Majestic Ayreon

On By bradbirzerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

For those of you who have followed progarchy from the beginning (and, a huge thank you–whenever you joined our little anarchomusical republic), you know how much we admire Arjen Lucassen.  Lucassen is a wonder in every way.  What he does with music is simply mind boggling.  Not only do I listen to Arjen in all of his many projects whenever I can, I also use every chance when lecturing on modern literature, science fiction, and dystopia to talk about Lucassen.  So, it grieves me that this has to be short as a post.  I’ve spent the past week at an academic conference in Bryn Mawr, and I’m more than a bit behind on my writing.  

Whenever Arjen produces something–whether it’s a solo album, Guilt Machine, Star One, Ambeon, or Ayreon–he does so with impeccable excellence.  The writing, the lyrics, the packaging–every thing is perfect.

soundstreamsunday: “If There Is Something” by Roxy Music

On By Craig BreadenIn art rock, electronic, glam rock, progressive rockLeave a comment

ROXY-2If in May 1972 the Rolling Stones defined and deified rock and roll (and themselves) with the release of Exile on Main Street, one month later Roxy Music’s debut album made splatter art of such ideas.  A galvanizing, glammed-out, punked-up masterpiece, Roxy Music is the first of a series of four albums (including For Your Pleasure, Stranded, and Country Life) that artfully engage a European, distinctly non-bluesy, approach to rock. Where a mere three years later Roxy would hit the disco with “Love is the Drug” and a decade on would make one of the great, soulful, chilled-out new wave records with Avalon, in 1972 the band was pushing in every direction, its self-defined non-musician Brian Eno creating on-the-fly soundscapes that turned Andy Mackay’s reeds into guitars and Phil Manzanera’s guitars into sirens, while Bryan Ferry ululated — more in the style of Roger Chapman than the smooth crooner he would become — loose, even free associative, lyrics rendered on a spectrum from oddball to heartbreaking. While their image and aesthetic fit into the cutting edge of the British glam music scene at the time (Bowie’s Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust was released just the week before), and their creation myth is inseparable from their influential visual audacity (for who could look more creepy in a feather boa and leopard skin than the be-rouged Eno?), it was the band’s intense musicianship and penchant for the melodic that was the core of its success and influence, and why you can hear this first album in everything from The Rocky Horror Picture Show to Talking Heads. The sound is richly subversive, hooks are everywhere, songs use shifting dynamics to create emotional peaks. They challenge convention, but are fully wrought, they are all surface, but go deep.

Roxy Music on Amazon

soundstreamsunday archive

The History of Rush — Part 1

On By Time LordIn Progarchy1 Comment

Read all about the early years of Rush. A sample:

Alex Lifeson: It was at junior high, in that ‘getting to know you’ stage, that Geddy and I got heavily into music.

Geddy Lee: We wanted to be rebellious, to break away from our families, like all kids want to do. And we both had a really deep passion for music and wanting to play it. Almost every day we’d go to his parents’ place after school and we’d jam for two hours.

Alex Lifeson: For a long time we were in different bands, but we always jammed together. We loved to learn all those great Cream songs, play along to the record player, and play them better and better and better. It was really a lot of fun. It was just the two of us – no drummer. The good old days! We’d either play along with the record, or we would both plug into Ged’s amp and just play, him on bass, me on guitar. We were beginning to look at music more seriously and really trying to figure out what the musicians were playing, how the bands worked. And we loved to play. We just couldn’t get away from it.

Geddy Lee: The first time I ever got high was with Alex. He was just a terrific pothead, and a terrible influence on me. We went to the local public school grounds to smoke some pot. At that time I was playing in another band, and after I got high with Al, I went over to the guy in my band’s house for rehearsal. But I was a little too high to be very functional, and this guy was really mad at me. He was very straight and he was really upset with me. He was threatening to tell my mother that I was high. That was a bummer!

Progarchy’s* Interview* with Jem* Godfrey* of Frost*. Seriously.*

On By Erik HeterIn progressive rock4 Comments

On May 27th of this year, Frost* returned from an eight-year hiatus to release their latestFrost album, Falling Satellites (Progarchy review here). In conjunction with this release, Frost* … ‘s mastermind, Jem Godfrey, was willing to sit down with us for a chat (where do you put the apostrophe with the asterisk already there??). We discussed the new album, mused philosophically about life, talked more about his the formation of Frost* and his activities outside of the band … and asterisks. Those pesky asterisks.

 Progarchy: What would you say is different in a musical sense relative to the two previous Frost* albums?

JG:      We have a different bass player and drummer from the previous recorded album we did. I think that in and of itself adds a whole new sound to the band, because they are playing in a different sort of way than JJ [John Jowitt] and Andy [Edwards] did. That’s the first thing. The second thing is that John Mitchell was very keen on not doing classic John Mitchell on this, he was really up for taking his rule book and throwing it out the window, and that was brilliant. He was trying out new, different sort of effects and putting his guitar through all kinds of plug-ins and interesting sort of sounds, trying different guitars, so he was really up for experimenting. I think kind of also just that it’s eight years later that our sound palette is slightly different as technology has sort of moved on. So you know it’s the same band but it’s definitely sort of moved on, I think.

Progarchy: Now with John (Mitchell), you say he threw out his rule book, so how would he define his rule book?

JG: Well, he has got two settings, loud and quiet normally. He’s not normally one for heavily effecting his guitars, but he got some Valhalla plug-ins and stuff, and was running it through his laptop and doing all sorts of non-John things this time out, and it really worked.

Progarchy: So I guess his classic John Mitchell sound is what you hear more on Arena or Lonely Robot then?

JG: Yeah, I think so. There are a couple of bits where it’s obviously him doing that sound, because you have to have a bit of that in there, but he was very up for trying different things. There are a couple of bits in there that you wouldn’t know it’s guitar, but it’s actually guitar, he’s gone quite experimental in some places.

Progarchy: And what about you, how would you say your sound palette has changed?

JG: I’ve got sort of a lead sound I’ve developed over the years which has sort of become my signature sound, and which I didn’t really mean to do that back in the day. There are a couple of times I sort of “wheel it out.” I sort of liken it to how Tony Banks does his Pro Soloist … it’s quite nice to get a sound in there that you recognize. But again, I’m not wedded to any particular synth, I just use whatever is around at the time and put it through effects.

Progarchy: You also mentioned something about using a Chapman Railboard on this album, can you elaborate on that?

JG: It’s a kind of Chapman Stick, sort of a Tony Levin classic 10-string guitar thing. It’s basically one of those but it’s made out of solid aluminum, so it’s basically a single machined piece of metal. It looks like a Stick, but it’s a metal Stick. It’s got different tones, it’s quite tubular, it’s really nice. It’s really good for arpeggio stuff. You can hear it on Numbers and Closer to the Sun, there’s a lot of Railboard on those two tracks.

Progarchy: Can you delve into the concept behind this album a bit more?

Continue reading “Progarchy’s* Interview* with Jem* Godfrey* of Frost*. Seriously.*” →

GRENDEL: Anderson/Stolt – Invention Of Knowledge (2016) — Grendel HeadQuarters

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock2 Comments

Jon Anderson of Yes and Roine Stolt of The Flower Kings, making an album together? Why not? I always had the feeling The Flower Kings are heavily influenced by (early) Yes. The two blokes surrounded themselves with guest musicians like Tom Brislin, Daniel Gildenlöw and Nad Sylvan, and (ex) members of The Flower Kings for […]

via Anderson/Stolt – Invention Of Knowledge (2016) — Grendel HeadQuarters

The State of Prog, June 2016

On By bradbirzerIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Dear Progarchists, as always, a huge thanks to all who read us, all who write for us, and all who make the incredible music we all enjoy.

2016 has already been a really interesting year for Prog even if we’re not quite halfway done with it.  The market for Prog releases is higher than at any other time in my 48-year old adult memory.  In the meantime, we see more and more complaints and fears that the market is dead or near dead.  These cries of woe and despair began about a year ago, but now we see it becoming complacent in the music press.  Folks such as those who made huge money in the 70s and 80s now argue that they would never make an album now, as they’d find no support from labels.  I’m sure this is true, as the music market is radically decentralized from what it was in, say, 1985.

For someone listening to the music, however, all of these complains and fears seem like an incredible disconnect.  After all, the type of music I enjoy is now being produced and created at a rate I’ve not seen since my childhood.  I am not, however, looking at the market as a producer, merely a consumer.

Continue reading “The State of Prog, June 2016” →

Interview with METAQUORUM

On By NickIn progressive rock1 Comment

MetaQuorum

A UK based progressive rock project by Dmitri Ermakov and Koos van der Velde recently put out two new songs: “Jonathan Livingston” and “Migration.” The band that grabs inspiration from plenty of different genres talked with Progarchy about their creative chemistry.

Hey folks. How are you doing?

Doing OK but wish the weather was better 🙂

Continue reading “Interview with METAQUORUM” →

The Definitive Folklore @BigBigTrain

On By Time LordIn ProgarchyLeave a comment

Folklore!

Download it in hi-resolution audio with the definitive track list:

I make the case for the definitive version in my review.

Also, be sure to read the virtual liner notes.

soundstreamsunday: “Stop Breaking Down” by the Rolling Stones

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

Rolling Stones-Exile on Main Street 1“Unlikely” is probably the right word, that the hairiest, grittiest, straight-uppenest American rock record of the 1970s, maybe ever, would be made by an English band in tax exile in the south of France lolling in sheer European decadence. That the Rolling Stones attained such a state of grace is only partly surprising, though, given the sheer will of their progress to the point of Exile on Main Street: with Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, and Sticky Fingers the writing was on the wall, but it was this double album that sealed their legend, where the channeling was complete, where without seams the Deep South blackness poured through their pasty, pale, drug-addled limey fingers in drums and basses and guitars and voxes and keys and horns. They hadn’t just gone to the crossroads, they’d set up the tent years before and waited it out, for the spirit to finally visit them. “Satisfaction”? “Get Off My Cloud”? Even “Honky Tonk Women,” with its perfect guitar? Those were killing time, chop builders, and the work they’ve done since has had high points too but has never been more than the downhill coast. Exile’s the big meet up, a meticulously made album with no contrivance, a blues turned over with a rock shovel, originals mixing with covers with barely a hint of borderline, as if this is their music as much as it is yours or mine or Robert Johnson’s. And it’s here that they cover one of Johnson’s more unusual songs, less a blues than a prophet’s vision of the rock and roll to come.  The Stones had already covered Johnson on record by the time of Exile — the down tempo “Love in Vain” was featured on Let It Bleed — but the rock and roll suggested in “Stop Breaking Down” is wrung from the song by the Stones, matching the strut of the lyric, “Every time I’m walking down the street….”

soundstreamsunday archive

Virtual Liner Notes: @BigBigTrain

On By Time LordIn Progarchy1 Comment

IMG_0002

Progarchy.com has conveniently organized for you all the essential Big Big Train virtual liner notes:

And The Merch Desk adds some comments about Folklore:

Continue reading “Virtual Liner Notes: @BigBigTrain” →