1970s progressive rock

[Mike Moth]

Just a little late for the 70s, released in 1980, but still feeling very 70s. Pythagoras, "Journey To The Vast Unknown," progressive electronic w/live percussion. A friend of mine turned me on to this a few years ago and it's been one of my favorites since.

[amnor]

This feels like coming back to the newsgroups and message boards that I haunted in the mid 1990s where I read about all the prog rock out there that I couldn't get to.  I appreciate everyone posting the links so I can continue my interrupted discovery.

In my early adulthood I listened to the "mainstream" prog groups a lot, mostly Yes and King Crimson - that had a lot to do with my being a drummer and admiring Bill Bruford so much, though I never saw him perform with Crimson (I did see him with Earthworks once).  I saw King Crimson twice: in 2000 with Pat Mastelotto, then on their final tour in 2021 with the three drummers Pat, Gavin Harrison and Jeremy Stacey.  That was a good show: Mel Collins was there on sax, and they played "Cirkus."  Lizard is one of my favorite albums of theirs, particularly the title track, which I rank alongside the first album as strongly evoking fantastical images.

There was Rush too of course: the "By-Tor Cycle," if you will, on Fly by Night and Caress of Steel.

Observing the commentary about where dungeon synth came from as an outgrowth of black metal, along with the projects that have been included under its name but came from different directions (like Jim Kirkwood citing Yes' Relayer, also formative for me), it reminds me of reading something Bill Bruford wrote about how music critics and journalists applied the name of progressive rock or art rock to a supposed style or movement that really wasn't united or deliberate: the individual bands were coming from radically different directions.  I see prog rock and dungeon synth as very similar sociological phenomena, repetitions of the same pattern.

[goldofthetigers]

Good dutch pink floyd-esque prog. Though I think less menacing than floyd