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Prog/Psych/Space Pop/Rock


Dusty Chalk

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Thought I'd start this thread, seeing as I'm listening to Sky Cries Mary right now. Check 'em out.

Well, can't have this thread without mentioning Porcupine Tree, so I'll mention them: Porcupine Tree -- so there, I mentioned them. If you like this type of music and you haven't heard them, you should at least check them out.

No, seriously, they've recently been remastering a lot of their back catalog, and the impossible to get Lightbulb Sun should be coming up soon.

Stars Die (the compilation) is a good place to start.

Warning: multiple versions of practically all their albums exist, so do your homework first -- decide, for example, beforehand, whether or not you must have the remasters and bonus tracks, or if you'd rather just get all the important tracks for cheap on the used market (both are certainly viable decisions).

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Yes. They rock. I love The yes album... starship troopers... good stuff. King Crimson, Jethro Tull, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Steve Miller Band, lots of others... RadioHead is okay, but they aren't exactly "classic rock" though this thread is way more general then that so I guess it's with the territory. For contemporary groups they are pretty good. I guess if we are counting them, then we might as well add in A Perfect Circle.

all stuff I like.

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Early Pink Floyd == acid rock. So yeah, that qualifies.

Radiohead == jury still out. They definitely have qualities of "space" and "psych", but they're basically a pop band, IMHO.

Yes == to me, they define prog. One of my top 10 favourite bands/artists of all time. Going to see Rick Wakeman (solo grand piano tour, retiring afterwards) in June. Easily my favourite pop/rock keyboardist.

Can -- now listening to Future Days -- weaves a curvy line between pop, rock, space, kraut rock, and just plain jamming. Recommended. Need to get some of the other SACD's of theirs that came out.

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If you don't know Hash Jar Tempo, you owe it to yourself to check out Well Oiled from 1997. It's a collaboration between Roy Montgomery and Bardo Pond, and is a long suite in seven movements. Supposedly just a sample of a seventy-minute session which was improvised in 1995. If you love that instrumental psychedelic rock, this is the real buzz, formed from the groundwork by the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, the Doors, Hawkwind, and other visionaries in the psych world. I also have Under Glass from a couple years later, which is very good too, if maybe just a small step below and a bit more experimental.

And on the more pop side, you know how much I love the new Voyager One Dissolver :dance:

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Never heard of Hash Jar Tempo, will have to check it out. You've not steered me wrong yet.

Well, you likely guessed by the Ash Ra Tempel reference in their name that they have a lot of Krautrock in their soul, and that's the case. Bardo Pond has a pretty dense drone sound, but with Roy Montgomery they clean up the sound and turn it into more of an ambient feel. Kind of a soundtrack to a lazy day. But Ash Ra Tempel, they were the real deal, huh? I know you are a big Tangerine Dream fan, so no news to you that drummer/synth guru Klaus Schulze left and hooked up with guitarist Manuel Gottsching and eccentric bassist Hartmut Enke to form one of Germany's most cosmic bands, Ash Ra Tempel. And made history with that 1971 debut ...

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recommend me some more late 1960s' early 70's type stuff I haven't talked about so far.

dusty i like yer taste, give me a survey of some good stuff that I need to hear.

I'll go one at a time, but I need a better idea of what you're looking for -- sorry, I should have been paying to your musical interests more. What is it, specifically, that you like about my taste in music? What sorts of things have piqued your interest?

Okay, here's one: Italian prog -- Premiata Forneria Marconi, The World Became The World -- worth the price of admission for the brilliant opener "The Mountain" and the title track. Don't think because of the gorgeous choir music for the first two minutes that this is some sort of "chill" piece -- it rocks out like a mofo. Side 2 has some nice jazzy underpinnings. This is some really nice ensemble work, and they make a lot of racket for just four guys (I thought it was 6).

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Steve Hackett, Voyage of the Acolyte

After The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway..., Peter Gabriel left Genesis. Unhappy with his role in the band, Steve decided to release a solo album. Two years later, after his last two albums with the band, he left permanently and did the very excellent but different follow-up, Please Don't Touch.

His relationship with other members of the band wasn't dismal, as Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford both helped out on his first solo album, so this is in many ways a Genesis "side-project". It's not Genesis -- let's just get that out of the way. Much of the album is instrumental, and the two or so songs ("The Hermit" and the opening strains of "Shadow of the Hierophant") are sung by a classically trained operatic female soprano, in a folky/classical style.

But the instrumental aspect of this album slays. There's mellotron all over this thing, moogy bass, guitars, keys, drums -- it all just comes together. It opens with "Ace of Wands" -- a fast-tempo prog rocker with fusion/jazzy underpinnings. "A Tower Struck Down" is a riff-based monster, with a nice little "found sound breakdown" towards the end -- my second favourite track of the album. My favourite is "Shadow of the Hierophant" which starts out all bombast and majesty, then quickly dies down to a trickle of notes -- this is the kind of dynamic range which people miss in contemporary recordings. If you ever hear me do a song where the bass comes in a beat or two early, it's because of what is done in this song -- I love that point at the end of the final verse where the bass comes in early. It gives me chills. It then goes off on an interlude before starting a very simple little repeated riff that repeats and grows with added instruments -- a la Bolero, or Mike Oldfield -- for the rest of the song. When listening on vinyl, the whole track is recorded quieter, so that when the climax is reached, it really is one of the loudest most powerful sounds I've heard in rock and roll.

Recently remastered with bonus tracks, do not get the original CD release -- it's horrible. Steve has been fighting to get the rights to his first couple of albums for a while, and he finally did, and I've heard they're excellent. I am originally familiar with the vinyl. All four of his first albums (the two mentioned + Defector and Spectral Mornings) are must-haves for any classic prog fan.

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:raises eyebrows: I'm a huge Klaus Schulze fan, but I missed that that was an Ash Ra Tempel reference. (interest gets raised even more)

Oh, I get it now...Ash Ra Temple...Hash Jar Tempo...

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I'm going to have to get that -- are both of their albums as good as each other, more or less? (The other being Under Glass.)

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Hey, Davey -- how come you haven't made me get anything by Bardo Pond. Good place to start? AMG list Amanita, Lapsed, and Dilate as their three best, with Dilate being extra special 4.5 stars good. Yes?

Oh sorry, didn't know this place was still turned on. Seemed past dead last time I stopped by. Dilate, yeah, that one is pretty nice. Used to talk about it some at Rave Recs. I remember our old friend Cornelius had seen them a few times (along with just about everyone else I ever mentioned since his band played a lot of the same gigs) and said the chick was pretty hot amidst those walls of droning guitars. Something about a nice looking woman and lots of feedback that gets me a bit horny too >:D

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