Can the early 70s prog sound be cloned nowadays?

Here's what I mean: there have been many attempts by several "Neo-prog" or other artists to capture the same sort of essence which was included in the early records of King Crimson and Genesis and so on. Yet it has felt to me that such efforts have been extremely hit and miss; they've written songs with a similar song structure, yes, used Mellotron, the Hammond Organ etc, but more often than not the result actually feels like a modernized homage/tribute to the classics rather than a personal and artistic work. And it's actually really easy to understand why, for if the aim, of say Steven Wilson, is to make a record which clearly is heavily influenced by the classics, then the record has also to be on par with said classics, or else the house of cards falls apart. It becomes a hollow copy of the masterpiece it is trying to be. While the musicianship and songwriting of such artists can be extremely acknowledgable, the product at the end fails to deliver something unique, which made the classics so good to begin with. While I love Opeth's Pale Communion, every time I listen to it I get this nagging feeling of "Oh Genesis guitars!", or "Oh KC intro!" or just "oh Goblin, as in GOBLIN"

What is your take on this? There are bands like Änglagård and Anekdoten that, in my opinion, are able to catch that 70's classic sound a bit better, but I'm not entirely sure. They were mostly active in the 90s, when digitalized audio engineering was still at its baby steps, maybe that had something to do with it?

SteveG wrote:

What I try to say is that there clearly are musicians/bands who try to mimic the 70's early prog atmosphere in their sound, like Steven Wilson, but when doing so, they are unable to do it without sounding like a side-kick act to the real deal itself. Is it possible to create a 70s sound that not only sounds like a side-kick act but also unique, that could stand side-to-side with In The Court of The Crimson King? Or is it all just about trying to pay tribute to that time? As I said, I think Änglagård and Anekdoten are far more near that 70's atmosphere than the aforementioned Steven Wilson, or Opeth's Pale Communion.

SteveG wrote: No as it would be nothing but imitation and that wears thin very quickly as you yourself have observed. Bands can try pay homage to their heroes  by using mellotrons and the like but it carries a heavy price.

If you mean ripping off, that's an easy one.

That early prog sound for sure can not be cloned as Dolly was as well, but the contemporary prog can be recorded and produced majestically in a retro-prog style. I'd like to recommended some great retro-prog albums by the contemporary prog bands:

Edited by Svetonio - February 18 2015 at 20:43

1. Works of art can only exist in their time. Not in the future, not in the past.  That's why no band will ever be able to clone the 70s rock music. They can sound identical to the 70s, but they won't feel authentic.

2. For people who aren't all that familiar with the 70s sound, you can duplicate the 70s feel and they won't be able to tell the difference. There's a guy I know that composes classical works (something like piano sonatas) that sound just like Beethoven's piano pieces.  Enough to fool me!  I certainly can't tell if it's the real Beethoven or someone in 2015 writing new Beethoven sound-alike music.

3. Just because you can clone the 70s prog, doesn't mean anyone out there will do it. The OP mentioned "personal and artistic work". You can't create that kind of work if you're trying to clone somebody else.  The guy I just mentioned who wrote Beethoven sound-alike pieces?  He's not creating any personal or artistic work. It's the opposite of personal and artistic.

There isn't a single 70s sound, there are many.  Let me demonstrate:
Taking just one band: some of Pink Floyd's 70s albums sound very different from each other - if you didn't know that Atom Heart Mother, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall were all by the same band you'd never guess it just from listening to them for the first time.  Now multiply that by a hundred other examples, and you'll see clearly that many bands don't have a single sound.  And obviously the sound differences between bands are even more different.

There also isn't a sixties sound, an eighties sound, or a 2010s sound.

Apocalypse in 9/8 seems to crop up all the time with Squonk a close second. But as said before they are never the real deal. Its one of the reasons I don't rate IQ's Dark Matter album as highly as some others and I do count myself as an IQ fan. Harvest Of Souls was just too close in structure to Suppers Ready for comfort for me. However what it just doesn't have is the 'feel' of that times and that is a very difficult thing to achieve. Astra on the other hand have managed to get the feel of the seventies using analog equipment and recording techniques (as I understand it) but to their credit never sound like a clone of anything (more like the b*****d love child of early Floyd and Sabbath if anything).

Edited by richardh - February 19 2015 at 01:49

Why should that sound be cloned? Have albums of 70's bands and artists all of a sudden disappeared from the market?