{"id":29214,"date":"2025-04-22T05:30:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T09:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=29214"},"modified":"2026-01-26T15:21:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T20:21:36","slug":"hundred-word-reviews-for-april-2025-prog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/22\/hundred-word-reviews-for-april-2025-prog\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundred-word Reviews for April 2025: Prog"},"content":{"rendered":"

More of my quick takes on music I want you to know about. This time the theme is progressive rock from around the globe.<\/p>\n

\"\"the ajjancy \u2013 …to be arranged<\/i><\/b>
\nA curious release, this album makes no bones about engaging in copyright violation. It\u2019s a mashup of songs that \u2013 by rights \u2013 shouldn\u2019t go together. Yes\u2019 \u201cRoundabout\u201d is combined with Michael Jackson\u2019s \u201cThriller.\u201d Whether that\u2019s a good idea or not is beside the point; it\u2019s done effectively. The musicianship is prog, the style is pop, and the vocals are sweet, with bits of hip hop worked into the mix. The involvement of utility man to the stars Fernando Perdomo should help this release get noticed. Deeply strange, …to be arranged<\/i> is a stylistic exercise, a \u201cbecause we can\u201d effort worth hearing.<\/p>\n

\"\"Mark Wingfield \u2013 The Gathering<\/i><\/b>
\nEven if you yourself weren\u2019t talented, if you made an album with Tony Levin, Gary Husband, Percy Jones and Asaf Sirkis, you\u2019d likely have a winner on your hands. But if you\u2019re Mark Wingfield, the resulting album would be even better than that. Is The Gathering<\/i> progressive rock, jazz or something else? Ultimately it doesn\u2019t matter; the album\u2019s ten instrumental tracks are expressive and inviting while displaying well-executed musical ambition. Wonderfully majestic and atmospheric, guitarist Winfield\u2019s song-soundscapes are thrilling indeed. Technical mastery wedded to accessible composition equals a strong and consistently engaging album, however one decides to classify it genre-wise.<\/p>\n

\"\"Quartet Diminshed \u2013 Deerand<\/i><\/b>
\nTehran, Iran is perhaps not the first place one would look for avant garde progressive music. But thanks to the intrepid work of MoonJune Records\u2019 Leonardo Pavkovic, this group has now released its fourth album. Classically-minded compositions and breathtaking improvisation (and it\u2019s often hard to tell which is happening) characterize the evocative and spellbinding music. The four musicians are joined on Deerand<\/i> by Markus Reuter and Tony Levin. The four-part title track takes up some 25 minutes, moving through all manner of textures. \u201cTehran II\u201d is glacial; \u201cAllegro Per Il R\u00e9\u201d is dramatic. Imposing yet accessible, it\u2019s wonderfully expressive music.<\/p>\n

\"\"Beledo \u2013 Flotando con el vacio<\/i><\/b>
\nFrom NYC by way of Montevideo, Uruguay comes Beledo, guitarist\/violinist and creator of Flotado con el vacio<\/i> (Floated with the Void<\/i>). On his ninth studio release, Beledo engages the assistance of Sirkis and Husband (see above) along with a handful of other ace players. Combining South American musical traditions and world music, the album explores a wide variety of textures \u2013 serene, expansive, dreamy, knotty and angular, and more \u2013 and it somehow all holds together. If one listens passively, the music occasionally takes on a slightly smooth jazz character. Listen more actively and album reveals itself as a model of complexity-meets-accessibility.<\/p>\n

\"\"Anupam Shobhakar \u2013 Liquid Reality<\/i><\/b>
\nFrom Bombay (Mumbai) we have Anupam Shobhakar, a guitarist who plays fretted and fretless guitars. His music may remind some listeners of John McLaughlin\u2019s Fourth Dimension, with the odd (to Western ears, at least) vocalizations that figure into some of the tunes. Complicated, knotty melodies will either chase away or fascinate listeners; if you’ve read this far, chances are good that the latter will be the case. If one could imagine a more acoustic-based rethink of Discipline<\/i>-era King Crimson, that might give a vague, general sense of the sort of music Shobhakar is making. Deeply evocative songcraft characterizes this set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More of my quick takes on music I want you to know about. This time the theme is progressive rock from around the globe. the ajjancy \u2013 …to be arranged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,56,65],"tags":[5654,5651,1409,5653,5652],"class_list":["post-29214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-prog","category-review","tag-anupam-shobhakar","tag-beledo","tag-mark-wingfield","tag-quartet-diminished","tag-the-ajjancy","cat-49-id","cat-56-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29214"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30697,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29214\/revisions\/30697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}