Tag: los angeles

Odds & Ends: May 6, 2024

Band: Caverns Measureless | Album: Caverns Measureless | Genre: Progressive folk | Bandcamp

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.

Score: 76/100

Band: Hizbut Jámm | Album: Hizbut Jámm | Genre: Psychedelic folk | Bandcamp

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.

Score: 83/100

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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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Top Prog EPs of 2022

Welcome to the fourth installment of The Elite Extremophile’s Top Prog Releases of 2022. We’re starting off with the Top Prog EPs of 2022. The two-part Top 50 Albums list will be posted in the coming days.

I’ve never settled on a firm number for this list, but the last three years have all been Top Fives. This year, though, I listened to many more short releases than usual, and there are nine in particular that I want to highlight.

The difference between an EP and a short LP can often be murky. A number of these releases could have feasibly been included in the Top Albums list (and at least two initially were). However, upon thinking it through, I’m comfortable with this list. Aside from being fairly short, I don’t have firm criteria for differentiating LPs and EPs. It’s very much an “I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it” situation.

So, without further ado, let’s jump into the list!

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Album Review: Cynic – Ascension Codes

Band: Cynic | Album: Ascension Codes | Genre: Progressive metal, Progressive rock, Jazz-fusion | Year: 2021

From: Miami, USA | Label: Season of Mist

Bandcamp

Cynic is one of my absolute favorite progressive metal bands. They’ve got a singular sound that weaves together death metal, jazz, and astral progressive rock. Though they have drifted away from explicit death metal after their 1993 debut, their evolution has been natural, and they’re still recognizably the same band.

Ascension Codes is the band’s fourth full-length album and the first since the untimely deaths of founding drummer Sean Reinert and longtime bassist Sean Malone. These two are sorely missed, but the musicians assembled by guitarist/vocalist Paul Masvidal pay fitting tribute to the unique styles and incredible skills of their predecessors. Notably, instead of utilizing a bass guitarist, the bass parts here are all played on a synthesizer, which lends a unique character to this album in the context of Cynic’s discography.

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Odds & Ends: October 4, 2021

Band: Ars de Er | Album:Other Side | Genre: Progressive rock, Avant-prog | Bandcamp

Ars de Er’s last album leaned heavily into avant-prog and RIO, but Other Side is a little more grounded in “traditional” prog. There are especially strong echoes of Porcupine Tree’s heavier stuff, like Fear of a Blank Planet. This album still has plenty of influences from jazz and modern classical music, which makes the overall palette well-balanced and diverse. 

Score: 74/100

Band: Bantamweight | Album: Sounds + Haptics | Genre: Experimental rock | Bandcamp

This is a loud, unsubtle record. The mixture of metal, rock, and electronic elements are utilized to pummel the listener. It’s an intense listen, so in this case the album’s short runtime (only 29 minutes) is a virtue. A runtime of more than 30 minutes would have run the risk of becoming too exhausting. Beyond the intensity, the compositions are creative and full of great textural contrasts. The vocals are powerful and impassioned, and the array of synth tones are able to conjure a wide ray of moods and emotions.

Score: 80/100

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Album Review: Kesem – Post-Terra

Band: Kesem | Album:Post-Terra | Genre: Progressive rock | Year: 2021

From: Los Angeles, USA | Label: Sentient Recordings

For fans of: Astra, Gong, Hawkwind, early Pink Floyd

Bandcamp

Kesem’s debut EP was my EP of the year for 2020. It was a mind-bending trip of 21 minutes that blended progressive rock and space rock with the rawness and energy of classic garage rock. The songs on that EP feature sudden shifts in tone, texture, and mood; and the ample deployment of trumpet made them stand out.

Their first full-length-release, Post-Terra, follows in the same path as their self-titled EP. It feels more polished with smoother edges than its predecessor, but that doesn’t mean the sound is watered down at all. There’s still plenty of astral odysseys and surprises packed into this album.

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Odds & Ends: September 6, 2021

Band: Antinode | Album:The Canary the Named the Stars | Genre: Progressive rock | Bandcamp

The three songs on this long EP/short LP are solid, spacey progressive rock with subtle touches of jazz, metal, and indie rock. I’m a big fan of the instrumental tones and textures, and despite the songs’ lengths, they never feel like they’re dragging. There’s significant internal variation on all three tracks, and there’s a natural flow to the way the compositions evolve.

Score: 81/100

Band: Big Big Train | Album: Common Ground | Genre: Neo-prog, Progressive rock | Bandcamp

I have never understood the appeal of Big Big Train. They’ve got the occasional decent song here or there, but I’ve never enjoyed an entire BBT album. They often come off as saccharine and glossy, like a worse version of Spock’s Beard. Maybe I’m too much of a dour Debbie Downer to enjoy such unashamedly major-key music, but the opening “The Strangest Times” exemplifies my lack of fondness for this act. It’s bright, sunny piano-pop that doesn’t strike me as particularly proggy in any definition of the word. Successive tracks are significantly better, though it’s still not exactly my cup of tea. Much of this album comes off as soulless and plain, to say nothing of the bloat. The band sounds stuck in the mid-’90s’ prog scene, a sound which was fine for its time but was rightfully cast aside at the turn of the century. The lushness hobbles the band’s ability to make any real splash, and everything on here has been done much better previously by other artists, often half a century ago.

Score: 51/100

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Odds & Ends – July 12, 2021

Band: BaK | Album:Crater | Genre: Progressive rock, Progressive metal | Bandcamp

BaK is a bombastic Australian act which blends the sound of acts like Pain of Salvation and Dream Theater with Middle Eastern instrumentation and rhythms. The closest parallel to BaK is probably the Tunisian power metal act Myrath, though some of the weaker moments on this EP do remind me of Grorr. The integration of those more exotic influences is done better than most acts who attempt similar genre fusions, but it’s still really tough to not come off as corny.

Score: 71/100

Artist: Christian Cosentino | Album: Lawn | Genre: Progressive metal | Bandcamp

This proggy atmospheric black metal album makes extensive use of lush, programmed orchestration. Many parts of this record feature piano as a co-lead instrument alongside guitar, and strings are almost always present. Normally I’m not the biggest fan of this type of arrangement, but I credit the success here to the fact that he went in a more atmospheric direction, instead of something more traditionally proggy, technical, and overblown.

Score: 81/100

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