It is now New Year's Eve and time to complete the top 10 of 2012. Here is the upper half of that list.
5. American Hollow: Last Dream Before Dawn
(Album: Screaming into the Void)
We continue our American tour with American Hollow, a group from Salt Lake City that formed only four years ago and released their debut album Whisper Campaign in 2010. The prog metal album sounded more than just a little monotonous to me, but this year's new EP Screaming into the Void contains much more varied styles and moods. The second track of the EP, Last Dream Before Dawn even reminds me of Blackfield's best, most melodic output. The song cannot be found in YouTube, but here are links to both Spotify and, for those who don't use that service, also to the group's web page:
American Hollow - Last Dream Before Dawn (web page link)
4. Echolyn: Locust to Bethlehem
(Album: Echolyn)
Our American tour concludes in Pennsylvania, at Echolyn headquarters. Their excellent, self-titled new album was released in June and contains several highlights, one of which is this beautiful song. At its beginning, the guitar and drums give the listener a nice set of false expectations. What begins sounding like a mellow blues rock track, builds up to a memorable art rock piece with big sounds and even string arrangements to boot. Unfortunately, I cannot find the entire track anywhere to link here, but there is a 90-second sample in iTunes (link to Finnish iTunes below, change to your home country if you live elsewhere) and under it, there is also a short YouTube snippet from the recording session of the song's string sequences.
90-second sample in iTunes
3. Muse: Save Me
(Album: The 2nd Law)
One of the year's most pleasant surprises was the British art rock band Muse, whose latest album The 2nd Law contained a couple of truly exceptional highlights. The real pinnacle is Save Me, which achieves perfection in the melody-driven guitar rock/pop genre. It is the highest ranking, shall we say regular piece of music on the list before we ascend to new heights. The best two tracks are Art with a capital A, music that will hopefully be remembered for decades to come. This is not to say the Muse's achievement isn't absolutely great as well, its greatness is just slightly different.
2. Sigur Rós: Valtari
(Album: Valtari)
The Icelandic art rock group Sigur Rós is the only artist to appear twice in the top 10. Their new album's title track is a lengthy ambient instrumental that contains immense power. Rarely has a composition so perfectly reflected the cover of the album it is taken from. The desolate, somehow arctic looking seascape tinged in filthy green and slightly out of focus is the kind of an image that the cold sounding, yet unbelievably beautiful melody brings to mind. Most of its running time, Valtari just runs rings around itself - not attempting to go anywhere, but enjoying its staying power instead. Valtari is one of those rare recordings in popular music that elevates from mere entertainment to an artistic work of the highest calibre.
1. Storm Corrosion: Drag Ropes
(Album: Storm Corrosion)
Anticipating a heavy prog metal album and then hearing this as its opening track was one of those all too infrequent moments that are the artistic equivalent of being hit on the head with a large wooden board. When hearing it, I was under the mistaken impression that Steven Wilson's creativity had not been peaking recently, which made hearing this unbelievable masterpiece all the more surprising. Wish I were surprised like this more often. The 9 minute, 47 second song is very close to my 10-minute maximum limit and represents a musical style that is really difficult to pin down. And just look at this beautiful video that has been made to support the song and its message. Incredible. Year's best in every way.
Like I wrote in the first part of this story, my favourite long (over 10-minute) song or composition of 2012 is Speaking in Lampblack by Echolyn. Let's embed it below as well, for comparison, as it happens to be available in YouTube. Paradoxically, at 10 minutes and 45 seconds it is only 58 seconds longer than Drag Ropes, yet gets classified as a longer work due to the 10-minute limit having been crossed. Check out both, and you will have listened to 20 minutes of very best music released this year.
It should be fairly obvious, based on these lists, that my favourite artists this year have been 1. Echolyn, 2. Storm Corrosion, and 3. Sigur Rós. I would have to place Echolyn to number one spot, because the level of greatness is most consistent on their album. Storm Corrosion and Sigur Rós are very close to each other in this respect.
There is now also a Spotify playlist available containing as many of the listed songs as possible. Not everything listed here is available in Spotify, so I cannot call it "Best of 2012", let's simply call it "2012 Highlights". It will also contain some songs and compositions that did not quite make it to the list, but which to my mind are also very good and worth a listen.
maanantai 31. joulukuuta 2012
sunnuntai 30. joulukuuta 2012
Best of 2012, part 2
So here we are, with ProgActive's list of the top 10 songs or instrumentals that run under 10 minutes each and have been released during 2012. It might be worthwhile to point out once again that there might be other masterpieces that we have missed but these are the ones we haven't.
The list seems varied in that among the ten, only one artist appears twice and there is music from several different countries. Although the list has been compiled from a prog point of view, it is not a prog list. In fact, the songs that can be classified purely as prog, are clearly in a minority here. But most of the titles listed have at least some kind of prog connection or have been influenced by it. Before moving to Iceland, we begin our tour in the U.K.
10. Anathema: Untouchable, Part 1
(Album: Weather Systems)
While the album Weather Systems was already mentioned as a disappointment in part 1 of this story, there is no denying that its opening track works really well. Melody and instumentation are impeccable, and the overall feel is familar from previous releases like We're Here Because We're Here (2010) and the masterful reworked compilation of older works, Hindsight (2008). If only the rest of the album had been as good as its first track!
9. Sigur Rós: Ég anda
(Album: Valtari)
The new album by the Icelandic group Sigur Rós was this year's biggest surprise. I honestly thought that they had already lost their creativity and didn't pay any attention to the new release when it first came out. Boy, was I wrong! Valtari is easily their second best album ever, following the undying masterpiece that was ( ) (2002). Ég anda is also an opening track and, unlike Anathema's song above, gives promises that the rest of the album is actually able to keep. Below, there is a link to the song accompanied by a strange video.
8. Arcana: Somnolence
(Album: As Bright as a Thousand Suns)
This short, moody, even sombre instrumental piece is also the opening track of the album. It runs just under two minutes but leaves an indelible impression on the listener, and precisely like the previous song on the list, makes promises that the rest of the album can easily keep. Arcana, that initially sounded like a cheaper version of Dead Can Dance, has now fully grown to real artistic merit of their own. I am eagerly waiting for more music like this from Sweden.
7. Motorpsycho: Into the Mystic
(Album: The Death Defying Unicorn)
Having already visited Iceland and Sweden, there is not a long way to check out Norway as well. The fanciful and fairly far-out musical fable called The Death Defying Unicorn by Trondheim's best known group Motorpsycho does not begin but ends with this outstanding track that proves one thing: prog is fun! And it sounds like they have had plenty of it when writing and performing this truly excellent piece of music that can leave the listener simply exhausted with pure joy.
6. OSI: Wind Won't Howl
(Album: Fire Make Thunder)
Now is the time to move to the United States, for the first but not the last time on the list. OSI is the prog metal group originally formed by Fates Warning guitarist Jim Matheos and the original keyboardist of Dream Theater, Kevin Moore, also of Chroma Key fame. On their fourth album Fire Make Thunder, drums are played by Porcupine Tree's Gavin Harrison. Expectations were high following the outstanding previous studio album Blood (2009) but the overall end result turned out to be disappointingly mediocre. Except for this one great song, for which there is no full recording available either in YouTube or Spotify. But you can check out a 35-second sample below: Wind Won't Howl plays between 2:23 and 2:58.
The remaining best five tracks of the top 10 will turn up here tomorrow!
The list seems varied in that among the ten, only one artist appears twice and there is music from several different countries. Although the list has been compiled from a prog point of view, it is not a prog list. In fact, the songs that can be classified purely as prog, are clearly in a minority here. But most of the titles listed have at least some kind of prog connection or have been influenced by it. Before moving to Iceland, we begin our tour in the U.K.
(Album: Weather Systems)
While the album Weather Systems was already mentioned as a disappointment in part 1 of this story, there is no denying that its opening track works really well. Melody and instumentation are impeccable, and the overall feel is familar from previous releases like We're Here Because We're Here (2010) and the masterful reworked compilation of older works, Hindsight (2008). If only the rest of the album had been as good as its first track!
9. Sigur Rós: Ég anda
(Album: Valtari)
The new album by the Icelandic group Sigur Rós was this year's biggest surprise. I honestly thought that they had already lost their creativity and didn't pay any attention to the new release when it first came out. Boy, was I wrong! Valtari is easily their second best album ever, following the undying masterpiece that was ( ) (2002). Ég anda is also an opening track and, unlike Anathema's song above, gives promises that the rest of the album is actually able to keep. Below, there is a link to the song accompanied by a strange video.
8. Arcana: Somnolence
(Album: As Bright as a Thousand Suns)
This short, moody, even sombre instrumental piece is also the opening track of the album. It runs just under two minutes but leaves an indelible impression on the listener, and precisely like the previous song on the list, makes promises that the rest of the album can easily keep. Arcana, that initially sounded like a cheaper version of Dead Can Dance, has now fully grown to real artistic merit of their own. I am eagerly waiting for more music like this from Sweden.
7. Motorpsycho: Into the Mystic
(Album: The Death Defying Unicorn)
Having already visited Iceland and Sweden, there is not a long way to check out Norway as well. The fanciful and fairly far-out musical fable called The Death Defying Unicorn by Trondheim's best known group Motorpsycho does not begin but ends with this outstanding track that proves one thing: prog is fun! And it sounds like they have had plenty of it when writing and performing this truly excellent piece of music that can leave the listener simply exhausted with pure joy.
6. OSI: Wind Won't Howl
(Album: Fire Make Thunder)
Now is the time to move to the United States, for the first but not the last time on the list. OSI is the prog metal group originally formed by Fates Warning guitarist Jim Matheos and the original keyboardist of Dream Theater, Kevin Moore, also of Chroma Key fame. On their fourth album Fire Make Thunder, drums are played by Porcupine Tree's Gavin Harrison. Expectations were high following the outstanding previous studio album Blood (2009) but the overall end result turned out to be disappointingly mediocre. Except for this one great song, for which there is no full recording available either in YouTube or Spotify. But you can check out a 35-second sample below: Wind Won't Howl plays between 2:23 and 2:58.
The remaining best five tracks of the top 10 will turn up here tomorrow!
lauantai 29. joulukuuta 2012
Best of 2012, part 1
2012 is coming to an end, so what better time than right now to wrap up its music offerings and create yet another "best of" list which I'm sure the world is not lacking this time of year. While writing this, I am fully aware of the futility of such an effort: there's no way I have even heard all of the year's most significant songs and compositions. I am likely to discover many of them later. So the top 10 that follows cannot really be the final word on 2012 - only a list of the most impressive songs I have heard so far. Yet this is not to belittle the list, or say it has no significance: I have heard some pretty amazing pieces of music this year already.
Before going any further, let's make one thing absolutely clear. Even though the name of the blog is ProgActive, what follows is not a collection of best progressive rock albums and songs. There are no genre limitations here. All that matters is the quality of the music, not where it may be pigeonholed. Obviously, I do lean considerably towards prog in my preferences, but am not limited only there.
Before getting to the songs themselves, a few words about the albums of 2012. Here at ProgActive we don't really celebrate them, although in some exceptional cases they may receive honorable mentions. I firmly believe that the way music is collected and listened to has already permanently changed. The album by a single artist or group is really no longer the defining unit when it comes to a collection of music. A playlist is. Even back in the early 1980's when I first started compiling "year's best" lists (I think my first was in 1981, topped by The Garden by John Foxx), I was more interested in individual tracks than entire albums. There is even more reason for that now that the availability of digital downloads means that purchasing individual songs is more and more common as opposed to buying entire albums - be they in digital or physical format.
In spite of that, if we do have a brief look at 2012 albums next, there is one release that can easily be selected above all others. It is in fact the one and only new album I bought this year: the self-titled album by the American symphonic prog group Echolyn which I already reviewed back in August. It is a slightly uneven piece of work, but an impressive one nonetheless.
Many other album releases that I anxiously waited for in advance turned out to be disappointing. Anastasis, the first studio album by Dead Can Dance in 16 years, is one that comes to mind in particular: high expectations that were met by mediocre results. Anastasis is not bad, and it's certainly better than the group's previous two releases: the completely aimless Into the Labyrinth (1993) or the too ethnic for its own good Spiritchaser (1996), but that's all you can say for its defense. On the Dead Can Dance scale, Anastasis is still well below average.
In much the same way, two groups that had shown promise on their earlier releases, Anathema and OSI let me down with their new albums Weather Systems and Fire Make Thunder, respectively. And an even bigger letdown than these two was All the Wars by The Pineapple Thief, on which I failed to find anything truly interesting whatsoever. Considering the group's earlier masterworks, this came as a definite surprise. Compared to it, even Sounds That Can't Be Made by Marillion seemed satisfying: I expected next to nothing and got exactly what I expected.
Of course, 2012 albums included some pleasant surprises as well. Many better works came from artists that I wasn't paying particular attention to beforehand. For example, a year ago I had already more or less forgotten about the Icelandic group Sigur Rós, whose 2008 album with the unpronounceable title had been such a huge disappointment back when it came out that I didn't even bother to listen to their new album Valtari until several months after its release, only to realise that they had made a really, really impressive return to form.
Another album for which I had low expectations to begin with was the debut album of Storm Corrosion. This was due to Steven Wilson's apparent growing interest towards heavy metal. When he decided to collaborate with Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth, I assumed that they would produce some kind of a black prog metal album that would contain a lot of growling vocals and be of little interest to me. As it turned out, I was wrong, and pleasantly surprised. There are no metal riffs at all on Storm Corrosion the album. Instead, it contains some of this year's best musical moments, although it is a noticeably uneven piece of work, just like Echolyn.
One more Swedish artist worth mentioning is the goth / dark ambient group Arcana, whose latest album As Bright as a Thousand Suns was released under my radar, but which I luckily stumbled across a little later and found many good moments contained therein.
Next, we narrow down the scope of the actual top 10 of 2012. As before, I have eliminated really long songs from the list because, at least to me, they seem like an art form of their own. Already in the 1980's, I compiled a separate list for them, drawing the line to 10 minutes. This year, there haven't been too many candidates in the "longer than 10 minutes" category, so it is then Echolyn who dominate that list, with Storm Corrosion a close second.
Echolyn's brilliant Speaking in Lampblack (10 mins. 45 secs.) would be my very first recommendation, closely followed by Island (16 mins. 38 secs.) from the same album. It would be advisable to also check out Storm Corrosion's Ljudet innan (10 mins. 7 secs.) as well as their album's title track (10 mins. 2 secs.). But that's really all the really outstanding long tracks from 2012 I have been able to discover so far.
Following this, we finally move on to the top 10... due to be ready and published right here either tomorrow or, at latest, on Monday, New Year's Eve. Please be sure to come back and check out the finest tracks running under 10 minutes and released during 2012.
Sigur Rós: Valtari
Before going any further, let's make one thing absolutely clear. Even though the name of the blog is ProgActive, what follows is not a collection of best progressive rock albums and songs. There are no genre limitations here. All that matters is the quality of the music, not where it may be pigeonholed. Obviously, I do lean considerably towards prog in my preferences, but am not limited only there.
Before getting to the songs themselves, a few words about the albums of 2012. Here at ProgActive we don't really celebrate them, although in some exceptional cases they may receive honorable mentions. I firmly believe that the way music is collected and listened to has already permanently changed. The album by a single artist or group is really no longer the defining unit when it comes to a collection of music. A playlist is. Even back in the early 1980's when I first started compiling "year's best" lists (I think my first was in 1981, topped by The Garden by John Foxx), I was more interested in individual tracks than entire albums. There is even more reason for that now that the availability of digital downloads means that purchasing individual songs is more and more common as opposed to buying entire albums - be they in digital or physical format.
OSI: Fire Make Thunder
In spite of that, if we do have a brief look at 2012 albums next, there is one release that can easily be selected above all others. It is in fact the one and only new album I bought this year: the self-titled album by the American symphonic prog group Echolyn which I already reviewed back in August. It is a slightly uneven piece of work, but an impressive one nonetheless.
Many other album releases that I anxiously waited for in advance turned out to be disappointing. Anastasis, the first studio album by Dead Can Dance in 16 years, is one that comes to mind in particular: high expectations that were met by mediocre results. Anastasis is not bad, and it's certainly better than the group's previous two releases: the completely aimless Into the Labyrinth (1993) or the too ethnic for its own good Spiritchaser (1996), but that's all you can say for its defense. On the Dead Can Dance scale, Anastasis is still well below average.
In much the same way, two groups that had shown promise on their earlier releases, Anathema and OSI let me down with their new albums Weather Systems and Fire Make Thunder, respectively. And an even bigger letdown than these two was All the Wars by The Pineapple Thief, on which I failed to find anything truly interesting whatsoever. Considering the group's earlier masterworks, this came as a definite surprise. Compared to it, even Sounds That Can't Be Made by Marillion seemed satisfying: I expected next to nothing and got exactly what I expected.
Anathema: Weather Systems
Of course, 2012 albums included some pleasant surprises as well. Many better works came from artists that I wasn't paying particular attention to beforehand. For example, a year ago I had already more or less forgotten about the Icelandic group Sigur Rós, whose 2008 album with the unpronounceable title had been such a huge disappointment back when it came out that I didn't even bother to listen to their new album Valtari until several months after its release, only to realise that they had made a really, really impressive return to form.
Another album for which I had low expectations to begin with was the debut album of Storm Corrosion. This was due to Steven Wilson's apparent growing interest towards heavy metal. When he decided to collaborate with Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth, I assumed that they would produce some kind of a black prog metal album that would contain a lot of growling vocals and be of little interest to me. As it turned out, I was wrong, and pleasantly surprised. There are no metal riffs at all on Storm Corrosion the album. Instead, it contains some of this year's best musical moments, although it is a noticeably uneven piece of work, just like Echolyn.
One more Swedish artist worth mentioning is the goth / dark ambient group Arcana, whose latest album As Bright as a Thousand Suns was released under my radar, but which I luckily stumbled across a little later and found many good moments contained therein.
Next, we narrow down the scope of the actual top 10 of 2012. As before, I have eliminated really long songs from the list because, at least to me, they seem like an art form of their own. Already in the 1980's, I compiled a separate list for them, drawing the line to 10 minutes. This year, there haven't been too many candidates in the "longer than 10 minutes" category, so it is then Echolyn who dominate that list, with Storm Corrosion a close second.
Echolyn's brilliant Speaking in Lampblack (10 mins. 45 secs.) would be my very first recommendation, closely followed by Island (16 mins. 38 secs.) from the same album. It would be advisable to also check out Storm Corrosion's Ljudet innan (10 mins. 7 secs.) as well as their album's title track (10 mins. 2 secs.). But that's really all the really outstanding long tracks from 2012 I have been able to discover so far.
Following this, we finally move on to the top 10... due to be ready and published right here either tomorrow or, at latest, on Monday, New Year's Eve. Please be sure to come back and check out the finest tracks running under 10 minutes and released during 2012.
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