• Music

    Thierry Zaboitzeff – Le Passage

    March 10, 2024 - By 

    Thierry Zaboitzeff was for many years a member of the seminal avant-progressive/RIO group Art Zoyd, and since 1997, he has been involved in numerous solo projects and collaborations.  This is one of the bleakest records I’ve heard in recent memory, and the liner notes on the Bandcamp site sum up the mood perfectly: “Our world is in the midst of turmoil. Human madness forces Earth to defend itself with violent aftershocks, like so many distress signals. Will wisdom finally become the watchword of the times to come, clearing the path to a possible future? This is the undoubtful aim of…

  • Music

    Audion 60

    March 8, 2024 - By 

    The legendary Audion Magazine has a new (well, new to Bandcamp) edition out, and included with it is about 1 1/2 gigabytes of tracks from albums reviewed within.  They were my first doorway to progressive rock, and I am forever indebted to them.

  • Music

    Disen Gage, Alexei Borisov, Misha ‘MOX’ Salnikov, Eugene Voronovsky – Bionika

    December 7, 2023 - By 

    Russian experimental band Disen Gage have collaborated with some of the country’s most notorious experimental musicians.  Alexei Borisov, for instance, has been featured on these pages before.  MOX and Voronovsky are new names.  The music is an impressive mix of early-era Tuxedomoon-influenced music supported by a avant-prog bass, drums and guitar.  Experimental enough to be weird, but structured enough to be familiar to the ears.

  • Music

    Eclectic Maybe Band – Bars Without Measures

    November 26, 2023 - By 

    With the exception of Christian Vander, I cannot think of too many people whose name would be so heavily associated with zeuhl and avant-progressive rock in general than Guy Segers.  The former bassist of the legendary Univers Zero has collected some of the finest names in avant and progressive rock to make an album loaded with wildly improvised music.  It’s an astounding, challenging release – one which no listener would ever get bored of.  Kudos to Discus Music for releasing this gem. The list of musicians should be enough to entice even the newest of zeuhl fans: Julie TIPPETTS (Vocals)…

  • Music

    Beat Love Oracle – Turning The Table

    September 2, 2022 - By 

    Our friends at áMARXE Records out of Galicia in Spain have released a really heavy album influenced by Canterbury Music, Zappa and jazz-rock in general.  There are so many twists and turns in Beat Love Oracle‘s album that it’s one I’d have trouble finding words to describe, so it is best to listen to the music directly and be amazed.

  • Music

    Y Bülbül – Fever

    July 19, 2022 - By 

    What a charmingly weird discovery this is!  Yiğit Bülbül is a London-based musician whose roots are in Turkey, and this mini-album combines the experimentation of artists like Holger Czukay with the dulcet sounds of Serge Gainsbourg’s backing band in their calmer moments.  A surreal release this one…

  • Music

    Birdsongs of the Mesozoic – The Iridium Controversy

    July 3, 2022 - By 

    Cuneiform Records offered this album as a half-price release this weekend, and though I already had the album, I thought it would be good to note what an amazing album this was back in its prime. Birdsongs of the Mesozoic are a band from Boston, Massachussets who have been active for well over 40 years now, and are perhaps America’s best representative of avant-progressive rock, having no difficulty straddling the lines of aggressive prog rock with classical music, much like their European contemporaries Art Zoyd and Univers Zero, among others.

  • Music

    Adrian Belew – Elevator

    June 17, 2022 - By 

    Legendary King Crimson and David Bowie guitarist Adrian Belew returns with a brand new progressive rock album that emphasizes rock loudly.  It sounds like a very complicated version of power-pop if the song a13 is any indication of what the rest of the album sounds like.  The only off-putting thing is the VERY high price tag for what is a normal-sized album.  The economy back home must be getting ever more brutal, I guess.

  • Music

    Ellipsis Quintet – Avoid The Void

    June 5, 2022 - By 

    This is something of a revelation for me!  The music produced by the Ellipsis Quintet, led by trumpeter Vasilis Nalbantis, mixes traditional Balkan, Greek and Levantine melodies inside a framework that would appeal to fans of the avant-progressive and Rock-In-Opposition genres.  Theirs is a prog-world-jazz stew that’s one of the freshest things I’ve heard come out of Austria in a long time (barring electronic music, of course).

  • Music

    Roz Vitalis – 20 Years – Alive and Well

    April 28, 2022 - By 

    Roz Vitalis are a progressive rock band out of St. Petersburg, Russia, who have wowed audiences worldwide by blending symphonic prog with slightly more avant-garde tendencies.  The tracks here are recorded live, but don’t let that dissuade you from trying out this album.  The sound is crisp and full, and the performances are a nice development from their studio work.