and we don't have a crystal ball to predict the future

 

I suppose though if you could pull together the leading talents in modern prog (and the fringes) to engineer something like this then maybe someone like Dave Kerzner or <yawn> Steven Wilson could 'direct' it.

 

Wilson had his go with Raven , but Kerzner has recently released an album called New World which suggests he could be the James Cameron of the prog world. He was also involved in the superb Sound Of Contact album which to my mind is a modern classic ( but not recognised as such admittedly).

 

 

 

 

 

hahahaha!!!! Furry Rodent, hahaha!!!! Guldbansem, that's so funny hahaha!!!  awww ExittheLemming the furry is officially the most fluffy cutie snuffy too funny adorable cute here on P.A.

hahahaha, still laughing here and awww cute hahaha xxxxx

hahahaha RichardH, I too have some difficulty getting into Steven Wilson's albums, especially Blackfield band, however he is a genius producer and master of sound this must be said and he has a massive impressive resume of bands he remixed or mastered, their music, just to name a few (not albums coz those are many)

1. King Crimson

2. Caravan

3. Jethro Tull

4. ELP

5. hAWKWIND

6. yes

7. Gentle Giant

among so many others, truth be told he expanded the dynamic range of those bands COMPARED TO THEIR LATER previous releases

A massive hug to you, RichardH  

Exactly. Bravo Kati

By the way, there are a number of candidates for that "new CttE". For example, IQ's Road of Bones is already mentioned; also, in prog metal sub-genre (which wasn't exist in 1972 when CttE was released), there are the masterpieces that are already (great) classics of Prog, e.g.  Images and Words  and Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory  by Dream Theater.

Please be careful hellogoodbye! the ghosts are fearful almost as little lemmings!  

And that is a fact.

Indeed. If there has been one in the past few years, I suspect it's something by Big Big Train.

That's not what I meant. Back in the 70s prog was in and hot and there was a much larger fan base, whereas we today have trouble finding fans enough to go around. There are just too many acts to chose from

I was not referring to the actual music or the possibility of something being produced with just as much punch and wow factor as the old classics - no, merely commenting on the fact that we, as progheads or whatever you wish to call it, today are a rather small niche audience. 

For an album to rival say Close to the Edge it would not only need to be genuinely progressive (wow I've never heard anything like that before-kinda progressive), it additionally needs the support and will of the fans to listen to something that is completely new....just like most young prog fans did oh so long ago. It's about open-mindedness towards new music, and I honestly don't see that in today's audience - not even on here (although there are some). It's all about mentality and approach for musicians and fans alike.....that and then like I've mentioned countless of times before: we need a brand new 'the 60s' for that to ever happen.

 

 

 

 

 

Is it Cold War and the fear of WW3 maybe?

 

 

 

 

 

How you will recognize that "new sixties" when it comes, I'm just curious?

 

 

 

Yes but also about everything else. Simply comparing similar looking crises is just lazy imo.....and you can't really compare them either. Nothing is new anymore in 2015. We've more or less seen it all. Comparing that to the sixties is plain wrong. The civil rights movement with Martin Luther King was unprecedented. People had never ever experienced anything like it - just like the Vietnam war. Suddenly you could see people getting slaughtered on your TV whilst eating supper -in colour no less. That was also a first. Hell the Americans even went to the moon. There is no way of replicating that almost worldwide sense of adventure in today's world. Oh and what about the JFK murder - or the first ever nuclear crises? 

I could go on, but I figure you get the gist of what I'm saying

That music revolution you mentioned was just one of the products of general atmosphere of the sixties when the Cold War and the fear of WW3 was dominant. However, I doubt that he has a clear image about what he was speaking about when he mentioned the "new sixties". I think that he just said "we need a "new sixties" and, self-satisfied, he's thinking that he said something great. Actually, the sixties will never repeat in a form that will be similar enough to the guys as Guldbamsen as well that he might say "here come new sixties".

 

Spot on what I was thinking....For me it's a matter of volume of listeners today as compared to then and who actually listens to prog today. Back in the CTTE days, generic rock fans listened to Yes, the fanbase was gigantic compared to today's prog rock fanbase. We are a very very small niche group and the music is so unheard of outside our little world I don't think it would ever reach the stratosphere of CTTE, TAAB or SEBTP...meaning across many genres of music or music polls.

Let's take for example the IQ album mentioned, which I too believe it is brilliant and worthy of that long standing high poll position. Outside our world it has no meaning at all and would never cross into the generic rock world like the grand fathers of prog albums do.

Also our music takes time to appreciate, you truly have to sit and listen to understand the music, lyrics the vibe of what an IQ and others are trying to convey....Folks this is not background music, so let's face it today's music environment is about quick, easy listen, no fussing over long music passages, noodling or suites heck not even concept albums...simply the public has no time for this kind of music. YouTube, Spotify and streaming, listening to individual tracks is what most people do now, buying an album and sitting down and soaking it all in seems a thing of the past...unfortunately.

 

Pretty much agreed.

Classic albums are never slow-burners and they seldom, if ever took, time to appreciate. They were instantly recognisable as being Classic from the moment they were released even when it took the general public a while to latch onto that.

I see it ranked much higher then those albums on multiple lists, including ours.

No it doesn't. It's a good album and some will say it is even a great album but it is only a classic album of its genre, along with Operation Mindcrime and perhaps a couple of other Prog Metal albums. But rank alongside the major albums of any other genre or generation it most certainly does not.

That did not happen even on a micro-scale let alone the macro-scale you are claiming. 

If this was even remotely the case then every 70s rock band would have had high-grossing albums and that it blatantly and demonstrably untrue. 

How anyone can make-up nonsense like this beggar's belief. 

Just as you are it seems.

Totally irrelevant and wrong in the same breath.

Chart ranking (especially for a recently released album) does not make it a classic album.

Are you saying that an album can't become a classic unless it has a huge influence on bands to come? That makes sense to me.

Partly. There are many factors that go towards an album being called a Classic and that could be one of them.

However, the current chart-ranking of any recently released album is artificially high because the ratings have not normalised after the initial surge of positive reviews.

I guess I just don't see that happening......As far as polls go, who knows. Will be cool to see what the PA Top 10 looks like in 10-20 yrs, assuming PA is still around.

*are only English Symphonic Prog [and related] albums from 70s deserved to be called the classic albums?*

Could you name any bands that have made a really strong impression that are outside of the Anglo-centric realm?

What evidence do you have for asking such a question? It seems to me that you have formed an unsubstantiated hypothesis and are now trying to be selective in the data you use to validate it. This is called cherry picking and it is universally regarded as being "a bad thing".

Spend less than an hour scouring the site and you'll see folks mentioning faves from Italy, France, Germany, Spain, The States and on and on.. 

The usual suspects are of course always present in the forum, mainly because they're the usual suspects hoho, but when you dig a little deeper you'll see a good portion of RPI lovers - people into the French scene, Swedish, Norwegian, German you name it. I'm fairly certain people mention these albums as classics too - I know I do.

The polls and charts have a tendency to be in favour of the British bands yes, but that's because of exposure and the fact that English tends to be a lot easier to get down than Flemish - not because of some evil crusade against music from other countries. 

But my favorite music isn't regarded as all classics so there must be an evil crusade against it!

 

There's far too much phlegm in Flemish to let it go down easily.

 

In reference to 70s Brit prog being the apotheosis and main influencer of the genre, there is certainly something to be said in that regard. It is what one would call a "perfect storm" of cultural, societal and musical attributes culminating in a brand of rock that many have copied or referenced, but really none have topped, not even Brit descendants 40 years on.

 

But this type of perfect storm is nothing new. Rock in its infancy in America, or jazz, each had such an apotheosis. Certain styles of classical music in Austria/Germany, and then again in late 19th/early 20th century Russia reached peaks that really no one can outdo, only emulate. We haven't had a new Bach or Mozart in a few hundred years.

Yea, De-Loused in the Comatorium, released in June 2003, already is a classic album par excellence with such strong influence on numberous contamporary prog bands.

 

By the way, aside of great music what the classic album ought to contain, and to be well sold, and to get many serious reviews, and yet to be influential on newcomers, and so on, I think that an album artwork also must be great in the case of an album which we called classic. That's very important thing, that an artwork is somehow following the music ideas that are presented on an album. And The Mars Volta's De-Loused in the Comatorium album artwork is just another nice example of that (nothing less than in the OP mentioned CttE with Roger Dean's masterpiece artwork painted with an ancient air-brush, though very modern technique at that time).

 

 

Last but not least, Roger Dean's choice of colours at the front cover of CttE is so wonderful and also testify of the true artist.

 

From Wiki: 

 

The album's sleeve was designed and illustrated by English artist  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Dean_%28artist%29" rel="nofollow - Roger Dean , who had also designed the cover for Fragile (1971). It marks the first use of the Yes "bubble" logo. Some of the photography used was shot by  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyn_Adelman" rel="nofollow - Martyn Adelman  who had played in  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syn" rel="nofollow - The Syn  with Squire. On reflection of its artwork, Dean said: "There were a couple of ideas that merged there. It was of a waterfall constantly refreshing itself, pouring from all sides of the lake, but where was the water coming from? I was looking for an image to portray that"

Well let's see...

The De-loused artwork was created by Storm Thorgerson after an exchange of ideas with TMV. Roger Dean's artwork for CttE has nothing to do with the album's music or its ideas, it is merely a continuation of the shattered world theme he start on Fragile and continued through to Yessongs. Tales was the first Yes album where the band had a say in the cover imagery design (and frankly it shows).

(The history of art really isn't your forte is it): The Airbrush design that is in use today was invented in the nineteenth century and its operation, design and function has not changed since that time. The company that made them back then is still making them now. Since the design is the same now as was in 1893 then a 1970s airbrush would not be called "ancient". Airbrush painting was not a "modern technique" in 1972 as there are examples of airbrush artwork from every decade of the 20th century. 

They are related to each other.  That is why there has been such a long relationship

between the two. 

Ugly, cadaravish artwork and music?  (I hate being a music critic when it gets negative,

I'm just saying that is what the artwork seems to imply).   I'm sure some get a sense

of trippy power out of it. 

It seemed like classic prog was about creating a heavenly vision, more often than not.

Even Van der Graaf was on a type of spiritual crusade, even in an activist sense, like

Hammill's solo albums.   One thing that separated early Prog often from music current to it

was a general sense of spirituality.   Take it in a broad way perhaps, like waking up and 

existentialism (the end of Endless Enigma).   Prog didn't seem to just focus on the complaint.

[I've never heard Roger Dean's music ]

They aren't so much related to each other as associated with each other, just as Paul Whitehead is associated with Genesis, Barney Bubbles with Hawkwind and Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis are strongly associated with Pink Floyd although they created covers for many other bands (including Yes, Genesis and Hawkwind).

Is this referring to De-Loused in Comatorium? Neither artwork nor music are cadaver-like as far as I can tell (the clue is in the album title surely). As Storm Thorgerson stated ( http://www.rockarchive.com/the-mars-volta_photo_print_mvol001st.html" rel="nofollow - here ) the bronze head represents the album concept's protagonist in a comatose state with the shaft of light coming from his mouth representing a cry for help.

 

Spot on really

 

The likes of The Mars Volta have also been mentioned but I don't believe they have had the widespread appeal that Radiohead album had. After it was released people started talking about prog again.

 

I'm going to also push forward slightly tentatively Muse - Absolution. Now I realise that many don't consider Muse to be anything to do with prog whatsoever but then isn't the point that modern band should be trying to get to a different place and not just treading over the same ground?

However, when an Anglo-centric prog fan is to think about prog in the way that only English symphonic [and related] bands from 70s are prog then 90% material of those bands that were outside of mentioned Anglo-centric realm will not sound as a prog to the ears of an Anglo-centric fan, maybe they will sound to his/her ears "proggy" at best.

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

.....then everybody can see that effectivelly it's the same thing on that kind of covers ie that "big" difference in used technique is invisible on the final product. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a straw man argument and not very good one at that. You are still peddling this unsubstantiated hypothesis and now, since no one has taken your bait, you are inventing answers to justify your unproven opinion.

CttE is seen as one of if not the greatest prog album ever made, however I disagree. As far as Yes goes, I think 'Fragile' is a much better album, and it's among my favorites, so of course it leaves more of an impact on me. While it would make sense for an album to be called a classic once it has a huge influence on bands to come or something like that, there will always be people who don't like the 'classic' album. I think it's logical for different people to all have their different list of classic albums.

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.

Once again:  

I said the INNER cover was painted using cans of aerosol car enamel paint. Got that? Has that sunk into your skull yet? I'm not talking about the simple two-colour blend on the front cover - that is such an arse-numbingly simple effect to do that it's not worthy of being discussed - but if you insist - no I cannot tell that CttE front cover was painted with cans of aerosol or an airbrush HOWEVER I CAN tell that that Smak cover was NOT painted with cans of aerosol paint (I also think that it could have been done better, it seems a little sloppy to me but maybe that's the effect they were going for). If you cannot see this then that really does not concern me, you would not be my first or second choice as an expert on art.

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.

That's why Roger Dean's works from 70s are combination, though magnificent, of aerosol car enamel / guache(s) done with an airbrush (his skies, clouds, haze, etc.) and  watercolors done with "normal" brushes for the small details.

BTW, Roger Dean as a young man was an industrial designer, not a painter. So he designed his floating islands, he didnt "just find" these forms while eg he was painting his visions with oil on canvas as eg Salvador Dali did.

 

 

I fail to see the point you are attempting to make here - you have added absolutely nothing to what I have already said. If you want to agree with me then go ahead and agree with me but this is just getting ridiculous now. 

And sorry... your playing with plastic toy models does not qualify you to discuss airbrush and aerosol can painting techniques at the level Roger Dean worked at. From what you have written here there is now little doubt in my mind that you know nothing of either technique other than what you quickly read on the internet today.

Are we finished now? Can we go back to talking about whether there is or ever will be a modern classic prog album?

Well said--agree 100%. It's a new world out there.

People who  aren't music fans have to be aware of it one (or more) decades after its release.

I don't get the complaints about modern technology. Doesn't stuff like spotify make it easier to track popularity? A real modern classic shall eventually be played by radio stations after it has become popular on free services like spotify.

OK Computer, maybe images and words?

If a modern classic comes around though, I certainly don't think it's going to sound anything like Yes, Genesis, Camel, Gentle Giant, or even King Crimson and VDGG.  Nor would i want it to necessarily.  But it will change the way people look at the music in general, if it truly is a classic. 

I guess that a true classic must have some element of novelty, something that sets it apart from what had already been done and from what its contemporary bands are doing. So modern classics must be coming from modern Prog subgenres, and likely not from retro-Prog.

I guess that albums like The Wall, Script From A Jester's Tear (or perhaps Misplaced Childhood), Images And Words, Hybris, De-Loused or Still Life are already considered "classics" by many Prog fans. So I have no doubt that some albums from the 2000's and the current decade will be considered classics within 15 or 20 years. In a way comparable to CttE? That I do not know...

Ok, I'll take the bait. 

In my mind, classic means that it has to have impact beyond the true believers of the genre. If it doesn't do that, we're just arguing amongst ourselves (which we're doing) about things that in the greater scheme don't really have impact. One could argue, I guess, that greater impact will be gleaned by the unwashed masses at some point in the indeterminate future, but I don't buy it. 

What album raises to the level of "classic" from the 90's and the 00's? From the 90's I think one could make the case that something like OK Computer is a classic. And on this point, we argue mightly whether or not this is even Prog. From the 00's what is your choice? I can't think of any highly rated PA album from the 00's that has had impact beyond our small group. Personally, I know of no one who has ever heard anything released in the last 15 years that was ranked highly on PA, and my guess is outside of our small group, I never will.

The days of thinking our Prog heroes are creating masterworks that will be embraced by a large audience and recognized as "classics" are over.

In the end, does this bother me. Not really. We should enjoy what we have, support the artists who are willing to create something we love, that is well outside the mainstream, and know worry about whether or not we are supporting music that was created for the future.

 

So why would one think that a "prog-rock" album would suddenly fall from the sky today and eclipse albums like Close to the Edge or Dark Side of the Moon or Thick as a Brick? We are still referring to and revering those albums 40+ years after their release. These were huge hits then and people (not just crusty old farts) are still buying remasters/remixes/new digital technologies of these albums today.

 

I won't be here 40 years from now (the insurance actuarial tables work against me), but it seems to me music in general and how music is listened to has become so fragmented, so iTune-single-downloadable, that the album format and long compositions are fading fast from public consciousness. It may not seem so on our little prog island, where we stack our CDs in formidable walls like a bastion of lost hope in a sea of musical sputum; but the island is sinking, foundering in a compositional climate change with an inevitability that is evident. To me, at least.

Dark Elf said it much better than I did. I couldn't agree more...

But this is most likely because those speak more closely to me. Those records represent what is going through my head. Those records completely changed music for me. And they are far different from the albums you guys are speaking about, so I believe they could have a similar wave of influence on music in the future.

Ah, no. They may be important to you personally but that does not make them Classic albums per se. 

 

Let us forget the fact that the albums that have been bandied about in the last few posts (Close to the Edge, Thick as a Brick, Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here) all charted in the top ten upon their release in both the UK and the US (so they were publically popular), and that critics in general praised the albums as groundbreaking or special (so they were critically well-received also); instead, let's just stay closer to home amongst rabid prog-heads: all four of the albums are listed in the top ten of Prog-Archives Progressive Rock Top Albums list with ratings of 4.59 or greater (in fact, the top two are CttE and TAAB, WYWH is fourth and DSotM is seventh).

 

So, there is a consensus among prog fanatics, there was a consensus amongst critics and the normally stupid record-buying public also bought millions of the albums. Granted, naming albums "classics" and "masterpieces" is certainly subjective, but one can use objective data to derive basic criteria that bolsters certain opinions.

 

 

But for anything truly modern to break ground and do something new, it pretty much has to be polarizing in some way so there are going to be dissenting opinions on it.

Oh and also the only people that hated Deloused that were professional critics were like Pitchfork and we all know they are pretty awful. 

I don't mean to be argumentative. I just am seriously confused... potentially i'm talking about something that we aren't talking about or I'm not. I don't know anymore. What is life?

For me, it is a real modern classic and one of the best albums ever released (I think the bonus disc is even better than the main one!). I thought it was the best album of 2014 by miles, but then along comes Steve Rothery with Ghosts of Pripyat and throws me completely. For me, these two are exceptional in any era.

In 2015, we have Steven Wilson's Hand Cannot Erase, which is miles better than TRTRTS and again, close to exceptional. And finally, Steve Hackett releases Wolflight, which is another astonishing album (except for the cover art).