I was listening to an album today that I haven't listened to in years and it made me think about this subject.  I can't think of any band with a more progressive release than Cynic's - Focus in the 90's.  I would argue that if that album was released today it would be well ahead of its time.

 

Just listen to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3XV5SeUBWE" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3XV5SeUBWE

 

I could be wrong as I am not the authority around here.  There are many people on this site with MUCH more knowledge than me.  If I am wrong please send me a list of stuff to listen to.  I'm intrigued.

 

DAN

FLOWER

KINGS

:)

Fisherman's Friend for you, my boy!

Actually, I think I might agree with this. Plus TFK, of course.

I know what you mean. Neurosis was and is metal, but ever since they made Souls at Zero - they´ve, inadvertently perhaps, pushed the boundaries of what metal use to be - and therefor they are also pioneers in that aspect. But I don´t think any of their fans would call them prog So they are progressive and they play rock, but are not prog? Hhhmmm - all I know is that they belong on this site, but these things are bound to happen when the progressive spirit is to be found outside of the conventional ones - like say the formula going back to the early 70s. 

Progressive music became something different in the 80s. Take Dead Can Dance and their masterpiece Within the Realm of a Dying Sun. That album has always been considered to be a classic of Darkwave or what some call Ethereal Wave, but inside PA DCD is listed for their later albums where they infused a lot of strange percussion and folk world music. Within the Realm of a Dying Sun still sounds far more progressive(at least to these ears), and certainly when you think about what had come before, which was nothing. It was truly unique in that sense, but it was never about rock n roll.   

I lived in England for a good bit of that time period, everyone was ga-ga over Oasis as I recall.  I DID see Bis when they launched, they were not a bit progressive but they had a damn fine stage presence & take-no-prisoners sound!   1994 most likely (Exeter gig, "Cavern Club").

My favorite albums from the 1990s:

OK Computer - Radiohead

The Soft Bulletin - Flaming Lips (5th place)

The Mollusk - Ween (2nd place)

Dirt - Alice in Chains (3rd place)

Dummy - Portishead

Endtroducing - DJ Shadow

Streets - Savatage

I See a Darkness - Will Oldham

Bone Machine - Tom Waits (1st place)

Mule Variations - Tom Waits

Weld - Neil Young

The Good Son - Nick Cave

Promised Land - Queensryche (4th place)

Time out of Mind - Bob Dylan

Clouds Taste Metallic - Flaming Lips

Painkiller - Judas Priest

Solaris-Martian Chronicles

Solaris-1990

Anglagard..of course

 

 

so this

 

 

to this

 

to this

 

 

 

is probably one of the most progressive leaps in one genre in both innovation and evolution, from an interesting rave act to become the today best selling act in electronica, is quite impressive, and it tooke them 7 years...

Here you imply that progressive is a style, but I think we should save that adjective to describe something that makes progress from some previous standpoint. Radiohead weren't prog rock (which is a style) in the 90's, but they were very progressive.

OTOH, alternative rock is a style, but there is no such thing as alternative rock, because it should be an alternative for something else, and that means all rock music is alternative because it is an alternative to something else... 

And to go further, there is no such thing as experimental music...

I don´t know Agi - I think in terms of originality the 2 first albums blow fat of the land out of the ball park. By 96-97 there was huge number of artists who were meshing all kinds of musics into the electronic genre. I see what you mean though, because in regards to the prog world, this is the record that introduces psychedelic aspirations - as well as far more instruments. Narayan and Mindfields both dabble in "prog" as in what we hear on this site - whereas early Prodigy was another thing altogether.

The debut and Jilted are my faves from them - and those two records also cemented them as something pretty unique, which was electronic art punk with a dance flavor. They still have that image, just look at their latest couple of releases.

The term "experimental" refers to something that results from an experiment. The only way to make experimental music would be to create sounds/silence/rhythms/pauses etc. by total randomness, but to do that you have to make the decision to create music that way. Then making this "experiment" has become a composing method, and it's not more experimental than making say, dodecaphonic, stochastic, aleatoric or any other kind of music.

There is perhaps a music style called "experimental music", but experimental music as such doesn't exist. 

This is of course hairsplitting. 

There's hardly anything better than scholastic hair-splitting on PA, I live for this. 

EDIT: same goes for cooking. You can experiment even with the ingredients of the most simple salad... Just use something you normally wouldn't use there. And beware of potential side effects. 

 

Is it possible to establish a difference between being original/innovative and progressive?  Perhaps, progressive is more akin to "groundbreaking", in which case it is a word to be used sparingly (and probably wouldn't apply to many 70s prog rock bands, let alone more contemporary bands).  I would not call Radiohead a groundbreaking band because their albums represent more a contemporary update of rock music. But the way in which they go about is very original and unique and to that extent, they are comfortably more progressive (adj.) than Anglagard or Spocks Beard.

 

But that seems to be lead us right back to prog the genre.  I'd have thought progressive as an adjective implies progressing the state of a given genre of music which Dylan certainly did. Dylan and RS were progressive musicians of their time and nobody is going to dispute that re Beatles anyway.  If we take emphasis on development as the crux of what is progressive, I think tracks like Airbag, Exit Music for a film and Paranoid Android do reveal a thrust on that in the OK Computer album (though there are several more straight up tracks like Lucky or Subterranean Homesick Alien).  It is rightly compared to DSOTM in that sense because that album too has some progressive moments and some much closer to regular rock music.   I agree that Kid A is a more progressive album if taken in that light but I'd then also not dispute Anglagard or SB either.

 

Alt rock is one heck of a black hole ...and in the 90s, it could mean literally anything so what's roughly the music you are comparing OK Computer with here?  In comparison to what the Seattle grunge or Smashin' Pumpkins, U2 or Oasis were doing up to that point, I'd say OK Computer is at a totally different level. It is as intricate and detailed in its execution as Grace but much more evolved and eclectic, formally.  It is as if the band wanted to remind the mainstream scene of the time what great rock music used to be about without sounding like a fascimile of classic rock.  Again, this depends on what we are comparing OKC with it and it's possible there were some alt rock bands at that time who were writing rock music of a lot of subtlety and depth in composition which I haven't heard.

As for something that was actually 'progressive' then I would say Radiohead - OK Computer as already mentioned if only for Paranoid Android and Karma Police.

Another band that deserve some credit for trying something different was Mansun. Their first two albums were very progressive orientated in approach. Six in particular was a bit of a curiosity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_%28Mansun_album" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_(Mansun_album )

http://www.sicmagazine.net/articles/154/mansun-six" rel="nofollow - http://www.sicmagazine.net/articles/154/mansun-six

You nailed it there, that's more or less the framework I was thinking of. I agree Radiohead went further than any of the mentioned bands, but I see them as the end of an evolutionary process. They didn't come up themselves with revolutionary innovations, which is the kind of progress we've been discussing here*.  Nothing like what Dylan going electric was for 1965, King Crimson for 1969 or punk for 1976. I just think OK Computer was better, more refined and more accomplished. Another thing to measure innovation with is what paths does it open; or in this respect the innovative bands of the mid to late 90s were Neutral Milk Hotel, Modest Mouse, Yo La Tengo, Wilco, Belle And Sebastian, Trans Am, GYBE, etc., because they were the ones to break the new grounds for '00s indie rock. OK C was an end of the road IMO, that album coudn't be bettered, outdone, continued. Even Radiohead, when they changed direction with the more experimental Kid A and the albums that followed, they were recycling things already done in the early to mid '90s by Pram, Trans Am, Seefeel, Tortoise, Disco Inferno, Stereolab, etc.

* i.e. the groundbreaking revolution implied by the OP 

There though some bands like Mr. Bungle, Thinking Plague, Cardiacs (who released their best album in the 90s), Uz Jsme Doma who released some great stuff, and others I can't think of at the mo. 

To make "experimental music" is not about having a method, it is a method. The "experimental" is a method that (perhaps) produces unexpected results, but that is just a way of working. You can of course make music using a lottery machine, and it may generate music that you can call experimental music, but to make music that way is not to make experiments.

As a composer I can normally choose between two methods: 1) pre-determining everything in a work, leading to full serialism, or 2) leaving room for the unexpected development. I always work with the latter. The end product may sound like "experimental", but there is nothing experimental in that working method.

There was a time when anything out of major/minor tonality was called "experimental", which I found tragicomic. From a conservative pop music listener's point of view almost all prog is just what you could call "experimental".

This is interesting. I was already rather familiar with Tortoise and Trans Am but I decided to investigate the others and not only did I already hear very little in the two aforementioned, but I also heard exceptionally little to none of Radiohead in the other bands you mentioned. I think out of all of them I heard the most in Pram. Their sounded reminded me a bit of the layered delay loops on The King of Limbs. I think that Radiohead are more of a result of studio experimentation, a great producer, and a whole lot creativity. 

No, I'd vote for this:

 

I struggle to think of any ELP track this sounds like tbh. I was expecting a massive snare attack a la Toccata , not a relaxed groovy type of song

 

on second thoughts

OK, maybe not!  Great song though.  Maybe "best progressive" rather than "most progressive."

I really wasn't blown away by much new prog in the 90's.  

Thanks, you nailed it for me!  Sort of a "progressive-regressive" thing.....how does a hyper-progressive format (Fripp's double-trio, synth guitars, world-class prog musicians) create a...hit single??  

I thought it was brilliant!  

That was an amazing show/tour (I saw it twice).....Fripp using his synth guitar to trigger Mellotron samples was a hoot!  Who needs racks of tapes?  

I have a feeling that Fripp has long wanted a "hit single" and tried very hard to achieve this, going back to Giles, Giles & Fripp.   

His contemporaries in Yes, ELP etc. all managed to pull it off, but Crimson never quite got there.  

 

 

I did enjoy them on the 1992 Black Moon tour but by this time they were just a solid band trotting out the standards.They had pretty much become their own tribute band.

 

ELP's peak as a live band was about 1973-74. Lake still had a voice to die for ,Palmer could still whip up a storm and Emerson was a towering presence.

 

Djam Karet

 

And if all you heard is metal, I would like to suggest that you missed a band whose first 5 or 6 albums make King Crimson, sound ... a bit commercial!

Wow, I would never have guessed. Are they the only group you listen to that are from the 90's onwards? And your incessant dismissive attitude towards metal is getting tiring. I suggest you go and listen to Gorguts' Obscura, and realise that in comparison, Djam Karet are not really... innovators at all!    

 

 

 

Meshuggah was who I was going to say. Insanely technical, ahead of their time, and helped change the face of the Metal genre.

 

What about Confessor? Nobody sounded like these guys. Crazy drumming, unique voice, interesting arrangements.

 

 

 

Meshuggah = clueless fans x lack of musical knowledge.

Seriously, they aren't that technical, their guitarist has gone on record saying he doesn't know essentially any theory. Their drummer is good, and incorporates more advanced theoretical concepts than the rest of the band, but he's not the end of the world. (Also, as a drummer, in my opinion most of his work is incredibly clinical)