Welcome to Prog's brand new Tracks Of The Week. Seven brand new and diverse slices of progressive music for you to enjoy.
It was a proper battle of the post-rockers for most of last week with Leicester's Maybeshewill and MONO from Japan battling things out. Maybeshewill triumphed with their new standalone single October, but not before goth prog metallers Exomnis snuck into second place, shifting MONO back to third.
The premise for Tracks Of The Week is simple - we've collated a batch of new releases by bands falling under the progressive umbrella, and collated them together in one post for you - makes it so much easier than having to dip in and out of various individual posts, doesn't it?
The premise for Tracks Of The Week is simple - we've collated a batch of new releases by bands falling under the progressive umbrella, and collated them together in one post for you - makes it so much easier than having to dip in and out of various individual posts, doesn't it?
The idea is to watch the videos (or listen if it's a stream), enjoy (or not) and also to vote for your favourite in the voting form at the bottom of this post. Couldn't be easier could it?
We'll be bringing you Tracks Of The Week, as the title implies, each week. Next week we'll update you with this week's winner, and present a host of new prog music for you to enjoy.
If you're a band and you want to be featured in Prog's Tracks Of The Week, send your video (as a YouTube link) or track embed, band photo and biog to us here.
MARJANA SEMKINA - PYGMALION
Here's a shock for you. Someone dies in Marjana Semkina's new single Pygmalion, the second to be taken from her upcoming second solo album Sirin, which she releases on May 31. The video drips in rich, morbid atmosphere - we're looking at this and thinking someone really needs to cast Marjana in a film like one of Jean Rollin's old vampire movies from the 70s. Impressively she raised the entire total of the Kickstarter for Sirin in just one day!
"Pygmalion is somewhat of a modern and much darker take on the Greek legend of a man that makes a statue and falls in love with it," Semkina explains. "In the song, a lot more damage is done - the protagonist murders women and creates a perfect wife for himself. The song is a metaphor for relationships that leave you in pieces and all alone, trying to repair the damage done by someone who tricked you into thinking that they cared about you. The video plays around a similar theme but as a dedication to my ex, it has a much more gratifying ending."
DAVE FOSTER BAND - DELICATE THINGS
Anglo-Dutch proggers the Dave Foster Band return with a new album entitled Maybe They’ll Come Back For Us which will be released on May 31. It finds Steve Rothery guitarist Foster and Dutch vocalist Dinet Poortma in fine form, and, befitting of a man with Foster's standing, boasts several top-notch guest appearances, including Level 42's Mark King, former Big Big Train musician Carly Bryant and Mr. Rothery himself. Delicate Things is the second single from the new album.
"I’m a big Muse fan and wanted to have a crashing power chord thing going on,” states Foster, "but it’s Dinet's melody lines that make this song work so well for me. She's great at weaving melodies through my odd chord changes.” Poortman adds that her lyric “is about how precious life is, and that the things that really matter are the small things. We can sometimes get so wrapped up in our own perception of life that we forget that everything worthwhile is actually free."
BILL FISHER - YELL OF THE RINGMAN
Best known as guitarist, singer and songwriter for Nottingham's flamboyantly clad prog troupe The Church Of The Cosmic Skull, Bill Fisher will release his third solo album How To Think Like A Billionaire through Septaphonic Records on May 3. Yell Of The Ringman is the first single from the record, which sounds rather like what might have happened had the late Dennis Wilson recorded a follow-up to his classic 1977 debut solo album Pacific Ocean Blue. Definitely one for those who enjoy the Beach Boys, especially Surf's Up (an album the late John Wetton always stated was his favourite prog album ever!), and a bit of Yacht Rock. And who doesn't?
"Imagine Kate Bush and Michael McDonald wrote a yacht doom album satirising edgelord-tech-billionaire-worship, recorded by Peter Gabriel and Tori Amos in the early 80s using an industry prerelease unit of the late 90s Yamaha PSR8000 synthesiser, several heavily distorted guitars, and a baby grand," says Fisher. He makes a good point too!
PALLBEARER - ENDLESS PLACE
Despite their doom pedigree, there's always been something unerringly progressive about US quartet Pallbearer and so they prove on new album Mind Burns Alive, which marks a sonic shift away from the more metal aspects of their earlier music to a dark post-rock sound that is reflected throughout the whole of the new album. Mind Burns Alive is released through Nuclear Blast Records on May 17, and in the next issue of Prog vocalist-guitarist Brett Campbell tells us that long-time fans have been asking "where are the riffs?" in the new album. You'll hear a few in Endless Place, one of the heavier tracks from the album, but still steeped in rich atmospherics.
"These are vignettes which tell the stories of people who deal with myriad sicknesses of the spirit," explains Campbell. "These are illnesses communicated by the world we live in, and the subjects are the symptoms of its disease."
THE OMNIFIC - MATRICES
Bass, how low can you go? Pretty low if you're Australian instrumental three-piece The Omnific, seeing as they have two bass players within their ranks! The Melbourne band have just announced that they will release their second album, The Law Of Augmenting Returns, through Wild Thing Records on June 7 and from which Matrices is the first single. Of course, if awards were given out for mullets, The Omnific would win hands down. Check out flamboyant drummer Jerome Lematua in this video!
"Matrices weaves modern cascades of thumping and slap, while embracing a futuristic soundscape," explains one of the band's bassists, Toby Peterson-Stewart. "This is one of the harder songs to play for all of us respectively, it’s a great example of a song that makes us all better musicians from playing it. Also, many djent."
THE BEE TELLERS - RIVER POEM
Former Mostly Autumn singer, solo artist in her own right, and member of folk/prog duo Odin Dragonfly, Heather Finlday has formed The Bee Tellers with fellow York musician SImon Snaize. The pair describe their sound as "folk, blues and Americana infused progressive rock songs with Eastern vibes and a nod to Buckingham Nicks and Led Zeppelin featuring vocals, harmonies, guitars, harmonium woodwind and percussion," and you can hear that in the slow-building River Poem, with its striking video.
"In a chat with Si about the importance of being in the flow as a creative, I recalled a poem I’d written in August 2022, in the Cumbrian Lakes on a camping holiday with the kids," explains Findlay. "Having just arrived and pitched and wandered down to the river ‘afore the eventide’, the chaos of finishing up work, packing, prepping, leaving and driving there made a stark contrast to the tranquil, green serenity of the Lakeland waterside. A beautiful synchronicity to go along with this was that in those first few riverside moments, long before Si & I began writing together, I had also sent a photo of the scene to him accidentally that was meant for my boys’ Dad. Most mysterious but, definitely a seed planted… 18 months on, as soon as I began reading the poem to Si, he picked up the guitar and out flowed River Poem… "
DANIEL DAVIES - I KNOW WHY
Most Prog readers will be aware of Daniel Davies from his work with his Godfather John Carpenter and Carpenter's son Cody. A former member of both Year Long Disaster and Karma To Burn, and also the son of Kink Dave Davies, rock heritage runs through Daneil's blood. He's about to release his fourth solo album, Ghost Of The Heart, through Sacred Bones Records on June 21. The album displays a variety of musical styles, from the prog associated with his work with Carpenter, to this stomping, Zeppelin-esque rocker.
"I wrote I Know Why on Halloween night,” Davies explains. 'We were trick-or-treating, and I could see this girl walking into the darkness and disappear. I liked the image and the feeling that it gave me. It evolved from there and became a song about isolation and loneliness."
