International World Of Prog

Those hardy, regular visitors (ah, the pretence, the pretence…) will be familiar with my constant phobic battles against the prog music, and my attempts to overcome the fear, and even to embrace it.

And now, I am pleased to report, further progress - alongside the fine work carried out by gentlemen scholars such as Man Aubergine and Cleckhuddersfax, another ally has presented itself in the form of Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word.

Before I go any further though, I must pull them up on that title. Prog is a four letter word. I can see that, you can see that. It’s pretty clear. Now, I’ve never been involved in the process of making a vinyl record or compact disc for mass publication, and so can’t really comment on the pressures that one may find oneself under when deadlines loom and so on, but I would have thought even the most tooted up music executive fool would pick up on that one? I’m not angered, more concerned. Let’s leave it behind us. Okay? Okay.

That aside, Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word collects together offerings from all over this crazy world of ours, which Andy Votel considers to be truly ‘progressive’. Hmm, poncy. But the results are what counts, and indeed and truly, this time they count from such distant lands as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Korea and Wales in a wave of wafer-thin reformed-mind sweetness.

It’s a slightly mixed bag, with some straightish up garage stuff from the East, and what might even be referred to as funk occasionally popping up, but what of it? Hmm?

Listen here to Visitors, about which I can find nothing – except to say their music reminds me of an idiot-savant child idly creating new colours by shooting beams of moonlight through prisms in carefully random directions - and San Ul Lim, three brothers from Korea who are surely the smartest men ever to walk this earth armed with a Casio and a dream…

Get the proper record on Delay 68 from here for pretty cheap, so you can listen to a Turkish man sound both Scottish and insulting. It is very worth it.

Visitors – Visitors

San Ul Lim - Frustration