Archives” Life’s Soundtrack: New Progressive Rock from Houston – Six Minute Century’s Wasting Time!

Wasting TimeSo the soundtrack for a variety of activities around the house today was a prog/power metal band from Houston,Texas Six Minute Century . The band has been around since 2004 playing mostly locally in Houston. After signing with Nightmare Records in 2008, Six Minute Century released their début album “Time Capsules”. After that release and the positive reviews it received, the band has played many cities in the United States, and been invited to perform  at a variety of festivals including:  Rocklahoma, Rock The Bayou,festival, Nightmare Metal Fest I and II, and ProgPower XI.My soundtrack today was their second release Wasting Time also on Nightmare Record. The album is hot off the presses! The official release was yesterday! It really only took the first couple of songs to decide that this was a band that I was going to like. well actually it was the use of radio reports about the havoc of the Galveston flood that acted as the intro to the song “City of Hope” that did the trick.  It seemed that through the entire album the opening to each song was varied and interesting.! Read More

Archives:Life’s Soundtracks:The run was a struggle but the music from Day Six was great!

Originally Posted: March 24, 2013 at Me, Myself, Music and Mysteries – Please Note my running and music listening are linked so sometimes you have to put up with the running info to get to the music, or then again you can just scroll past it!!

Day sixSo some days you really look forward to your run, you start, you feel good and the run goes very smoothly. Then there are other days, well, they don’t go as well. Saturdays area often a slow day for me. I work all day at Lippincott and then at Target not getting done until 11:15 plus! Yesterday the day went from 7:15 to 11:15, so overall today this 61 year-old body was moving kind of slow! So this afternoon when I just felt like taking a nap I did some kundalini yoga trying to wake me up, and it worked so I got motivated enough to run, went out and discovered that it was a lot colder and windy than I thought it was, anyway, I put on another layer of clothes and set out. I had created a new four mile course and the start looped around a little, so that, after just a little bit a left turn would have led me back home, which was where I really wanted to go or a right turn would set me on my way into the fourteen mile an hour wind and the first leg of my four mile run. Now the only thing good about heading into the wind on the first two miles of a run is that the wind is at your back on the way back!! That’s what happened and really the only reason that I was able to finish the run! The other thing that got me through the run was the music, as always! The music was from a prog rock band Day Six and their album The Grand Design. So with the wind at my back for half of the run, I made it through with an overall pace of about 10:05 per mile, so overall it was not a bad run! Read More

Progressive Metal from NYC’s – Infinite Spectrum – Misguided

Misguided
Infinite Spectrum

Infinite Spectrum is a progressive metal band from New York City formed by two college students bass payer Alex Repetti and guitarist Alex Raybin soon after they met they began collaborating on musical tracks that laid the foundation for their debut album. After the instrumental tracks had been composed and recorded singer and composer Will Severin joined the party and wrote and recorded the vocals for their debut album Misguided. Everything was assembled and mixed by Grammy Award winning engineer, Chris Theis and the album was released in 2012! According to ProgArchves: Read More

New Prog from French Avantgarde Metallers – Ethersens – Your Wandering Ghost

ETHERSENS is a Experimental/Post Metal or as they describe themselves on their website “French Avantgarde metallers” from Midi-Pyrénées, France. The core of what was to become Ethersens came together around 2001 when guitarists Johan Bourrut and Mickael André decided to form a band.The idea of a band, moved a step closer to being a reality when drummer Stephane Nestiri joined them in 2002. After several members moved in and out of the band, in 2003, the line-up stabilized when Fred (bass) and Stephan (vocals) joined the band. Because all the members of the band had experience with other bands they proceeded straight to album making (didn’t pass go, didn’t collect 200 dollars) Their debut album Ordinary Days was recorded between 2005 and 2006 but wasn’t released on Scarlet Records until 2008. The album was well received and the band set out on a five-year quest to record their sophomore album, Read More

Prog Rotation Part 2 – Eclectic Prog from Texas’ Herd of Instinct – Conjure!

The other instrumental prog rock band that has been in my listening rotation over the last week or so is the Texas eclectic prog band Herd of Instinct. I have listened to their second release Conjure. The band’s self-titled first release was released in 2011 and was four years in the making. Flashback to 2007 – Wow- that was a long trip – the band 99 Names of  God had disbanded after ten years on the Texas Music scene as an Art Rock band – yeah right?? How do you get beer drinking into that music! But I digress back to 2007 where drummer Jason Spralin and WARR Guitarist Mark Cook are trying to form a new band. Soon they joined forces with ex-Nervewerks guitarist Mike Davison and got down to work!!  Four years later they produced that self titled album (hum about two times as long as the gestation period of the elephant) Anyway, critics praised the album and comparisons were made to King Crimson. The band’s music is drawn from a variety of influences including: multi-cultural music, literary clues, Horror and cinematic film scores, and obscure elements of Rock, Avant-garde, Electronic, Prog, and Psychedelic music. (Horror films and Psychedelic music may survive on the Texas Music scene, no wait – psychedelic music is that hippie music!) Read More

Crossover Prog from Canada’s AsZension – Biosphere!

One of the albums that has been in my prog rock listening rotation over the past several days is Biosphere the sophomore release from the Canadian Crossover Prog band AsZension. The band is currently a studio-based band but there are plans to make it a live band. The band was founded by multi-instrumentalist Kevin Thiessen after he completed his studies in Contemporary Music and Technology, audio engineering, production and guitar at Selkirk College in Nelson B.C. After finishing his studies Thiessen set out to find like-minded musicians. First he met and then added guitarist and engineer Calvin Shiu, a martial arts practitioner and at the time, a recording arts student at the University of Lethbridge to the band. Shiu brought with him  his ”Shamisen”, a Japanese fretless lutelike instrument. This led to inspire Thiessen to use more world instruments in his miusic. In today’s recording era this is accomplished through “Virtual instrument technology or Vst’s. The final member of the band drummer Kyle Sheppard was an easy choice for the band since he had worked with Thiessen and was a life-long friend of Shiu’s. Their self-titled debut album won rave reviews and was nominated for Best Début Record at the 2012 ”Prog Awards” The Web World Awards dedicated to Progressive Rock. Read More

The Safari Explores the Music of the Brazilian Progressive Metal band Angra!

So the other day, Spotify suggested that I listen to the song “Reflective” from the album Sounds of Innocence by Kiko Loureiro. Since the name looked interesting and he appeared to be a guitarist I downloaded the album onto the iPhone and it became the soundtrack for my ride to the Motor Vehicle Inspection Station. I discovered that Kiko is a very, very talented progressive rock guitarist and a member of the Progressive Metal band Angra. So after listening to Loureiro’s solo album, I downloaded Angra’s latest release Aqua and gave it a listen! Both of the albums are very good, but I think I prefer Aqua. Sometimes solo prog rock guitar albums seem a little boring to me. So here’s what I discovered about Angra. Read More

The Safari Explores the Classical Side of Progressive Rock’s Jordan Rudess – All That is Now!!

The question of the day is: Can a prog rocker create beautiful classical piano music? My answer to that is a resounding yes – especially if that rocker entered the Julliard School of Music Pre-College Division for classical piano training at nine years old, like rock keyboard artist Jordan Rudess did!!. I think that the prog rock world is glad that in his late teens Rudess became increasingly interested in synthesizers and progressive rock music and left the classical world behind and set out to make his way as a solo progressive rock keyboardist!! Read More

The Safari Encounters Mad Fellaz, an Italian Progressive Instrumental Band!!

Mad Fellaz is a five man is an instrumental progressive rock band from Bassano Del Grappa, Italy. The now five-man band started out in 2010 as an experimental unnamed trio consisting off:Emanuele and Paul Bason Busatto on electric guitars and Mark on drums. As the band developed, bassist Carlo Passuello, keyboardist Henry Brunelli and Rudy Zilio on flute and synthesizer were added to the band.The current line-up of the band is: Read More