We’re back with a brand new Tracks Of The Week! This week we’ve got another seven new and diverse slices of progressively inclined music for you to enjoy.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Steven Wilson walked off with the honours last week with the title track to his much-anticipated album, Requiem For A Village. The Pineapple Thief came a very credible second and fellow UK progger Joh. Holden in third place.
The premise is simple – we’ve listened to a batch of new releases by bands falling under the progressive umbrella, and collated them together in one post for you – it makes it so much easier than having to dip in and out of various individual posts, doesn’t it?
The idea is to watch the videos (or listen if it’s a stream), enjoy (or not) and also to vote for your favourite in the voting form at the bottom of this post. Couldn’t be easier, could it? We’ll be bringing you Tracks Of The Week, as the title implies, each week. Next week, we’ll update you with this week’s winner and present a host of new prog music for you to enjoy.
If you’re a band and you want to be featured in Prog‘s Tracks Of The Week, send your video (as a YouTube link) or track embed, band photo (please, don’t forget the photo!) and biog with quotes to us here.
LESOIR – HIDDEN FIRE
The Dutch band’s latest single, the Eastern-sounding Hidden Fire, is taken from their upcoming album Tomorrow Is Now Today, which is released through V2 Records on October 23. It’s without a doubt one of the most enigmatic pieces of music we’ve yet heard from the Maastricht sextet. You’ll be able to hear more from the new album when the band play live with Airbag in the UK in October and with Annicke van Giersbergen across Europe in November.
“The track captures that quiet despair of watching identity dissolve into passive consumption, questioning whether people still make conscious choices about what they let in,” the band say. “Do you let it go, or do you push back? Let the frustration win, or stay true to yourself and speak up anyway?”
CROWN LANDS – THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Canadian prog duo Crown Landes have been preparing for their upcoming homeland headline tour by decamping to Chalet Studios in Pickering, Ontario, where their heroes Rush had worked on albums such as Presto, Roll The Bones and Counterparts in pre-production, to record a few tracks from their recent Apocalypse album, including the epic Through The Looking Glass. Impressive stuff.
“For me, what separates a good band from a great band is what they can do as a live band. When there are no tricks or backing tracks, ” explains guitarist/bassist/keyboardist Kevin Comeau. “Just the musicians in the room. We wanted to capture ourselves as honestly as we could with this live series. I’m very happy with the way that we captured the band at Chalet studio. Chalet is probably my favourite place to be in the entire world. I spend as much time there as I can. In fact, I married my wife there 3 years ago!’
PILOTINTHEPICTURE – RUN
Pilotinthepicture is the introspective solo project of Hamburg-based musician and songwriter Wolfram Zarnack, better known as the drummer for the psychedelic rock band Lee Shore and the post-metal band Drownship. Zarnack’s solo work blends prog rock, ambient, post-rock, and psychedelia into a melancholic, atmospheric sound, and he releases his debut album, While We Escape, is released on October.
Zarnack refers to his sound as “post-progressive rock”, and the insistently melodic new single, Run, which is released today, also features the charming vocals of Josefine Winter, which add another level of magnetism to the overall sound.
THE FLOWER KINGS – THE GODS OF ROME PT. 2
Sweden’s prog rock royalty, The Flower Kings, have followed up last year’s LOVE album with the similarly themed HOPE, which they released through InsideOut Music on October 23. The Gods Of Rome Pt. 2 is more classy prog from Roine Stolt and pals, who show no sign of letting on their message of positivity, which hasn’t always been taken well by some online, Stolt told Prog magazine last year!
“At a certain point in life – you arrive at a place where outside opinions matter less – and the process gravitates towards making an album that YOU yourself would LOVE but would perhaps normally not be viewed as a commercial attempt at all,” Stolt says. “We, the band – trust YOU, the audience – to be curious and to trust us that we want to bring you a grand glowing adventure.”
“This is one of several parts of an epic piece of music that has been swirling around for some years. I reworked bits and wrote some new lyrics that now have the backdrop of ancient Rome – but act more as a metaphor for modern-day power play. Every nation and every leader/president wants to shine and be remembered as the greatest – expansive dreams often tend to implode, however.”
WARRINGTON-RUNCORN NEW TOWN DEVELOPMENT PLAN – THE MACHINE
If Kraftwerky, Kosmische sounds are your bag, then Gordon Chapman-Fox’s brilliantly named Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan are the band for you! He’s been exploring the modernist utopian aesthetic of the UK’s post-war new town development programme through timeless retro-futurist electronic music since 2020 and will release his latest album, Industrial Growth, through Castles In Space on October 30. The brooding The Machine is a most appetising starter.
“My music has been getting heavier and heavier over the years”, says Chapman-Fox. “As my music often reflects my feelings on the outside world, this is very much a visceral response to our current times. There’s always been a darkness to my work, but this felt like the time to unleash it all.”
SHY, LOW – PALMISTRY
Shy, Low are an instrumental post-rock quintet hailing from Richmond, Virginia, who will release their forthcoming album Purity Spiral through Pelagic Records on October 16. New single Palmistry shows a mastery of restraint whilst still managing to capture the emotional grandeur that great post-rock delivers, which bodes well for the upcoming album.
“Whether constructing intricate layers of harmony or driving songs toward explosive climaxes, there is a deep understanding of pacing, atmosphere, and the power of restraint,” the band confirm. “Momentum is at the heart of this album; through intricate rhythmic detail and explosive bursts of energy, drums become the anchor and catalyst, supporting the expansive arrangements while pushing them toward moments of cathartic release.”
RAINBURN – CONFESSIONS
Bangalore progressive rock trio Rainburn’s third album, thirty seven, due for release on November 4, is woven from a near-death experience that frontman Vats Iyengar endured and survived while stranded at sea. Across nine connected songs, the record explores faith, humanity’s perceived superiority over nature, love and mortality, while pushing Rainburn’s sound into new territory through industrial rhythms, electronic textures and stark acoustic guitar
“We wanted the video to tell a story of its own, independent of the album’s narrative, while staying true to the song’s central themes,” says Iyengar. “The sonic template for this record was very different from what we’ve had in the past – we were referencing bands like Depeche Mode, Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails far more than bands that are usually classified as prog. Of course, all these new elements were pulled into the ambit of the Rainburn sound, so this is very much a deeply conceptual progressive rock album, albeit with some unique twists.”
