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Prog|Issue 105Ed’s LetterNEXT ISSUE ON FEB 4 SALEHello and welcome to issue 105 of Prog Magazine. I know this reaches you between Xmas and the New Year, but the last issue was out in November and it just seemed too early to share our Xmas card with you. Here it is for your enjoyment now. Thanks once again to John Langton for his wonderful workLast issue we bade farewell to Deputy Editor Hannah. This issue I am delighted to introduce you to her replacement, Natasha Scharf. Natasha’s been with Prog since our inception back in 2009 and has been our News Editor for the past five years. She beat off very strong competition to land the job and I’m really looking forward to taking the magazine forward into a new decade with…2 min
Prog|Issue 105SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS ANNOUNCE 2020 TOURNick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets are hitting the road again in April and May for what will be their biggest tour of the British Isles yet. Along with 14 dates across England, they’ll be taking in Scotland, Ireland and Wales as well, before heading out to mainland Europe.Almost 20 years ago to the day, Prog’s Editor Jerry Ewing – then a contributing editor at Classic Rock – talked to Nick Mason about Pink Floyd in an interview to celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Wall. He said, “This is the second time a major member has left and you’ve gone on to even greater things.” Mason replied, laughing, “Oh, as soon as I get rid of Dave [Gilmour], such great plans.” Few could have predicted that two decades later that…4 min
Prog|Issue 105HACKETT RETURNS FOR SECONDS OUT LIVE SHOWSSteve Hackett’s Genesis Revisited project reaches an end of sorts when he recreates 1977’s double live album Seconds Out next winter.He left after the original tour, but, still in love with the music, will revive the full LP with additional material when he tours the UK in November and December 2020.“It’s a very personal thing,” Hackett tells Prog of Genesis Revisited, which he started in 1996. It’s informed his solo work too, as he argues: “Artists continually have to keep giving themselves pep talks, no matter whether you’ve done incredibly well or you’ve struggled away for years and years. I might change the delivery, but I’m keeping the intention of the music.”The tour hits many venues Genesis played in ’76, which Hackett says is a fluke of scheduling. “But the…1 min
Prog|Issue 105TOUNDRA OPEN DR CALIGARI’S CABINETToundra mark the centenary of early gothic horror movie Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligari by releasing their soundtrack album of the same name on February 28 via InsideOut. Acclaimed for being a psychological and political drama, the 1920 silent film explores what happens when good people begin accepting instructions from a psychopathic leader. The Spanish instrumentalists first set their music against the screenplay last year. “For all our 12 years we’ve wanted to do a soundtrack,” guitarist and pianist Esteban Girón tells Prog. “We had the opportunity of doing it live in a big cinema in Madrid, our home city. “We wanted to take the opportunity to record it and spread the message. It’s not just music, it’s not just an album from Toundra. It’s something different – an important…1 min
Prog|Issue 105HACKETT RETURNS FOR SECONDS OUT LIVE SHOWSSteve Hackett’s Genesis Revisited project reaches an end of sorts when he recreates 1977’s double live album Seconds Out next winter. He left after the original tour, but, still in love with the music, will revive the full LP with additional material when he tours the UK in November and December 2020. “It’s a very personal thing,” Hackett tells Prog of Genesis Revisited, which he started in 1996. It’s informed his solo work too, as he argues: “Artists continually have to keep giving themselves pep talks, no matter whether you’ve done incredibly well or you’ve struggled away for years and years. I might change the delivery, but I’m keeping the intention of the music.” The tour hits many venues Genesis played in ’76, which Hackett says is a fluke of…1 min
Prog|Issue 105VIRGIL’S TALES OF RUIN RELEASEDVirgil Donati releases his new album, Ruination, in Europe on February 7. “I’ve gone for a huge melting pot of musical ideas,” he reveals. “I guess you could call the style progressive fusion. One thing I did decide was to introduce vocals for the first time on a solo album. I got Irwin Thomas, who also plays guitar, to do them, and the way he approached the challenge was to use his voice as another instrument.” Four of the album’s 11 songs have vocals, and first came out outside Europe in autumn 2019. So why did the virtuoso drummer, who’s also worked with Allan Holdsworth and Steve Vai, choose to delay the album’s European release? “I put out Ruination in America [first] because I was touring there at the time,…1 min
Prog|Issue 105GOLDEN YEARS EXPLORED IN NEW BOOK ON PROG’S HISTORYMore than 100 interviews with some of the biggest names in prog from the late 60s and 70s have formed the basis of a new book, published by Omnibus Press on February 27.A New Day Yesterday, written by Prog’s Mike Barnes, includes interviews with Keith Emerson, Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford and Annie Haslam, plus previously unseen content.“There’s so much received wisdom today about 70s prog that I wanted to get the real story of the decade,” says the author. “I’ve also added recollections from fans and I have written chapters on politics, youth fashion and tribalism, and attitudes to drugs and sex in the 70s to give a cultural context to the story.”Weighing in at 608 pages, the paperback is packed with archive and contemporary material. Its title is taken…1 min
Prog|Issue 105HARK, THE HERALD KEYBOARDSChristmas is a time of indulgence, which is why every day of the year is Christmas for me. But I do try and get things into proportion as the end of the year comes in to view. New Year is a special time when I can sit back and reminisce about all the things that have happened in the previous 12 months. Then, as I slip slowly into total depression, I can cheer myself up by making New Year’s resolutions that, deep down, I know are impossible to keep.I found my previous year’s list a few days ago and it was interesting to note what a total waste of time it had been writing it in the first place. It read: Resolution one: As you are about to turn 70…2 min
Prog|Issue 105GOLDEN YEARS EXPLORED IN NEW BOOK ON PROG’S HISTORYMore than 100 interviews with some of the biggest names in prog from the late 60s and 70s have formed the basis of a new book, published by Omnibus Press on February 27. A New Day Yesterday, written by Prog’s Mike Barnes, includes interviews with Keith Emerson, Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford and Annie Haslam, plus previously unseen content. “There’s so much received wisdom today about 70s prog that I wanted to get the real story of the decade,” says the author. “I’ve also added recollections from fans and I have written chapters on politics, youth fashion and tribalism, and attitudes to drugs and sex in the 70s to give a cultural context to the story.” Weighing in at 608 pages, the paperback is packed with archive and contemporary material. Its…1 min
Prog|Issue 105HARK, THE HERALD KEYBOARDSChristmas is a time of indulgence, which is why every day of the year is Christmas for me. But I do try and get things into proportion as the end of the year comes in to view. New Year is a special time when I can sit back and reminisce about all the things that have happened in the previous 12 months. Then, as I slip slowly into total depression, I can cheer myself up by making New Year’s resolutions that, deep down, I know are impossible to keep. I found my previous year’s list a few days ago and it was interesting to note what a total waste of time it had been writing it in the first place. It read: Resolution one: As you are about to turn…2 min
Prog|Issue 105NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDSWhen he first emerged as a leading light of the post-punk underground in the early 80s, Nick Cave could hardly have seemed further removed from anything remotely related to progressive rock. As drug-munching frontman with The Birthday Party, he made spiky swamp rock with malevolent overtones, before forming his own band, The Bad Seeds, for 1984’s From Her To Eternity. From then on, The Bad Seeds began to provide Cave with an extraordinarily versatile and distinctive vehicle for his always literate and emotionally supercharged lyrics.Over the past 30-plus years, Cave and his band have recorded a huge catalogue of critically acclaimed and often wildly successful records, perennially hailed by the mainstream but never bland enough to become part of the furniture. Still, for Prog readers at least, genuine prog credentials…2 min
Prog|Issue 105ARPALEXIS GEORGOPOULOS, AKA Arp, has been making waves in the sound-art and electronic music scene in New York and beyond for well over a decade. Unashamedly eclectic in his approach, his evolution as an artist operating initially within the airy textures of analogue synths of 2010’s The Soft Wave or the same year’s deeply textural acoustic-ambient collaborations with Slapp Happy’s Anthony Moore, have all marked him out as someone keen to explore different worlds and alternative directions. That wanderlust saw 2018’s Zebra embarking upon a more overtly jazzier area. “I don’t even know what ‘jazz’ means in a way,” he says, “I’ve always been most into people like Don Cherry, Alice Coltrane; people that are I suppose closer to the cosmic jazz side of things or what they used to…3 min
Prog|Issue 105NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDSWhen he first emerged as a leading light of the post-punk underground in the early 80s, Nick Cave could hardly have seemed further removed from anything remotely related to progressive rock. As drug-munching frontman with The Birthday Party, he made spiky swamp rock with malevolent overtones, before forming his own band, The Bad Seeds, for 1984’s From Her To Eternity. From then on, The Bad Seeds began to provide Cave with an extraordinarily versatile and distinctive vehicle for his always literate and emotionally supercharged lyrics. Over the past 30-plus years, Cave and his band have recorded a huge catalogue of critically acclaimed and often wildly successful records, perennially hailed by the mainstream but never bland enough to become part of the furniture. Still, for Prog readers at least, genuine prog…2 min
Prog|Issue 105IS PROG READY FOR 7.1?What appeals to me about surround sound is the immersive experience. It’s the three-dimensional nature of being right at the centre of the music. In the early 70s, various attempts were made to market quadraphonic recordings on eight-track cartridge and vinyl. As successful as some of those early mixes were, the problem emerged when it came to deliver them. Competing systems required the consumer to fork out serious money for unique playback alternatives to the basic record player or cassette deck. Like the audio equivalent of the war between VHS and Betamax, it’s only when one format emerges as the ‘winner’ that any commercial foothold and future can be determined. In the 70s, the fight for quad never happened, so why is it that, more than 40 years later, surround…2 min
Prog|Issue 105JAKUB ZYTECKI“I feel like I’m having a midlife crisis, so I wanted to make this record representative of this moment in my life.”“WHEN I WAS 12, I had a guitar teacher who gave me a video of John Petrucci playing two Dream Theater songs. I played it over and over again, and I practised like mad,” says Jakub Zytecki. “Then I started getting into Allan Holdsworth and Eric Johnson, and I’m now really interested in production.”The uplifting Nothing Lasts, Nothing’s Lost is Polish guitarist Zytecki’s second solo release, and it’s a world apart from the prog metal grooves on his debut, 2015’s Wishful Lotus Proof. The vibrant 11-track album takes its title from a quote by US psychonaut Terance McKenna, and works in influences from psych and jazz. “I was smoking…3 min
Prog|Issue 105FIELD MUSICIn January 2019, art rockers Field Music played a pair of shows at the Imperial War Museums in Manchester and London, performing as part of the IWM’s ‘Making A New World’ programme of events reflecting on the legacy of the First World War. Having specially written a suite of songs and instrumental pieces for the performance, brothers Peter and David Brewis realised that they had “accidentally made a new album”, and a concept album at that, with Making A New World covering such widely diverse topics as social housing, gender reassignment, the Dada art movement, Tiananmen Square and sanitary towels.How did the IWM commission come about?Peter: The guy who does our visual stuff had a friend at the Imperial War Museum, and she asked if she could get in touch…5 min
Prog|Issue 105One Of My TurnsThe Wall is arguably the most debated album in Pink Floyd’s canon. It splits opinion in the way, say, The Dark Side Of The Moon (universally loved) or The Final Cut (universally unloved) never could. But, love it or loathe it, The Wall is absolutely impossible to ignore. And, lest we forget, 40 years ago it gave Pink Floyd a Christmas No. 1 – now a feat impossible to think of from a band who at the time hadn’t released a single since 1968. At Christmas 1979, my group was top of the pops.Four decades on, Prog felt it was time to tell the story once again. Like the great tales of yore, it’s worth repeating, to learn of its absolute audacity, and how its mere 31 performances in four…25 min
Prog|Issue 105ComingBack To LifeAfter Roger Waters left Pink Floyd, David Gilmour and Nick Mason had wondered which direction to take the band. As we now know, they found a way, and it’s compiled and documented in the hefty new box set The Later Years 1987-2019.When Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late Storm Thorgerson, was looking through old files as he designed the artwork for it, he came across a photograph he’d taken in Iceland in the 70s, of two men in silhouette, studying a map. Eventually it was used as the cover image on a ‘sampler’ version of the box set.“It was originally an idea related to Animals,” Powell says of the photo, “but was never used, though I had always loved it. It had lain dormant ever since. I…6 min
Prog|Issue 105JONATHAN PETERS“When I was little, I lived in a village in Leicestershire, and I had a portable radio that went everywhere with me. I first heard Queen on the Radio 1 chart rundown, with Bohemian Rhapsody, aged five. I’d also tape the chart shows, and I remember a very specific one from 1978 that had Kate Bush, ELO and Sweet in it. It was just one chart, with all this amazing stuff in it. And everything I listened to then, I’m proud to say that I still do. “I started buying pop singles at 10, but soon was buying Queen. I got teased at school because they weren’t very cool. When The Works came out I started buying their back catalogue. I got to A Night At The Opera and I…6 min
Prog|Issue 105THE PROG READERS’ POLL 2019It’s that time again: last issue we revealed to you the Prog Critics’ Choice of 2019 and in December you, the Prog readers, had your say. As always, it makes for some very interesting reading. Sometimes just releasing an album in the given year will propel you into the public consciousness and into the polls. Sometimes mobilising your fanbase through social media will do it. Others are simply just evergreens. I do enjoy going through the results and drawing my own conclusions. I’m sure you do, too. Thank you to everyone who voted, and congratulations to all our winners and everyone who features. Enjoy before we turn our attention to a new decade. Long live prog in 2020. BAND 1. BIG BIG TRAIN 2. OPETH 3. MARILLION 4. LEPROUS 5.…6 min
Prog|Issue 105Miracle Workers“We’re sounding great and it’s getting better and tighter by the gig. We’re in a good place.”Roine StoltMirkko DeMaio has been The Flower Kings’ drummer for more than a year, but he’s still a little in awe of the boss.“Roine’s a miracle,” says DeMaio. He’s the healthiest guy I’ve met in this business. I mean, he eats a lot, but it’s all healthy stuff. When he walks in he’s like a king. He’s a man who lives for his art, and everything he does is driven by passion. And he looks younger than any of us.”The enviably well-preserved Roine Stolt is 63. DeMaio is 35, and Zach Kamins (who replaced the Kings’ long-serving keyboard player Tomas Bodin) is just 32.“Roine’s so great to work with,” says Kamins. “He has so…7 min
Prog|Issue 105YOUR SHOUT!“Again a name I personally have never heard of, is Prog mag changing somehow and starting to veer away from the norms of prog music?”Steve Harrison“It’s very rare I say this, but who? I don’t know what point you’re trying to prove with these artists that are niche at the best.”Jason Richards“Wasn’t he in Touch, who played the very first Monsters Of Rock? I thought they were AOR?”Mike Veert“American Tears were a fantastic US pomp rock band. Vastly underrated in my opinion. If you like bands like Kansas, Saga, Starcastle and their ilk there’s lots here to get your teeth into!”Simon Arnold“Never heard of them.”Andy Morton“Umm… Who?”Joshua Creasey“Mark Mangold? Drive, She Said, right? They’re AOR, nothing to do with prog.”Alex Myers“Also led the late 70s band Touch. Liked that band…2 min
Prog|Issue 105Storm’s A Coming…Jethro Tull were given their name (that of an 18th-century agriculturist) in 1967 by Dave Robson, a booker at the Ellis-Wright agency, who dealt with the young band. If they had not been booked into the Marquee club soon after this christening, Ian Anderson, who didn’t particularly like the name, reckons that it would have been changed again. But as he was the group’s frontman, the writer of almost all of their material and the one who engaged most in the business side, he himself went on to become synonymous with the name, to the extent that some people actually referred to him as Jethro Tull. In the States in the mid-70s, this was even shortened by some to the both inappropriate and rather over-familiar ‘Jet’. Many had noted that…9 min
Prog|Issue 105Miracle Workers“We’re sounding great and it’s getting better and tighter by the gig. We’re in a good place.”Roine Stolt Mirkko DeMaio has been The Flower Kings’ drummer for more than a year, but he’s still a little in awe of the boss. “Roine’s a miracle,” says DeMaio. He’s the healthiest guy I’ve met in this business. I mean, he eats a lot, but it’s all healthy stuff. When he walks in he’s like a king. He’s a man who lives for his art, and everything he does is driven by passion. And he looks younger than any of us.” The enviably well-preserved Roine Stolt is 63. DeMaio is 35, and Zach Kamins (who replaced the Kings’ long-serving keyboard player Tomas Bodin) is just 32. “Roine’s so great to work with,” says…7 min
Prog|Issue 105New Spins SONS OF APOLLOEdited by Jo Kendall jo.kendall@futurenet.comMike Portnoy and Derek Sherinian’s supergroup follow up their 2017 debut Psychotic Symphony with… well, more of the same. The band toured fairly heavily off the first album, playing some 83 shows, so they’ve had some time to establish and build the chemistry between the five members: Billy Sheehan on bass, Bumblefoot on guitar and vocalist Jeff Scott Soto alongside Portnoy and Sherinian. But the band have yet to assert their own unique identity as a collective to the same extent that Flying Colors, another of Portnoy’s all-star projects, accomplished this year on their excellent third album.At the risk of stating the obvious, the main musical point of reference for Sons Of Apollo is Dream Theater, the band that first brought Sherinian and Portnoy together, and…36 min
Prog|Issue 105The Monastery Of Sound…June 2, 1969: prog rock hopefuls Mandrake Paddle Steamer squeezed onto the stage of a home counties ex-servicemen’s establishment and made history as the first band to play Friars Aylesbury, the legendary club currently celebrating its 50th anniversary year. Mandrake didn’t get beyond one single but Friars became a progressive rock stronghold as its unusually enthusiastic crowd embraced names such as King Crimson, Van der Graaf Generator and East Of Eden, all but adopted the early Genesis, encouraged Bowie to unveil Ziggy Stardust and ignited the ascension of Marillion. Flying by the seat of its pants from week to week, Friars survived through sheer musical passion, echoed by regulars prone to judge that week’s act by what limb-flailing reaction was sparked in ‘Leapers’ Corner’. John Peel liked it so much…11 min
Prog|Issue 105Digging DeepProg caught up with Kaprekar’s Constant bassist/lyricist Nick Jefferson and guitarist/principal composer Al Nicholson on Friday September 20. While the timing was entirely by chance, it turned out to be an auspicious day to be having our conversation, as it coincided with the official release date of the band’s second album, Depth Of Field. At a time when physical sales have been declining, to embark on the not inconsiderable challenge of writing material, corralling a team of busy musicians to record the music, and then release the results on CD into an uncertain and chronically overcrowded marketplace could be seen either as an act of heroic endeavour or hubristic folly. Jefferson and Nicholson, who’ve been friends and colleagues since the early 1970s, accept that in truth it’s probably a bit…7 min
Prog|Issue 105POST-ROCKFollowing a storming set at ArcTanGent this year, Norwegian two-piece Aiming For Enrike release their debut album, Music For Working Out (Pekula). It’s a restless blend of electronic post-rock in the Battles and Three Trapped Tigers mould, with elements of punk and dance and nods to mathcore. It doesn’t have the same visceral impact as their live show, but with foot-stompers like Hard Dance Brainia and riff-workouts like Infinity Rider there’s a great deal of variety on offer on this excellent album.Real Terms, rising from the ashes of Liverpudlian mathrock four-piece Vasco Da Gama, boast three uniquely talented musicians in the line-up. Together, the yearning vocals of John Crawford, sparse, skitter-stop guitar paying of Chris Lynn and virtuoso drumming of David Kelly make them currently the most exciting experimental rock…2 min
Prog|Issue 105In The RawOpening for a legendary prog band on tour is an opportunity that most bands could only dream of. But for Manchester duo The Blackheart Orchestra, they’ve had the honour of doing it twice. After supporting Hawkwind on their In Search Of Utopia – Infinity And Beyond tour in 2018, including a sold-out performance at the London Palladium, The Blackheart Orchestra’s Rick Pilkington and Chrissy Mostyn opened for the space rock legends’ UK tour again in November 2019, including a highly anticipated performance at London’s award-winning Royal Albert Hall. “During the tour, Dave [Brock] told a story about how in his younger years he used to be busking outside the Palladium, and years later he’s on stage there two nights in a row,” smiles Mostyn. “A year ago, we were asked…5 min
Prog|Issue 105New Spins SONS OF APOLLOEdited by Jo Kendall jo.kendall@futurenet.com Mike Portnoy and Derek Sherinian’s supergroup follow up their 2017 debut Psychotic Symphony with… well, more of the same. The band toured fairly heavily off the first album, playing some 83 shows, so they’ve had some time to establish and build the chemistry between the five members: Billy Sheehan on bass, Bumblefoot on guitar and vocalist Jeff Scott Soto alongside Portnoy and Sherinian. But the band have yet to assert their own unique identity as a collective to the same extent that Flying Colors, another of Portnoy’s all-star projects, accomplished this year on their excellent third album. At the risk of stating the obvious, the main musical point of reference for Sons Of Apollo is Dream Theater, the band that first brought Sherinian and Portnoy…35 min
Prog|Issue 105FRANK ZAPPABlow-by-blow account of a classic.Frank Zappa once wrote that failure is one of the things that “serious people” dread. He also observed that failure was “nothing to get upset about”.“Unparalleled access to Zappa’s creative processes.”While Hot Rats was conspicuous by its absence from the US charts 50 years ago, record-buying punters put it inside the UK’s Top 10. Lacking the trenchant parody or overt stoner japes that were very much a part of his previous releases, Hot Rats is free of that kind of cultural carbon dating. Recorded in the summer of 1969, it’s all about starting anew, an artistic statement that’s about reinvention and a steely purpose, coming off the back of Zappa’s divorce from his band The Mothers Of Invention. It also marks the break with the Verve…2 min
Prog|Issue 105IN CONTINUUMDave Kerzner’s interstellar epic comes to a terrific conclusion It has been less than a year since ex-Sound Of Contact keysmeister Dave Kerzner dropped his remarkable Acceleration Theory: Part One: AlienA. Its tale of interstellar love between earthling Kai (voiced by Bad Dreams’ Gabriel Agudo) and AlienA (sung by Letitia Wolf) was, by turns, exhilarating and beautiful. Kerzner’s debut space opera was also boosted by stand-out guest slots from the likes of Steve Hackett, Steve Rothery, ‘Uncle Tom Progley and all’. “This makes Olias Of Sunhillow sound earthbound.” Part Two of Acceleration Theory – in which AlienA is abducted by her species for giving Kai the means to save the human race from annihilation – is both less starry and more focused than Part One. Yes, there are guest appearances,…2 min
Prog|Issue 105Bloody Well WriteSCRIPT FOR A TEAR OF JOYJust read your excellent Marillion feature in Prog 104, and it certainly brings back memories. I was at the Marquee when they supported Spider (Sunday, January 3 1982), and their first headline gig on January 25.But they also played a gig at The Starlight Rooms, West Hampstead on January 27, with Pallas as support. That was where I got the demo cassette, and also this poster, which I’ve always loved.I saw them 20 times in ’82 – would have been 21, but for an Asia show at Wembley Arena.By a quirk of fate, I am also now married to a Margaret!Prog on!Ian HobbsINFREQUENCYGenerally a good mag to get one’s teeth into as it were. Been with you since the early days, so keep it up.I…6 min
Prog|Issue 105Bloody Well WriteSCRIPT FOR A TEAR OF JOY Just read your excellent Marillion feature in Prog 104, and it certainly brings back memories. I was at the Marquee when they supported Spider (Sunday, January 3 1982), and their first headline gig on January 25. But they also played a gig at The Starlight Rooms, West Hampstead on January 27, with Pallas as support. That was where I got the demo cassette, and also this poster, which I’ve always loved. I saw them 20 times in ’82 – would have been 21, but for an Asia show at Wembley Arena. By a quirk of fate, I am also now married to a Margaret! Prog on! Ian Hobbs INFREQUENCY Generally a good mag to get one’s teeth into as it were. Been with you…6 min
Prog|Issue 105COLIN EDWIN: NEW SOLO ALBUMO.R.k’s Colin Edwin releases a song-based solo album, Infinite Regress, on Hard World on January 24. The collaboration with his long-time friend, vocalist and lyricist Robert RJ Peck came about in rather unusual circumstances.“I’d been working on my own on a load of instrumental pieces and one of the problems is that you don’t have anyone to bounce ideas off,” he explains. “So I sent Rob a couple of tracks saying, ‘What do you think of this?’ And the reply I got was that they came back with vocals and guitar on them! It just carried on like that and the lyrical themes that he came up with all fitted what I had imagined really well, even though I hadn’t said anything to him.”One of the most immediately striking things…2 min
Prog|Issue 105VIRGIL’S TALES OF RUIN RELEASEDVirgil Donati releases his new album, Ruination, in Europe on February 7.“I’ve gone for a huge melting pot of musical ideas,” he reveals.“I guess you could call the style progressive fusion. One thing I did decide was to introduce vocals for the first time on a solo album. I got Irwin Thomas, who also plays guitar, to do them, and the way he approached the challenge was to use his voice as another instrument.”Four of the album’s 11 songs have vocals, and first came out outside Europe in autumn 2019. So why did the virtuoso drummer, who’s also worked with Allan Holdsworth and Steve Vai, choose to delay the album’s European release?“I put out Ruination in America [first] because I was touring there at the time, so it made sense…1 min
Prog|Issue 105COLIN EDWIN: NEW SOLO ALBUMO.R.k’s Colin Edwin releases a song-based solo album, Infinite Regress, on Hard World on January 24. The collaboration with his long-time friend, vocalist and lyricist Robert RJ Peck came about in rather unusual circumstances. “I’d been working on my own on a load of instrumental pieces and one of the problems is that you don’t have anyone to bounce ideas off,” he explains. “So I sent Rob a couple of tracks saying, ‘What do you think of this?’ And the reply I got was that they came back with vocals and guitar on them! It just carried on like that and the lyrical themes that he came up with all fitted what I had imagined really well, even though I hadn’t said anything to him.” One of the most immediately…2 min
Prog|Issue 105MOBIUS’ SECOND IS FULL OF EASTERN PROMISEMobius will release their second album, Kala, on January 30 via Bandcamp. It marks a significant departure for the French/Middle Eastern outfit, who explore the nature of death with a sense of confidence. “We were influenced by jazz and classical music on the first album, but the new one is much more modern,” vocalist Héli Andrea tells Prog.She was inspired to the theme after the experience of finding the dead body of a relative, who’d been gone four days. “His body was decomposed, but not like in the films,” she recalls. “I thought I’d be traumatised, but instead I thought, ‘That’s how we become in the end. It’s not awful, it’s just recycling life.’ I thought it was really poetic, really inspiring. I’m a different person.”To achieve her intentions, Andrea…1 min
Prog|Issue 105SOLO ALBUM FOR NIGHTWISH BASSISTNightwish and Tarot bassist and vocalist Marko Hietala is set to release the English version of his solo album, Pyre Of The Black Heart, on January 24 via Nuclear Blast. Hietala released the Finnish version of the album in May under the name Mustan Sydämen Rovio. Together with his friends and “long-term collaborators”, Tuomas Wäinölä (guitar) and Vili Ollila (keyboards), the trio wrote 10 eclectic tracks that may surprise fans who were expecting something more along the lines of Nightwish’s symphonic grandeur. Described by Hietala as “hard prog”, the new album spans myriad genres from metal and stoner rock, to traditional Finnish folk and 60s/70s-inspired rock. “The album wouldn’t have been done like this if it wasn’t for the guys,” says Marko of his bandmates. “They brought in a lot…2 min
Prog|Issue 105MOBIUS’ SECOND IS FULL OF EASTERN PROMISEMobius will release their second album, Kala, on January 30 via Bandcamp. It marks a significant departure for the French/Middle Eastern outfit, who explore the nature of death with a sense of confidence. “We were influenced by jazz and classical music on the first album, but the new one is much more modern,” vocalist Héli Andrea tells Prog. She was inspired to the theme after the experience of finding the dead body of a relative, who’d been gone four days. “His body was decomposed, but not like in the films,” she recalls. “I thought I’d be traumatised, but instead I thought, ‘That’s how we become in the end. It’s not awful, it’s just recycling life.’ I thought it was really poetic, really inspiring. I’m a different person.” To achieve her…1 min
Prog|Issue 105YOUR PROG CHEF: MIKE MORTON (THE GIFT)“I used to be the sort of guy who thought cooking was a chore, but recently I’ve started to get quite into it. About three or four years ago, I went on a health binge and started picking up recipe books by the likes of Jamie Oliver, Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson. Now I make a lot of pies and stews; I’m not really into salads or quinoa, I like old-fashioned food. I’m fond of bolognaise and lasagne – anything that’s heavy on fat, carbs and starch!Although I don’t sound like it, I’m Scottish in origin, and this recipe is a traditional Burn’s Night supper. The secret is to pour a dram of single-malt scotch over it. It’s something I learned from my grandfather, who was a Glasgow ship builder.…2 min
Prog|Issue 105BRANDON YEAGLEY“I was raised on progressive rock. My parents were pretty much into everything, and I inherited this box of cassettes from them when I was between the ages of eight and 10.ELO’s Out Of The Blue really stood out. I’ve always been a fan of concepts. I grew up with Meat Loaf and I was a big fan of the rock opera; nobody has done it quite like Queen, Meat Loaf and ELO. They were such great songwriters. And ELO were one of those bands that you never realised how many songs they had until you looked at a greatest hits. Man, what a catalogue!Out Of The Blue is probably my favourite record by them, and it just so happens that was the one I got second-hand. They certainly took…3 min
Prog|Issue 105YOUR PROG CHEF: MIKE MORTON (THE GIFT)“I used to be the sort of guy who thought cooking was a chore, but recently I’ve started to get quite into it. About three or four years ago, I went on a health binge and started picking up recipe books by the likes of Jamie Oliver, Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson. Now I make a lot of pies and stews; I’m not really into salads or quinoa, I like old-fashioned food. I’m fond of bolognaise and lasagne – anything that’s heavy on fat, carbs and starch! Although I don’t sound like it, I’m Scottish in origin, and this recipe is a traditional Burn’s Night supper. The secret is to pour a dram of single-malt scotch over it. It’s something I learned from my grandfather, who was a Glasgow ship…2 min
Prog|Issue 105BRANDON YEAGLEY“I was raised on progressive rock. My parents were pretty much into everything, and I inherited this box of cassettes from them when I was between the ages of eight and 10. ELO’s Out Of The Blue really stood out. I’ve always been a fan of concepts. I grew up with Meat Loaf and I was a big fan of the rock opera; nobody has done it quite like Queen, Meat Loaf and ELO. They were such great songwriters. And ELO were one of those bands that you never realised how many songs they had until you looked at a greatest hits. Man, what a catalogue! Out Of The Blue is probably my favourite record by them, and it just so happens that was the one I got second-hand. They…2 min
Prog|Issue 105KEV ROWLAND“Big Big Train were the first band to send me a cassette,” recalls Kev Rowland. “Final Conflict were the first to send me a CD, and Vertical Alignment were the first band to send me a download…”When talking to this veteran music writer, anecdotes about obscure bands – Milky Way Gas Station, Different Trains, Mice On Stilts, Mastermind – whiz overhead. Back in 1990, the self-professed music addict was pulling shifts as a night manager at Sainsbury’s in Cobham, and by day writing Feedback, a specialist rock music newsletter, on his electric typewriter. His thick contacts list and prolific reviewing and interviewing made Feedback an invaluable resource for prog fans in the pre-Google, pre-Prog, age.“If someone had told me back then that there was going to be a regular glossy…3 min
Prog|Issue 105ARPALEXIS GEORGOPOULOS, AKA Arp, has been making waves in the sound-art and electronic music scene in New York and beyond for well over a decade. Unashamedly eclectic in his approach, his evolution as an artist operating initially within the airy textures of analogue synths of 2010’s The Soft Wave or the same year’s deeply textural acoustic-ambient collaborations with Slapp Happy’s Anthony Moore, have all marked him out as someone keen to explore different worlds and alternative directions. That wanderlust saw 2018’s Zebra embarking upon a more overtly jazzier area. “I don’t even know what ‘jazz’ means in a way,” he says, “I’ve always been most into people like Don Cherry, Alice Coltrane; people that are I suppose closer to the cosmic jazz side of things or what they used to…3 min
Prog|Issue 105KEV ROWLAND“Big Big Train were the first band to send me a cassette,” recalls Kev Rowland. “Final Conflict were the first to send me a CD, and Vertical Alignment were the first band to send me a download…” When talking to this veteran music writer, anecdotes about obscure bands – Milky Way Gas Station, Different Trains, Mice On Stilts, Mastermind – whiz overhead. Back in 1990, the self-professed music addict was pulling shifts as a night manager at Sainsbury’s in Cobham, and by day writing Feedback, a specialist rock music newsletter, on his electric typewriter. His thick contacts list and prolific reviewing and interviewing made Feedback an invaluable resource for prog fans in the pre-Google, pre-Prog, age. “If someone had told me back then that there was going to be a…3 min
Prog|Issue 105JONATHAN PETERS“When I was little, I lived in a village in Leicestershire, and I had a portable radio that went everywhere with me. I first heard Queen on the Radio 1 chart rundown, with Bohemian Rhapsody, aged five. I’d also tape the chart shows, and I remember a very specific one from 1978 that had Kate Bush, ELO and Sweet in it. It was just one chart, with all this amazing stuff in it. And everything I listened to then, I’m proud to say that I still do.“I started buying pop singles at 10, but soon was buying Queen. I got teased at school because they weren’t very cool. When The Works came out I started buying their back catalogue. I got to A Night At The Opera and I rediscovered…6 min
Prog|Issue 105WIN!Ho ho hum! If Santa didn’t bring you everything you wanted for Christmas, this month’s competition is for you. Just feast your eyes on this bumper bundle of goodies in celebration of 2019, surely one of the finest years in progressive music. One lucky recipient will bag the following CD packages: Jethro Tull’s Stormwatch: 40th Anniversary Force 10 Edition including previously unreleased material; Marillion’s Afraid Of Sunlight – Deluxe Edition with unheard tracks and brand new interviews; and the deluxe hardback book edition of Bruce Soord’s All This Will Be Yours with two bonus CDs. For good measure, we’ll also throw in a set of vinyl reissues of Karnivool’s first three albums: Themata, Sound Awake and Asymmetry. (Cold turkey not included.) For your chance to win this special bundle, visit…1 min
Prog|Issue 105JORJA CHALMERSJORJA CHALMERS LEADS a double life. For the past 12 years she’s toured the world playing sax and keyboards in Bryan Ferry’s band. But away from the spotlight, and in a succession of hotel rooms while on the road, she’s been composing dark, electronic-based songs that speak of both the loneliness of being away from family, and a desire to escape into a different imaginative world. Originally from Australia, Chalmers moved to London in 2004 and joined new wave band Hotel Motel. One night at a gig in east London, Ferry’s personal assistant happened to be in the audience, “and suddenly I got a MySpace message: ‘Do you want to come and audition?’ Oh my God!” Before long she was on stage performing the Roxy Music songs that her father…3 min
Prog|Issue 105A Living Nightmare“Doing the Nightmare Scenario stuff, I can go into full psycho mode at home, working 12 hours a day producing this thing, then do some artwork, or some video installation stuff to go along with it. It’s nice and different to have that sort of immediacy.”Full psycho mode suits Dan Briggs. The bassist-turned-multi-instrumentalist lives alone in the woods in Greensboro, North Carolina, with no roommates around to roll their eyes if his amplifiers reach boiling point.This fertile ground for creation is perhaps partly why he has become so prolific in recent years, with new solo project Nightmare Scenario just another colourful planet in Briggs’ odd but undeniably classy universe.Menacing yet melodic prog metallers Between The Buried And Me are the focal point – the ‘day job’, if you will –…5 min
Prog|Issue 105FIELD MUSICIn January 2019, art rockers Field Music played a pair of shows at the Imperial War Museums in Manchester and London, performing as part of the IWM’s ‘Making A New World’ programme of events reflecting on the legacy of the First World War. Having specially written a suite of songs and instrumental pieces for the performance, brothers Peter and David Brewis realised that they had “accidentally made a new album”, and a concept album at that, with Making A New World covering such widely diverse topics as social housing, gender reassignment, the Dada art movement, Tiananmen Square and sanitary towels. How did the IWM commission come about? Peter: The guy who does our visual stuff had a friend at the Imperial War Museum, and she asked if she could get…5 min
Prog|Issue 105TREASURE ISLANDYou know what it’s like when you need to find an item, you rummage in your cupboards and it’s not there. Or at least it’s not where you thought you’d left it. Photos, tapes, trinkets, leaflets, keepsakes… all seem to have a life of their own when it comes to evading the search for one’s memorabilia. Accruing ‘stuff’ seems to be one of the things that comes with getting older. As is forgetting where you put it – or whether you really had it in the first place.So imagine what it’s like if you were once a member of Gentle Giant. The band broke up in 1980 after an amazing decade-long career that produced a clutch of albums with some of the most adventurous and distinctive rock music of the…9 min
Prog|Issue 105ComingBack To LifeAfter Roger Waters left Pink Floyd, David Gilmour and Nick Mason had wondered which direction to take the band. As we now know, they found a way, and it’s compiled and documented in the hefty new box set The Later Years 1987-2019. When Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late Storm Thorgerson, was looking through old files as he designed the artwork for it, he came across a photograph he’d taken in Iceland in the 70s, of two men in silhouette, studying a map. Eventually it was used as the cover image on a ‘sampler’ version of the box set. “It was originally an idea related to Animals,” Powell says of the photo, “but was never used, though I had always loved it. It had lain dormant ever…5 min
Prog|Issue 105A Living Nightmare“Doing the Nightmare Scenario stuff, I can go into full psycho mode at home, working 12 hours a day producing this thing, then do some artwork, or some video installation stuff to go along with it. It’s nice and different to have that sort of immediacy.” Full psycho mode suits Dan Briggs. The bassist-turned-multi-instrumentalist lives alone in the woods in Greensboro, North Carolina, with no roommates around to roll their eyes if his amplifiers reach boiling point. This fertile ground for creation is perhaps partly why he has become so prolific in recent years, with new solo project Nightmare Scenario just another colourful planet in Briggs’ odd but undeniably classy universe. Menacing yet melodic prog metallers Between The Buried And Me are the focal point – the ‘day job’, if…5 min
Prog|Issue 105The Return Of The Five-Headed Best“Sons Of Apollo is definitely a five-headed beast,” Mike Portnoy declares dramatically, in reference to the band’s lengthy 2018 tour. “Each and every one of us, each night on stage, regardless of how small the place was or how many people were there, delivered as if we were the heavyweight champions of the world. It was a five-ringed circus of musical muscle, and I think the crowds at each gig reacted to that.” The musical muscle that Portnoy describes is not merely optimistic hyperbole. As well as Portnoy’s drum credentials with Dream Theater, Transatlantic and a raft of other side-projects, the talents of Derek Sherinian (keyboards, ex-Dream Theater), guitarist Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal (Guns N’ Roses], Mr Big bassist Billy Sheehan and singer Jeff Scott Soto [Yngwie Malmsteen, Journey] are a…7 min
Prog|Issue 105TREASURE ISLANDYou know what it’s like when you need to find an item, you rummage in your cupboards and it’s not there. Or at least it’s not where you thought you’d left it. Photos, tapes, trinkets, leaflets, keepsakes… all seem to have a life of their own when it comes to evading the search for one’s memorabilia. Accruing ‘stuff’ seems to be one of the things that comes with getting older. As is forgetting where you put it – or whether you really had it in the first place. So imagine what it’s like if you were once a member of Gentle Giant. The band broke up in 1980 after an amazing decade-long career that produced a clutch of albums with some of the most adventurous and distinctive rock music of…8 min
Prog|Issue 105THE PROG INTERVIEW STEVE HOGARTH“You never want to be comfortable. I don’t think good art comes from comfort,” says Steve Hogarth. It’s now 30 years since Hogarth turned down the offer of playing keyboards with The The in favour of joining Marillion. “I remember my old publisher saying: ‘Give it a couple of years,’” he says. “I still don’t really think forward that much into the future. It’s an uncertain world we live in, and who knows when it’s all going to come crashing down. I’m reminded of Ringo [Starr], when somebody asked him how long it [The Beatles] was going to last, he said: ‘Maybe a year or two, and I’ll open a hairdressers.’”When Hogarth came on board, Marillion were signed to EMI, enabling them to record 1989’s Season’s End, his first album…15 min
Prog|Issue 105IN CONTINUUMDave Kerzner’s interstellar epic comes to a terrific conclusionIt has been less than a year since ex-Sound Of Contact keysmeister Dave Kerzner dropped his remarkable Acceleration Theory: Part One: AlienA. Its tale of interstellar love between earthling Kai (voiced by Bad Dreams’ Gabriel Agudo) and AlienA (sung by Letitia Wolf) was, by turns, exhilarating and beautiful. Kerzner’s debut space opera was also boosted by stand-out guest slots from the likes of Steve Hackett, Steve Rothery, ‘Uncle Tom Progley and all’.“This makes Olias Of Sunhillow sound earthbound.”Part Two of Acceleration Theory – in which AlienA is abducted by her species for giving Kai the means to save the human race from annihilation – is both less starry and more focused than Part One. Yes, there are guest appearances, from Marco Minnemann,…2 min
Prog|Issue 105PSYCHEDELIC PROGSwedish’s Siri Karlsson certainly talk a good game. “We descended among the lava snakes of the underground, up in whirlwinds, from cavernous waters to new continents and mythical parties,” say Maria Arnqvist and Cecilia Österholm, referring to the epic title track of Horror Vacui (Tombola Records). Thankfully, it’s as fantastical as it sounds, the duo creating a dizzying processional piece that shifts from ringing psych-folk and fusionist jazz to synthetic ambience and esoteric space-rock. The rest of the album, their fifth in total, is just as impressive, particularly the nervy sax slither of Drone To The Bone.On a whole other tip, Planchettes are a New Orleans trio who mine the classic tropes of rockabilly, surf and 60s garage-punk on effervescent debut, The Truth (Rise Above). They’re clearly fans of Nuggets,…2 min
Prog|Issue 105THE PROG INTERVIEW STEVE HOGARTH“You never want to be comfortable. I don’t think good art comes from comfort,” says Steve Hogarth. It’s now 30 years since Hogarth turned down the offer of playing keyboards with The The in favour of joining Marillion. “I remember my old publisher saying: ‘Give it a couple of years,’” he says. “I still don’t really think forward that much into the future. It’s an uncertain world we live in, and who knows when it’s all going to come crashing down. I’m reminded of Ringo [Starr], when somebody asked him how long it [The Beatles] was going to last, he said: ‘Maybe a year or two, and I’ll open a hairdressers.’” When Hogarth came on board, Marillion were signed to EMI, enabling them to record 1989’s Season’s End, his first…15 min
Prog|Issue 105KING CRIMSONProg’s first super-missile; expanded and refried in high-tech sauce.King Crimson are one of the few bands that really did change the course of progressive music; in their case, through dazzling virtuoso musicianship, superior songs and awesome supernatural power. Before In The Court Of The Crimson King appeared in October 1969, progressive rock had yet to find its feet; Crimson’s seismic live set, then this album, made it grow up fast by grabbing all the disparate jazz, classical and folk strains flying around like kite-strings and welding them into their own startling new genre. As Greg Lake said, ITCOTCK “fired the starting pistol on progressive rock.” If any race was on, KC started out front and stayed there.“The swarm of bees in a robot’s pants are McDonald and Fripp.”After June ’69’s…2 min
Prog|Issue 105Ed’s LetterNEXT ISSUE ON FEB 4 SALE Hello and welcome to issue 105 of Prog Magazine. I know this reaches you between Xmas and the New Year, but the last issue was out in November and it just seemed too early to share our Xmas card with you. Here it is for your enjoyment now. Thanks once again to John Langton for his wonderful work Last issue we bade farewell to Deputy Editor Hannah. This issue I am delighted to introduce you to her replacement, Natasha Scharf. Natasha’s been with Prog since our inception back in 2009 and has been our News Editor for the past five years. She beat off very strong competition to land the job and I’m really looking forward to taking the magazine forward into a new…2 min
Prog|Issue 105TOUNDRA OPEN DR CALIGARI’S CABINETToundra mark the centenary of early gothic horror movie Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligari by releasing their soundtrack album of the same name on February 28 via InsideOut.Acclaimed for being a psychological and political drama, the 1920 silent film explores what happens when good people begin accepting instructions from a psychopathic leader.The Spanish instrumentalists first set their music against the screenplay last year. “For all our 12 years we’ve wanted to do a soundtrack,” guitarist and pianist Esteban Girón tells Prog. “We had the opportunity of doing it live in a big cinema in Madrid, our home city.“We wanted to take the opportunity to record it and spread the message. It’s not just music, it’s not just an album from Toundra. It’s something different – an important message of the…1 min
Prog|Issue 105SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS ANNOUNCE 2020 TOURNick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets are hitting the road again in April and May for what will be their biggest tour of the British Isles yet. Along with 14 dates across England, they’ll be taking in Scotland, Ireland and Wales as well, before heading out to mainland Europe. Almost 20 years ago to the day, Prog’s Editor Jerry Ewing – then a contributing editor at Classic Rock – talked to Nick Mason about Pink Floyd in an interview to celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Wall. He said, “This is the second time a major member has left and you’ve gone on to even greater things.” Mason replied, laughing, “Oh, as soon as I get rid of Dave [Gilmour], such great plans.” Few could have predicted that two decades later…4 min
Prog|Issue 105STEVE HILLAGE AND BRIAN ENO ENTER THE ORB!Steve Hillage, Miquette Giraudy and Roger Eno are just some of the collaborators on the forthcoming release from The Orb. Abolition Of The Royal Familia will be released via Cooking Vinyl on March 27.The new album, the band’s 16th studio recording, is the first collaboration between Alex Paterson and new writing and musical partner Michael Rendall, who was previously a member of The Orb’s touring band and studio engineer. Abolition Of The Royal Familia includes a tribute to cosmologist and fan Stephen Hawking (Hawk Kings) and is a companion album to 2018’s No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds, with its “anything goes” ethos.Alongside Hillage, Giraudy and Eno, the 12-track also features guest appearances from Killing Joke bassist Youth, who worked with the band on No Sounds…, as well as 17-year-old…1 min
Prog|Issue 105SOLO ALBUM FOR NIGHTWISH BASSISTNightwish and Tarot bassist and vocalist Marko Hietala is set to release the English version of his solo album, Pyre Of The Black Heart, on January 24 via Nuclear Blast. Hietala released the Finnish version of the album in May under the name Mustan Sydämen Rovio.Together with his friends and “long-term collaborators”, Tuomas Wäinölä (guitar) and Vili Ollila (keyboards), the trio wrote 10 eclectic tracks that may surprise fans who were expecting something more along the lines of Nightwish’s symphonic grandeur. Described by Hietala as “hard prog”, the new album spans myriad genres from metal and stoner rock, to traditional Finnish folk and 60s/70s-inspired rock.“The album wouldn’t have been done like this if it wasn’t for the guys,” says Marko of his bandmates. “They brought in a lot of ideas…2 min
Prog|Issue 105STEVE HILLAGE AND BRIAN ENO ENTER THE ORB!Steve Hillage, Miquette Giraudy and Roger Eno are just some of the collaborators on the forthcoming release from The Orb. Abolition Of The Royal Familia will be released via Cooking Vinyl on March 27. The new album, the band’s 16th studio recording, is the first collaboration between Alex Paterson and new writing and musical partner Michael Rendall, who was previously a member of The Orb’s touring band and studio engineer. Abolition Of The Royal Familia includes a tribute to cosmologist and fan Stephen Hawking (Hawk Kings) and is a companion album to 2018’s No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds, with its “anything goes” ethos. Alongside Hillage, Giraudy and Eno, the 12-track also features guest appearances from Killing Joke bassist Youth, who worked with the band on No Sounds…, as well…1 min
Prog|Issue 105FAD GADGETSSKWITCHYou couldn’t blame anyone for being daunted by the prospect of learning to play piano. With 88 keys and no indication about which ones to press and when, there’s every reason to shut the lid and move on with your life. But one squidgy button’s got to be easier, right? The Skwitch attaches to your iPhone and is described as “amazingly expressive”, but essentially it’s a ‘next note’ button: give it a parp, and it plays the next note in a sequence of preprogrammed tunes. Cute, but not really suitable for an impromptu performance of Flight Of The Bumblebee.www.skoogmusic.com/skwitchEP01 SNEAKERSWe live in an era of ubiquitous connectivity, where devices communicate with each other in order to bring human beings small amounts of pleasure and/or convenience. This pair of sneakers, or…1 min
Prog|Issue 105MAMIFFER“SONG BY SONG, the album is a backward narrative of the journey I had to take to become an empowered woman,” says Faith Coloccia, singer-songwriter of Seattle experimental folk duo, Mamiffer, about the new album The Brilliant Tabernacle.“I started working on the album from 2013 until 2018. During that time, I had a pregnancy, I gave birth and I was a new mother. The record encompasses that journey. The egg that created my child has been in my body my whole life, and when I was a foetus inside my mother, I had all of the eggs that I would ever have. I was trying to trace back the beginning of life from mother to mother. The album starts with my son’s birth and goes backwards to when he was…3 min
Prog|Issue 105FAD GADGETSSKWITCH You couldn’t blame anyone for being daunted by the prospect of learning to play piano. With 88 keys and no indication about which ones to press and when, there’s every reason to shut the lid and move on with your life. But one squidgy button’s got to be easier, right? The Skwitch attaches to your iPhone and is described as “amazingly expressive”, but essentially it’s a ‘next note’ button: give it a parp, and it plays the next note in a sequence of preprogrammed tunes. Cute, but not really suitable for an impromptu performance of Flight Of The Bumblebee. www.skoogmusic.com/skwitch EP01 SNEAKERS We live in an era of ubiquitous connectivity, where devices communicate with each other in order to bring human beings small amounts of pleasure and/or convenience. This…1 min
Prog|Issue 105MAMIFFER“SONG BY SONG, the album is a backward narrative of the journey I had to take to become an empowered woman,” says Faith Coloccia, singer-songwriter of Seattle experimental folk duo, Mamiffer, about the new album The Brilliant Tabernacle. “I started working on the album from 2013 until 2018. During that time, I had a pregnancy, I gave birth and I was a new mother. The record encompasses that journey. The egg that created my child has been in my body my whole life, and when I was a foetus inside my mother, I had all of the eggs that I would ever have. I was trying to trace back the beginning of life from mother to mother. The album starts with my son’s birth and goes backwards to when he…3 min
Prog|Issue 105HOLMWe take you now to a nuclear fallout shelter beneath the headquarters of the Union Bank Of Switzerland in Zürich. This is where instrumental trio Holm have been refining their intoxicating mash-up of post-rock, shoegaze and sound experimentation for the past three years. “Every building in Switzerland had a bomb shelter, because of the Cold War,” says the band’s bassist James Varghese.Varghese met Holm guitarist Dimitri Käch and drummer Alessandro Giannelli more than a decade ago when they were studying music at Zürich’s University Of The Arts. Together they conjured sophisticated sounds, but subsequently took separate musical paths. “We wanted to get back to the three of us experimenting,” says Varghese, “so we went to our cellar and jammed like we did at university. The music didn’t have to fit…2 min
Prog|Issue 105IS PROG READY FOR 7.1?What appeals to me about surround sound is the immersive experience. It’s the three-dimensional nature of being right at the centre of the music. In the early 70s, various attempts were made to market quadraphonic recordings on eight-track cartridge and vinyl. As successful as some of those early mixes were, the problem emerged when it came to deliver them. Competing systems required the consumer to fork out serious money for unique playback alternatives to the basic record player or cassette deck.Like the audio equivalent of the war between VHS and Betamax, it’s only when one format emerges as the ‘winner’ that any commercial foothold and future can be determined. In the 70s, the fight for quad never happened, so why is it that, more than 40 years later, surround sound…3 min
Prog|Issue 105HOLMWe take you now to a nuclear fallout shelter beneath the headquarters of the Union Bank Of Switzerland in Zürich. This is where instrumental trio Holm have been refining their intoxicating mash-up of post-rock, shoegaze and sound experimentation for the past three years. “Every building in Switzerland had a bomb shelter, because of the Cold War,” says the band’s bassist James Varghese. Varghese met Holm guitarist Dimitri Käch and drummer Alessandro Giannelli more than a decade ago when they were studying music at Zürich’s University Of The Arts. Together they conjured sophisticated sounds, but subsequently took separate musical paths. “We wanted to get back to the three of us experimenting,” says Varghese, “so we went to our cellar and jammed like we did at university. The music didn’t have to…2 min
Prog|Issue 105WIN!Ho ho hum! If Santa didn’t bring you everything you wanted for Christmas, this month’s competition is for you. Just feast your eyes on this bumper bundle of goodies in celebration of 2019, surely one of the finest years in progressive music.One lucky recipient will bag the following CD packages: Jethro Tull’s Stormwatch: 40th Anniversary Force 10 Edition including previously unreleased material; Marillion’s Afraid Of Sunlight – Deluxe Edition with unheard tracks and brand new interviews; and the deluxe hardback book edition of Bruce Soord’s All This Will Be Yours with two bonus CDs. For good measure, we’ll also throw in a set of vinyl reissues of Karnivool’s first three albums: Themata, Sound Awake and Asymmetry. (Cold turkey not included.)For your chance to win this special bundle, visit www.bit.ly/ProgBundle19 and…1 min
Prog|Issue 105JORJA CHALMERSJORJA CHALMERS LEADS a double life. For the past 12 years she’s toured the world playing sax and keyboards in Bryan Ferry’s band. But away from the spotlight, and in a succession of hotel rooms while on the road, she’s been composing dark, electronic-based songs that speak of both the loneliness of being away from family, and a desire to escape into a different imaginative world.Originally from Australia, Chalmers moved to London in 2004 and joined new wave band Hotel Motel. One night at a gig in east London, Ferry’s personal assistant happened to be in the audience, “and suddenly I got a MySpace message: ‘Do you want to come and audition?’ Oh my God!” Before long she was on stage performing the Roxy Music songs that her father had…3 min
Prog|Issue 105THE PROG READERS’ POLL 2019It’s that time again: last issue we revealed to you the Prog Critics’ Choice of 2019 and in December you, the Prog readers, had your say. As always, it makes for some very interesting reading.Sometimes just releasing an album in the given year will propel you into the public consciousness and into the polls. Sometimes mobilising your fanbase through social media will do it. Others are simply just evergreens. I do enjoy going through the results and drawing my own conclusions. I’m sure you do, too.Thank you to everyone who voted, and congratulations to all our winners and everyone who features. Enjoy before we turn our attention to a new decade. Long live prog in 2020.BAND1. BIG BIG TRAIN2. OPETH3. MARILLION4. LEPROUS5. TOOL6. KING CRIMSON7. DREAM THEATER8. IAMTHEMORNING9. BENT KNEE10.…7 min
Prog|Issue 105JAKUB ZYTECKI“I feel like I’m having a midlife crisis, so I wanted to make this record representative of this moment in my life.” “WHEN I WAS 12, I had a guitar teacher who gave me a video of John Petrucci playing two Dream Theater songs. I played it over and over again, and I practised like mad,” says Jakub Zytecki. “Then I started getting into Allan Holdsworth and Eric Johnson, and I’m now really interested in production.” The uplifting Nothing Lasts, Nothing’s Lost is Polish guitarist Zytecki’s second solo release, and it’s a world apart from the prog metal grooves on his debut, 2015’s Wishful Lotus Proof. The vibrant 11-track album takes its title from a quote by US psychonaut Terance McKenna, and works in influences from psych and jazz. “I…3 min
Prog|Issue 105Storm’s A Coming…Jethro Tull were given their name (that of an 18th-century agriculturist) in 1967 by Dave Robson, a booker at the Ellis-Wright agency, who dealt with the young band. If they had not been booked into the Marquee club soon after this christening, Ian Anderson, who didn’t particularly like the name, reckons that it would have been changed again. But as he was the group’s frontman, the writer of almost all of their material and the one who engaged most in the business side, he himself went on to become synonymous with the name, to the extent that some people actually referred to him as Jethro Tull. In the States in the mid-70s, this was even shortened by some to the both inappropriate and rather over-familiar ‘Jet’.Many had noted that the…9 min
Prog|Issue 105The Return Of The Five-Headed Best“Sons Of Apollo is definitely a five-headed beast,” Mike Portnoy declares dramatically, in reference to the band’s lengthy 2018 tour. “Each and every one of us, each night on stage, regardless of how small the place was or how many people were there, delivered as if we were the heavyweight champions of the world. It was a five-ringed circus of musical muscle, and I think the crowds at each gig reacted to that.”The musical muscle that Portnoy describes is not merely optimistic hyperbole. As well as Portnoy’s drum credentials with Dream Theater, Transatlantic and a raft of other side-projects, the talents of Derek Sherinian (keyboards, ex-Dream Theater), guitarist Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal (Guns N’ Roses], Mr Big bassist Billy Sheehan and singer Jeff Scott Soto [Yngwie Malmsteen, Journey] are a musical…7 min
Prog|Issue 105One Of My TurnsThe Wall is arguably the most debated album in Pink Floyd’s canon. It splits opinion in the way, say, The Dark Side Of The Moon (universally loved) or The Final Cut (universally unloved) never could. But, love it or loathe it, The Wall is absolutely impossible to ignore. And, lest we forget, 40 years ago it gave Pink Floyd a Christmas No. 1 – now a feat impossible to think of from a band who at the time hadn’t released a single since 1968. At Christmas 1979, my group was top of the pops. Four decades on, Prog felt it was time to tell the story once again. Like the great tales of yore, it’s worth repeating, to learn of its absolute audacity, and how its mere 31 performances in…25 min
Prog|Issue 105Mark MangoldFor a casual rock fan, the best-known fact about Mark Mangold is that he was once part of a group (Touch) whose bass player, Doug Howard, swallowed a bee while performing at the inaugural Monsters Of Rock Festival at Donington Park in 1980. But there’s far, far more to this Floridaborn keyboard maestro than just pubquiz trivia.A professional musician since the age of 13, Mangold has had his songs performed by a variety of A-listers including Cher, Michael Bolton, and Paul Rodgers and Kenney Jones with their short-lived 90s band The Law. And yes, he was very much raised on progressive music. Not only did the young Mangold appreciate the early work of keyboard players Rick Wakeman, Tony Banks, Keith Emerson and Deep Purple’s Jon Lord, he also considers himself…9 min
Prog|Issue 105The Monastery Of Sound…June 2, 1969: prog rock hopefuls Mandrake Paddle Steamer squeezed onto the stage of a home counties ex-servicemen’s establishment and made history as the first band to play Friars Aylesbury, the legendary club currently celebrating its 50th anniversary year.Mandrake didn’t get beyond one single but Friars became a progressive rock stronghold as its unusually enthusiastic crowd embraced names such as King Crimson, Van der Graaf Generator and East Of Eden, all but adopted the early Genesis, encouraged Bowie to unveil Ziggy Stardust and ignited the ascension of Marillion.Flying by the seat of its pants from week to week, Friars survived through sheer musical passion, echoed by regulars prone to judge that week’s act by what limb-flailing reaction was sparked in ‘Leapers’ Corner’. John Peel liked it so much he waived…11 min
Prog|Issue 105Digging DeepProg caught up with Kaprekar’s Constant bassist/lyricist Nick Jefferson and guitarist/principal composer Al Nicholson on Friday September 20. While the timing was entirely by chance, it turned out to be an auspicious day to be having our conversation, as it coincided with the official release date of the band’s second album, Depth Of Field.At a time when physical sales have been declining, to embark on the not inconsiderable challenge of writing material, corralling a team of busy musicians to record the music, and then release the results on CD into an uncertain and chronically overcrowded marketplace could be seen either as an act of heroic endeavour or hubristic folly. Jefferson and Nicholson, who’ve been friends and colleagues since the early 1970s, accept that in truth it’s probably a bit of…7 min
Prog|Issue 105In The RawOpening for a legendary prog band on tour is an opportunity that most bands could only dream of. But for Manchester duo The Blackheart Orchestra, they’ve had the honour of doing it twice. After supporting Hawkwind on their In Search Of Utopia – Infinity And Beyond tour in 2018, including a sold-out performance at the London Palladium, The Blackheart Orchestra’s Rick Pilkington and Chrissy Mostyn opened for the space rock legends’ UK tour again in November 2019, including a highly anticipated performance at London’s award-winning Royal Albert Hall.“During the tour, Dave [Brock] told a story about how in his younger years he used to be busking outside the Palladium, and years later he’s on stage there two nights in a row,” smiles Mostyn. “A year ago, we were asked where…5 min
Prog|Issue 105Mark MangoldFor a casual rock fan, the best-known fact about Mark Mangold is that he was once part of a group (Touch) whose bass player, Doug Howard, swallowed a bee while performing at the inaugural Monsters Of Rock Festival at Donington Park in 1980. But there’s far, far more to this Floridaborn keyboard maestro than just pubquiz trivia. A professional musician since the age of 13, Mangold has had his songs performed by a variety of A-listers including Cher, Michael Bolton, and Paul Rodgers and Kenney Jones with their short-lived 90s band The Law. And yes, he was very much raised on progressive music. Not only did the young Mangold appreciate the early work of keyboard players Rick Wakeman, Tony Banks, Keith Emerson and Deep Purple’s Jon Lord, he also considers…9 min
Prog|Issue 105YOUR SHOUT!“Again a name I personally have never heard of, is Prog mag changing somehow and starting to veer away from the norms of prog music?”Steve Harrison “It’s very rare I say this, but who? I don’t know what point you’re trying to prove with these artists that are niche at the best.”Jason Richards “Wasn’t he in Touch, who played the very first Monsters Of Rock? I thought they were AOR?”Mike Veert “American Tears were a fantastic US pomp rock band. Vastly underrated in my opinion. If you like bands like Kansas, Saga, Starcastle and their ilk there’s lots here to get your teeth into!”Simon Arnold “Never heard of them.”Andy Morton “Umm… Who?”Joshua Creasey “Mark Mangold? Drive, She Said, right? They’re AOR, nothing to do with prog.”Alex Myers “Also led the…2 min
Prog|Issue 105MARILLIONWith strings attached, Marillion get by with a little help…When properly employed, a string quartet can add instant class and credibility to pretty much any music. These qualities were already abundant in the nine songs Marillion have chosen to revisit and reimagine here, and they do so in very good company. Youthful, outward-facing, and enthusiastic for genres beyond the classical sphere, the Brussels-based quartet In Praise Of Folly are a great fit for Marillion’s ambitious, layered compositions. They’ve played with the band already – at their Weekends, at their triumphant debut concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 2017 – and along with French horn player Sam Morris and flautist Emma Halnan they were the ‘Friends’ on the recent, rapturously received Marillion With Friends From The Orchestra tour.“Rothery and the…2 min
Prog|Issue 105AND LAST BUT NOT LEASTBest known as the keyboardist for cult Italian proggers La Locanda delle Fate, Michele Conta brings us Endless Nights (AMS), his first album of original music since that band finally fizzled in the mid 2010s. It’s a welcome return – a proggy symphonic statement, old-fashioned yet with a modern gleam. Conta’s beautiful keys-led pieces also feature dizzying guitar from Max Arminchiardi, smooth vocals from Ermanno Brignolo, and among the drummers here is Gavin Harrison, no less.Another Italian pianist, Francesco Gazzara pays affectionate tribute to Genesis’ 70s catalogue on his latest record as Gazzara Plays Genesis. Here It Comes Again includes piano/orchestral arrangements of The Musical Box, Supper’s Ready, Dance On A Volcano and more of prog’s defining moments. As ever, Gazzara is a talented and sympathetic interpreter of his subject.Former…2 min
Prog|Issue 105HENRY COWStudio, demos and live recordings, plus a DVD of prime Cow.This career-spanning set includes all the remastered studio albums and more from one of the most exploratory groups of the 70s. The story starts here with early demos, including songs of a rather whimsical bent like Rapt In A Blanket “from an unmarked tape” circa 1971-3. Then came their dazzling 1973 debut Legend with its Canterbury affinities, through to the autumnal landscapes of Unrest and culminating in the concise, chamber ensemble feel of the group’s final album, 1979’s Western Culture.“The studio albums don’t tell the whole story…”Drummer Chris Cutler’s early influences include Keith Moon, whereas guitarist Fred Frith is a fan of Zappa, Jeff Beck and of Roger Waters’ bass playing. But extrapolate those influences and then add Ornette Coleman,…2 min
Prog|Issue 105TWELFTH NIGHT‘Farewell’ performance from neo-prog giants, on CD and Blu-ray too.Shot in HD at London’s Barbican Silk Street Theatre in December 2012, A Night To Remember captures a reformed Twelfth Night playing their last (but one) gig in spectacular style, with the type of staging that their dramatic, widescreen music entirely justifies. Tour manager Stuart Calder’s day job at the Barbican’s Guildhall School Of Music And Drama helped them go out with a bang, not only securing a prestigious venue, but also a team of students eager to film a full-scale rock gig – in addition, over a million pounds’ worth of lighting rig was blagged and a giant reproduction of the late Geoff Mann’s iconic artwork for Fact And Fiction was painted on the stage.“The vibe is celebratory and the…2 min
Prog|Issue 105MARILLIONWith strings attached, Marillion get by with a little help… When properly employed, a string quartet can add instant class and credibility to pretty much any music. These qualities were already abundant in the nine songs Marillion have chosen to revisit and reimagine here, and they do so in very good company. Youthful, outward-facing, and enthusiastic for genres beyond the classical sphere, the Brussels-based quartet In Praise Of Folly are a great fit for Marillion’s ambitious, layered compositions. They’ve played with the band already – at their Weekends, at their triumphant debut concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 2017 – and along with French horn player Sam Morris and flautist Emma Halnan they were the ‘Friends’ on the recent, rapturously received Marillion With Friends From The Orchestra tour. “Rothery…2 min