Billy Sherwood is no stranger to an all star compilation. Over the years, he’s helped mastermind tributes to all manner of artists, often with mixed results. His 2019 project ‘A Prog Rock Christmas’ can seem as scattershot as many of those previous all star affairs, but by bringing together various prog legends to put their own stamp on a few familiar yuletide ditties, there are a several things to enjoy along the way, ranging from the traditional to the bespoke.
Tag Archives: prog
Prog rock legends Pallas offer free festive download
Hot on the heels of the Bad Elephant Music 2019 sampler, here’s some more prog rock goodness for you!
For the Christmas period, the legendary band are offering their fans (and potential new listeners) a Christmas themed download. Joining a few reworkings of familiar songs, the download also includes some cracking live material, which is reason enough to add this to your collections even if you’re not festively minded.
Grab a new label sampler from Bad Elephant Music!
One of the UK’s most adventurous independent labels, Bad Elephant Music, have a Christmas gift for you.
They’ve just issued a new downloadable sampler for 2019, bringing together tracks from many of their best bands.
VINCENT CARR’S SUMIC – New Paeans
Vincent Carr’s fifth album ‘Rekindled’ (released under the name Vincent Carr’s SUMIC in 2016) was one of the year’s most pleasant surprises. Taking influences from Nick Drake, John Martyn, various 70s prog bits and a smidgeon of trad English folk, the album took the listener on a very pastoral musical journey. Traces of Freddie Phillips’ children’s TV scores also added to the album’s very English qualities. It was an album only heard by a relative few, but those who did, invariably loved it.
MAGNUM – Magnum II
Magnum’s debut album ‘Kingdom of Madness’ had a long and somewhat difficult birth. An album had been completed by the end of 1976, but for reasons best known to themselves, the Jet Records label sat on the tapes. Magnum continued to write new material and gig constantly, and subsequently, the album was given an overhaul. A few older tracks were sidelined for newer songs and a rejigged long-player eventually appeared on record shop shelves in August 1978. This possibly didn’t help the album’s fortunes in the short term; instead of being released at a time when the record’s prog and pomp styles were still in vogue, Magnum were left with a fantasy themed album drifting in the unsure waters of punk and new wave bands. It only scraped the UK album chart’s top 60.