one, I focused on Wilson’s previous album, HAND.CANNOT.ERASE and explored the Christian humanist elements within it.
A huge thanks not only to Winston Elliott and Steve Klugewicz, masterful editors of The Imaginative Conservative, but to Stephen Humphries as well. As some of you might very well know, there is no one in the world outside of Wilson himself who knows more about Wilson than Humphries does.
Over at Angry Metal Guy, Swordborn has a good review of one of my favorite releases of 2017, Lucid Dreaming’s The Chronicles Pt. II, which is a heavy metal adaptation of The Chronicles of Prydain books. Here’s a taste:
These books were favorites of mine as a child, and remain so to this day. The first installment of The Chronicles remains one of my go-to favorites when illustrating one of the most thematic and spiritually faithful translations of fantasy novel to metal album, despite a relatively unenthusiastic reception in many power metal courts. To no one’s surprise, I’ve been following the progress of Pt. II with interest, and have been entertaining pretty high expectations for it.
Stylistically, Lucid Dreaming is very raw power metal in a myriad of ways. Not only does the mix feel very vocal- and bass-forward, but the array of guest vocalists that breathe life into Prydain’s characters are sourced from throughout the European heavy/power metal underground. None of them bear the polished pedigree that so many of the more commercially successful power metal acts are often noted for, but rather, they infuse the compositions with gritty, energetic, and passionate imperfection. Consequently, The Chronicles, Pt. II boasts an immense amount of character that is lacking in so many concept and story albums produced by the metal genre at large. Tobias Sammet and Arjen Anthony Lucassen may be able to conjure epic soundscapes to assist their grandiose artistic vision, but I’ll bet an oracular pig that neither of them could whip out such an earthy, authentic literary adaptation as this (and probably could never be bothered to).
A listen through the first several tracks will quickly indicate the order of the day for Lucid Dreaming: long, vocally-driven compositions are laid over relatively simplistic but well-formed power metal frameworks spearheaded by hooky rhythm and lead work composed by Oberboßel.
After presenting that montage of my top sixteen albums from 2017 in Part 1, it’s time to start ranking them. So here we go, from sixteenth place to ninth place…
16. Tangerine Dream – Quantum Gate
A controversial release, given the opinion of some that ‘The Tangs’ should have bowed out gracefully following the death of founder and last remaining original member Edgar Froese a couple of years ago. But Thorsten Quaeschning has proven himself a safe pair of hands, more than capable of moulding the ideas and musical thumbnail sketches that Edgar left behind into something that is most satisfying, and recognisably a TD album. Definitely worth a listen if you are a fan of the band, or of electronic music in general.
15. Charlie Cawood – The Divine Abstract
Charlie’s taken time out from bass-playing duties with Knifeworld and his various other musical projects to produce his first solo release – and very good it is, too! An utterly delightful collection of subtle and fascinating compositions, some with a distinctly oriental feel, played largely on acoustic instruments. Charlie handles guitars & sitar, and a host of others play everything else (among them various other members of Knifeworld, and Haken’s keyboard maestro Diego Tejeida). Particular highlights are The Earth’s Answer, Garden Of The Mind and closing track Apotheosis.
2017 – what a year it has been for prog. Against the backdrop of some highly perplexing and disturbing events across the world’s stage, but, to quote the title of Paul Stump’s excellent assessment of prog, The Music’s All That Matters.
On a personal note, it has been a particularly challenging year, having early on developed a stress-related condition due to pressures presented by a previous employer, which led to an emergency operation and a month’s recuperation. This was coupled with seeing a parent being subsumed in the clutches of dementia. However, equilibrium was restored in the latter part, thanks to the kindness, belief and support of many people both inside and outside the prog bubble.
Though prevailing conditions resulted in me missing several high profile happenings, including HRH Prog in March, 2017 has continued to astound and astonish with the quality of the music being produced, and also the wonderful community of people. This is the tribe that cherishes and follows prog in individual capacities from the fans and supporters, to the writers, the promoters, the merchandise sellers, the record label owners and of course, the artistes themselves, most of whom make scant financial returns on their considerable investments of time and energy. As was originally stated, the music is all that matters.
Without further ado, here are the highlights, and some of the lowlights, which made 2017 another great year for us prog passionistas.
Top Albums:
1) The Slow Rust of Forgotten Machinery – The Tangent. As one of prog’s most outspoken savants, Andy Tillison brings profound political and social commentary into the narrative of this musically outstanding album. This is a clarion call to wake up and see how our perceptions of the world are being manipulated. Some stellar musicianship peaks on Dr Livingstone (I Presume), co-written by his brilliant fellow Tangential collaborator Luke Machin. Thoughtful, profound with hints of jazz and dance-trance, it also features some extraordinary hard hitting artwork by DC Comics cartoonist, Mark Buckingham.
While John Fahey was working on the set of songs that included “Sunny Side of the Ocean,” for The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death (1965), he was completing his master’s thesis in folklore at the University of California at Berkeley, the first biography and analysis of the work of blues guitarist/singer Charley Patton. It was published in paperback form in 1970 and is now considered a classic of blues literature. (Like most early Fahey endeavors, original printings go for exorbitant sums. However, indulge yourself here for free.) Fahey’s obsession with Patton is clear but also realistic, and contains in it the reach and grasp of a true scholar. One gets the impression he probably could have rattled this off in his sleep, despite the occasional dry stiffness no doubt desired by his thesis committee. Fahey’s point: blues and folk scholarship was missing out big on players like Patton, who for years had been written off as being past the cut-off point of interest of circa 1928, i.e., more influenced by records than oral tradition and thus not worth bothering over. The racism banked deep in this position aside, Fahey argues successfully that the atmosphere of non-direction in the recording studio for blues artists of Patton’s era (1929-1934) in particular — a result of A&R men having no idea what black communities wanted in the “race records” they were promoting to those same communities — gave players like Patton freedom to perform more naturally than they might otherwise, and produced work that provided a window into African American existence in the Mississippi Delta in the first half of the 20th century.
Fahey’s efforts notwithstanding, Patton remains a dazzling mystery, dead and mostly forgotten for over thirty years before Fahey’s scholarship and the debts acknowledged by artists like Bob Dylan. Far wilder in lifestyle and presentation than that other King of the Delta Blues, Robert Johnson (himself no stranger to the on-the-edge, rough life of an itinerant Delta musician) Patton’s repertoire was also more diverse, and his showmanship as much a part of his legend as his musicianship to the people who knew him and had seen him perform (to the extent that Son House expressed surprise to Fahey on hearing a Patton record Fahey played back for him, not recalling his friend’s potent guitar prowess but instead Patton’s “clowning”). While Patton’s legacy never attained the rock’n’roll sanctification accorded Johnson’s work — there’s no equivalent for Patton to Cream’s cover of Johnson’s “Crossroads” or the Stones’ “Stop Breaking Down” — his work constitutes in its rawness an essential rock document, the direct antecedent to the entire career of Howlin’ Wolf (who Patton mentored), and thus by association Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits. So if Robert Johnson is closely associated with classic blues rock as exemplified by Cream and the jam bands that followed, Patton can to some degree be claimed by artists who inhabit rock’s lunatic fringe. This isn’t, of course, an all-or-nothing proposition, but just one possible, shifting observation. Patton was a punk.
Only a week old and already a favorite in the Birzer house. The kids are running around singing “Mer-rr-y Christmas” in full-blown David Longdon style. What a beautiful gift to the world, capturing everything that matters about the season.
Jerry Ewing’s PROG magazine has put a call out for nominations for this year’s READERS’ POLL. Here’s the handy-dandy link: PROG READERS’ POLL 2017.
Make sure you follow the directions for the email: “To vote, copy the categories below and e-mail us with the subject line ‘Readers’ Poll 2017’ to prog@futurenet.com.”
I have proudly sent in my nominations, but I would like to encourage you to consider two specific folks for nomination.
Unsung Heroes. Alison and Martin Reijman.
First, please consider nominating our own (well, she’s her own!) Alison Reijman as the “Unsung Hero.” I have known Alison–only through the internet and correspondence; sadly, never in person–for years now, and I can state that I know of no other person not directly employed by a record label, a PR firm, or a magazine dealing with PROG who has promoted the genre more than Alison has. She not only loves the music and the musicians, but she, herself, is a lovely, lovely person. She exemplifies, at least to my mind, all that is best in our strange but delightful little corner of the cultural world. She’s brilliant, free-spirited, spontaneous, tenacious, and exceedingly generous and kind.
Dawn Eden has a theologically astute review of the Bob Dylan box set Trouble No More over at Angelus. Here’s a taste:
It is a long way from the almost pugilistic attitude of the opening track of “Slow Train Coming,” in which he announces in his best Bobby Zimmerman sneer, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody,” to the heart-wrenching introspection of the final track of “Shot of Love,” “Every Grain of Sand”: “There’s a dyin’ voice within me reaching out somewhere / Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair … I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man / Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.”
“Trouble No More,” in showcasing versions of those songs and dozens more from Dylan’s gospel period, affords a wealth of insights into what took place between those two moments. It is a moving chronicle of the believer’s journey toward the virtue of true Christian hope, in the sense that Aquinas means when he defines hope as desiring an unimpeded union with God in the manner of “a future good, difficult but possible to obtain.”
And so it was that, for a few years at the cusp of the 1980s, Woodstock Nation’s greatest revolutionary rebelled against rebellion itself, against the old enemy whom Saul Alinsky in “Rules for Radicals” admired as “the very first radical.” Although he afterward returned to secular music, he never disavowed it. In fact, in 2015, when receiving the MusiCares Person of the Year Award, he even indicated a desire to record another gospel album.
The only footnote to her analysis that I would add would be to argue that the subsequent track “Ring Them Bells” from Oh Mercy (1989) is one of Dylan’s best songs ever, right up there with the aforementioned “Every Grain of Sand,” because it epitomizes what Dylan learned in his Gospel period, and yet also signals a shift beyond his Vineyard theological training, both with its explicit mention of “St. Peter” and also its intensely mystical mode of vision.
What another cracking year for music in the Prog world.
Am I still able to say that –‘ Prog’? Some people are too cool to want to associate themselves with it.
And yet there have been some fine releases in 2017 that are proudly ‘Prog’, with a capital ‘P’.
Not least the excellent ‘From Silence to Somewhere’ from Wobbler and the Tangent’s ‘The Slow Rust of Forgotten Machinery’. I know that there will be many lists out there soon enough- ‘My favourite top 10 of the year’ and ‘here’s a picture of all my vinyl’, posts are imminent across the web and social media.
To that end I have really narrowed the best of the year to one release.. and it really is one of the most outstanding albums in a rich and varied career to date.
It’s no secret that last year there was much gnashing of teeth (mine were gnashed) and lamentation at the announcement that Beardfish were disbanding, in fact there is a little torch still lit in a hope that someday they will reform.
However on the strength of ‘On her Journey to the Sun’ – RikardSjöblom has stepped out of the shadow of his former band and produced a triumphant body of work that highlights his impressive skills and craftsmanship, both in composition and performance.
It would be remiss of me to not refer to the outlet that Sjöblom worked under for this release. Using the Gungfly project, his mission statement for the style of music was laid out. Previous Gungly albums have been eclectic, self-reflecting and unafraid of what genre they are associated with. In a break from some of this though, Sjöblom hasmade an album that captures the spirit of prog with a fresh, vitality that even the diehards that renounce prog and all its perceived crustiness, would struggle to deny.
Amazing cover…A striking release all round..
Don’t just take my word for it, critically the mainstream press in the UK – namely the Guardian, recognised the album as one of their best for 2017 and placed it alongside the likes of Richard Dawson, Drake and Paramore. What they thought of it is the reason it stands out. On her Journey to the sun may be prog but it has a pop sensibility about it. See Steven Wilson also this year for attempting this. But rather than follow Wilson’s plan to emulate his heroes of Talk Talk and Gabriel, Sjöblom keeps them more subtle in the delivery. The fantastic Polymixia combines the level of epic complexity you would expect from Sjoblom, and mixes it skilfully with a funk groove-clavi section that comes straight out of classic Stevie Wonder
What is joyful about the album is the superb voice of Sjöblom. His delicate ethereal falsetto combines with passionate soulfulness and sometimes a grittiness that packs a punch. Adding to this is the weirdly bonkers, sometimes trippy vibe that inhabits this album as it does a lot of his work, especially the Beardfish prime albums. It’s this level of sophistication that sets this above his peers and keeps the album spinning on and on…
While 
Progarchy 