SMPT:e by Transatlantic
My mate James is the world's biggest progger. He has so many prog CDs he had to reinforce the floor of his flat. He once had a record player which was so expensive it took a team of four people to come in and install it. Some of these things might be true. Anyway, James asked me to review a Transatlantic album, so here we are. SMPT:e is the first album by the prog supergroup which features Neal Morse (once of Spock's Beard), Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater), Pete Trewavas (Marillion) and Roine Stolt (the Flower Kings). The style is very much classic neo-prog. It's almost a case study in how to make a prog album. Long songs, tick. Odd time signatures, tick. Big sound, tick. And so on. This is very much an album which consolidates the progressive rock sound rather than extends it. The first track, for example. It's 31 minutes long. It starts with a short atmospheric scene-setter before going into a high-tempo instrumental section and from there into more of a song section. Y...