Go Back   Aural Moon - Progressive Rock Discussion > Prog Rock Discussion > General Discussion/Prog News
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Reply
 
Thread Tools Rate Thread Display Modes
  #1  
Old 07-21-2006, 08:08 PM
Yesspaz's Avatar
Yesspaz Yesspaz is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Brandon, MS
Posts: 3,134
"New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

Hi ho neighbors. Persueing and scored this nugget. FINALLY! The near future looks bright. I copied/pasted this from The Times, but check the links too. The second link has a 30 minute audio documentary on the new prog movement, with interviews of Rick Wakeman and others.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...007511,00.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onemusic...ck404p01.shtml


Prog rock? Just say yes
By Chris Campling

For decades the ancient behemoths of progressive rock were the butt of critics’ jokes. But thanks to new bands like the Mystery Jets, the sound is back


The sound of 2006 will be terribly bright. It will have practised its instruments hard, will have taken lessons, and will have assimilated all the best influences from the classics, rock, jazz and pop. And lo! The sound of 2006 will be called — in fact, already has been called — new prog, prog moderne, or crazy prog, which is a funny title, but not terribly descriptive. There is nothing crazy about prog.
Fab. It’s wonderful watching the specialist music press swallowing the prejudices of decades and finally agreeing (albeit tacitly) that there is nothing wrong with being able to do something beyond the capacity of mere mortals. There is a huge amount of Schadenfreude to be derived from watching the current crop of music rags trying to wax appropriately enthusiastic about the new prog without mentioning the P-word too often. My favourite is this, from the Scots rag Clash , about the sound produced by the Reading quintet Pure Reason Revolution: “Not dissimilar to gorging on LSD and being fed to the Kraken from Clash of the Titans.” Which, as a description of music, is not dissimilar to pants.



The Band Most Likely To, however, are the Mystery Jets. Not only do they possess the media hook of having two generations in their lineup — Henry Harrison, the rhythm guitarist, is the father of Blaine, the singer. Not only are they signed to the achingly hip Transgressive label. But they sound like a prog primer — or, if you prefer, a shopping list of all that has been best about the best rock music trends of the past 30 and more years. There’s Yes in there, and early Roxy Music and Pink Floyd circa Dark Side of the Moon and a lot of King Crimson, as well as the jingly-jangly indie sound that will get the band past a lot of mental blocks. Their debut album, due for release in March, is a wonderland of memories — here a synthesizer sound first heard on Roxy Music’s first album, there the grumbling Rickenbacker bass of Yes’s Chris Squire.

William Rees is their guitarist. He plays with a clean purity of note that has led Barry Hyde of the Futureheads to call him “the new Steve Howe (of Yes)”, an encomium with which he is not unfamiliar and with which he can, to an extent, concur.

“Not because I think I’m as good as he is,” he hurries to add on the phone from the farmhouse in the Dordogne, to which the band has repaired for a little songwriting and recording of B-sides (there’s another prog staple to tick off the list — Getting it Together in the Country). No, it’s because he approaches his craft with the same care and love as Howe has done for four decades. Extraordinarily, Rees is 20, which is extraordinary not only because he plays so well, but also because he is looking forward, some time this year, to recording in Berlin because that was where David Bowie recorded Low, Heroes and Lodger in the mid-1970s, with Brian Eno as producer. Rees is a big Brian Eno fan.

It’s enough to bring tears to the eyes of a father of a certain age. Not only does a 20-year-old like the same music I do, he’s quite unembarrassed by it. In fact, it probably doesn’t occur to him to find it strange, just as he finds nothing exceptional in what some would say is the Mystery Jets’ USP — the father-and-son Harrison involvement. “It’s not just Blaine and his dad,” he says, sounding slightly niggled. “It’s my band, too.”

And it has been his — their — band since he was a child. He and Blaine Harrison met at nursery school, and were in a band together with Henry Harrison (an architect who wins every dad’s envy by not only dreaming of being in a band, but doing it) when Rees was 7.

Why does he think that his band’s sort of music — he refuses to call it prog, precisely because the name has had such a bad press — is suddenly popular or, at any rate, talked about? Rees sees a progression towards progressive beginning with the rise of the Strokes, followed by the Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, the Arctic Monkeys, Antony and the Johnsons. “It’s a good time for music,” he says, a more open-minded environment, far removed from the limited thinking of Britpop, or at any rate the thick-ear tendency that made Oasis the only Britpop band to survive, and even flourish, in 2006.

It was just such an environment that led to the rise of prog first time round. Nearly 40 years ago “difficult” pop, which was called Underground, was a singles chart staple, thanks to Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Jethro Tull, Family, Fleetwood Mac, Santana and the Moody Blues.

Is there any reason to hope for a similar golden age in 2006? Possibly not — the singles chart may be a weakened currency these days, but it still gets your mug all over the national press. Short of shacking up with Kate Moss, the Jets will have to rely on the sort of audience that once wandered around with records conspicuously tucked under their arms.

Strangely, though, it is in modern listening habits that any real rebirth may come. As any parent knows, getting your offspring to listen, let alone like, your music is difficult veering towards impossible. Just mention the words “Here’s something I think you will like” and they dematerialise. But could that be because of the format you are using? Let them find it and download it for themselves and the stigma is gone, particularly if the guitarist from Mystery Jets likes it, too.

Still, if the trend is to be shortlived, and indeed underground, let’s enjoy it while we can. Let’s savour the big thinking that led Pure Reason Revolution to release a single nearly 12 minutes long (very prog, if of the overinflated type) and call it The Bright Ambassadors of Morning, a line from Pink Floyd’s Echoes.

And then there’s the new Yes. Mew are from Denmark, which means their lyrics are written in their second language, which lends them the same capacity for opacity as Jon Anderson in his pomp.

Mew, whose celebrity fans include Bono — who will apparently give anything new the thumbs up if it might make him seem more hep to the jive — and Michael Stipe, who doesn’t care about such things and is thus to be trusted, are four albums into their career. And what you hear in their latest, And the Glass-Handled Kites (oh dear. Still, it’s not as bad as the Moody Blues’ To Our Children’s Children’s Children) can bring tears of joy to an old progger’s ears.

NME might describe their sound as “The Cocteau Twins meet jagged underground freaks Sonic Youth”, but that’s because it, too, is afraid of using the P-word. All I know is that they remind me of the rush I got when I first heard Yes’s Time and a Word (1970), track one, side one, where they take a Richie Havens song, No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed, and Steve Howe put the theme from The Big Country into it. Mew ’s music is all soaring, symphonic stuff, with the bass player following the drummer’s strokes, note for beat, the way Chris Squire does.

Just writing it down makes the heart spring with youthful joy. I think I’ll go and put on the last movement of Close to the Edge and play some massive air bass. And I see that Jethro Tull are playing Ipswich at the end of March. Note to self: book tickets.
__________________
Feels like I'm fiddling while Rome is burning down.
Think I'll lay my fiddle down, take a rifle from the ground!
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old 07-22-2006, 04:42 PM
RogorMortis's Avatar
RogorMortis RogorMortis is offline
Patron
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Denmark
Posts: 699
Smile Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ



I just have to comment on that article Spaz has brought and that is of course to do with Mew that comes from my Denmark.

I do enjoy them as I have their albums and will say yes they do belong to the neo progressive movement but to compare them to Yes in my view is an insult to Yes. Mew have their own sound with a singer who sings in a high pitched voice (and who I thought was female to begin with) but their songs have nothing to do with typical Yes songs in structure - they are too short to start with. Mew is a band that relies on a heavy guitar sound but not with a an independent sound that Howe produced.

But I'm positivley surprised that they have been picked out as the Danish scene of today is not that progressive at all. Denmark had their hayday back in the periode of 1971-75 but to say that Mew is the new Yes is overshooting the goal. But I'd like to hear Mossy's view as she like Mew too.
__________________
Beware of the Spanish Inquisition,coming to a town NEAR you
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 07-22-2006, 08:24 PM
kirk's Avatar
kirk kirk is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: NW Canadian border, Blaine Wa.
Posts: 468
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

"Prog Moderne"! I like it!
That's much better than the misused and abused, sort of
nonsensical "neoprog".

K
__________________
Zenpool
at SongPlanet

www.cdbaby.com/zenpool
available at itunes, toweronline, bestbuyonline,
sony direct, rhapsody, loudeye...
IOMA award winner "best producer"2004
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old 07-23-2006, 09:52 AM
Hawksun's Avatar
Hawksun Hawksun is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 85
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

Come on, just call it Prog. There's enough hair-split genres in music, we don't need more. In a few months we'll probably end up with Indie Prog, Post-Prog, Canterbury-Revival, Power Prog, New Wave of British Progressive Rock Music and Progcore if the trend goes on. Just call it Prog. And if it's not then call by it's real name rather than inventing another crap term (World music anyone?).

P.S.: This is adressed to the music press, not my fellow monners.
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old 07-23-2006, 02:38 PM
mossy's Avatar
mossy mossy is offline
Patron
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Bright lights of the desert
Posts: 725
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

RM, I was also surprised to read that the writer considered Mew to be a "new" Yes. My skin crawls when I read that sort of categorization anyway. Take each artist on their own merit.

I like Mew, but it's Michael who is really into them. And he thinks "they're nothing like Yes".

But it's all subjective isn't it.
__________________
Faffist
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old 07-23-2006, 04:57 PM
kirk's Avatar
kirk kirk is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: NW Canadian border, Blaine Wa.
Posts: 468
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hawksun
Come on, just call it Prog.
Hey...just call it "Rock" for all I care.
It's not like Borders or B&N has a "Prog" section.

As I said to someone else, probably before you joined- in the 70's we didn't
see Yes, Crimson, The Who, Deep Purple, Led Zep ect. as being
anything other than Rock.

Comparing bands as diverse as Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Procol Harum,
lumping them into a category is ridiculous IMO.

It's evolved from a device for making store navigation easier,
to a device for appearing artsy, I.E.- We play " Triphiphousemetalfunk ".
It goes along w/ those junked out Brit dudes on MTV saying
"We recorded the entire album in 3 hours..."

As a listener, I agree it's out of hand. As an artist, I'll take every
advantage available
to point someone in the right direction,
or help lead some Goth salesgirl to my music when asked.

Kirk/Zenpool
www.songplanet.com/zenpool
__________________
Zenpool
at SongPlanet

www.cdbaby.com/zenpool
available at itunes, toweronline, bestbuyonline,
sony direct, rhapsody, loudeye...
IOMA award winner "best producer"2004
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Old 07-23-2006, 06:38 PM
pelothar's Avatar
pelothar pelothar is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Lima, Perú
Posts: 13
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

Just prog please, if theres no more classical 70's prog, the nowdays progressive music we have is the only prog left... so its just.. proggresive rock
__________________
Pelothar - Peruvian Prog Lover
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Old 07-23-2006, 07:18 PM
Hawksun's Avatar
Hawksun Hawksun is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 85
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

Quote:
Originally Posted by kirk
Hey...just call it "Rock" for all I care.
I was refering to Prog as the whole spectrum of progessiv-ness (Progressive Electronic, Prog Folk, and on and on...) not just prog-rock.

You could also split it into the Aphex Twin categories: Music you like, music you don't like.
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Old 07-23-2006, 09:44 PM
Yesspaz's Avatar
Yesspaz Yesspaz is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Brandon, MS
Posts: 3,134
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

I think we're missing the point of why I posted this article. I don't care one way or another whether the press wants to call this prog revival New Prog. The glorious thing is that there IS a prog revival! Mars Volta, Mew, The Mystery Jets, Pure Reason Revolution, Oceansize, Muse, ...and They Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, and dozens of other new prog and proggish bands are emerging from a genuine scene, rather than consciously rehashing the originators. This to me is encouraging and refreshing. They're definitely prog, but they come with more recent influences.
__________________
Feels like I'm fiddling while Rome is burning down.
Think I'll lay my fiddle down, take a rifle from the ground!
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Old 07-23-2006, 11:13 PM
rick_wakeman rick_wakeman is offline
Banned
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: France
Posts: 89
Send a message via MSN to rick_wakeman Send a message via Yahoo to rick_wakeman
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

yep very subjective. trying to consider kinda bands like Muse or Mars Volta or Deep Purple like prog related is legitimate. But i would call them boring bands . They only can switch a bright light on for novices towards rock. Or for teenagers. But wow what a lecture, Yesspaz.
Reply With Quote
  #11  
Old 07-23-2006, 11:25 PM
Hawksun's Avatar
Hawksun Hawksun is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 85
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

I would call them bands with excellent musical ideas; I'd probably call them Prog if my conception of what is prog and what is not wasn't so biased on a certain type of sound. But yeah I guess this could be the start of the next prog genration, that is if more bands follow their steps and continue with their ideas and sound.

Oh and sorry for the rant Spaz, it's just that I hate it when new pointless genre names are introduced for no good reason.
Reply With Quote
  #12  
Old 07-24-2006, 10:06 AM
Rick and Roll's Avatar
Rick and Roll Rick and Roll is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Baltimore suburbs
Posts: 5,039
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

I've been holding off replying here because I'm not all hot and bothered by the bands mentioned. I've tried the Volta, it's fun in spots, but it's overblown in places.

Yorksvc burned me the Oceansize....it's excellent, but a bit mellow (read slow to develop) for me.

There's plenty of bands in the past 20 years that I consider great. They all don't appear at once. Trying to lump everything in a revival category, well, I don't see it. This music is alive and well in its own niche without any help.

Save the revivals for the preachers

I always cringe when I hear anyone compared to Steve Howe. Steve was great with Yes, and when I've seen him solo and with Yes, but the GTR and Asia is music to yawn by. I like bands working as a cohesive unit (Djam Karet, etc). telling me Johnny Nosepicker sounds like Steve Howe tells me...well I'm not sure.
Reply With Quote
  #13  
Old 07-24-2006, 09:29 PM
Yesspaz's Avatar
Yesspaz Yesspaz is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Brandon, MS
Posts: 3,134
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

Wow. I'm shocked how up in arms ya'll are that people are citing Yes and Floyd as influences. Would you rather they cite The Clash and the Sex Pistols? Do you WANT rehashed prog? Don't you want something new?

Volta is fresh baby! Psych-era Floyd meets Santana's jams meets hardcore meets electronica-programming. That's what I mean by new influences - they're pulling in hardcore and electronics as well as more traditional prog influences. Truly new. Not the same old InsideOut and Kinesis cloners.
__________________
Feels like I'm fiddling while Rome is burning down.
Think I'll lay my fiddle down, take a rifle from the ground!
Reply With Quote
  #14  
Old 07-24-2006, 09:41 PM
Rick and Roll's Avatar
Rick and Roll Rick and Roll is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Baltimore suburbs
Posts: 5,039
Re: "New Prog," the genre - A MUST READ

Quote:
Originally Posted by Yesspaz
Wow. I'm shocked how up in arms ya'll are that people are citing Yes and Floyd as influences. Would you rather they cite The Clash and the Sex Pistols? Do you WANT rehashed prog? Don't you want something new?

Volta is fresh baby! Psych-era Floyd meets Santana's jams meets hardcore meets electronica-programming. That's what I mean by new influences - they're pulling in hardcore and electronics as well as more traditional prog influences. Truly new. Not the same old InsideOut and Kinesis cloners.
I'm not up in arms at all. It should be a compliment. The high points of Volta remind me of the Chili Peppers. I'd rather listen to them than a lot of the others. But as the Who said..."every idea in my head, someone else has said"
Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools
Display Modes Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump



All times are GMT -5. The time now is 07:25 AM.