Specimen 13, Echosystem

Oh, yes, when something is good, you can know it the moment you hear it, sometimes.

Then the affirmation deepens the more you listen.

The prog-outness of project-band Specimen 13 and their album Echosystem (Unsung Productions) is that. Denis Rodier is drumming, giving us some vocalizing and Martin Vaniar is on guitars (and some bass and soundscaping). That's the core. Then Adrian Benavides and Markus Reuter had a hand in arranging, mixing it down. And Markus produced the recording. He plays some of his patented touch guitar too and had a hand in the sound design, which is perhaps a fancy way of saying he helped shaped the final ambiance you hear, which is rather wonderful. Adrian plays some guitar and etc., too. Then there is a cast of other musical helpmates including Trey Gunn, Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto, and some vocalists, and some other-others, other folks. All-in-all a hot combination!

Well now if that sounds promising, believe me it is as good as you can imagine it. It's 30-something minutes of highly evolved out prog-rock, post-Crimsonian heaviness atmos-edge. It's dem fine. You can shell down a few peanuts and get it at http://specimen13.bandcamp.com/ You should.

TriPod

TriPod? Yes. Here we have a trio in the realm of such ensembles as Morphine--sax, bass and drums with vocals. But they don't precisely sound like Morphine. It's a prog-fuse, song-centered hard fullness created by the presence of Clint Bahr on 12-string bass and lead vocals (a twelve-string bass is composed of the standard four strings on an electric bass, plus two-octave strands per regular string...so 4+8=12), Steve Romano on drums and percussion, and Keith Gurland on alto and tenor, clarinet, effects and backing vocals. All this on their self-titled album just out on MoonJune (MJR004).

The music is somewhere in the realm of King Crimson progressivity, in its own special way. There are hard-edged, intricate arrangements, prog song niceties and a program that combines the two elements in judiciously balanced contrasts.

Clint Bahr's bass playing has a fullness that might make you think there's a guitar in there as well, but there isn't. He's playing the 12-string so that the bass and chordal possibilities come out strongly. Keith Gurland's saxophony is well-suited for the music and gives the music the second melodic voice in the ensemble that fleshes it all out. Steve Romano plays a LOT of drums as is fitting, and that sounds great too.

The songs-vocals put it all in focus. This is some heavy prog that should not be missed if you like the edgy Crimsonian thrust as I do.

And Clint's 12-string bass alone is a listen in itself. It's first-rate prog-fuse in any event.

Mr. Moonjune Recommends, Vol. 2, "Letting Go"

Mr. Moonjune, aka Leonardo Pavkovic, the driving force behind MoonJune Records, has come up with a second volume anthology of prog-fuse music by artists and bands that may not be well known to you, but nonetheless deserve a hearing. The anthology contains 25 worthy tracks and you can get them as Mr. Moonjune Recommends, Vol. 2, "Letting Go" for a modest donation of $1, or whatever you'd like to contribute above that.

It's a wonderful bargain, of course, but most importantly it introduces you to internationally stationed artists who are playing some extraordinary or at least far-from-ordinary prog fuze. There are wonderful guitarists, tight bands, space rockers and notes galore.

For a buck you hear: Alex Machacek, Jeff Sipe, Matt Garrison; Asaf Sirkis; Mark Wingfield & Rene von Grunig; The Avengers; Apostolis Anthimos; John Sund Acoustic Sense; Dialeto; Uzva; Michel Sajrawy, and 16 others. Some may not yet be totally original in what they are up to but everything sounds very good, sometimes excellent.

Here's a bunch of music worth hearing, for almost nothing. It's a no-lose proposition.

Go to http://www.moonjune.com/mjr_web_2013/home_mjr/ and click on the album cover to find out the complete details and to get your download.

Gazpacho, London

Gazpacho is a noteable Norwegian post-prog outfit. Their double-CD release from last fall, London (Kscope), affords you an in-depth listen to the band and its many facets in a live setting.

They play a sound-scape orchestrated sprawl-carpet of ambitious, somewhat melanchology music that excels in song form, arrangements, great vocal presence and instrumental skills. I accidently skimmed a review that compared them to Radiohead. Maybe so. I hear also a little of the Steve Wilson influence plus perhaps Jeff Buckley and the recent band Ours. Though it's possible that Gazpacho never even heard the latter. But there is a resonance.

What's going on here has teeth. It is formidable post-prog. It is impressive. It is moody. It is very, very good.

It's another rather extraordinary band in the Kscope stable. Find this one, keep it, and listen to it if you want something really worthwhile in this vein.

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.

Moraine, Metamorphic Rock: The Band in Good Form Live at NEARFest, 2010

Moraine's first album showed the world they were a very smart prog/fuze outfit that offered a sound alternative to the usual ways of being new. Dennis Rea's torrid guitar styling led the way for a kind of great adventure in electric sound that drove home the idea that Moraine had an original vision and were well on their way to putting it forward for the world to dig.

Their subsequent 2010 appearance at NEARFest was well-captured and we now have what they played there on the new CD Metamorphic Rock (Moon June 040). This is especially strong as a all-band effort, with solid compositions by Dennis Rea and other band members and some interesting adaptations of traditional and contemporary world music. The instrumentation of electric guitar, baritone-winds, violin, eight-string bass, and drums is used to excellent effect in ways that make for an even more identifiable sound this time out.

The music generally is more sonorous and less edgy in this go-round, but no less original. It shows once again that Moraine is a band to follow closely in the years to come. And it's a terrific listen as well! Very much recommended.

Riverside EP "Memories in My Head" Continues Their Original Prog Stance

With modern prog rock there are a few elements you expect on any representative disk. Well developed vocals, poetic impressionistic lyrics, long song structures, synth-org & guitar-bass-drums all in synch with elaborate arrangements and some pithy soloing (more of the latter and less vocals and you start entering into fusion territory). Of course that's just a template. WHAT a group does with that matters much.

Riverside is a group that puts all of those elements together. Their 10th anniversary EP Memories in My Head (Laser's Edge) shows that they manage to go well beyond the rote aspect of prog practice to create music today that is original, spacey and musically rich in the manner of the best historic bands. That they do not sound like those bands is why they are very good; that after 10 years of hitting it they are confidently themselves makes them more than that.

This is terrifically moody, long-form prog. All elements are there and the production sparkles as it sprawls into familiar yet somehow strangely rearranged soundscapes.

Thirty-minutes. Three long pieces. One happy listener.

Guitarist Matt Stevens' Latest, "Ghost"

Every so often an artist contacts me and sends me something good I would not have otherwise been able to hear. Matt Stevens is one such. He's a guitarist over in England and his new one, Ghost (self-released) has a very nice feel to it. It features Matt mostly on acoustic, with light percussion or sometimes a rock rhythm section. He has a modern sense of melodic contour that reminds me a little of Fripp's League of Crafty Guitarists and the California Guitar Trio, only it's pared down, more intimate at times, and it has Matt Steven's own sensibility in it. Nice playing and nice arranging are to be found here.

It's an h of a good listen. Trance, minimalism, psychedelics, quirky melodizing and some rhythm guitar almost out of Sonic Youth make this both fun and hip. And it's all put together in a way that sticks in your head as a definite breath of cool air. Check it out by Googling "Matt Stevens Ghost."

The Opening: Lively Prog From The CloverSeeds

French prog rockers The CloverSeeds hit American audiences for the first time with The Opening (Laser's Edge). It is actually their second full album, the first to be released here.

What they are is a band that does directly emotional material with the clout of metal but the expansive soundstage, long sustain and layering of prog rock. Vocals are strong in a youthful sort of way and the songs have something to them.

This is an excellent band that happens to sound great on disc, thanks to state-of-the-art rock production values advocated by producer Christian Moschius. The guitars are in the driver's seat. A slightly macabre darkness and melancholy prevails.

If those traits are ones you find agreeable, you will most likely find CloverSeeds to your liking. This album does not stint on musical content or rely on formulaic twitches and ticks. They are the real thing.

Trey Gunn Retrospective: I'll Tell What I Saw

Trey Gunn, integral later King Crimson member, touch guitarist and musical composer-conceptualist has created some important music in the last two decades. He has made eight solo albums (1993-2010) and collaborated with many artists. Some of the fruits of those efforts can be heard in his new 2-CD retrospective I'll Tell What I Saw (7dMedia 1012).

The cumulative effect of repeated listens to the more than two hours of music on this set is impressive. There are world-music-meets-Gunn-progressive-music excursions with musicians and singers from Mexico, Italy, Russia and elsewhere. There's the progressive rock-funk that relates to and extends what he was doing in his King Crimson days. There are soundscapes of a deep sort. And much more besides.

What strikes me listening to the back-to-back highlights of his solo career is the sheer musicality and sonic originality of it all. It's a style that needs your attention because the soundstage is commonly packed with musical colors and events. The time spent is rewarded with much to savor and linger over. There is wonderful guitar and bass work, there's the orchestral conception and the layering, there is compositional brilliance.

Trey Gunn may well be rock's premier sound-artist of the past 20 years. Certainly he is one of the very select few at the very top of the game.

Revel in this one. Highly recommended.

Bill Bruford's Summerfold Collection

We continue with the second volume of the Bill Bruford retrospective. The first installment discussing volume one was posted earlier (see August 24, 2010 entry on this blog). This concluding release, “The Summerfold Collection” (Summerfold), covers Bruford’s recordings under his own name from 1987-2008. The emphasis during this period shifts away from vocals and guitars. Keyboard-horn ensembles and a well conceived brand of Fusiony sounds dominate these sides. With two loaded CDs in the set, there is much music. Generalization ends up being a little diffuse as a result. Suffice to say that Bruford’s drumming is the key element here. The compositions and arrangements do not function as a simple foil for a set of drum solos however. The music is subtle and well put together and the drumming is fully integrated into the routines. The drumming is without cliche and gives testimony to the creative musical mind at work.

It is the work with the bands Yes and King Crimson that gave rise to his reputation. It is by way of these latter recordings that he fulfilled the promise of his talent and showed himself a very productive, capable leader and musical conceptualist. Those who enjoyed his work with others will most certainly not be disappointed with the more personal side of his music here. Those coming to his music for the first time will be pleased with the wealth and quality of music offered. Good sailing to Mr. Bruford in his retirement. He’s deserved it.

Originally posted March 24, 2009 at www.gapplegate.com/musicalblog.html.

District 97: Original Progressive Music Group in First Offering

We've had a resurgence in new progressive sorts of rock lately. Some sound familiar, as if you are listening to a new album by a group you already know. Others do not sound that way. District 97 does not.

Hailing from Chicago, the band recently released their first album, Hybrid Child (Laser's Edge 1057), and it's a good thing they did, to my mind.

Leslie Hunt has a rock voice that's worthy of the music the band creates. Drummer Jonathan Schang wrote all the songs on the CD save one, which he co-wrote with Leslie. The instrumentation of cello. keys, guitar and bass seems right for what they do. And what they do is memorable. The songs stick in the mind, the prog routines and solo spots are filled with good musicianship and attention to the craft.

To me District 97 is a great example to play if someone wants to know what's good in the prog revival. They rock hard and they have great lines to work with. What more can you ask for? We can ask for a second album, that's for sure. I hope they keep growing because this is an impressive start!

Bill Bruford's Winterfold Collection

Drummer Bill Bruford has been a thinking person’s rocker. His musical and thoughtfully driving work with Genesis, Yes and King Crimson has been a model for emulation. He has also had a long career as a leader in his own right. Sadly, he recently announced his retirement from active playing. But to cap it all off he’s put together two retrospective collections of the various recordings he made with his own band over the years. The Winterfold Collection (Winterfold), a first installment, covers the fertile period of 1978-1986. We’ll take a look at that volume today and cover the second set a little later on.

The first thing one is struck with is the variety and quality of the music and ensembles involved. The progressive and fusion elements are there as one expects, but there are many different ways of arriving to those musical places. The excellent tracks featuring the acerbic Annette Peacock on vocals (part of the time) and the wonderful Alan Holdsworth on guitar are perhaps the most striking. The material is unusual and the band really burns it up. The collaborations with keyboardists Dave Stewart and Patrick Moraz are adventurous excursions that bear listening to again as well. None of this music sounds dated, as some of this sort of material can these days. Bruford’s drumming is consistently refreshing and unexpected and there’s a consistency of direction there that comes from his strengths as a leader. We wish him well in his retirement and hope you will give this volume a listen in tribute. I am very glad to have had a chance to go back again and rehear these sides anew.

Originally posted on March 11, 2009 at www.gapplegate.com/musicalblog.htm

Impressive German Electricity from the Season Standard

February 17, 2009—In my earlier days I came across an idea by I forget who. The tempo of a music, the thought goes, increases parallel to the amount of social upheaval present in the surrounding society. For the world we inhabit there are times of that sort. And today’s CD is packed with music of a rapid density, for the most part. Now I don’t think such an idea can be proven and there may be nothing to it ultimately, but the debut album of the German group The Season Standard (Squeeze Me Ahead of Line [Unsung]) speeds up the passing musical landscape to a captivating, exhilarating blur at times.

We’re talking about a progressive rock quartet: guitar/guitar-keys/bass/drums with vocals. The drummer Simon Beyer is a remarkable anchor and fire branding energizer for the group sound. He plays a very busy, sometimes asymmetrical and always driving brand of funk-rock rhythm that sets up the band’s pieces irresistibly. The music is complex and at the forefront of what can be done with what has been. Think of the funky elements of Yes, Beefheart, Zep and what followed only intensify it in a boiling, bubbling cauldron of notedness, like Mars Volta hooked up to a sophisticated music machine. There’s a lot of music contained in any given minute of this disk and it is nothing throwaway. It’s very good and very interesting. It rarely stops to look around. It’s going somewhere relentlessly, excitingly.

Mathias Jahnig has a good sense of his instrument (guitar) and the others are similarly situated. Mathias’ vocals have kind of a half-speed anchorage in the swirling musical pattern and give the band a second pivoting point (with the drums the first) in this multi-centered music. It’s fascinating. It’s great. I am impressed and want to hear more.

Algernon and their "Ghost Surveillance" Music

Algernon does not fit easily into a preconceived notion of what a band should be doing. It's a five-man outfit, essentially two electric guitars, vibes, bass and drums. Dave Miller, one of the guitarists, writes most of the material.

Ghost Surveillance (Cuneiform) is their latest release and it is an intriguing mix of ambient instrumental rock music. It has a progressive edge to it but goes everywhere at once. The main thrust is a fascinating group sound of vibes, guitars, synthesizers and a hip rhythm section. Now that might sound like a lot of things but the compositions have a kind of quirky individuality that sets the band apart. The melodies are strong, sort of riff oriented sometimes. It's music that has a tunefully different spin on what a band can do. Every cut is different and the arrangements are elaborate yet directly communicating.

If you want some smart prog rock, here's where you'll find it.

Politics, Deep Avant Rock and Compelling Guitar Work from Barry Cleveland

Guitarist, songwriter, producer, journalist and politically involved Barry Cleveland surfaces with a new album that may raise a few hackles with the far northpaw political contingency. Hologramatron (Moon June) assembles an all-star lineup to produce a vibrantly luminous album of progressive-protest rock.

Of course rock has had a tradition of speaking truth to Power, and this album follows in that lineage. He takes on big oil interests, laissez faire excess, religious right versions of Christianity, the spoilage of our environment and other issues with a sarcastic wit. Of course if the music was not interesting, I would not be covering this release. It is.

There's an attractive space-rock ambiance throughout and a varied program that keeps interest up. In addition to the spiky originals there's a remake of the lovely anti-war song "What Have They Done to the Rain," which was a hit for the old Searchers back in (was it?) 1966. Then there's a rousing version of the instrumental oldie "Telstar" (anybody else have the Tornadoes album?) which totally sounds right.

If you voted for Genghis Khan any time in the last 20 years you might not like this album. If you didn't I think you'll be pleased.

Djam Karet, NEARFest, 2001

February 2, 2009—Ever heard of Djam Karet? I hadn’t until I stumbled upon something about them on the net. I believe they formed sometime in the mid-‘80s and as far as I can tell are still together. I grabbed one of their CDs online, Live at NEARFest 2001 (NEARfest), and have been giving it a listen. Djam Karet (pronounced “Jam CaREY”) is an instrumental rock outfit with two guitars (the second doubling on keyboards), bass and drums. I guess you could call what they do progressive, if you need a label for it. The live set has some room for jamming, not an overwhelming abundance. The bulk of the music centers on tunes and their arrangements and if you want to look for a weakness, it’s there. The numbers seem mostly lackluster; there are only a few that stand on their own as entities that you might recognize and pleasantly anticipate as you listen more than a few times. “Feast of Ashes” is one of them; it has a nice sprawling thing going. More pieces like that and I would be more convinced of their importance. Perhaps this isn’t their best CD, but I can’t be sure, since of course I haven’t heard the rest of them.

The band had been together apparently around 15 years by the time they did this concert, and that shows in the tightness of the routines. But the music isn’t especially pyrotechnical, if you look for that. The main guitar soloist is decent by the standards of the style, and the second fellow can turn in some credible licks as well. Neither is a monster. Nonetheless this is not at all bad music. What’s most remarkable is the longevity of the band. May they continue.

Mariusz Duda and "Lunatic Soul": Almost Goth, But No Goblins

Originally posted on December 11, 2008

In the contemporary world of neo-progressive or post-progressive rock there is a fertile inventiveness that may be under the radar for much of the mass audience, but bears scrutiny for those whose main concern is worthy music. Take today’s review CD, Lunatic Soul (KScope), a project from lead singer Mariusz Duda, the creative force behind the group Riverside.

It’s telling that all guitars are acoustic, and yet there is an electricity in the power of the group sound. All ten tracks have a haunted, haunting quality and a mood that has a touch of goth in its darkness without resorting to facile hobgoblin imagery. Each cut is its own musical world, and like Porcupine Tree or Pineapple Thief, there are those horizontal planes of sound prosody that envelop and engage the listener. There is musical substance to all this. It has ravishing passages that lack the lightweight quality of something like your typical new age music. It’s what new age would be if new age had any lasting value. New age always has been a kind of bastard child of the progressive scene and also of ECM-style jazz. And perhaps it is all-but-dead in any way that matters.

If so it is because there are new groups of artists such as Duda who have a clear vision of how to create moody sound sculptures devoid of claptrap and contrivance. The best qualities of classic period Moody Blues productions had a certain empty-longing-for-the-something-missing in the everyday life of the time, and the best of this post-progressive sort of music does all that but more subtly, with a better feel for the long form.

In our increasingly private lives filled with solitary TV watching, internet surfing, and ipod enclosures in personal cocoons of sound, we are like the Victorians--with the gulf between public and private ever widening--except there is perhaps an increasing emptiness, and nothing to hide worthy of mention, a generic privacy of exposure. While community dissipates and degenerates, we wait for the inevitable in solitude--death, or foreclosure or just further coffin-like isolation. Now that is not especially cheery, but these post-progressive folks seem to capture the Zeitgeist we all experience in some form today with something akin to true art. Generations in the future may look to music like this as clues to what we were like, what the 21st and 22nd century felt like to live in. Maybe.

Listen to the cut “Adrift” for a lyrically cosmic ambiance that is not beholden to anyone but hearkens backwards and points forwards simultaneously. Lunatic Soul has that. It engages without pandering to mawkish taste or plundering the flotsam of ready-made, formulaic “product.” It’s very good, and a very encouraging sign for those who watch and listen, who wait for something worthwhile from our rock brethren. Or more of it at any rate. Off to make coffee. . .

Medeski, Martin & Wood Do Zorn's "Zaebos"

Originally posted on December 8, 2008

John Zorn’s music captures our attention again today on the CD Zaebos (Tzadik), which consists of music from his Masada cycle as performed by the versatile and talented keys-bass-drums trio of Medeski, Martin and Wood. This is music with a freely charged electric jolt. And there’s certainly a rock component to this Semitic tinged set. MMW puts in one of their best performances ever. A tightly melded fusion of the written music and the trio’s interpretation makes for an organic compound of sound and energy that grooves, digs deeply into the roots of the minor mode sound, soars with musical wings of fire, and rests momentarily on a musical thought before returning again to the driving momentum of the music. The injection of interesting melodic sound blocks, cliché-less riffs and harmonic frameworks combine for an exceptional package of invention.

There was an old NYC ad slogan when I was young. It was for a bread company and it went “You Don’t have to be Jewish to Like Levys.” Zorn and MMW’s appealing disk has that same attraction. Imagine an incredibly hip Emerson, Lake and Palmer playing with an assuredness you’ve never heard from them before. It’s beyond that by a wide margin, but it might give you some idea of the power of this music. Both Zorn and MMW have taken some of the tenets of progressive rock and applied them to a jazz and beyond perspective that doesn’t forget the immediacy of powerful driving waves of sound. That’s an achievement and disks like these truly should be recognized more widely for what they are and what they do. Listeners must abandon what they think they should be hearing and they will surely get more than they imagined. The boldest sound adventures can do that. Keeping warm in a COLD New Jersey. . .

Danny Brill and the "Golden Age" of Prog Rock

Originally posted on November 13, 2008

I once was hanging out at a used record store not far from the Iron Building in downtown NYC. (The store was a great place for obscure bargains, probably gone now.) I overheard a conversation that sticks with me today (this was around 18 years ago). The salesman was trying to interest a customer in an RCA recording of the Golden Age of Opera (a reissue of opera 78s by famous stars of the Met in the ‘20s and ‘30s). “Golden Age?” the customer responded. “When anyone starts talking about the ‘golden age’ of anything I start getting suspicious.” He didn’t buy the record and we all went on our way in life but he had a point. There is no golden age. Every moment is a golden age if you are alive, no matter how tarnished that gold seems. Because it’s YOUR life.

So when I tell you that the CD for today will appeal to anyone who likes the “Golden Age” of Progressive Rock (1968-73, I guess), I do it with all the qualifications above. Yet I am serious. This is a tiny release by Danny Brill on his Danny Brill label and it is appropriately titled Better Late Than Never. He’s a guy who saw Emerson, Lake and Palmer at the Fillmore East in 1971 and was entirely entranced with that sound. He kept on playing keyboards, now more in the ELP style (along with influences like Yes, Gentle Giant, and etc.), but eventually gave it up to form a musical instrument rental company.

Now here it is 2008 [or it was when I wrote this]; he is at last playing again seriously and has made this album. It isn’t going to blast forth on MTV’s playlist, I imagine. So what? It actually has some real charm. There’s the great Tony Levin on bass, Nick Moroch on guitars, and a program of progressive music that sounds good to me. It has humor, depth and variety. It has a retro feel but is clearly made in the world we live in today. He deserves your support. And don’t forget to savor every moment of your life. Revel in your Golden Age today and every day.