I could hardly be happier. My latest issue of PROG magazine just arrived—the one with the Marillion cover (and a great article about the neo-prog bands of the early 80s).
But as fun as the magazine is, I submit it’s worth the price of subscription just to get the CD sampler. I am of the generation that has been (is) fighting (within my own brain) the battle for physical, “hard copy” media and thus I don’t download. Being too cheap to have satellite radio in the auto, I love CD samplers. PROG’s latest collection, “LORDS OF THE BACKSTAGE” is a corker; maybe the best one I’ve heard.
With 10 tracks clocking in at about an hour I only found one song that gets a less than an “A” rating.
Track 1: “The Storm” from Arjen Lucassen and Anneke vanGiersbergen’s latest magnum opus THE GENTLE STORM kicks of…
Released today, the gorgeous album from IZZ, EVERLASTING INSTANT.
I promise to provide a much more in-depth review of this album in the coming weeks. It arrived happily this morning at the Birzer estate in Longmont, Colorado. The sun is shining, the Rockies radiating, and some of the best music of the progressive rock era (about my age, as it turns out) is playing for the third time. As most of you know, “Everlasting Instant” is the conclusion to the trilogy that began with “The Darkened Room” (2009) and continued with “Crush of Night.” (2012).
As this is merely a mini review, let me state a couple of things.
First, the album is absolutely outstanding.
Second, while it is an excellent piece of art on its own, “Everlasting Instant” successfully incorporates themes (lyrically and musically) from the previous two albums, thus closing the trilogy with a profound sense of accomplishment.
Third, the music surprises me a bit—only because it’s as melodic as all IZZ albums, but its minimalism at points and its equally hard progressive aspects jarred me several times during the initial listens. Frankly, this album is far more prog than the previous two, and it’s gone well beyond what I expect of IZZ. All to the good!
As proggers, we should all rejoice with the release of this gorgeous album.
As American proggers (those of us who are), we should raise our fists in victory. This has been a VERY, VERY good year for American prog: Glass Hammer, Neal Morse, IZZ. Please, keep them coming!
Yes I know that the internet has been flooded with countless parodies based on the 2004 Foreign film DOWNFALL which features the incredible performance of actor Bruno Ganz as Hitler in the final days of WW II’s Battle for Berlin. Some of the funnier ones have dealt with Star Trek, the New England Patriots, and Batman. But this one wherein the Prog Titan band YES is being ranted about is my favorite. And just for the sake of trolling internet PC Gestapo (ba, da, dump!) I think the Nazis and Hitler were evil.
Join Neal in his home town for this two-day music festival!
Long time collaborators Mike Portnoy and Randy George, as well as Neal Morse Band anchors, Bill Hubauer and Eric Gillette, will join Neal as this group of master musicians perform
Neal’s world renowned albums? (Question Mark) and Sola Scriptura
This weekend will be filled with Special Guests, Exclusive VIP Packages, a FREE Inner Circle only performance, Pre-show dinners, and much more!
We also invite you to be our guests for a worship and baptismal service with Neal and friends on Sunday, Sept 6.
This music event WILL SELL OUT, so make your travel plans to Cross Plains, TN now!
The striking cover of Heavy On The Beach by Grand Tour.Hew Montgomery, Mark Spalding, Bruce Levick and Joe Cairney – collectively Grand Tour.
Saturday night was End of the World Night on one TV channel here in the UK. It was a semi light-hearted look at Armageddon and the most likely possible causes of global meltdown and the end of the world as we know it.
Several academics put forward their respective theories on how civilisation is most likely to end with a different film to depict each possible cause of the Apocalypse. The conclusion was that although we are pretty nervous about pandemics, alien and zombie invasions, extreme changes in climate, erupting volcanoes and perish the thought, an asteroid entering our airspace, the overriding Number One fear is still the threat of nuclear war. Cue a few well-chosen scenes from the classic Stanley Kubrick political satire “Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb” to further illustrate the point.
This dovetailed nicely with an album which I have had on almost constant play in the Progmobile for the past couple of weeks, which may have escaped some people’s attention when it was released in February.
“Heavy On The Beach” is the debut album from Grand Tour, an amalgamation of two of Scotland’s finest prog exports, Abel Ganz and Comedy of Errors.
The album is the brainchild of Hew Montgomery, the former Abel Ganz keyboards player and composer, who has held a long time fascination with the Cold War years and the resultant stand-off between the superpowers during this tense period. The album’s title indirectly comes from Nevil Shute’s book “On The Beach” depicting nuclear war and its aftermath, that was turned into a 1959 film starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner.
As the book and film show, there are ramifications far beyond the theatre of war itself and how the shockwaves reverberate -literally – around the world so that the only habitable parts of the earth are in the southern hemisphere until the inhabitants are doomed when threatened with creeping radiation sickness.
It’s a bleak and foreboding scenario on which to base a whole “concept” album such as this especially as the whole musical journey is set in just the one location, the beach. But in keeping with other Armageddon-themed films, the beach is a natural place from where to watch the distant atomic mushroom cloud erupt over the endless sea.
Hew had been developing the material for this album over a period of 30 years and he deliberately bases it on the classic prog keyboard sounds of Hammond organ, Mellotron, Moog leads and Rhodes piano. To this, he has added, along with his own basslines, the searing guitar runs of Mark Spalding, the precision drumming of Bruce Levick and the distinctive pure voice of Joe Cairney, three compadres from Comedy of Errors,
An eerie wind and apocalyptic grand organ begins the album, during which Cairney is your narrator and guide to the scene he surveys down on the beach. From there, the eight tracks take you on a journey exploring the subsequent landscape following the detonation of Robert Oppenheimer’s deadly toy. It is a beautifully balanced and absorbing album which never loses its shape or momentum. It ebbs and flows like the tides lapping on the beach, the compositions all giving a slightly different perspective to the nightmare scenes of oblivion and abandonment they are depicting.
This also includes a reminder of Little Boy and the Fat Man, the names of the uranium and plutonium fusion bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively which effectively brought World War 2 to a cataclysmic end.
However, one of the most spine-tingling moment is when Cairney cries out during the final track The Grand Tour (Part 2):
“Save me, take my soul,
Save my children, not my home.
God, can you hear me, or am I alone?
Save me, take my soul.”
It is though all hope is lost to the madness of those who choose to play the highest of stakes with millions of innocent lives.
Hew also mentions that Grand Tour will always be a “Big Big Train” kind of venture, in that it is a studio based project with no plans to present live gigs. However, as both bands share the same sound engineer Rob Aubrey and Big Big Train do have two sell-out live concerts in August this year, never say never!
For now, here is an album which is likely to be right up there with the best of the best at the end of 2015.
If you have missed it so far, find out more here: http://grandtourmusic.org/
So, the new Toto album (XIV) is pretty darn great. It has an epic closing prog track, “Great Expectations,” that rocks your socks off and pays tribute to the glories of prog. “Chinatown” also has mad prog spirit to it as well. As for the rest, I am still warming to some of the other tracks, but my initial standout favorites among the remainder are “Orphan” and “The Little Things” and “Fortune.”
I was pleased to discover Toto is touring together with Yes this summer. It will be great to see Yes again, and also to see Toto play their most stellar track, “Great Expectations,” live. And I’ve always had a soft spot for “Hold the Line” and “Rosanna” as well…
Seeing the little girls in their Easter dresses, witnessing the arrival of the first flowers, and feeling the cool pine air coming off of the Rockies, I couldn’t help but think of this glorious song from almost a year ago. Ave, Tin Spirits!
A new version of Steve Hackett’s classic track Spectral Mornings has been recorded and will be released as an EP on download and CD on April 27th. The release is the brainchild of Rob Reed who wanted to re-imagine the instrumental track, with its beautiful melody, as a song. Rob asked Big Big Train’s David Longdon to write the words for the new version.
Spectral Mornings 2015 features guitars by Steve Hackett, vocals by David and Christina Booth, drums by BBT’s Nick D’Virgilio, keyboards by Rob Reed and Nick Beggs on bass.
All profits from Spectral Mornings will go to the Parkinson’s Society UK.
The EP includes four different versions of Spectral Mornings and audio previews can be heard at iTunes.
The CD version can be purchased at Cherry Red, Burning Shed, or Amazon.
The download version can be purchased at iTunes or Amazon.
NEW BIG BIG TRAIN EP
A new BBT EP featuring three new songs (two of which will be exclusive to the EP) will be released on June 1st ahead of the band’s three sold out shows in London in August.
For any of our readers in the UK, particularly in the north, this is something that I’ve been working on for a while now, and it’s finally coming to fruition. Ever since we hosted Jon Gomm in our church four years ago, I’ve been wanting to arrange some more gigs, and now it’s happened! I hope as many of you as possible will be able to share in this event: it promises to be a blinder! Tickets will go on sale after 13th April – £8 in advance, £10 on the door.
Progarchy 