16 May 2008 :: unemployed and/or bored writers please take note: CMG is now hiring

Retconning


VI :: Prog I (Art, Symphonic, Space)
Mark Abraham :: 2 February 2007 |            


History (Take One): screw history; prog is a hoax, right?

We could drown in semantics; as a descriptive term “prog” is about as touchy as Caligula’s mood. It’s like the entire history of German philosophy expressed in haiku; it’s a pretty idea, but try to use it too efficiently and you’ll end up with Electric Light Orchestra, the Art Bears, and Cluster in the same frosty breath. And while using subgenre buzz terms may map out the formicinatic detail, they tend to crush the anthill: Canterbury, art rock, symphonic prog, Italian symphonic prog, progressive electronic, krautrock, avant-prog, RIO (rock in opposition), zeuhl — what are we even talking about anymore? Try to mean too much, or too little, and the exceptions will pull the punch line. And just try saying it, ‘cause you’ll choke: the letters probably spell “Magma.”

If we want to define it, we need to simplify: all “prog” means is rock music that moves out of rock to embrace classical, jazz, or electronic music (whereas, for example, “fusion” denotes the opposite movement of jazz into rock). As a rule, it’s usually either/or, although there are always exceptions that prove that rule (…Magma).  For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to follow a very loose framework and divide my deliberations on prog in three: this installment will deal with symphonic, art, and space prog (which, at least in composition, generally embrace orchestral and romantic influences). Forthcoming columns will deal with RIO and avant-prog (the free jazz and free improvisation side) and krautrock (generally, the electronic end). This disclaimer is for anybody who read this list and feels gypped at the lack of Beefheart, Zappa, Art Bears/Henry Cow, Univers Zero, Samla Mammas Manna, or the entirety of Germany: they’re coming. Basically, as long as the real nerds (hi! We should go for coffee!) can deal with zeuhl (or, I guess, just Magma) being present here, everything should work out fine. (Also worth noting, I guess, that Magma is the exception to everything I’m about to say, since, y’know, they’re Magma.)

History (Take Two): my history. Because some of the albums that are in this list routinely get shit on. Sometimes by me. Let me show you my cards:

I started Junior High in 1991; I had like maybe 40 cassette tapes. Among them were the kinds of things you might expect: “Weird Al” Yankovic whatevers, MC Hammer and other notable sock hop jamz, and awesome stuff like Salt-N-Pepa, N.W.A., and Public Enemy that I understood as “awesome” for all the wrong reasons at the time. I would quickly own both Use Your Illusions. Nevermind was released around the same time, but my junior high remained largely immune to grunge (I didn’t; I just didn’t hear it right away from schoolmates). I also believe I had Reebok Pump-Ups. I was totally, disquietingly cool. Then my father bought a stereo system with a CD player, bought the Led Zeppelin box set, played me “Black Dog,” and I proceeded to listen to everything on that set approximately 867 million times; I made my own cassette dubs with handmade covers, and I loved the (quite proggy) shit on Houses of the Holy (1973), Physical Graffiti (1975),and Presence (1976). My father then bought a copy of Dark Side of the Moon (1973). I went out and bought everything by Pink Floyd I could find. Umma Gumma (1969) and Meddle (1971)shocked me. I can’t quite remember how I got into Gabriel-era Genesis; I’ve always had a pop streak, so it’s possible I stayed in the Collins years until 1993, when the early January release of The Longs gave me “Old Melody” and sent me flying backwards through their collection. I bought Phish’s A Live One (1995) on a whim (due to song title “Chalk Dust Torture,” I believe); this was grade ten, and I used the same logic when I read “The Rejected Mexican Pope Leaves the Stage” on the archival Mothers of Invention album Ahead of Their Time (1993) later that year. By the end of high school I had most or all the albums of all of these bands, as well as Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, Mr. Bungle, Mike Oldfield, King Crimson, Captain Beefheart (well…the in-print ones I could find at the time), Yes, and Frank Zappa’s solo collection (at 60+ albums, some of my friends actually came with me to celebrate the purchase of the final addition, which…lame, but also: hee!).

Even though Beefheart and Zappa are RIO, these are all prog albums in the most traditional of senses: long song formats, heavily orchestrated or entirely free improv that relied on technical prowess and experimental tendencies. They are also, often, albums that get shat on by experimental enthusiasts. I mean, who actually listens to Yes or Pink Floyd, really? I certainly didn’t, by university. Why? I was fortunate enough to have my definition of “prog” irrevocably altered by friends I met in first year that introduced me to Can and Neu! and Cluster (which sent me off into both electronica and krautrock on my own) and a lovely record store where I could actually buy albums by John Zorn (who had produced Mr. Bungle [1991]) and related RIO work. Consequently, when I heard somebody playlisting “Money” next to “Tripping Billies” on a party list it would only reify my out of the blue and ill-formed suspicion that Dark Side of the Moon was lukewarm compared to Future Days (1973). Or, to use an averted tragedy to explain it differently, Can and Neu! are the reasons I was able to hop off the Phish train before it was too late, and they’re the same reason that the burgeoning New Brunswick jam-scene bored me to fucking tears. I say “out of the blue and ill-formed” — it’s not that I still don’t think Neu! (1972) is better than Fragile (1971), or that the New Brunswick jam-scene isn’t still tear-fucking boring; it’s just that at the time I based the decision on cache, rather than content.

I think it runs one of two ways: you hear, say, Pink Floyd, and that becomes your inverted glass ceiling, your fringe, that’s what “experimental” comes to mean for you, and you stop your frontier right there. Or you keep going. And, really, the “keep going” factor isn’t just about being more musically conscious, or adventurous, or worst of all better; it relies on all sorts of factors: access, allowance, random chance. If Eric Hill (who writes wonderful out reviews for Exclaim, but who also filled Backstreet Records with wild and crazy shit during my undergrad) hadn’t been stocking certain things and testing them out on me, I wouldn’t have been exposed to so much of the music I had been at such an early age.

Point being, you latch on, and once you move deeper, suddenly Aqualung (1971) doesn’t sound quite so innovative. So you get crotchety and snobby, pissed off at all your buddies simultaneously playing shitty air drums to “Ants Marching” for the sixtieth time in a row at a party. There’s really two points to make here. Because history (Take Three!) matters, and I’ve been deliberately comparing albums released around the same time so far to make a point: comparing Can and Pink Floyd is fine, but it’s really myopic to expect that Aqualung should sound more innovative than, say, Here Comes the Indian (2003); it’s unhistorical, and — okay, it could be my day job — but I really think the hardest part about becoming a competent, non-annoying music snob is being able to historicize your tastes.

Second point: the second hardest part is acknowledging relativity. In simplest terms, I probably could never have appreciated Autechre if I hadn’t heard “Achille’s Last Stand” first. And even if that’s a specific historical and cultural situation to me (via my father), Yes and Pink Floyd are critical albums in my own musical history because they taught me how to listen the way I do. Except, experimentation in music runs the same way. “Prog” by default dominated as a descriptive term for so long because it was the easiest way to isolate a constantly advancing fringe still dominated (until the rise of electronic music forms in the late ‘80s) by something still recognizable as a rock band. As a result, what was “progressive” was constantly delineated by what was more “prog” than what had come before. None of which is to even broach the topic of how far ahead of the curve most metal listeners are. Well, semi-broached now.

These issues are especially crucial due to the proliferation of internet music fandom, in part because obscure bands like Can are receiving the kind of press that they couldn’t in their own radio-defined era. The more we rep those bands, the more mystique is pulled away from their popular contemporaries and successors. But should it be? The name of this column is a joke; we can retcon our tastes, as if we always knew about Can, or Neu!, or Magma, or whatever, and then the albums that prepared us for them (the ones we very likely heard and loved first) suddenly aren’t advanced enough. But is it because they aren’t as good? Or because they don’t represent the farthest reaching point of some weird influence + technology + reception + obscurity calculus that doesn’t make any sense anyway because rarely are historicity or relatively considered variables in present-tense taste.

It’s always both, for me, at least. Can is better than Pink Floyd, as far as I’m concerned, and nothing annoys me more than somebody telling me that my opinions are less valid because I only “listen to obscure music that nobody else has heard of.” But what annoys me in the exact same is “you still listen to that?” A rejoinder, then, to both sides, expressed as a spurious claim: even if the Dave Matthews Band deplorably reduces the more variegated ideas of prog into simple consumable feel-good party-ready tid-bits, from another perspective they open up minds to the possibilities of listening habits that reach beyond 4/4 rhythms and simplistic arrangements. In other words, DMB suck, of course, but at least their success wasn’t based on Nicklebackian derivatives. In other words, if you’re a fan and you ask me why I just can’t enjoy them, I’ll tell you all about how their promotion of care-free college fresh-baked stoner romanticism is wracked with boring platitudes that only serve to reinforce the sexism and heterosexism of liberal arts culture, but if you’re paying attention you’ll notice I’m not really critiquing the music. Which is why if you’re not a fan I won’t just write them off — I don’t like them much, but at least people that do are listening to something with a little more substance than James fucking Blunt.

That is my struggle: I loved Pink Floyd when I was 14; I could hum along with the instrumental portions of “Echoes.” As I got older, the dorky cynicism of Roger Water’s lyrics started to grate; the music seemed less tightly wound and more noodlingly guitar-based; the basic process of overdubbing became something I intimately understood, and therefore I also understood that the way Pink Floyd did it wasn’t that exciting. But those of us who fervently believe that experimental music is the exact point of making music at all — to push forward, to live in the future — need to keep in mind those moments when Pink Floyd was that frontier for us. Because if we don’t, we retcon the other way, acting as if the shit that turned us on then isn’t the same shit that turns us on now. The music and bands aren’t the same — even the quality of the music may not be the same — but the way you suck breath between your teeth is: we learn and expand through consumption, and my taste is only as good as yours if I recognize the way it grew.

All of which is to say that I think that ignoring the crucial position of the albums made in the more safe quarters of prog is a disservice. Nobody is born into loving Here Comes the Indian or Beaches and Canyons (2002); it’s a process started with “Money” and including “Careful with that Axe Eugene” and “Dogs” and “Roundabout” and “Discipline” and — yes, for me — “Harry Hood” and then suddenly Can and the Boredoms and Suicide and This Heat and all of Norway make sense because they aren’t simply luminous parachutes billowing in the wind; they’re attached to your body-as-anchor that can descend back through the history of music into Muddy Waters. Which is a long way of saying that we’ll cover the prog I’m still learning how to hear in the future; here’s a little tribute to albums that helped me get this far.




Van Der Graaf Generator Pawn hearts (1971)

One reason punks lobbed metaphorical molotovs at progressive rock: they felt it was too geeky and self-involved. That criticism doesn’t quite work with Peter Hamill; his lyrics were always best at his most nihilistic. If previous effort H to He, Who Am the Only One (1970) played things sincere and straight, acting with In the Court of the Crimson King (1969) to create some of the more over-worn clichés of rock history -- dripping electric pianos and keyboards; the clenched fist delivery of soulful nonsense -- it only created them; they weren’t clichés at all at the time. But what’s amazing is that only a year later, on the three tracks that make up this masterpiece, Hamill and crew were already attempting to transcend the progressive, romantic-infused limitations of art rock they had helped to map by subverting them. “Lemmings (Including Cog)” begins with the English band’s patented influenced-by-“A Whiter Shade of Pale” keyboards as Hamill croons; at the five-minute mark, however, the whole band slunches into a wicked riff driven by horn player David Jackson as Hugh Banton drops the organ for some grueling synth work. The band fades low as Hamill whispers “what cause is their left but to die?” which may well seem silly now, but ask that question in the era of the Weather Underground? Chilling. The instrumental section on “Man Erg” is giddy and brilliant: a sweeping synth marks a shift to 11/4 time (the 5 is marked with a staccato repetition of full chords while the 6 is an anvil floating back and forth like a feather) that slows down as the band repeats the phrase. When the song picks up again Guy Evans shows off his skill of being the clangiest quiet drummer ever. Epic closer “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers” is a medley of several different segments; highlight “Kosmos Tours” features Hamill singing in consecutively faster cyclic phrases in shifting time signatures. Robert fucking Fripp guests on the album for some lovely guitar solos, but Jackson, Banton, and Evans are the real stars here, led by Hamill’s wonderfully ranging voice.



Brainticket Cottonwoodhill (1971)

This Swedish/German group affixed a sticker to their first album that proclaimed, “after listening to this record, your friends may not know you anymore.” An opus of space rock and one of the most trippy records ever made, the album exists somewhere between formal prog, blues, and “Woolly Bully.” “Black Sand,” with Joel Vandroogenbroeck’s filtered organ and Ron Bryer’s wah guitar, is a laboratory of space rock ideas: repetitive structure, claustrophobic mixing, and a steady but deliberate tempo. Werner Frolich jams on the one-note bass line, Cosimo Lampis and Wolfgang Paap lounge on the percussion, and producer Hellmuth Cole (to my Buffy friends: it doesn’t really sound like Hellmouth music) manipulates filters and electronics. “Places of Light” is similar; the breakdown is more rock-orientated, but the verses over which singer Dawn Muir speaks are direct precedents for electronica. In its purest form, that’s what space rock was: a form of prog that compressed the symphonic ideas of contemporaries into short repeating bursts, emphasizing ambience and tone over form. Space rock bridges the gap between symphonic prog and krautrock, between the psychedelia of the sixties and the progressive ambitions of the seventies, which is why both parts of extended closer “Brainticket” are as much funk (or even afrobeat) as they are prog; the organ play and electronic manipulation over top keeps Brainticket sailing outwards (and Vandroogenbroeck’s work is consistently fascinating, as experimental as it is orchestral) even as the rhythm section anchors them firmly to the ground. Be careful about thinking this is the most straightforward album on this list; it might not have the symphonic ambitions of Yes or King Crimson, but the disaster area is just as wide.



Yes Close to the Edge (1972)

Yes is an easy band to condemn. They are such a geek band: all form, little substance, and -- excepting a couple churners like “Long Distance Runaround” and “Roundabout” (which geeks geek-out to more than anything ever because they know the slight head bob the unconvinced get at the faux-funk guitar heroics is the biggest “I told you so” they are ever going to have with this band) -- absolutely zero personality. Fragile (1971) gets marks for such clean recording given the technology at the time (this band was tight); marks for stretching pop music to its limit; demerits for sounding like robots doing it. I liked them before I understood what I liked about music and then once I figured it out I hated them for a long time. Getting back into them over the last few years hasn’t been an easy process, I’ll readily admit, but this particular album holds charms (real or nostalgic; I’m not entirely sure) that the rest of the catalogue seems to fend off. It’s not that Close to the Edge has more “real” personality, but in expanding their palette to include funk and reggae and other ideas Yes gained a personality by proxy, and even if the delivery is still cold and clinical, sometimes it with catch you off guard with unexpected beauty. Check the vocal breakdown on the title track with all of those evil flitting synths -- it’s enough to make up for Jon Anderson screaming “I get up / I get down” and the “serious” church organs that end the segment. Or watch the juxtaposition of Chris Squire’s bass and Steve Howe’s acoustic guitar underpinning the pitched organs during the intro to “And You and I.” Or the awesome time signature combos in “Siberian Khatru” (parts are in 7/4; parts in 15/4); all of it doled out in Howe’s clever guitar bits and alternatively futuristic and baroque keyboard flourishes courtesy of Rick Wakeman. The obvious religious themes of Anderson’s lyrics don’t grate so much as his hilarious sincerity, but the serious chops of his band mates more than make up for sigh-worthy stanzas like “Hold down the window / Hold out the morning that comes into view / Warm side, the tower / Green leaves reveal the heart spoken Khatru.” Bill Bruford’s drumming throughout the album probably deserves its own blurb, but of course his work in King Crimson seemed to loosen him up a bit, so I always tend to favor his work with Fripp instead. Besides, talking about technique is really old hat for Yes. In those terms, Close to the Edge is just about the perfect symphonic prog album. But it’s also really hard to snuggle up to.



Hawkwind Space Ritual (1973)

The Hawkwind formula is essentially as follows: add some motorik-synth styles to your pre-Modern Lovers road trip rock, toss in some ludicrous poetry, and excise the hippy dippy fat Brainticket was so fond of in favor of some overlord angst. You’ll either love the shit or hate it, because it’s basically Stooges attitude with krautrock electronics and Doors rock stretched out forever over the course of this double live album. With Robert Calvert basically ranting over top. But for music that often seems so dense and uniform, it sources so many ideas. Nik Turner’s saxophone (especially on the Wilhelm Reich-inspired “Orgone Accumulator”) sounds like post-punk horns a few years early, Lemmy Kilmister and Simon King lock drums and bass together in a fashion where they play rock but mean dub, and all three synthesizer players -- Dave Brock, Dik Mik Davies, and Del Dettmar -- swarm around the mix like insects anticipating the rave scene. Calvert may play the apostle-of-space antics a tad thick, but it’s a wild album where “Master of the Universe” can cop Sabbath’s “Paranoid” at the same time that “Electronic No. 1” can ape Cluster. And it’s songs like “7 by 7, “Brain Storm,” and “Space is Deep” where Hawkwind really move out, adapting symphonic forms to their self-consciously limited palette. It’s in those moments where you can hear all the astute but emotionally chill moments of Yes reformed as punk avengement.



Magma Mëkanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh (1973)

I said last time that The Hissing of Summer Lawns was my favorite album ever, but that’s only in relative mood to this and The Velvet Underground and Nico. The concept of classically trained drummer Christian Vander, this French group veered away from the Anglo-influenced direction of the French underground and pioneered zeuhl, which is Kobaïan for “music” -- Kobaïan being the constructed language in which all of Magma’s material is sung, and to which Sigur Rós’ parents probably procreated. The language is part of a broader story where, fearing the ecological and political destruction of the earth, refugees take flight to a far off planet called Kobaïa. After the utopian planet has been settled, a new group of refugees arrives, and so a delegation is sent back to earth to warn of the impending danger. Soon, these delegates are imprisoned, but eventually they are released, and vow never to return (I suspect Vander was at least in part influenced by early 19th century French philosopher Charles Fourier). Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh is the third part of the Theusz Hamtaahk trilogy, but the first recorded. In it, prophet Nebehr Güdahtt reveals the legend of Kobaïa to an Earth that has long forgotten the delegation; he asks people to march with him. And that marching is beautiful, since the band’s music is a conflation of several ideas: the late period jazz of John Coltrane (Magma was in part the result of the sadness Vander felt upon hearing of Coltrane’s death), the classical influence of Stranvinsky and Orff, and R&B. And while Magma isn’t really much for experimental geeks -- nothing here is technologically shocking for 1973 -- in terms of concept and composition, they are the most adventurous band on this list. Maybe ever. Their work is so complex that it still hasn’t really had much of an influence outside of France and Japan. But “complex” is relative: what you will hear when you turn this on is a chorus singing harmonies over constantly pulsing and shifting time signatures (it’s kind of like macro-minimalism, and bears more than a little resemblance to Steve Reich and Terry Riley’s work). And not chanting either; the vocal arrangements are incredibly daunting, but are always carefully crafted and based on gospel and R&B concepts, even if the vocalists are a little marshal in their delivery. Klaus Dietrich shares lead vocal duties with Vander, and Stella Vander, Muriel Streisfield, Evelyne Razymovski, Micele Saulnier, and Doris Reinhart join them for some of the most impressive (and live, super-impressive) marathon harmonies ever. Meanwhile, the horns and reeds of Rene Garber and Teddy Lasry accent the crests and troughs of the music, while in the quieter bits, Jean Luc Mandelier and Clause Olmos play some intricate duets on piano and guitar, and Vander often leaves the kit to throw some spiraling organ chords at them. Jannick Top’s bass is crucial; his ability to play loose and funky while pushing the music along is always amazing. And the result is…nuts? Amazing? Insane? Beautiful? Epic? What do you call a minimalist jazz/classical/rock gospel soundtrack for an entirely fictional utopian fantasy? You call it “best,” and shut up before it eats you.



Genesis The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974)

Literally, Lamb doesn’t contain Genesis’s best songs. I think it’s quite reasonable to argue, however, that in turfing overly labored symphonic opuses like “Supper’s Ready” and “Cinema Show” -- awesome songs by themselves but ones that seemed to distract attention from the rest of the album they appeared on -- they were able to overcome their Achille’s Heel: god awful filler. Nusery Crime (1971), Foxtrot (1972), and Selling England by the Pound (1973) have always been as notable for their insanely intricate highs as they have been for their incredibly disposable lows. Lamb -- Gabriel’s most brilliant lyrical suite -- manages to spread the attention to detail around while lowering the Phil-sings-lead quotient considerably. Of course, you could also argue that Lamb is, as a whole, Genesis’s best song; that this double album in all of its glory is the logical extension of what “Supper’s Ready” set out to do. Because what’s better than this ostrich-narrated Broadway-fetish gloating West Side Gory tale of castration, schizophrenia, body image, and brotherly love? It’s so incomprehensible it makes sense, just like the name of the title chracter -- “Rael” -- is such a horrifically anvilicious pun that you just sort of accept it. Basically, Rael-who-spraypaints-things-to-prove-he-is-“street” gets caught in a thick goo that also makes him hallucinate about Broadway heroes; he finds himself in a cage; he gets out to find himself in a factory that is packaging human bodies; he reminisces about his life on the streets, in bed, consulting a sex book; he follows a crowd of crawling people in a chamber with thirty-two doors where he delights in anti-modernist images of the working class; he follows a blind woman into a waiting room where he deliberates on death, is anesthesitized, fucks some large-breasted snake women, and eats their moltings that taste like chocolate; he emerges from that cave to find himself in a colony where everybody looks like a mutated Planter’s peanut man, and so does he, and so does his brother John; he finds out the only way to cure the affliction is to get castrated; his recently offed dick is stolen by a giant raven and his brother refuses to help him find it; on his way down into the ravine to follow his brother he spots a window into his home world but then hears his brother drowning in the rapids below; he descends only to find that the person drowning is himself; he knocks and know balls about how everything is everything; the end. But somewhere in there Tony Banks learned how to play keyboards with the band rather than just on top, Steve Hackett (even as his influence within the band declined) was able to add some lovely color on a guitar that finally sounded like it had caught up with technology, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins finally got to get their rocks off, Brian Eno twiddled some knobs, and a band was created from the ashes of a symphonic art collective. In short, Genesis grew up, got with the times, turfed the boring romantics, and the results were astoundingly good -- just in time for Gabriel to ditch the whole affair. The band would return to the industrial revolution, but their queer vision of the seventies is the greatest (and, more importantly, the most honest) rock opera the era has to offer.



King Crimson Starless and Bible Black (1974)

Oh, Robert Fripp. You clever soul, opening with a honky tonk tune. Except it isn’t, and of course Starless and Bible Black unfolds like all v2 Crimson albums: unconventionally. Choosing between this, Lark’s Tongues in Aspic (1973), and Red (1974) isn’t easy. Red contains the most punk-laced technical prowess, it’s the most obtuse, and Lark’s Tongues is the most traditionally “art rock,” but I’ve always had a soft spot for the unabashed improv and silliness of this in-between album. Here’s one reason why: Bill Bruford’s decision not to play anything during the live recording of “Trio” was considered a crucial choice by the band, so he received compositional credit. Snerk. The two-and-a-half studio tracks let bassist John Whetton use his assured voice to belt out Supertramp guitarist Richard Palmer’s lyrics about consumerism and society, but the live tracks are the real draw, and improvs “We’ll Let You Know,” “The Mincer,” and the title track are astonishingly polished, while the beautiful Fripp-composed “Fracture” that closes the album proves why King Crimson was the technical prog group to beat. On all of these tracks we hear insanely complex riffage, but also a sense of restraint foreign to groups like Yes and Van der Graaf Generator. There is silence, and space, and most importantly the general momentum is never just a slope; the band moves in peaks and valleys, more concerned with the tension inherent in each moment than pushing towards some glory-note future. This is especially true of the improvised intro to “The Night Watch” and “Trio”; both tracks serve to show off David Cross’ lovely violin work, but they also show Crimson playing at ambience, hinting at modern digital ambience and minimalism in ways that other art rock groups were too busy scrawling Tolkien quotes in their note books to attempt. This is thick, complicated music. And every untouchable inch of it is beautiful.



Franco Battiato Clic (1974)

Italy was and is a hotbed of prog music (so much so that it’s not just “symphonic prog” if it’s Italian; it’s “Italian symphonic prog”). It was also a hotbed of prog fandom, and pretty much all popular symphonic prog and art rock bands found immediate success there. Franco Battiato is an odd addition to prog ranks, however. His music differs from prog because of his cinematic sense; he owes more to avant garde composers like Igor Wakhevitch and electronic musicians. His songs are like brief vignettes of mood, an approach that would be adopted both by post-rock artists and John Zorn in his Filmworks series. And while it’s true that Fetus (1971) or Pollution (1972) might be more suited to a prog column, Clic has always been my personal Battiato fave, especially since its songs are just so varied. The music on Clic unites aleatoric explorations, collage, thick electronic pulses, fleeting vocals, and a healthy sense of space, anticipating all kinds of modern experimental music in ways that very few of his contemporaries did (or, I guess, did well). “Ethika for Ethica,” the lovely radio collage that concludes the album, is one of the best examples of how collage music should be done, so that the point itself isn’t the collage, but in the relationship between events. Battiato’s ear is pretty unequaled in this kind of stuff, and Clic remains the best example. It’s weird, it’s contrary, it’s gorgeous, and it builds symphonic mountains out of fragments of Italian culture.



Area Crac! (1975)

Also from Italy, Area was a group that bridged the gap between RIO and symphonic prog. Led by the amazingly powerful vocals of organist Demetrio Stratos (now there’s an awesome Roman-hero type name), Area unites strict leftist politics with incredibly complex jazz figures and orchestral bombast on Crac!, loosening the mold a bit from their previous and equally intriguing Caution Radiation Area (1974). Guitarist Paulo Tofani also wields a Moog on several tracks, and on both instruments he tends to throw in some Mediterranean flavored scales that sound wonderful mixed with the rest of the band. Keyboardist Patrizio Fariselli buoys his wilder tendencies in round chords, while Guilio Capiozzo and slap-fanatic Ares Tavolazzi manage to sound spastic and beyond-tight all at the same time. Crac! also sees the band playing around with electronics more, suddenly dropping into weird dissonant textures before the free jazz impulse returns in full. “Nervi Scoperti” shows the group at their exploratory best, opening with a jazz refrain, sailing through some brilliant free jazz, and ending with some incredibly complex prog-derived riffs and vocal/piano duets. At the other end of the spectrum, “Giola e Rivoluzione” is positively pop, separating giddy lyrics and lovely organ runs with thick guitar phrases and a beautiful sense for restraint (and this is another reason I made the crack about the Dave Matthews Band above. This is what that bullshit should sound like). “Implosion” and “La Mela Di Odessa (1920)” are the most free form tracks on the album; both are properly free jazz/fusion tracks, but each has incredibly swift prog sections that build structures into their “free” frameworks. And “Area 5,” the closer, sounds like the band taking lessons from Battiato, creating a collage of themselves that anticipates the early work of the Boredoms. The album is all over the map, basically, but the through line is made from competence and innovation, both of which Area excelled at.



Pink Floyd Animals (1977)

I can barely listen to Dark Side of the Moon (1973) anymore. Wish You Were Here (1975) always kind of bored me. Meddle (1971) is fun for “Echoes” but the rest of it can go away. The Wall (1979)gets the biggest “snerk” I can muster. “Final Cut” is fun once in a while, but it is what it is, which is kind of more funny than tragic. Whether this is because of overexposure or what I don’t know, but I also know that Animals does not, for me, suffer a similar affliction (well…maybe the story about the pig on the cover does). “Dogs” still gives me the same pleasure and despair it did when I was 14 (although I understand it way better now). “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” may have sloppy politics, but who can argue with the sheer rock force? And “Sheep,” even with its heavy-handed psalm slurring, is just as triumphant when those rolling guitars crest at the coda. Because here’s something that little-ol’ space rock progsters Pink Floyd did surprisingly way better than their symphonic counterparts on this album: they transitioned to the instrumental portions in ways that didn’t hit you like an anvil with a card attached reading, “and now it’s time for the fantastic musical skills of the band to be on display.” They constructed complex arrangements that were about mood and emotion more than technique (King Crimson was really the only band that was ever somewhat successful at both). They sounded like they were having fun doing this album, despite it being the most genuinely dreary thing in their catalogue. And even if the Orwell homage sounds silly, Waters mostly managed to pull it off without being mawkish or doing his usual holier-than-thou technique of reducing entire complex concepts to us-and-them distinctions. David Gilmore plays plenty of guitar solos but they don’t ever sound like David Gilmore guitar solos. Nick Mason gets to funk around with all sorts of weird styles he hadn’t touched since “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” Rick Waters cares. In short (because I don’t need to talk about the music, do I? You’ve all heard it) this album withstands pretty much any complaint because it’s actually quite good. I mean, on the relative prog scale it’s sloppy and the experimentation is pretty mundane for 1977, but it’s pretty, and I still get chills as “Dogs” closes, “dragged down by the stone.” In fact, this is the only album that doesn’t get dragged down by the stone; it’s the only one where perennial stoner-gods Floyd managed to make an album that is actually more fucked up than the drugs they supposedly go down easy with. Good job, kids.