Canterbury scene, U.S prog, Italian prog, french prog, or anything « prog », feel free to post here
Here’s a starting point:
Canterbury scene, U.S prog, Italian prog, french prog, or anything « prog », feel free to post here
Here’s a starting point:
Ah maybe this will help me answer an oooold question : what is prog rock? What separates it from rock? (a lot of the examples listed I would have just said it’s rock music).
I’ll be curious to listen to the propositions because either way I like rock music and that’s where I come from so I’m happy to see a place for that on lines
Where’s the Gong?!?
They’re my favorite band ever!
Haha yeah, absolutely. At least it’s starting the conversation, let’s find out what « Prog-rock » is. Is it just odd meters, instrumental demo/maestria, uncommon phrases ? curious too
now is the time to begin to move forwards, advance
from despair and the darkness of solitary men who are chained
in a market they cannot control in the name of the freedom
that hangs like a pall on our cities and their towers of silence
we shall destroy!
Ahh, prog rock. The first genre that I dove deep into as a teenager, spending ages looking for the next obscure album to listen to… I don’t listen to a much of it these days, but I’m excited for this thread nonetheless.
Here’s some Italian bands:
the bbc’s Prog Rock Brittania is a pretty fun overview of the rise and fall of prog. it’s viewable in parts on youtube:
my knowledge of prog isn’t terribly deep, but here’s a fun contribution from Hungary (a bit later ‘prog’):
edit: one more from Hungary, because this video is super fun. disclaimer - I used to collect Hungarian/Czech/Romanian ‘beat’ records, so I have a real soft spot for this stuff:
So many replies in no time, I love Lines this song is awesome ! « idorablo », this made my day :-)))
You’re absolutely right! Please post your favorite song from Gong, I love em too
Brilliant. In twenty characters
The idea with prog being short for progressive, was that these musicians were taking rock instrumentation and energy beyond the rock genre, which meant taking classical, jazz and avant-garde approaches to composition and performance, and were pushing or “progressing” what you could do with these instruments - they were trying to make high art with popular music. The first bands that played what became known as progressive rock were often inspired by bands like The Beatles (Sgt. Peppers is often credited as the first prog rock album) and the Velvet Underground (and a lot more of course, you can hear a lot of influences from blues, folk, country…), and many had formal music educations. Many of the original artists just thought they were making psychedelic music hahaha. There are many styles and “schools” of prog rock, generally from different parts of Europe (but there are plenty of great exceptions), from symphonic progressive rock (possibly the daggiest but also most fun styles), to jazz fusions, to krautrock/kosmiche, to Rock In Opposition (RIO, which was very avant-garde and often had ties to activist movements, with rejecting the mainstream even in its name), to psych/prog folk… Many of these names were either given by people outside the scenes or retrospectively.
I was a massive prog need for quite a few years in my late teens/early 20s! It’s what got me interested in more avant-garde styles of music, and it’s what eventually lead me into electronic music. The appreciation for minimalism that I got from listening to Can (which are a band that I’ve constantly listened to for over a decade now who still sound fresh to me!) has become the backbone to my current musical practices, massively influential to my life!
To add some sounds to this thread, here’s an often overlooked gem from the RIO school, featuring some musicians from Henry Cow and Art Bears, and coming in a bit later in the scheme of things, in 1984. Such a beautiful piece of music:
Some really heavy psych prog kraut from a band Amon Duul II, that originally started from a German commune:
And one more for now from a quintessential freak folk band called Comus, another group that came from a hippy commune, who’s lyrics would be more at home in a death metal band than in folk music. Some of the most tweaked folk you’re ever likely to hear:
Wow, track #2 in particular. Amazing.
Neat to bump into somebody else whose musical trajectory started with prog rock. I started exploring the genre as a teenager probably 30-40 years after the music was made, haha. But it was a huge entry point to many other genres for me: free jazz, IDM, techno, free improv…
I need to research RIO - new to me!
Modern prog anyone?
plenty of better songs by this band (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3-5916EsI4, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjnIf3Mm6xI), but this is probably one of the more classically “prog” ones
Mumps is one of my all time favorites. Phil Miller’s playing is so good. The tone is so clean and reveals this tentative nature of the playing that has always been huge for me. So Inspiring!