Only 14

King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard - Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava (very solid, but I prefer the other two Gizztober albums)

Tangerine Dream - Raum (mostly a pleasant surprise)

Weserbergland - Sacrae Symphoniae nr. 1 (pretty great)

+ I consider DOMi & JD Beck - Not Tight a modern jazz fusion album - and spectacular

I think I'll check out the RIO/Avant albums + Breidablik, Crippled Black Phoenix, Godzilla and a few more - but none of the Neo, Symphonic or Metal releases. Life's too short.

^ Not in PA I love these ten:

billy woods - Aethiopes
Weyes Blood - And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow
Silvana Estrada - Marchita

The Comet is Coming - Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam
DOMi & JD Beck - Not Tight

Black Flower - Magma

Shabaka - Afrikan Culture

Little Simz - NO THANK YOU

Chip Wickham - Cloud 10

Natalia Lafourcade - De Todas Las Flores

-and a handful more, patchier ones

Listen ... as in COMPLETE!

6

Partial, because a lot of it was on the tube or bandcamp or something, then at least 10 to 12 more should be added. That means about 20.

I like to hear the whole thing, and make the determination of it all then. So, a lot of the material that showed up in pieces, I did not get to listen to a whole lot. 

I am in the process of listening to some of these things, although I have to say that I'm not a great fan of a lot of the re-hashes, by older bands ... there are not many that I end up enjoying, and even the likes of Peter Hammill and VdGG has not escaped this event. Still good, but not as strong, and it shows that age has hurt just a wee bit.

One other small detail ... the availability of some of these things is difficult ... and that hurts the music. I wanted to get The Rome Pro(g)jet cd ... good luck to me! With all those names, the album is buried in nowhere land ... very sad! I would say that about one third to a fourth are not distributed regularly ... and while this should not be the main detail for PA, it should be considered. I find it scary, weird and strange, that so much of this material listed here is showcased, and it's impossible to get.

Hi Pedro, you're right about some stuff being hard to find on CD. Or even in samples so we can listent to it before buying. But I'm always doing my best to get the CD's of albums I like. So I often order from obscure online shops... or directly from the artists.

In the case of The Rome Pro(g)jet, I think you can/should buy it from http://www.vincenzoricca.it/?product=v-compendium-of-a-lifetime-2022" rel="nofollow - Vincenzo's store . And pretty much all of his album is available to listen on his https://www.youtube.com/@vincenzoricca1495/videos" rel="nofollow - Youtube page .

I don't listen to prog as predominantly these days as I used to, so my roundup on this list:

Hellfire - black midi (Awesome, in my opinion the clear cut prog album of the year. I don't think it is flawless, Half Time has no purpose outside of strictly scaring the sh*t out of me, but man you got to commend these guys for not only being so popular despite making such outlandish, abrasive and infernus music. And for also, in my eyes, doing the best job of moving progressive music into the 2020s with every album they release)

King Gizz:

Ice Death Planets - My favorite of the trilogy, incredibly lively, energetic, well structured and elaborate acid rock jamming

Laminated Denim - Probably my second favorite prog album of the year. Two longform yet concise Krautrock/Space Rock influenced jams with all sorts of cool polyrhythmic fun

Changes - Really unique record, one I enjoy a lot, especially the long form and Gentle Giant infused title track "Change" as well as the bouncy and space lounge tinged "Hate Dancin"

Omnium Gatherum - The Dripping Tap is my favorite song they've ever done, but I found a lot of the rest of the record to be a bit of a safe grab bag of songs from the band. A lot of solid tracks from, but very few spectacular songs.

Motorpsycho - Ancient Astronauts (Pretty solid jammy, noisy heavy psych. Nothing they've done since The All is One has really grabbed me and I think I'd benefit from more listens of this one)

Black Country - Ants From Up There (Some really good songs here, Concorde especially. But I think on average, the album, themes and performances are a little too melodramatic for me. And I think Snow Globes is a pretty weak song taking up a good chunk of the album)

Porcupine Tree - Closure Continuation (Kind of middle of the road and forgettable. I think there's good moments, and I wouldn't even really single out a song as bad, but I just find that as a whole the songwriting strikes me as underwhelming and this album kind of fell right off the radar for me mere days out of it's release and overly long-winded roll out.)

Voivod - Synchro Anarchy (A surprisingly strong late career record from the band, full of those wacky, off-kilter riffs we know them for. Not an overly ground shaking statement, but I remember digging this one quite a bit.)

To be honest that's about all the prog I listened to this year. I'm not really at all interested in Neo Prog or certain types of modern prog bands (Flower Kings, Marillion, Karfagen) so if anyone has recommendations from this list of records I should check out please send them my way. I've been out of the loop, here's some other albums from this year I enjoyed

Soul Glo - Diaspora Problems (Hardcore Punk)

Beach House - Once Twice Melody (Dream Pop)

Alvvays - Blue Rev (Indie/Shoegaze)

Immolation - Acts of God (Death Metal)

The Smile - A Light For Attracting Attention (Alternative Rock)

Billy Woods - Aethiopes (Abstract Hip Hop)

JID - The Forever Story (Southern Hip Hop)

Kikagaku Moyo - Kumoyo Island (Psychedelic Rock/Raga Rock)

Denzel Curry - Melt My Eyez See Your Future (Southern Hip Hop)

Animal Collective - Time Skiffs (Neo Psych)

Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain (Indie Folk)

Nas - Kings Disease III (Hardcore Hip Hop) 

Hi,

Neither has the CD ... now I'm curious ... how can someone review these things when they are not available to anyone else?

Very scary thought, and here was a thread on people cheating and creating fake rankings!

I'm thinking that for a band to be reviewed, it should have a CD out ... not hidden, either! 

Just like some other places I know, they get some promos, and Guy Guden sure gets them, so far ahead it isn't funny! But, in the end, I gave up ... there are other things I would like to get and fighting just to find one of them, is not worth the time anymore when you are 72. So, goodbye Pro(g)jet ... the list is 100 albums long, so finding something else of interest should be much easier! The hard part is that obviously some of the folks in that album do not seem to care enough about what they did ... otherwise, it would be seen and heard a lot more. 

I don't get your point. The last Rome Pro(G)ject CD is available on the artist store (and other places) and you can listen to 90% of the album on Youtube. Isn't that enough?

That's half of what I bought..... Most of what I streamed was not my taste, even the harder stuff was just meh for me.

I'm boring too....

Great to see you here again, Doug! Did you end up listening to the new Snarky Puppy release? I think it's another stellar release in an already strong discography.

Hi Doug,

You should check Barrdo:  https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=12296" rel="nofollow - https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=12296

Their last album(s) are so good, and very eclectic. I'm talking about Équivoques vol. 1 and vol. 2, both released in 2022.

Just follow the Bandcamp links on each album page.

To be honest, there's maybe two or three from this past year (other than Marillion or PT) that I bought but haven't listened to yet. Those would be Lobate Scarp, Moon Letters and Born (I think that's it). LS didn't even make this list and neither did ML I don't think.

Edit: Oh yeah, the latest TFK too. I'm behind on their last several albums. The last one I heard was Desolation Rose. Lol.