Prog V3.0 Discussion Thread

except, brave threadslayer, while both culturally appropriate the theonyms of hellenic godlings, MOMUS (unlike) COMUS is a practitioner of analog baroque, not prog, while COMUS recorded some of the best acid prog-folk of the 1970s, up there with FAMILY, AUDIENCE, BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST, and the STRAWBS, blazing trails for more recent acid-prog folk jams by the likes of SPIRES THAT IN THE SUNSET RISE, AKRON/FAMILY, and CIRCULUS

The new Aluk Todolo is aggressive instrumental rock that I wouldn't call metal; also, the album (called Voix, out in February) is one long piece divided into six sections. Pretty prog if you ask me.

reggie don't take this the wrong way but it seems like all of your posts consist of you name-dropping completely random bands with no further explanation.

i hear affinities among the names being dropped. in disagreement with tuesday's (false binary) complaint "either it is instrumental, or it has really bad vocals" i pointed out that a lot of prog is being made by europeans whose english isn't native, like the danish band Mew and the italian band Ainur. names -- yorke, timony, o'rourke -- were dropped as counterexamples of native english speakers who have recorded excellent prog and whose vocals don't suck. i brought up Baroness, Ghost, and Goat as examples of bands who like Baron are making a kind of proggy neo-classic rock; Diagonal's name was dropped because two of the Baron guys used to be in Diagonal (a more trad prog band). i mentioned the Cardiacs (spazz prog) and Dälek (prog hop) sort of to affectionately mess with louis (sorry louis), because i've noticed he likes both. i mentioned Battles because i appreciated xelab's suggestion to listen to Ahleuchatistas (as i had fastnbulbous's suggestion to check out Baron) and the song "power with" on their latest album sounds exactly like Battles, for the first few minutes at least. moving along, mention was made of Steamhammer because i hear an affinity between how extreme they were for their time and how extreme Orthrelm is for ours, same as i do between Magma and Opeth, in a way that qualifies dominique's smart attempt to come to terms with 1.0 / 1.5 / 2.0 / 2.5 / 3.0. i suppose GOBLIN would have made for a better affinity with Opeth, since there's a song called "Goblin" on the recent Opeth album in direct homage, but dominique brought up Magma so i went with that. i also hear an affinity between Peter Hammill and Sufjan Stevens as extremely ambitious prog / orch pop dudes from different decades, so that's why they came up. Comus, Family, Barclay James Harvest, the Strawbs, Spires That in the Sunset Rise, Akron/Family, and Circulus are all bands that in some way shape or form play an acid prog folk that can be celebrated for how out it is (or derided for its ren faire overtones, depending on the ear of the listener). i hope that this guide to my recent posts helps! again i think it's interesting how resistant people are to discussing prog and how the stigmas associated it with foster suspicion. compare for instance the discussion in the tompkins square thread, where no one would ever complain that everyone sounds like john fahey and robbie basho. it's almost impossible to imagine a similar congeniality here. i'll even blame myself, take the fall for wanting the discussion to stay as wide-ranging and inclusive (rather than exclusive) of reference as possible, if that means there can be more posts like fastnbulbous's, xelab's, dominique's, and 誤訳侮辱's that mention bands i've never heard that i would like to check out, rather than the endless loop of the past however many decades of how horrible or at least dated all prog* is

*except the prog "i" like

I'm totally glad you liked that Ahleuchatistas album reggie, the math rock tag will probably put a lot of people off but no doubt they are a fearsome band.

late shout out to Robert Adam Gilmour for linking the José Luis Fernández Ledesma tracks earlier. I checked out the Nirgal Vallis album because I've read about it in passing and it's really great, very much on the prettier side of the genre, almost as if there's a big Popol Vuh influence in there somewhere. I definitely recommend it.

According to Discogs the first half of the album is actually from 1985. Shame nobody was paying attention.

anyway my take on the whole 1.0/2.0/3.0 thing is that it has to do with the era and not necessarily the type of music. like I would consider a band like Wobbler to be "Prog 3.0" even though they probably only use instruments made before 1973. though Dominique's breakdown is very interesting. I would argue that stuff like Max Tundra or Dan Deacon fits in the "3.0" tier, I mean Max Tundra at least is clearly aware of all those 2.0 bands and in some sense emulates them a little.

for me 1.5 would be stuff like Starcastle, Kansas, or even Rush, 2.0 is Neo, 3.0 is everything 90's and beyond. really reductive but hey. maybe you could argue there's a 4.0 going on with bands like Battles. I have no idea.

Cool. I had sorta forgotten about Ledesma after putting him on my shopping list.

I had thought the romantic cover art to Deluge Grander - August In The Urals was ill fitting but actually there is a lot of lushness coming through on further listens. Love the watery flowing piano.

I just started listening to Haken - generally I stay away from things tagged "progressive metal" but I hear a lot of Mr Bungle in these guys, they're all over the place. In a pretty cool way that is.

http://teamrock.com/news/2016-03-17/jon-anderson-roine-stolt-join-forces-on-invention-of-knowledge

new EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY might interest groovers & shakers, as well as the new TIME IS A MOUNTAIN ~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kPxhwjOMNE

Time is a Mountain was suggested to me by Spotify, but aren't they more jazz than prog? Great great stuff

i'd say they play a pretty jazzy prog, somewhere between THE SOFT MACHINE and KING CRIMSON. i'm a big fan of dude's wiggly keybs. with all its sci fi sound effects and spacy meanderings, "sepian" also kinda sounds like one of the improvs from one of the ecent VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR albums

Yeah I spose it's such a fine line, I guess the review of it I found after hearing it was on a jazz site so I kinda filed it there in my head

a fusion, as it were

this drummer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=238&v=htZLjRqOu5I

anybody heard this new italian group "the winstons" (no relation to "amen brother")? trio making new music in the style of robert wyatt era soft machine. good!

i will check em out

my own city's Hardcore Crayons are like a good post 90s underground rock type of prog

https://hardcorecrayons.bandcamp.com/

some relative newbies working the masters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPdoWp-PHFU

Hardcore Crayons are pretty good. I bought their CD.

I think these dudes from Louisville are pretty cool.

https://ohlm.bandcamp.com/

I don't know if this is the right thread, but the latest Three Trapped Tigers album is fantastic. It's on Superball so might be appropriate. They're an IDM-influenced mathrock three piece but it's basically prog.

The title track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMr5ZWPBEhM&ab_channel=superballmusictv

when i saw them live with liturgy they were a bit dull but it might work much better on record

jerry!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkVyzD-IBPs

Okay, that cover of Terrapin Station is excellent. Hoping this might inspire Daniel Rossen to further explore his prog tendencies.

it at least coincides with progressive tendencies, rallying for bernie the other day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZQP4xG6Txc

rufus is bringing it ~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccP6mI1GMS4

might hit too close to home for too many ~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNBfo4IIoG0

it is too bad that no new good prog rock has been recorded since punk made it obsolete (cost ineffective) ~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g05yCAF-qgc

I don't know if this is really prog v.3.0 since it's a follow on to their last album from 1978 but Argentinian legends Bubu released an EP not long ago from out of nowhere:

https://bubuprog.bandcamp.com/releases

saying that it's a completely different lineup of musicians with the same composer. In any case it's really good.

Anyone listen to German band Dark Suns? Their upcoming album Everchild (June 3) seems very promising, continuing their turn from prog metal to psych prog with some jazzy bits along the lines of perhaps Motorpsycho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLWbQHa4UZ4

Listening to Haken - this is unexpectedly nice and weird. I really like their whole early computers aesthetic too.

Aaah the massive track in the middle is amazing!

I had thought the romantic cover art to Deluge Grander - August In The Urals was ill fitting but actually there is a lot of lushness coming through on further listens. Love the watery flowing piano.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 27 December 2015 13:22 (5 months ago)

Love the first two tracks of this. The first is a monster and the second has these really lovely idyllic ethereal parts. I actually think just these first two would have made a better album than the 5 that stand. The remaining three all have good stuff in them but they get decreasingly interesting. The third is really quite good most of the time though.

How about their other albums?

I think it's kind of set up that way - I don't have an issue with the last two tracks ("The Solitude of Miranda" is especially good) but they do feel like bonus tracks in a way.

The Form of the Good is pretty great though it's maybe tougher to get into. It's entirely instrumental (outside of some faint backing vocals) and really dense at times. "The Tree Factory" is pretty cool, kinda Zeuhl-ish, though it goes through a number of cool movements (one definitely sounds Zappa-inspired). The key track is the 20-minute "Aggrandizement" which is totally insane - not like any prog epic I've ever heard, it's just one steadily rising instrumental part that keeps piling on and on and on. It's the sort of thing you have to listen to at ear-bleeding volume.

The last two tracks really dampened my enthusiasm for the album.

The Mercury Tree are pretty good - new album is kind of lovely. They're like a weirded-out occasionally-microtonal Yank take on Thumpermonkey. Discovered by snooping on ultros' RYM profile, which I'm sure is acceptable behaviour

Hey stay out of my stuff, you

Glad you liked it anyway, I probably should have brought it up here but I forget these things. Here it is if anyone else is interested:

https://themercurytree.bandcamp.com/album/permutations

The Quietus and ultros' rym page are p much the only two music sites I read in 2016 (apart from the obvious, of course)

new Deluge Grander is up and running. headfirst I go!

Cool.

I'm going to listen to this only cuz one of them pm'd me and I said I would... the samples seemed decent enough.

Also this may be of interest, it's modern chamber music that's barely prog but it kind of sounds like Univers Zero and it's on AltRock Productions. And it's really quite good.

https://altrockproductions.bandcamp.com/album/night-en-face

it's...........ok. like, there are good moments. i'll definitely listen to it again. really though (and i know frogbs will come in and yell at me for thinking this) the whole Deluge Grander project existed to make the first track on their first album, and everything since hasn't quite matched that half-hour slab of brilliance

will listen to this though thanks!

me and my 50 socks all FP'd you for this, see you in a month asshole

i guess 'aggrandizement' is quite good as well. they should just release albums with two 20+ minute tracks on them

seriously though I can understand that. I think DG's music has gotten more difficult on each album, like it's kind of steered from a fairly recognizable Zeuhl-prog hybrid to something more resembling classical music. that 20-minute track on Form of the Good still sounds like nothing I've heard, it's like he took the massive instrumental finale of a traditional suite and made that the epic. pretty cool. Heliotains completely passed me by the first couple times I listened to it - could not remember a single thing about it until I really sat down and concentrated, after which I realized it's as brilliant as the others, just harder to grasp. I've only heard some samples from the new one (it's not on Bandcamp yet) but it feels like it's kind of the same.

Been listening to the Birds And Buildings debut, it's good but it really does just sound like Deluge Grander, I know it only has two members from DG but I think maybe they'd be better off just keeping the DG name and changing the members when they want to be the "other band".

Cheer-Accident/Polvo vibes + Bob Drake cameo

https://starperiodstar.bandcamp.com/album/daylight-spending-time

cool!

cheer-accident themselves have a new one soon, featuring a couple of former gorilla museum employees (among others)