Category: progressive rock

Kronstad 23 – Sommermørket (2025)

“Something is brewing in the state of Norway! Kronstad 23 are the latest trailblazers from northern Scandinavia: a creative force exploring the boundaries of musical genres, including but not limited to: psych rock, jazz, post-rock & scandinavian folk music. The group of young players follows the footsteps of Motorpsycho, Elephant9 & El Paraiso’s own Lotus, Fra Det Onde & Kanaan, carving out their path through the musical landscape in seemingly effortless ways! One minute you’re floating on cosmic Pharoah Sanders waters, the next you’re ascending on electrified if-Tortoise-played-Allman Brothers-style jamming.”

Camel – The Live Recordings 1974–1977 (2023)

Camel’s The Live Recordings 1974–1977 captures the band stretching their classic progressive rock pieces into long, flowing live journeys across full concerts from the Camel, Mirage, The Snow Goose, Moonmadness, and Rain Dances eras. Themes from the studio albums open out into extended instrumental sections, with Andrew Latimer’s guitar and Peter Bardens’ keyboards drifting from mellow, atmospheric passages to powerful climaxes.

Clearlight – Clearlight Symphony (1975)

“In what refers to its musical content, Clearlight Symphony is a completely opposed concept to that of the other project in which Verdeaux was involved at the time: the collective album Delired Chameleon Family (also reissued recently on Wah Wah Records), a brilliant psychedelic dive into the French underground of the seventies. Clearlight Symphony, instead, is a much more author-controled work, where all the musicians adapt themselves to Verdeaux’s circular, systematic composition. The alleged and collected improvisations, dissonances and atonalities (superb Boulé), the rhythmic tension of Artman’s enigmatic, Heldonian drumming, Blake’s environmental VCS3 modulations, Hillage’s content cosmicism, Verdeaux’s crescendos and counterpoints… Plus echoes of Débussy, Terry Riley, Soft Machine, Magma, and why not, the aforementioned Tubular Bells. In short, a work of honesty, an album of its time.”

Vangelis – The Dragon (1978)

“The Dragon is the second of the pair of illegally-released Vangelis LPs (Hypothesis is the other one) that came out in 1978 but was recorded in June 1971. This album includes Vangelis, Silver Koulouris on guitar, Michel Ripoche on violin, Brian Odger on bass guitar and Mick Waller on drums. It was produced by Giorgio Gromelsky and recorded at Marquee Studios in London. Unlike Hypothesis, The Dragon has a more Greek flavor to it, consisting of three tracks, the side long jam title track, the spaced-out “Stuffed Aubergine” and the upbeat “Stuffed Tomato”. This album was also subject of a lawsuit filed by Vangelis and fellow musicians against Charly Records Ltd. After they won, future manufacturing of the album stopped.”

Spook – Spook (2022)

“SPOOK – Dutch for GHOST – is a brand new trio by Simon Segers (De Beren Gieren, Black Flower) on drums, Nicolas Rombouts (Ottla, Dez Mona) on double bass and Filip Wauters (The Wodads, BackBack) on pedal steel and guitar. What started in the summer of 2019 as a one-off meeting has now grown into a fully-fledged collective that breaks the boundaries between improv and composition with intense interplay and sparse themes. The prominent presence of the pedal steel gives SPOOK an allure of “free country” or “post western”. Add some pulsating progrock rhythms and the free spirit and virtuosity of jazz and you capture the unique sound of SPOOK.”

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Agusa – Prima Materia (2023)

“Agusa’s music effortlessly foliates from majestic beauty to violent outbursts and everything in between. It blends tripped-out psychedelic and progressive rock structures to instill visions of nature, the cosmos, and dreamlike passages, meandering into realms of a possibly supernatural or parallel existence. This is instrumental music where the instruments – and the people playing them – communicate directly with our hearts and minds.”

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Diagonal – Live in Leeds 2012 (2021)

“A remastered ‘official bootleg’ documenting Diagonal in its second formation – playing live in support of Wolf People in 2012 at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds. A very different beast to the current band line-up, this Diagonal shared territory with the likes of Magma and ‘Red’ era King Crimson. Hot from the release of their second album ‘The Second Mechanism’ Diagonal were in top muscular form, sonically blasting West Yorkshire with unique, pulsating heavy prog.”

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Hedvig Mollestad Trio – Smells Funny (2018)

“When a power trio can share the stage comfortably with the likes of John McLaughlin and Black Sabbath, you know two things: They rock hard, yet provide enough harmonic content and improvisational daring to make it interesting. Norway’s Hedvig Mollestad Trio does precisely that on its sixth album. Recorded live in the studio, Smells Funny is a metal-jazz excursion that often tips into the Sonny Sharrock zone, fueled by Ellen Brekken’s rumbling bass, Ivar Loe Bjørnstad’s insistent pulse and Mollestad’s hellacious chops and fertile imagination… When Frank Zappa famously said, “Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny,” he was referring to a moldering of the music. The Hedvig Mollestad Trio aims at providing an antidote with this audacious outing.”

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