Haven't done this in a while: 10 random tracks from my iPhone:
- Porcupine Tree, "The Sky Moves Sideways"
- Mogwai, "I Chose Horses". Mellowness from one of the greatest Post-Rock groups around.
- Thinking Plague, "Lux Lucet". Thinking Plague is one of the strangest things
I listen to. I don't know quite how to describe it. Often atonal, seriously dissonant when not outright atonal, oddly structured. It's very peculiar stuff, definitely not to everyone's taste. - Gordian Knot, "Singularity". A very hard/loud instrumental piece. Definitely in the prog genre. Beautiful guitar solos, great bass pulse driving it.
- Marillion, "King".
- Lunasa, "Punch"
- Naftule's Dream, "The Wanderer". Would you believe progressive Klezmer?
- King Crimson, "Neal and Jack and Me".
- Pink Floyd, "Marooned". It's a crime to call this dreck Pink Floyd, when in
fact it's really nothing more than Dave Gilmour masturbating with his guitar. Ick. - PDQ Bach, "Es War Ein Dark Und Shtormy Night". If you're not in the know,
PDQ Bach is the alter ego of Music professor Peter Schickele. He claims that PDQ is
the 13th illegitimate child of J.S. Bach. Schickele in constantly "finding" PDQ Bach
compositions lining birdcages, etc. This is from PDQ's period of setting "poetry" to
what passes for music to PDQ. Featuring words like "Approaching I saw ein Knight in shining armor with ein codpiece enorm," set to pseudo-Schubert. Great for laughs, and not to be
missed if you get a chance to see him live!
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our DonorsChoose challenge. Seriously - throw them a couple of bucks. It doesn't need to be much. There are around three thousand people per day who read this blog; if you each contribute $5, it would more than pay to fully fund every…
1. **Thinking Plague: "The Aesthete"**: Thinking Plague is just plain *odd*. They're
a hard-to-classify group. It's got vocals, but instead of the vocals being the lead,
they treat voice as just another instrument. They're often atonal, and when they're
tonal, the chords are often…
Kansas, "Byzantium": an example of why Kansas fans waited so long for
Kerry Lofgren to return to the band. The guy's a brilliant songwriter. Even with
Walsh's voice clearly aging and suffering from abuse, this is fantanstic stuff.
Isis, "Wrists of Kings": Fairly hard post-rock. I like Isis a…
Naftule's Dream, "Speed Klez": Naftule's Dream is a
brilliant progressive klezmer band. I happen to love klezmer,
but I think that anyone into jazzy prog rock would also enjoy
them. They're terrific.
Oregon, "Celeste": Oregon is a band that I can't make
up my mind about. They're a jazz…
I don't know 'bout the Floyd thing - considering (aside from The Division Bell and Rick Wright's song) the whole album is Dave whining about his divorce (even though half the songs were written by his new girlfriend which I never figured out), at the very least Marooned is JUST the music whimpering and not the cheezy lyric on top of it. :)
"Neal and Jack and Me" - after too many years without the album (lost somehow), I made my kids buy it for me for Christmas. Not just a random track, definitely a favourite! Enjoying the blog btw.
PDQ Bach is "the 13th illegitimate child of J.S. Bach"? Maybe. I recall him being described as the last but least of J.S. Bach's 20-odd children, and also the oddest.
Mmmmmm, Gordian Knot...slobber, slobber...
Not well known but some very good material. The second album (Emergent) has some great work by Bill Bruford as well. Very enjoyable.
GK has to be some of my favorite stuff from the last decade along with Mont Campbell's "Music From a Round Tower".