Back catalogue: Progressive Rock

Review: Bristol trio Waldo's Gift unleash their debut album, a blistering and maximalist guitar record brimmign with improvisational prowess, their music a thrilling blend of prog-metal, math-rock and the more intense ends of electronic music. Tracks like 'Candifloss' and 'Malcolm's Law' showcase the band's technical skills and their ability to create complex and captivating soundscapes, while 'The Galli' and 'This One is Improvised' offer a glimpse into their free-flowing, improvisational approach. Recorded live with no overdubs, the album captures the band at their most raw and unfiltered, pushing the boundaries of their instruments and their own musical limits.

Review: 'A Shared Sense Of Purpose' is a fittingly collectively-minded name for a new Gordon Chapman-Fox aka. Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan release. The first glimpse of his latest full-length LP, Your Community Hub, this first sampler hears the artist continue to develop his totally singular vision in eerie modernist electronica, deploying lilty arpeggiations and contradictorily Utopian, yet at the same time, sinister, melodies and ambiences; all with a view to producing an uncanny deja entendu. These are deployed to mourn the slow, increasing privatisation of Chapman-Fox's native Warrington-Runcorn, specifically its singular bespoke town centre - its walkways, its local postal system, its gridded shop lots - which were all designed to make it a five-minute city, long before the concept of fifteen-minute cities had entered town planning discourse. Though, perhaps this lament masks a more sinister sense of enjoyment, as there is indeed a perverse sort of pleasure that arises in the bittersweetly uncanny perfumes that waft from this latest haunted mood piece. Perhaps just like the experience of revisiting Warrington-Runcorn after having known it in childhood, we hear both sadness and euphoria, at the same time, in the face of its ostensible loss.

Review: Amused To Death is the third studio album from Roger Waters outside of his work in Pink Floyd. As one of the fundamental creative forces in the prog behemoth, of course it's hard to separate his solo work from that most famous of bands, but this is indeed its own beast. At times it's an experimental space in which Waters uses space and minimalism to great effect, creating a foreboding sound peppered with speech samples and field recordings. There are of course plenty of more straightforward tracks too, like lead single 'What God Wants, Part 1'. This lavish issue of the 1992 album spreads the music out across four discs and comes in a box set format, a must-have for devoted Floyd and Waters collectors.

Review: Pink Floyd's Roger Waters recorded The Lockdown Sessions at home during the COVID lockdowns between 2020 and 2021. Of course, intrigue was bound to spark up as to what Waters would be doing in this time, so we're not surprised supply has matched demand. What ensues is a mixture of exclusive live originals (mastered for this EP of course), and a handful of new versions of old Floyd classics. The 2022 version of 'Comfortably Numb' falls into the latter category, appearing on the B-side. Meanwhile, brand new cuts like 'Mother' and 'Two Suns In The Sunset' appear on the A, acting as Waters' new reflections on a world driven mad; the songs were first streamed live to fans during the incipient, isolated phase of Zoom-calling and make-do music performances from inside musicians' homes.

Review: Via Cooking Vinyl comes a limited edition version of Roger Waters' upcoming redux and re-record album of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, pressed on an exclusive transparent blue vinyl and available only at independent record stores (and, of course, Juno). It has the same tracklist and features as the standard version, but with a slightly different cover art and packaging. While Waters is of course fond of the original incarnations of his Floyd-era albums, the motivation to embark on a redux series of Floyd material came after he first began to experiment with stripped-back versions of other older recordings. Now he continues this charge for their most popular ever album. Exciting!

Review: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds - The New Generation revisits the 1978 classic with a fresh cast, packing a powerful punch. This updated version, like the original, evokes the feel of an old-style radio drama, now narrated by Liam Neeson. His softer Celtic tone contrasts Richard Burton's original sombre delivery, although his cues are sometimes overshadowed by repetitive music. Notable contributions include Gary Barlow's plaintive 'Forever Autumn,' Joss Stone's thoughtful 'The Spirit of Man,' and Ricky Wilson's fervent ''Brave New World.' The revamped instrumentation and eerie new Martian music add a modern twist, yet the piece retains its grandiose symphonic rock roots. The music recalls early Rice/Lloyd Webber and John Barry's film scores, blending nostalgia with innovation. The sound recording delivers a hefty impact, perfect for the UK tour celebrating H.G. Wells, the father of science fiction. Now available on double vinyl, this release honors the timeless appeal of Wells' visionary work while introducing it to a new generation.

Review: The 70s were a superb time for Krautrock and Walter Wegmuller's Tarot from 1973 is one of the classics. Now for the first time, it has been remastered from the original tapes and comes in a no doubt highly sought after deluxe box set. Bern born Wegmuller was the son of Roman travelers and himself spent much time roaming around Europe and India making jewelry as well as painting. Helping him to record this album when he settled back in Bern were legends of the scene like Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel members Manuel Gottsching and Hartmut Enke, and other musicians known as The Cosmic Jokers.

Review: English musician Steven Wilson, known primarily as the founding member of the band Porcupine Tree, shares the mint vinyl gatefold edition of his latest album: a literal musical overview of the prog rock genre which made him famous. Composed of just two wildly ambitious 20-minute suites, 'Objects Outlive Us' and 'The Overview', Wilson's distinctively guitar-led, lurchy solos and gargantuan progressive highs aim to evoke the so-called "overview effect", whereby astronauts seeing the Earth from space undergo a transformative cognitive shift, experiencing an overwhelming appreciation of beauty and an increased sense of connection to other people. Through such themes of magnitude and cosmic expanse, Wilson takes a valiant arm to the bridge here, facing the universe's cold indifference as an avenue to radical empathy.

Review: This timely reissue of Zamrock's Afro-prog-psychedelic masterpiece makes its debut on vibrant yellow vinyl. WITCH was a group influenced by James Brown, the Stones, and Deep Purple and they dominated 70s Zamrock stages in their heyday. Their musical journey spanned only five years and culminated in the fifth and final rock album, which predated a split and a new disco venture in Zimbabwe. The record fuses traditional Zambian rhythms and folk melodies with progressive rock and, somewhat echoing Lukombo Vibes, it embodies the Osibas' "afro-rock" style. This release encapsulates WITCH's evolution and influence and gives a vivid glimpse into the era's musical fusion and cultural resonance.