Bill Bruford - Bruford Tapes (79)

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01-Hell's Bells
02-Sample and Hold
03-Fainting in Coils
04-Travels With Myself - And Someone Else
05-Beelzebub
06-The Sahara Of Snow - Part One
07-The Sahara Of Snow - Part Two
08- One of a Kind (Part Two)
09-5G

Atoll - Rock Puzzle (79)

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1 L' Age d'Or (Dans 8000 Ans)
2 L' Ultime Rock
3 Kaelka
4 Smarto Kitschy
5 Eau (H20)
6 Garces de Femmes
7 La Maison de Men-Tää
8 Puzzle
9 L' Ultime Rock [Studio Z Version]
10 Puzzle [Studio Z Version]
11 Atari, That's a Game! [Smarto Kitschy-American Mix]
12 Here Comes the Feeling
13 No Reply
14 Eye to Eye

Atoll - Musiciens Et Magiciens [1974]

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French progressive rock group Atoll fashioned their music around Yes' and Genesis' repertoire, employing lush tapestries of classically oriented string work to light melodies and intricate song structures.

1974's Musiciens-Magiciens is among the band's strongest releases, laying out breezy, energetic passages that use a moderate amount of keyboards and strong dosages of guitar to create busy semi-suites that hold together quite well.

All the vocals are in French, but the instruments are what truly steal the show, especially in the 11-plus minutes of "Le Baladin du Temps," a concept piece which is broken up into three separate parts.

The final track, entitled "Je Suis D'ailleurs," has the band creating some rather spirited musical drifts and variations through the use of animated rhythms and resilient textures, much like Ange does, another French progressive band.

While Atoll's composition rarely strayed throughout their short lifespan, Musiciens-Magiciens remains one their best albums, mainly because the group was just starting out and their music and images sound fresh and inventive.

The release of Musiciens-Magiciens that appears on Musea contains four live bonus tracks, with two of them repeats of the album's original cuts.

Purists should be aware that the recording of the live tracks is very poor and of the lowest quality, but the original seven cuts sound quite good.

Genesis – Trespass (73)

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01 Looking For Someone
02 White Mountain
03 Visions Of Angels
04 Stagnation
05 Dusk
06 The Knife

Ad Infinitum - Ad Infinitum (99)

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01 - Ad Infinitum
02 – Immortality
03 – Waterline
04 - Physician Heal Thyself
05 - A Winter's Tale
06 - Rain Down
07 – Overland
08 - All Hallows Eve
09 - Neither Here Nor There
10 - Ad Infinitum (reprise)


Sounding very much like an album from 20 years previous, Ad Infinitum's debut is filled with such staples of the progressive rock sound as time shifts, intellectual lyrics, and layers of intricately played guitars and Mellotrons. There is even the cover art by Roger Dean.

The result is an album that while far from original is nonetheless a strong addition to the prog-rock canon.

At times, the group does hover a bit close to sounding like a cover band, but it's usually only for a brief period such as the introduction to the title track that sounds uncomfortably similar to Pink Floyd's "Shine on You Crazy Diamond."

For much of the album, the fact that the band melds together the styles of various progressive artists means that the music comes across as an interesting hybrid rather than simply a carbon copy.

"Overland" in particular sounds like a meeting of the members of the classic lineups of Yes and Genesis and like the rest of the album is recorded far better than those bands ever were.

Progressive fans wary of new releases that falsely claim to be throwbacks to the golden age of prog-rock should have no complaints about this one.

Peter Gabriel – So (86)

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01 - Red Rain
02 – Sledgehammer
03 - Don't Give Up
04 - That Voice Again
05 - In Your Eyes
06 - Mercy Street
07 - Big Time
08 - We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)
09 - This Is The Picture (Excellent Birds)

Nektar - Dream Nebula (Best Of 1971 To 1975) (98)

Disco 1

01 – Prelude
02 - Astronauts Nightmare
03 - Warp Oversight
04 - The Dream Nebula (Part 1)
05 - It's All In the Mind
06 - A Tab In The Ocean
07 - Do You Believe In Magic (Single Version)
08 - New Day Dawning
09 - Wings (Single Version)

Disco 2

01 - Cast Your Fate
02 - King Of Twilight
03 - Remember The Future (Part 1)
04 - Oop'S (Unidentified Flying Abstract)
05 - Fidgety Queen
06 – Recycle
07 - Cybernetic Consumption
08 - Recycle Countdown
09 - Auomation Horroscope
10 – Recycling
11 - Flight To Reality
12 - Unendless Imaginations

Progressive rock is one of the most misunderstood and maligned styles of popular music.

Its sound has been defined by a few of the most popular artists of its brief early-'70s heyday, including Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and Genesis.

This has not only caused prog-rock to become a love-it-or-hate-it subgenre, but also overshadowed the contributions of many less commercially successful groups who created their own distinctive sounds.

Anyone's Daughter - Neue Sterne (83)

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01 - Der Plan (... Und Das Eis Zerschlagen)
02 - Neue Sterne (Des Poppers Unglückliche Liebe)
03 - In Zerbrochenem Glas
04 - Wieder Weiter
05 - Das Puppenspiel
06 - Viel Zuviel
07 – Konsequenzen
08 - Illja Illja Lela
09 - Cafi Einstein
10 – Reprise

Anyone's Daughter was a late-'70s, early-'80s symphonic prog rock band heavily influenced by Genesis as well as by German bands such as Elroy and Grobschnitt.

After breaking up in the mid-'80s, the group reformed in 2000.

Genesis – Genesis (83)

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1 Mama
2 That's All
3 Home by the Sea
4 Second Home by the Sea
5 Illegal Alien
6 Taking It All Too Hard
7 Just a Job to Do
8 Silver Rainbow
9 It's Gonna Get Better


Moments of Genesis are as spooky and arty as those on Abacab — in particular, there's the tortured howl of "Mama," uncannily reminiscent of Phil Collins' Face Value, and the two-part "Second Home by the Sea" — but this eponymous 1983 album is indeed a rebirth, as so many self-titled albums delivered in the thick of a band's career often are.

Here the art rock functions as coloring to the pop songs, unlike on Abacab and Duke, where the reverse is true.

Some of this may be covering their bets — to ensure that the longtime fans didn't jump ship, they gave them a bit of art — some of it may be that the band just couldn't leave prog behind, but the end result is the same: as of this record, Genesis was now primarily a pop band.

Anybody who paid attention to "Misunderstanding" and "No Reply at All" could tell that this was a good pop band, primarily thanks to the rapidly escalating confidence of Phil Collins, but Genesis illustrates just how good they could be, by balancing such sleek, pulsating pop tunes as "That's All" with a newfound touch for aching ballads, as on "Taking It All Too Hard."

They still rocked — "Just a Job to Do" has an almost nasty edge to its propulsion — and they could still get too silly as on "Illegal Alien," where Phil's Speedy Gonzalez accident is an outright embarrassment (although in some ways it's not all that far removed from his Artful Dodger accent on the previous album's "Who Dunnit?"), and that's why the album doesn't quite gel.

It has a little bit too much of everything — too much pop, too much art, too much silliness — so it doesn't pull together, but if taken individually, most of these moments are very strong, testaments to the increasing confidence and pop power of the trio, even if it's not quite what longtime fans might care to hear.

Castanarc - Journey To The East (84)

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Track Listings
1. Peyote (4:40)

2. Traveling Song (2:08)

3. Am I (3:30)

4. Goodbye to All That (5:50)

5. Rhyme (2:11)

6. The Fool (8:40)

7. Soon (3:04)

8. Journey To the East (7:30)

Total Time: 37:33
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Line-up/Musicians
- Mark Holiday / vocals

- David Powell / keyboards

- Paul Ineson / electric guitars

- Neil Duty / bass, electric, & acoustic guitars

- Dave Kirkland / drums & percussion
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CASTANARC's "Journey To The East"" is a real classic and is one of those light hearted progressive rock recordings with highly memorable songs.

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Standout for me here is the absolutely beautiful soft voice of Mark Holiday who I would say has one of the top voices.

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CASTANARC are a neo-prog act but never get too synthy for my liking instead delivering a gentle but complex offering which I am sure will please all prog heads.

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They never get too loud or out of control and keep focus on building vocal harmonies and beautiful sonic architecture.

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At times I think "Journey..." carries a slight Alan PARSONS touch. "Journey To The East" is a real cult prog classic and is a great album to sit and listen to.

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Obscure neo-proggers from the UK mid-80's scene, CASTANARC only stuck it out for four albums.

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The sound is a mixture of GENESIS and YES, but the vocalist sounds so much like John Waite that if you're a fan of his or the BABYS, it can tend to be a distraction.

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However, the music is more keyboard-oriented and less guitar-dominant than MARILLION, and reminds at times of SAGA. Overall, CASTANARC is a fairly decent neo-prog band, comparable in quality to PALLAS or PENDRAGON and not as good as JADIS.

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"Journey To The East" is a real cult prog classic and is a great album to sit and listen to.

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