Exploring the Symphonic Progressive Rock of Netherland’s – Minor Giant – On the Road

One of the albums that has been in my listening rotation for a while now is the debut album of a symphonic rock/progressive rock band from the Netherlands Minor Giant, and with each listen I like the album more and more. The first seeds of the band were sown in 2010 when at 16 years old the founder of the band Rindert Lammers composed and recorded several instrumental symphonic progressive rock tracks. Then in 2011 Rindert posted an instrumntal demo to Soundcloud, soon thereafter vocals from Christiaan Bruin (Sky Architect, Chris) were added to the track. The second seeds were…

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Exploring the Dynamic Jazz Piano of Hiromi Uehara – Alive!!

Originally posted at Let’s Explore Jazz So while I did really enjoy all of the albums on the Jazz playlist that I created yesterday. There was one album though, that caught my attention very quickly and  that was Alive by Hiromi! The album was released on June 17th on the Telarc label and currently the album is No, 37 on the JazzWeek Chart and No 11 on the Billboard Jazz Chart. Alive is Hiromi’s ninth studio release and her third release as Hiromi’s  Trio Project.  The current trio features: Simon Phillips on drums and Anthony Jackson on bass. Her first four…

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Exploring Neo Prog from the United States’ Roy Strattman – The Lie of the Beholder!

This morning I took a moment and gave a quick listen to a few of the albums now on progstreaming, I picked two, found the albums on Spotify, put them on the iPhone and listened today. The two albums were from Roy Strattman: The Lie of the Beholder and Mike Kershaw’s Ice Age. Of the two I listened to more of Strattman than Kershaw, so I guess I’ll begin there. The Lie of the Beholder is the first album produced by Roy Strattman under his own name, prior to this release Strattman has been, since 2002, the sole guitarist and joint…

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Exploring the Music of Spain’s Kant, Freud, Kafka – No Tengas Miedo – Symphonic or Not!

After my run last night, I was pretty much physically drained, I took a shower, ate and then wrote a post at Me, Myself, Music and Mysteries. After that, I was going to write about my run and its soundtrack, which was the new album from The Royal Southern Brotherhood. While I was getting ready to write that post, I went to look up something about a prog band that I listened to earlier in the day Rite of Passage. wasn’t having much luck finding information, so I went to progstreaming, where I first saw their album. While I was…

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2014 Progressive Metal from Iran – Whispers in Crimson – Suicide in B Minor!

This morning I was reviewing the new progressive rock albums that have been released in June. Among the releases was Suicide in B Minor by Whispers in Crimson which was released on June 24th. What made the album particularly interesting to me was,  the band hails from Tehran in Iran. I knew that progressive metal had a strong following in the Middle East, but I also thought that it was difficult to produce metal music in Iran, which is actually pretty much the case according to the founder of Whispers in Crimson  Amirali Nourbakhsh,  who in the band’s biography at their…

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The Old Runner Gets Going Again… with Music from Ontofield …Sleeping with Fractals!

So Tuesday was fairly hot here in New Jersey and then yesterday it cooled off a little, and the fair weather runner inside me said yes today is the day!!Checking Runmeter on the iPhone I see that with half the month gone this is my first run in May, My last run was April 28th, that sucks, I should be ashamed of myself! Anyway I did feel pretty good yesterday so I did some light yoga stretching and took off. I felt good through the first two miles and averaged 10:06 per mile, then I slowed down over the 3rd…

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Psychedelic/Space Rock from Canada’s Greylevel – Hypostatic Union

Again this weekend Thursday through Sunday was a blur….Thursday I worked both jobs from 8:30 am to 11:30 PM, then got back up to be on a site 30 minutes from my home at 8 am! I worked until 12:00 then ran around getting ready for a wedding, drove to Avalon NJ a one hour forty minute drive, went to a wedding on the beach, attended the reception and drove him arriving back home at 11 PM. Saturday was a few errands and then work again from 5:30 to 11:30! Sunday Mother’s Day found us at my son Andrew’s home…

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Symphonic Prog from the USA’s Rocket Scientists – Supernatural Highways! (Video)

Many moons ago, when my on Andrew still was working part-time at Target, I have a vague recollection of him telling me about a band he had listened to and enjoyed – Rocket Scientists. I think that I gave the band a quick listen and really didn’t care for them. A week or so ago, the band released a new EP titled Supernatural Highways, so I went to Spotify to check it out. There are two tracks on this 30 minute EP- track one “Traveler on the Supernatural Highway” hogs 26 minutes of them, leaving 4 minutes plus for “On Her…

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Neo Prog from the UK – Gandalf’s Fist- A Day in the Life of (..Ivan -Not! …) a Univeral Wanderer

When I first heard of the band Gandalf’s Fist…… ….. I discovered two guys who over the last few years have become good friends and have formed a band with a name that arose from an attempt by a mutual friend to impress a geeky girl. The band name that their friend created and the two friends have stolen is Gandalf’s Fist!  The two friends are  multi-instrumentalist Dean Marsh and lyricist/vocalist Luke Severn.  Their music is steeped in the British Prog rock scene of the 1970s….Continue Reading Sometime last week I saw that I had missed last  fall their latest release…

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The Safari goes “Down Under” and finds Hibernal’s Progressive Rock “Audio Movie” Replacements

The other day I was reviewing the latest albums on Progstreaming and the sci-fi looking album art for Replacements from Hibernal caught my eye…. So I made it available offline at Spotify, put it on the iPhone and it became the soundtrack for some work around the house. The album was to say the least very different. it surprised me, when I first heard the narration about “The synths”,. I figured it was just a part of the opening of the album, but then on the second track “The City Ebbs Away”, came the voice of Artemis and  I soon realized…

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