Any other examples?

Well, here's a few for you, although as you can imagine on a site like this, it's all been said before...

BJH: after Woolly's departure; you could feel the stripped down nature of the melodies from 'Eyes' onwards.. (1979)

Greenslade: Time & Tide...  (1975)

Eloy: Metromania: A much harsher, guitar led sound which for me still worked, but it wasn't really Eloy.. (1984)

Camel: The structural simplicity started with Rain Dances, but had become overwhelming by I Can See You House (1979)

Renaissance: Azure d'Or is the last one I can listen to...

Curved Air: Held it together until Copeland joined...

ELO: Eldorado - good... Face The Music - Pop...

Abacab definitely counts. I've only heard it a couple of times, but I didn't think it was terrible. Couldn't tell you which tracks, if any, stood out to me as decent though.

Love Beach doesn't count IMO. It's a desperate grab for commercial relevance, certainly, but in more of an AOR vein - it's a couple of years too early to jump on the new wave bandwagon. Emerson Lake and Powell is a slightly better fit, but beyond some of Keith's synth choices, that album's pretty much business as usual for an ELP record.

Grab for commercial relevance? Really? We know now that the album was a contractual obligation. Emerson especially was miserable during the creation of that album. No one should be surprised of the final result knowing that. 

As for ELPowell, I don't think it's new-wave at all.  

Cristi wrote: As for ELPowell, I don't think it's new-wave at all.

Agreed. All I was saying was that Keith deploys some harsher 80s synth sounds on that record, so it inches slightly closer to that territory than Love Beach, which isn't New Wave in the slightest. Either way I don't see it as in line with the albums in my original post.

Robert Fripp's League Of Gentlemen project would be a good contender, although it might be more post-punk than new wave

Out of these I think that only Metromania fits well, as New Wave is really not soft pop. I'd expect New Wave influenced things to have a certain edge. Discipline has that for sure, Camera Camera has it, too, but in a strange, very "un-new wavish" manner (similarly A; Under Wraps is much more New Wave), Azure D'Or doesn't have it at all, neither the Camel nor BJH material at the time. Drama maybe less than 90125, but these are interesting cases. Abacab is debatable, too. Eloy had changed their sound already to some extent for Colours, then once more for Performance, but only taking up very faint hints at New Wave. 

Animals and The Wall are, by the way, quite a bit more gritty than WYWH and DSOTM, and may fit here, too.

New wave and the mix of new wave and prog seems to date back as far as 1971 with the duo Sparks (then Halfnelson). As prog waned and catchier post-punk with pop hooks emerged many prog bands joined suit. In addition to the examples already presented were:

Cos - Swiß Chalet (1979)

Confusional Quartet - s/t (1980)

The Edge - Square 1 (1980)

Machiavel - New Lines (1980)

Merlin - s/t (1980)

Super Freego - Pourquoi es-tu si méchant? (1982)

In addition Rush's synthpop albums like "Signals" are considered prog new wave as well as the trilogy of KC albums. Keep in mind new wave was the pop cousin of post-punk so i agree that soft rock and just pop doesn't qualify. Many bands like Banco, Renaissance, Yes and countless others flirted with new wave for an album or two. Some were more successful than others.

EDIT - sorry obviously didn't stop to read the posts carefully enough!

This thread caused me to obsess over new wave prog so i just made a list of every possible candidate i could find!

Check it out :)

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/new-wave-post-prog-a-strange-chimeric-beast/" rel="nofollow - https://rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/new-wave-post-prog-a-strange-chimeric-beast/

I second these suggestions!

Mmmaaybe... I mean 'New wave' is an interesting way of framing that period for Prog, and yeah in a way Discipline, A, Drama and the others mentioned have a suggestion of NW to the extent that it was a definable genre (which it wasn't really).   "New World" is closer to what prog artists faced in the '80s , and some handled it better than others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno_discography" rel="nofollow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno_discography

As has been said, Rush with albums like Grace Under Pressure.

I don't think 3 qualifies. That's a forgettable platter of sappy pop rock.

Hi,

Not sure about this much, at least from some of the early albums that are not new wave at all and are very, very prog with mechanics in the music that most prog bands are not even associated with, due to their commercial branding!

But considering Brian "New Wave" is kinda silly ... the folks at New Age stores disliked Eno a heck of a lot, and one of these folks here in Portland, even stated that she refused to carry anything with his name! I guess it didn't support that image of the fairy and women ... like so much of their junk!

I don't see how Eno is new-wave 

He's not! He's art pop, ambient and experimental rock. Likewise i could never understand why Roxy Music is considered prog :/

You're right. I forgot to put Saga on my list. They were definitely both in the 80s.

And added!

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/new-wave-post-prog-a-strange-chimeric-beast/" rel="nofollow - https://rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/new-wave-post-prog-a-strange-chimeric-beast/

well, yeas, obviously. 

I'd posit that he invented new wave, along with Fripp.  He started this with Roxy Music.  

From Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Out_%28magazine%29" rel="nofollow - Far Out  magazine cited the  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avant-rock" rel="nofollow - avant-rock  music of  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Beefheart" rel="nofollow - Captain Beefheart  as laying "the groundwork for  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-punk" rel="nofollow - post-punk , new wave, and  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_wave" rel="nofollow - no wave , allowing the likes of  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno" rel="nofollow - Brian Eno  and  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie" rel="nofollow - David Bowie  to pick up from where Beefheart had left off".

so Captain Beefheart laid the groundwork for post-punk before even punk existed?! 

I get it Roxy Music and Bowie were an influence on new wave and 80s music in general, but Brian Eno solo?! Can you give me an example. Eno was one of the creators for electronic music/ambient but new-wave? I don't know 

The Residents have always been pretty new wavish. Peter Hammill was well appreciated in the 1980s and it is clear why - he went in a similar direction already with Nadir's Big Chance and had transparent edgy song writing on the late 70s/early 80s albums; he wasn't exactly influenced by new wave I'd say, rather he created his own new wave (as did Residents).

Holger Czukay's Way to the Peak of Normal takes up some hints, more obviously on Biomutanten, and Full Circle and Snake Charmer, where he collaborated with post punk icon Jah Wobble. On the more poppy side, even Novalis and Anyone's Daughter threw in some contemporary influences on their 80s albums.

Of course we're not here talking about bands such as Japan, This Heat, Cardiacs, who started at the time, but these are absolutely worth a listen for those few here who don't know them already.

What a fun mix of supreme and cringeworthy! I think some of those I just named would well qualify for being there.

^ i totally agree that Eno was a precursor to new wave as was Bowie and all those bands like the Stooges that are now considered proto-punk however i never thought of him as new wave himself because new wave refers to a branch of punk rock that took a more melodic route somewhere around 1977 at the earliest.

The term also refers to a period of time that featured a range of genres ranging from synthpop and power pop to pub rock, 2 Tone, ska, progressive pop and new romantic. Since Bowie had albums like Let's Dance come out during that era he does qualify but Eno's albums from that era were pretty much limited to ambient and electronic.

New Wave is one of those fuzzy nebulous terms many will never fully agree on.

Indeed, as well as Aussie phenoms "Icehouse."  

Eno was a true musical pioneer, and he laid the groundwork for "new wave," whatever the hell THAT is!  (I hate all of these arbitrary definitions, music is a continuum).  

He was also a force in the reactionary "No Wave" movement!! 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_wave" rel="nofollow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_wave

Peter Gabriel's So is a fantastic new wave album. It has all the sophistication of stuff from early Genesis to the more poppy sounds of the times. Highly recommend.

I have to agree!

siLLy puPPy wrote: New Wave is one of those fuzzy nebulous terms many will never fully agree on.

That's because there is no such style--  It was just a name given to a period that didn't have a generic term.  

Peter Gabriel's So is not New Wave or rock or Pop.   It is it's own genre.

What the OP means in subtext is 'who got the punk memo?' . Most did in fact and just about everyone dropped the expansive indulgent prog to go more to the point. 

Some got the memo before it came out. Peter Gabriel certainly did but I think that was largely a necessity to distance himself from Genesis. He kind of got lucky on that one but nevertheless PG1 is a superb album in my estimation.

What about Hawkwind? I'm not a fan particularly except of Quark Strangeness and Charm which felt like it could easily have come out in 1980-1983 rather than 1977.

richardh wrote: 'New Wave' was just any new bands that came out post punk so the idea of 'prog goes new wave' is impossible. ...

Hi,

My thoughts are that "New Wave" an idea, rather than a reality. Progressive/Prog had already established itself by its very high individuality, which the New Wave folks did not like ... the sort of thing that suggests "ego" up front ... as if you didn't see that in the stores and in the cheap music and the fake hip dresses a few years later.

I do think, in a weird sort of way, that prog has gone "new wave" in terms that it has become a bit of a joke and not real ... individuality nowadays means a guitarist in DT going on by himself, and the band is secondary ... and while that is something that was a point for the "progressive" folks, it is not how the "progressive" folks like to describe themselves. It's difficult to not think of Steve Howe going nuts on "Relayer" and then we not wanting to compare it to these days what DT has done in the past 5/10 years.

It hasn't gone "new wave" and never did, but it did go ... pop ... more pop ... phd pop! Besides "new wave" is just a word for folks that don't like music anyway!

richardh wrote: ... What about Hawkwind? I'm not a fan particularly except of Quark Strangeness and Charm which felt like it could easily have come out in 1980-1983 rather than 1977. ...

By the time of QSC I'm not sure that Hawkwind, had given up on the big trips. It was thought that Dave Brock was having problems with the inconsistent drumming, and seeing Ginger Baker show up for a fun show, was interesting, but it made that album much better, even though it still was no longer a trip band, just a song band, although the songs were not exactly just 3 minutes. I've had the thought that if they had tripped out to 15/20 minutes, that GB might have enjoyed it more, but instead he went on to say "the worst little r&r band in the world" ... which was kinda sad. I don't think of Hawkwind as that bad, I tend to reserve that to many punk bands and another handful, but the point was that it was just songs, and I think that GB was more interested in something else than just songs!

I like the Hawkwind trip band, and when they did "The Electric Tepee" and then "It Is The Business ... " thier "trip" was back, but it had taken on a more ambient form, (specially "Business"), though TET was a massive hard rocker, more along the lines of what we used to call "acid rock" ... which, surprisingly enough not many Hawkwind folks like these two albums ... they are excellent, and for my thoughts, they are the last two great albums by Hawkwind ... after that, just too many redos and not enough value for the work in my book ... I really think that not having Nik, or Calvert around made a huge difference as they were both more literate and educated in order to help make the band more creative and experimental, something they lost altogether.

I, personally, do not like the idea, or thoughts that "prog went new wave" ... basically it went along with all the commercial activity, which we should have expected to continue and maintain some control over a lot of the music, until the 90's when independent moves changed the scenery, along with the Internet.

Nowadays, for my tastes, even though I dislike the expression, prog is almost all new wave in that it has very little, if anything new ... and these folks still have not figured out that the same old setup is tired and new adventures need to be undertaken, but most musicians at 20 these days, only have an elementary education about music, and the likelihood that they might see a bigger picture, where they could place themselves, is not likely to happen ... too involved with the idea that they must be liked by their fans and such so they can sell ... you really think that original progressive bands sat around and thought about their fans? ... NO ... they went and studied and developed their music instead, which most progressive applying bands these days are not capable of doing. I kinda, sorta, have this idea that the next progressive experience will not have a drummer with a snare drum, or a screaming guitar, and that instead we're gong to hear a duet between a flute and a violin, that would rival some stuff that we have heard before ... to be "progressive", the band has to change/challenge the ideas that time has provided ... and it has been so for many years in the history of music, except rock music, that continues living in the past ... where everything that can be done, has already been done!!! (Per Ian, btw, on the Rick Wakeman special)

At the time that was true but the term NEW WAVE has since been used to refer to bands that exuded a punk attitude within the context of various genres such as synthpop, pub rock, new romantic, 2Tone ska, etc.

As far as Gabriel is concerned, the prior two self-titled albums were / are considered NEW WAVE due to a connection with post-punk but by the time So came out the punk aspects had been extinguished and it was just simply art rock.

I'd say it's more the reverse--   at the time 'new wave' was considered a kind of post-punk which of course it wasn't anymore than punk was considered post-prog except in a purely socio-musical sense.   But now I'd have to say NW is more nebulous, less defined, and more era-oriented.