Casting the Prog Rod Catches Some Beardfish

Casting the Prog Rod Catches Some Beardfish

Saturday night is turning out to be a real rocking night.  For some reason the slot before my show, 8pm to 10pm, has seen a few incumbents come and go, each with their own musical tastes and playlists.  In this case, the playlist has been rock.  Well, I won’t complain, especially as Alex Fletcher even strayed into proggy territory by playing some Muse as she became temporary owner of that fickle slot.  I have to say that it’s really great that a station like Phoenix FM can cater for the rock fan, whatever their overall leanings.

So, did this week’s show have any major gremlins, any mad machine revenge, any spontaneous CD combustion?  Luckily, no!  What I put in the machines seemed to want to play ball this week, which made the whole evening a more relaxing event for me.  In fact, I turned the studio speakers up and enjoyed the music at a level that prog rock almost deems obligatory.  For this show I scoured my old CDs and pulled out a couple of real classics that brought back a smile of reminiscence as I played them.  I was also lucky enough to have a couple of promo releases of music due for release.  The full playlist for this Saturday, the 21^st of April is as follows:

Artist : Album : Track

Planet X : Quantum : Alien Hip Hop (due out 21st May)

Pallas : The Dreams Of Men : Too Close To The Sun

King Crimson : Kaboom : Red

Pink Floyd : Obscured By Clouds : Free Four

Tomas Bodin : Sonic Boulevard : The Hero From Cloud City

Alan Parson Project : Pyramid : One More River

Mangrove : Coming Back To Live : Facing The Sunset

Jadis : Photoplay : I hear Your Voice

10CC : Deceptive Bends : Feel The Benefit (Parts 1, 2 and 3)

Beardfish : Sleeping In Traffic: Part One : Roulette (due out 21st May)

Dream Theatre : Octavarium : Octavarium

A real joy was to hear the new Beardfish album.  It’s an album that has a real retro prog feel to it, but then swings effortlessly to the modern day with a superb sound production,.  Crafted by set of gifted musicians from Sweden, the new Beardfish album makes me want to go out and get their entire back catalogue and play it to death.  Another pleasant surprise was the new Planet X album, called Quantum.  Derik Sherinian, ex Dream Theatre keyoards, has made a bit of a name for himself as a quality musician, creating heavy, yet very progressive, instrumental music.  On his new album he’s assembled a range of excellent musicians to complement his keyboard playing and has produced an album that weaves through full on rock, metal fusion and driving progressive rock that it can leave you breathless in places.

So, to next week, I have in my grubby mitts the new Kiapa album and I’m going to air some of it on the show.  I’m also going to try and slot in some ELP and a host of other great prog rock.  I hope you can find the time to tune in.  Speaking of tuning in, visit me on www.myspace.com/daveoprogshow.

Bye for now,

DaveO.