The Stranglers - Prog?

I am a bit of a Stranglers fan (along side prog rock bands) and have always found albums like 'Black and White, 'The Raven' and 'The Men in Black' to be very experimental, even progressive.  Definately not punk!

Just wondered what others think?

hemmick reef wrote: I am a bit of a Stranglers fan (along side prog rock bands) and have always found albums like 'Black and White, 'The Raven' and 'The Men in Black' to be very experimental, even progressive.  Definately not punk! Just wondered what others think?

You more or less repeat what I said in this post:
http://www.progarchives.com/forum/edit_post.asp?PID=1835636& amp;PN=0&TPN=3

Certainly prog inspired..

Good musicians who wrote very original sounding music. I've seen them live (with Hugh Cornwell) but I only have a few of their albums. I have 'No More Heroes' 'Aural Sculpture' and 'All Live & all of the Night' (I was at that gig! ) I want to get some more Stranglers..

Reccomendations please 

Although fully punk by their attitude, the stranglers were a bit rejected by other punk group by being suspect because they had a KB player (noticably older too) , sporting mustaches, and slightly more complex tunes. But to call them prog is taking things a bit too far, IMHO!!

I'd say they were more of a pub rock band a bit like Dr Feelgood

Their french bassist JJ Burnell was always picking fights, too!

Among the other suspect groups were The Police with a jazz bassist, a prog drummer ans an ex-hippie guitarist, Outlandos D'Amour was an outstanding album. The Jam were sometimes complex , but in their later days - The Gift

Edited by Sean Trane

^ Can you define polyphony?

to blacksword - try their first two - Rattus Norvegicus and No More Heroes, and also the live "Stranglers and Friends live at concert". especially listen to "Down in the Sewer" from their first album. if the Stranglers were ever prog for a few minutes, it's in this song.

No.

Great band, but not a prog band. If the Stranglers were to be included, there would be little justification for the exclusion of 50-100 other late 70s-early 80 acts.

From the entry on polyphony in Wikipedia:

Polyphony is a musical texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony).

The term is usually used in reference to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance: Baroque forms such as the fugue which might be called polyphonic are usually described instead as contrapuntal. Also, as opposed to the species terminology of counterpoint, polyphony was generally either "pitch-against-pitch"/"point-against-point" or "sustained-pitch" in one part with melismas of varying lengths in another (van der Werf, 1997). In all cases the conception was likely what Margaret Bent (1999) calls "dyadic counterpoint", with each part being written generally against one other part, with all parts modified if needed in the end. This point-against-point conception is opposed to "successive composition", where voices were written in an order with each new voice fitting into the whole so far constructed, which was previously assumed.

Two treatises, both dating from c. 900, are usually considered the oldest surviving part-music though they are note-against-note, voices move mostly in parallel octaves, fifths, and fourths, and they were not intended to be performed. The 'Winchester Tropers', from c. 1000, are the oldest surviving example of practical rather than pedagogical polyphony, though intervals, pitch levels, and durations are often not indicated. (van der Werf, 1997)

The oldest surviving piece of six-part music is the English rota Sumer is icumen in (ca. 1240). (Albright, 2004)

Incipient polyphony (previously primitive polyphony) includes antiphony and Call and response (music), drones, and parallel intervals.

I only partially concur with this definition though; seperating fugues and the usage of counterpoint from polyphony is splitting hairs; the usage of counterpoints is only a more refined technique of polyphony. Johann Sebastian Bach undoubtedly was the grandmaster of counterpoint (and hence of polyphony too).

You must not confuse "polyphony" with "pseudo-polyphony". The latter uses two or more different voices too; the difference, however, is that in the latter these voices are NOT independent of each other and essentially rely on mere chord progression. Pseudo-polyphony indeed often occurs in prog-rock; real polyphony is very rare. Gentle Giant and High Tide are examples for bands who use real polyphony, also Frank Zappa occasionally. Zappa is sometimes very complex and even occasionally uses polytonality (2 or more different scales at the same time).


Edited by BaldFriede

BaldFriede wrote: You must not confuse "polyphony" with "pseudo-polyphony". The latter uses two or more different voices too; the difference, however, is that in the latter these voices are NOT independent of each other and essentially rely on mere chord progression. Pseudo-polyphony indeed often occurs in prog-rock; real polyphony is very rare. Gentle Giant and High Tide are examples for bands who use real polyphony, also Frank Zappa occasionally. Zappa is sometimes very complex and even occasionally uses polytonality (2 or more different scales at the same time).

Why do you have only four stars (collaborator), when i'ts obvious that you know prog music better than everyone on progarchives?