Dreadnaught, Have A Drink with Dreadnaught

Dreadnaught's 2001 album was front-and-center on these pages a couple of days ago. They are back some 13 years later with an EP, Have a Drink with Dreadnaught (Red Fez).

What applied to their first album is ditto here. They play a well-arranged kind of prog metal that has the markings of a musical vision that stands within the "tradition" of such music but goes beyond it into original territory.

The guitar work will get your attention, but bass and drums are busy and very engaged too.

The vocals do the job they intend. Songs may not be radio charters but the point is in the elaborate group sound, to my mind, and in that realm you are well served to check this out. If the first album has a slight edge over this one in my mind, this is an EP so of necessity covers less territory.

Nice band!

Markus Reuter, Kopfmensch

Something new from the innovative Markus Reuter. Well, not entirely new. It's an anthology of Reuter's work that he put together before embarking on last year's "Two of a Perfect Trio" tour of the US (a Crimsonite gathering featuring the Adrian Belew Power Trio and Tony Levin's Stickmen, the latter of which included Reuter).

The album is called, humorously, Kopfmensch (Unsung). It's not exactly a greatest hits compilation. Some of it is unreleased. It shows you hefty, exhilarating glimpses of the post-Crimson Reuter, the compositional post-prog Reuter, and, something I am less familiar with, the art-song Reuter.

There are 16 cuts, much music. All kinds of notables appear (go to www.markusreuter.com for a rundown of what and who). And the end result, after a suitable period for gestation, is remarkable. Landmark. A gem of avant rock and/or post-prog. It's what others may be trying to do, but don't always get quite right.

This is quite right.

Gavin Harrison and 05Ric, The Man Who Sold Himself

Gavin Harrison? Porcupine Tree's drummer. 05Ric? Multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, bassist. Their third album, The Man Who Sold Himself (Kscope 5:1 DVD and CD) came out last February and it's a beauty. It has some of the art-song-meets-fusion qualities of classic Allan Holdsworth & IOU, it has the push and thrust of later King Crimson, and it manages to evoke all that without sounding like all that.

Gavin's drumming is superb, as is 05Ric's bass playing. The vocals are right on, the musical backgrounds always interesting and space-ly hip, and sometimes more than that too (like some of the guitar work), and the songs are grab-worthy.

So how come I am just coming to this one? I am running late. Better Nate than Lever Brothers?

Oh ye prog, fuze, post-progs and post-fuzes! Do not miss this one.

Lunatic Soul II: Music from Some Unknown Ethnic Group in Space?

Lunatic Soul is a creative enclave with Riverside principal/lead singer Mariusz Duda as the primary driving force. Like Peter Gabriel and Dead Can Dance, Lunatic Soul creates a spacey pulsating ambiance that is like some modern-day ethnic music from a peoples yet unidentified. Or as Mariusz puts it, "trance-like... oriental-alternative" music.

All this can be heard and felt on the new release Lunatic Soul II (K-Scope 161). This is reflective, intelligent post-prog in the manner of the best of such music. Duda's voice is expressive and dead center in a musical way. The instrumental arrangements are modern and vibrant in the best sense. It sounds like the music of the future. Walls-of-sound of distinctive rock reverberance, hand drums and eastern tonalities, poetic lyricism, this is music to live inside, a world unto itself.

Besides that it's a hell of a good listen.