Emulating Classic Prog Is Not Prog

Listening to new albums by the likes of Phideaux and The Watch, I begin to wonder if this is even prog at all.

Also, I've been looking for progressive rap krautrock, but have had no luck thus far.

Everyone has different ideas of prog. In the end it's all just music and a lot of people listen to it to enjoy it. Maybe it takes a bit more to entertain their brain than the casual radio listener but that doesn't mean by extension that they have heard everything that came before and are listening to it checking if it is brand new.

colorofmoney91 wrote: Also, I've been looking for progressive rap krautrock, but have had no luck thus far.

Have you heard Faust vs. Dalek?




Edited by A Person - April 20 2011 at 23:05

For me prog is that kind of music that I take few seconds to say "I like it". So Phideaux are prog and Coldplay are not.

All I can say is if you think Phideaux is a simple rehashing of 70s symphonic prog then you probably can't be helped.

The problem isn't the music, it's the label. Also, you guys are thinking progressive in the most literal sense which is ok. This is why I don't like the term progressive rock.  I like bands that have a certain sound that don't necessarily bring anything new to the table but I agree it's not progressive in the truest sense of the word.

What I don't understand then is the term proto prog. People often say that King Crimson's first album was the first true progressive rock album. Clearly there were progressive rock albums before it such as DOFP which was very progressive for it's time. It all gets a bit confusing. Prog rock vs progressive rock vs prog. Some people even use the big P prog and the little p prog.

There's nothing worse than a johnny-come-lately living off ideas/structures/tones from decades past. Unfortunately, this is the accursed mark of the modern age. The only reasonable thing we can do is to not grant these thieves  attention or money; starve them out and continue to the real innovators from the now-gone Golden Age!

I have somewhat of a classification for these "emulating" artists:

*Some groups start where the classic prog groups left off during the late 70s and then progress from there (sort of a "what if?" situation)...examples? Anglagard, Echolyn, Wobbler, Beardfish

*Others just try to sound like their favorite bands but making something completely new (sort of "what if Gabriel never left Genesis") and I still consider them to be slightly progressive because they try to take off where these bands they are trying to emulate ended their careers (and they don't try to repeat "Selling England by the Pound")... examples: Glass Hammer, The Flower Kings.

*There are some that trying to be different just take pieces of inspiration from 70s groups and glue them together. Examples: Phideaux, Manning.

*Others just take the sound of the classics and blends it with other genres, mainly pop and world music. This makes them more original, some more than others but still original. Examples: Mars Hollow, Lunatic Soul, MoeTar.

*At the end we have others that are what I would call "regressive": they want to re-do "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" or "Close to the Edge"... or worse, they want to simplify them. This ends with mixed results but most of the time we have bands that can't measure up to the standard of the groups they want to emulate or the music is too dull (at least for me). Examples: I would say most Neo-Prog (especially Marillion).

There are works from every one of these points that I enjoy and others that I don't... but, for me, the music that comes from the last classification is the most likely to be dull (I do like Marillion's Script for a Jester's Tear and some of Quidam's output, for example)....

Edited by ProgressiveAttic - April 21 2011 at 00:40

For most of us progressive rock is perceived as being a mind-set, for the rest of the world it's a genre in which bands mentioned fit perfectly. This is no debate, this is a linguistical problem.