Big Big Train - The Likes of Us Subgenre(s): Crossover prog
Score: 80
Year: 2024
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 11th (of 77 listed so far)
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For a prog group with unusually strong name recognition, I've listened to relatively little of them. My recollection was that they are a group I will always like but never really love. So with so much music to explore out there, I lost track of them in favor of seeking out more of the unknown.
Well, today, I pulled up their current release and it quickly had me reassessing my impression of this artist. This really is a rather brilliant album. While Big Big Train do not sound at all like Kansas, the remind me of them inasmuch as they can make prog melodious and mainstream without losing sacrificing quality or intent. Magnificent melodies abound throughout this album. The third cut, the epic, 17+ minute "Beneath the Masts" is loaded with eminently listenable tuneage, but overall remains an marvel of long form compositional structure, making me think of some of the great side long Transatlantic epics. If I had one quibble about this album, it would be that there's a little too much balladry for my tastes; when you're writing long (6-7 minute) songs, running two such ballads in a row drags things just a bit for me. Still, only a minor quibble, as they do ballad about as well as they rock. I love the rhythm section sound engineering on this album as well, especially the bass. A perfect fit for my ear.
Rosalie Cunningham - To Shoot Another Day Subgenre(s): Crossover Prog
Score: 85
Year: 2024
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 10th (of 89 listed so far)
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I think this is my first actual release day review in a while. I'd been wanting to check out Rosalie Cunningham for a while, and what better opportunity than on the release day of her latest album. So Cunningham's latest is my first and I gotta' say I thoroughly loved this album upon first listen, even more upon the second. There's nothing overly prog on the album, but Cunningham's ingestion and regurgitation of so many genres is itself quite progressive in spirit. And what a voice! Rich and full, technically strong and captivatingly expressive, it's all I could ever want in a vocal.
I think the 1 Nov release date is a day late (at least in the US) as a number of songs on this album would go great with Halloween. At times it's like someone gene spliced Florence Welch and the steamy side of Alannah Myles and the resulting being had a love child with Alice Cooper who then decided to become a master of mixing musical modes both traditional and modern.
Inner Prospekt - Unusual Movements Subgenre(s): Crossover prog
Score: 80
Year: 2024
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 19th (of 91 listed so far)
Here in November, I can already declare 2924 a great year for new prog. The latest example is the latest album from Inner Prospekt, the brainchild of Rome-based keyboardist Alessandro di Benedetti. As a keyboardist effort, you'd expect tome great keys, and you wouldn't be disappointed here. But there's also well placed guitar and percussion. Only the vocals show any signs of weakness, but they do treat the subject matter appropriately.
Being from Rome, you might expect this to be Rock Progressivo Italiano, but it's really much more mainstream in sound, brining it clearly into crossover prog territory. But even that is belied by the complexity (and quality) of composition and the sheer length of songs, with three cuts over 10 minutes each. This is great music for those who may not be into hard core prog, but do have a longer attention span.
Marillion - Misplaced Childhood Subgenre(s): Neo Prog
Score: 85
Year: 1985
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 6th
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Upon hearing Kayleigh on the radio almost 4 decades ago now, I ran right out and bought this album. While I was intrigued by this thing much unlike anything I'd heard before, it was oddly unsettling and other than the aforementioned hit and the equally accessible Lavender, I had a little trouble digesting the whole thing. But little by little, I came to appreciate every song as much as the catchy ones, and of course, I came to marvel the package as a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
As much as I have come to love and appreciate this album, last night's headphones listen was totally next level. I was enrapt as never before. For the first time, I truly heard the entire album as a single point in time, flawless in its coherence. It was like looking a t a great Monet and being able to simultaneously understand not only the mastery of the individual brushstroke, but also take in the whole thing, all at once and grasp the picture as a unified whole independent of it's constituent elements.
I have of course always been intellectually aware of the thematic unity of the album, but this is the first time I really felt it. This is why I revisit what I thought was familiar music!
Mind's Eye - A Gentlemen's Hurricane Subgenre(s): Progressive Metal
Score: 80
Year: 2007
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 8th (feeling generous, it's more likely to drop than climb with repeated listening)
This is a highly ambitious progressive metal concept album following a potentially repentant assassin. While this sits squarely in the progressive metal realm, it always maintained a thoroughly cinematic vibe such as I've not heard in a progressive metal album. While it doesn't really do anything new musically in the genre, it does what it does exceptionally well. Still, like that dark movie that could have had about 20 minutes edited out of it to keep it from dragging on a little too long, I did get a sense of fatigue here as though I knew, even early on, that I would be kinda' done listening before it was done playing. If you really like Dream Theater's The Astonishing, this will pose no problem; for most, it might be a bit much. A+ for ambition, vision and confidence. A little less for economical execution.
Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Tarkus Subgenre(s): Symphonic Prog
Score: 85
Year: 1971
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 8th
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The 20+ minute title cut of this classic is obvious fodder for the "prog is overindulgent, pretentious nonsense" crowd.... and you would never be able to convince those folks otherwise, but geez, this really is brilliant. Magnificent. Layered, complex, intense..... incredible. That title cut is a perfect 10. Now I don't expect things on side 2 to be up to that level, but it does seem rather a collection of not-fully-realized prog ideas, kinda' thrown together. Now ELP has always had a penchant for some of these random sounding proggy snippets on their album, but a full side of them, even as some of them are really quite excellent, can tend to tarnish what otherwise might have been a Close to the Edge or Thick as a Brick level of effort overall. Nevertheless, I still give this top marks as an album because I like variety, I like experimentation, and I really, really like that first side!
It's worth noting that this album charted at #1 in the UK, as well as top 10 worldwide, including a #9 showing in the US. This is the sort of thing that makes us old curmudgeons say music (or at least mainstream audiences) were better back in the day. There's no way an album comprised of a 20 minute epic and some wildly progressive snippets would ever chart today. The way we consume music today does not lend itself to, or require, epic attention spans.
There's no way an album comprised of a 20 minute epic and some wildly progressive snippets would ever chart today. The way we consume music today does not lend itself to, or require, epic attention spans.
That's probably true, but to be fair, back in the vinyl days you could pick up the tonearm and drop it on the specific part of the 20-minute epic that you liked best, so you could remember the spot visually instead of having to pinpoint the specific time location like you have to do now. Also, they released "Stone of Years" from the 20-minute epic as a single (at least in the US and Canada), which apparently was less than three minutes long, so that might have also helped for people who had trouble dropping the tonearm on the right spot.
Anyway, keep up the good work! I'm not really much of a "proggy" these days, but I suspect there are plenty of BEA people like me who read and appreciate this thread even if we don't interrupt on occasion like I'm doing right now.
Kampai - Phantasmagoria Subgenre(s): Neo Prog, Progressive Metal
Score: 75
Year: 1994
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 21st
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There is very little info available on easy to access sources covering this short-lived German group. They are solidly Neo Prog in spirit and occasionally metallic in sound. Oddly, individual compositions are rarely captivating, but the album as a whole comes across as a solid, integrated effort. Vocalist André Teikhoff occasionally tries a little too hard to force too much emotion into his delivery, but overall he's a solid vocalist and an excellent match for the material.
Reegonetti Band - Songs From the Raven's Nest Subgenre(s): Crossover prog
Score: 75
Year: 2024
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 43rd (of 96 listed so far)
Reegonetti Band, despite the name "band," is really just the duo of Börje Reinholdsson (drums, vocals) and Ronald Vikström (keyboards).
Despite the Italian sounding name, Reegonetti band are not RPI, nor are they even Italian, they are Swedish.
Despite forming in 1981, they didn't release their first album until 2021, fully four decades later.
Songs from the Raven's Nest is their second album, and takes the duo in a more progressive direction than their first, although it still has a fairly solid AOR core. The material is about as dark as the title and album cover would suggest, but it's not relentlessly as depressing as the likes of Porcupine Tree's "Fear of a Blank Planet." Each song seems to address a different theme related to some dark aspect of the human condition. Across the seven cuts, there's enough solid compositional skill and variety in delivery to keep the album from getting tired or onerous. The increased emphasis on progressive elements is quite welcome and if a sort of Spock's Beard meets Asia singing vibe sounds good to you, you'll probably like this album.
Αντωνία Μαυρονικόλα • Φλούδες Ερπίδες (Antonia Mavronicola & Floúdes Erpídes) - s/t Subgenre(s): a little bit of everything
Score: 80
Year: 2024
My Rank in Year as of this listen: 16th
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This is one of those glorious recommendations I'm in debt to the recommender for, as it's music I truly love, and music I doubt I would have ever found on my own. The strange thing is that there's nothing surprisingly different or new about it, yet it sounds like nothing I've heard before. There's not a lot of variety across the eight cuts, yet it never feels like it's getting old or repetitious. It doesn't sound seriously progressive, yet it seems to be a blend of many different prog subgenres from neo prog to heavy prog to prog metal to folk prog all wrapped up in one very tidy package. Oh, and this Αντωνία Μαυρονικόλα (Antonia Mavronicola) has the most incredible voice! Rich, full, powerful, expressive; at times shades of peak Grace Slick, and it goes so perfectly with the music! Yeah, this is a real winner.
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