OUT OF THE BARNYARD

The mysterious Fright Pig's debut album is such a confident tour de force that I'm forced to wonder whether we will discover more familiar prog names behind their porcine disguises somewhere down the line.

The album is a marvellous example of what I consider to be the most interesting strand in progressive rock at the moment - as exemplified by the most recent albums from Phideaux, Big Big Train, Galahad and even Marillion - with bands tearing up the genre rulebooks and feeling free to mix and match classic prog sounds with cutting edge musical techniques derived from more modern (and in some cases not even especially rock-oriented) musical genres.

Here the inspirations range from the folky to the electronic, underpinned with a piggy playfulness (see, for instance, the band's delirious reimagining of Bark At the Moon's riff...). Here's one prize porker that's no boar, and I hope to get more fine cuts from the Fright Pig in future.