It’s a funny old start to the year… I suppose the big headline is: - “Prog is dead, long live Prog”

It was shocking news to hear of the magazine’s demise just before Christmas. As my main source of discovering new music it would have been a massive loss. The radio means nothing to me and the internet is too vast to properly explore so here was a magazine full of writers whose judgement I trust.  

Hearing that it had been saved a few weeks later was a relief and hopefully new owners won’t mean changes to the standards we’ve become accustomed to.

As such, this year it’s Jerry Ewing who for the first time matched the most albums with me in the Prog writers end of years lists with his list including Swallow the Sun, Enslaved and Marillion at number 1.

 

So what do we expect in 2017? There should be the final ever Fish album towards the end of the year and the Eden House are preparing a new release for March but apart from that it’s probably all speculation from the usual suspects – Andrew Eldritch promised new music if Trump was elected, Julianne Regan is ‘still’ working on that solo album and after releasing a single last year there is still time this century for Carl McCoy to finally come up with something more substantial.

(All of which are less likely Heart FM adding Nine Inch Nails to their daytime playlist)

Finally a tip for the New Year, just because a band releases a fantastic album it doesn’t follow that they will write a fantastic soundtrack. I made this mistake with buying Riverhead by Ulver. It really is just background noise that does nothing for the listener if you haven’t got any visuals..........