Aelain is a five-piece guitar / keyboards / bass / drums Italian band that serves up music in the 80s AOR rock style. The song arrangements are typically neat and clean and there are loads of...
» Read moreAfter some none-too-fulfilling encounters with the likes of Eloy Fritsch and Artemiy Artemiev, I was becoming weary of what my next task with reviewing synthesizer-based music would hold. Alas,...
» Read moreWithout reading the credits, it would be easy to assume Amoeba is a four or five member band, but in reality it’s two guys: Robert Rich (vocals, keyboards, steel guitar, flutes) and Rick...
» Read moreAmstrong hail from Copenhagen, and are often compared to massive Attack and Portishead, but I don’t hear much of that. Their sound is a strange mixture of very artificial and organic, with...
» Read moreAnnie Whitehead is a trombonist and composer who has made what I’d characterize as an optimistic revalidation of the roots of early Brit jazz, adding a careful handling of world music themes....
» Read moreThis is a very good example of good “musical” ideas ruined by an out-of-control singer. “Musical,” here meaning instrumental ideas. The vocalizations of the singer, Andreas...
» Read moreBefore hooking up with Peter Blegvad and Dagmar Krause to form Slapp Happy, Anthony Moore was experimenting with some very innovative musical techniques. Reed, Whistle and Sticks is one of...
» Read moreAo, which is a Polynesian word for light and illumination, is the duo of Nahoo (aka Ric Gannaway) and Jojo (aka Jay Oliver), a pair of Mid-Westerners with a strong affiliation for New Age...
» Read moreIt’s been so long since we have heard anything from this Mexican prog man that I was beginning to wonder what happened to him. Outside of various appearances with the likes of Nirgal Vallis...
» Read moreThis CD is a concert by Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching which took place in April 2000 at Royal Festival Hall, presumably the site of earlier Schulze recordings of the same name. Not...
» Read moreNo newcomers to Exposé, this exotic Polish ensemble check in with another release. Atman’s sound is tough to pigeonhole, their forte being a bent for creating ambient drones...
» Read moreAudra captures the factory sound of the late 70s, of bands like Bauhaus and Joy Division. Their debut CD opens with a tasty little bit of nostalgia. “In All Our Androgyny” features an...
» Read moreThe electronic drum kit will undoubtedly make or break one’s opinion of this release by Russian prog-metal quartet Azazello, depending on your tolerance for such a mechanical backbone. And if...
» Read moreVeteran pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole became visible on the UK music horizon within several contexts by this release from his Transparent Music Ensemble in 1995. Since 1989’s Transparent...
» Read moreEver since I first heard this band back in the early 80s, I’ve been fascinated by their style: rock instrumentation playing challenging music which is not based in the conventions of rock and...
» Read moreCálix is a young Brazilian band that seems to strive for an early 70s rock sound as opposed to strictly prog, with easily grasped melodies and song structures, and a dominant Anglo-American...
» Read moreAs part of Thirsty Ear’s effort to expand its scope to a varied roster, ex-Rollins Band and Bowie’s recent guitarist Chris Haskett puts on his production hat to produce Virginia...
» Read moreCurved Air was always one of the most talented bands that was unable to realize the financial rewards for leading the crest of the 70s progressive wave. This was due in part to the massive hype by...
» Read moreOn Guitar Absolute Darren Stroud plays all guitars and plays bass on most tracks. Tones range from warm, clean jazzy tones to more distorted offerings. Stroud presents a balanced sense of...
» Read moreThere are loads of musicians trying to cash in on the Celtic music craze, and here’s another. This quote found on the web site should be warning enough: “David’s passionate use of...
» Read moreUtilizing the heretofore-unknown Soundbeam system, Dave Jackson has found a means to incorporate together his love of the spontaneous moment as well as live improvisation. Across the eleven cuts,...
» Read moreHere we have two four-song discs from Finland’s psychedelic progressive hard rock masters. The first (I Don't Remember) features a short version of a track from their album...
» Read moreThose expecting the usual collection of Yes-inspired sci-fi instrumentals from Chris Fournier this time out are in for quite a shock. For one thing, while the overall sound and production quality...
» Read moreVan Bogaert’s electronic leanings remind me a lot of 70s Vangelis and more symphonic-oriented electronic music like Tomita or some Kitaro. Throughout the 11 tracks on the CD, there is a...
» Read moreWith Sanity and Gravity UK session drummer Gavin Harrison steps up to the lead role with his very first album. Harrison is known for accompanying many divergent artists such as Iggy Pop,...
» Read moreThe musical world suffered a major loss in May of 1981 when Alan Gowen died of leukemia at the age of 33. Perhaps best known for his work with National Health, Gowen had also been the leader of his...
» Read moreGlenn Hughes has always been a hidden, overlooked talent in my book. The man came to prominence first with rockers Trapeze, before moving into the high profile of Deep Purple during the...
» Read moreThough Golaná (a.k.a. Scott Cunningham) plays handcrafted Native American wood flutes, his compositions have little connection the musical traditions of his Cherokee ancestors. Instead, the...
» Read moreFragoso practices a brand of swarthy, doomy ambient prog that bears the imprint of Peter Frohmader. Fragoso serves up dark, dank soundscapes with a love of low registers, thick textures, and...
» Read moreI remember Guru Guru from back in the 70s, when I picked up one album on a whim. It was spacey, funky jazz rock done with a sense of humor (I don’t suppose you can be too serious with a name...
» Read moreFurther tapping the bottom of the barrel of archives by Texas group Hands is this collection of live recordings and rehearsals by two prior incarnations of the band, named Prism and Ibis. The first...
» Read moreThe up side of the modern availability of inexpensive digital recording equipment is that virtually anybody who wants to can put out a CD of their own music without having to go through the...
» Read moreFor those of you who don’t know him, Hugh Burns is a much traveled and in- demand session guitarist who has played with the likes of Wham, Gerry Rafferty, and Jack Bruce. He is also involved...
» Read moreThis 66 ½-minute, one track CD reveals a style that may be part of the lineage of positive, gentle, cloudy ambient music that one finds on Steve Roach’s Quiet Music albums and...
» Read moreLeave it to musical chameleon Joe Jackson to twist the standard pop jazz arrangement of a few well known pop tunes and provide further proof of his oft-ignored creative genius. Dipping into his 60s...
» Read moreRecorded in mid-1999 in Paris, Whisper Not is the first recording of the trio since Jarrett took a health break in 1997 and 1998. He suffered from CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome). To do a whole gig...
» Read moreOne thing is certain: Robert Fripp and company have found a marketing outlet to appeal to the hard-core Crimson collector. Those of us left in the financial lurch now have a suitable access to the...
» Read moreFollowing quickly on the heels of Tempête et châtiments (reviewed in #20), l’Ange Vert’s fourth CD showcases live material from their 1999 tour. This French...
» Read moreFirst of all, this album is not a collaboration between Laraaji and Roger Eno. It is a split live album with separate performances from the two, recorded at the Lanzarote Music Festival in 1989....
» Read moreThe music on this disc was originally recorded from 1984 to 1990. Nothing is provided in the way of musician credits, but judging from the sound of it, Palocsay worked on his own. Most of the...
» Read moreLol Coxhill and Morgan Fisher are two musicians whom you wouldn’t think had crossed paths before. Coxhill’s resume consists of an early stint with Kevin Ayers and Mike Oldfield in The...
» Read moreHugh Hopper’s penchant to seek the unobtrusive collaboration results in another crystal of a project. This improvising trio is based on your typical guitar, bass and percussion scenario,...
» Read moreDespite the supposed 1986 release date on this, it must have languished in total obscurity for several years. The first this writer ever heard of this duo was on the Margen sampler, reviewed a...
» Read moreHow this one was missed by Exposé’s radar when it first came out is still a mystery to me, having only been brought to our attention earlier this year. The six tracks herein...
» Read moreIn the middle of his work as a keyboard player (with Queen, Mott the Hoople, and others) and as a producer (Allan Holdsworth), Morgan Fisher came up with two albums worth of oddities called...
» Read moreMusic from the Future is the recording name of Marcel Peelen, a Dutch native who now resides in the United States. A certified therapeutic recreation specialist who seeks to use synthesized sounds...
» Read moreThis oddly entitled outfit seems to get their influences as much from classic and psychedelic rock as progressive rock. The Age of Chivalry is mostly a guitar, bass, and drums affair, with...
» Read moreNLC is a project led by one Julien Ash, who has apparently been at this for some time, although these two releases were my first exposure to his work Their relative anonymity may not last, as they...
» Read moreCosmic Egg is one of the recent CD labels of Audion magazine’s Alan and Steve Freeman, acting sort of as a offshoot to their Auricle cassette line that they have run since the 80s. The...
» Read moreGuitarist Peter Banks continues to dig deep into his roots and comes up another winner with his latest disc. This one is of keen interest to collectors of the psychedelic era, since that’s...
» Read morePounding beats, throbbing bass, swirling electronics. Is this latest acid house, acid techno, electro-techno (whatever label you choose) sensation from Germany? No, surprisingly it is a foray into...
» Read morePeter Frohmader was in a number of groups in the early 70s that predated his tenure with the moniker “Nekropolis.” Kanaan is one of these groups, presented here live in concert in 1975....
» Read moreGerman rock journalist Michael Fuchs-Gamböck and Peter Frohmader met at a Faust concert in 1997. Their mutual interest in Krautrock and experimental music led to a lasting friendship and now a...
» Read moreTo me, at first this sounds a heck of a lot like Robert Wyatt vocally and Dead Can Dance (or other similar 4AD artists) musically. Ulrich has a thin, plaintive tenor voice that, like Wyatt’s,...
» Read moreIf you think that the acoustic guitar is a conventional instrument then you haven’t heard Preston Reed play it. Combining a tapping approach that is considerably evolved from the style of the...
» Read moreThe Art of Imagination is a series of six musical images in the European electronic tradition. The first is in a melodic, minor key with shakuhachi-like patches intoning over some deeper...
» Read moreRobert Carty is an independent musician who runs his own label and releases several CDRs a year in a variety of electronic styles. He has an enormous back catalog that I have only begun to tap, but...
» Read moreTolman is a singer-songwriter with a half-talking / half-singing Lou Reed style of vocalization. In other words, he’s got the vocal range of about five half-steps. This is not necessarily a...
» Read moreMost progressive rock fans know him as Colin Bass, bassist for Camel since the late 70s, but in Indonesia he is Sabah Habas Mustapha, the youngest brother of the famous 3Mustaphas3, an incredibly...
» Read moreThough best known these days as the keyboardist for the Violent Femmes, Sigmund Snopek’s first and greatest accomplishments have been in progressive rock. A three-act rock opera written in...
» Read moreOf the Mexican progressive groups I’ve heard, none attempts to integrate the traditional music of their country as much as Similares y Conexos. The five-pieces ranges from tunes a bit like...
» Read moreShot right out of the cosmos to earth by the stories of Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke is the Hungarian formation Solaris. Hungary is not the friendliest of places to release music that tries to...
» Read moreNot to be confused with a similarly-named 80s fusion act, this British band released three undisputed classics of progressive / psychedelic folk back in the 70s: St. Radigunds, Old...
» Read moreUnderground darlings Spring Heel Jack is the duo of Coxon and Wales from the UK. Oddities is their last segment in a trio of recordings the composers created, which has a consistent set of...
» Read moreAnyone who’s seen the Ozrics on their last couple US tours may have caught these folks inadvertently as their opening act. Yes, these are those bizarre guys in tuxes that look like some kind...
» Read moreOkay, let’s get one thing straight; this guy can play guitar. It’s obvious he can play circles around any of these modern thrashy guitar heroes. Stéphane Vaillant has got very...
» Read moreIt just doesn’t get much worse than "Prizefighters." I remember when GTR introduced this song during their only tour, I disliked it then and this version is worse. Take one guitar...
» Read moreAfter a silence of 27 years the illustrious Dutch psychedelic group is back, not with a new album, but with treasurable memories. The first four albums, Present from Nancy (1970), To...
» Read moreVocalist Susanne Lewis finally steps out into her first true solo album, nearly fourteen years after her most notable stint as lead singer for Colorado’s Thinking Plague. She’s also...
» Read moreOmnium’s primary mission is releasing “folk music that rocks,” and they turn slightly aside from that with this disc. Though Sviraj (pronounced “svee-rye”) have energy...
» Read moreMiss Vanflower is the vocalist for Lycia, another Projekt band. My favorite tracks on the Lycia I reviewed were the instrumentals, none of those here. Tara “plays” all the instruments:...
» Read moreIt’s about time that these Bay Area Celtic rockers released a live CD! Impressive as Tempest’s studio releases have been, they’ve never come close to the essence of the...
» Read moreThis live album is listed as “The concert before the Rio ArtRock Festival ‘98” and is the original Tempus Fugit line-up. The bass player would leave shortly after this. Tempus...
» Read moreThis late-60s quintet from NYC epitomized the broad sense of musical experimentation of the era, pulling incongruent forms together, and through a combination of optimism and naiveté,...
» Read moreAs a longtime fan of Fairport Convention and British folk rock, I had dismissed American folk as being either too cloying or too familiar. Not so with The Insect Trust, who do for American folk and...
» Read moreAlthough the 80s produced a spate of Japanese sympho bands, in recent years one tends to think of Japanese progressive music in terms of zeuhl (Ruins and related Yoshida projects) or the...
» Read moreThe recent resurgence of Thinking Plague has finally yielded the reissue of their (rare) first two albums (both included on this one CD in their entirety), showcasing the beginnings of one of the...
» Read moreOver the last half dozen years, King Crimson bassist Tony Levin has produced a small but impressive body of work on his own Papa Bear Records, including World Diary (1995), a collection of...
» Read moreTen years ago this would have been right at home on the SI label. For many readers, maybe that’s all you need to know. If you don’t know what that means, well, consider some of the more...
» Read moreThis interesting compilation is the result of a collaboration between members of an Internet mailing list called “e-Prog,” which is dedicated to the discussion of keyboard-led...
» Read moreThis was an awesome Internet find. I discovered the Looper’s Delight web page one day and am the better for it. A site dedicated to the use of the tape loop; its origins, tech tips and...
» Read moreFounded in 1974, the Vujicsics Ensemble is perhaps Hungary’s most widely respected folk group. Named for Tilhamér Vujicsics, a composer and musical folklorist in the tradition of...
» Read moreThis is the second album by the Canadian guitarist, and although it’s getting a bit moldy by now, it does deserve a mention here. O’Hara plays electric and acoustic guitars, and also...
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2021-04-01
New Aristocrats Live Album on the Way –
No foolin'! These supreme musicians toured Europe early in 2020, just before touring ceased to be a thing musicians could do, and there were some hot performances captured. On May 7, some of these will be releases as Freeze! Live in Europe 2020. »
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2021-03-25
Return of Jerry Lucky's Progressive Rock Files –
After much consideration and surprisingly, positive feedback, Jerry Lucky is announcing the launch of the progressive Rock Files podcast, featuring the latest progressive rock music from around the world. »
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2021-03-14
Jewlia Eisenberg RIP –
The sad news has come out that Jewlia Eisenberg has died. As a founding member of Charming Hostess, Eisenberg changed the face of music, bringing together Balkan klezmer, American folk, and experimental rock in a distinctive blend that garnered much praise. »
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2021-03-11
RIP Roger Trigaux –
The sad news has come to our attention that Roger Trigaux, the guiding force of Present and former member of Univers Zero, passed away on the evening of March 10, 2021 after a long ilness. »
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2021-02-14
SoundQuest Fest 2021 –
SoundQuest Fest, first experienced as a live festival in Tucson Arizona in 2010 was created by ambient music pioneer Steve Roach. This 2021 event will unite a worldwide gathering of artists and audience members together for a 3-day online event unique in the realm of ambient music. From March 26-28th a continuous flow of streamed performances, audio-video wonder worlds and deep immersion zones will burn bright on Roach’s YouTube channel. »
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Step Ahead - Step Ahead – Step Ahead was one of France's best symphonic bands and this, their only release, was a quite a rarity, not only in availability but also in quality. In the early eighties, few bands kept the... (1993) » Read more
Hermes Orchestra - Live – Dan Hermes is a jack-of-all-trades and music is just one of his passions. On this album professionally trained musicians play the compositions of Dan Hermes. All this was performed live at the Tremont... (2007) » Read more
Sigmund Snopek III - Virginia Woolf – Well, leave it to Peter Wustmann of WMMS to unearth something so totally obscure and unclassifiable that time had nearly forgotten about it. Sigmund Snopek III and the Bloomsbury People existed in the... (1995) » Read more
Vedda Tribe - Vedda Tribe – Vedda Tribe is an Italian three piece of guitar / keyboards / drums; no bass credit is given but that is a bass note I hear. They play in an aggressive manner that might recall classic King Crimson at... (2003) » Read more
Soft Machine - Noisette – Steve Feigenbaum (founder of Cuneiform Records) continues to expand the breadth of the Soft Machine legacy by finding gold in long forgotten tapes. His latest audio treasure spotlights a brief... (2000) » Read more