Prog V3.0 Discussion Thread

the opening track is my favourite i think ('babel') - check it out ppl

http://thequietus.com/articles/18778-john-stanier-battles-favourite-albums-interview?page=12

weather report and rush. maybe that's why i don't like battles!

I took you for a Rush fan because of your name.

nah, my username is a joke that ceased to be funny probably a decade ago, if it was ever funny at all. i don't hate rush anymore, but i also don't really ever listen to them.

The most 'prog' new bands I'm into right now are Mammatus and Perhaps. Mammatus is more spacerock than anything but the music is intricate enough that I think it passes muster. After the discussion, I'm a bit worried they might be too cheesy for this thread but imo they are a total blast:

https://youtu.be/M4ksZet5P0k

(Dont know why the Youtube volume level is so low though)

MAMMATUS kills it. EARTHLESS and ASTRA are up their space alley if you haven't checked them out

V2.65?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp2mem73WKY

suck it, non-believers

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/news/a38266/pope-prog-rock-album/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LiW6OKHLaU

prog v2.82?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEdLMkyeoJ4

anyone into those Deluge Grander tracks above, check out "Aggrendizement" from Form of the Good - absolutely bonkers (the whole album is great, but this is the centerpiece)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsi8Iy7Zah8

Interesting Quietus piece on 80s UK prog. Kinda makes me want to hear Twelfth Night. The rest, I'll skip.

never really got into most of that stuff, though IQ can be pretty decent . . . except for the dude's singing sometimes, when he sounds like the british sea power guy's hectoring knowitall older brother, deserving mention here

Problematic vocal styles

Good article, made me interested in Twelfth Night/Geoff Mann and Pallas.

I really like IQ. Had no idea about that film based on their album or that the keyboard player retired (from music altogether). Wonder what their new album sounds like without him.

That whole ripper act Pallas done onstage sounds nuts too, the song is genuinely unsettling.

Well Progarchives has the new IQ in their top 50 of all time, and I've read a lot of overwhelmingly positive reviews - I ought to get a copy myself.

"ten out of ten for clearly not giving a shit what anybody thought"

Also didn't know about Niadem’s Ghost having Peter Nicholls. He actually left IQ because of a really bizarre misunderstanding. Wishbone Ash's manager (possibly Miles Copeland) told the other members that Peter wanted to leave when he'd never said such a thing. I don't know why it taken them years to straighten that out.

hah, never heard that. those two interim IQ discs get slammed but Nomzamo is pretty good even if it's not really prog. Menel really was the Collins to Nicholls' Gabriel.

curious why joe didn't include discussion of CAMBERWELL NOW, even if discovered later on

Camberwell Now were really from more of an experimental / improv background (This Heat connections etc). I can't imagine anyone in Marillion would have even heard of This Heat - most of these bands were pretty mainstream in their influences (IQ and Twelfth Night excepted maybe). It was mostly cup-of-tea prog rather than absinthe-psychosis prog a la VDGG, Magma etc.

CAMBERWELL NOW were an amazing british neo-prog band active from the early to late 1980s. whether or not MARILLION listened to them is neither here nor there; inclusiveness is a goal in the canon formation of other musical nooks and crannies, no?

meanwhile keith levene -- steve howe's erstwhile roadie -- played "poptones"

if camberwell now are neo-prog then the cowsills are space rock.

well then set the controls for the heart of the sun, captain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xTpYB3FgiY

that is not neo-prog

Lovely track, thanks.

would you feel better if it were called "avant-prog"? let's pretend charles heyward wasn't in QUIET SUN or GONG either

charles hayward was in gong for approximately 3/5 of a second, and by that standard genesis is jazz fusion. yes, i would prefer it if it was called "avant-prog". genre labels are generally stupid and meaningless and i don't have much use for them, but when they do have use it's for describing bands that sound similar. since camberwell now's records sound roughly as similar to pallas as, say, scott walker's "climate of hunter" does, it is actively misleading to imply that they exist as part of the same genre.

he was the drummer of QUIET SUN for all of QUIET SUN's existence, and so by that standard yes, genesis is jazz fusion. it is actively misleading to suggest that 'climate of hunter' sounds more like PALLAS than CAMBERWELL NOW does. in the mid to late 60s, all sorts of bands sprang up all over america, playing in their garages, few of whom knew each other. we call it "garage rock". there are similarities and differences among all of these bands. in the mid to late 70s, all sorts of bands sprang up all over america and england, with torn shirts and short spiky haircuts. we call it "punk rock". there are similarities and differences among all of these bands. in the early 80s, all sorts of bands sprang up after punk rock that were less frightened of "prog" / unashamed of their instrumental virtuosity. PALLAS and CAMBERWELL NOW were two of them. there are differences and similarities between them. this pedantic rant of mine stems from a desire for more knowledge about these bands and prog in general, since they have been effectively written out of official rockist/popist history of the culture of the last four or so decades, or when mentioned, reflexively dismissed, which is a phenomenon interesting in and of itself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvXH6ycOtzE

i listened to that camberwell now track and it was amazing

iq sound like porcupine tree, this sound just makes me queasy now

the Quietus article was very specifically about the growth of a subculture/community, not just a list of bands. at the risk of sounding presumptous, given I was a toddler when this stuff was kicking off, I'm confident that the Venn diagram of ppl who liked Pallas (etc) and ppl who liked Camberwell Now is basically an eight

there's a lot of value in eking out the secret prog (or whatever) influences in music that sprang up in other scenes, I think ILM does or can do that v well. not really a failing of the piece that it doesn't get into that too much, though

not saying it's a failing. the piece was great. i wish there were more like it. i was genuinely curious why CAMBERWELL NOW wasn't included, because of the chronology, not that they ape IQ or whoever. ILM has a very active 'balearic revival' thread where hey, if it sounds vaguely balearic, then great. meanwhile the resistance to all things prog in 2015, to the point where saying anything at all about it is liable to provoke discipline of some sort or outright dismissiveness, is a confounding phenomenon. 1977 was a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time ago

I don't really see the IQ -> Porkie resemblance

I don't really know what you're talking about, there is plenty of love for prog of all kinds on ILM, not least this very thread. But to complain about the exclusion of a very obscure avant prog/improv band from an article that specifically focused on another sub-genre of prog altogether is .oO

xp

there was zero complaint about the exclusion. there was genuine curiosity after having enjoyed a really nice refreshing article. how the two are conflated is as oO to me as not hearing how proggy CAMBERWELL NOW are

why people still act like prog is some aesthetic prion disease that needs to be quarantined is beyond me

is there some detail everyone else is missing that explains why it's "curious" they weren't included? like do you know the writer irl or whatever

is there some reason my motives seem curious?

because they weren't part of the fucking scene! nobody is questioning the aesthetic value of camberwell now or even whether or not they qualified as "prog", for some definition of "prog". what people are questioning is why on earth camberwell now would belong in a chronicle of bands whose main aesthetic principle was sounding like gabriel-era genesis, but with modern digital synthesizers. really, if the writer had for some reason decided to include camberwell now in the article that would be far more curious than their exclusion.

Yeah, I'm not getting it either Reggie. I don't think they sound enough like the core neo guys. Maybe if there was a lot more brit prog in the footnotes.

I really enjoyed hearing that track from IQ's The Wake again. I tend to hate sterility but IQ often have that sort of superclean sci-fi sound that works for them most of the time. I've got three of their albums (The Wake, Dark Matter, Frequency) and it's mostly good. I played "Sacred Sounds" a million times. Apparently the do very well in Germany. Oddly I see them in metal sections, possibly because metal magazines used to cover them. There's a Japanese tribute band too.

because they weren't part of the fucking scene!

so? why are you shocked by discussion of other british bands from the same era that were recording prog, in response to an article that talks about mid-80s british neo-prog? this is an open music discussion board, last i checked. maybe mention of CAMBERWELL NOW will lead to mention of some band from that era i've never heard of, i might want to check out, in addition to those others? or would that be offensive too somehow BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT PART OF THE SCENE?

xpost

if we talk about kraut rock don't dare mention ACHIM REICHEL because he wasn't part of the scene!

i'll be glad to talk about camberwell now related bands you may not have heard of- how about lifetones, charles bullen's post-this heat band? they're good. just don't try to tell me they're neo-prog, because they're not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljfbuLCWIXc&list=PLE163783F9570F588

or maybe we can talk about radar favourites, charles hayward's pre-this heat supergroup with geoff leigh, cathy williams, gf fitzgerald, and jack monck from stars? very little material exists and is of uneven quality, somewhere between henry cow and red balune (one of the tracks showed up on the red balune ep later on).

wow, didn't see any of this until now, but have to agree w rushomancy and others regarding Camberwell Now. Totally not a part of any group that would include Marillion or IQ. Not musically, ideologically, certainly not popularity-wise. Camberwell Now was more than just This Heat connections, it was basically the next evolution of This Heat (as CN bassist was actually in TH before they folded)-- political avant-prog (or just avant-rock), that was FAR more in step RIO bands like Henry Cow than neo-prog (or likeminded bands such as Red Balune mentioned above, or their label mates Kontakt Mikrofoon Orkest and the Black Sheep).

Neo-prog always seemed kind of a joke to me. Granted, I wasn't old enough to appreciate bringing back of the old prog guard in the 80s, so by the time I heard, it just seemed pointless and sad, especially compared to bands I actually did like from the 80s....like This Heat and Camberwell Now! Don't get me wrong, there is something to be said about finding threads in genres/scenes that most people don't hear/acknowledge (my pet thread is between Magma and minimalists like Meredith Monk) -- but on this one, to me, there's too much a gulf in not just the way the bands sound, but in their approaches/reasons for making music in the first place.

agree - I'm way, way more into stuff like Camberwell Now but for better or worse this thread was started for prog qua prog, the dubious effete cape-wearing wacko stargazing nonsense that people still make for baffling reasons

MIND YOU

stuff like Deluge Grander rises above the majority of neo-prog by using techniques inspired by the likes of Magma and other avant-prog groups - there is a grey area and I think the grey area belongs here

and then I do wonder which other threads we have for RIO or Zeuhl V3.0…I can't think of many…

I am basically down with qualmsley's attempts to redefine prog as the Fiery Furnaces or whatever, but I am concerned that this thread might have a narrower remit. What do you all think - free-for-all or keep it Marillion?

I always lean towards more inclusive.

But why on earth is "effete" or "wacko stargazing" used as in insult?