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I keep going back to this album Steve Wilson - The Raven that Refused to Sing (and other stories)

 
Never heard of Demon Fuzz before but they're a pretty damn good English jazz/prog rock with touches of African funk from the late 60s/early 70s. The album cover grabbed my attention right away.

 
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R.I.P., Phil May of The Pretty Things. Although I think of them as a psych or hard rock band, their influence on prog rock and early heavy metal is undisputed. May co-wrote S.F. Sorrow, which was the first real "rock opera." Here's a small piece of it.

 
London based band Hats Off Gentlemen It's Adequate have released a new album that features 7 songs related to the books of Alastair Reynolds so it might interest folks on different levels. They don't really have much in the way of videos so the best I can do is pimp this audio version with the album cover. It's eclectic stuff and the vocals require a degree of tolerance.

 
Why yes, Old Bean, I suspect you may be correct. Toodle pip!:grin:
 
Digging on the original when I found this live cover by Steve Hillage, best known for playing in Gong.

 
I only have the bottom four of these. And with the exception of the Nektar album, they're some of my favourites. Makes me keen to try the other four.
I love that UK album. Their first is good too.
 
I had tickets for Steve Hackett later this year. The official notification came today the tour has been pushed back to 2021 for obvious reasons. I was also planning to grab Musical Boxe's "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" tour. I have seen it once before, but it is such a good show. But, hey, in the scheme of all things 2020 things, I can't really complain.
 
Really enjoying the mellow beauty of Modern Ruins - it's like aural tears.

 
I've long threatened doing a series of posts on what I term "The Prog and Wrestling Connection", the seemingly strange tag team of progressive rock and professional wrestling. Or rather the use of the former in the latter, such as Tom Sawyer being Kerry Von Erich's ring entrance, or Coheed & Cambria's Welcome Home previously being the NXT theme song. This is my half-hearted first post on the topic.

While recently watching a 1981 episode of NWA Tri-State Championship Wrestling (Leroy McGuirk's Tulsa office, for old school rasslin fans) on YouTube, I noticed a semi-familiar song being played during recaps leading into commercials. It was definitely a progressive rock song, albeit of the watered down Camel/Alan Parsons Project/Saga variety, blending in large elements of the budding synth-pop school of New Wave.

Anyway, after "skimming" all my pre-'82 albums by those three bands, I gave up and Shazam'd it. Turns out I did have an album containing it, but it was on Steve Hackett's Defector--

 
Old news, perhaps, but here is the entire Lamb Lies Down On Broadway done as a full animated moive. It's a lot to watch but at the very least I'd recommend watching The Lamia and In th Rapids/It (the tracks are labeled so you can scroll to them directly if short for time). Lamb Lies Down On Broadway really suits some form of visual narration to go with the music.

 
Generally better known for the soft rock hit "Lady in Red", Chris DeBurgh started out as an art rocker in the vein of the Moody Blues or Supertramp. He did a couple of small suites such as The Revolution/Light A Fire/Liberty which closes out his 1982 album The Getaway (same album as MTV hit "Don't Pay the Ferryman.")

 
Well, this isn't really a prog song, but it's by a band usually associated with modern prog, so why not? Certainly no worse than when I posted a cover of an Eddie Murphy song...

 
New Magenta is out. Apparently it's been out since July, but I did get an email notifications.

It's called Masters of Illusion and the theme is classic horror actors like Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Ingrid Pitt. It's a long album (in LP it would be 3 sider). I'll feed back more after I given a few spins, but there is a cute little promo video for it.

 
Funnily enough the Magenta album dropped on my mat yesterday along with this new, reunion release by Airbag. The latter have gone a little more electronic with this album and shaken off some of the more overt Floydisms. I don't mind the electronics creeping in so the album's put a smile on my face. I'll get to the Magenta over the weekend as it's definitely a lyric sheet open affair for the first listen.

 
I've been listening to the new Magenta album Masters of Illusion quite a lot over the long weekend. Despite that I am still in that learning phase, so I still can't pickout any favourite or least favourite tracks. I think it works very well as a whole, rather than just as a collection of songs.

It is a very mellow album, it reminds me bit of their Home album.. The tracks are long and intricate, it certainly isn't a not hard-edged or experimental. Personally I quite happy with that, it's suits my current mood just fine. It's made my week so far.
 
Time properly overwhelmed me this weekend and I didn't get a chance to get to Magenta - I could've put it on but that's not what I like for a first listen. Got to be 'phones.

One album that has really grown on me over the last 6 weeks or so is NDV's (Nick D'Virgilio) Invisible. It's not a pure prog album from him but I never really expected that for a solo album. What it does have is a wide range of styles that really keeps me interested; there's prog, some riffy rock, acoustic guitar, funk, piano led tracks and lots of supporting strings and brass to give it colour. I wasn't totally sure at first but it crept up on me while I was about to dismiss it as merely okay. Drumming is, quite obviously, top notch. Some great guest players as well - Tony Levin, Jem Godfrey, Jordan Rudess, Randy McStine, Jonas Reingold and a host of others; including Rick Neilsen from Cheap Trick somewhat surprisingly, who adds a typically zingy guitar solo to one track. Great stuff.

 
The first listen doesn't carry the same significance for me. Experience tells be I probably won't get a real buzz from it until repeated plays get into double figures. A new prog album is deferred gratification.
 
What the first listen does for me is to establish the album in my head in terms of sounds, themes, lyrics and the atmosphere conveyed by the booklet. You're right in that often that first listen doesn't result in a full bite. What I then tend to do is have the album in the car and on in the house without 'phones and that's normally when the real traction begins. With the NDV album it's one where I expected to get into it really quickly because it was very melodic and less "proggy" but it didn't happen that way at all and it was only washing up in the kitchen on Monday when I realised how good it was and took a moment to soak that all in; probably the tenth time I'd heard the album at that point.

The first listen thing for me is a little ritualistic and it takes me back to my early days of music consumption, coming back from a trip to the London record shops or an record fair (how quaint) and just sitting down with a beer to look at the covers and take it all in a really deep, exploratory way. To be fair I don't always do that so it's not a compulsion as such and certainly with something more immediate I might just stick it in the car and take it from there; for something like Brian Fallon or Craig Finn, the storytelling singer/songwriter style, they get absorbed more easily because they don't have all those sound layers to get immersed in. It's no less poetic and resonant but more like coming home rather than looking round someone else's house to see what they've done with the place.
 
Having held back on purchases a little bit over the past six months I invested a bit of cash in some cds from the wonderful folks at progrock.co.uk including this from Pain Of Salvation. They have to be one of the most inventive bands over the years, never standing still and producing albums that are some of the most idea packed and difficult to get into, but ultimately totally rewarding. The new one, Panther, offers more of the same; but which I mean, different.

 
One of the cds in my latest bundle was Lonely Robot's Feelings Are Good. It's a slightly more direct album than the previous three and departs from the trilogy's concept; no bad thing, no-one wants to outstay their welcome.

 
This song has been in my head for the past week. Sequences was always Twelfth Night's most favoured long song, and it is a classic of neo prog, but this one seems more fitting for the times. Again.

 
I've been enjoying the Pattern Seeking Animals album "Prehensile Tales." It hasn't totally caught fire after plenty of listens but is hovering nicely in the "pretty good" zone. This is my favourite track off the album.

 
That thump was the sound of the new Fish album, Weltschmerz, dropping onto the mat. There's something quite intimidating about a brand new double album to listen to and even more so with the emotion of knowing it's a career closer. We have tickets to see the big man in March but I still can't see it happening.
 
That thump was the sound of the new Fish album, Weltschmerz, dropping onto the mat. There's something quite intimidating about a brand new double album to listen to and even more so with the emotion of knowing it's a career closer. We have tickets to see the big man in March but I still can't see it happening.

Wow, you do consume a lot of music! I am embarassed to say it usually takes me months to process a new prog album which means less than a handful of new albums per year, and that includes classical music recordings which aren't the same but still I find have a learning curve.

So if FIsh retiring? There are older folk in music who are still at it.
 
Music is huge for me and I'm an avaricious consumer I'll freely admit; it's on at home, in the car, out running.....I do still sometimes struggle to keep up with it because, as you said, prog in particular requires full attention.

Fish is indeed retiring. He's had that decision in place for a long time but the creation of the final album has extended for various reasons, mostly health as I understand it, and the following tour has already been postponed twice. I think his health issues have been the main driver behind the decision and reading recent interviews with him I can understand why he's reached that point.
 
Kudos! I am sure progrock.co.uk appreciates people like you more than me!
 
Kudos! I am sure progrock.co.uk appreciates people like you more than me!
We all contribute, big or small, we all count. :thumbsup:

Probably worth adding that I'm now mortgage free and children flown; in the nineties I wouldn't have been so voracious.
 
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