Discovering more obscure prog rock

 

For fans of airbag (Norwegian band in the ilk of Pink Floyd) here is the solo album from the lead guitarist (Bjorn Riis - Lullabies in a car crash). Very impressive and polished, great guitar work. I like this one better than previous airbag albums. Definitely a recommended listen if you like the music I have been posting in this thread.

 

Speaking of Pink Floyd (and not so obscure), the latest album doesn't overly float my boat but the following track is OK (Bjorn's solo effort is better IMO)

 

Fish on Friday (a little more alt-rock than prog rock but quite listenable)

 

Here is one from no-man from the album Together We're Strangers. I have a number of their albums but for some reason I missed this one, and it is one of their best. Lots of atmosphere and somewhat similar to Steve Wilson/PT.

 

Presto Ballet (Piece Amongst the Ruins) from 4 years back

 

IZZ should have a new album out soon. The last one was very good, here is a track:

 

Lunatic Soul (from the front man of Riverside) has a new album out, full of atmosphere and features high on my repeat playlist - worth investigating further

 

iamthemorning also have a new album out, belighted. Here is a track quite different to the old material, heavier (the rest of the album is softer, more classical orientated but still prog rock). Definitely worth a listen (especially for the talented lead vocalist Marjana Semkina).

 

Yet another new release - The Pineapple Thief, Magnolia. This album is up with best of their discography and another recommended listen.

 

Lastly and not least, the new album from Opeth, Damnation, which I find is more consistent than their previous few releases.

 

Hope you enjoy these tracks as much as I do. Please do suggest and post other perhaps more obscure prog artists along the same vein as the music I have been posting. Thanks!

 

 

Thanks for the heads up...I'll listen to them today.

Robert Erdesz - also interesting prog folk.

 

Here are a couple more found this week:

 

This one is quite obscure, similar to Porcupine Tree

block out a full day of your life.

Go to RIO/Avant.

Go through the entire list. Give every single band about 2-5 minutes of your time. Write down all the ones that truly interest you. Go back to that list. Give each band on that list about a half hour of your time. The ones that stick with you, write those down now. Suddenly you have a new list of insane great bands that very few people on this planet care about. :)

 

That is why I'm posting some of the 'gems' I have discovered in this thread to make it easier for others to discover, and thanks to those doing the same thing (embedding youtube clips helps also, just a click away to sample a new tune). I do find amazing the diversity of recommendations, to be frank only about 20% have an appeal to me - but I suppose life would be dull if everyone had the same tastes. But still 20% is great and I have added significantly to my playlist based on recommendations on this site (& progressiveears).

 

Other useful resources I use is progstreaming, and I have posted earlier about a german guy who reviews literally hundreds of new prog releases each month (in English) with commentary about style, similarity to other artists etc. with links that make it easy to sample. It is a great archive going back 4 years also. http://newprogreleases.blogspot.de/.

 

I don't get much joy from streaming sites like Pandora and Spotify that have 'radio stations' where they automatically queue up supposedly similar bands, although I am a big Spotify user due to the convenience and massive catalogue (and I do buy CDs / paid downloads as well). I have a huge prog playlist on Spotify that I have curated over the years, basically when using Spotify to hop around sampling tunes if I hear a tune I like the first impressions of (and some tunes only get about 20 seconds!) I save it to the playlist then after a while come back to the playlist and listen to these songs a couple of times over a day or two, and the ones that I end up liking more get saved to my regular playlist and get listened to long term.

 

If you are interested and use spotify, here is Spotify link to the playlist where I save the first impression samples: Prog Rock (large collection here), and here is the favourites playlist: Starred (also some alt-rock, post rock & chillout). You will notice the vast majority of the music is from the last 10 years with a bias to melodic and dark/moody but a good mix of soft to hard/metal.

 

Do post your favourite ways of discovering new (or not so new) prog tunes, and what resources like blogs and forums you use.

It's just that there are some members who use slow internet connections, and when pages start to have this many vids included, it then takes a year to load.

Thanks