Prog

NEXT ISSUE FEB 09 ON SALE Hello, and welcome to the new issue of Prog, our final issue of 2020. I think we can all agree, it’s been quite a ride… although maybe not quite the one we were expecting back in January. But, as we end this strange year, th

John Carpenter releases Lost Themes III: Alive After Death through Sacred Bones on February 5. It sees the horror movie master – who has concentrated in recent years on creating music in a synthwave style – once more teaming up with longtime collabor

Anneke van Giersbergen will release her most personal album to date on February 26, via InsideOut. The Darkest Skies Are The Brightest is the Dutch singer’s first full-length studio release since her band Vuur’s 2017 debut In This Moment We Are Free

Danish-Swedish quartet VOLA will release their third album Witness in early 2021 via Mascot, following the recent launch of lead track Head Mounted Sideways. Vocalist and guitarist Asger Mygind says the theme of the single is “gradual destruction,” b

“The 70s were an amazing time in Los Angeles. I was around some of the prog rock stuff – but when I got a call from Bob Ezrin, saying, ‘Would you like to record with Pink Floyd?’ he didn’t say it was The Wall. “I said, ‘Ooh, that would be wonderful,

“I WANT TO BE transported to some other place,” says Mr Jay, singer, guitarist and sometime keyboard player with stargazing Scandinavian quartet Kingnomad. “That’s what I get from music – the journey, the escape.” For a moment this seems odd. As he’s

The Austrian state of Tyrol sits at a crossroads. To the north is Bavaria, while Italy, Liechtenstein and the rest of Austria hug its borders to the south, west and east respectively. In Tyrol, 10 years ago, Mother’s Cake became the archetypes of the

LILTING MELODIES, REMINISCENT of the sea, roll from Mary Lattimore’s harp in her new album Silver Ladders. Released in the autumn, it bridges the gap between classical harmonies and experimental rock; it’s a style the musician has been perfecting ove

RICK WAKEMAN AND Jon Anderson both play supporting roles in the musical journey of classically trained pianist Dyanne Potter Voegtlin. Invited to perform in a classical masterclass at the University Of London, Voegtlin bucked conventional tradition a

ARILD BRØTER IS a modest chap. In Prog’s natter with the drummer and founder of Norwegian instrumental jazz-proggers Pymlico, he downplays his drum tutor status (“I have a day job,” he mentions, vaguely), his time studying at the Los Angeles College

Actor-director – and experimental prog fan – Catz’s new documentary is an imaginative approach to musician, mathematician and Radiophonic Workshop visionary Delia Derbyshire, the creator of the greatest piece of avant-garde music ever heard by famili

In some ways 2020 will forever be tagged with the epithet of ‘the year we’d rather forget’, what with Covid-19 running rampant and impacting our lives in ways many of us had never previously imagined. And yet it’s also been a year in which we’ve seen

In the long, hot summer of 1976, Pink Floyd were holed up in their brand new studio in Islington making what would become their 10th studio album, Animals. Ten years earlier, they had been the sound of the underground and soon began making their name

What’s the story behind your plastic Algie? I lived for 20 years with a very contrasted black and white photo of some Pink Floyd pigs in a book. The pigs were arranged in the shape of a question mark. It wasn’t until 2012 that chance would enable me

More than four and a half billion years ago, a centre of gravity in our Solar System pulled in large amounts of dust and gas to create a giant, floating ball. One hundred million years later, this sphere collided with the planet Theia and the impact

Jem Godfrey of Frost* probably best captures the musical psyche of Rob Reed when, during a recent conversation, he told the prog multitasker he was the only person he knew who takes a break by making a new album. In between releasing Chimpan A’s The

Within a wooded valley beneath the castle of Orsini in central Italy lies the magnificent Sacro Bosco. Translating into English as ‘Sacred Garden’ and also known as the Park Of The Monsters, it was commissioned in the 16th century by military leader

This should have been a big year for Katatonia. The Swedish masters of dark prog were raring to go again after a short hiatus that ran from late 2017 to early 2019. At the start of this year, they were gearing up to release their 11th album, City Bur

It wasn’t really meant to happen this quickly. The Flower Kings have now released two albums in less than a year – and the latest is a double behemoth that spans more than 90 minutes. But really, what else is there to do in a pandemic than write a 21

Formed in 1963, and part of the first wave of the British blues boom, the Groundhogs initially came to public attention as John Lee Hooker’s backing band when the veteran bluesman paid a visit to the UK in 1964. More gigs followed with Jimmy Reed and

There may be some interesting stories about alternative ways of spending 2020, but Andy Glass can probably claim overall bragging rights. He’s had surgery for a brand new thumb joint to replace the one he’s worn out playing guitar in Solstice over th

Growing up in Russia, Marjana Semkina didn’t celebrate Christmas. It wasn’t until she first came to the UK in 2014 that she experienced the festive season in all its overblown glory. “Christmas was a very new thing for me when I started coming here,”

The last time Prog spoke with Crippled Black Phoenix founder Justin Greaves, everything seemed to be going extremely well. It was the summer of 2018 and his band were poised to release their seventh full-length recording, Great Escape. The album was

Derek Sherinian is a born salesman. Possessing a persuasive quick-fire patter, there’s a sense that if the mood took him, he’d offer an eloquent argument to convince you that The Beatles were abysmal or that David Bowie was merely a poor man’s Gary N

“I don’t know if this album is prog rock, but it’s certainly in a classic rock style that could easily be considered prog, you know?” Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne is on the phone from a car outside his Oklahoma City home, discussing with Prog where his

Fifty one years ago, four expatriate Africans and three Caribbean musicians came together in London as Osibisa. Flying their “crisscross rhythms that explode with happiness”, UK audiences had never seen anything like the seven smiling figures in Afri