Progarchy is happy to host our very first contest EVER, courtesy of the Mighty Matt Stevens, Anglo-Saxon demigod of guitar and all things guitar-related.
And, the prize?–2 tickets to the SLIGHT RETURN of the “Stabbing A Dead Horse, February 2, 2014, Camden Barfly.
Featuring Knifeworld, The Fierce & The Dead and Trojan Horse.
Knifeworld: A unique London psychedelic band at the forefront of the new UK progressive movement including members of Gong, Cardiacs, Guapo and Chrome Hoof.
Fierce And The Dead: “…post-hardcore bass tone; pulsing motorik drums; chiming, interlocking guitars somewhere between Afrobeat and Robert Fripp (and) shockingly brutal bursts of math-metal” Rock-A-Rolla Magazine
Trojan Horse: “THE FUTURE OF PROG WITH NOT A CAPE OR MELLOTRON IN SIGHT”
Jerry Ewing’s PROG has a nice teaser about the forthcoming prog festival, Celeb8.3. For our British and European readers especially. The rest of us get to joy for you and sorrow for us!
Incredible lineup: Andy Tillison’s The Tangent, Robin Armstrong’s Cosmograf, Matt Stevens’ The Fierce and the Dead, and Stu Nicholson’s Galahad. Sheesh, like “old home week” at college. Ok, feeling nothing but joy for my prog friends on the other side of the Atlantic, nothing but joy. . . .
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 88,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 4 days for that many people to see it.
The opening few moments of Kaleidoscope transition perfectly from the band’s previous outing, The Whirlwind. The atmospherics and sound effects cause the listener to imagine the Transatlantic blimp/starship landing in a Close Encounters sort of way.
The band, it seems, readily survived the whirlwind, and they’ve come back to tell us about their adventures.
Despite the opening few moments of transition (over six minutes, actually) from the last album, Kaleidoscope has far more in common, in terms of structure and themes, with SMPT:e and Bridge Across Forever than it does with their 2009 masterpiece. It’s eclectic, to be sure, but . . .
. . . this is pure and glorious Transatlantic in every way.
And, what can one say about Transatlantic that hasn’t been said? These four guys not only embody traditional symphonic prog in their music, they live it and promote it and love it and cause lots of other folks to feel the same. A Transatlantic album is never just another offering, it’s always a moment in prog history.
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Cohesive Community or Autonomous Individuals?
Yet, for me, it’s hard to think of Transatlantic as a band as much as I think of them as four friends, getting together to jam next to each other. Big Big Train, for example, always sounds like a group of brilliant individuals who have agreed to build an album while working firmly as a cohesive unit, a community without bounds. TA, though, sounds like four very separate individuals who want to play next to and around one another. It’s even a blast listening to TA albums, thinking, oh that’s Neal’s part, that’s Roine’s, that Mike’s, or that’s Pete’s.
Write that Mystery Board. . . let the deal go down.
One picture in the accompanying booklet even mysteriously shows a white board with the parts of each member. Were I still sixteen, I would spend hours trying to decipher the meaning of it all in some gnostic fashion. Sadly, that was 30 years ago, and I have no such time, though the desire remains.
While thinking of modern prog groups, BBT reminds me much more of 1973 Genesis, while TA reminds me of 1971 Yes. Not that either is retro, as they both are their own and no one else’s, of course.
Or, to put it in military terms, BBT is an Anglo-American Marine unit and TA is a group of late medieval Berserkers, ready to challenge the enemy through individual honor. To take this a bit further, Andy Tillison of The Tangent would be leading a cavalry charge uphill.
Ok, enough comparisons, but even the title of the new TA album is revealing, as a series of overlapping, reflecting images. Appropriately, each song title deals with a color or a type of light.
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A Beautifully-Fractured Whole
When the video of “Shine” appeared online, a number of proggers on the internet loved the song, of course (who doesn’t love TA?), but worried about the direction of Transatlantic, wondering if the whole album would have such a praise and worship feel. Fear not! As a song, Shine, seems like nothing else on the album. Except, perhaps, for Neal’s one solo contribution and paean to hope, “Beyond the Sun.” The latter, though, bleeds directly into the 32-minutes finale, “Kaleidoscope,” and serves as an effective prologue.
The first song, “Into the Blue,” doesn’t really pick up until several minutes into the song and past the atmospherics, the transition from The Whirlwind. At 25 minutes, this is an adventure. Rather than it building and building, it builds, falls, and builds again several times. At moments, it sounds like pure TA, at other times, it sounds very much like a sequel to TFK’s Desolation Rose. Even the creepy, ominous voice that appeared on TFK’s “Bavarian Skies” and “White Tuxedos” makes a cameo here on “Into the Blue.” Very welcome, though, is the cameo vocals of Daniel Gildenloew. Of all of the songs on the album, this is by far the most religious, lyrically, especially the references to St. Paul’s writings (Galatians and Romans). The religion never becomes blatant, though, and it will probably seem merely a Jon Anderson-like love of the Cosmos for most listeners.
Everyone who loves TA has already had a chance to hear “Shine,” so I won’t go into details here, except to state that it 1) fits the albums; and 2) has a sitar part at the beginning I didn’t catch in the video.
My favorite track, by far, is “Black as the Sky.” Every member of TA is in top form, but especially good are Roine’s vocals and the rhythm and interplay of Mike and Pete. Phew. Amazing. I hope they start off the concert with this. Talk about a rocking intro, one sure to enliven the entire crowd immediately. The song, though, did make me a little sad. If this were still 1982, this song would absolutely dominate album rock radio in America, and TA would be one of the best selling artists and bands in music.
The fourth track, “Beyond the Sun,” the only song credited to a single member of TA, Neal, is best described as something Anderson and Wakeman could have written around 1989. Neal’s voice, of course, sounds absolutely nothing like Anderson’s, but this track is as ABWH as it gets.
As mentioned earlier, it blends perfectly into the final track, the grand epic, Kaleidoscope. Pure TA. As Mike said in one concert, “nothing but epics.” This is epic symphonic prog, to be sure, and it ends the album as well as “Into the Blue” opened it. The difference is that the lyrics of this song are as psychological as the lyrics of the opening are religious. Ultimately, this song deals with accepting the pains of the world and making the most of them. The interplay of Neal’s and Roine’s vocals is especially good, and it’s rather jaw dropping when Roine’s voice, in the third movement of the song, sings “And so the king of karma lost his only son.” It’s one of those just perfect moments that we proggers so often crave.
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Covered and Uncovered
The bonus cd has 8 additional tracks all covers, featuring music from Yes, Elton John, the Small Faces, King Crimson, the Moody Blues, and several others. Clearly, Morse and Portnoy love covering their favorite tracks as so many of their albums attest. Generally, as is usual with Morse and Portnoy, the covers are not reimaginings of old songs (think of Glass Hammer’s reimagining of “South Side of the Sky”), but truly straight-forward covers of each. To my mind, the best covers on disk two are ELO’s “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” and “Tin Soldier” by the Small Faces.
The third disk, a DVD, has the Shine video and two vignettes. I only received Kaleidoscope, Saturday afternoon, so I’ve not had the chance to watch these yet. My apologies! I will, and I’ll either post something separately or add to this review.
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Summa
Admittedly, I’m at a point, where there’s nothing from Stolt, Morse, or TA that I won’t buy, devour, and cherish. So, my view is probably not as objective as it could be. I can state this, though: this is a work of beauty, a work of four musical warriors taking on the music scene and doing so with integrity, class, and majesty.
Kaleidoscope is a more than worthy follow-up to The Whirlwind, contains some truly stunning moments, and returns us, at least in form, to the best of TA before the six-year long hiatus. Very highly recommended.
Really nice to see PROG magazine and editor Jerry Ewing giving Glass Hammer their just due! Thank you, PROG.
Jon Davison, who also fronts Yes, has laid down vocal tracks alongside returned live singer Carl Groves and former member Susie Bogdanowicz. Guest musicians include Rob Reed of Magenta, David Ragsdale of Kansas and Randy Jackson of Zebra.
And the album marks Glass Hammer’s first-ever collaboration with an outside lyricist in the track Crowbone, penned by British historical fiction novelist Robert Low.
Babb tells Prog: “We turned a corner last year when Carl rejoined to fill in for Jon, who was touring with what we call ‘the other band.’ We knew it wasn’t a good thing to have Carl only front us on stage, but we’d always said how much we would love to have him in the studio, as well as Susie – so, back she came as well In our minds, they’d never really left.
Please forgive this somewhat strange interruption here in the flow of progarchy. But, I have to express this. It’s not a review, just an expression of love.
I’ve only been listening to Anathema since 2008. In the big scheme of things, I’m an Anathema newbie, and I never knew about them when they were a death-metal band. I’ve still not explored that side of the band, and I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t understand it or what they were trying to accomplish with their early albums.
I can state with certainty, however, that I believe that every thing they’ve recorded over the last 11 years is of the highest excellence and integrity. I will admit, I wasn’t as keen on Weather Systems as I was We’re Here Because We’re Here. To me, the 2011 album is an example of a perfect album, or as perfect as things can get in this world. When I hear Anathema, I think of Rush meeting Marillion, of Arvo Peart meeting U2 (Unforgettable Fire period). We’re Here Because We’re Here hit everything just perfectly, and it did so with intensity and purpose (two of my favorite words). I’m also not a fan, generally, of music videos for single songs, but the video for “Dreaming Light” hit me very hard. It captured mystery, tragedy, and innocence so . . . well, perfectly. My oldest daughter, Gretchen, and I watched it over and over when it came out. We made up stories about it, and it became a very important part of our relationship. We’re naturally very close, but this only made us closer. It gave us a way to talk about war, abuse, and other horrific issues that must be confronted. But, of course, the video also embraces hope. Perhaps hope pervades every aspect of the song, frankly.
Weather Systems (2012), as I judged it, succeeded just as well, and. in some ways, better, until Track No. 9. Then, it all fell apart for me, really changing the complexion of the entire work of art and, to some extent, of the band. I certainly have nothing against poetry or spoken word, but, from my perspective, “Internal Landscapes” just failed. I didn’t find the story compelling, and I thought the voice of the narrator (an American, I presume, or at least a North American) mediocre. Maybe I’m just close-minded, but this really affected me. I still played the album around the house and on our very long car trips, but I grimaced every time “Internal Landscapes” came on. When PROG called Weather Systems the best album of 2012, I was just stunned. Big Big Train had earned that one!
Last week, however, Gretchen started singing a song repeatedly, and I recognized that I recognized it, but I couldn’t quite place it. She didn’t have the lyrics correct, but had interpreted them as well as she possibly could have, given that I have the CD in my office, and she’s only heard the album intermittently. After about 10 tries with different groups, she explained again, “No, daddy, it’s a back and forth, a man and a woman, and they’re in love but they’re separated.” It hit me that it had to be Anathema. I put on Untouchable, Parts I and II, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, that was definitely it.
I’d already heard the soundtrack of the UNIVERSAL concert, and I enjoyed it. Hoping to encourage Gretchen, I ordered the concert video. It arrived yesterday. Let me express my view of this concert in the most succinct way I can: Wow. Just wow. I love concert DVDs, and I have quite a few of them. This, however, has to rank up near the top. It has reaffirmed everything I loved about this band, but didn’t quite understand. I’m still not a fan of “Internal Landscapes,” but it doesn’t matter. This is reality. This is myth. This is beauty. This is intensity. This is integrity. This is glory. This is music.
Once again, everything is simply perfect. The aggressiveness, the playfulness, the seriousness, the artistry, the cinematography, the personality. Everything. In. Its. Right. Place.
Thank you. Just, thank you. And, my beautiful and wondrous daughter, Gretchen, thanks you as well.
Tom Woods is one of the foremost political philosophers and commentators in the United States today. He’s also a proud progger.
I had the great privilege of speaking with one of America’s foremost political commentators yesterday, Tom Woods, about progressive rock. It turns out that Tom is a huge progger. I shouldn’t be surprised. I think we’re both the younger brothers of Neil Peart. We really had a field day talking about CLOSE TO THE EDGE, SELLING ENGLAND BY THE POUND, THICK AS A BRICK, PASSION PLAY, IN ABSENTIA, and THE FINAL CUT.
We talked “third wave prog,” too.
Tom was especially interested in the founding and purpose of progarchy. And, for what it’s worth, Tom is as smart and insightful as he is kind. A true gentleman. Here’s a link to our show yesterday. Enjoy.
Progarchy 