The album Whatever Day Suits You Best mixes electronica, prog and jazz into a thick and heady brew of dance-beat inflected, instrumental jazz-fusion.... If you are looking at the line-up, and are thinking: “ah now that looks like an instrumental Van Der Graaf Generator, those perennial favourites of the Italian prog community”, then you would be, as I was, wrong. The sound here is more individualistic and reminds me of the French electronica-meets-jazz of Moksha Samnyasin and also of Sonny Simmons’ 2015 album Nomadic. It is livelier, less dark, though just as substantial.Read the full review by Martin Burns at dprp.net
The album sees the quartet hone their blend of melody and muscle into a sharper and more dynamic force. Dramatic vocals bring an emotional crescendo to their deeply sophisticated and hard-edged progressive rock.Media/Samples
“An Gorta Mór” is a concept album about the theme of runaway: the opening and the closing numbers build a bridge between the tragedy of the Irish Famine (An Gorta Mór in Gaelic) and the massive Irish exodus to America of the middle of the 19th Century with the current move of people from Africa to Europe through the Mediterranean way. The other songs are about runaway and desperation from another point of view, focusing on other social issues such as unemployment and domestic abuse.Media/Samples
The band cites a lot of influences on this album (progressive metal, rock, jazz fusion (I’m not the greatest fan of this type of music but it works here), electronic, and cinematic music) and all of that is here. I don’t want to take away anything from that lengthy description but the overall vibe and sound I get from this is: picture Liquid Tension Experiment without the guitar. Well.. not ALL without guitar. There is a guest guitarist on the epic here, so maybe think LTE with just a pinch of guitar.Read the full review by Rob at progressivemusicplanet.com
'Arrivals & Departures' features songs audiences have heard at live gigs over the past few years but hadn't yet been committed to tape. From the blistering space sludge of "Jupiter" to the wizard rock of "Mother's Eyes" and the kosmische hard-rock of "Arrival", it's a worthy send off. Side two of the cassette features a full 16-minute freak-out live version of the aforementioned "Jupiter".Media/Samples
The Swedish counterculture legends formerly known as Träd, Gräs och Stenar revisit the universe they created in the 1970s, building woolly, choogling rock songs that sound both earthy and sublime.Read the full review by Allison Hussey at pitchfork.com
Falling somewhere between experimental, progressive, and doom/post-metal, Los Angeles’ Ancestors thrives on crafting aural journeys “rife with atmosphere, tension, and raw human emotion.” ... the sequence isn’t as multifarious, colorful, or aggressive as its predecessors overall; yet, the band transforms their newfound limitations into an exceptional testament to the expressive power of polished minimalism and unified flow. As such, it’s an analogous yet idiosyncratic new offering that proves how vital they remain as a trio.Read the full review by Jordan Blum at metalinjection.net
The album, while not entirely breaking new ground, knows what it needs to do and does it well. The bluesy opening riff belies what comes next, with everything from Sevendust-detuned-groove and swagger, to brass and New Orleans band moments that Diablo Swing Orchestra would love, to the aforementioned sweet and sour singing passage from Houry Dora Apartian, to even piano balladry and just a slight hint of chip-tune, and plenty of great keyboard moments all throughout.Read the full review by Austin Kokel at sonicperspectives.com
This is the sound of a band experimenting, of kicking out through more barriers and, on occasions, of finding new levels of intensity and experience. This is also a different approach from ‘Dag & Natt’ and, freed from the need to develop an overall concept this gives us more opportunities to explore new sonic topographies.Read the full review at psychinsightmusic.com
It’s an exceptionally intricate album, comprised of the kind of mercurial progressive rock which reminds us of the recently mentioned on the blog Ghostbound and other acts like Anathema, Porcupine Tree and more. During its runtime, Even As the Light Grows focuses on a kind of dreamy melancholia that’s hard to parse, evoking both a sort of depression and a sense of wonder and introspective speculation. While doing so, it features guitars, bass, drums and vocals but also plenty of brass and string instruments. Beyond instrumentation, its themes are often gentle and expansive like post-rock but also contain blastbeats and harsher, more abrasive segments.Read the full review by Eden Kupermintz at heavyblogisheavy.com
