Arcadium was another list of obscure British psychedelic bands. They had their start playing at such clubs as The Middle Earth (where every act you can imagine from well known, like Pink Floyd, to little known acts like Writing on the Wall, Wooden O, and Tam White were seen performing there). A small label called […] Continue reading →

Just when I thought I knew Far East Family Band through albums like Nipponjin (1975) and Tenkujin (1977), they gave us Parallel World, which is their third album. Like their previous album, Klaus Schulze was given a hand (in the mixing department), only this time around his influence is even stronger. The three guys handling […] Continue reading →

This 1970 adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror has often been unjustly maligned. No, I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece of cinema, but a pretty unintentionally silly and amusing adaptation of the Lovecraft story. Don’t expect the movie to be 100% true to the story, in fact Lovecraft stories weren’t supposed to translate too […] Continue reading →

For every Yes, ELP, Genesis, King Crimson, etc., there were many more lesser known prog rock bands. Bands like Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, Caravan, Cressida, Beggars Opera, Spring, etc. all created some great music but were often forgotten in the mists of time, but those who found out about these bands gave high […] Continue reading →

Gentle Giant is often a highly regarded band in the prog rock community. The rock critics (of the Robert Chistgau, Dave Marsh, and Lester Bangs variety), for the most part, hardly ever said anything good of these guys. And yet the band didn’t have the same “overblown pretentiousness” (critics opinion, not mine) that was often […] Continue reading →

Having the Italian prog scene pretty well covered here, it should only come as natural I should review one of the best albums from one of the biggest names of Italian prog. I am referring to Premiata Forneria Marconi, better known as PFM for us non-Italian speakers. Per Un Amico, released near the end of […] Continue reading →

When it comes for the prog rock scene here in America, it seemed like the Midwest and the Northeast Coast (New York, New Jersey, DC, etc.) was where most American prog bands originated. Like Starcastle (from Champagne-Urbana, Illinois), Kansas (from Kansas, of course), Atlantis Philharmonic (from Cleveland), Cathedral (from New York), Ethos (from Ft. Wayne, […] Continue reading →

If you’re a fan of Gong, here’s an album I should suggest you: from Clearlight, called Clearlight Symphony. Sometimes the band is called Clearlight Symphony (but it doesn’t really matter, the band was called simply Clearlight after this album). Mainly Clearlight was a project of French keyboardist Cyrille Verdeaux, and whatever musicians he could find […] Continue reading →

One area of prog rock I failed to cover here is the French scene. I covered the British, German, and Italian scenes pretty well here, even threw in some Scandinavian acts. When people think of French prog, they think Magma, Ange, Atoll, or Pulsar. Another band worth looking in to is Carpe Diem, who only […] Continue reading →

Far East Family Band spawned the careers of three guys. Their names being Fumio Miyashita (who often released his albums under simply the “Fumio” name), Akira Ito, and most of all, Masanori Takahashi. Maybe you might not know Masanori Takahashi by that name, but you know him as Kitaro, the prolific New Age artist of […] Continue reading →