The Tangent: Proxy (2018)

Doing another skip in The Tangent discography (I do like and will own at some point The Slow Rust of Forgotten Machinery) and moving up to 2018 with Proxy. If 2015’s A Spark in the Aether was meant to be some kind of return to form (to fine if somewhat mixed results), Proxy feels more like the band I came to discover and love. Most of the team is back, and the music plays to Tillison’s strengths with two big epics and three slightly less epic though no less fun songs to really get the band back on their stride. For me this is the start of a great run, so let’s get into the weeds.

ChrisMay 31, 20241 Comment

Vinyl

The Tangent: A Spark in the Aether (2015)

Despite skipping a few albums (I don’t own physical copies of Down and Out in Paris and London, COMM, or Le Sacre du Travail) it appears as though I’m back where I started with The Tangent. Because A Spark in the Aether, their 8th studio album, is subtitled The Music That Died Alone – Volume 2 and is purposefully position as a return to their prog roots after a few left hand turns. I can see that even if I’m not as familiar with the albums I missed – this is a prog rock album invested in the notion of prog rock: its history, its present, and its future. As such it’s a bit of a mixed bag for me – there’s stuff I really enjoy and some stuff (particularly lyrically) that distances me, as we’ll discuss below. But overall despite not being in my top tier of Tangent records, there’s plenty of good to be had, so let dive in at what is just over the halfway point of our Tangent journey.

ChrisMay 30, 2024May 29, 20241 Comment

The Tangent: Not As Good As The Book (2008)

We’re back with my running series on the albums of The Tangent, and I’m glad I waited before continuing, because not only do I really like Not As Good As The Book, the band’s fourth album, but I can actually try and answer the question of whether the album is as good as the book, because I was able to grab a copy of the special limited edition version that actually comes with a book – a 94 page novella to be exact, written by Andy Tillison and illustrated by Antoine Ettori.This might be the first and only time you get a record AND a book review, so let’s get into it.

ChrisMay 28, 2024May 29, 2024Leave a comment

Mandalaband: Legacy – The Story of Mandalaband 1975-1978

Another impulse buy based off word of mouth from the prog community. I had never heard of Mandalaband, the brainchild of David Rohl which blended together the symphonic-heavy prog that was burgeoning in the mid-70s with a healthy dose of Tibetan mysticism and fantasy-driven lyrical themes. There’s a fair amount of hippie-drippy bombast as well in the melodies, and if you’re like me and never heard of the band before there’s probably no better place to start than Legacy – The Story of Mandalaband 1975-1978. Covering the first two albums – the self-titled Mandalaband and the almost-soundtrack The Eye of Wendor: Prophecies – the box set contains not only the original mixes remastered, but newly remixed versions of both albums by David Kohl with additional demos and alternate mixes.

ChrisMay 21, 2024May 20, 2024Leave a comment

Arco Iris: Los Elementales (1977)

A quick hit/impulse buy from a few weeks back. I first came across Arco Iris on one of the episodes of The Professor’s Picks on Sea of Tranquility. Blending together progressive rock and jazz fusion, Los Elementales was the departure point for the Argentinian band, the last album they’d make in their home country before moving to the US, and the first album to abandon the folk/acoustic elements that were a hallmark of the band’s earlier discography. I grabbed the recent reissue of the album on CD, and overall it’s real fun jam, so much so that I can see a limited vinyl edition is available which is definitely making me consider a double dip…

ChrisMay 19, 2024May 18, 2024Leave a comment

Vinyl

The Tangent: A Place in the Queue (2006)

By the time of their third album changes were afoot for The Tangent. Roine Stolt and Zoltán Csörsz were gone, replaced by Krister Jonsson (with an assist by Dan Watts) on guitar and Jaime Salazar on drums. Andy Tillison becomes even more ambitious in his scope for the band, and A Place in the Queue clocks in at over two hours. But far from suffering from some of the slow bloat of their last album, here things become more varied, more expansive, and overall more successful. There are a lot of folks who call this the band’s best album, and while I might not quite agree there, we can certainly align that this is a huge, stellar record, fixing the mistakes of the previous and aiming for heights that will come to define the band on future releases.

ChrisMay 17, 2024May 17, 20241 Comment

Consuming the Tangible

We are what we consume

Month: May 2024