a modern classic prog album

OK Computer is probably one of the best possible answers if there has to be one. Pretty much universally acclaimed, appears on every best-of list imaginable, a combination of both musical ambition and popularity through perfectly capturing the zeitgeist.

Though, of course, the prog community (and Radiohead themselves) probably don't see Radiohead as typically prog enough to call it a modern prog classic, or a new CttE, or whatever. But as others have said, I don't think 'a new CttE' is a meaningful idea, so this'll do.

 I'm getting confused as to which Serbian is responding to which post. This post seems to be replying to my replies to Svetonio and Robert. I know Svetonio has decreed never to respond to my posts but I wasn't expecting Pjer to answer on his behalf. Hey-ho.

Yes, I also read that article and in his book Views, when asked about the relationship between his pictures and the music, he says that he rarely heard the music before doing an album cover. "I cannot say that the music was ever a direct inspiration for my work."

Roger Dean was (and still is) skilful with an airbrush, but as I said - Close To The Edge is not a piece of airbrushed artwork. There are marked differences between artwork made with an airbrush and one made using cans of aerosol paint, firstly his airbrush art is done in water colour whereas the aerosol can is cellulose car enamel (acrylic aerosols that graffiti artists use are a modern invention) which is why the marbling effect you see in a lot of his early work stops once he moved over to using the airbrush. Cans are extremely difficult to control especially when working on small-scale pieces of work and that shows in the finished pieces, compare CttE with the incredible fine-touch he achieved on the Tales cover and the difference in technique is glaringly obvious.

So when you look at his actual airbrush works starting with the massive four-picture set he did for Yessongs the skill and control is as good as any other illustrator, his work doesn't show quite the same level of fine-art touch that H R Giger had but only because his style does not require it. For your information it is not a dilatory technique (aside from painstakingly cutting sheets of Frisket™ Film to mask out areas) it is actually a pretty immediate technique especially when working free-hand, therefore skies are a doddle and can be knocked out in a few minutes.

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Differences in choices of classics, I've seen, can be reflected in different groups, where the vast majority of a group will believe that such and such album is a classic or the classic from a band, while another group would have a majority disagree. Speaking of Yes, most big time progheads of course cite Close To The Edge as the crowning achievement of the band, but outside of those circles I've seen most people instead root for Fragile. Some folks here might be stunned to see how many times musicians featured on Amoeba Music's "What's In My Bag?" series picked Fragile. Perhaps, taking into account both the opinions of various progheads and outsiders, it can be said that the most quintessentially classic Yes album is in fact Fragile. 

Rajaz and OK Computer are great albums made away from the Golden Age of Prog. 

Yup, for instance the popularity of Deloused has dipped greatly...to the extent that TMV got voted out against Heep on this forum.  There used to be Dream Theater threads left, right and centre on this forum; now they only get into the conversation (EVEN on the DT appreciation thread) when they have a new album.  Where are The Decemberists now; their albums were the toast of this forum at the time of their release.  My point being that the popularity of modern 'classics' peaks pretty early and they fade away from public memory rather quickly.  And it's not because they are bad vis-a-vis the classics of the 70s; it's simply that the music scene is too fragmented today and a small hardcore fanbase cannot prop up the popularity of an album for too long.  I would say Kid A was the last prog classic and something dramatic needs to happen in the prog world (and the music industry in general) for that feat to be repeated.  If Kid A is considered too weird and not 'inclusive' enough, then OK Computer but that's it.  The likes of Genesis or Yes have either not made albums in years or not made albums that enough people care about and yet they remain in the conversation practically all the time while even a band like Porcupine Tree is not much discussed any more after they stopped making new albums.  And PT did have crossover appeal; they pulled in fans who didn't otherwise care much for prog.

His intention was to use aerosol can enamel paint just for an effect - to blending one color to another like a smoke, or as Italians would say, to make sfumato. 

Effectively, it's the same thing if he did it with an airbrush instead of the cans of aerosol enamel paint because the difference of those techniques is invisible at the final product ie CttE album jacket. Thats what i said.

I agree. I think outside the rarefied atmosphere of Prog OK Computer has achieved general Classic status, (Kid A less so perhaps), but it managed that in spite of being seen as Progressive Rock even in the loose sense of the word... it was probably regarded as being a "Classic" long before it was accepted as being "Prog" here.  But within the confines of what we view as being Progressive Rock the fragmentation of sub-subgenres and tastes means that the chances of finding modern albums that have wide appeal within the genre as a whole are pretty slim.