New Album By The Prog Collective

So many new prog albums! A great source for seeing what's coming up is ProgRadio's 'New Albums' page, which you can find here:

https://www.progradio.com/newalbums

According to this, thirty-three albums categorised by ProgRadio as prog were released in March 2024. To stay on top of all this I'd have to review more than one album per day! So I have to choose, and my choices are necessarily sometimes a little arbitrary.

The Prog Collective, however, is not an arbitrary choice. It is, according to its own website, the world's finest prog rock supergroup. I'm not sure I agree with that, but it's most definitely worth having a listen.

So let's find our bearings. What kind of prog territory are we in? First thing to note is that there is no song longer than 5:09 on the album, so there's no epics. First track 'Darkest Hour' is entirely instrumental and while it sounds menacing and interesting, it doesn't really have any development or structure which makes me think of prog. The second track 'Ominous Signs' is the same - it's a single idea played out without variation in tempo or dynamics. I'm starting to get the flavour of this album.

For me, the lack of singing is a major problem, because without a lyrical focus, I'm not really sure where these snippets are going. The music itself is good, it's beautifully played and produced, but prog (for me) is more than just a bunch of good bits. A great piece of music is about repetition and variation, themes that weave in and out. My model for the greatest prog song ever written is One For The Vine, the Tony Banks classic on Wind And Wuthering (as if I have to explain) because it is constantly changing yet forms one overall consistent structure - a whole world in a song, if you will. Gustav Mahler talked about symphonies being worlds, and it's something I think should apply to prog.

I've hit track 4, 'Dark Days', by this point, and we have vocals! We even have Patrick Moraz playing keyboards. But again, it feels more rock than prog rock to me.

I don't like these blogs getting too long, so I'm not going to do a track by track analysis of the whole album. Instead, I'll summarise. To me, this sounds like some great individual tracks that someone could have taken and formed prog rock songs from. It's like the raw material of prog rather than the finished article. Like a film soundtrack. If you just like the sound of prog and don't pay too much attention to its structure, if you don't particularly care for a prog epic, and if you don't bother too much about vocals, this is an excellent album worthy of your time. But if you're looking for something a bit more classically prog, then I think you might be disappointed.

Reasons to listen:

  • You like to hear some great musicians playing some great music
Reasons not to listen:
  • You like your prog a bit more, well, prog
Interesting fact of the day: Nick D'Virgilio doesn't play on this album. To my knowledge. He probably makes an uncredited cameo somewhere.

By the way you can find a playlist on Amazon Music for Progressive Rock Focus here:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Album Stories From Time And Space By Hawkwind

So I come to Hawkwind with absolutely no baggage, which is how I'm spinning being completely ignorant of these musical giants. How I've managed to get to this age without hearing this band before I've no idea, but there you are. I can see from Wikipedia that Hawkwind's only consistent member is Dave Brock, still making music at the age of 82. I think it's really important to avoid qualifiers to reviews like "...this is impressive for an 82 year old ". The music stands or falls by itself. So I'm not going to be impressed by his age (although I am a bit). I'm two songs in, and it's not what I expected. The sound is structurally straightforward but full of ideas and variation.  The second song, The Starship, is full of energy and even though it's basically two chords its groove manages to hold the attention for the nearly 8 minutes of the song. The singing is not to the forefront, clearly Dave's voice is, not suprisingly, not holding up pa
Read more

Bigger On The Inside By Rachel Flowers

Oh my goodness I am listening to something amazing. I have just discovered, through a random association on Amazon Music (I was listening to Jadis), the incredible Rachel Flowers, an American multi-instrumentalist and composer. There's an excellent mini-bio on IMDb which I've linked below. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5231044/bio/ Composer is important, because these songs are not thrown together in five minutes. You can hear the thought and craft that went into them. On top of that, she's a great singer. And her lyrics are excellent! How do I describe her music? Well, it's definitely progressive rock. Extended themes. Three of the songs are longer than 10 minutes and the album clocks in at 67 minutes. The melodies, though, are out of this world. There's an American twist to some of them which at times reminds me of TV theme tunes, but in a good way. Kind of progressive rock and soft jazz. Track 7, for example, "The Darkness" has a sublime refrain which bui
Read more

King Crimson Discipline

This album was released in September 1981 and you may well argue it's not a progressive rock album at all. It's certainly a long way from 1970s Flutes and Fairies. It is clearly influenced by Talking Heads. Remain In Light was released in 1980 and the stylistic influences are clear. Adrian Belew, King Crimson's singer on this album, worked on Remain In Light of course. Its emphasis is on rhythm rather than harmony, which dominated earlier King Crimson. The first song Elephant Talk really sounds like Talking Heads, Belew's vocal delivery almost a direct copy of David Byrne. But the instrumental arrangement takes it to another level. Fripp is clearly delighting in trying something new. In the second song, Frame By Frame, I can detect some XTC influences. Something about the vocal line strongly reminds me of Andy Partridge. I absolutely love this song. The third song, Matte Kudasai, sees a distinct change of mood, and you could be tempted into thinking it's quite strai
Read more