Issue 2026-018

Art Griffin's Sound Chaser — Approaching Translucence

Greg Cummins

Art Griffin is another musician I had never heard of until his latest album was offered up for review. He has released three albums I am aware of under the moniker of Art Griffin's Sound Chaser. While I often enjoy keyboard-centric albums in general, the songwriting has to be really good for me to be fully hooked. In this regard, I have plenty of previous material from my all-time favourites with which to compare works such as what is in front of me, and for the most part I am very impressed. That is in no small part thanks to two very important additions to this ensemble. Joining Art are Kelly Kereliuk on guitar and Victoria Yeh on violin. To say they are accomplished musicians would be doing them both a disservice as their contributions to these nine tracks really give them a dimension all their own.

The immediate influence I heard right out of the starting gate is the uncanny resemblance to Jean Luc Ponty whose electric violin has pampered my ears for more decades than I am prepared to admit to. When backstopped with some incendiary guitar gymnastics, the outcome is incredible. In addition to these we are treated to a guitar solo from Randy McStine, a tasty Hammond B3 solo from Derek Sherinian along with some extra drumming from Marco Minneman (Aristocrats) and Todd Sucherman (Styx).

The keyboards offer up a bevy of very atmospheric moods, and when played in unison with the violin, (especially), that mood is elevated several notches higher. For similarities, I have to reference Lenny White's The Adventures of Astral Pirates which is an extraordinarily good album when played at the right time.

However, let's address the elephant in the room: the opening track. It should be a statement piece — big, bold, “welcome to the journey” stuff — but it's unfortunately hijacked by a synth drenched in wah-wah that sounds like it's trying to audition for a 1970s cop show. It's one of those choices where you can almost hear someone in the studio saying, “Yeah, more wah, that'll make it funky”, while everyone else quietly stares at their shoes. It's not unlistenable, just mildly tragic. Hey dudes, how about more cowbell!

Having said that, however, the rest of the album is exceptionally good so if your preference is for moody jazz fusion with plenty of ambience and seriously professional musicianship, I can't think of a better candidate. This will probably make one of my top 10 albums of the year. Needless to say, I will have to track down their first two albums (just to complete the kleckshun, as such). Excellent musicianship all around guys. Great job!

Kepler Ten — Random Number Generator: Episode 1

Calum Gibson

Five years after their last album (A New Kind of Sideways), Kepler Ten have returned with Random Number Generator: Episode 1, the first in a collection of sci-fi-themed, shorter, digital-only releases. Imagined by drummer Steve Hales as a “sinister story of escapism and addiction” and brought to life by the trio for our listening pleasure.

Having begun life as R2, a Rush tribute group, before becoming Kepler Ten, it is understandable that there is similarities in structure and sound to the Canadians. Add into this some John Petrucci-style soloing, and you have a good idea of the sound. Harmonious licks, technical and fast-paced drum work, funky bass lines and melodic vocal work are all mixed to create a modern prog sound.

Rhythm and intricacy is the key to this release, with the drums setting a steady and fun pace while the bass provides the main wall of the structure. The guitarwork was done by Alistair Bell, who also contributed to the writing and recording of the release before leaving the group. Richie Cahill (the original guitarist) therefore made a return to fill in the gap. Bell's contributions were kept, however, to acknowledge his efforts. And those licks, solos and riffs combine to provide the aforementioned intricacy of the songs.

While being a prog rock album through and through, the nature of the music does lend it a metallic edge and give it a bit of bite. While not prog metal in the way that Dream Theater are, it never less has a hard edge to it in the same way that Porcupine Tree aren't metal but mix with the same circles.

If you like Big Big Train, Pineapple Thief or the other previously mentioned groups, but wish they were just a bit faster and crunchier, then you should get some enjoyment out of this.

Pangaea — The Reckoning

Jerry van Kooten

Although released after their 2024 comeback album Beowulf, The Reckoning was recorded a long time ago. In fact, it was supposed to be the band's fourth album, after A Time And A Place (2002), again with Robert Berry producing.

While recordings were well underway in 2003, life got in the way for several people involved, as they say, or more like life and jobs were taking higher priority, which makes perfect sense. The album project was abandoned. Not long after, though, a changed line-up re-recorded everything with Dito Godwin taking the producer's seat. And now, more than 20 years later, The Reckoning combines both versions on a double CD.

Things got a little confusing when it comes to details. I received three PDFs with different information, but these do not have any recording details for who is playing what on which version. I could only find the name of the producer and not the musicians of the two line-ups. The digital file set I received was missing several tracks from both albums when I compared the entry on Discogs, but it did include the acoustic versions that are not part of the digital release on Bandcamp. (The tracklisting above is taken from Discogs, so I assume complete, but who knows.) I don't need a full set to tell you about this album, but I might be mixing up some details here.

If I understand the info I did get correctly, the main part of CD 1 (all songs are marked with (Vol 1)) is the 2003 version with Robert Berry producing. The main portion of CD 2 (all tracks marked with (Vol 2)) comprises the 2004 version produced by Dito Godwin. The alternative versions on CD 1 and the acoustic versions on CD 2 are of unknown source.

The songs are the same. By that I mean the compositions are the same. The arrangements and recordings, however, are something else.

From the moment you hear CD 2, it almost sounds like a different band. (Well, it is partly, but I have no idea who is playing.) I don't know what happened between abandoning the first version in 2003 and starting to re-record everything in 2004, but it's a big difference. And then it is just a matter of taste which version you are going to prefer.

There has always been a certain amount of AOR to Pangaea's songwriting. CD 1 shows a band going towards AOR more than they hac ever done before. Was it a sign of the times? Was it a conscient decision? Or does it sound like this because the project and therefore the recordings were abandoned? The production and mix are excellent, of course. But overall, it's certainly the least progressive album in the band's discography, the easiest to listen to.

CD 2 has a very different sound. The arrangements are fuller, and the brass section (uncredited in the info I have) is a major factor for the difference in listening experience. Don't expect a brass-heavy album, it's still rock songs. But the brass sound is really adding something extra, as would an extra keyboard player do: adding more layers. The sound becomes fuller and definitely more interesting for prog-minded ears.

Both versions show some typical Pangaea elements. The focus seems on writing shorter and punchier songs. That's always been part of their catalogue, but there is just more of that here. The melodic guitar lines I love in their music are still there, though I wouldn't mind hearing more of those. They clearly decided to return to that on 2024's Beowulf. I like the rough vocals, they really make the songs rock even more. The mix and mastering on both versions are top-notch.

It's a good thing they kept the "lost" album till after the new album. Having 20-year-old recordings as a come-back album is tricky, especially if the sound does not fully match the new sound. A lot happens in 20 years. Making an impact with Beowulf and then treating fans with these previously unreleased recordings was a good decision.

Massimo Pieretti — The Next Dream

Béla Alabástrom

Massimo Pieretti describes his second solo work, The Next Dream, as a "dark musical", for which he has assembled an astonishing cast of collaborators, a veritable roll-call of some of the finest musicians in contemporary prog. The album comprises a series of operatic vignettes conjuring up a liminal space between the dream and the waking worlds, of deadly nightshade and evening primrose.

Come Heavy Sleep, Massimo's sumptuous arrangement of English Renaissance composer John Dowland's song, evokes the retreat of the last lingering rays of sunlight, the scraping sound like the lid of a sepulchre being opened from within. Melancholy and atmospheric, with an exquisite vocal from Maria Chiara Rocchegiani, it coils itself around the listener like bindweed, gently and seductively, never quite concealing the earthy fragrance of death's decay, a carpet of wild garlic and wood anemone. Like Arthur Hughes' April Love with the glossy green of trailing ivy, but at nightfall, a half-glimpsed yet menacing shade in the background poised to steal away the vital breath. It closes with the narrator whose voice is both soothing and sinister, beckoning us to enter a twilight world, where everything is as elusive as a fleeting shadow in lamplight.

The mood shifts immediately in Creatures Of The Night, Pt. 1 with a jazzy piano ripple, a pool of warm and inviting light spilling out onto the street outside a nightclub. As we enter, we are enveloped by a guitar solo which combines a wistful laid-backness with captivating technical flourishes. Germana Noage conveys the trepidation of the encounter with the titular creatures, never fully defined, their intentions swathed in ambiguity. The underlying tension builds, vacillating between the fight and flight response, the guitar unobtrusively underpinned by violin and piano smooth as a silk gown's caress. The foreboding dissipates momentarily as Simone Cozzetto's guitar soars above the thready pulse of the bass. Accompanied by a dreamlike soprano saxophone and gossamer-light piano, the narrator speculates aloud whether the creatures are merely figments of his imagination, his voice the echo of the past in a ruined cloister whose stones have absorbed centuries of devotion.

The centrepiece of the album, The Chinese Witch opens with a quotation from the traditional folk song Mo Li Hua (jasmine flower) before bursting forth into a moonlit landscape, an American highway flanked by desert, towering cacti as onlookers, cabriolet hurtling down the tarmac, swallowed up by distance and darkness. Nowhere do the vocals come to the fore with such scintillating splendour as here, Maria Chiara Rocchegiani and Kate Nord both delivering utterly sublime performances. The Chinese witch functions as a metaphor for the West's propensity to project its own preoccupations and insecurities on to other cultures, perceiving them as an existential threat. The main section reaches a climax, levelling off with Massimo's piano gently punctuating the ethereal intermingling harmonies, their delicate serenity perturbed by a viscerally powerful, almost guttural, chant reminiscent of Jess Holland's in Cheyenne, a breeze stirring a wind chime on a remote farm porch, the ancient Chinese melody borne back on a silkmoth's dusty wings.

I Dream Of Flying employs stark contrast to heartrending effect, a child's high-pitched voice brimming with anguish and helplessness, whose most ardent wish is to become a doctor, having experienced the brutality of war, is overlaid with strings and piano exuding calm. Michael Trew's vocals restrained, almost whispered, yet steeped in empathy and sorrow on behalf of the victims of conflict. The rich layers of melody and subdued symphonic grandeur with hints of King Crimson's I Talk To The Wind appear otherworldly, like wisps of cloud tinged red by the sunset, lending the lyrics greater poignancy:

Nothing more kept me from seeing sad
Deceived, hopeless and terrified people
Thousands of bombs dropped over these lands
Thousands of children
Their eyes cannot settle
On a single colour

The cinematic quality of the music is expressed most fully in this miniature masterpiece, as the camera removes us from the scene of devastation, the rubble, dust and unforgiving, arid drabness, from the hollow-eyed desperation, Andrea Amici's transcendent Mellotron solo and synths effortlessly intertwining with Massimo's piano in a curlicue of hope, the final note reverberating like an unanswered question hanging heavy in the air.

The narrator prefaces Creatures Of The Night, Pt. 2 by asking "Who is out there?" pushing through the cobwebs in a vaulted crypt where only the foolhardy venture. Nick Fletcher's majestic guitar is the perfect complement to Laura Piazzai's impassioned and epic vocals, as the creatures look on impassively from the shadows, biding their time with patience instilled over millennia. At once urgent verging on the frenzied, yet detached, a sense of heaviness and suffocation coupled with complete vulnerability, the malevolent incubus weighing on the slumbering woman's chest in Fuseli's The Nightmare, the deranged, frantically bulging eyes of the mare peeping through the red velvet curtains of her bed. Supernatural Gothic drama of the highest order, the demons sent scuttling back into the recesses by the final command "Away!"

The album concludes with the title track, divided into seven compact sections, vivid yet transitory impressions, blurred fragments of a half-remembered dream, each flowing seamlessly into the next, Dominic Sanderson resplendent on lead vocals. The instrumental interlude Presto builds in intensity with Tom Hyatt's warm and intricate bass gloriously coalescing with guitar and synths, continuing through The Long Old Story, before a final elongated note is interrupted frenetically by the piano, picking up the pace most aptly for Hurry Up! Chaotically propulsive, almost veering out of control, it is satire of our social media-driven times, the incessant clamouring for attention, the distortion and hollowing out of friendship, the snapping fingers demanding an instantaneous response, the fickleness and judgemental abrasiveness. It culminates in a reprise of The Chinese Witch with Kate Nord again regaling us with her gorgeous soprano. Against a backdrop of eerie and unsettling synths with a distinct War Of The Worlds feel, the narrator closes proceedings with his recurring and still unresolved question.

The Next Dream offers an opulent melodic feast, a haughty peacock trailing his tail feathers languidly across the worn flagstones on a balmy evening, mortality's chill corruption lurking on the edge of perception, a moment of heady and joyous abandon before the final grain of sand descends through the hourglass.

Smalltape — Tangram

Ignacio Bernaola

Some albums you approach cold. Others you've already bought before you've heard a single note. Tangram was the second kind: I loved the previous album The Hungry Heart, Philipp Nespital announced the crowdfunding project, and that was that. Straight to the crowdfunding page and get on board, no second thoughts.

For those unfamiliar: Smalltape is the project of Philipp Nespital, a German musician and sound designer who does most of the stuff himself: vocals, keys, guitars, bass, production... His music sits somewhere between progressive rock, ambient, and jazz, with a cinematic quality that's hard to pin down and easy to get lost in.

The debut album The Hungry Heart was a slow-burning gem that arrived in 2021 and still gets regular plays at home. Which makes it a bit funny that this one didn't land on first listen. The Hungry Heart clicked almost immediately; not obvious given that this is hardly your typical prog fare.

Tangram kept its cards close to its chest and waited to see if I was serious. First play: yeah, I like this. Second play: okay, there's more going on here. And then at some point (I can't tell you exactly when) it just quietly opened up. The concept maps onto the experience better than most concept albums manage.

Tangram, the ancient Chinese puzzle: seven simple shapes that don't obviously fit together but eventually form something whole. That's genuinely how the album feels. Of course reading about that idea helped a bit... The three-part No Time suite, split across the tracklist like a thread you keep finding, is the clearest expression of this. Each time it reappears, it carries a little more weight. Nothing spelled out, just pieces clicking into place.

There are obvious highlights: Goodbye is the first proper song, and it really surprises, Phoenix builds slowly and then just lifts off, and Second Chance, featuring a very welcome Bruce Soord guitar solo, is probably the most immediate moment on the record.

But what really got me is the calm of the whole thing. Even when it gets busy, it never pushes. It never needs to prove anything. I've put this on more times than I expected just because of the mood it creates. And yes, it rewards repeat listening, not through complexity for its own sake, but through small details you don't catch until the fourth or fifth time round.

Those little things are exactly what keep you coming back. One thing worth saying: if you go in expecting The Hungry Heart, you might need a few more listens than usual. This one doesn't rush. Give it that, and it really does pay off. Number four on my 2025 list and honestly, looking back, that feels generous to everything above it.

Tusmørke — Balderdom

Mark Hughes

Norway's weirdest progressive group returns with their twelfth studio album (or fourteenth if you include the collection of outtakes [Osloborgerlig Tusmørke: Vardøger og Utburder vol 1] and the split album with Spectral Haze [Elektriske Skrekkøgler og Forhistoriske Framtidsfabler]) which is an impressive rate of output since the first release was in 2012. Featuring core members Brennesle (drums, percussion and electric guitar on intro and outro on Lidskjalv), Krizla (flute; recorder, vocals and Moog Minimoog Model D on Lidskjalv) and Benediktator (bass, vocals, electric guitar, keyboards, Glockenspiel and percussion) alongside new members Selve Kraften (keyboards) and Kusken (drums on the first four tracks) and a whole host of female backing singers and additional bassists.

The band are right out of the seventies in both their appearance and musical style. Evidence for that can be gleaned from the list of keyboards used on the album which includes Mellotron, Moogs, Fender Rhodes, a whole host of different Rolands. The album is very much one of two halves with a clear distinction between the two. The first four songs stem from November 2022 and a celebration of the winter solstice and have a musical focus split between progressive psychedelic folk and the more avent-garde aspects of the Canterbury scene.

Svensk drøm and Vi er et kollektiv are the best of the four songs with good use made of the female choir whose harmonies, particularly on the former track are endearingly off kilter. The latter is best explained by watching the video which I found highlights the strengths of the song better than I could in words! Nice use of Fender Rhodes in the intro. Balderdom (Tres jolie) lives up to the French part of the title being rather a jolly number largely brought about by the cheerful flute motif. However, it is rather lightweight and tends to meander somewhat. That leaves Rerun Of Forever (Stravinsky) which is more chaotic and reminds me somewhat of Gong in places. The repetitive nature of the vocal chanting is quite enthralling, and although vocals throughout the album are in Norwegian, some English can be heard in this piece. The rather manic conclusion to the piece is quite the highlight with multiple weird sounds being coaxed from the various keyboards.

The second half of the album is taken up by over 21 minutes of Lidskjalv, a track that has been in existence, in various forms, since the 1990s. It is on this track that Tusmørke state their progressive credentials. And, it might be added, with aplomb. The interplay between guitar, keyboards and flute is enticing and completely avoids any Jethro Tull comparisons.

The length of the piece allows plenty of tempo changes as well development of periods of high tension and relief. Lidskjalv (or Hliðskjálf) in Norse mythology is the name of the throne in Asgard where Odin surveyed his realms providing him with knowledge and wisdom. As I don't speak Norwegian and no lyrics are provided, I have no idea if this is relevant to the song, but given the band's frequent use of pagan sources and folk traditions, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a source of inspiration. Whatever, that will be of no use to most listeners and what is important is the quality of writing and performance which is top-notch.

Tusmørke occupy a unique place in the progressive firmament, and it is clear that they will not have massive universal appeal. Balderdom is an album that takes time to assimilate; at first I admit to not really understanding what the band were about. But with perseverance came enlightenment, and it was certainly worth the effort.