The most musically complex prog band(s)?

fuxi wrote: I'm beginning to feel a little despondent. Whenever I mention Discus or Kenso in one of these threads, I get no response at all. People just carry on chatting about some of the more familiar (usually Anglo-Saxon) prog acts, such as VDGG, Gentle Giant or Zappa. Of course there's nothing wrong with any of their music, which I myself enjoy a great deal. It's pretty complex as well. I just find it terribly frustrating that no one's interested in two of the most exciting prog bands active today, just because they're from eastern Asia! I wish some act of God would catapult either Discus or (especially) Kenso into Prog Archives' Top 50. If you look at quality alone, they fully deserve to be there.

Well, just saw this thread now, and I agree that Discus is fantastic and quite complex.  I saw Kenso at Nearfest 2005, and while I thought their performance was fantastic, I didn't think they were anymore complex or challenging than more well known fusion outfits (though the less challenging.....for me, anyway....aspect probably helped me enjoy the show more).

Still, considering Frank Zappa wrote compositions on the Synclavier that were unplayable by human musicians (many of them, anyway) I think he gets the prize :-)  But were they music?  Hmm, opinions will certainly vary on that.  They were scored using musical notation, so I'm betting they were music even if a relatively few people will be able to hear it as such.  For the record, I'm not really one of those people.  But some of the pieces on Civilization Phase III are incredibly complex and intricate musical compositions.  Whether they are enjoyable or not depends more on your analytical music listening skills than on "gut feelings" or traditional concepts of melody and tempo.

I always felt Gentle Giant could win the most complex prog sweepstakes, but the more I've listened to them over the years, the more I've realized that the individual parts of each player are quite often not complex at all..........but the intertwining of each part (which are all either different, or off set rhythmically from the other parts) is what gives that impressive of extreme complexity.  But then, I suppose that makes the overall composition pretty complex.

In any case, complexity in music really depends on the listening skills of the listener, as well as the skills of the band members.  I'm sure Camel did some things in the 70's that they thought were quite complex at the time, but which Return To Forever would probably consider quite simple.

Atavachron wrote: fuxi wrote: I'm beginning to feel a little despondent. Whenever I mention Discus or Kenso in one of these threads, I get no response at all. People just carry on chatting about some of the more familiar (usually Anglo-Saxon) prog acts, such as VDGG, Gentle Giant or Zappa. Of course there's nothing wrong with any of their music, which I myself enjoy a great deal. It's pretty complex as well. I just find it terribly frustrating that no one's interested in two of the most exciting prog bands active today, just because they're from eastern Asia! I wish some act of God would catapult either Discus or (especially) Kenso into Prog Archives' Top 50. If you look at quality alone, they fully deserve to be there. I didn't  "chat on about some of the more familiar prog acts" Atavachron wrote: Unexpect's In a Flesh Aquarium is pretty intricate, also Dave Kermann's stuff and a little known Japanese band called Flat 122 ..and one of the bands I mentioned is Japanese  ...so HAH !!

HAH!!!!  hahhahaha..  you go David.

We can end this debate by all listening to Birds of Fire or Inner Mounting Flame by Mahavishnu Orchestra!

+Or Octopus, Free Hand, or In a Glass House!!!!

Shakespeare wrote: Japa-zeuhl is über complex.

Well the most complex bands that I like (i know there are some metal bands out there that are pretty insane, but i dont listen to them!) would be any of the following:

micky wrote: Or by listening to On the Third Day .. or Face the Music.

ELO? Their music is very layered in the studio, but as far as the music itself, not really.

keiser willhelm wrote: meshuggah. i dont, and probably will never be able to understand how they play those ployrythms in those insane time sigs with such mindblowing ease. they are always dead on!! surely they much lose count or rhythm sometime durring a live show? and yet, they dont. their song/EP "I' is incredibly complex. And  big nod to Behold. . . The Arctopus.

it is simply a matter of counting. when you study Indian percussion the first thing you learn is counting. in this video at about 2:05 and again at 6:13 Trilok Gurtu demonstrates the counting technique (though he keeps it simple there).
the Indian school of rhythms, the so-called "tala tarangini" is very complex; the basics of it are explained on the cover of the Embryo album "Life with the Karnataka College of Percussion" (which has an incredibly low rating, probably because the only 2 people rating it so far did not understand it at all; I have to review it), the technique can be heard in great detail on that album; the Karnataka College of percussion demonstrates it in all its complexity



Edited by BaldJean - March 06 2008 at 04:20

oops, I noted I forgot to post the link to the video I mentioned: here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQuD1DSkk8U
the passages I meant start at 2:05 and 6:13
by the way, at least parts of the video were shot in Cologne, where Friede and I live; you can see Katja and Mireille Labeque exiting from a subway station and get a good view of the Cologne cathedral there, an unmistakable building (which, by the way, was the highest building in the world before the Eiffeltower was built)


Edited by BaldJean - March 06 2008 at 05:16

Fuxi wrote :