trio tagged posts

Portland experimentalists The Mercury Tree emerged as a solo project of Ben Spees in 2004 and became a full band in 2006. The band is now: Ben Spees (vocals, guitar, keyboard), Aaron Clark (bass, backing vocals) and Connor Reilly (drums, backing vocals). They have released three albums and two EPs. The newest release, a full-length called Freeze in Phantom Form, sees the band shifting from everything previously released while still keeping their recognizable chemistry. The trio contributed a song to our latest Progstravaganza sampler. Here is what Ben, Aaron and Clark have to say about the new album, and some other things as well.

Nick: Hello there, guys! So it seems that summer 2012 was pretty busy for you, no? You gigged and finished a new album, so how do you keep yourselves sane meanw...

Although I may have not found myself wholly impressed with last year’s “A Grounding in Numbers”, it was cool to hear Van der Graaf Generator still evolving their sound well into their golden years. Easily predicted, “A Grounding in Numbers” was very laid-back and far from the bombastic madness of their prime. As such, I would have likely expected more of the same from Van der Graaf Generator’s next album; a Peter Hamill-driven collection of reflective songwriting, with the occasional progressive twist to keep listeners on their feet.

For better and worse, “ALT” goes against every expectation. To be honest, it doesn’t even feel like a Van der Graaf record.

Pink Floyd’s black sheep “Ummagumma” was the first thing I was reminded of, minutes into the album...

Portland’s experimentalists The Mercury Tree are about to release their third album called Freeze in Phantom Form on September 15th. The follow-up to 2011′s Pterodactyls sees the band turning towards more spacey, jam-oriented shooegaze mood, with more use of live looping and keyboards.

After Interspatial, which is available to stream on the band’s Bandcamp page, Prog Sphere brings you an exclusive premiere of Frontera, the second song of the album. When asked about the song, as well as the album’s direction, Ben Spees (guitars, vocals, keyboards) and Aaron Clark (bass, backing vocals) say:

“This song went through so many mutations and yet it seemed to progress in a very natural way. It started with Aaron’s bass riff, which was originally in 7/4, then mutated to 13/8...

UK Prog metallers hAND are currently in the midst of writing their as yet untitled third album. It is a concept album exploring the nature and fluidity of sexuality, as well as differing relationship structures between human beings. Taken from one person’s perspective it reflects their experiences and journey up to a certain point.

In a recent blog post on the bands official site they revealed “Currently we are half way done with writing the new album, with lots of further ideas and demos floating around for the remaining half. One of the tracks we have been working on is Chiptune inspired; we’ve been having a lot of fun utilizing synths and different effects to get a quirky and fun sound for that track...

Although ‘concept’ albums are ridiculously abundant in the progressive metal genre, it takes a lot of skill and determination to make it work. Harder still is to pass a concept entirely instrumentally, without a set of lyrics to guide the listener along. Sure, it may be argued whether or not Counter-World Experience’s “Music for Kings” is a concept album, but if song titles are worth anything, this is a showcase of some of history’s most famous (and infamous) monarchs. Like a tender steak, many of these lords’ stories are rich and bloody. Though this may be an ample breeding ground for death metal, Counter-World Experience play a highly jazz-infused form of metal. Most importantly, they do it really, really well. Bloodlines aside, there’s a great deal to appreciate here.

The concept of ja...

This is what Rush is like without any sense of progression. This is not progressive rock. This is Led Zeppelin-influenced blues/classic rock. Neil Peart wasn’t even a member of the band yet! The only three songs here that stand out are ‘Finding My Way,’ ‘In The Mood,’ and ‘Working Man,’ which still get some decent radio play by classic rock stations, but in all seriousness; in terms of musical intelligence and innovation, this album is massively shadowed by the band’s coming works.

However, this isn’t a ‘bad’ album (if it was, it would have earned one star)… It’s just not that great, at least in the eyes of a Prog fan. The thing that suffers this album the most is it’s total lack of ‘prog.’ That’s why it can’t be marked too high...

The new ProgSphere’s AwesomeCast episode named Spherical is coming little bit earlier than what you might have been expected. With this one we are making a break from curated podcasts series, not longer than a week, as we will be back with the new curated episode already next Friday (May 24th).

This podcast is comprised of 20 tracks, taken from the bands from the PSPR roster (http://promotions.prog-sphere.com). It’s been a while since we had an insight podcast of our roster, thus this one comes as pretty much introspective. We’ve been quite active with having more and more bands asking for our services and we can’t be any happier to see our clients, but first and foremost friends, being happy with our work.

To make a long story short, look down for the PLAY button, hit it and enjoy!

When a band names band scrabble nights, band spelling bees, band cupcake bake-offs, band outings to the aquarium as their interests, you realize you get some pretty serious player. (sic)

London’s Butcher in the Fog works as a trio comprised of Yanni Georgiou on guitars/vocals, Emmy Porter on bass and Alex de la Cour on drums. The release in question is the band’s second EP release so far (after Bonafide Studio EP), but the latest update says that they are about to release a full-length later this Fall. Musically, these dudes and the dudette strive to somewhat heterogeneous mixtures of variety of genres including punk (crust), metal, stoner rock, grunge… Energetic, in short.

The blinking moments of heavy psychedelia wrapped up with everything previously mentioned sound promising, thus the ...

Salt is a useful thing. Historically, it was used as an imperial currency, and today, we use it to season fries. Salt now also has the distinction of being the apparent inspiration between Salt of Tusj, a remarkable new act from Norway. Better known as SOT, this left-of-centre jazz trio’s debut album ‘Kind Of Saltz’ dropped at the end of 2011, and what a way to wrap up the year it is. Although jazz fusion is a fairly well-traversed style of music now, SOT replaces the typical trumpet or saxophone fare with a tuba. Combining that with an already experimental sensibility, ‘Kind Of Saltz’ is both fun and challenging. It is good to hear such a unique take on jazz.

SOT will undoubtedly draw comparisons between other acts who pursue an avant-jazz format...

A great album!

Trigon were a band who I did not know about their existence one month ago, now, I thank Nikola Savic for enlightening me and guide me to listen to this excellent German trio, whose  album I am reviewing was released in 2011. It contains 13 compositions that make a total time of 67 minutes. It opens with “Peitscht das Kamel”, which starts with drums and then bass and guitar join and create a cool psychedelic track, with nice changes, some guitar riffs and a strong bass that caught my attention.

“Roter mond” has a mid-tempo rhythm, with zones whose intensity seems to increase, and others where the music slows down and we can listen to the guitar as leader, while the bass and drums play some soft figures as background...