Bloody Dreams and Loveless Prog

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rockLeave a comment
loveless
LOVELESS, released November 4, 1991.

It’s rather hard for me not to feel a twinge of nostalgia as I think back a quarter of a century.  Through my great friends, Craig Breaden, Joel Haskard, and Kevin McCormick, I was discovering a world of neo-psychedelic pop.  Lush, organic, voluptuous.  The Sundays, Catherine Wheel, The Charlatans, House of Love, Mazzy Star, Jane’s Addiction, and the Cocteau Twins were in full (and fulsome!) form.  Phish, Smashing Pumpkins, and Lush were about to hit it big, though I really had no idea just how big they would hit.

Even old mainstays such as The Cure and XTC were releasing some of their best material at the same time.

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My Very Own “Late-to-the Party Best of 2016”

On By Jay WatsonIn progressive rock1 Comment

Our good friend and fellow Progarchist Time Lord posted a great 31 December addition which he called “Late to the Party—Best of 2016.”  He so perfectly expressed what all music lovers who make year-end lists encounter…too much great music and not enough time (or money). I too would add to my list the following albums which I hastily, but fervently, listened to in the last two days of calendar year 2016. They are all added to my “Honorable Mention” list:

FRACTAL MIRROR: Slow Burn 1 (Stellar musicianship, and the kind of project that makes you feel not just better after listening to it, but smarter.)

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soundstreamsunday: “I Can’t Stand It” by the Velvet Underground

On By Craig BreadenIn punk rock, Rock and RollLeave a comment

392585-velvet-undergroundOutside the fact both groups employed players of a violin/viola in their lineups at one time or another, and possessed songwriters of legend, you’d be hard pressed to find common ground for Fairport Convention, last week’s soundstreamsunday feature, and the Velvet Underground.  But in an imaginary Venn diagram of live rock jams from otherwise non-jammy groups circa ’68-’72, Fairport’s scratchy, chugging take on “Matty Groves” would share a noisy, electric segment of that interlocking circle with V.U.’s live work during the same period.  In 1969 the Velvets, with aforesaid violist/bassist John Cale one year gone and a third album released (The Velvet Underground), recorded a handful of shows in Texas and San Francisco, showing an energetic, touring rock outfit whose songs of hustlers, dopers, and beloved Factory freaks worked even without Cale’s avant-garde contributions.  Indeed, Cale’s replacement Doug Yule, doubling on organ, more than adequately filled in Cale’s creeped-out carnival viola drone. The tapes — unreleased until 1974’s 1969: Velvet Underground Live with Lou Reed (the full two-night run at San Francisco’s Matrix was released in 2015 in pristine glory and it is mind-blowing) — like the rest of their music, hold the seeds of punk.  But beyond that, the jams they insert, not part of the studio versions, have a live inventiveness and melodic sensibility that rank among the finest of their long-haired time.  On “I Can’t Stand It” — in its studio incarnation a proto pop-punk nugget of the variety the band could so effortlessly summon — the band opens up space for an extended guitar section that takes cues from Jim McGuinn’s intro to “Eight Miles High” and pushes its Coltrane-inspired riffing into the stratosphere. Mo Tucker’s relentless pounding and Yule’s bass background the song, never allowing the guitars of Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison to disintegrate into wandering exploration.  This is a lean-and-mean live band unharried by the legend they would become (Tucker has even noted that on this tour audience members would tell her they couldn’t even find the band’s albums for sale), at a time when rock-n-roll was meant to be rough around the edges, and maybe even exact a toll.

*Above image, Doug Yule, Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, Mo Tucker, 1969.

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 above.

 

Avenged Sevenfold Embrace Their Inner Prog

On By Bryan MoreyIn progressive rockLeave a comment

Avenged Sevenfold released a surprise album a few months back, but I hadn’t listened to it until this week… when iTunes dropped the price into a reasonable range. New drummer Brooks Wackerman is a huge improvement over Arin Ilejay, bringing a punch to A7X’s music not heard since Mike Portnoy was drumming for them following the tragic death of Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan. Personally, I’m more of a fan of early Avenged Sevenfold, but I enjoy music from across their catalog.

Well, with their most recent album, The Stage, the band finally embrace their inner prog metal souls. They have always been great musicians, and “The Rev” was one of the best drummers in metal. His style was heavily influenced by Portnoy, and it always showed in his playing. This is why it is so awesome to hear these progressive influences worn on their sleeves with their new album. The final song happens to be the longest song the band has ever written, and it almost sounds as if Dream Theater wrote it. It is over 15 minutes long, but the way it is written makes it fly by. As you sail into the new year, enjoy this little piece of brilliance by A7X:

“Late to the Party” — Best of 2016

On By Time LordIn progressive rockLeave a comment

As the year winds down, I would like to start a new feature over here at Progarchy.

This new feature is called “Late to the Party.”

Its purpose is to communicate albums that I found out about too late to include on my own Best of 2016 lists.

That is, I found out about them mostly by reading other people’s Best of 2016 lists!

Upon checking out their suggestions, anything that I fell in love with, and consequently started playing on heavy rotation, is placed on my “Late to the Party” list.

(We can continue this feature into January, if people are willing to share their late year-end discoveries. I know I always learn about a ton of great new music from CEO. Carl will always keep me busy for a lot of January!)

Also, you can include items on the “Late to the Party” list from years prior to 2016, items that you nevertheless discovered in 2016, and played heavily during the year, just as if they had been brand new discoveries that edged out all the competition in 2016 for a time on your playlists. (I include two of these “REALLY Late to the Party” discoveries below: i.e., Harvest and Gowan.)

First up is Anakdota, who have an absolutely fantastic, crazily progtastic album that I learned about thanks to Nick here at Progarchy:



Anakdota — Overloading

Also, the MoMM taught me about the existence of Maschine. I absolutely love their jazz tinges and I am giving this one much heavy play in December also:



Maschine — Naturalis

Further, AMG alerted me to this excellent 80s-style metal album, which totally rocks:



Eternal Champion — The Armor of Ire

And now on to the big revelation for December. MoMM also gave me The Jaguar Priest, which is probably the album I am playing in heaviest rotation this month. If you can’t handle death metal vocals (i.e., growly “Cookie Monster” singing) as part of the vocal palette of a cast of multiple singers, then skip tracks 1, 2, and 4 on this release. But do not miss the rest of the album which, even with those three tracks deleted, remains one of the finest prog metal epics of the year. Don’t believe me? Then download one track, “Awakened By the Light.” I did and I was soon hooked, buying the whole album in short order:



Universal Mind Project — The Jaguar Priest

By the way, I discovered Harvest in 2016 and ended up listening to their Northern Wind album from 2014 an incredible amount of times. This was also an album where I downloaded only one track at first, “It All Becomes Clearer,” but fell in love with it and soon purchased the whole album, which I listened to again and again:



Harvest — Northern Wind (2014)

Finally, I saw earlier this year that an album by Gowan from 1990, Lost Brotherhood, was re-released on iTunes. I never listened to it at the time, but it turns out that it has three brilliant tracks that totally hooked me this year: “Love Makes You Believe,” “Message From Heaven,” and “Holding This Rage.” Highly recommended!



Gowan — Lost Brotherhood (1990)

It’s never too late to come to the rock and roll prog-party!!!

Remembering ELP: Genuine Art and Beauty

On By Time LordIn progressive rockLeave a comment

Bruce Frohnen has an essay over at TIC about ELP, arguing that they are “the most important musical group of the rock era.” Here’s part of his argument:

“Karn Evil 9” is not overblown, it is genuinely and intentionally music on a grand scale, combining classical techniques with multiple, interlacing rhythms, and polyphony to immerse the listener in a web of sound that for a time creates its own reality.

“Counterpoint” is a concept (not to say a reality) little understood among most rock musicians; but it was crucial to ELP’s ability to produce sounds that made sense at a level frankly higher than can be achieved in most blues-based music, with its emphasis on a single, simple melody underscored by rhythms deeply rooted in a single beat. At their usual best, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer performed according to a vision of rock music as rooted in the classical past. They produced both direct classical adaptations (“Fanfare for the Common Man” being the most famous) and original compositions that likewise combined modern rhythm and technique with melodic sophistication to create genuine art—pieces of beauty capable of affecting the souls of listeners.

2016 – A Year of Joy and Sadness

On By Erik HeterIn progressive rockLeave a comment

To say 2016 was a turbulent year would be an understatement.  For good and bad, the events of 2016 are going to ripple for years, if not decades to come.

Fortunately, one area in which 2016 was not a turning point was in the trend of excellent prog releases, which kept coming without any letup from 2015 … or 2014 … or 2013 … you get the picture.  Like those years, 2016 saw a bumper crop of excellent releases, and in a few cases, saw bands hitting new highs.  Truly, this was one area where we can be unequivocally thankful for what 2016 brought.

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Firth of Fifth Friday

On By Jay WatsonIn progressive rock1 Comment

In my recent “Best of 2016” Prog albums I gave an “honorable mention” to one Gustavo Santhiago for his instrumental endeavor “Animam.”   I called it “stunningly beautiful” because that’s exactly what it is. You can read more about this 17-year old (I know? right?) Brazilian composer at his own website: http://gustavosanthiago.wixsite.com/gsanthiago  but I wanted to post this clip of his playing ‘Firth of Fifth.’

Mellotron set to 11

 

CEO’s Ten Favorite Prog & Rock CDs of 2016

On By carleolsonIn progressive rock6 Comments

After failing to post any “Favorite Music of 2015…” lists last year, I’ve decided that I should avoid elaborate explanations for my choices, but simply note a thing or two about each release that captured my ears and held my attention. I’ve also decided to post three separate but fairly short lists: Prog/Rock, Jazz, and Everything Else. In short, I’m trying to kill my propensity for overkill. I suspect I’ll fail! Here, first, are my picks for favorite prog & rock albums of the past year (give or take a few months):

• “The Prelude Implicit” by Kansas | This is, I think, one of the best feel-good stories in kansas_thepreludeimplicitprog of 2016. After all, Kansas could have just kept touring and playing the same old—ranging from good to great to classic—tunes. Instead, they produced a very good, even great, album. As I wrote in my Progarchy.com review: “In short, the band has found a commendable and impressive balance between old and new, with plenty of prog-heavy, classic Kansas-like passages, but with an emphasis on ensemble playing over solos.  … Kansas is to be commended for embracing their past while clearly moving forward with a confident and often exceptional collection of songs. Highly recommended for both longtime Kansas fans and for those who like melodic, well-crafted prog that puts the emphasis on memorable songs and musical cohesion over theatrics and solos.”

• “Secrets” by Ian Fletcher Thornley | I was initially flummoxed by this album, expecting thornley_secretsa variation on the hard-rocking, high energy music of Big Wreck and Thornley, both fronted, of course, by the prolific Canadian singer, guitarist, writer, and producer. I finally listened to it late one night, in the dark, and I finally heard it on its own terms: acoustic, reflective, mellow, mournful, defiant, sad, and yet shot through with a sense of cautious hope. Thornley demonstrates that his remarkable writing skills are equal to his vocal prowess, which is an aural wine bearing hints of Big Country (“Frozen Pond”), Chris Cornell (“Feel”), Peter Gabriel (“Stay”), Bruce Springsteen (“Just To Know I Can”), and Jeff Buckley (“Blown Wide Open”). In the end, this is a modern blues record featuring every shade and hue of sadness, longing, and loss.

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