Xmas Reading Bonanza
STOP PRESS: ONE XTRA--da missus on best of teevee 2003
Woebot on his mate Gwen the nutty record collector/dealer--lots of lovely full color scans (note to self: must MUST get a scanner) of the covers of incredibly pricey/obscure records as touted by Gwen. Matt in agony about the $1000 records he covets but can't buy. I am so out of these guys league, i don't think I've ever spent more than $28 in real money on a single slab of vinyl. (When i say real money i mean not the monopoly money you get from Music & Video Exchange when you trade stuff in for exchange which doesn't count cos its promo lead into gold yagetme)
k-punk awakes with a speculation on the future madeleines/involuntary mnemonic triggers for 2003. a hard one to guess, this, the most unlikely tunes remind me of past years, often ones i didn't consciously register at the time or particularly care for
technicolor with an amazingly thorough overview (scroll down a bit) of the year. must concur especially with the comments on Grime (amazing, yes, but it could have moved so much further/faster) and dance (the glut expands but who on earth is buying the stuff?). Exhibiting true obsessive-compulsiveness Jess then returns a bit later with a list of great tunes he forgot to include, reminding me of one i forgot: Kanye West, "Thru the Wire". Love the way that this is basically just a guy playing a portion of one of his favorite records over and over, pitched up ardkore stylee so that Chakha sounds even more heliumgasmic, over this great sloppy-seeming beat. Another fave i forgot: Field Mob, 'Sick of Being Lonely', crunk but amiable, even plaintive.
skykicking with a thought-provoking post on
the disappearance of "rhythmic danger" from drum'n'bass--triggered quite a few thoughts at this end which hope to put down here sooner rather than later
bit late on this one but just in case anyone's not checked it a terrific piece on the 'screwed and chopped' phenomenon in texas rap by tufluv--the entry is Wednesday December 17
todd burns on best xmas album EVER Crunk and Disorderly
--on which subject, i'm no scholar of this particular form, but it strikes me that Ying Yang Twins "Salt Shaker" is a pretty advanced production. Lots of interesting sounds whizzing about in them; multilayered bass noises, farty eruptions. Sorta like Rabelaisian bleep'n'bass, where LFO stands for Lewd Frequency Oscillations. [You have to admire also the frugality of the 'Salt Shaker' video. One location--a fire station; one prop, a fire truck; a few models (c.f. the hundreds of scanty clads in your average rap video). No special FX. If they skipped on catering and just got several tubs of chicken wings and a dozen supersized sodas in , well the budget could come in under.. 10 thousand? That's chicken feed!]
Naked Madja with Part 2 of the epic year round-up.
Interesting comments on Grime's inhumanity and absence of a redemptive vision. I get where marcello's
coming from but for me the coldness and harshness
and uninvitingness of the music IS the humanity, IS the emotion. That's how the world/life has treated these guys and that what's coming out in the music: the sonic equivalent of the skrewface. that was what was fascinating about the Wiley interview at hyperdub, the way he related to the coldness in his music to the
cold rage when he was kicked out by his granny because he'd been getting into trouble
with the law; he felt totally abandoned yet knew it was his fault, except on another level it wasn't,
'society is to blame' -- but that to me shows how there's a total existensial/emotional AND social/political dimension to these bleak impersonal-seeming machinic instrumentals. that said, for sure, there's much tonnage of shite grime trackage or pure functional mc tools
silver dollar circle has a great little rant (might have to scroll down a bit) about all the things wrong with modern culture, i found myself in total agreement, EXCEPT that the trigger for the rant is Daft Punk, who don't to me seem the embodiment of emptiness and blank irony Simon takes them as. Things like "One More Time" and "Digital Love" seem full of pure openhearted love and joy, and also really potent ammunition for those who argue that irony and awe can coexist and are not mortal enemies. (Whereas The Darkness, say, seem like really potent ammunition for the opposed view).
Monday, December 22, 2003
Thursday, December 18, 2003
FAVES 2003
TOP 23 DISCRETE SONIC ARTIFACTS
(all categories; unranked)
Junior Boys, "Last Exit"
Dizzee Rascals, "Vexed"
Dizzee Rascal, "Sittin' Here"
Dizzee Rascal, "Do It"
Jammer, "Black Man Freestyle" over "Pulse X" (Luka pirate tape)
Kano, "Boys Love Girls"
Vybz Kartel, "Sweet To The Belly"
Wiley, "Ice Rink" (Wiley juggling all the MC versions in a row live on radio premiere, Luka pirate tape)
Cabaret Voltaire, "Fuse Mountain"
Cabaret Voltaire, "Dream Sequence Number Two Ethel's Voice"
Cabaret Voltaire, "Henderson Reversed Piece Two"
Villalobos, "Dexter"
Bigga-Man, "Trump" or "Funny Song" [still don't know]
Bright Eyes, "One Foot In Front of the Other"
DJWrongspeed, "Talk 'n Ads"
DJWrongspeed, "Old Skool"
Animal Collective, "Panic"
Unknown Artist, "Strings of Death" [imaginary title] + unknown MCs (Luka pirate tape)
LFO, "Blown"
Essentials crew, Deja Vu FM show date unknown (Scud tape)
Hi-Tension, "British Hustle"
Freez, "Southern Freez"
Remarc, "Thunderclap"
TOP 23 SINGLES/TRACKS/VIDEOS
1st Equal/
Dizzee Rascal, "Vexed"
Wiley featuring various MCs, "Ice Rink"
Kano, "Boys Love Girls"
Vybz Kartel, "Sweet to the Belly"
Junior Boys, Birthday EP
Villalobos, "Dexter"
7/ Bigga Man, "Trump" or "Funny Song" [still don't know!]
8/ Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz featuring the Ying Yang Twins, "Get Low"
9/ Bright Eyes, "One Foot in Front of the Other" (off Saddle Creek 50 comp)
10/ Mark One versus Plasticman, "Hard Graft 1/Hard Graft 2"
11/ Outkast, "Hey Ya"
12/ Outkast, "The Way You Move"
13/ Sean Paul, "Get Busy"
14/ Unknown Artist, "Strings of Death" [imaginary title]
15/ The Surgery featuring Mr Bigg Shott, "Shott The Weed"
16/ Kelis, "Milkshake"
17/ Codex & Flexor, "Crazy Girls"
18/ Dizzee Rascal, "Fix Up Look Sharp"
19/ Jon E Cash versus Capleton, "Clear Conscience"
20/ Data 80, "Baby, I Can Forgive (extended mix)"
21/ Black Ops, "Haywire (sub low mix)"
22/ Schneider TM & Kptmichigan, "The Light 3000"
23/ Jammer, "Weed Man"
Runners Up (unranked): Simon Sez, "Shut Ya Mouth", "Golly Gosh"; Sharky Major, "Ain't a Game"; Vive La Fete, "Noir Desir" [heatseeker tune/fastest riser]; Wiley, "Ground Zero", "Frostbite"; K2 Family & Dem Lott, "What! (Secret Service Remix)"; Jammer, "One And Allâ"; Coldplay, "Clocks"; White Stripes, "Seven Nation Army", "The Hardest Button to Button"; Sean Paul, "Like Glue", that one wot versions "Uptown Ranking"; Bonecrusher; Beyonce, "Crazy In Love (unreleased cuz nonexistent vocal free and rap free dubstrumental)"; 50 Cent, "In Da Club"; Tatu, "All The Things She Said", "How Soon Is Now"; Chingy, "Right Thurr"; Lumidee, "Uh Oh" (unreleased cuz non-existent Autotune Pitch-Correct Mix)
TOP 13 ALBUMS/COMPILATIONS
1/ Dizzee Rascal, Boy In Da Corner
2/ Animal Collective, Here Comes The Indian
3/ Villalobos, Alcachofa
4/ LFO, Sheath
5/ N.A.S.T.Y. mix-CD by Jammer, Deuce magazine July 2003
6/ DJWrongspeed, Pirate Flava
7/ Michael Mayer, Fabric13
8/ David Banner, Mississippi: The Screwed and Chopped Album
9/ Ward 21, U Know How We Roll
10/ DJ Scud & Panacea Present The Redeemer, Hardcore Owes Us Money
11/ Various Artists, Crunk & Disorderly
12/ Vybz Kartel, Up 2 Di Time
13/ Soundmurderer + SK-1. I<<
Runners up (unranked): Stars Like Fleas, Sun Lights Down On the Fence; Lightning Bolt; Heroin (Orthlong Musork); Richard X; Ragga Ragga Ragga 2003; Elephant Man; Yeah Yeah Yeahs; Dinky; The Mover; Data 80; Mr. Scruff, Trouser Jazz; Bubba Sparxx; Kraftwerk; Akatombo, Trace Elements (Swim); More Fire Crew; Various Artists, Bricksmack (Drosstik); OutKast; David Toop, Black Chamber; Various Artists, Street Beats Mixed by Slimzee and Femme Fatale Featuring B-Live and Gods Gift; Matthew Dear, releases beyond counting; Platinum Performers 2 Fast 2 Ferocious free cd, Deuce winter 2003; Tobias Thomas, Smallville; Various Artists, Rephlexions; The Bug; Various Artists, The Biggest Dancehall Anthems 2003
TOP 13 REISSUES/RETRO
1/ Cabaret Voltaire, Methodology '74/'78. Attic Tapes;
2/ Soundmurderer, Wired for Sound
3/ The Blue Orchids' The Greatest Hit + EPs (new on LTM/Darla)
4/ Remarc, Sound Murderer
5/ Various Artists, British Hustle: the Sound of British Jazz-Funk from 1974 to 1982
6/ Factrix, Artifact
7/ 23 Skidoo, The Culling Is Coming
8/ Al Green, The Immortal Soul of Al Green
9/ Pyrolator, Ausland
10/ Essential Logic, Fanfare in the Garden
11/ Television, Marquee Moon and "The Dream's Dream" on Adventure
12/ Jean Cohen-Solal, Flute Libres/Captain Tarthoporn
13/ Arthur Russell, The World of Arthur Russell
Runners up (unranked); King Sunny Ade, The Best of the Classic Years; Palais Schaumburg; Animal Collective/Avey Tare & Panda Bear, Danse Manatee/Spirits They've Gone, Spirits They've Vanished; Metal Urbain; Various Artists, Cool As Ice; The Door and the Window; Nervous Gender; Fred Frith, Guitar Solos; Bad Company [not the rock band silly]; Lory D; Ultramarine remixes; Roy Ayers anthology; Bad Brains; Charalambides; Various Artists, Nice Up The Dance; The Passage, Pindrop/Degenerates/Enflame/For All and None
UNOFFICIAL COMPILATIONS
(unranked)
Grievous Angel Soundsystem vol 1: Nervous Ragga (P. Meme)
Radio-Phonic+ (J. House)
The Forbidden Zone, 1967-73 (J. Savage)
In The Sprawl, Vol 1 and Vol 2 (T. Finney)
Beta Lounge Record Club Shipment no. 13 (P. Sherburne)
Bounce Alliance: New Orleans, Miami, London/Swizz (M. Ingram)
Speed Garage 'Lost Classics' (M. Ingram)
Longhair Round Up 2003 (M. Ingram)
Australian Post Punk Vols 1-4 (J. Dale)
Robert Haigh, Vol. O: Before Breaks Began (M. Gascoigne)
Omni Trio, The Eps #1/Works #2 (S. Reynolds)
OLDSTUFF: NOT REISSUED BUT REDISCOVERED/REVELATORY
Home T/Cocoa Tea/Shabba Ranks's "Pirates' Anthem"
Human League/Martin Rushent, Love and Dancing
Gong, Camembert Electrique/Flying Teapot/You
Donald Fagen, The Nightfly
The Meters, Rhino double-Cd
Thomas Leer, 4 Movements/Contradictions
The Residents, The Commercial Album
Tubeway Army, Replicas
Gary Numan, The Pleasure Principle
Lard Free, oeuvre entiere
Byrds, Younger Than Yesterday
Goblin, Suspiria
Boston,"More Than A Feeling" (especially video on VH1 Classic)
Anthony Red Rose, "Tempo"
Dirtsman, "Hot This Year"
Guru Guru, Hinten
Love, Forever Changes, "7 & 7 Is"
Madness, many tunes
The Beat, first album, "Too Nice To Talk To"
The Specials, first two albums, singles
UB40, "The Earth Dies Screaming"
The Fall, oeuvre entiere
Black Chiney, Mixes 1 to 128 (chest ya Mr. Maplestone)
ON THE FENCE
Basement Jaxx
Matmos
Speicher
Sylvian
!!!
OFF THE FENCE
Luomo
UNACCOUNTABLY LOST ALL APPETITE/CURIOSITY
Jay-Z
Missy/Timbaland
Neptunes
Radiohead
OVEREXPOSED
Pharrell's face
Pharrell's falsetto
IN MY STOCKING PLEASE SANTA
(hint hint hint)
Miles, Jack Johnson five-cd box; Shirley Collins, box + Love, Death and the Lady; Pitman; Scott Walker box; Ze compilations;
Sub Rosa electronic anthologies; Linda Perhacs; Nurse with Wound, Soliloquy for Lilith 3-CD; Soft Machine BBC sessions; Annette Peacock I'm The One; Topic folk box; David Toop book; Bangs anthology
WORDS
The usual suspects (my cru my dogz BLOGGAZ 4 Life believe it m8 ---er, cough, I say chaps, keep on keeping on, eh?!); Deuce; Paul Morley, Words and Music (even though it's wrong), Greg Tate, Hendrix bk (bit short though innit); Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times.
OTHER
The Office series 1; Italian postwar politics; Scottish people; Sheffield people; Bedekar Pickles, Kieran Press-Reynolds; Da Missus; the endless treasure of VH1 Classic; Bridget Riley retrospective at the Tate; short but sweet six days summer sojourn in London, with no rain!
UNFAVES (NON-MUSIC)
The Office series 2; virtually everything on TV; domestic politics; global politics; woes of various sorts cutting dark swathes across the lives of friends and contemporaries.
MOST ANTICIPATED FOR 2004
Wiley album; N.A.S.T.Y. and/or Jammer albums; Dizzee #2; a proper Streets release would be nice eh Mike; Junior Boys full length; more Arfur Russell reissues; Animal Collective/Avey Tare/Panda Bear overload; 10 yrs since 1994 junglizm nostalgia in overdrive (started already, just couldn't wait); finishing the book.
PREDICTIONS/WISHFUL THINKINGS
Rap gets worse before it gets better; dancehall gets better before its gets worse; grime stays level AND underground BUT 3rd pirate radio hardcore continuum win in a row for Mercury; continuum's yin/yang light/dark musical/antimusical pendulum swings the other way in the form of a 2step revival (dis one 4 da ladeez massif); microhouse abruptly peters out, just like that; MACROhaus (Felix 'Don't You Want My Love' meets Giselle Jackson 'Love Commandments' meets The Mover meets Energy 52 'Cafe Del Mar') blows up ENORMOUS; Jay-Z comes out of retirement; Marcello Carlin comes out of retirement; Madonna gets Screwed; David Stubbs, Kodwo Eshun, and Paul Kennedy start blogs; nu-metal just, like, totally ENDS leaving all the weird hair 'n' bad beard bands as stranded and fucked as Poison Warrant etc were circa grunge; mysterious but aesthetically-astute virus cause out all post-Green Day/Blink 282 pop-punk vocalists to permanently lose their perky puppy-like overmelodious voices, hooray!; mid-Eighties revival begins in earnest, Williamsburg rife with bands imitating Kitchenware sound and Ron Johnson roster; Kane Gang The Triffids and Balaam & the Angel reform for School Disco: The Bad Music Era; bottom drops out of the mutant disco/negroclash market and Hip-House, New Beat and possibly even Hi-NRG are the new hotzones.
IN CONCLUSION
Merrie Xmas, and hope y'all get whatcha want in and for the 04.
TOP 23 DISCRETE SONIC ARTIFACTS
(all categories; unranked)
Junior Boys, "Last Exit"
Dizzee Rascals, "Vexed"
Dizzee Rascal, "Sittin' Here"
Dizzee Rascal, "Do It"
Jammer, "Black Man Freestyle" over "Pulse X" (Luka pirate tape)
Kano, "Boys Love Girls"
Vybz Kartel, "Sweet To The Belly"
Wiley, "Ice Rink" (Wiley juggling all the MC versions in a row live on radio premiere, Luka pirate tape)
Cabaret Voltaire, "Fuse Mountain"
Cabaret Voltaire, "Dream Sequence Number Two Ethel's Voice"
Cabaret Voltaire, "Henderson Reversed Piece Two"
Villalobos, "Dexter"
Bigga-Man, "Trump" or "Funny Song" [still don't know]
Bright Eyes, "One Foot In Front of the Other"
DJWrongspeed, "Talk 'n Ads"
DJWrongspeed, "Old Skool"
Animal Collective, "Panic"
Unknown Artist, "Strings of Death" [imaginary title] + unknown MCs (Luka pirate tape)
LFO, "Blown"
Essentials crew, Deja Vu FM show date unknown (Scud tape)
Hi-Tension, "British Hustle"
Freez, "Southern Freez"
Remarc, "Thunderclap"
TOP 23 SINGLES/TRACKS/VIDEOS
1st Equal/
Dizzee Rascal, "Vexed"
Wiley featuring various MCs, "Ice Rink"
Kano, "Boys Love Girls"
Vybz Kartel, "Sweet to the Belly"
Junior Boys, Birthday EP
Villalobos, "Dexter"
7/ Bigga Man, "Trump" or "Funny Song" [still don't know!]
8/ Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz featuring the Ying Yang Twins, "Get Low"
9/ Bright Eyes, "One Foot in Front of the Other" (off Saddle Creek 50 comp)
10/ Mark One versus Plasticman, "Hard Graft 1/Hard Graft 2"
11/ Outkast, "Hey Ya"
12/ Outkast, "The Way You Move"
13/ Sean Paul, "Get Busy"
14/ Unknown Artist, "Strings of Death" [imaginary title]
15/ The Surgery featuring Mr Bigg Shott, "Shott The Weed"
16/ Kelis, "Milkshake"
17/ Codex & Flexor, "Crazy Girls"
18/ Dizzee Rascal, "Fix Up Look Sharp"
19/ Jon E Cash versus Capleton, "Clear Conscience"
20/ Data 80, "Baby, I Can Forgive (extended mix)"
21/ Black Ops, "Haywire (sub low mix)"
22/ Schneider TM & Kptmichigan, "The Light 3000"
23/ Jammer, "Weed Man"
Runners Up (unranked): Simon Sez, "Shut Ya Mouth", "Golly Gosh"; Sharky Major, "Ain't a Game"; Vive La Fete, "Noir Desir" [heatseeker tune/fastest riser]; Wiley, "Ground Zero", "Frostbite"; K2 Family & Dem Lott, "What! (Secret Service Remix)"; Jammer, "One And Allâ"; Coldplay, "Clocks"; White Stripes, "Seven Nation Army", "The Hardest Button to Button"; Sean Paul, "Like Glue", that one wot versions "Uptown Ranking"; Bonecrusher; Beyonce, "Crazy In Love (unreleased cuz nonexistent vocal free and rap free dubstrumental)"; 50 Cent, "In Da Club"; Tatu, "All The Things She Said", "How Soon Is Now"; Chingy, "Right Thurr"; Lumidee, "Uh Oh" (unreleased cuz non-existent Autotune Pitch-Correct Mix)
TOP 13 ALBUMS/COMPILATIONS
1/ Dizzee Rascal, Boy In Da Corner
2/ Animal Collective, Here Comes The Indian
3/ Villalobos, Alcachofa
4/ LFO, Sheath
5/ N.A.S.T.Y. mix-CD by Jammer, Deuce magazine July 2003
6/ DJWrongspeed, Pirate Flava
7/ Michael Mayer, Fabric13
8/ David Banner, Mississippi: The Screwed and Chopped Album
9/ Ward 21, U Know How We Roll
10/ DJ Scud & Panacea Present The Redeemer, Hardcore Owes Us Money
11/ Various Artists, Crunk & Disorderly
12/ Vybz Kartel, Up 2 Di Time
13/ Soundmurderer + SK-1. I<<
Runners up (unranked): Stars Like Fleas, Sun Lights Down On the Fence; Lightning Bolt; Heroin (Orthlong Musork); Richard X; Ragga Ragga Ragga 2003; Elephant Man; Yeah Yeah Yeahs; Dinky; The Mover; Data 80; Mr. Scruff, Trouser Jazz; Bubba Sparxx; Kraftwerk; Akatombo, Trace Elements (Swim); More Fire Crew; Various Artists, Bricksmack (Drosstik); OutKast; David Toop, Black Chamber; Various Artists, Street Beats Mixed by Slimzee and Femme Fatale Featuring B-Live and Gods Gift; Matthew Dear, releases beyond counting; Platinum Performers 2 Fast 2 Ferocious free cd, Deuce winter 2003; Tobias Thomas, Smallville; Various Artists, Rephlexions; The Bug; Various Artists, The Biggest Dancehall Anthems 2003
TOP 13 REISSUES/RETRO
1/ Cabaret Voltaire, Methodology '74/'78. Attic Tapes;
2/ Soundmurderer, Wired for Sound
3/ The Blue Orchids' The Greatest Hit + EPs (new on LTM/Darla)
4/ Remarc, Sound Murderer
5/ Various Artists, British Hustle: the Sound of British Jazz-Funk from 1974 to 1982
6/ Factrix, Artifact
7/ 23 Skidoo, The Culling Is Coming
8/ Al Green, The Immortal Soul of Al Green
9/ Pyrolator, Ausland
10/ Essential Logic, Fanfare in the Garden
11/ Television, Marquee Moon and "The Dream's Dream" on Adventure
12/ Jean Cohen-Solal, Flute Libres/Captain Tarthoporn
13/ Arthur Russell, The World of Arthur Russell
Runners up (unranked); King Sunny Ade, The Best of the Classic Years; Palais Schaumburg; Animal Collective/Avey Tare & Panda Bear, Danse Manatee/Spirits They've Gone, Spirits They've Vanished; Metal Urbain; Various Artists, Cool As Ice; The Door and the Window; Nervous Gender; Fred Frith, Guitar Solos; Bad Company [not the rock band silly]; Lory D; Ultramarine remixes; Roy Ayers anthology; Bad Brains; Charalambides; Various Artists, Nice Up The Dance; The Passage, Pindrop/Degenerates/Enflame/For All and None
UNOFFICIAL COMPILATIONS
(unranked)
Grievous Angel Soundsystem vol 1: Nervous Ragga (P. Meme)
Radio-Phonic+ (J. House)
The Forbidden Zone, 1967-73 (J. Savage)
In The Sprawl, Vol 1 and Vol 2 (T. Finney)
Beta Lounge Record Club Shipment no. 13 (P. Sherburne)
Bounce Alliance: New Orleans, Miami, London/Swizz (M. Ingram)
Speed Garage 'Lost Classics' (M. Ingram)
Longhair Round Up 2003 (M. Ingram)
Australian Post Punk Vols 1-4 (J. Dale)
Robert Haigh, Vol. O: Before Breaks Began (M. Gascoigne)
Omni Trio, The Eps #1/Works #2 (S. Reynolds)
OLDSTUFF: NOT REISSUED BUT REDISCOVERED/REVELATORY
Home T/Cocoa Tea/Shabba Ranks's "Pirates' Anthem"
Human League/Martin Rushent, Love and Dancing
Gong, Camembert Electrique/Flying Teapot/You
Donald Fagen, The Nightfly
The Meters, Rhino double-Cd
Thomas Leer, 4 Movements/Contradictions
The Residents, The Commercial Album
Tubeway Army, Replicas
Gary Numan, The Pleasure Principle
Lard Free, oeuvre entiere
Byrds, Younger Than Yesterday
Goblin, Suspiria
Boston,"More Than A Feeling" (especially video on VH1 Classic)
Anthony Red Rose, "Tempo"
Dirtsman, "Hot This Year"
Guru Guru, Hinten
Love, Forever Changes, "7 & 7 Is"
Madness, many tunes
The Beat, first album, "Too Nice To Talk To"
The Specials, first two albums, singles
UB40, "The Earth Dies Screaming"
The Fall, oeuvre entiere
Black Chiney, Mixes 1 to 128 (chest ya Mr. Maplestone)
ON THE FENCE
Basement Jaxx
Matmos
Speicher
Sylvian
!!!
OFF THE FENCE
Luomo
UNACCOUNTABLY LOST ALL APPETITE/CURIOSITY
Jay-Z
Missy/Timbaland
Neptunes
Radiohead
OVEREXPOSED
Pharrell's face
Pharrell's falsetto
IN MY STOCKING PLEASE SANTA
(hint hint hint)
Miles, Jack Johnson five-cd box; Shirley Collins, box + Love, Death and the Lady; Pitman; Scott Walker box; Ze compilations;
Sub Rosa electronic anthologies; Linda Perhacs; Nurse with Wound, Soliloquy for Lilith 3-CD; Soft Machine BBC sessions; Annette Peacock I'm The One; Topic folk box; David Toop book; Bangs anthology
WORDS
The usual suspects (my cru my dogz BLOGGAZ 4 Life believe it m8 ---er, cough, I say chaps, keep on keeping on, eh?!); Deuce; Paul Morley, Words and Music (even though it's wrong), Greg Tate, Hendrix bk (bit short though innit); Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times.
OTHER
The Office series 1; Italian postwar politics; Scottish people; Sheffield people; Bedekar Pickles, Kieran Press-Reynolds; Da Missus; the endless treasure of VH1 Classic; Bridget Riley retrospective at the Tate; short but sweet six days summer sojourn in London, with no rain!
UNFAVES (NON-MUSIC)
The Office series 2; virtually everything on TV; domestic politics; global politics; woes of various sorts cutting dark swathes across the lives of friends and contemporaries.
MOST ANTICIPATED FOR 2004
Wiley album; N.A.S.T.Y. and/or Jammer albums; Dizzee #2; a proper Streets release would be nice eh Mike; Junior Boys full length; more Arfur Russell reissues; Animal Collective/Avey Tare/Panda Bear overload; 10 yrs since 1994 junglizm nostalgia in overdrive (started already, just couldn't wait); finishing the book.
PREDICTIONS/WISHFUL THINKINGS
Rap gets worse before it gets better; dancehall gets better before its gets worse; grime stays level AND underground BUT 3rd pirate radio hardcore continuum win in a row for Mercury; continuum's yin/yang light/dark musical/antimusical pendulum swings the other way in the form of a 2step revival (dis one 4 da ladeez massif); microhouse abruptly peters out, just like that; MACROhaus (Felix 'Don't You Want My Love' meets Giselle Jackson 'Love Commandments' meets The Mover meets Energy 52 'Cafe Del Mar') blows up ENORMOUS; Jay-Z comes out of retirement; Marcello Carlin comes out of retirement; Madonna gets Screwed; David Stubbs, Kodwo Eshun, and Paul Kennedy start blogs; nu-metal just, like, totally ENDS leaving all the weird hair 'n' bad beard bands as stranded and fucked as Poison Warrant etc were circa grunge; mysterious but aesthetically-astute virus cause out all post-Green Day/Blink 282 pop-punk vocalists to permanently lose their perky puppy-like overmelodious voices, hooray!; mid-Eighties revival begins in earnest, Williamsburg rife with bands imitating Kitchenware sound and Ron Johnson roster; Kane Gang The Triffids and Balaam & the Angel reform for School Disco: The Bad Music Era; bottom drops out of the mutant disco/negroclash market and Hip-House, New Beat and possibly even Hi-NRG are the new hotzones.
IN CONCLUSION
Merrie Xmas, and hope y'all get whatcha want in and for the 04.
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Lists lists lists lists with twists (good on yer Woebot) but nobody, except Marcello, can be arsed with making any substantive commentary on the artifacts in question, let alone hazard anything resembling an Overview. Well I’m with the majority this year: Faves, due any day now, is going to be on the, ah, perfunctory side. Partly cos I’ve not got the time, and partly cos almost everything on it I’ve already said plenty about here during the past annum. As for an overview, you must be kidding! Who'd even attempt such a thing, you’d be throwing yr hands up in disparation (excruciating pun intended) within minutes. The Big Picture don’t bear contemplating really (even grime wasn’t THAT astounding). This is a time for the minutiae-minded (chest ya Tufluv, Finney) but be wary y'all--tis a thin line between alertness to those small but significant shifts and unwittingly teaching yourself to settle for less and less. Titillating, for sure, when Mr. Michael Mayer started dropping tunes with a Glitterbeat stompy feel in NYC the other week (that’s shuffletech, right?) and downright delightful to hear an actual honest to goodness T.Rex bassline on one track, but it takes more than a slight intra-scenic shift towards the quasi-lumpen to shake my world, rearrange my mind, make me raise my voice even. So bring on the Macrohouse, the MACRO-everything. Be unreasonable demand the momentous.
Monday, December 15, 2003
Feeling
----The face of Wayne Coyne--the most appealing countenance in all of modern rock, don’t you think? I wonder what he’s going for with that image. It’s sort of Andrew Gold mixed with Jeff Lynne. I imagine him as this rising-but-not-quite-made-it-yet songwriter circa 1975, driving across LA on his way to a meeting with Linda Ronstadt’s people, in hopes of getting a tune on her next album.
----Marley Marl’s sampladelic production of “Ain’t No Half-Steppin’” by Big Daddy Kane--a gorgeous mist of near-microtonal plinks and dissonant chings, the instrumental source whereof is tough to ascertain through the haze (Rhodes keys?).
----Ryuichi Sakomoto, B-2 Unit. Amazing stuff (unbelievable, really, for 1981), even better than the “Bamboo” EP with Sylvian. Can finally see why “Riot In Lagos” is such a talismanic reference for certain Detroit types and Black Dog sorts.
----Various Artists, Crunk and Disorderly. Tis the season to be grimy: featuring Lil Jon & East Side Boyz, Lil Flip, Three 6 Mafia, Pitbull, Bone Crusher, Youngbloodz and more, the best Xmas album EVER!!! Favorite tune, sonixly: Konkrete featuring Big Boi’s eerie “D-Boy Stance”. Favorite tune, vocal performancely: over the brontosauran slow-stomp of “Guess Who’s Comin’ To Town” Bonecrusher emits a gruff rasp as heavy-breathed as Tad after bingeing at Taco Bell. Favorite tunes, conceptually: Ying Yang Twins “Ho! Ho!”---and yes it’s the obvious gangsta-Santa pun; David Banner’s “It’s Christmas Time (Jingle Bells)”--the chorus (to the tune of that carol that goes “god rest you merry gentlemen”) is “it’s winter time and we still cannot find a job/we fill out applications but you treat us like we’re slobs/so we rob and we steal/we’re just trying to get a meal/cos it’s Christmas time and we’re broke again, broke again”; Killer Mike’s “A Christmas Grind”, which starts with a shotgun blast and has this oddly Streets-soundalike-y chorus that goes “it’s Christmas time/I’m on the grind/Gonna take what’s yours and make it mine.” Not exactly tidings of comfort and joy, then.
---Kelis, “Milkshake”. Sounds like the ‘Tunes have been listening to Liaisons Dangereuses.
----The 808 B-line in “The Way You Move”. Jungalistic but smoove--worthy of Alex Reece.
----Finding Speakerboxxx/The Love Below for $2 in Kieran’s school fair. Two bucks!
----Also finding a CD of sound library music, Bite Hard: The Music De Wolfe Studio Sampler 1972-80, subtitled ‘An Eclectic Selection of Progressive British Sountracks’. (Hooray for hip East Village parents deciding to purge their CD collections as toys and Thomas the Tank Engine videos take up every square inch of their apartments!). It was the word ‘progressive’ that grabbed my eye, but although there’s a fair bit of Moog on this it didn’t quite live up to my hopes of Goblin-lite or Graaf-zak. Worth the two bucks though for “Spiro”, a 1975 rimshot and hi-hat heavy drumkit workout with ominously distorted and sustained guitarchords that sounds uncannily like something of ACR’s The Graveyard and The Ballroom. (Which is just about to be reissued by Soul Jazz).
---the almost hardcore tempo, wonderfully jaunty breakbeat tune they use in action or chase scenes on Powerpuff Girls.
----David Banner, Mississippi: The Screwed and Chopped Album. Screwed and Chopped by Michael Watts of Swisha House.
Bit weird listening to the fucked-up rmx w/o ever having heard the original album, I suppose, but this is great-- a late arriving contender for my Top 10 of the year. Love that droopy, slurry sound, like slipping helplessly into the slough of despond. A woozy-Uzi feel, like gangstas whose psychological armour is melting, releasing a long pent-up lush melancholy at times oddly redolent of Gary Numan at his most Satiesque and grandly pretty ("Down In the Park", say). There’s also sounds in there that seem vaguely gloomcore in flavour (whereas your non-screwed crunk has this stabs and distorted bassdrum sounds that sometimes approach a sort of downtempo gabba. The avant-lumpen, get-low impulse is transglobal, certain noises seem to have universal appeal). The chopping aspect might be even more interesting than screwed’s 16 rpm deaccelerated effect--at times the combination is like watching/experiencing a car crash in slow-motion, all blunted impacts and drawn-out metallic lacerations. Guess it’d be kinda interesting to get “on the vibe” for the full drug-music-tech interface insight. But as much as I’m a major Lester Bangs fanboy I’m not going to start necking Romilar or its modern counterpart. So I’ll have to content myself with being in the same position of those who heard and dug the sped-up voices in ‘ardkore without understanding their relationship to the E-rush. (Actually I don’t think I’ve done a downer of any description, unless alchohol counts, so got no reference points to draw on whatsoever. Do they still make quaaludes?). (Related topic: how certain drugs seem to have cultural effects and ramifications, whereas others (glue, say, or valium) don’t seem to generate anything in the way of subculture or musical effects; seem literally infra-cultural or even anti-cultural. I’d have put Robitussin or whatever these guys are sippin’ in the non-culture-generating bracket but it seems to have crossed over to the other side (as I guess ketamine did, eventually).
-----DJWrongspeed, Pirate Flava
Another late arriving contender for the Top Ten. For almost a whole year this chap Wrongspeed was doing a weekly 15 minute show on Resonance FM (between May 02 and February of this year--whythaFUCK did no one tell me?!?! Not that I’m living within radio range, but… there's arms that coulda been twisted, pleas and wheedling that could have been made). Then Resonance had to pull it after a complaint from the Radio Authority. More like sound art than music per se, each ‘Pirate Flava’ episode was a collage of culcha-matter gleaned from the pirate airwaves of London---MC patter, phone-ins, ads, tunes, station idents, rants. This Pirate Flava CD, kindly sent by Wrongspeed, starts with a 30 minute Megamix of what I guess must be highlights from the entire series: a fantastically compressed audio-archive of a decade plus of renegade broadcasting. But in some ways the next segment, “Talk’n’ Ads,” is even more amazing: Radio Babble-on of quirky, nutty, or offensive public speech. Or maybe that should that be Radio Babel-on--a profane and promiscuous tapestry of slanguages, dialects, creoles, patois, pidgins and outright foreign tongues, that reveals and revels in London as one of the great cosmopolitan cities of the world. Ads for morning-after contraception (reedy-voiced adolescent Black British boy--“oh shit the condom’s burst! Oh that’s okay you can’t get pregnant the first time”), community-conscious sermons about guns and how civic-minded adults really ought to step in to defuse teenage squabbles before they escalate, conspiracy theorists, religious nuts, ads for hair salons in Tulse Hill, phone-ins full of banter and larking about, but also sometimes hate and bigotry (some ugly examples of black homophobia: “in Jamaica, they stay in the closet… and when we FIND where the closet is, we’re gonna set it alight”), amateur lady-MCs gamely rhyming about playas who need to stay monogamous, advice and counselling from the utterly unqualified and self-appointed. It’s forbidden popular knowledges and minor languages ago-go. Next up is the pure E-rush of “Old Skool” (which wonderfully includes some material from before I started taping-- 89/90/91 days, when the DJs still had a touch of Smashy and Nicey about them: that old style smarmy patter of discotheque deejays who’d announce requests and dedications in a laughably TransAtlantic ‘smoove’ voice. Nice also to rehear the wobbly-nerved tones of Colin Faver, cheesy quaver). Finally there’s a fab garridge/2step collage called “UK Shed Mix”. Wrongspeed really ought to archive the entire series on the web (you can’t get the old shows on Resonance, unlike most of their other programmes, presumably 'cos they had to pull them after the Radio Authority's warning)
Not feeling
----All those Devo tunes in adverts (particularly rife on children’s TV channels for some reason). I know those guys have to keep up the mortage payments, but still…
-----Ludacris, “Stand Up”. Sonically: makes me think of Chain Reaction after they stopped being any good, circa CR 20, great ugly slabs of tectonic sound. Luda-wise: the larger-than-life brashment vibe now seems painfully overstated and quite irritating.
-----Luomo. You know, I’ve listened to that album more times than many of my ab favs of 03, and all I can say is: you guys are nuts! It just sounds incredibly meek, prissy, and characterless to these ears. More Latin Quarter than whatever cool Eighties reference points you care to bring.
----Sickly sensation of doom as you contemplate those forthcoming Liars LP titles--They Were Wrong, So We Drowned; “Steam Rose From The Lifeless Cloak”; “There’s Always Room On the Broom”; “If You’re a Wizard, Then Why Do You Wear Glasses”; “They Don’t Want Your Corn They Want Your Kids”, “We Fenced Other Houses With the Bones Of Our Own”; “Flow My Tears The Spider Said”. Not that titling was ever their forte especially, but…
----The face of Wayne Coyne--the most appealing countenance in all of modern rock, don’t you think? I wonder what he’s going for with that image. It’s sort of Andrew Gold mixed with Jeff Lynne. I imagine him as this rising-but-not-quite-made-it-yet songwriter circa 1975, driving across LA on his way to a meeting with Linda Ronstadt’s people, in hopes of getting a tune on her next album.
----Marley Marl’s sampladelic production of “Ain’t No Half-Steppin’” by Big Daddy Kane--a gorgeous mist of near-microtonal plinks and dissonant chings, the instrumental source whereof is tough to ascertain through the haze (Rhodes keys?).
----Ryuichi Sakomoto, B-2 Unit. Amazing stuff (unbelievable, really, for 1981), even better than the “Bamboo” EP with Sylvian. Can finally see why “Riot In Lagos” is such a talismanic reference for certain Detroit types and Black Dog sorts.
----Various Artists, Crunk and Disorderly. Tis the season to be grimy: featuring Lil Jon & East Side Boyz, Lil Flip, Three 6 Mafia, Pitbull, Bone Crusher, Youngbloodz and more, the best Xmas album EVER!!! Favorite tune, sonixly: Konkrete featuring Big Boi’s eerie “D-Boy Stance”. Favorite tune, vocal performancely: over the brontosauran slow-stomp of “Guess Who’s Comin’ To Town” Bonecrusher emits a gruff rasp as heavy-breathed as Tad after bingeing at Taco Bell. Favorite tunes, conceptually: Ying Yang Twins “Ho! Ho!”---and yes it’s the obvious gangsta-Santa pun; David Banner’s “It’s Christmas Time (Jingle Bells)”--the chorus (to the tune of that carol that goes “god rest you merry gentlemen”) is “it’s winter time and we still cannot find a job/we fill out applications but you treat us like we’re slobs/so we rob and we steal/we’re just trying to get a meal/cos it’s Christmas time and we’re broke again, broke again”; Killer Mike’s “A Christmas Grind”, which starts with a shotgun blast and has this oddly Streets-soundalike-y chorus that goes “it’s Christmas time/I’m on the grind/Gonna take what’s yours and make it mine.” Not exactly tidings of comfort and joy, then.
---Kelis, “Milkshake”. Sounds like the ‘Tunes have been listening to Liaisons Dangereuses.
----The 808 B-line in “The Way You Move”. Jungalistic but smoove--worthy of Alex Reece.
----Finding Speakerboxxx/The Love Below for $2 in Kieran’s school fair. Two bucks!
----Also finding a CD of sound library music, Bite Hard: The Music De Wolfe Studio Sampler 1972-80, subtitled ‘An Eclectic Selection of Progressive British Sountracks’. (Hooray for hip East Village parents deciding to purge their CD collections as toys and Thomas the Tank Engine videos take up every square inch of their apartments!). It was the word ‘progressive’ that grabbed my eye, but although there’s a fair bit of Moog on this it didn’t quite live up to my hopes of Goblin-lite or Graaf-zak. Worth the two bucks though for “Spiro”, a 1975 rimshot and hi-hat heavy drumkit workout with ominously distorted and sustained guitarchords that sounds uncannily like something of ACR’s The Graveyard and The Ballroom. (Which is just about to be reissued by Soul Jazz).
---the almost hardcore tempo, wonderfully jaunty breakbeat tune they use in action or chase scenes on Powerpuff Girls.
----David Banner, Mississippi: The Screwed and Chopped Album. Screwed and Chopped by Michael Watts of Swisha House.
Bit weird listening to the fucked-up rmx w/o ever having heard the original album, I suppose, but this is great-- a late arriving contender for my Top 10 of the year. Love that droopy, slurry sound, like slipping helplessly into the slough of despond. A woozy-Uzi feel, like gangstas whose psychological armour is melting, releasing a long pent-up lush melancholy at times oddly redolent of Gary Numan at his most Satiesque and grandly pretty ("Down In the Park", say). There’s also sounds in there that seem vaguely gloomcore in flavour (whereas your non-screwed crunk has this stabs and distorted bassdrum sounds that sometimes approach a sort of downtempo gabba. The avant-lumpen, get-low impulse is transglobal, certain noises seem to have universal appeal). The chopping aspect might be even more interesting than screwed’s 16 rpm deaccelerated effect--at times the combination is like watching/experiencing a car crash in slow-motion, all blunted impacts and drawn-out metallic lacerations. Guess it’d be kinda interesting to get “on the vibe” for the full drug-music-tech interface insight. But as much as I’m a major Lester Bangs fanboy I’m not going to start necking Romilar or its modern counterpart. So I’ll have to content myself with being in the same position of those who heard and dug the sped-up voices in ‘ardkore without understanding their relationship to the E-rush. (Actually I don’t think I’ve done a downer of any description, unless alchohol counts, so got no reference points to draw on whatsoever. Do they still make quaaludes?). (Related topic: how certain drugs seem to have cultural effects and ramifications, whereas others (glue, say, or valium) don’t seem to generate anything in the way of subculture or musical effects; seem literally infra-cultural or even anti-cultural. I’d have put Robitussin or whatever these guys are sippin’ in the non-culture-generating bracket but it seems to have crossed over to the other side (as I guess ketamine did, eventually).
-----DJWrongspeed, Pirate Flava
Another late arriving contender for the Top Ten. For almost a whole year this chap Wrongspeed was doing a weekly 15 minute show on Resonance FM (between May 02 and February of this year--whythaFUCK did no one tell me?!?! Not that I’m living within radio range, but… there's arms that coulda been twisted, pleas and wheedling that could have been made). Then Resonance had to pull it after a complaint from the Radio Authority. More like sound art than music per se, each ‘Pirate Flava’ episode was a collage of culcha-matter gleaned from the pirate airwaves of London---MC patter, phone-ins, ads, tunes, station idents, rants. This Pirate Flava CD, kindly sent by Wrongspeed, starts with a 30 minute Megamix of what I guess must be highlights from the entire series: a fantastically compressed audio-archive of a decade plus of renegade broadcasting. But in some ways the next segment, “Talk’n’ Ads,” is even more amazing: Radio Babble-on of quirky, nutty, or offensive public speech. Or maybe that should that be Radio Babel-on--a profane and promiscuous tapestry of slanguages, dialects, creoles, patois, pidgins and outright foreign tongues, that reveals and revels in London as one of the great cosmopolitan cities of the world. Ads for morning-after contraception (reedy-voiced adolescent Black British boy--“oh shit the condom’s burst! Oh that’s okay you can’t get pregnant the first time”), community-conscious sermons about guns and how civic-minded adults really ought to step in to defuse teenage squabbles before they escalate, conspiracy theorists, religious nuts, ads for hair salons in Tulse Hill, phone-ins full of banter and larking about, but also sometimes hate and bigotry (some ugly examples of black homophobia: “in Jamaica, they stay in the closet… and when we FIND where the closet is, we’re gonna set it alight”), amateur lady-MCs gamely rhyming about playas who need to stay monogamous, advice and counselling from the utterly unqualified and self-appointed. It’s forbidden popular knowledges and minor languages ago-go. Next up is the pure E-rush of “Old Skool” (which wonderfully includes some material from before I started taping-- 89/90/91 days, when the DJs still had a touch of Smashy and Nicey about them: that old style smarmy patter of discotheque deejays who’d announce requests and dedications in a laughably TransAtlantic ‘smoove’ voice. Nice also to rehear the wobbly-nerved tones of Colin Faver, cheesy quaver). Finally there’s a fab garridge/2step collage called “UK Shed Mix”. Wrongspeed really ought to archive the entire series on the web (you can’t get the old shows on Resonance, unlike most of their other programmes, presumably 'cos they had to pull them after the Radio Authority's warning)
Not feeling
----All those Devo tunes in adverts (particularly rife on children’s TV channels for some reason). I know those guys have to keep up the mortage payments, but still…
-----Ludacris, “Stand Up”. Sonically: makes me think of Chain Reaction after they stopped being any good, circa CR 20, great ugly slabs of tectonic sound. Luda-wise: the larger-than-life brashment vibe now seems painfully overstated and quite irritating.
-----Luomo. You know, I’ve listened to that album more times than many of my ab favs of 03, and all I can say is: you guys are nuts! It just sounds incredibly meek, prissy, and characterless to these ears. More Latin Quarter than whatever cool Eighties reference points you care to bring.
----Sickly sensation of doom as you contemplate those forthcoming Liars LP titles--They Were Wrong, So We Drowned; “Steam Rose From The Lifeless Cloak”; “There’s Always Room On the Broom”; “If You’re a Wizard, Then Why Do You Wear Glasses”; “They Don’t Want Your Corn They Want Your Kids”, “We Fenced Other Houses With the Bones Of Our Own”; “Flow My Tears The Spider Said”. Not that titling was ever their forte especially, but…
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Treading on Thin Ice. Over at hyperdub Instalment #2 of that fabulous Martin Clark interview with Wiley. Amazing stuff re. turning rejection (being kicked out by his granny for being a bad bwoy) into a cold cold inner fireball of motivational energy. (And to think there's those out there who still think you can somehow enjoy/understand Grime without even registering its content/context!!!). The album is called Treading On Thin Ice and it's due early 04.
Monday, November 24, 2003
PROGMETHEUS UNBOUND: THE RETURN
Well, I feel I should apologise for Progmetheus Unbound. At the end of the day, it was simply far too cursory.
Via an intermediary (he doesn’t have email or even a computer, in fact the Billboard Progressive Music Guide was written on a typewriter) Bradley Smith has made his feelings known: “not thorough,” “sloppy”, “uninformed”. Noam tried his best but couldn’t quite hide his disappointment. Other correspondents (see below) haven’t been nearly so concerned about sparing my feelings.
My only excuse really is that the whole undertaking, while based in genuine curiosity about ‘progressive’, is practically speaking an exercise in seeing how extensively you can map a sonic terrain with only the most minimal first-hand (first-ear?) acquaintance with it.
Any, for what it’s worth, here is Progmetheus 2, an attempt to make amends by rounding up the most blatant ommissions and egregious category errors. To start off, some comments from my blog peers and e-correspondents.
^^^^
In as kindly a tone as he can manage Luc Sante notes numerous sins of omission:
NYC JUILLARD-HIPPIE PROTO PROG
Ars Nova
New York Rock & Roll Ensemble
BEAT GROUP LEAN PROGWARD
The Move
PROG 50S-NOSTALGIA
Roy Wood as Eddie & the Falcons
GARAGE-PROG
Electric Prunes--Mass in F Minor
ZAPPA-SONDHEIM HYBRID PROTO-PROG
Chrysalis
NONE DARE CALL IT PROG
Love (well, Four Sail and Out There, anyway)
DUTCH-SCANDINAVIAN DIVISION
Focus
NO WAVE PROG
Dark Day
Circus Mort (future Swans)
that Don Giovanni-based concept album perpetrated by members of Mars [John Gavanti? Don King?]
SF NEW WAVE PROG
Tuxedomoon
Sleepers
NYC MINIMALIST PROG
Glenn Branca (20 guitars!)
Rhys Chatham (100 guitars!)
^^^^
Audibly (legibly?) rubbing his hands together with glee, Sébastien Morlighem draws attention to a series of blunders:
POSTPUNK IS PROG INNIT PROG
The Work
Family Fodder (in fact all the Cold Storage connection)
Door & the Window
Flying Lizards*
Bits in The Fall discography (Live at the Witch Trial, The Unuterrable's Ketamin Sun -mock-prog ?)
*(The Flood/Trouble/Events during Flood on the side B of first LP ; most of the second LP, plenty of Fripp in it !)
FROG PROG
Early Pascal Comelade*
* minimal electroprog, big influence of Fripp/Eno, Pinhas, of course (check 'Allez Theia' by Heldon!!!)
COMEDY PROG/POETRY PROG FUSION
Lady June*
* ‘Linguistic Leprosy’ has bits of early TG in it?
^^^^
Outwardly genial but spiced with undertones of schadenfreude, Stanley Whyte points out the bleeding obviousness of such absent categories as:
WHEELS OF STEEL PROG
DJ Shadow*
Kid Koala
* Bonus prog points for releasing discs that are enhanced by listening to them through headphones.
NUGGETS PROG
Amboy Dukes - Journey to the Center of Your Mind*
*This should ALMOST be disqualified for including anything by Ted Nugent, as definitely-not-prog as I can think of.
1ST-TIER BRITISH INVASION PROG
The Kinks (1968-75)*
* this encompasses Village Green Preservation Society, Muswell Hillbillies, Lola Vs The Powerman, Acts 1, 2 and 3, Soap Opera - Concept
Albums ALL!
CZECH PROG
Plastic People of the Universe/Pulnoc
JAZZ-PROG
Keith Jarrett
^^^^
Matthew Ingram, barely able to stifle his glee,
points out the absence of French synth prog outfit Space Art from the PROG DISCO category, seeing as they were the same crew responsible for Space’s "Magic Fly," while also noting that Tom Moulton's Kebekelektrik album (a Kraftwerk Homage apparently) features a disco cover of Ravel's "Bolero," and in a final encyclopaedic flourish points out the presence of future Police guitarist Andy Summers as drummer on Deep Purple organist Jon Lord’s 1975 album Sarabande (“which was moving into Axelrod-y territory via covers of Ravel”)
^^^^
Rather testily, Scott Woods chips in with
PROG SOUL
Marvin Gaye
RURAL PROG
The Band's "Chest Fever"
AYERS PROG
Kevin Ayers
Roy Ayers
And further suggests that limiting this thing to music is, frankly, parochial-minded given the existence of:
PROG CINEMA
Ken Russell
Oliver Stone
Stanley Kubrick
^^^^
Verging on belligerent, Eli Bingham berates: “Where's Manuel Goettsching and E2-E4 then?! I mean, shit, he WAS in Ash Ra Temple”. He’s right: a shocking omission in the PROTO-TECHNO PROG CATEGORY
^^^^
Co-founderBruce Adams appreciates the inclusion of Kranky in the list of prog labels but objects to the Eurocentric bias resulting in the absence of:
JAPANESE PROG and JAPANESE SUB-PROG {blue cheer damage}: Acid Mothers Temple, Ruins, Boredoms, Keiji Haino/ Fushitsusha and the PSF label.
Bruce is also keen to advance his pet theory about the influence of ECM Records on American left field rock of the 1990s (see Appendix 3)
^^^^
Too nice to actually call me an ignoramus to my face, Wallace Winfrey is dismayed by the non-appearance of Voivod in the METAL IS PROG INNIT PROG category. He also suggests that Grateful Dead merit some kind of category (JAM PROG?) for their Weather Report suite, Blues For Allah, Terrapin Station (“all with the signature prog trappings of one long song composed of several parts”) and notes that bassist Phil Lesh and Ned Lagin's electronic 70s outing, Seastones “specifically mentions use of Buchla instruments--a hallmark of any good
prog outing”.
^^^^
Jonathon Dale
tartly indicates the embarrassing absence from HUNGARIAN PROG of prog-metal band The Galloping Coroners (a/k/a Vagtazo Halottkemek) and the non-appearance in FINNISH PROG of Circle (who “hide it behind these stoned circular riffs a la Loop or whatever, but the organ playing (Jon Lord, good Lord!) and the squealy dramatic (almost cod-operatic) vocals are a dead giveaway”.
^^^^
Francesco Brunetti reckons I need my head examining if I can’t see the righteousness of the following lineage:
MAGICKAL MYSTERY PROG/ALEISTER
CROWLEY IS PROG)
Graham Bond -- Holy Magick
Psychic TV -- Force the hand of chance
Nekrophile Rekords -- The beast 666 and the archangels
of sex rule the destruction of the regime
Current 93 -- Christ and the pale queen mighty in
sorrow
Coil -- Moon's milk (in four phases)
^^^^
Alan Murphy comes up with an embarrassment of glitches
whose lowlights include:
BIG BAND CONCEPT JAZZ PROTO-PROG
Miles Davis (& Gil Evans) - Porgy & Bess, Miles Ahead, Sketches Of Spain
FREE-JAZZ PROTO-PROG
Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz (A Collective Improvisation), The Shape of Jazz to Come
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme, Ascension, Interstellar Space
WIDESCREEN 80’S STADIUM PROG
U2
later Simple Minds
Disintegration-era Cure
Talk Talk*
* even if they never made it to stadium size, they sounded like they did
NEO-HAWKWIND DRONE PROG
Spacemen 3
Loop
^^^^^
In tones more sorrowful than scornful Matthew Maragno hints that it was possibly a bit of colossal fuck-up not to have addressed the existence of
TURNTABLIST PROG-HOP
Q-Bert
Radar
Rob Swift
Eddie Def
To which I can only feebly retort: you forgot DJ Faust, and suggest that while Matt’s contention that “pretty near all of them” are proggish is broadly true, most in fact lean more to Yngwie Malmstee/Satriani technoflash/showboating than yer actual full-on progrock concepts/fantasia pretentiousness
Matt also suggests adding Captain Beefheart to COMEDY PROG, adding Sun Ra and Mahavishnu Orchestra to JAZZ PROG, adding Widespread Panic to DIXIE PROG, and throwing Phish in their somewhere. Good points all.
^^^^^^
With an exquisite blend of asperity and condescension Michael Carty draws attention to the non-inclusion of Chapterhouse and the appropriate category: SHOEGAZE PROG-LITE (DECAFFEINATED & SUGAR-FREE), observing en passant the nice irony of the fact that “the name is even only one letter off Charterhouse, school of Genesis origins”.
^^^^
Aaron Goldberg practically jumps up and down on the spot with delight upon spotting the manifest failure to recognise the 80s-progness of midperiod Tears For Fears: “I mean a guy doing a guitar solo to Nature and the Gods on the cliffs of Scotland or wherever is so PROG I can't believe you missed it!!”. There was also of course their Pepper’s/Magical Mystery Tour-era Beatles homage Sowing the Seeds of Love. Aaron further proposes Ween as “masters of post-prog”.
^^^^
Adam Sobolak advances persuasively the thesis that art-rock began when Klaus Voorman met the Beatles. “The pre-Hamburg proto-Beatles fundamentally were still just kids and fanboys sowing their
wild oats, it wasn't like rock'n'roll was going to be their career or anything. Besides, if there was any "higher pretense", the pre-1960 high-art embrace of American popular musics like jazz and rock always had a certain "noble savage" disconnect. The most radical outcome of the Beatles' contact with Voorman's bohemian circle is that the disconnect vanished; "art" and "rock" effectively fused. “ One notes also Voorman’s bass playing on the great Yoko Ono records (PRIMITIVIST PROG?)
^^^^
Rob Geary reckons any fule kno that latter day Warp is pure PROGTRONICA--“Aphex Twin and Squarepusher's recent efforts both the hallmark of prog- the dreaded DOUBLE ALBUM. Squarepusher's even came with the boast/warning sticker for the second disc, "Alive in Japan." Hello Budokan.” (One might go further moot the entire genre of IDM as intrinsically prog). Rob also notes that Spring Heel Jack “once cheered the PROG ‘N’ BASS bass movement from the sidelines but seemed to have successfully escaped late prog hell for the different hell of the academy”
^^^^
Ben Wolfson takes no small delight in pointing out that Univers Zero belong in BELGIAN PROG not FROG PROG; that Cuneiform is a shameful absence from the PROG LABELS list; that the ITALO-PROG subsection is pathetically underpopulated (he cites Stormy Six, Area, Picchio dal Pozzo as particularly notable); that’s there a vast subgenre of Rock in Opposition-style Eurorock mostly in the mold of Henry Cow; that DIXIE PROG really ought to include the Dixie Dregs and PROG-FOLK could probably include Richard Thompson (he was in the "supergroup" French Frith Kaiser Thompson, after all). He controversially nominates Television as prog (claiming that Fripp wanting to join the group while he was living in New York; Eno also produced some early Television demos). He adds that “it's not just the case that Laswell was in NYC Gong; the band was essentially Daevid Allen + Material” and in a penultimate flourish of encyclopaedic knowledge notes that Andy Summers’s prog credentials extend beyond Spooky Tooth to include “not one but two albums with Fripp--guitar synth duets”. Finally, “why aren't the Ruins in PROG’N’BASS?”. Crushing.
^^^^
Ex-girlfriend Suzanne Spiers emerges from over 16 years radio silence to heap fresh insult upon ancient injury with the observation that I somehow forgot to put Sven Vath in PROG TECHNO despite having extensively slagged him off for progward tendencies in Energy Flash. For an extra twist of the knife she mentions Clock DVA and The Cure as startling omissions.
^^^^
Marc EC Morris feels that Wu-Tang Clan’s non-appearance in PROG HOP is bizarrely wrongheaded, given their “obsession with maths, conspiracy theories, etc plus escalating pomposity circa the second Graveidiggaz album and then the utterly prog Wu-Tang Forever”
^^^^
Freshman-year crush Rebecca Rosengarde (who I recall only having a worn, scratched copy of a Rolling Stones compilation and possibly something by the Clash but what the hey) emerges from the digital ether to propose the category:
EIGHTIES WET’N’WIMPY INDIE-MAVERICK ESOTERIC PROG-LITE
Cindytalk
Sad Lovers & Giants
The The
Eyeless in Gaza
And further suggests that Arto Lindsay’s post-DNA outfit Ambitious Lovers fit somewhere on account of their series of albums based around the seven deadly sins.
^^^^
Damon Nguyen reckons Kak and Bubble Puppy both fit the category of LATE PSYCH/PROTO-PROG, and is downright insulting about the failures to incorporate Skin Yard, Sado Nation, and “all Amebix-inspired punk metal” somewhere in the list. It's all Greek to me.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Okay, that was the hard part. Now for the errors and omissions that occurred to me independently concerning the first list of prog subgenres.
BRASS SECTION PROG
The Flock*
Electric Flag [misfiled]
* favorite of Phil Oakey pre his conversion to pop aesthetic
SUB-PROG
Budgie
Three Man Army
Dust
COMEDY PROG
Grimms
MORLEY PROG
Van Der Graaf Generator
JAZZ PROG
Anthony Braxton
Miles Davis post-Bitches Brew
PROG-SOUL
Isaac Hayes
Isley Brothers
DISCO PROG
Cerrone *
Donna Summer--“State of Independence” **
* every album has approx four 10 minute songs on it and some kind of overall concept
** cover of a Jon Anderson song
MUTANT DISCO PROG
Thomas Leer
Arthur Russell
Faze Action
SYNTH POP PROG
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Yukihiro Takahashi--Neuromantic
Eurythmics--In the Garden *
John Foxx--The Garden
Thomas Leer -- Contradictions
Thomas Dolby
Dramatis
* involved Holger Czukay, Conny Planck, and Robert Gorl, and if memory serves some flutes
POSTPUNK IS PROG INNIT PROG
Metaboliste
The Lemon Kittens/Karl Blake/Danielle Dax
The Passage
Biting Tongues
Family Fodder
NEW WAVE PROG
Joe Jackson -- Big World/Will to Power/Blaze of Glory
Men At Work
SKA PROG
The Beat -- Wh’Appen
Madness--The Rise and Fall*
* gatefold sleeve; almost a concept album; suffused in nostalgia; used David Bedford# to do a brass band arrangement on ‘Primrose Hill’; excessive use of keyboards
# the prog arranger, worked on Roy Harper’s Stormcock, did at least four extended instrumental albums on Virgin including Instructions for Angels “the first LP ever in BBC Matrix H Quad/Stereo”, recorded partly at Worcester Cathedral (with Mike Oldfield producing) and based on the poems of Kenneth Patchen
PROGCORE
Minutemen
Meat Puppets
Birdsongs of the Mezoic
Tools of Ignorance
Tragic Mulatto
Blind Idiot God
METAL IS PROG INNIT PROG
Blue Oyster Cult
Electric Sun
PROG-HOP
DJ Shadow *
* Greil Marcus noted the following in a recent Real Life Rock Top 10 column:
“DJ Shadow, Diminishing Returns Party Pak (bootleg) For the second of two discs drawn from BBC jockey John Peel's March 29 show: a 40-minute collage of apparent examples of 1965-73 California pop, Fairport Convention-style folk rock, and British post-Beatle-isms. It's all so stylistically third-hand and discographically obscure that you imagine only Shadow can still name the tunes--even if anyone can hear the desire and idealism that seem coded in their forms”
GRUNGE PROG
Smashing Pumpkins
POST ROCK IS PROG INNIT PROG*
Brise-Glace
Gastr de Sol
* see appendix 5 for essay on post rock as anti-New Wave as the prog-redux
PROG LABELS: OMISSIONS
Passport
Manticore
Janus
Ektroverde
Brain
Ohr
Spalax
Sky
Spiegelei
Opal
Marmalade
E.G.
Extreme
Cuneiform
CMP
Akarma
Futura
Antilles
CBS *
* supposedly cornered the market at one point
DEFINITELY NOT PROG NOT ONE LITTLE BIT OH NO: OMMISSIONS
Marshall Crenshaw, the Vaselines, John Hiatt, Graham Parker, Voice of the Beehive, B52s, Creedence Clearwater, Brian Selzer, John Cougar Mellencamp, Springsteen, J. Geils Band, Mott the Hoople, Nils Lofgren, Bob Seger....
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Here’s some all-new categories that I missed last time round:
LATE PSYCH/PROTO PROG POP
Bee Gees circa Odessa
The Zombies circa Oracle and Odyssey
The Appletree Theatre
Kaleidoscope (UK)
Ill Wind
The Millenium
The Mandrake Memorial
Jude Henske & Jerry Tester
Euphoria
Gandalf
The Insect Trust
Open Mind
The Outsiders
Whistler, Chaucer, Detroit and Greenhill
JK & Co. Vernon Haddocks.
LATE PSYCH/SOUND LIBRARY/PROTO-TRIPHOP PROG
The Electric Prunes (later albums)*
David Axelrod
* Release of an Oath and Mass in F Minor --essentially David Axelrod records
“BREL CANTO”/ORCHESTRATED EXISTENSIALIST PROG
Scott Walker 1, 2, 3, 4
PROGRESSIVE BLUES/HEAVY-ROCK PROG
Cream
Mountain*
Vanilla Fudge
Beck Bogert & Appice
Baker-Gurvitz Army
Groundhogs
Al Kooper
Leon Russell
Blodwyn Pig
Atomic Rooster
Steamhammer
Masters of Reality **
Anything with Jack Bruce in it
Anything with Ginger Baker in it
Most anything with Jeff Beck in it
* key sonic architect Felix Pappalardi (former Cream producer) pioneered studio technique of close-miking different parts of the drum kit; second most famous song the keyboard laced “Nantucket Sleighride” about the 19th Century whaling industry and known to older UK readers as theme song of World In Action.
** second album features Ginger Baker on drums, he also sings a quite amusing song about how Yanks can’t brew a decent cuppa tea -- sfunny cos it’s true!
LATIN-FUSION PROG
Santana
PROG-LEANING SINGER-SONGWRITER
Shawn Philips
RUSTIC SUB-PROG
Greenslade
Strawbs
Meriweather *
* band fronted by Steve Sutherland of MM/NME/IPC fame
SPOOF PROG
Heavy Jelly
FUSION PROG
Mahavinshnu Orchestra
Colosseum
Return to Forever
Stanley Clarke
Brand X
Tony Williams Lifetime
Last Exit
George Duke
FUSION PROG LITE
John Klemmer
COSMIC BUFFOON PROG
Eric Burdon & War
Todd Rundgren
Verve/Richard Ashcroft
COMEDY PROG-LITE/POMP
The Tubes
LADY PROG
Sally Oldfield
Kate Bush
Annie Haslam
Vicki Richards
Constance Demby
Laurie Anderson
Danielle Dax
Bjork
Lisa Gerrard
PROG-FUNK
Rufus
PROG-FOLK
The Roches *
* produced by Robert Fripp
PROTO-PUNK PROG
Simply Saucer
Sproton Layer*
* First and Floyd-like band of Roger Miller of Mission of Burma--who're quite prog really come to think of it.
PROTO-NEW WAVE PROG
Split Enz *
* pre-skinny tie new wave phase they were outright prog, apparently
“JUST LIKE PUNK NEVER HAPPENED” PROG/NEW WAVE? WHAT NEW WAVE? PROG
U.K.
PROGGERS PASSING AS NEW WAVE PROG
Peter Gabriel circa III/Shock the Monkey *
Anthony More
Bill Nelson
Fripp-Exposure/God Save the Queen-Heavy Manners
King Crimson circa Elephant Talk
Golden Palominos **
* banned use of cymbals at the III sessions for that Joy Division/Comsats-like tom-tom panning drum sound
** as well as lydon, stipe, anton fier etc, actually featured people like jack bruce, fred frith, nicky skopeletis, richard thompson
MANZANERA PROG
Quiet Sun *
Go **
801
* This Heat’s Charles Hayward was in this group I think
** supergroup featuring Stomu Yamashta, Al Di Meola, Klaus Schultze and Phil M amongst others
FUCKING OBSCURE THESE, IS HE MAKING THE DAFT NAMES UP NO HONESTLY PROG
Chilliwack
Kraan
Klaatu
CUTLER PROG
Chris Cutler *
Ivor Cutler **
* Henry Cow, Art Bears, Residents Eskimo, the Wooden Birds, Cassiber etc etc.
** Ivor Cutler appeared in the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour film 1967 (his character was called Buster Bloodvessel!); his song
"I'm Going In A Field" featuring the line "I lie beside the grass" much loved by McCartney and possible influence on “Mother Nature’s Son”; John Peel favorite circa a time when Peelie played weird tapes by the likes of Ron Geesin; Cutler sings on Wyatt’s Rock Bottom; he put out records three albums on Virgin in the pre-punk mid-Seventies and one on Harvest; appeared on 1975 Virgin sampler alongside Wyatt, Mike Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, Kevin Coyne, Beefheart, Henry Cow, Tom Newman, Clear Light, Hatfield & the North, White Noise and Steve fucking Hillage; also did an album for Rough Trade in the Eighties produced by David Toop & Steve Beresford. He’s prog prog prog prog PROG but actually hates rock music--indeed all amplified music--and is a member of the Noise Abatement Society!
OLDFIELD PROG
Mike Oldfield
Sally Oldfield
Paul Oldfield
SHELLEY PROG
Pete Shelley--Sky Yen*
Tiller Boys **
* electronic composition recorded in 1974, released circa 79/80
** Shelley + Eric Random + ???; Neu/Cluster-like
POMP (WITH LATENT PROG TENDENCIES)
Queen
Meatloaf/Steinman
POMP POP (W. L. P. T.)
City Boy
NEW WAVE POMP (W. L. P. T.)
Boomtown Rats
SINOPHILE PROG
Andy MacKay--Resolving Contradictions
Vangelis--China
Japan--Tin Drum
SAN FRANCISCO POST-PUNK IS PROG INNIT PROG
MX-80
Factrix
Chrome
Tuxedomoon
PROTO-POSTCARD PROG
Onyx*
* Glasgow schoolboy progressive rock group in which Edwyn Collins once played ukulele
POST-PROG PROTO-RAVE
Cosmik *
* Tyrol-based scene of late Seventies/early Eighties (Tyrol being Northernmost Italian, formerly part of Austria, interesting mix of Germanic and North Italian culture, and the birthplace of Giorgio Moroder) based around psychedelic dance music, lakeside proto-raves, hallucinogens. The soundtrack, so I'm told, somewhere between Krautrock and Moroder/Cerrone. I like to imagine it as sounding a bit like Manuel Gottsching/E4-E8.
DULCIMER PROG
Laraji
Constance Demby
Dead Can Dance
FLUTE PROG
Jethro Tull
Northwinds
Jean Cohen-Solal*
Saga de Ragnar Lodbrock
Men At Work
Mercury Rev
* check his Flute Libres/Cpatain Tarthoporn reissue on Mio Records, distributed in the US by Forced Exposure -- really ace, no serious, made a flute-believer outa me and that’s really saying something
NEW AGE PROG
Romantic Warrior*
Steve Roach
Ash Ra
Deuter
David Parson
Kitaro
* Pete Namlook’s early band
ECM PROG
John Abercrombie
Terje Rypdal
Steven Micus
John Surman
David Torn
Morning Glory *
*not actually on ECM but most of these folks in it
PROGZAK
Roxy Music--Avalon
SOLO AXE HERO PROG
Jan Akkerman
Phil Manzanera
Bill Nelson
Robin Trower
Adrian Belew
FORCED EXPOSURE PROG
Cochise
Magic Bus
The Scene is Now/Fish N’ Roses
Glass Eye
NEO-SUBPROG
Saint Vitus
NEO-PSYCH PROG
The Legendary Pink Dots
Porcupine Tree
4TH WORLD/NEO-GEO PROG
Osamu Kitajima
Winwood/Kabaka/Amao
Tibetan Bells
Don Cherry
Ryuichi Sakomoto
Paul Schutze
Jon Hassell
John Surman
Dead Can Dance
Holger Czukay
Byrne/Eno
Loop Guru
David Toop
Burnt Friedman
Jah Wobble--oeuvre entiere
Bill Laswell--oevure entiere
Aksak Maboul*
* the irrepressible Sébastien Morlighem says: first LP is really one of the crossovers between 'Prog' & 'Pre-World Music'. Second LP features Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Catherine Jauniaux
INDUSTRIAL PROG
Foetus
Laibach
Psychic TV
Coil
Skinny Puppy/The Tear Garden
Nine Inch Nails
NEW WAVE CAREER “SECOND ACT” PROG-RELAPSE
The Armoury Show
Luxuria
AGIT-PROG (AUSTRALIAN NEW WAVE SUBDIVISION)
Midnight Oil pre-Diesel and Dust
PARODY PROG
Spinal Tap -- “Jazz Odyssey”
PERFORMANCE ART/MODERN DANCE PROG
Blue Man Group *
La La Human Steps
* the music that accompanies the malarkey is kinda sub-Krautrock
OCEANIC PROG/BLISSED OUT PROG
Talk Talk *
Hugo Largo
Saqqara Dogs
Orang
Bark Psychosis **
Drowning Pool/Mumbles
* “this sounds like the music on fucking Pogles Wood”--Dominic Stud Brother. Possibly features bassoons (see Appendix 2 on Classic Prog Instruments)
** once listed The Enid in a ‘what we are listening to this week’ thing in Melody Maker, Graham Sutton now claims this was a joke but ain’t fooling nobody
BLONDE PROG
Darling Buds--Crawdaddy
Wendy James*
* for the concept album with songs that Costello wrote in one weekend
BLACK ROCK PROG
Living Colour
Burnt Sugar
90s NEO-PROG
Dream Theater
Voice Of Eye
Alboth
Rake
Iceburn
Cerberus Shoal
In the Labyrinth
Glass
Buckethead
Tractor Hips
Miriodor
Boud Deun
Ensemble Nimbus
Echolyn
Volapuk
LO-FI PROG
Truman’s Water
Timber
Thinkin’ Fellers Union Local 282
PROGRESSIVE HARDCORE
Rising High
CANTERBURY PROG-TECHNO
Ultramarine *
* Samples of Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers on Every Man and Woman Is A Star; later collaborations with Wyatt; avowed fondness for Mike Oldfield’s Hergest Ridge
CANTERBURY PROG-RAP
The Brotherhood *
* prod by Trevor Jackson who sampled all those Canterbury groups like Egg
NINETIES AFRO-PROG NYC CHAPTER
We
DJ Spooky
Sub Dub
Wordsound
Spectre
NEW MILLENIUM NEO-NEO PROG AND CRYPTO-PROG
Avey Tare & Panda Bear/Animal Collective
Guapo
Rapider Than Horsepower
Sigur Ros
Mars Volta *
Ephel Duath *
Stars Like Fleas **
* these two courtesy of Mostly Weird, Some Normal
** check their excellent Sun Lights Down on the Fence for electro-acoustic quirktronica, instrumental palette includes bass clarinet, copper bells, zurka, pedal steel, flute, clarinet, accoridan, toy xylophone, harp, prepared guitar, bassoon, cello, banjo, rhodes piano, and egg shaker
NINETIES/NOUGHTIES AGIT-PROG
Godspeed You Black Emperor
MISCELLANEOUS
I had problems filing these adequately:
Add N To X
Gerry Rafferty
Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co.
Bonfire
Bobby Beausoleil
Flash and the Pan
Sadistic Mika Band
Klaatu
Shylock
Giles, Giles & Fripp
Kingdom Come
Automatic Man
Mu/Merrill Fankhauser
Mark-Almond
Faith No More/Mr Bungle
Laughing Clowns
No Means No
Manfred Mann
Steve Tibbetts
Tom Newman
Pinski Zoo
Nucleus
Happy the Man
Between
Motor Totemist Guild
Pavlov’s Dog
Yeti
APPENDICES
APPENDIX 1: PROG MOVERS SHAKERS & PLAYERS
Pete Jenner
Giorgio Gomelsky
Jonathan King
Uwe Nettelbeck
Simon Draper
Andrew Lauder
Nick Mobbs
Jean Carakaos
Miles Copeland*
David Cunningham
* apart from the Police connection, he earlier managed Curved Air or something
APPENDIX 2: CLASSIC PROG INSTRUMENTS
Mellotron*
The Gizmo**
Chapman Stick
Fairlight
Symphony Orchestra
Flute
Koto
Electric Violin
Gongs
Moog
Flugelhorn
Brass Band
Choir
Bassoon
Wordless female vocals
Arp
Worcester Cathedral organ***
Welsh male choir ****
* comprehensive-seeming list of every band that ever used a mellotron
** contraption invented by ex-10 CCers Godley & Creme and used on their triple album rock opera Consequences
***8 David Bedford, Invitation to Angels
**** Man’s “C’mon” features the Gwalia Choir
APPENDIX 3: ECM AND AMERICAN 90S LEFTFIELD ROCK
Kranky’s Bruce Adams: “During the mid 80s ECM switched major label distribution and a flood of albums showed up in stores as cutouts. I remember buying tons of albums at $1.99 or $2.99 a piece [SR: same thing happened in the UK] as do several of the kranky musicians I've spoken with over the years. I think it's the influence of those albums has filtrated down. The same thing happened with EG releases. I remember the entire Eno and 4th World catalogs being available at dirt cheap prices on vinyl. It always interested me how economic/distribution events, seemingly random, can have an aesthetic result. Consider the influence that the flood of bootleg krautrock CDs had in the mid-90s. For a long time Neu, Harmonia, Popul Vuh titles were all available as German and French bootlegs only…. [In re. ECM] In addition to the blurry guitar sounds from John Abercrombie, Bill Frisell [the first albums he did solo were on ECM as well as appearances in the Paul Motian and Paul Bley groups]. Terje Rypdal and Steve Tibbetts you can factor in releases on the New Series/ Classical wing of ECM by Arvo Part, Paul Giger and others as influences. And of course, the use of ethnic and unusual instrumentation and techniques by artists on the label from the Art Ensemble forward…. “
APPENDIX 4: POSTROCK
essay on post rock as anti-New Wave as the prog-redux
APPENDIX 5: AFRO-PROG
Afro-Prog Resource: Kosmigroov
APPENDIX 6: MISCELLANEOUS PROG RESOURCES
Gibraltar Encyclopaedia of Progressive Rock
Gnosis
ProgressoR
Axiom of Choice
Ground and Sky
Aural Innovations
Best progressive rock albums of all time
progressive ears
http://www.progressiveears.com/
Gong
Man
Heldon:
Heldon article at Angbase
Richard Pinhas article
Heldon official site
APPENDIX 7: UNITED NATIONS OF PROG
A fuller but very far complete breakdown of prog by nationality:
KRAUT-PROG
Passport
Spermull
Puhdys
2066 And Then
Zarathustra
Epidermus
Spacebox
Grobschnitt
Tyndall
CZECH PROG
Modry Efekt
Plastic People of the Universe
Umela Hmota
POLISH PROG
Test
ROMANIAN PROG
Phoenix
SWEDISH PROG
Samla Mammas Manna
Lucifer Was
Trad Gras Och Stenar
Trettioariga Kriget
International Harvester
Algarnas Tradgard
Kebnekajse
Arbete Och Fritid
FINN PROG
Pekka Pohjola
Circle
Wigwam
Haikara
Hoyry Kone
Kroko
NEIL AND TIM FINN PROG
Split Enz
ITALO-PROG
Cherry Five/Goblin
Premiata Formeria Marconi
Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso
Theatre
Le Orme
Stormy Six
Area
Picchio dal Pozzo
I Teoremi
Il Balletto Di Bronzo
Libra
New Trolls
Il Rovescio Della Medaglia
Museo Rosenbach
Osanna
Osage Tribe
Arti & Mestieri
Confusional Quartet
HUNGARIAN PROG
Fermata
FROG PROG
Lightwave
Jean Cohen-Solal
Etron Fou Leloublan
ZNR
Bernard Szajner
Ragnar Grippe
Perception
Pataphonie
Potemkine
Shub Niggurath
Saga de Ragnar Lodbrock
BELGIAN PROG
Univers Zero
Arkham
Art Zoyd
DUTCH PROG
Focus
Savage Rose
Solution
Kracq
Persephony
Willem Breuker Kollektief
GREEK PROG
Socrates Drank The Conium
SOVIET PROG
Eduward Artemiev
Zvuki Mu
WELSH BOOGIE-PROG
Man
KIWI PROG
Split Enz
Well, I feel I should apologise for Progmetheus Unbound. At the end of the day, it was simply far too cursory.
Via an intermediary (he doesn’t have email or even a computer, in fact the Billboard Progressive Music Guide was written on a typewriter) Bradley Smith has made his feelings known: “not thorough,” “sloppy”, “uninformed”. Noam tried his best but couldn’t quite hide his disappointment. Other correspondents (see below) haven’t been nearly so concerned about sparing my feelings.
My only excuse really is that the whole undertaking, while based in genuine curiosity about ‘progressive’, is practically speaking an exercise in seeing how extensively you can map a sonic terrain with only the most minimal first-hand (first-ear?) acquaintance with it.
Any, for what it’s worth, here is Progmetheus 2, an attempt to make amends by rounding up the most blatant ommissions and egregious category errors. To start off, some comments from my blog peers and e-correspondents.
^^^^
In as kindly a tone as he can manage Luc Sante notes numerous sins of omission:
NYC JUILLARD-HIPPIE PROTO PROG
Ars Nova
New York Rock & Roll Ensemble
BEAT GROUP LEAN PROGWARD
The Move
PROG 50S-NOSTALGIA
Roy Wood as Eddie & the Falcons
GARAGE-PROG
Electric Prunes--Mass in F Minor
ZAPPA-SONDHEIM HYBRID PROTO-PROG
Chrysalis
NONE DARE CALL IT PROG
Love (well, Four Sail and Out There, anyway)
DUTCH-SCANDINAVIAN DIVISION
Focus
NO WAVE PROG
Dark Day
Circus Mort (future Swans)
that Don Giovanni-based concept album perpetrated by members of Mars [John Gavanti? Don King?]
SF NEW WAVE PROG
Tuxedomoon
Sleepers
NYC MINIMALIST PROG
Glenn Branca (20 guitars!)
Rhys Chatham (100 guitars!)
^^^^
Audibly (legibly?) rubbing his hands together with glee, Sébastien Morlighem draws attention to a series of blunders:
POSTPUNK IS PROG INNIT PROG
The Work
Family Fodder (in fact all the Cold Storage connection)
Door & the Window
Flying Lizards*
Bits in The Fall discography (Live at the Witch Trial, The Unuterrable's Ketamin Sun -mock-prog ?)
*(The Flood/Trouble/Events during Flood on the side B of first LP ; most of the second LP, plenty of Fripp in it !)
FROG PROG
Early Pascal Comelade*
* minimal electroprog, big influence of Fripp/Eno, Pinhas, of course (check 'Allez Theia' by Heldon!!!)
COMEDY PROG/POETRY PROG FUSION
Lady June*
* ‘Linguistic Leprosy’ has bits of early TG in it?
^^^^
Outwardly genial but spiced with undertones of schadenfreude, Stanley Whyte points out the bleeding obviousness of such absent categories as:
WHEELS OF STEEL PROG
DJ Shadow*
Kid Koala
* Bonus prog points for releasing discs that are enhanced by listening to them through headphones.
NUGGETS PROG
Amboy Dukes - Journey to the Center of Your Mind*
*This should ALMOST be disqualified for including anything by Ted Nugent, as definitely-not-prog as I can think of.
1ST-TIER BRITISH INVASION PROG
The Kinks (1968-75)*
* this encompasses Village Green Preservation Society, Muswell Hillbillies, Lola Vs The Powerman, Acts 1, 2 and 3, Soap Opera - Concept
Albums ALL!
CZECH PROG
Plastic People of the Universe/Pulnoc
JAZZ-PROG
Keith Jarrett
^^^^
Matthew Ingram, barely able to stifle his glee,
points out the absence of French synth prog outfit Space Art from the PROG DISCO category, seeing as they were the same crew responsible for Space’s "Magic Fly," while also noting that Tom Moulton's Kebekelektrik album (a Kraftwerk Homage apparently) features a disco cover of Ravel's "Bolero," and in a final encyclopaedic flourish points out the presence of future Police guitarist Andy Summers as drummer on Deep Purple organist Jon Lord’s 1975 album Sarabande (“which was moving into Axelrod-y territory via covers of Ravel”)
^^^^
Rather testily, Scott Woods chips in with
PROG SOUL
Marvin Gaye
RURAL PROG
The Band's "Chest Fever"
AYERS PROG
Kevin Ayers
Roy Ayers
And further suggests that limiting this thing to music is, frankly, parochial-minded given the existence of:
PROG CINEMA
Ken Russell
Oliver Stone
Stanley Kubrick
^^^^
Verging on belligerent, Eli Bingham berates: “Where's Manuel Goettsching and E2-E4 then?! I mean, shit, he WAS in Ash Ra Temple”. He’s right: a shocking omission in the PROTO-TECHNO PROG CATEGORY
^^^^
Co-founderBruce Adams appreciates the inclusion of Kranky in the list of prog labels but objects to the Eurocentric bias resulting in the absence of:
JAPANESE PROG and JAPANESE SUB-PROG {blue cheer damage}: Acid Mothers Temple, Ruins, Boredoms, Keiji Haino/ Fushitsusha and the PSF label.
Bruce is also keen to advance his pet theory about the influence of ECM Records on American left field rock of the 1990s (see Appendix 3)
^^^^
Too nice to actually call me an ignoramus to my face, Wallace Winfrey is dismayed by the non-appearance of Voivod in the METAL IS PROG INNIT PROG category. He also suggests that Grateful Dead merit some kind of category (JAM PROG?) for their Weather Report suite, Blues For Allah, Terrapin Station (“all with the signature prog trappings of one long song composed of several parts”) and notes that bassist Phil Lesh and Ned Lagin's electronic 70s outing, Seastones “specifically mentions use of Buchla instruments--a hallmark of any good
prog outing”.
^^^^
Jonathon Dale
tartly indicates the embarrassing absence from HUNGARIAN PROG of prog-metal band The Galloping Coroners (a/k/a Vagtazo Halottkemek) and the non-appearance in FINNISH PROG of Circle (who “hide it behind these stoned circular riffs a la Loop or whatever, but the organ playing (Jon Lord, good Lord!) and the squealy dramatic (almost cod-operatic) vocals are a dead giveaway”.
^^^^
Francesco Brunetti reckons I need my head examining if I can’t see the righteousness of the following lineage:
MAGICKAL MYSTERY PROG/ALEISTER
CROWLEY IS PROG)
Graham Bond -- Holy Magick
Psychic TV -- Force the hand of chance
Nekrophile Rekords -- The beast 666 and the archangels
of sex rule the destruction of the regime
Current 93 -- Christ and the pale queen mighty in
sorrow
Coil -- Moon's milk (in four phases)
^^^^
Alan Murphy comes up with an embarrassment of glitches
whose lowlights include:
BIG BAND CONCEPT JAZZ PROTO-PROG
Miles Davis (& Gil Evans) - Porgy & Bess, Miles Ahead, Sketches Of Spain
FREE-JAZZ PROTO-PROG
Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz (A Collective Improvisation), The Shape of Jazz to Come
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme, Ascension, Interstellar Space
WIDESCREEN 80’S STADIUM PROG
U2
later Simple Minds
Disintegration-era Cure
Talk Talk*
* even if they never made it to stadium size, they sounded like they did
NEO-HAWKWIND DRONE PROG
Spacemen 3
Loop
^^^^^
In tones more sorrowful than scornful Matthew Maragno hints that it was possibly a bit of colossal fuck-up not to have addressed the existence of
TURNTABLIST PROG-HOP
Q-Bert
Radar
Rob Swift
Eddie Def
To which I can only feebly retort: you forgot DJ Faust, and suggest that while Matt’s contention that “pretty near all of them” are proggish is broadly true, most in fact lean more to Yngwie Malmstee/Satriani technoflash/showboating than yer actual full-on progrock concepts/fantasia pretentiousness
Matt also suggests adding Captain Beefheart to COMEDY PROG, adding Sun Ra and Mahavishnu Orchestra to JAZZ PROG, adding Widespread Panic to DIXIE PROG, and throwing Phish in their somewhere. Good points all.
^^^^^^
With an exquisite blend of asperity and condescension Michael Carty draws attention to the non-inclusion of Chapterhouse and the appropriate category: SHOEGAZE PROG-LITE (DECAFFEINATED & SUGAR-FREE), observing en passant the nice irony of the fact that “the name is even only one letter off Charterhouse, school of Genesis origins”.
^^^^
Aaron Goldberg practically jumps up and down on the spot with delight upon spotting the manifest failure to recognise the 80s-progness of midperiod Tears For Fears: “I mean a guy doing a guitar solo to Nature and the Gods on the cliffs of Scotland or wherever is so PROG I can't believe you missed it!!”. There was also of course their Pepper’s/Magical Mystery Tour-era Beatles homage Sowing the Seeds of Love. Aaron further proposes Ween as “masters of post-prog”.
^^^^
Adam Sobolak advances persuasively the thesis that art-rock began when Klaus Voorman met the Beatles. “The pre-Hamburg proto-Beatles fundamentally were still just kids and fanboys sowing their
wild oats, it wasn't like rock'n'roll was going to be their career or anything. Besides, if there was any "higher pretense", the pre-1960 high-art embrace of American popular musics like jazz and rock always had a certain "noble savage" disconnect. The most radical outcome of the Beatles' contact with Voorman's bohemian circle is that the disconnect vanished; "art" and "rock" effectively fused. “ One notes also Voorman’s bass playing on the great Yoko Ono records (PRIMITIVIST PROG?)
^^^^
Rob Geary reckons any fule kno that latter day Warp is pure PROGTRONICA--“Aphex Twin and Squarepusher's recent efforts both the hallmark of prog- the dreaded DOUBLE ALBUM. Squarepusher's even came with the boast/warning sticker for the second disc, "Alive in Japan." Hello Budokan.” (One might go further moot the entire genre of IDM as intrinsically prog). Rob also notes that Spring Heel Jack “once cheered the PROG ‘N’ BASS bass movement from the sidelines but seemed to have successfully escaped late prog hell for the different hell of the academy”
^^^^
Ben Wolfson takes no small delight in pointing out that Univers Zero belong in BELGIAN PROG not FROG PROG; that Cuneiform is a shameful absence from the PROG LABELS list; that the ITALO-PROG subsection is pathetically underpopulated (he cites Stormy Six, Area, Picchio dal Pozzo as particularly notable); that’s there a vast subgenre of Rock in Opposition-style Eurorock mostly in the mold of Henry Cow; that DIXIE PROG really ought to include the Dixie Dregs and PROG-FOLK could probably include Richard Thompson (he was in the "supergroup" French Frith Kaiser Thompson, after all). He controversially nominates Television as prog (claiming that Fripp wanting to join the group while he was living in New York; Eno also produced some early Television demos). He adds that “it's not just the case that Laswell was in NYC Gong; the band was essentially Daevid Allen + Material” and in a penultimate flourish of encyclopaedic knowledge notes that Andy Summers’s prog credentials extend beyond Spooky Tooth to include “not one but two albums with Fripp--guitar synth duets”. Finally, “why aren't the Ruins in PROG’N’BASS?”. Crushing.
^^^^
Ex-girlfriend Suzanne Spiers emerges from over 16 years radio silence to heap fresh insult upon ancient injury with the observation that I somehow forgot to put Sven Vath in PROG TECHNO despite having extensively slagged him off for progward tendencies in Energy Flash. For an extra twist of the knife she mentions Clock DVA and The Cure as startling omissions.
^^^^
Marc EC Morris feels that Wu-Tang Clan’s non-appearance in PROG HOP is bizarrely wrongheaded, given their “obsession with maths, conspiracy theories, etc plus escalating pomposity circa the second Graveidiggaz album and then the utterly prog Wu-Tang Forever”
^^^^
Freshman-year crush Rebecca Rosengarde (who I recall only having a worn, scratched copy of a Rolling Stones compilation and possibly something by the Clash but what the hey) emerges from the digital ether to propose the category:
EIGHTIES WET’N’WIMPY INDIE-MAVERICK ESOTERIC PROG-LITE
Cindytalk
Sad Lovers & Giants
The The
Eyeless in Gaza
And further suggests that Arto Lindsay’s post-DNA outfit Ambitious Lovers fit somewhere on account of their series of albums based around the seven deadly sins.
^^^^
Damon Nguyen reckons Kak and Bubble Puppy both fit the category of LATE PSYCH/PROTO-PROG, and is downright insulting about the failures to incorporate Skin Yard, Sado Nation, and “all Amebix-inspired punk metal” somewhere in the list. It's all Greek to me.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Okay, that was the hard part. Now for the errors and omissions that occurred to me independently concerning the first list of prog subgenres.
BRASS SECTION PROG
The Flock*
Electric Flag [misfiled]
* favorite of Phil Oakey pre his conversion to pop aesthetic
SUB-PROG
Budgie
Three Man Army
Dust
COMEDY PROG
Grimms
MORLEY PROG
Van Der Graaf Generator
JAZZ PROG
Anthony Braxton
Miles Davis post-Bitches Brew
PROG-SOUL
Isaac Hayes
Isley Brothers
DISCO PROG
Cerrone *
Donna Summer--“State of Independence” **
* every album has approx four 10 minute songs on it and some kind of overall concept
** cover of a Jon Anderson song
MUTANT DISCO PROG
Thomas Leer
Arthur Russell
Faze Action
SYNTH POP PROG
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Yukihiro Takahashi--Neuromantic
Eurythmics--In the Garden *
John Foxx--The Garden
Thomas Leer -- Contradictions
Thomas Dolby
Dramatis
* involved Holger Czukay, Conny Planck, and Robert Gorl, and if memory serves some flutes
POSTPUNK IS PROG INNIT PROG
Metaboliste
The Lemon Kittens/Karl Blake/Danielle Dax
The Passage
Biting Tongues
Family Fodder
NEW WAVE PROG
Joe Jackson -- Big World/Will to Power/Blaze of Glory
Men At Work
SKA PROG
The Beat -- Wh’Appen
Madness--The Rise and Fall*
* gatefold sleeve; almost a concept album; suffused in nostalgia; used David Bedford# to do a brass band arrangement on ‘Primrose Hill’; excessive use of keyboards
# the prog arranger, worked on Roy Harper’s Stormcock, did at least four extended instrumental albums on Virgin including Instructions for Angels “the first LP ever in BBC Matrix H Quad/Stereo”, recorded partly at Worcester Cathedral (with Mike Oldfield producing) and based on the poems of Kenneth Patchen
PROGCORE
Minutemen
Meat Puppets
Birdsongs of the Mezoic
Tools of Ignorance
Tragic Mulatto
Blind Idiot God
METAL IS PROG INNIT PROG
Blue Oyster Cult
Electric Sun
PROG-HOP
DJ Shadow *
* Greil Marcus noted the following in a recent Real Life Rock Top 10 column:
“DJ Shadow, Diminishing Returns Party Pak (bootleg) For the second of two discs drawn from BBC jockey John Peel's March 29 show: a 40-minute collage of apparent examples of 1965-73 California pop, Fairport Convention-style folk rock, and British post-Beatle-isms. It's all so stylistically third-hand and discographically obscure that you imagine only Shadow can still name the tunes--even if anyone can hear the desire and idealism that seem coded in their forms”
GRUNGE PROG
Smashing Pumpkins
POST ROCK IS PROG INNIT PROG*
Brise-Glace
Gastr de Sol
* see appendix 5 for essay on post rock as anti-New Wave as the prog-redux
PROG LABELS: OMISSIONS
Passport
Manticore
Janus
Ektroverde
Brain
Ohr
Spalax
Sky
Spiegelei
Opal
Marmalade
E.G.
Extreme
Cuneiform
CMP
Akarma
Futura
Antilles
CBS *
* supposedly cornered the market at one point
DEFINITELY NOT PROG NOT ONE LITTLE BIT OH NO: OMMISSIONS
Marshall Crenshaw, the Vaselines, John Hiatt, Graham Parker, Voice of the Beehive, B52s, Creedence Clearwater, Brian Selzer, John Cougar Mellencamp, Springsteen, J. Geils Band, Mott the Hoople, Nils Lofgren, Bob Seger....
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Here’s some all-new categories that I missed last time round:
LATE PSYCH/PROTO PROG POP
Bee Gees circa Odessa
The Zombies circa Oracle and Odyssey
The Appletree Theatre
Kaleidoscope (UK)
Ill Wind
The Millenium
The Mandrake Memorial
Jude Henske & Jerry Tester
Euphoria
Gandalf
The Insect Trust
Open Mind
The Outsiders
Whistler, Chaucer, Detroit and Greenhill
JK & Co. Vernon Haddocks.
LATE PSYCH/SOUND LIBRARY/PROTO-TRIPHOP PROG
The Electric Prunes (later albums)*
David Axelrod
* Release of an Oath and Mass in F Minor --essentially David Axelrod records
“BREL CANTO”/ORCHESTRATED EXISTENSIALIST PROG
Scott Walker 1, 2, 3, 4
PROGRESSIVE BLUES/HEAVY-ROCK PROG
Cream
Mountain*
Vanilla Fudge
Beck Bogert & Appice
Baker-Gurvitz Army
Groundhogs
Al Kooper
Leon Russell
Blodwyn Pig
Atomic Rooster
Steamhammer
Masters of Reality **
Anything with Jack Bruce in it
Anything with Ginger Baker in it
Most anything with Jeff Beck in it
* key sonic architect Felix Pappalardi (former Cream producer) pioneered studio technique of close-miking different parts of the drum kit; second most famous song the keyboard laced “Nantucket Sleighride” about the 19th Century whaling industry and known to older UK readers as theme song of World In Action.
** second album features Ginger Baker on drums, he also sings a quite amusing song about how Yanks can’t brew a decent cuppa tea -- sfunny cos it’s true!
LATIN-FUSION PROG
Santana
PROG-LEANING SINGER-SONGWRITER
Shawn Philips
RUSTIC SUB-PROG
Greenslade
Strawbs
Meriweather *
* band fronted by Steve Sutherland of MM/NME/IPC fame
SPOOF PROG
Heavy Jelly
FUSION PROG
Mahavinshnu Orchestra
Colosseum
Return to Forever
Stanley Clarke
Brand X
Tony Williams Lifetime
Last Exit
George Duke
FUSION PROG LITE
John Klemmer
COSMIC BUFFOON PROG
Eric Burdon & War
Todd Rundgren
Verve/Richard Ashcroft
COMEDY PROG-LITE/POMP
The Tubes
LADY PROG
Sally Oldfield
Kate Bush
Annie Haslam
Vicki Richards
Constance Demby
Laurie Anderson
Danielle Dax
Bjork
Lisa Gerrard
PROG-FUNK
Rufus
PROG-FOLK
The Roches *
* produced by Robert Fripp
PROTO-PUNK PROG
Simply Saucer
Sproton Layer*
* First and Floyd-like band of Roger Miller of Mission of Burma--who're quite prog really come to think of it.
PROTO-NEW WAVE PROG
Split Enz *
* pre-skinny tie new wave phase they were outright prog, apparently
“JUST LIKE PUNK NEVER HAPPENED” PROG/NEW WAVE? WHAT NEW WAVE? PROG
U.K.
PROGGERS PASSING AS NEW WAVE PROG
Peter Gabriel circa III/Shock the Monkey *
Anthony More
Bill Nelson
Fripp-Exposure/God Save the Queen-Heavy Manners
King Crimson circa Elephant Talk
Golden Palominos **
* banned use of cymbals at the III sessions for that Joy Division/Comsats-like tom-tom panning drum sound
** as well as lydon, stipe, anton fier etc, actually featured people like jack bruce, fred frith, nicky skopeletis, richard thompson
MANZANERA PROG
Quiet Sun *
Go **
801
* This Heat’s Charles Hayward was in this group I think
** supergroup featuring Stomu Yamashta, Al Di Meola, Klaus Schultze and Phil M amongst others
FUCKING OBSCURE THESE, IS HE MAKING THE DAFT NAMES UP NO HONESTLY PROG
Chilliwack
Kraan
Klaatu
CUTLER PROG
Chris Cutler *
Ivor Cutler **
* Henry Cow, Art Bears, Residents Eskimo, the Wooden Birds, Cassiber etc etc.
** Ivor Cutler appeared in the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour film 1967 (his character was called Buster Bloodvessel!); his song
"I'm Going In A Field" featuring the line "I lie beside the grass" much loved by McCartney and possible influence on “Mother Nature’s Son”; John Peel favorite circa a time when Peelie played weird tapes by the likes of Ron Geesin; Cutler sings on Wyatt’s Rock Bottom; he put out records three albums on Virgin in the pre-punk mid-Seventies and one on Harvest; appeared on 1975 Virgin sampler alongside Wyatt, Mike Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, Kevin Coyne, Beefheart, Henry Cow, Tom Newman, Clear Light, Hatfield & the North, White Noise and Steve fucking Hillage; also did an album for Rough Trade in the Eighties produced by David Toop & Steve Beresford. He’s prog prog prog prog PROG but actually hates rock music--indeed all amplified music--and is a member of the Noise Abatement Society!
OLDFIELD PROG
Mike Oldfield
Sally Oldfield
Paul Oldfield
SHELLEY PROG
Pete Shelley--Sky Yen*
Tiller Boys **
* electronic composition recorded in 1974, released circa 79/80
** Shelley + Eric Random + ???; Neu/Cluster-like
POMP (WITH LATENT PROG TENDENCIES)
Queen
Meatloaf/Steinman
POMP POP (W. L. P. T.)
City Boy
NEW WAVE POMP (W. L. P. T.)
Boomtown Rats
SINOPHILE PROG
Andy MacKay--Resolving Contradictions
Vangelis--China
Japan--Tin Drum
SAN FRANCISCO POST-PUNK IS PROG INNIT PROG
MX-80
Factrix
Chrome
Tuxedomoon
PROTO-POSTCARD PROG
Onyx*
* Glasgow schoolboy progressive rock group in which Edwyn Collins once played ukulele
POST-PROG PROTO-RAVE
Cosmik *
* Tyrol-based scene of late Seventies/early Eighties (Tyrol being Northernmost Italian, formerly part of Austria, interesting mix of Germanic and North Italian culture, and the birthplace of Giorgio Moroder) based around psychedelic dance music, lakeside proto-raves, hallucinogens. The soundtrack, so I'm told, somewhere between Krautrock and Moroder/Cerrone. I like to imagine it as sounding a bit like Manuel Gottsching/E4-E8.
DULCIMER PROG
Laraji
Constance Demby
Dead Can Dance
FLUTE PROG
Jethro Tull
Northwinds
Jean Cohen-Solal*
Saga de Ragnar Lodbrock
Men At Work
Mercury Rev
* check his Flute Libres/Cpatain Tarthoporn reissue on Mio Records, distributed in the US by Forced Exposure -- really ace, no serious, made a flute-believer outa me and that’s really saying something
NEW AGE PROG
Romantic Warrior*
Steve Roach
Ash Ra
Deuter
David Parson
Kitaro
* Pete Namlook’s early band
ECM PROG
John Abercrombie
Terje Rypdal
Steven Micus
John Surman
David Torn
Morning Glory *
*not actually on ECM but most of these folks in it
PROGZAK
Roxy Music--Avalon
SOLO AXE HERO PROG
Jan Akkerman
Phil Manzanera
Bill Nelson
Robin Trower
Adrian Belew
FORCED EXPOSURE PROG
Cochise
Magic Bus
The Scene is Now/Fish N’ Roses
Glass Eye
NEO-SUBPROG
Saint Vitus
NEO-PSYCH PROG
The Legendary Pink Dots
Porcupine Tree
4TH WORLD/NEO-GEO PROG
Osamu Kitajima
Winwood/Kabaka/Amao
Tibetan Bells
Don Cherry
Ryuichi Sakomoto
Paul Schutze
Jon Hassell
John Surman
Dead Can Dance
Holger Czukay
Byrne/Eno
Loop Guru
David Toop
Burnt Friedman
Jah Wobble--oeuvre entiere
Bill Laswell--oevure entiere
Aksak Maboul*
* the irrepressible Sébastien Morlighem says: first LP is really one of the crossovers between 'Prog' & 'Pre-World Music'. Second LP features Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Catherine Jauniaux
INDUSTRIAL PROG
Foetus
Laibach
Psychic TV
Coil
Skinny Puppy/The Tear Garden
Nine Inch Nails
NEW WAVE CAREER “SECOND ACT” PROG-RELAPSE
The Armoury Show
Luxuria
AGIT-PROG (AUSTRALIAN NEW WAVE SUBDIVISION)
Midnight Oil pre-Diesel and Dust
PARODY PROG
Spinal Tap -- “Jazz Odyssey”
PERFORMANCE ART/MODERN DANCE PROG
Blue Man Group *
La La Human Steps
* the music that accompanies the malarkey is kinda sub-Krautrock
OCEANIC PROG/BLISSED OUT PROG
Talk Talk *
Hugo Largo
Saqqara Dogs
Orang
Bark Psychosis **
Drowning Pool/Mumbles
* “this sounds like the music on fucking Pogles Wood”--Dominic Stud Brother. Possibly features bassoons (see Appendix 2 on Classic Prog Instruments)
** once listed The Enid in a ‘what we are listening to this week’ thing in Melody Maker, Graham Sutton now claims this was a joke but ain’t fooling nobody
BLONDE PROG
Darling Buds--Crawdaddy
Wendy James*
* for the concept album with songs that Costello wrote in one weekend
BLACK ROCK PROG
Living Colour
Burnt Sugar
90s NEO-PROG
Dream Theater
Voice Of Eye
Alboth
Rake
Iceburn
Cerberus Shoal
In the Labyrinth
Glass
Buckethead
Tractor Hips
Miriodor
Boud Deun
Ensemble Nimbus
Echolyn
Volapuk
LO-FI PROG
Truman’s Water
Timber
Thinkin’ Fellers Union Local 282
PROGRESSIVE HARDCORE
Rising High
CANTERBURY PROG-TECHNO
Ultramarine *
* Samples of Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers on Every Man and Woman Is A Star; later collaborations with Wyatt; avowed fondness for Mike Oldfield’s Hergest Ridge
CANTERBURY PROG-RAP
The Brotherhood *
* prod by Trevor Jackson who sampled all those Canterbury groups like Egg
NINETIES AFRO-PROG NYC CHAPTER
We
DJ Spooky
Sub Dub
Wordsound
Spectre
NEW MILLENIUM NEO-NEO PROG AND CRYPTO-PROG
Avey Tare & Panda Bear/Animal Collective
Guapo
Rapider Than Horsepower
Sigur Ros
Mars Volta *
Ephel Duath *
Stars Like Fleas **
* these two courtesy of Mostly Weird, Some Normal
** check their excellent Sun Lights Down on the Fence for electro-acoustic quirktronica, instrumental palette includes bass clarinet, copper bells, zurka, pedal steel, flute, clarinet, accoridan, toy xylophone, harp, prepared guitar, bassoon, cello, banjo, rhodes piano, and egg shaker
NINETIES/NOUGHTIES AGIT-PROG
Godspeed You Black Emperor
MISCELLANEOUS
I had problems filing these adequately:
Add N To X
Gerry Rafferty
Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co.
Bonfire
Bobby Beausoleil
Flash and the Pan
Sadistic Mika Band
Klaatu
Shylock
Giles, Giles & Fripp
Kingdom Come
Automatic Man
Mu/Merrill Fankhauser
Mark-Almond
Faith No More/Mr Bungle
Laughing Clowns
No Means No
Manfred Mann
Steve Tibbetts
Tom Newman
Pinski Zoo
Nucleus
Happy the Man
Between
Motor Totemist Guild
Pavlov’s Dog
Yeti
APPENDICES
APPENDIX 1: PROG MOVERS SHAKERS & PLAYERS
Pete Jenner
Giorgio Gomelsky
Jonathan King
Uwe Nettelbeck
Simon Draper
Andrew Lauder
Nick Mobbs
Jean Carakaos
Miles Copeland*
David Cunningham
* apart from the Police connection, he earlier managed Curved Air or something
APPENDIX 2: CLASSIC PROG INSTRUMENTS
Mellotron*
The Gizmo**
Chapman Stick
Fairlight
Symphony Orchestra
Flute
Koto
Electric Violin
Gongs
Moog
Flugelhorn
Brass Band
Choir
Bassoon
Wordless female vocals
Arp
Worcester Cathedral organ***
Welsh male choir ****
* comprehensive-seeming list of every band that ever used a mellotron
** contraption invented by ex-10 CCers Godley & Creme and used on their triple album rock opera Consequences
***8 David Bedford, Invitation to Angels
**** Man’s “C’mon” features the Gwalia Choir
APPENDIX 3: ECM AND AMERICAN 90S LEFTFIELD ROCK
Kranky’s Bruce Adams: “During the mid 80s ECM switched major label distribution and a flood of albums showed up in stores as cutouts. I remember buying tons of albums at $1.99 or $2.99 a piece [SR: same thing happened in the UK] as do several of the kranky musicians I've spoken with over the years. I think it's the influence of those albums has filtrated down. The same thing happened with EG releases. I remember the entire Eno and 4th World catalogs being available at dirt cheap prices on vinyl. It always interested me how economic/distribution events, seemingly random, can have an aesthetic result. Consider the influence that the flood of bootleg krautrock CDs had in the mid-90s. For a long time Neu, Harmonia, Popul Vuh titles were all available as German and French bootlegs only…. [In re. ECM] In addition to the blurry guitar sounds from John Abercrombie, Bill Frisell [the first albums he did solo were on ECM as well as appearances in the Paul Motian and Paul Bley groups]. Terje Rypdal and Steve Tibbetts you can factor in releases on the New Series/ Classical wing of ECM by Arvo Part, Paul Giger and others as influences. And of course, the use of ethnic and unusual instrumentation and techniques by artists on the label from the Art Ensemble forward…. “
APPENDIX 4: POSTROCK
essay on post rock as anti-New Wave as the prog-redux
APPENDIX 5: AFRO-PROG
Afro-Prog Resource: Kosmigroov
APPENDIX 6: MISCELLANEOUS PROG RESOURCES
Gibraltar Encyclopaedia of Progressive Rock
Gnosis
ProgressoR
Axiom of Choice
Ground and Sky
Aural Innovations
Best progressive rock albums of all time
progressive ears
http://www.progressiveears.com/
Gong
Man
Heldon:
Heldon article at Angbase
Richard Pinhas article
Heldon official site
APPENDIX 7: UNITED NATIONS OF PROG
A fuller but very far complete breakdown of prog by nationality:
KRAUT-PROG
Passport
Spermull
Puhdys
2066 And Then
Zarathustra
Epidermus
Spacebox
Grobschnitt
Tyndall
CZECH PROG
Modry Efekt
Plastic People of the Universe
Umela Hmota
POLISH PROG
Test
ROMANIAN PROG
Phoenix
SWEDISH PROG
Samla Mammas Manna
Lucifer Was
Trad Gras Och Stenar
Trettioariga Kriget
International Harvester
Algarnas Tradgard
Kebnekajse
Arbete Och Fritid
FINN PROG
Pekka Pohjola
Circle
Wigwam
Haikara
Hoyry Kone
Kroko
NEIL AND TIM FINN PROG
Split Enz
ITALO-PROG
Cherry Five/Goblin
Premiata Formeria Marconi
Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso
Theatre
Le Orme
Stormy Six
Area
Picchio dal Pozzo
I Teoremi
Il Balletto Di Bronzo
Libra
New Trolls
Il Rovescio Della Medaglia
Museo Rosenbach
Osanna
Osage Tribe
Arti & Mestieri
Confusional Quartet
HUNGARIAN PROG
Fermata
FROG PROG
Lightwave
Jean Cohen-Solal
Etron Fou Leloublan
ZNR
Bernard Szajner
Ragnar Grippe
Perception
Pataphonie
Potemkine
Shub Niggurath
Saga de Ragnar Lodbrock
BELGIAN PROG
Univers Zero
Arkham
Art Zoyd
DUTCH PROG
Focus
Savage Rose
Solution
Kracq
Persephony
Willem Breuker Kollektief
GREEK PROG
Socrates Drank The Conium
SOVIET PROG
Eduward Artemiev
Zvuki Mu
WELSH BOOGIE-PROG
Man
KIWI PROG
Split Enz
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