Welcome to Prog's brand new Tracks Of The Week, Seven brand new and diverse slices of progressive music for you to enjoy.
Well done to US instrumental post-rockers If These Trees Could Talk, whose new single Trail Of Whispering Giants obliterated the opposition last week, withTrevor Rabin and young American progressive metal troupe Artificial Language in secind and third places respectively.
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.
So get watching. And get voting at the bottom of the page.
EXPLORING BIRDSONG - THE COLLAPSE
Alt-leaning prog trio Exploring Birdsong are back with anther new single. The wonderfully melodic The Collpase follows the release of the band's cover of Deftones Diamond Eyes, and the band's second EP Dancing in the Face of Danger, both released last year. It draws a line under what the trio see as the first phase of their career and they're now hard at work on what will be their full-length debut album for Long Branch Records.
"Although in a very different style, The Collapse was originally written way back in 2017 during our time at university," the band explain. "Used as part of our songwriting course, we submitted it almost as a throwaway song, and as a result, didn’t resurface again until mid 2023. When we went back and re-listened, time had given us fresh ears, and allowed us to rework and really bring out the potential in what is now a song we’re super proud of. The song used to be centred around just piano and a solo vocal. For it to have blossomed into something so wildly differing in texture is really, really cool for us."
CIRCULINE - TEMPUS HORRIBILIS
US prog rockers Circuline have had a major revamp and now feature Lifesigns and Iona guitarist Dave Bainbrdge and Kyros keyboard player and singer Shelby Logan Warne on bass alongside founding member Andrew Colyer, drummer Darin Brannon and lead vocalist Natalie Brown. They will release their brand new album C.O.R.E. through the Inner Nova Music label on September 20, from which comes the complex and intriguing Tempus Horribilis. Circuline are currently engaged in a Virtual Tour which consists of 57 events in 48 weeks, with single releases, yyric videos, official videos, “Behind the Scenes” videos and Livestream Q&A events where the band is able to connect with their fans around the world.
“For this particular video, we chose to shoot outside in an industrial area, and it was super hot and sunny in the middle of the afternoon, and right when we were filming and sweating it out, a big storm appeared, with tons of wind and clouds, and we thought that nature was going to overtake us," says keyboardist Andrew Colyer. "Luckily it created a really dramatic background to go with the song and the music. The rest of the videos for this 2024 CORE Virtual Tour are being produced in other creative ways. We’ve had so much fun creating all of the videos for this Virtual Tour - we’ve been ‘on location; in train stations, on rivers, in parking lots, and on soundstage studios."
BIG BIG TRAIN - LOVE IS THE LIGHT
Big Big Train return with a third single release ahead of the release of their latest album, The Likes Of Us, which is released through InideOut Music on March 1. It's both the band's first new album for their new label and also the first full-length release to feature new singer Alberto Bravin, who replaced the late David Longdon, and who wrote the poignant Love Is The Light.
"This song recounts a difficult period in my life and how I got through it," says Bravin. "In 2018 my daughter was born, I had a happy life and was travelling around the world playing a lot of gigs with PFM. But for no apparent reason I became deeply depressed. The most difficult challenge is not to heal, but to admit what’s happening. And you can do it only if you have real support from the people around you. My wife, Nicole, was always there for me and she helped me find the light. And she’s still doing it: with love."
"When Alberto submitted Love Is The Light as a song to be considered for The Likes Of Us, we really required no discussion about whether to include it on the album or not – it was an absolute no brainer that we should record it," adds bassist Greg Spawton. "It’s a beautiful ballad that draws from Alberto’s personal experience but also has universal appeal. When we played Love Is The Light live on tour last year, it got a terrific response every night and I hope people will take the song to their hearts as we have."
MIDAS FALL - AM I WRONG
It's a new-look Midas Fall who will release Cold Waves Divide Us, their first new album in six years, through Monotreme Records on March 8. Guitarist Michael Hamilton has joined founding members Elizabeth Heaton and Rowan Burn, bolstering the band's sound, not least in this new single Am I Wrong, which is a particularly lively offring from the Prog Award winning trio.
“A lot of our music comes from a place of sadness and reflection, and takes its time to build and layer," explains singer Elizabth Heaton. "I Am Wrong comes from a much angrier place. We played around with this more aggressive sound using pounding drums and baritone guitars.
"Lyrically it is about feeling trapped in a situation with someone where you feel never good enough, constantly criticised and like you can never win. When the self-doubt and insecurity turns to the realisation that you are being bullied, the result is a pretty pissed off song.
"The video was filmed over the course of a night in Glasgow city centre. It is a nod to the 1981 film Possession where a woman becomes possessed in a Metro station. We are big fans of this era of horror so also wanted to integrate some Dario Argento style FX to add to the drama of the song."
CALEB LANDRY JONES - CORN MINE
If you don't know the voice then you'll almost certainly know the face! Caleb Landry Jones is perhaps better know for appearing in such blockbuster movies as No Country For Old Men, Get Out and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Yet his music is what appealed to Prog when we first heard his debut, the Syd Barrett-inspired The Mother Show back in 2020. His new album, Hey Gary, Hey Dawn, is his fourth, released through Sacred Bones Records on April 5. It's a bit more in your face than the debut, although there's plenty of Barrett, Beatles and even T-Rex in the colourful psych of new single Corn Mine and its accompanying video, featuring Jones buried up to his neck in a mine!
"We built the mine from styrofoam and chicken wire," explain video directors Lewie and Noah Kloster. "We built it in three large sections that connect in order to fit it up the stairs to spray paint the tunnel on our roof. We modified the train to move extremely slow, went through about 60lbs of corn, and 120 hot glue sticks. Finally, once the mine was complete, Caleb flew through the night out to NYC and we put his head in the hole. None us had slept the night before shooting, which added a great mood to the video. We blacked out our studio windows and suffocated ourselves with a fog machine all day. When we finally wrapped, we felt like it had been a lifetime down in the mines together. The video birthed an everlasting artistic friendship. We love CLJ and can't wait to work together again."
DAVE MCLEAN - FAINTLY BLOWING
It's a bright and breezy pysch sound from Dave McLean, also of London psych duo The Chemistry Set, with his cover of Faintly Blowing, originally recorded by London psychedelic outfit Kaleidoscope. Indeed it was the title track from the band's 1969 second album. The track is McLean's first ever solo release and will be available as an 8" lathe-cut single - it will have the stereo version on one side and a phased mono mix on the other.
McLean's done a good enough job to impress original Kaleidoscope singer Pete Daltrey, who says of his version, "It`s always puzzled me why our catalogue was not covered by other bands. This version is true to the original but with his own stamp on it. Particularly liked the ending."
ABSTRAKT LAKE - THE POND BELOW
Abstrakt Lake is the electronic project of multi-instrumentalist Balthazar Klimt, who has been desribed as "a curious musician and jack of all trades... for around ten years, worked on projects marked in turn by rock, metal, electronics, progressive rock and world music." The Pond Below is the debut single from the band, who will release their eponymous album, produced by Vadik Squarez, in October on Wormhole World Records.
"It was his growing interest in field recording that was the origin of Abstrakt Lake," the band's label state. "The first demos were very experimental, quite ambient and sometimes noisy. But gradually, with the addition of vintage synths and retro drum machines, and under the influence of albums by Dead Can Dance, Marius Leirånes, Jacob Holm-Lupo, Molesome, or even Eomac and Waterbased, the pieces came together more melodic, more rhythmic, more accessible. In the end, Abstrakt Lake's music reveals itself to be electronic but organic, ambient but melodic, contemplative but travelling."
