Tag: Progressive Rock
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Stick Men + Sonar @ The Garrison, Toronto, 27 August 2017
Time to get sticky! Stick Men are a progressive rock act where all three band members stick it to conventional rock norms by playing wielding sticks – two Chapman sticks and drum sticks. Formed in 2007 by Chapman stick player Tony Levin of King Crimson fame (who has appeared on over a whopping 500 albums),…
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Magma @ The Mod Club in Toronto, 20 August 2017
Sometimes progressive rock feels too limiting a label for an infinitely innovative collective credited with introducing unorthodox and challenging elements to music. One such act is cult legend Magma, formed in France in 1969 by the ambitious Christian Vander. Vander took Magma one step beyond other musicians at the time by creating his own language for…
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The Jelly Jam + Rustik @ The Rockpile, Toronto – 18 August 2017
A progressive rock/metal supergroup strikes Toronto! The members of The Jelly Jam include bassist John Myung from Dream Theater, guitarist and vocalist Ty Tabor from King’s X and drummer Rod Morgenstein, an alumni of Dixie Dreggs and Winger. Despite their line-up’s impressive roster of musical contributions, this band has a criminally limited fan base. Their…
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White Willow – Future Hopes
Every White Willow album is a gem, and Future Hopes might be the most precious of them all. Befitting the fact that they’ve entered their third decade in the progressive rock scene, White Willow’s newest offering is something special, both musically and visually (yes, that’s a Roger Dean painting on the cover). Of the young…
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Pink Floyd – The Early Years, 1967-1972, Cre/ation (2CD)
As every fan of the band knows, there have been three eras in the history of Pink Floyd: the first, Syd Barrett-fronted stoner-pop period, the second (epic) Roger Waters-fronted period (which gave us albums like Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Wish You Were Here and Animals) and the final David Gilmour-fronted incarnation which…
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Rush – Signals LP
Just one year after they began to challenge both themselves and their audience with new songwriting ideas and compositional presentations on Moving Pictures, Rush elected to ride that wave of inspiration with Signals – their ninth LP and second of a new era. Right off, there’s no question that Signals takes its lead from Moving…
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Rush – Moving Pictures LP
It is often regarded as an inconvenient truth, but the fact is that it becomes increasingly difficult for a band to change or take artistic risks as they get further into their career. A lot of that difficulty may come from the band’s perceived responsibility to their fans; the people watching and listening were the…
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Tylor Dory Trio – Carried Away
If I were to try and summon up Tylor Dory Trio’s sound in a soundbite, it would be that they are a cross between Opeth and Alice In Chains. But that doesn’t do justice to the depth of their music. As you can gather from the name, we have here the classic power-trio format in…
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Nightingale – Retribution
When most music lovers who favour the heavier side of things think of Sweden the first genre reference that comes to mind is Swedish Death Metal, but over the past 20-plus years bands and people like Opeth, Katatonia and Dan Swanö having been trying to change that. Returning to the ranks of the progressive, classic, technical and…
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Opeth – Pale Communion
Pale Communion is a richly appointed collection of progressive rock that continues the approach of 2011’s Heritage, while refining and expanding the style that characterized that troubling (to some) transitional album. Everything on Pale Communion—the production, the material, the performances—hangs together more logically than on Heritage. The songs travel through candlelit corridors, sidestep into a…