Progressive rock / metal

New Devin Townsend album coming September 2nd:

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Not a fan of the cover tbh, reminds me of generic Insideout prog rock albums. High hopes for the album though, hopefully it's a departure from the Addicted/Epicloud/Sky Blue stuff he's been hung up on lately.

https://www.facebook.com/dvntownsen...347786590552/1228032973888689/?type=1&theater
 

WITHERSCAPE, the progressive Death Metal outfit consisting of Swedish singer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Dan Swanö (ex Edge Of Sanity/Bloodbath, Nightingale, etc.) as well as fellow Swedish multi-instrumentalist Ragnar Widerberg, have announced the worldwide release of their sophomore full-length album "The Northern Sanctuary" for July 22nd, 2016 via Century Media Records.

Musically, "The Northern Sanctuary" manages to seamlessly blend the best elements of the band's 70's/80's Prog/Hardrock and even AOR roots with contemporary, yet always atmospheric and subtle extreme Metal. Its infectious catchiness will doubtlessly appeal to the passionate followers of Swanö's diverse artistic catalogue, but also to fans of bands like Opeth, Amorphis or Symphony X.
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Solid stuff, but it's not really sticking with me. I like the hybrid of styles, though. The music is produced like traditional metal, but with harsh vocals on top of it. At first it doesn't sound like it fits, but eventually I really enjoy the sound. Choruses definitely sound like Soilwork to me, though. Those Swedes.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
I like the hybrid of styles, though. The music is produced like traditional metal, but with harsh vocals on top of it. At first it doesn't sound like it fits, but eventually I really enjoy the sound.
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Swanö is an amazing producer. I'd say probably my favorite producer in metal at the moment. I think it helps that he can sing clean and harsh vocals and played guitar, bass, drums and keyboards in multiple bands of different genres so he knows how everything should sound.

I'll just put this out here:

My favorite song from 1st Witherscape album:

From Swanö's solo album (Swanö describes it as "if Rush played death metal in the 70s"):

From Swanö's AOR/hard rock band:
 
I like his list. Mostly. And, let's admit it, picking TAAB (or even A Passion Play, as I would do) as you favourite JT song is kind of a cheat.
 
http://teamrock.com/news/2016-07-20/jon-anderson-on-how-vangelis-album-inspired-thriller

Jon Anderson has recalled how the 1981 album The Friends Of Mr Cairo which he produced with composer Vangelis inspired Michael Jackson's smash hit album Thriller.

The former Yes man claims that producer Quincy Jones told him that he and Jackson took a guitar riff from the record and "made it funky" for the 1982 hit Billie Jean.

Anderson tells the new issue of Prog magazine: "The luck of the draw, I met Vangelis – a very different kind of musician, who started the trend of electronic music. Over the 80s we were evolving musically, not thinking about what was hip or what was good business.

"There's my classic story of how we inspired Michael Jackson's Thriller. Quincy Jones told me that he and Michael had been listening to our album, The Friends Of Mr Cairo.

"They took the riff and made it funky for Billie Jean. Quincy said he'd been recording our song State Of Independence with Donna Summer, and I said he had an incredible guy singing backing vocals.

"He said, 'That guy was Michael – we were both digging your album.' So that's kinda cool, that cross-pollination in music."

 
Ridiculous. I totally missed this news in 2014. Glenn Cornick, Jethro Tull's bassist from 1967 til late 1970 died in that year.

Remembering Jethro Tull's Glenn Cornick

The bassist was an integral and often overlooked part of the prog-rock titans' early sound.
For most of its 47 years, the British rock band Jethro Tull was led, driven and defined by one man: singer, flautist, songwriter and conceptualist Ian Anderson, who publically admitted his retirement of the group and name last spring. But at its founding in late 1967 and across its first three albums – This Was (1968), Stand Up (1969) and Benefit (1970) – Jethro Tull was a band, and bassist Glenn Cornick, who died on August 28th at age 67, was its stout, nimble underpinning, the vital half of a blues-ribbed, jazz-fluent rhythm section with original drummer Clive Bunker. In the liner notes to a 2008 reissue of This Was, Cornick recalled that the album was recorded on 4-track tape and he and Bunker played their bass and drum parts live to one track, sounding like "he and I were some conjoined musical creature."

Born on April 23rd, 1947, Glenn Douglas Barnard Cornick was part of a mid-Sixties soul band from Blackpool, the John Evan Smash, with Anderson, then a guitarist. When the group fell apart, Cornick, Anderson, another of that band's guitarists, Mick Abrahams, and Abrahams' friend Bunker became Tull's first lineup. Anderson immediately became the primary songwriter and visual focus in his stewbum's overcoat and cross-legged pose as he soloed on flute.

But Cornick was a figure of striking eccentricity as well: wearing glasses and a bowler that he later traded for an Indian-cloth headband. The bassist also had a co-writing credit as Len Barnard on the B-side of Tull's first single, "Aeroplane" (mistakenly issued as Jethro Toe), and he was a consistent, compositional force on the early albums, often running in sturdy, melodic counterpoint to the flute and guitars. In a band that actually functioned in those first years like a power trio under Anderson, Cornick's robust doubling of riff played by Abrahams and (starting with Stand Up) his replacement Martin Barre was a grounding force, keeping Anderson's progressive writing rooted in blues movement and muscle.

Cornick was, it seems, not destined to be in Tull for long. Two of his signature performances, "Song for Jeffrey" and "Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square," were named after Jeffrey Hammond, Anderson's grammar-school friend, one of Cornick's predecessors in the John Evan Smash and, finally, his successor in Tull when Cornick, chafing under Anderson's hardening grip, left at the end of 1970. Cornick started his own band, Wild Turkey, which he revived for albums and shows (including Tull fan conventions) in the Nineties and early 2000s. Cornick also played with ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Bob Welch and Nazz drummer Thom Mooney in a mid-Seventies trio, Paris.

Neither of Cornick's later bands are on Spotify, so this jukebox is all Tull, classic and deep with diversions, including that "Aeroplane" rarity (it was actually a John Evan Smash recording, with the horns taken out) and Tull's performance on the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus TV special with Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi. "His background in the beat groups of the North of England and his broad knowledge of music was always helpful in establishing the arrangements of the early Tull," Anderson said of Cornick in a tribute on Jethro Tull's website. ....

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Filmed by Clenn Cornick's son, Drew Cornick:
Several weeks before the Musical Storytellers: A Memorial for Glenn Cornick event, I had the opportunity to meet with Ian Anderson in Southern California before one of his shows to record a memorial tribute to my father. Not knowing what to expect, I was pleasantly blown away by the kindness Ian exhibited allowing me to video tape him remembering my father. Ian and I were able to share nearly an hour of memories and stories that allowed me to learn and understand more of my father. Here is a shortened version of our conversation.
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Glenn Cornick footage:
 
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