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.
A big well done to Dikajee, who won a very tight race in last week’s Tracks Of The Week with Home Of The Wind, and with both Chimpan A and Kalandra tying on equal votes in second place. A first for Tracks Of The Week, if we’re not mistaken!
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.
NORTH SEA ECHOES – GOOD ENOUGH
If, for some reason, you’ve not checked out North Sea Echoes, then surely the poignant ballad, Good Enough, is the track to make you investigate further! Fates Warning duo Jim Matheos and Ray Alder walk a different musical path to Fates Warning’s intricate prog metal, but it’s no less rewarding. Good Enough comes from the pair’s secind album as North Sea Echoes, How To Cast A Shadow, out now on Metal Blade Records. It’s got ‘crossover hit’ written all over it!
“Good Enough was one of the first songs written for How To Cast A Shadow,” singer Alder says. It‘s a simple yet beautiful song, and it quickly became one of my favourite songs that Jim and I had written together. While we never intended for it to be released as a single or video, we decided that while we were together for a photo shoot, we would also shoot a video for this. I think that we both agreed that this song was just too nice not to be shared with others.”
BOSS KELOID – LANDSLIDE
Wigan’s prog rockers Boss Keloid will release their sixth studio album, Float & Aperture, through Church Road Records on October 23. The sprawling nine-minute Lanslide is the first music they’ve shared from the upcoming album, an intricate workout full of knotty rhythms and challenging and twisting time signatures, which bodes well for the new album.
“This song has many meanings throughout its lyrical content. The main story is about learning to accept that we are all our own worst enemy, and that when you realise this, life does get easier,” the band say of the tracj=k, before adding that the album is all, about “embracing life, rolling with the punches and the waves of beauty, and not being afraid to channel and express those experiences through art, music, love, anger and wisdom. Experience tells a story if you don’t mind sharing it.”
DOWNES BRAIDE ASSOCIATION – HELLO HELLO
There’s no doubting the songwriting ability of Geoff Downes and his DBA partner, Chris Braide, whose honeyed tones bring Hello Hello, the band’s latest single, to life in blissfully melodic fashion. The pair release their latest album, Truama, through Cherry Red Records on September 25. Given Downes has a new Asia album landing in November, it’s a wonder where he finds the time. He also celebrated his birthday last week – happy birthday Geoff!
“Hello Hello is a deceptively upbeat song about how our own psychology can sometimes work against us,” Chris Braide explains. “We can retreat into ourselves, build walls and become isolated, and that isolation can have a devastating effect. At its heart, the song is about having the self- awareness and courage to reach out and say, ‘I’m scared, I need help, is there anyone there?’ When we say ‘love can open doors’, that begins with learning to love and accept yourself. Sometimes opening that first door is what allows the rest of the world back in.”
CLIVE NOLAN – FROST UPON THE LONGSHIPS
Sounds like Clive Nolan’s been listening to Wardruna, Heilung, and their ilk, if new single, Frost Upon The Longships, is anything to go by. It heralds the arrival of Nolan’s new solo album, Song Of The Winter Throne – The Saga Of Håkon Håkonsson, due for release on October 2 via WLR (We Låve Rock) and Oskar Records, and which tells the story of one of medieval Norway’s most remarkable kings!
“Having immersed myself in the world of Beowulf, I found that the pull of the North had not loosened its grip on me,” Noilan explains. “The sagas, the stark beauty of Norway, the rhythm of old stories carried across crackling fires and ocean spray… all of it continued to echo in my imagination long after the final notes of ‘Wildlands’ had faded. There were more stories to tell… and perhaps, this time, something based in history, rather than myth. The more I explored Haakon’s world, the more I realised that this was not simply the story of a king’s reign. It was a story of survival. This was the perfect story for me to set as an album!”
GODSTICKS – HOLD BACK
Welsh proggers Godsticks released their seventh album, VOiD, earlier this year, and now present a guitar and bass playthrough of the track Hold Back for your enjoyment. Featuring guitarists Darran Charles and Gavin Bushell and bassist Francis George. The hard-working bunch are out on the road again at the moment, later in November and also have dates lined up in February and April next year too!
“Hold Back is a particularly tense song for us, both lyrically and musically,” they say. “It’s about those who provide an emotional crutch for a friend who constantly demands being the centre of attention, and isn’t afraid of manufacturing dramatic scenarios to ensure the focus on them never wavers. We’ve all had experience of these characters and it’s draining. The quick pace and precision of the riffs is something we really had to work on to nail in the studio. We of course rarely give any consideration to any potential difficulty performing songs live when writing, preferring instead to kick that proverbial can as far as we can down the road (that’s a problem for future Godsticks and we don’t care much for them!), and indeed this song is one that required a disproportionate amount of rehearsal. That hard work certainly paid off when we first began playing the new songs live, and the joy of the band locking in for this track is almost indescribable.”
THE OCEAN – ULTIMA ESPERANZA
German prog collective The Ocean flex their ‘epic’ muscles to dramatic effect on the 11-minute Ultima Esperanza (Spanish for “last hope”), which itself is part of a 20-minute title track and closing piece, Solaris, from their upcoming album, which they release through Pelagic Records on September 25. The track takes its name from the southernmost province on the South American continent, named after the inlet known as Última Esperanza Sound. The inlet was given its name by Spanish navigator Juan Ladrillero in 1557, who hoped it would offer a passage to the Strait of Magellan. Instead, it leads to a glacier – and ultimately, a dead end.
“Ultima Esperanza explores the intrinsically human notion of hope as the driving force behind all explorative endeavours, and loss thereof,” the band state. “It is a reflection on mental resilience, tracing the different stages of losing hope and the mind’s remarkable tendency to keep projecting it even onto the most dire realities, as an instinctive means of survival.”
RAPHAEL WEINROTH-BROWNE – DISSOLUTION
Canadian cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne gets introspective on the delightfully moody Dissolution, with its dramatic black-and-white video, shot in Cornwall! It’s a piece originally composed for a contemporary dance company’s production BACH Reimagined, itself reimagining Sarabande from Bach’s Sixth Cello Suite, and which now forms part of Weinroth-Browne’s third solo album Empyrean, which is out on September 11. You can catch him supporting Einar Solberg on the latter’s upcoming solo tour.
“Dissolution was originally composed for the contemporary dance production BACH Reimagined with UK-based company James Wilton Dance,” Weinroth-Browne explains. “It is the centrepiece of the Empyrean album, and is most certainly its emotional apex. Of everything I have released as a solo artist, this is at once my most classical and experimental work to date.”
