Greetings

Another label that have a nice roster of unconventional artists that might be of interest is Silber Records. Linking to their catalog page with samples and stuff to investigate. I believe most of this stuff is on Spotify for an easy option to check out further.

Windhawk wrote: Goodsir wrote: How often does everyone here venture outside of prog? And I will definitely check out Moonjune. Sounds like hella interesting stuff. I have a taste that range from Modest Mussorgsky (classical) on one extreme to Triptykon (metal) on the other, and don't mind listening to more mainstream oriented material at times either. Norwegian dream pop band Bel Canto for instance, old blues rocker Robin Trower, the ever so great Steppenwolf can also be mentioned. Nazareth and The Sensational Alex Harvey Band are other favorites of mine, and I've always had a soft spot for Gary Numan. Vangelis and Kitaro are also artists I enjoy, and Isao Tomita merits a mention as well. To some extent also Jan Garbarek. If any of these names rings a non-prog bell somewhere.

Goodsir wrote: How often does everyone here venture outside of prog? And I will definitely check out Moonjune. Sounds like hella interesting stuff.

it is only one of several types of music I like, so I suppose I spend much of my time outside of it.  I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it in general. I have never felt it to be the be all end all of musical genres. What it is though is FAR and away the most interesting of musical genres.  I believe there is nothing better than great prog but conversely there is nothing .. nothing.. worse than bad prog. Considering how difficult prog is to actually do well, there is a lot more sh*t out there IMO than gold. The fun is finding the gold while trying to avoid stepping in the others. 

How often does everyone here venture outside of prog? And I will definitely check out Moonjune. Sounds like hella interesting stuff.

While somewhat less adventurous / challenging than others mentioned, Phideaux is a nice artist to get familiar with as far as contemporary artists are concerned.

If you like jazzrock and music of a somewhat more experimental kind aligned to that brand of music, US label Moonjune Records has plenty of stuff that merits an inspection.

Should keep you busy for a few hours those two alone.

Raff wrote: Some great stuff released in the past four or five years has been reviewed on my blog, whose link you can find in my signature (it's the first one). Other suggestions, off the top of my head: From the Nineties: Änglagård - Hybris and Epilog Anekdoten - Vemod Discipline - Unfolded Like Staircase 21st century: Miriodor - Avanti! Forgas Band Phenomena - L'Axe du Fou The Tea Club - General Winter's Secret Museum (these are NJ guys, great live band!) Kotebel - all their albums (available for streaming on Bandcamp) Cabezas de Cera - all their albums Diablo Swing Orchestra - Pandora's Pinata Yugen - Labirinto d'Acqua The Knells - s/t Alec K. Redfearn and the Eyesores - Sister Death Thieves Kitchen - One for Sorrow, Two for Joy These are just a few! Bear in mind that I have rather offbeat tastes, and that a lot of these suggestions are not your typical symphonic prog. The good thing is that you can stream a lot of these albums from Bandcamp or other similar websites, or find samples on sites such as this one.

Goodsir wrote: By the way, what area of New Jersey do you live in, if you don't mind me asking?

We live in Northern Virginia, just south of DC (Micky is my husband), but have very good friends in NJ, and in the past few months we went there twice. BTW, this is a great place to visit for great live music: http://www.njproghouse.com/

Some great stuff released in the past four or five years has been reviewed on my blog, whose link you can find in my signature (it's the first one). Other suggestions, off the top of my head:

From the Nineties:
Änglagård - Hybris and Epilog
Anekdoten - Vemod
Discipline - Unfolded Like Staircase

21st century:
Miriodor - Avanti!
Forgas Band Phenomena - L'Axe du Fou
The Tea Club - General Winter's Secret Museum (these are NJ guys, great live band!)
Kotebel - all their albums (available for streaming on Bandcamp)
Cabezas de Cera - all their albums
Diablo Swing Orchestra - Pandora's Pinata
Yugen - Labirinto d'Acqua
The Knells - s/t
Alec K. Redfearn and the Eyesores - Sister Death
Thieves Kitchen - One for Sorrow, Two for Joy

These are just a few! Bear in mind that I have rather offbeat tastes, and that a lot of these suggestions are not your typical symphonic prog. The good thing is that you can stream a lot of these albums from Bandcamp or other similar websites, or find samples on sites such as this one.

hahah.  She is working on it. I see the smoke coming from her ears.

Also note her blog, she has done a lot of reviews of the current batch of prog.  She is a little behind this year but still.  Lots of good ones she has reviewed, plus I simply love reading her reviews.  For a non-native English writer, she writes better than many (including me).

Thank you both so much for the warm welcome! A nice list of some prog albums you would recommend from the past 20 years would be highly appreciated.