Late Bloomers/Second Wind

I rarely dig new releases from the old dinosaurs. About 90% of what I hear old bands turn out can be reduced to 2 things for me: sonic tiredness prolonged to keep the wheels go round and a general unimaginative approach to making music. 

Guldbamsen wrote: Then there are those rare bands that somehow never get stale. They keep pushing the limits and evolving their sound. Here I'm specifically thinking of two Norwegian bands - Ulver and Motorpsycho respectively. Both acts seem right on the edge of "hip" and "cool" to the young music fans out there - kids that probably were in their diapers, or momma's internal handbag, around the time they started out. Yet whenever either of these bands release something new, you'll see countless of teens from around the world write grammatically challenged odes.

Mascodagama wrote: Guldbamsen wrote: Then there are those rare bands that somehow never get stale. They keep pushing the limits and evolving their sound. Here I'm specifically thinking of two Norwegian bands - Ulver and Motorpsycho respectively. Both acts seem right on the edge of "hip" and "cool" to the young music fans out there - kids that probably were in their diapers, or momma's internal handbag, around the time they started out. Yet whenever either of these bands release something new, you'll see countless of teens from around the world write grammatically challenged odes.     If you take Ulver and Motorpycho as examples you could speculate that this has something to do with the musicians keeping themselves fresh by continually collaborating with new people, either in the band context or outside of it.  I think AKA Moon would be another instance of this.   It probably helps for such a collaborative approach if you've got a flourishing local scene that is full of people with similar (or nicely contrasting) musical interests, providing a ready source of musical bedmates. Norway seems to have that in spades!

You might be onto something there Simon. Norway, in particular, has seen a multitude of new progressive bands during the last 15 years or so - many of whom do a little gang-banging outside of their respective groups.
It also helps being open to new frontiers - new venues of sound. Ulver fx started out as a black metal band for then to embrace folk, post rock, ambient, electronic/IDM and now with their latest something akin to Krautrock - Ulver-style that is.

I'd say Dream Theater fits the bill with their latest.  After all of their years and all of their albums, they have arrived with a double concept album created for music theater.  And despite all of the naysayers, I know I am right, because every long-term fan that I know seems to hate the new album because it is apparently not what they want from their Dream Theater album.    Now take that in your daddy prog pipe and smoke it.

Pendragon.  I prefer their last three albums over their first seven.

I was pleasantly surprised by Jean-Michel Jarre's 2015 album Electronica 1: The Time Machine. While there were certain tracks I disliked, I enjoyed the bulk of the album. As was mentioned earlier, collaborations seemed to have helped getting the creative juices flowing.

rushfan4 wrote: I'd say Dream Theater fits the bill with their latest.  After all of their years and all of their albums, they have arrived with a double concept album created for music theater.  And despite all of the naysayers, I know I am right, because every long-term fan that I know seems to hate the new album because it is apparently not what they want from their Dream Theater album.    Now take that in your daddy prog pipe and smoke it.

well GAWD damn... that sounds like an album I might like..

wait..  *slams head into table*

ok... better now.  I'm sure it still sucks.. even if it is different

I've always preferred new material from older artists. To me the old veterans are more hungry to take things to new places because they've already tread so much ground. I'd suggest Henry Kaiser as older fellow still pouring out fresh stuff; from tortured avant guitar on Lake Monsters (with Sandy Ewen) to histrionic leads alongside classical keyboards on Ultraviolet Licorice (with Bob Bralove) to the Rock and Jazz intermingling on The Celestial Squid (with Ray Russell) to the Prog candy of Invisible Rays (with Morgen Ågren and Trey Gunn) to the dual randomly timed delay trick he uses on Requia and Other Improvisations for Guitar Solo making him sound like more than one person playing. He improvises everything, so it never sounds stale. I'm not sure what hip is nowadays, but I'd say he dabbles in hip with his use of bit crusher type distortion he uses on the track, March of the Wind Potatoes, off Ultraviolet Licorice (a wee bit to my chagrin, since I don't really care for bit crushers, but what the hey).

Swans best stuff is their latest stuff.     I would argue that Black Sabbath's 13 and IQ's Road of Bones in a way, both qualify.  

Mellotron Storm wrote: I agree Bamsen about being disappointed by far with most older band's new releases, 90% would probably be close. YES is a good example but there's lots. CIRCLE's new one blew me away, a fresh sound from a band who's released something like 30 albums(approx.). I'm about to review KOMARA's debut and will mention that this could have been what KING CRIMSON's latest sounded like. Of course Pat on drums for both bands is the connection. That Bruford quote about "when you want to hear what music is going to sound like in the future, you put on a King Crimson album" sure didn't hold true for their latest but KOMARA showed what could have been.

Edited by Guldbamsen - February 22 2016 at 09:48