Norwegian Prog

Great band and wonderful album that Blackbox. By far my favourite from the band up until now. I really dig how they managed to fuse gothic 80s music with a contemporary progressive expression alongside an odd but very interesting take on the Somewhere Over The Rainbow theme.

True. I'm blind. 

Blackbox is also by far my favorite Major Parkinson album, for the same reasons too.

Heard this album? Released on the same record label as many of the others (Rune) 

 

It seems that my favorite prog in recent years has been coming out of Norway. I discovered Wobbler back in 2007, with Hinterland, and the band just simply kept getting better and better through the years, culminating with From Silence to Somewhere. Tusmørke is another band I've discovered, I have all their albums except for the Spectral Haze split album from 2015. It's a bit strange to see them do a children's prog album with Bydyra, but there you go! Much better than Barney the Dinosaur, I have to say. I really get a kick of Krizla (Kristoffer Momrak) quoting Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" on flute on "Ekebergkongen" off Ført Bak Lyset. Jordsjø was something I discovered on Prog Archives, and coincidentally Breidablik (since they released a split cassette with Jordsjø called Songs from the Northern Wasteland). I went to Bandcamp and was just blown away by both of their music. Jordsjø released a limited edition double vinyl on Pancromatic simply called Jordsjø which compiled material from all their cassettes, except for Jord. I was lucky to get a copy, from a dealer via Discogs and that album rarely left my turntable for about a month. Music not unike Wobbler, Tusmørke and Änglagård, although "Hekseskogen" sounds just like Bo Hansson! Håkon Oftung, the brains behind Jordsjø appears on the new Tusmørke album Bydyra, playing guitar. Jordsjø has a deal with Karisma Records (not to be confused with the old UK Charisma of Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator fame) and Jørd will become available on CD soon. I was lucky to score a cassette of that, from Duplicate Records who still had a couple copies at the time I bought this. I knew that this band was going to graduate from limited edition demo cassettes to wider distribution. And for Breidablik, this is basically Berlin School style electronic music, although the Bandcamp page calls it the "Bergen School of Electronic Music", Bergen being the town Morten Birkeland Nielsen, the man behind Breidablik, hails from. I was able to purchase the Vinter cassettes from Bandcamp, and the LP of Penumbra through a dealer via Discogs. 

As for '70s Norwegian, I don't have a lot. I have the old 1990s CD reissue of Akasha, from 1977, reissued by Ad Perpetuam Memoriam from Sweden. The production, performance and sound quality is a bit amateurish, but it's a weird combination of space rock and symphonic prog with tons of Mellotron. I have a few Terje Rypdal albums (as they're not impossible to find as they're on ECM), but they're more fusion, but I really dig a lot of those moody atmospheres he creates like on Odyssey. I know there are others like Ruphus, Junipher Greene, Folque (more folk/folk rock), Prudence, Popol Vuh/Ace, Høst, Aunt Mary, and others.