Beardfish: Destined Solitaire…. a brief review

On By iangreatorexIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Destined Solitude

Beardfish are another of the wave of Scandinavian bands to grace us with their music in the last decade or so. Heralding from Sweden they have been around since 2001.

I had heard of the band but never listened to their music. Various people had recommended their latest album ‘The Void’ but I first got hold of one of their earlier albums ‘Destined Solitaire’, released in 2009.

What can I say other than, for me, this has the ‘Wow’ Factor.

Perusing Wikipedia (dangerous I know), they are likened to Genesis and Yes…..mmmmm, not so sure about that………..yes, they are labelled as ‘Prog’ but they are light years away from these Classic Prog bands.  Avant-garde certainly, their imaginations run riot through this album. To me the music conjures up a meeting between Frank Zappa and The Marx Brothers, it’s that zany and madcap. There are an incredible amount of different influences prevalent, from prog through jazz with even some ‘growling’ metal. They are refreshingly unique in a genre where that’s very difficult to be.

These Swedish guys are certainly talented and incredibly inventive. They are the spawn of the Mothers of Invention!

This album is complex and long but rewards perseverance. It took me three listens just to begin to appreciate it and I’m sure that with repeat listening more of its treasures will be revealed.

If you like eccentric,  surreal 70s style music (with a lot of Hammond organ),  I heartily recommended this album.

My journey has just started with this unusual band. Their latest album is winging its way through the Christmas post.  I wait with anticipation.

Coralspin Interview

On By bradbirzerIn Uncategorized2 Comments

One of my favorite CDs to make an appearance this year comes from a band with a big Trevor Rabin or Trevor Horn kind of feel to it: Coralspin’s Honey and Lava.  Very graciously, band leader Blake McQueen allowed me to take up his valuable time to interview him.  This is the first of what I hope will be many such interviews at Progarchy.  Here’s my review of Honey and Lava.

On to the interview.

1350332246_Coralspin_web1-Oct2012Progarchy: Blake, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.  I’m sure you’re incredibly busy.  So, again, thank you.  As you know, I’m a huge fan of your first CD, and I think while you guys have already gotten a lot of notice, there’s much, much more to come.  Would you mind telling our readers a bit about yourself–especially our North and Latin American readers who aren’t as familiar with the U.K. prog scene. 

Blake: We come from the melodic, more song-orientated end of the prog spectrum. Ellie, the singer and keyboardist and myself, also a keyboard player, are classically trained. Ellie is also a classically-trained oboeist, although we haven’t yet put that to use! Jake had a Dad who liked to play jazz piano, and as a result Jake can play jazz piano pretty well himself, but he taught himself guitar as his main instrument. Both the guys in our new rhythm section can play piano as well, so we are an all-piano-playing band!

Speaking of the new rhythm section, this is something we want to announce, we’re very excited about it. We’ve got Mick Wilson on bass, and Ed Gorrod on drums, they’ve both joined us on a ‘session’ basis for gigging next year and for the recording of the second album. They are absolutely awesome players and the band sounds phenomenal. Mick comes from an instrumental prog band who are friends of ours called Red Bazar, we have gigged with them previously. Ed’s also in a prog band called Stuntmen.

Prog magazine recently described as like ‘Brian May and Rick Wakeman’s prog child’, which is not a bad description, although on Honey and Lava I perhaps sound more like Tony Banks than Rick Wakeman as I don’t do many whizzy keyboard bits (more of that on the next album, though).

Continue reading “Coralspin Interview” →

Flying Colors (Best of 2012 — Part 4)

On By Time LordIn 20122 Comments

Flying Colors

Another one of the albums in my Top Ten for 2012 is Flying Colors.

The sad fact is that so many “supergroup” collaborations end up being less than the sum of their parts.

But this collaboration is a glorious exception. Everything has gone right here.

Neal Morse (and Mike Portnoy) teaming up with Steve Morse (and Dave LaRue)?

Continue reading “Flying Colors (Best of 2012 — Part 4)” →

Now THAT’S a Prog Guitar!

On By Thaddeus WertIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

In 1985, my wife and I had the privilege of seeing Michael Hedges live. I still can’t believe one man alone on stage could produce so much music. Aerial Boundaries is one of those genre-transcending albums that is an immediate classic and redefines the possibilities of what can be done on a guitar . Yesterday, December 2, was the 15th anniversary of his passing. What a terrible loss for us all when he was killed in an automobile accident in California. Here’s a video of him playing “Because It’s There” on a “harp-guitar” (the music begins at 2:30 if you want to skip the intro):

Genesis Revisited II/Kompendium: Looking Forwards and Backwards

On By bradbirzerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

By Alison Henderson

Two albums have been released in the past month, which have presented an interesting fork in the prog road, so far as I am concerned. They have a great deal in common in terms of where their roots lie and the musicians which appear collectively on both. And both may succeed in their own ways in bringing more listeners into the proverbial prog fold.

 

Genesis Revisited II

hckttGenesis Revisited II is Steve Hackett’s continuing project to rearrange and revitalise some of the vast Genesis canon, a task he started 16 years ago with the first volume, Watcher of the Skies. As currently one of the busiest and most sought after prog artists in the business, this has been a huge undertaking for him. The cast of musicians he has picked this time reflects the crème de la crème of prog with his trusty inner circle of Nick Beggs, Lee Pomeroy, Roger King, Gary O’Toole, Amanda Lehmann, Rob Townsend, Phil Mulford along with special guests that include Steven Wilson, Francis Dunnery, Nik Kershaw, Mikael Åkerfeldt, Steve Rothery, Nad Sylvan, Jakko Jakszyk, Neal Morse and Roine Stolt plus John Wetton, Nick Magnus and his brother John Hackett who appeared on volume one.

Continue reading “Genesis Revisited II/Kompendium: Looking Forwards and Backwards” →

Genesis Revisited II

On By Dr NickIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Reinterpreting the much-loved classics of one of the seminal 70s prog bands is a sensitive business, even if you are one of those responsible for creating said classics in the first place. Tinker too much and you risk losing the essence of what made those classic songs so good; change too little and people will question the point of the exercise.

The former criticism was levelled at Steve Hackett in some quarters when he released the first of his Genesis retrospectives, back in 1998. Fourteen years on, he charts a safer and more successful course with this follow-up album, opting for a more subtle treatment of seventeen Genesis songs across the 2 hours 23 minutes of a double CD. He also find space to revisit four songs from his lengthy solo career.

Continue reading “Genesis Revisited II” →

The Extravagant Shadows – David Gatten

On By Craig BreadenIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

ImageI had the fortune last evening, unbelievably as part of my job, to see what is only the third screening of David Gatten’s new digital movie, The Extravagant Shadows.  Gatten, who typically works in film, introduced his work and apologized in advance for its length.  At three hours, the movie is a departure for the filmmaker, who typically works in short films.  But “I play for keeps,” he said, “I put all my marbles in the circle.” I admire that.

Image
While I am unfamiliar with Gatten’s other films, so can’t bring to it the kind of context I would like, I was struck by its musicality and thought it appropriate I write about it on the pages of Progarchy.  It is a layered work, composed but also improvisatory, rhythmic and surprising.  And, while it is difficult to describe in terms of story or narrative, its physicality is fairly simple:  A song by Merrilee Rush — whose songs play at intervals through the movie, including her 1968 hit “Angel of the Morning” — plays over a blank screen, and as it fades out the frame is filled by a shelf of perhaps 10 or 11 books, their colorful spines revealing early 20th century editions of works by James, Dickens, Dumas, and others.  Into this static shot slides a glass panel, and we briefly see Gatten and the DSLR he used to shoot the movie.  The artist, and his tools, are present in this film, which subsequently became even more apparent, as a hand and a brush loaded with paint enters the frame, and proceeds to paint the panel.  Over the course of 175 minutes this panel is painted and repainted, bright and muted colors blending, contrasting, drying and cracking, revealing layers underneath.  Between new coats being applied text appears and disappears on the screen, stories and descriptions emerging, disappearing, running into one another, suggesting to me the magic realism of Borges or Pynchon.

Continue reading “The Extravagant Shadows – David Gatten” →

Music Sacra: James MacMillan and his music for our times

On By Kevin McCormickIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

In September 2010, when Pope Benedict made his historic and transformative visit to the United Kingdom, his first stop was Glasgow, Scotland. There, as he inaugurated the first-ever official state visit by the pope to the UK, he celebrated the opening Mass to the sounds of newly commissioned liturgical music. The music was thoughtful, joyful, singable, yet richly musical. It was the premiere of a work by a man well known in the contemporary classical music community but less known to those outside it: Scottish composer James MacMillan… continue

Spock’s Beard: The 11th Album

On By Dr NickIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Preorders are now open at Indiegogo for the 11th studio album by Spock’s Beard, entitled Brief Nocturnes and Dreamless Sleep.

The album is available as a digital download or physical CD, with various optional perks such as band signatures, T-shirts, bandanas, photos, etc.

A March 2013 release is predicted.

Momentum (Best of 2012 — Part 3)

On By Time LordIn 20121 Comment

Momentum

Another one of the albums in my Top Ten for 2012 is Neal Morse’s Momentum.

Brad Birzer appends a useful album overview to the end of his epic CWR review of Neal Morse’s career:

Not a concept in the way several of his other albums are, Momentum most resembles his penultimate album with Spock’s Beard, “V.” As with its 2000 counterpart, Momentum has six songs. The first five are eight minutes or less long, with the last song being a 34-minute epic.

With skill and passion, Morse’s new album considers [in “Momentum”:] the pace of modernity and our reactions to it, [in “Thoughts Part 5”:] the necessity of appearing deep in conversation, [in “Smoke and Mirrors”:] how to weather deception in this world, [in “Weathering Sky”:] how one interprets his calling in the world, and [in “Freak”:] the way a powerful spiritual figure would be perceived should he arrive bodily in the present day (I’ll leave it for the reader to discover the identity of the protagonist in the track, “Freak,” as Morse deftly leaves the identity a mystery until the very end of the song) in his shorter tunes.

The epic is, well, epic. As the title, “World without End,” suggests, the thirty-four minutes explore the motivations of a person, and especially whether he or she is trying to shape the ephemeral or the permanent and timeless.

I have to admit that one of my favorite moments on the disc is when the title track glides on into the killer guitar solo that is expertly framed by an ecstatically swirling keyboard flight path:

Go listen to 3:10—4:10 on the album track…

Indeed, that is definitely one of the best minutes of prog we have heard all year.

(Note: 2:49—3:18 in the video below has the killer guitar solo, but omits the awesome keyboard/guitar dogfight. But I am not complaining: I love that I heard the Single Edit version first by watching it as a sneak peek on YouTube; and then, even though I had already fallen in love with the song, when I downloaded the album itself, I got the extra thrill of hearing the suddenly-new keyboard/guitar dogfight now added to the end! It was a unique experience unparalleled by any previous prog preview encounter!)

Continue reading “Momentum (Best of 2012 — Part 3)” →