Album Review: Tropical Fuck Storm – Fairyland Codex

Band: Tropical Fuck Storm | Album: Fairyland Codex | Genre: Art punk, Experimental rock | Year: 2025

From: Melbourne, Australia | Label: Fire Records

For fans of: Squid, black midi, Cardiacs, Fuzz

Tropical Fuck Storm is an Australian quartet that has been around since 2017, but I ran across them only recently. Their style is a little tough to define, but I think the genre tags I used above are pretty accurate. Maybe I could have tossed in “noise rock,” but I think that gets the point across. While not particularly “proggy” in the sense that they don’t ape the sounds of the 1970s or perform extended suites, their style is innovative and forward-thinking. They’re a genuine breath of fresh air in the rock world.

Fairyland Codex is the band’s fourth full-length release, and it might just be their best yet. The sound palette is diverse yet unified, and the band is able to weave in earworm melodies amidst supremely chaotic passages.

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Album Review: Cime – The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble

Band: Cime | Album: The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble | Genre: Avant-prog, Art-punk | Year: 2024

From: Aliso Viejo, USA | Label: Independent

For fans of: black midi, At the Drive-In, Frank Zappa

Bandcamp

Monty Cime is the eponymous leader of this album’s titular ensemble. She covers vocals and bass, but beyond her, a huge cast of other musicians pitch in to flesh things out. On the Bandcamp page for this record, a friend of Monty’s describes how she recorded all the demos on a guitar and a cheap keyboard in their closet over the span of several days. It really is impressive knowing that these huge, sprawling, and lush tracks had such humble origins.

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Best of 2023: Top 50 Prog Albums Part 2: 25-1

Welcome to part two of The Elite Extremophile’s Top 50 Prog Albums of 2023. Part one can be found here. Now, let’s get back to it!

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Best of 2023: Cool Songs

Welcome to the fifth annual installment of The Elite Extremophile’s Top Prog Releases. 2023 was an exceptional year for prog and prog-adjacent genres, and I was left with a glut of good music that wasn’t going to make my year-end lists. Even in less-stellar years, there are often records that I’m overall unimpressed with, which just so happen to have a great song or two on them. Thus, from a desire to not give such releases the short shrift, I’ve decided to highlight ten Cool Songs from this year.

This segment is meant to show off great tracks that otherwise do not appear on my year-end lists. If a release makes my best EPs or best albums list, it is disqualified from appearing in this particular segment.

Without further ado, let’s get to it!

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Odds & Ends: December 25, 2023

Band: Frankie and the Witch Fingers | Album: Data Doom | Genre: Progressive rock, Krautrock | Bandcamp

Frankie and the Witch Fingers remind me a lot of Osees. The music is fierce, energetic, and shot-through with punk influences. But the riffs are usually weird and angular, with uncommon meters. Despite a lot of the overt, aggressive tendencies of this band, the music remains relatively accessible. There are plenty of melodic hooks and catchy riffs and themes. “Syster System” is one hell of an earworm, and “Doom Boom” has a groovy, King Gizzard-esque feel to it.

Score: 80/100

Band: Gong | Album: Unending Ascending | Genre: Progressive rock | Bandcamp

Once you get outside the very big names of progressive rock (Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, etc), Gong is one of the better-known second-echelon prog acts. I’m honestly not that familiar with their output beyond their Pot Head Pixie trilogy of the early 1970s. Looking over their Wikipedia article however, they have been incredibly prolific, with numerous projects labeled “So-and-so’s Gong” also being considered part of their oeuvre. Maybe I’ll eventually do a Gong Deep Dive, but seeing all the various Gong-adjacent projects makes that a daunting prospect. I’ve also discussed Yes being a ship of Theseus, but they ain’t got nothin’ on Gong. There’s a whole damn Wikipedia article on the topic. Just look at this graphic!

Moving onto the music of Unending Ascending, it’s pretty decent. It’s psychedelic in feel, with a lot of space rock elements. The playing and compositions are complex and thoughtful. There are some weaker moments, like the sleepy and overlong “Ship of Ishtar”, but most of the record manages to be engaging and entertaining. Despite none of the current members of Gong having been in the band prior to 2007, they do a great job of maintaining the spirit of the classic Gong sound.

Score: 77/100

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Album Review: GEZAN with Million Wish Collective – 「あのち」

Band: GEZAN with Million Wish Collective | Album: 「あのち」| Genre: Art punk, Experimental Rock | Year: 2023

From: Tokyo, Japan | Label: 13th Records

For fans of: Squid, Frank Zappa, black midi

Bandcamp

Japan often gets stereotyped as having a lot of bizarre media. We’ve all seen those clips of insane Japanese game shows. I’ve never been to Japan, so I can’t personally vouch for the country, but I’ve got a feeling that’s an unfair, unrepresentative slice of their media landscape. I’ve heard enough dull Japanese jazz-rock to be confident they’ve got their own anodyne TV shows. However, sometimes that reputation for weirdness is warranted. Those insane game shows do exist, after all. And musically, it was Japan that revitalized zeuhl in the 1990s. The latest release from GEZAN falls firmly into that tradition of strangeness.

「あのち」(“Anochi”) is a striking record. It’s distinctive in its sound, and I somewhat struggled when thinking up artists for the “For fans of” section of the header. This album contains a dizzying blend of punk, prog, jazz, art rock and more. It touches on an impressive number of genres while also maintaining a sense of purpose about itself.

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