It’s been a very long time since we’ve heard new music from Alex Lifeson. Apart from Alex’s guest appearances on other albums, it’s been a decade since Rush’s masterpiece, Clockwork Angels. Lifeson’s new band, Envy of None, sounds nothing like Rush, but this track off their upcoming album is excellent nonetheless.
After listening to the song, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Envy of None are signed to Kscope. They have an atmospheric and industrial edge to them that Kscope is known for. Hopefully the rest of the album will be just as good.
The ever-fascinating and brilliant Giancarlo Erra just released the new video on social media. This from Erra:
I’ve never been so nervous and excited about a new Nosound album, probably not even for the first one!
During the last few years a deep changing process happened, with my voice and my music and everything around my career. I somehow started seeing much more clearly who I am and where to go, ‘allowing myself’ to do so.
This album is the closest I’ve ever been to my own musical vision, and Don’t You Dare is one of the outstanding tracks for me, brilliantly interpreted in the full video by Manuel Lobmaier.
Our last glimpse of real beauty–NAO’s compilation album.
Sam Healy–while complying with Big Euro Brother laws, regulations, and microintrusions–offered a wonderful teaser/trailer for the forthcoming North Atlantic Oscillation album, coming sometime this year.
Granted, it’s only a full-eighteen seconds worth, but it’s eighteen more seconds then we had before. . .
To be sure, every release from the Norwegian art rockers extraordinaire, Gazpacho, is not just another moment in a progger’s life, but an actual event—filled with meaning and significance, marked by the awareness and heighten-ness of all five senses.
For those of us in the United States, we wait that extra week for the package from Burning Shed to arrive. Then, we carefully remove the rectangular sticker from Kscope (this one, Kscope607) and, then, the cellophane. I have the strange habit of collecting every one of these cellophane stickers, placing each within the front or back cover of whatever book I’m reading at the time. Today, when the mail came, I was re-reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Book of Lost Tales, Part I. Hence, the Kscope607 sticker sits nicely behind the front cover.
Opening the booklet releases a smell every bit as satisfying as that of a brand new car. It’s a bit sweet and a bit pulpy. And, then, we dive into the pictures and, most importantly, the lyrics.
The only disappointing thing about a Gazpacho release is knowing that the next one is most likely at least two years out. Real art takes time, especially in the northern parts of the world. I’ve now gone through this ritual exactly 13 times (counting studio, live, and re-releases) since I first purchased NIGHT in 2007. It’s always healthy, and it’s always inspiring. As much a release as it is an inspiration.
Porcupine Tree, ARRIVING SOMEWHERE. . . (Kscope, 2018). 2 CD/1 Blu-ray package. A re-release of the 2007 title on DVD.
Though it originally came out over a decade ago, Porcupine Tree’s ARRIVING SOMEWHERE . . .–its live show from Chicago, October 11-12, 2005–has just been re-released by Kscope in a very nice 2 cd/1 blu-ray book.
When it first came out on DVD in 2007, I had purchased it immediately. Of all the concerts I own on varous forms of video, ARRIVING SOMEWHERE . . . has been in constant play, rivaling only Rush’s TIME MACHINE and Talk Talk’s LIVE IN MONTREUX for most played.
Now, having it on CD and blu-ray reminds me yet again how incredible Porcupine Tree was in the first decade of this millenium. Admittedly, between 2001 and 2010, I was rather obsessed with the band. To me–all pre-2009 and, thus, pre-UNDERFALL YARD–no other band had reached as far and as perceptively as had Porcupine Tree. The band seemed the perfect fusion of prog, pop, and psychedelia–in its music as well as in its lyrics.
Great news today from Burning Shed. The forthcoming album from Gazpacho: SOYUZ is now available for pre-order.
I didn’t realize this would be coming so soon. I’m in the middle of a retrospective of all of Gazpacho’s albums. This, of course, will be coming to a progarchy website near you.
There’s not enough space in the world to praise the efforts and successes of Giancarlo Erra. If you hit the tag “Nosound” on this post, you’ll see what I mean. We write about Erra a lot, as he never is uninteresting.
The new direction of Nosound sounds wonderful (as described in his post, below), and I’m more than eager to see where Erra takes the band.
Over the last several years, he has progressed from a rather Floydian vision to a rather Mark Hollis-ian vision of music. I’m guessing–but I do not know–that he’s moving toward an even more minimalist vision, perhaps something akin to Arvo Part.
Listening to this album is more of an affair than an adventure.
Ten year ago this fall, the brilliant Giancarlo Erra was in the studios writing, recording, and mixing what would become his magnum opus, LIGHTDARK, one of the first releases from the then-brand new KScope Records. Nothing Erra writes and records is unimportant, of course, but nothing he has done has quite matched the flawless LIGHTDARK, in its composition, its harmonies, its reach, and its flow. Never could this be wallpaper music. It is music that demands full immersion. As with T.S Eliot’s Four Quartets, Erra’s LIGHTDARK demands that we the listener stand within the art itself, seeing the world form the perspective of the art. As such, Erra is a genius, bringing us fully into his music.
As with some of the best composers of the past century, Erra eschews all forms of bombast as he whispers longingly toward the true, the good, and the beautiful. He is not afraid of silence, knowing that the notes that surround silence, do so affectionately and even passionately.
Imagine Mark Hollis writing music for Pink Floyd while serving as the backup band to Arvo Part, and you might get close to the genius and talent of Giancarlo Erra.
Progarchy 