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.
I swear I cover more than just avant-prog. Please ignore the fact that this is the fourth consecutive full-length review I’ve posted of an avant-prog act. 2024 is shaping up to be kind of a slow year in most of the other pico-genres I cover, but the crazy stuff is having a decent one. But you know what I don’t cover that often? New Zealanders!
Half Empty Glasshouse is a New Zealandic avant-prog and experimental metal band that takes the classical influences of bands like Eunuchs and integrates it even more. The Exit Is Over There! is their second full-length release, and it’s a concept album about public backlash to experimental music throughout history. The twisted, disgusted and disgusting faces on the album’s cover are a perfect complement to this theme.
People make fun of Ohio a lot (especially online), but it’s not without its contributions. They gave us Devo and, uh, chili on spaghetti and…multiple mediocre presidents. But Perfect! Now there’s something Ohio can hold its head high about! Perfect is an Akron-based quintet that plays a daring, experimental variety of jazz-inflected rock. Monkey Jockey Man and the Safari Tick Sugar is their sophomore album. Since their debut, they’ve ditched brass instruments in favor of some intriguing noise influences, and the results are quite strong.
Eunuchs are an Australian quartet who employ a whole host of assisting musicians to construct dense, symphonic soundscapes. At the heart of things, they are a rock band, but traditional rock instrumentation is often minimized or buried beneath dense layers of strings, woodwinds, and reeds. Bubbling up amidst all that is a chaotic, angry energy that provides for unique contrasting effects.
In many ways, these Aussies remind me of black midi, the foremost band in the current avant-prog scene (insofar as there even is such a scene). These guys lean even harder into non-traditional instrumentation, though. Large swathes of this album push the very definition of “rock.”
Rock in Opposition (usually shortened to RIO) is a movement I’ve referred to a few times, but I’ve never really delved into it too deeply. Narrowly speaking, it refers to a specific group of five (initially, later expanded to eight) experimental rock bands who toured and played together in 1978 and 1979. These oddball bands (including Univers Zero, Henry Cow, and Samla Mammas Manna) were opposed to the music industry’s “refusal” to promote them. This stance, to me, comes off as a bit petty and self-centered. These bands played weird, aggressively un-commercial music. At a certain point, one needs to be realistic about their target audience. A major label isn’t going to promote an album like Hérésie. More broadly speaking, though, RIO now refers to the bands which are stylistically descended from these initial bands. I’ve used that label to refer to acts like PoiL, Cratophane, and Ahleuchatistas.
Though not a member of the eight “official” RIO bands, Present appeared not long after. It was founded in 1979 by Roger Trigaux, a founding member of Univers Zero, which is a band I respect more than I enjoy (and that sentiment can largely be applied to the original RIO movement as a whole). They’re often minimal and moody and influenced by chamber music. I can appreciate it on a certain artistic level, but I don’t really like it that much.
This Is NOT the End was my first exposure to Present, and I like it a lot. It has a lot less of the chamber music-influenced stuff I associate with Univers Zero, but it has plenty of exciting, experimental, and overall-weird passages. This release is the band’s first since 2009, but it is, despite its title, the band’s final release. Trigaux, the band’s driving force, passed away in March of 2021, in the midst of recording.
Scottish one-man experimental act Caverns Measureless plays a creepy, unsettling, and adventurous variety of folk-rock on their self-titled sophomore album. Acoustic guitar and mandolin plink alongside violin and flutes, while the occasional brash stab of electric guitar sends the atmosphere careening in another direction. The compositions are wiry and fluid, often changing path suddenly. All the songs here are complex, creative, and moody.
Hizbut Jámm is an interesting quartet. It consists of two Poles on guitar and drums, a Senegalese musician on guitar and vocals, and a Burkinabe musician playing the kora–a type of lute from West Africa. The lyrics are sung in Wolof and French, and West African melodies and scales are woven into the music. But this fusion also draws heavily from the tradition of Euro-American psychedelia. Textures are lush and dreamy, and the overall mood is hypnotic. Hizbut Jámm is an entrancing listen, and it’s a rewarding experience both as passive background music and as the subject of more active listening.
Band: Everything Oscillating | Album:The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are | Genre: Progressive rock | Bandcamp
Everything Oscillating is an instrumental act that focuses on flashy, technical shredding. Two of the three members are the guitarist and bassist for the Seattle-based band Moon Letters, whom I’ve covered a couple times. EO does a great job threading the needle of balancing flashy instrumental antics and engaging songwriting. The best moments here call to mind classic bombastic ‘90s and early ‘00s prog bands like Liquid Tension Experiment and Transatlantic, with a bit more of a classic heavy metal influence. Jazz and Latin flavors are included naturally, and the (abbreviated) instrumental cover of “Achilles’ Last Stand” is done well, too. (I feel like I could write a short essay on my love for the original version of that song, and EO absolutely does it justice here. It’s right up there with “Carouselambra”, “In the Light”, and “The Rain Song” among my favorite Led Zeppelin cuts. (I know, shocker, my favorite Zeppelin songs are all among the band’s longest.))
Score: 79/100
Artist: Peter Gabriel | Album:i/o | Genre: Art pop | Bandcamp
Peter Gabriel’s first new album in 20 years is enjoyable. It’s decent, fairly arty pop with some good melodies and interesting ideas. His vocal performance is strong, and the production is clean, crisp, and professional. Compositionally, though, it doesn’t stand out. Post-rock flavors weave themselves into Gabriel’s usual somewhat-spacey writing style. It’s competent but not particularly memorable. i/o comes in two different mixes: the so-called “bright-side” and “dark-side” mixes. These two mixes are not meaningfully different. Yes, if you listen to each song’s bright and dark version, you can tell them apart, but the differences between the two are insubstantial, surface-level, and borderline-gimmicky. Publications (especially prog-focused ones) that included this on their best-of 2023 lists make me question if they just reflexively put every release from major ‘70s players on their year-end lists, regardless of quality. (In fact, I know several included Yes’s abysmal The Quest on their 2021 lists, so I suppose they do.) If you want some keyboard-forward art-pop to put on in the background, i/o will work, but this album doesn’t leave a lasting impression.
Welcome to the first half of The Elite Extremophile’s Top 50 Prog Albums of 2023. This article covers spots 50-26, and the top 25 will follow soon!
As a reminder: the label of “2023” is not entirely accurate. The music featured here covers December 2022 through November 2023. Trying to find new music in the month of December is a fool’s errand, as much of my time during that month is occupied with writing and editing this list.
As I always say, I’m sure there are some excellent albums not included on my list. This site is a one-man operation (in relation to reviewing, that is; my editors, Kelci and Dan, have been tremendously helpful), and I simply cannot listen to everything that gets released. I also have my personal biases against some rather popular trends in prog. (*cough* djent *cough*)
2023 wound up being an excellent year for the type of music I enjoy. While it wasn’t necessarily difficult to whittle the list down to fifty entries, some of the albums that failed to make the cut for this year’s list probably could place as high as the low thirties in weaker years. (Such acts include Loma Baja, The Ocean, Legendry, and Lil Yachty.) I contemplated expanding the list, but this already takes up a ton of my time as it is. So, let’s get to it!
CHROMB!’s appropriately-titled fifth album, Cinq, is a solid return to what I love about them. I wasn’t nuts about their 2020 release, Le livre des merveilles. One of their trademark characteristics is their frenetic, madcap energy, but that release saw them try to trim back those elements of their sound. Cinq has that irrepressible oddness and liveliness I love, but it’s been distilled into shorter, more focused compositions. As much as I love their sprawling 2016 release, 1000, sometimes you just want 33 minutes of to-the-point avant-prog.
Score: 78/100
Band: Howling Giant | Album:Glass Future | Genre: Heavy psych, Progressive rock | Bandcamp
Though nothing here matches the scope or scale of their 2020 epic, “Masamune”, Glass Future provides plenty of solid music. Hints of the band’s stoner roots can be heard in their riffs, but the arrangements are lush, thoughtful, and complex. Organ adds a powerful richness to the sound, and the vocal performances are strong. Melodies are catchy, yet inventive and unique. The songs on this album are all relatively short, but they don’t feel rushed.
The Elite Extremophile 