Considering this board has a number of dedicated topics catered towards niche fans, most notably the Metal thread, I think a progressive (or prog) topic makes a lot of sense. As much as probably people in the "Indie" scene don't care to acknowledge or admit, progressive rock has rooted it's head into a lot of bands/artists styles in "Indie" or "Alternative" (or whatever label you want to call it) in the last decade.

So this topic will be to review, discuss, suggest, etc music of that ilk. Whether it be Yes, Genesis, or Jethro Tull; or perhaps music like The Mars Volta, Tool, or Dream Theater. There's a ton of it out there..new and old.

I also think it's a good time due to the fact 2009 could see a ton of new albums in this style. For example, the new Umphrey's McGee album "Mantis" definitely falls under the umbrella. And I guess whether it's "prog" or not, it's a really good record, and worth checking out.

http://bestdocumentaries.blogspot.com/2009...rvation-in.html

Go BBC!

So I just listened to Porcupine Tree - Lightbulb Sun for the first time last week. Dunno why I put it off for so long, fantastic record.

Soundscape, are there any indie bands today that you would classify as "prog," or that you would deem as having a strong progressive influence? Mew, Caribou?

I mean, Radiohead famously denied any progressive rock influence,
even though OK Computer has an awful lot of moog.

I think In the Court of the Crimson King and Red are adequate bookends for the genre.

OK is def prog. So is most of Kid A. Pyramid Song is def prog as well.

I like Meshuggah, and they're hella prog.

I saw this, it wasn't bad, although kind of ironic how Pink Floyd are not featured at all.



There's definitely a lot of bands in the "Indie" scene, so to speak, who could be called "Prog" including Radiohead (ironically, a band I'm not into, but won't deny how influential they are).

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/SoundscapeMN/new_prog_umbrella

here's a list of about 100 artists I compiled/add-to who are sort of indie or alternative rock that also you can hear or notice some progressive rock elements to varying degrees.

the 100 or so names right now on it is the jist of what comprises my personal feeling of these groups who are taking elements of so-called experimental, math-rock/metal, psychedelic, progressive, post, chamber/baroque, and/or art-rock and combining it with what is often described as alternative or indie-rock and in some cases Metal (the Metal groups are maybe even harder to figure out since there's hordes of so-called newer "progressive" or technical, jazz, black, and death metal bands. It probably needs it's own list all-together actually).

Mew certainly. Their last disc "And the Glass Handed Kites" is somewhat of a concept record, and they've mentioned being influenced by early Genesis among others. The psychedelic elements, and complex or layered arrangements (vocal harmonies especially) is another common progressive rock element.

Caribou I honestly have not heard much from. But I have seen the prog tag mentioned from them.

Peter Gabriel-era Genesis

I actually posted this to the Metal Thread a week or so ago, but perhaps it is more appropriate in the Prog Thread......

(Soundscape, if you haven't checked this out yet, I imagine it to be right up your alley.)

The new (and old) Irepress songs are awesome!

this ain't bad..the name is familiar.

edit: yeah I've seen the name before. They're kind of sludgy Post-Metal..kind of like Russian Circles, or I suppose Isis as I'm noticing a bunch of comparisons to them.

edit 2: wait, Backslash, did this album leak?..or just that song?

Focus & Gentle Giant are two progressive rock bands that immediately spring to mind. There was a lot more to Focus than just that bizarre song "Hocus Pocus."

Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

ELP

Just that song, thus far. There is another song posted to their myspace, so we've seen two from the new album. Their first album is great as well. Solid instru-metal. I'm pretty excited about the addition of vocals on this one.

They are always compared to post-metal acts like Isis, but I really don't see it. Closest thing I can compare to the first album is probably Gordian Knot. I definitely get a bit of Leitmotif era Dredg from the snippets of the new album.

Thanks, that list was informative. I had never thought about the "prog" implications of a lot of these bands, like Apples In Stereo. However, that last record did have those wacky "non-Pythagorean compositions," and vocorder, etc.

It just goes to show that "indie" is just an umbrella term for all underground pop/rock and less of a specific aesthetic. I mean, you even have bands like Drive-By Truckers playing straight up southern rock under the indie tag these days. I think it's a good thing, though. Brian Eno once said that progressive rock was a vastly underrated genre, and that one day it would come around to being cool again. I don't see Gentle Giant making a comeback anytime soon, but then again I also never thought I would see Eno producing Coldplay.

Here's a prog-worthy note. Bill Bruford apparently is retiring as a live performer. We'll see if he ever makes a comeback I suppose since others have announced this before and made comebacks.

Bill retires from public performance



After 41 years of moving the percussive pulse in music and raising people's pulses in general, Bill Bruford has announced his retirement from public performance, effective from January 1st 2009. Bill's contribution to music is celebrated by the release of two new anthologies covering his solo career.





Pretty much since the mid 70's it's become rather under the radar, but at the same time there have been some more visible artists who've tapped into it off and on. And the thing I think is kind of significant is it's not just about what's it's stereotyped as. Fantasy lyrics, and self-indulgence. When it's done well, to many, it's incredibly beautiful. But "the umbrella" so-to-speak I find is also quite important. A lot of the people who are really into, are only into it..especially the 70's stuff..and then a lot of the more retro-prog...which you know has it's value, but as a music fan, I find there's more out there to offer that I can find a similar appeal to. It just doesn't sound the influences are so clearly shown on their sleaves. At the same time, some of the "retro-prog" stuff is worth getting into. Stuff like Transatlantic and Spock's Beard for example.

Pure Reason Revolution - Amor Vincit Omnia

try



http://myspace.com/purereasonrevolution

I could write a lengthly description right now about this band and album that I finally got to hear for the 1st time today, but in due time. Their debut album "The Dark Third" was my 2006 Album of the Year. This is the follow-up.

After 3x's playing the thing, it's very different, but after some growing, I am on-board with it. They have incorporated a large electronica-element on it. Very fat, heavy-synths, to go along with not as much, but still a decent amount of their trademark complex vocal-harmonies ala The Beach Boys and Pink Floyd.

This a very talented group from the UK, that I could see many around here liking. People who enjoy music like Porcupine Tree and Muse just to give a couple of names.

Speaking of umbrellas,
here in Nashville we have this band called Umbrella Tree.

http://www.myspace.com/umbrellatree

I like "Souls Are Warm Like Eskimos."

heyy!..this ain't bad!..reminds me a little of Mason Proper and some others. Thanks!

With Yes going on tour, it's sad that Bruford has retired. Anyone know whether their initial plans for the tour included him?

It's interesting & a little confounding to consider the bands that are classified as prog these days. The guy to whom I owe 75% of my musical proclivities is Steve Morse, whom I consider to be the consummate prog composer/guitarist. With him as a starting point, it's not that big a leap to Tool, Meshuggah, and Between the Buried and Me. Steve really knows how to construct a song that's heavy on hooks & intricate riffage w/o resorting to wankery. Some of the old Dregs/Steve Morse Band songs from the 80s & 90s have held up really well, others not so much--but he's still writing new, interesting stuff. If only he'd use his powers for real metal. I have no interest in Deep Purple, but reportedly his work with them has been good for all involved.

Here's some songs. Similar music is being made by The Magic Elf.

"Cruise Missile" (looks crappy but the soundtrack is from the album anyway)


"The Introduction"


"Tumeni Notes"

yeah the Dregs/Morse are pretty sweet. That stuff is better than the work he's done with PURPLE. A friend of mine wishes Blackmore would rejoin DP and Steve go back to the Dregs.

I saw them back in 2000 open for Dream Theater. They were pretty sweet; they did a cover of Zappa's Peaches in Regalia in fact.

Bruford hasn't been with Yes since the Union or perhaps ABWH tours. He played with Crimson I recall moreso in the 90's.

Oh I saw them on that tour in 2000--I think his songs are so much tighter than DT's, and of course, free of the horrible vocals. You've seen the Morse Band as well as the Dregs? While I enjoy the added texture of Jerry Goodman's violin (& to a much lesser extent T. Lavitz's keyboards), all that soloing takes away from the pure flow of the music that you get at a SMB show.

Saw Yes during the Big Generator tour...I guess Alan White was with them by then.

Yes (up until Tormato) is way too underrated and I think they're due for one of those high-falutin critical-re-evaluations all them 70s bands have been gettin' lately. Like ELO. Seriously, shit is insane. It's either just really fucking good, melodically and vocally pleasing, like most of Fragile, Yes Album and Time & A Word, or it's stupidly, ridiculously epic like Tales from Topographic Oceans and Relayer, or both, like Close to the Edge. A few years ago I was pretty into prog (especially Italian, Le Orme for life amirite ladies), and while my love has certainly died down again I will never stop loving Yes.

*Seriously though, Le Orme is some great shit. Good thread idea, I'll stick around, if the thread can survive.

Thread needs some Le Orme!

yeah Le Orme has some good stuff. They played Nearfest a few years ago and I would have liked to have seen them. I have a disc from I believe "ProgFest'97" with a live track from them that's a 10-15min epic. The singer tells a pretty interesting story before they perform that piece. Should look it up or go back to it soon.

Yes, well I'm in the minority for my love of DRAMA. It's my 2nd favorite. But my #1 for them has been, and probably always will be RELAYER. I absolutely love what Patrick Moraz did with them in the studio. He was like a scientist in a way.

But more or less everything up through DRAMA is great..then it's spotty for me. 90125 is not for me save for "Changes."..ABWH was ok I guess. In the 90's though I did enjoy "The Ladder" and off "Keys 2 Ascension 2" the 15min epic "Mind Drive" with Wakeman.

They're diehards swear by pretty much all of their work save for perhaps Union and Open Your Eyes. I guess they're one of those groups where everyone has a different favorite. Plus their solo work. Chris Squire's "Fish Out of Water" and Jon Anderson's "Olias of Sunnhillow" are both as good as anything Yes did themselves to me.

Relayer sounds so futuristic to me. You're right about Moraz, he just brought something so totally unique, it sounds like nothing else Yes or anyone else ever did. It barely even sounds like music, or songs, it's just this crazy spastic shit. They had balls for releasing that.

I like Drama too; I said up to Tormato because I don't like Tormato, and everything after that is not guaranteed to be good, but I think Drama is a damn fine album considering the circumstances. Machine Messiah = . 90125 is great if you have a tolerance for middle-aged 80s schlock (i.e. Alan Parsons), Big Generator is mostly garbage.. (though the live shows for that album were not bad!). The stuff after that is terribly inconsistent, and a lot of it has that disheartening late 80s/early 90s production.

Fish Out Of Water is JUST as good as any of the minor 70s Yes records, if not better. I'm not as crazy about Olias of Sunnhillow but it's still pretty good.

well fwiw..Jon did play EVERYTHING on OLIAS in fact. Yeah TORMATO isn't that great, but I still prefer it over the Yes-WEST and most of the 90's stuff.

I've only heard Deadwing, which I probably need to revisit. How would you rate that in comparison to LS?

Do we consider King Crimson's Discipline/Beat/Three of a Perfect Pair trilogy prog? It's closer to Talking Heads than what we usually (often pejoratively) call "prog," and takes more influences from African polyrhythms and Balinese gamelan ensembles than classical or psychedelic music, but it's Fripp, so of course it's gotta be prog, right? Anyway what I'm trying to say is that Bill Bruford was a huge and awesome part of that phase of the Crims. My favorite album of theirs is still Larks' Tongues in Aspic, though.

Staying on the '80s prog theme, I never got into Marillion like some friends thought I would. Misplaced Childhood has a few good songs up front but I get kind of bored and annoyed with it. I need to give Brave from 1994 some more attention. Apparently it's a whole new singer and a whole new Marillion. I dunno.

I hate prog rock.

yes..altho arguably, the BRAVE-era is not exactly what they're doing now. MISPLACED CHILDHOOD actually is considered 1 LONG SONG..but some do prefer sections of it over others. I would suggest to anyone not up for the Fish-era Marillion, before they write it off, check out the last LP he did with them "Clutching at Straws"..it's pretty different..and WAY MORE SONG-ORIENTED.

But the post-Fish or Steve Hogarth-fronted Marillion is still my favorite music ever made. BRAVE is their masterwork, but they have a handful of others I rate somewhat close. 1995''s "Afraid of Sunlight" and 2004's "Marbles" (important to consider the 2-CD CAMPAIGN edition with this one).

80's Crimson "prog"?..I suppose. I consider much of "progressive" and experimental of course. But then, much of Peter Gabriel's work..hell The Talking Heads, U2, The Police and many other groups from that period, while they don't sound much like the 70's Genesis or Yes, still were making music in a very explorative fashion.

Thanks for the endorsement of Brave! I feel justified in checking it out again tonight.


By whom? I thought it was just a concept album.

um..by the listing on the album?..it's a SUITE really..just listen to it. Much like Side B of ABBEY ROAD.

I didn't exactly think of it, or realize it was like that until I got the Vinyl and it was LISTED that way on the back.

Yeah, I get that it's a suite; I'm not an idiot. It's pretentious to claim it's an entire song. A suite isn't a long song.

But if it works better as a whole that's played straight through, you can kinda see the point of that argument. I quibbled with a few bits of BTBAM's Colors until I realized how much better it went down if heard in one sitting.

yeah it does..the same could be said for BRAVE and many others. DARK SIDE OF THE MOON even. Certainly, records that are most effetive when they are heard all-at-once to me are often greater-than-thesum-of-their-parts. Ok, that's kind of heavy on cliches, but certainly it makes sense to many.

Do you consider Styx as Prog?

Here is an article that gives us the correct answer to that question:
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseact...mp;swapped=true

I'd call it prog pop

Did you get that from the article?

didn't read it.

That's interesting, because that is the conclusion the article makes, that they are 'ProgPop"--not a very common term.

I think I've heard Deadwing and Into Absentia. Actually, I found them both to be dreadfully boring.........

Took me forever to get into In Absentia, had the exact same problem, album seemed boring as shit after the first three (fantastic) songs. However, post-Absentia PT just seems horribly overwrought, pretentious, and self-important. The lyrics in Fear of a Blank Planet were absolutely nauseating, and it's hard to ignore lyrics when the song you're putting them in is terribly uninteresting musically. I didn't give that album much of a chance, but it kind of put me off wanting to hear any of his future stuff. I will, however, vouch for the greatness of IA and the albums before it. I haven't heard Deadwing yet though.

DEADWING is one of their more accessible albums. Granted, if you want the space-rock PT..or even the more trip-hop slanted stuff, it ain't gonna be there. But many fans regard "Lazarus" and "Arriving somewhere but not here" to be 2 of the best pieces Steven Wilson has ever written.

BLANK PLANET otoh, some love it, but I found it to be incredibly overhyped and underwhelming. Actually, the EP that followed it "Nil Recurring" was better. The track "Normal" I consider right in there with those 2 songs on DW among others as one of the best songs Wilson has written as well.

They were on a winning streak for me with LS, IA, and DW and then it got broken with FoaBP. I'm still optimistic about what they do next, even though Steven Wilson has become predictable as evidenced on how similar INSURGENTES is to the recent PT and Blackfield. No matter, he often still manages to include a few if not a handful of well-written songs every recording period. I don't see why the next PT disc won't as well.

The Pre_LS stuff is more spotty for me. "The Sky Moves Sideways" and "Voyage 34" have some wonderfully trippy passages that I honestly have not taken in enough. "Signify" is probably the best bridge album with much of that kind of thing and enough of the more song oriented direction the band was headed. "Stupid Dream" many people adore..honestly, it's not bad, but I've never found it nearly as consisent or reliable as the follow-up "Lightbulb Sun."

not common, but it certainly can be used to describe a lot of artists.

Yeah Styx certainly dove into progressive rock at times. Especially the pre-"Come Sail Away" work..but even a song like "Suite: Madame Blue" could easily be regarded as prog.

Yeah, I thought I just pulled it out of the air. Honestly. Well, looks like it's becoming more common.

Coheed & Cambria...school me, anyone. (don't bother uploading tracks, point me to Youtubes or free streams if you wish)

Coheed:

The middle 2 records are, at least among progressive rock circles, considered their best.

"Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV: Fear Through the Eye of Madness"

"In Keeping Secrets 3"

Personally, I fine Good Apollo 1 to be their finest work. It's got hooks left and right that are as catchy as anything I've ever heard. The whole record flows incredibly well start to finish. The last piece or Suite "The Willing Well" concludes what is an incredible 70+ min trip.

In Keeping Secrets has some awesome sections as well, but it's not as over-the-top as GA1

Good Apollo 2, from 2007 is spotty. A few nice songs, but a lot more Hard Rock and Glam influences.

Second Stage Turbine Blade, the debut, also is more spotty..more hardcore punk influenced..and frankly, sounds like a debut album to me. Some swear by it..consider it their best, but most of the people into progressive rock do not.

Soundscape otm re: Coheed & Cambria, although I now rank In Keeping Secrets and Good Apollo equally. Upon hearing Good Apollo (my first exposure to them) I replayed it 3x straight, something I just don't do with new music. The songs are complex, tight and catchy. In defense of Claudio's vocals, they recall Michael Jackson, not the lazy, inaccurate comparison to Geddy Lee. Hella fun to sing along to.

Maybe due to the vocals & the uptempo majority of songs, I did consider them to be Prog Pop initially but now I dunno...there's a lot of heavy there too. Opinions?

Ags, here's a fun video of theirs from In Keeping Secrets.

Here's one from Good Apollo, live.





I was bored by them initially too, but the other day when I went back to listen to Deadwing, it was alot better than I gave it credit for at first.

Hmmm. I tried that 1st video, and I really couldn't separate it from Fall Out Boy (mind you, I haven't heard much of that band either...but the song seems like a desperate try for MTV/radio exposure there...)

The second one...much like Mars Volta without the weirdness. I have tried time and again to enjoy Mars Volta, but they just seem so straight-faced about being weird that they are unapproachable (and you probably know how I am about weird music!)...and the vocals irritate me more than C&H's or Geddy Lee's. Seems like C&H are a safer middle ground between Mars Volta and Rush. Not something I necessarily want to invest a lot of time or money in, but enjoyable for some good listening. If I have a chance to scope out an entire album for its conceptual themes, I'll give it a shot. Thanks guys.

Velocity,
I know a lot of people love IKS..I think it's a really good record, but it doesn't quite floor me start-to-finish like GA1. But a few years ago I got the STRING QUARTET TRIBUTE to that album and it made me appreciate it a bit more. The climax at the end I think is pretty close to GA1's. I dunno, I suppose over time, I may eventually regard it on par or even better than GA1. The writing is a bit more disciplined and subdued..maybe even conceptually you could say it's more clever, altho I've never tried to decode the entire story that much. I guess the next one could be the last and it's supposed to reveal more or less why everything is told as it is. Hopefully the music will be a step back to where they were with those middle 2 albums; which may help get more into the concept.

Personally, the Kaddisfly concept/trilogy got me a lot more. Sadly, the time of the last chapter (album) of that could be many years from now since they are on hiatus. But their new band "Water & Bodies" may or may not be exploring similar territory.