Welcome to Prog‘s brand newTracks Of The Week! We’ve got six new and diverse slices of progressively inclined music for you to enjoy.
Hearty congratulations to Welsh heavy proggers Godsticks, whose M.I.A. won last week’s Tracks Of The Week, beating off strong competition from Norwegian’s Major Parkinson and with Canadian prog duo Crown Lands in third place.
The premise is simple – we’ve collated a batch of new releases by bands falling under the progressive umbrella, and collated them together in one post for you – makes it so much easier than having to dip in and out of various individual posts, doesn’t it? The idea is to watch the videos (or listen if it’s a stream), enjoy (or not) and also to vote for your favourite in the voting form at the bottom of this post.
Couldn’t be easier, could it? We’ll be bringing you Tracks Of The Week, as the title implies, each week. Next week we’ll update you with this week’s winner and present a host of new prog music for you to enjoy.
If you’re a band and you want to be featured in Prog‘s Tracks Of The Week, send your video (as a YouTube link) or track embed, band photo and biog to us here.
POTHAMUS – HERAVIS II.II (LET LIGHT IN)
German post and prog rock label Pelagic Records, with whom Prog and sister title, Metal Hammer, are media partners for their annual PelagicFest, today announce a brand new compilation. album, The Dungeon Tapes, which features previously unreleased music and cover songs from a variety of artists on their roster.
Among those are Belgian trio Pothamus whose video for Heravis II.II (Let Light In) is included here. A beautiful slice of post-rock melded with drone music which we challenge any listener not to be moved by. Look out for a very special collaboration between Pelagic and Prog later in the year!
OLI DUERDEN – WILDFLOWER
Guitarist with Somerset post-rockers Blueneck and one quarter of West Country rockers Left Side Brain, Oli Duerden is back with his first new music since 2023’s Distant Paths EP. Here he returns with his brand new, super-sounding single, Wildflower. Built around guitars in open G tuning, layers of EBow, strings and piano meld to create a quietly epic reintroduction to Duerden’s musical mind that is his grandest offering yet, reaching from minimalist beginnings to soaring emotional highs. This one is a real journey.
“I never meant it to be so long from the last EP until I next released something, but sometimes life gets in the way,” he says. “Once this emerged, though, I knew I had to see it through to conclusion and get it out there.”
NMB – REACHING
Not sure why the Neal Morse Band rebranded as NMB, as from where we’re seated, everyone still calls them the Neal Morse Band! Anyway, we digress, they’re back with Reaching, another catchy slice of rockingly good and catchy prog rock, and the third single to be taken from their upcoming album L.I.F.T., which is released through InsideOut Music on February 27.
“Reaching became a really energetic track because of the way NMB approached it. My original sketch changed a lot when the band began to play it and we all put our vocals on it. I sketched out a lot of the original lyrics in the hotel room that morning, and brought it in, and we banged it out pretty quickly as I recall. We wanted to start it off with just vocals as we always enjoyed that with NMB right from our first outing as a band on The Grand Experiment album. If you like this band, you’re gonna love this track!”
I BUILT THE SKY – THE START OF SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL/SNAPSHOTS FROM A DREAM
Australian instrument al proggers I Built The Sky will release their new album, Promise Me You’ll Thrive on May 29. And the double video of The Start of Something Beautiful and Snapshots From A Dream are the first pieces of music to be taken from the album, knitted together in one video. Mixed and mastered by acclaimed producer Forrester Savell, the album was finalised under intense studio deadlines in Brisbane’s Airlock Studios, with some songs completed just days before drum tracking began!
“It was a bold move locking in the studio before everything was finished,” says guitarist and composer Rohan ‘Ro’ Stevenson. “But the pressure forced clarity. This album became a promise to myself and to anyone listening that no matter how hard life gets, we must keep the fire within us alive and thrive.”
WILDERNESSES – SUMMERTIME, 1917
London post-rock quartet Wildernesses have shared a video for their new single, Summertime, 1917. It’s taken from the band’s upcoming debut album Growth, out through Floodlit Recordings on March 27. The single explores love and loss, telling the story of two male soldiers in World War One, seen through the eyes of a modern narrator who discovers their love letters while renovating a deceased loved one’s house.
“I based the lyrics on a poem I wrote the year after my mum died of Motor Neurone Disease (MND),” says vocalist Phillip Morris. “I wanted to explore the conflicting feelings I had at that time, the process of acceptance, finding reasons that everything would be OK, even as death is final. Caring for her was a privilege that allowed me to know her more deeply, but I also witnessed the cruel loss of movement that ended in her death.”
WORRIEDABOUTSATAN – THE DREAM IS OVER
Yorkshire-based electronic musician Gavin Miller, otherwise known as worriedaboutsatan, has a pretty good track record in Tracks Of The Week, winning recently for, what we believe may have been a second time? He’s back with, The Dream Is Over, another slice of undulating electronic prog, which is taken from his upcoming his 20th album, No Knock No Doorbell, released on his own This Is It Forever label on March 27
“I wanted it to sound a bit more natural – I wanted to explore textures that weren’t necessarily electronic ones, or those you might associate with electronica – I picked the guitar back up, I got some live drums, I played bass,” Miller reveals. “It’s nice to break yourself out of that feeling of ‘let’s just turn the synth on and see what it spits out’ – it had to be a bit more direct this time.”
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