In April 2025, pop proggers Chimpan A (featuring Magenta’s Robert Reed and an assortment of musical friends) released a superb version of Peter Gabriel’s ‘Here Comes The Flood’. It managed to be reverential of the original recording whilst bringing a new slant via a modern production sound, and also shared a downtempo feel that felt half a world away from the ex-Genesis man’s musical interests. Coupled with the self-penned ‘Wolves’, the release marked a great return for the band after a few years away. This second two track release follows the same format – a Chimpan A original, joined by a well known tune sourced from the band’s many influences – and achieves a similarly impressive result.
Tag Archives: prog
THE REAL GONE SINGLES BAR #108
Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore some of the more interesting individual tracks that have landed in our inbox over the previous couple of weeks. This time around, we bring you some pastoral prog from a DIY multi-instrumentalist, a great pop throwback to a pre-Beatle age, a slice of country, a great R&B number…and more besides. As always, we hope you discover something new, and if you like what you hear, why not drop by and tell us? The submissions for the SB are still coming in fast, so there’s a lot more great stuff to come!
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GREENSLADE – Large Afternoon
Between 2018-2019, Esoteric Recordings – the prog rock subsidiary of Cherry Red Records – ran a brilliant reissue campaign for 70s band Greenslade. Their four major albums were lovingly repackaged and expanded with a wealth of live material, BBC Sessions and various alternate edits. In the case of fan favourite ‘Bedside Manners Are Extra’, the 1973 album was even coupled with a bonus DVD featuring the band’s appearance on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test, making the short set available in full, officially, for the first time. Such a good job was made of these affordable reissues that it was hoped that the campaign would be extended to include keyboard maestro Dave Greenslade’s first two solo albums – 1976’s ‘Cactus Choir’ and 1978’s lavish album and book set ‘The Pentateuch of The Cosmonololgy’ – since both deserved a similar level of TLC. Sadly, it wasn’t to be: instead, fans merely got a compilation disc presenting the best of Greenslade appended with one rare nugget – ‘Feathered Folk’, recorded live at the Reading Festival in 1973, which, in fairness, should’ve featured on the ‘Bedside’ reissue. [As of April 2025, neither of those aforementioned solo discs have had a decent CD send off; the Angel Air reissue of ‘Cactus Choir’ sounds awful, and ‘Pentateuch’ exists in an inferior edited version.]
CHIMPAN A – Here Comes The Flood / Wolves
Chimpan A’s ‘The Empathy Machine’ was an interesting album. Its songs took on the kind of lengths that would normally be associated with prog rock, but its sounds were far more pop oriented. The best tracks blended layers of synth with perfectly pitched melodic vocals, straddling the musical gulf between pop, AOR and electronica, almost in a way that pre-empted Alex Lifeson’s commercial sounds on the Envy of None debut, released just a few years later.
HATS OFF GENTLEMEN IT’S ADEQUATE – The Uncertainty Principle
In April 2024, prog band Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate returned to the spotlight with a two track release helmed by the rather thoughtful ‘One Word That Means The World (Arkhipov)’. The first new tracks to appear in over a year, the digital pairing re-acquainted fans with the Gentlemen’s rather quirky and adventurous musical style.