Category Progressive
1972 COUNTDOWN — #25 – 21
25 NICK DRAKE — PINK MOON A short album of brief songs—some barely more than sketches—somehow Pink Moon has all the depth of a midnight lake. Famous for bringing posthumous fame to the songwriter after it was skilfully deployed in an American TV ad, the title song exemplifies the sparse beauty of Drake’s final album. […]
1972 COUNTDOWN — #30 – 26
30 GENTLE GIANT — OCTOPUS There’s no doubt that some progressive bands (or albums) require effort to get into. England’s Gentle Giant are one of those. With scintillating playing, complex compositional structures (featuring changes of time, key, and instrumentation) and melody lines that puzzle on first acquaintance, this is not a band that gives up […]
1972 COUNTDOWN — #35 – 31
35 CHICAGO — LIVE IN JAPAN Coming out the year after their epic four LP set Chicago Live At Carnegie Hall, this is a far superior document of the brass-driven outfit in concert. The playing is energetic and powerful while the recording is much, much better than the tinny sound of the 1971 release. The […]
1972 COUNTDOWN — #40-36
40 PINK FLOYD — OBSCURED BY CLOUDS Falling between Meddle (1971) and Dark Side Of The Moon (1973), Pink Floyd’s soundtrack music for the Barbet Schroeder film La Vallée tends to be only ever mentioned in passing. Showing their more straight ahead rock side and capacity for focus, Obscured By Clouds is an excellent, understated record […]
1972 COUNTDOWN — THE STORY SO FAR
As a warm-up to a possible resumption of play in the 72 FROM ’72 countdown, here is a summary of the posts and albums so far. GREEN AND SUBMARINE kicked things off in mid-January. Summer Downunder is a time for thinking about beaches and oceans and spinning one of my favourite film soundtracks ever. It […]
STILL SHINING ON
At first glance, it looks fairly straightforward. After conquering the earth with Dark Side Of The Moon, Pink Floyd were shadowed by understandable anxiety regarding their follow-up album. Eventually, they found inspiration in the things they knew. Their own history An industry slavering at the door, demanding to be fed. The result was an album […]
SLEEP
8.5 hours duration, a full night’s repose. 31 sections explore variations on five themes. Scored for piano, cello, viola, violin, organ, voice (soprano), synthesisers and electronics. The opus took years to complete; during its creation the composer consulted a neuroscientist. It has been performed live in Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, London, and the Sydney Opera House. […]
PROGRESSIVE FOURPLAY A—D
I generally don’t last long in Facebook groups. Someone will say something offensive and/or ignorant I’ll hurriedly hit “Leave Group”. Sometimes, which is far worse, I’ll respond/react only to then see the thing collapse into a foetid swamp as my stomach sinks at roughly the same rate. And that’s just the music groups. Nevertheless, one […]
KLAUS ENCOUNTERS | THE FINAL FRONTIER
Continuing (and completing) Vinyl Connection’s homage to German synthesiser great Klaus Schulze. The Cosmic Couriers — Sci-Fi Party [1974] In the first half of 1973, producer Rolf Ulrich Kaiser organised a series of jams with a number of the major musicians in the emerging psychedelic/electronic space rock scene. There were recorded (without the musicians’ explicit […]
KLAUS ENCOUNTERS | DEPARTURE AND RETURN
A Dozen Klaus Schulze Albums Worthy Of Consideration When Klaus Schulze died on 26 April 2022 the world lost one of its foundation rock-electronic composers and a cornerstone of the early German indie music scene that became known as ‘Krautrock’. As someone who discovered his drifting, droning, pulsating synthesiser music back in the 1970s, I […]
FLY ME TO THE MOON
The debut album by Air is soaring towards its twenty-fifth anniversary. A big part of the reason people are still enjoying Moon Safari is its tasteful mash-up of genres. Melding lounge, electronica, chill-out, pop, even trip-hop, this charming album is friendly, accessible, and a sustained delight. The LP opens with the lounge jazz instrumental “La […]
JOIN THE YES UNION
The orchestral strains of Stravinsky’s Firebird ease into a smooth wash of synthesiser chords as the musicians take their places. A caped Rick Wakeman strokes the keyboard producing those electronic strings. Bill Bruford sits at a Simmons electronic drum kit, dressed for judo. Steve Howe is wearing a silky, brightly hued shirt while Jon Anderson, […]
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