Classic Rock Magazine ~ Prog Spawn

The latest issue of Classic Rock Magazine has a cover mounted CD devoted to new prog acts. The title and cover illustration of the disc is awful, but the music is uniformly excellent. A lot of it I have heard before, but it is gratifying to see this stuff get a wider exposure. It is just and right that acts like Big Big Train, Touchstone and Manning in particular have a forum like this to reach a much wider audience. They all deserve to be heard and hopefully pick up some converst on the way.

I was particularly impressed by the opening track by Mystery who appear to be a Canadian band. Haven’t heard them, but their “Travel To The Night” from their latest album was very tasty indeed. So need to check them out. I am not sure on the inclusion of Odin Dragonfly, the duo of Mostly Autumn’s Heather Findlay and Angela Gordon. This is nicely acoustic, but prog? Also, the very excellent No-Man have a track from their latest album here, but I wouldn’t class them as prog and I am surprised Steven Wilson approved the inclusion as he has in the past vocally distanced himself from the prog tag for his band Porcupine Tree. Maybe he is mellowing a bit.

A great little taster/compilation this and does indicate how strong prog rock is in the UK at the moment. But that title!!!