Of all of the classic-era Pink Floyd albums, Animals is the strangest and darkest, a record that's hard to initially embrace yet winds up yielding as many rewards as its equally nihilistic successor, The Wall. It isn't that Roger Waters dismisses the human race as either pigs, dogs, or sheep, it's that he's constructed an album whose music is as bleak and bitter as that world view. Arriving after the warm-spirited (albeit melancholy) Wish You Were Here, the shift in tone comes as a bit of a surprise, and there are even less proper songs here than on either Wish or Dark Side. Animals is all extended pieces, yet it never drifts – it slowly, ominously works its way toward its destination…

On their second album, Uriah Heep jettisons the experiments that weighed down Very 'Eavy Very 'Umble and works toward perfecting their blend of heavy metal power and prog rock complexity. Salisbury tips the band's style in the prog direction, containing one side of songs and one side dominated by a lengthy and ornate epic-length composition…

Steve Schroyder's (ex Tangerine Dream) super krautrock band, featuring many guests (from Ash Ra Tempel, Agitation Free, etc.). Recorded in 1975, "Magical Mind" is a psychedelic tour de force for electric guitar tones, Moog synth textures and discreet pulses from percussions. Ethereal soundscapes and freak out kraut-improvisations.

Adult Cinema is a remarkable one-man project helmed by multi-instrumentalist Mike Weston. Hot and Cold is his third release and displays a mercurial talent, seemingly at ease with an array of instruments, skilfully moulding together an entertaining melange of styles. As with previous albums, there are nods to the great bands of the 60’s and 70’s, but now Mike has added flavours from later eras and has further defined a unique sound for the band. The songs on ‘Hot and Cold’ cover a myriad of subjects such as religion, hatred, cowardice, control (and the loss of it), dual personality, science and atheism.

RanestRane is an Italian prog band from Rome that was formed in 1996. The aim of the musicians involved in this project was to compose and perform a rock-opera, so they chose a famous Werner Herzog's film, "Nosferatu The Vampyre", and commented it with music and original lyrics. They started their live activity in 2000 and conceived their shows as a "cineconcerto", with the images of the Herzog's film flowing in the background. In 2007 they released their rock-opera on a self-produced studio album, a double CD called "Nosferatu il Vampiro", and they have continued with works based on "The Shining" and "2001: A Space Odyssey". Among their musical influences you can find bands like Goblin, PFM, BMS, Genesis, and Marillion, to name a few. Incidentally, the band makes up a large part of the reorganized Il Rovescio della Medaglia.

Operation: Mindcrime (also known as: Geoff Tate's Operation: Mindcrime) is a progressive metal band that is fronted by the former lead singer of Queensrÿche, Geoff Tate. It is named after Queensrÿche's 1988 album of the same name…

The story of Cast begins in 1978 when the first golden era of Progressive Rock was agonizing, when the keyboardist Alfonso Vidales had the idea of creating a Rock band that blended Symphonic passages in order to keep his beloved Prog alive. Very little information can be found about the first 16 years of their existence, until 1994 when "Landing in a Serious Mind" is self released, an album that presents us a serious Symphonic band with an original sound.
1994 and 1995 are years of great activity for Cast, the band releases 5 albums. After two more albums and three years, the band signs with Musea for the release of "Imaginary Window" in 1999, an album that shows us a band that leaves behind the few Neo Prog leanings to embrace fully the Symphonic genre…

This marriage of four players with impressive pedigrees proved to be the success story of 1982 when Asia's debut lodged itself at the top of the U.S. album charts for two months. The album spawned a massive number four single in "Heat of the Moment," a follow-up Top 20 hit in the sweeping "Only Time Will Tell," and a handful of other tracks that received heavy radio play despite going against the grain of the new wave styling of the day. Produced by Mike Stone, Asia's strengths were the powerful vocals of John Wetton, the nimble, classically tinged guitar work of Steve Howe, Geoffrey Downes' majestic keyboard playing, and anchoring the band, Carl Palmer's propulsive drumming. The lyrics are overwrought at moments, but there's no denying the epic grandeur of the music, which provided some much-needed muscle to radio at the time, and did so with style.

Andrew Stone has been a musician for a while now. He was "Born in the Fifties", and loved all the great British and American bands of the early 70's. He has had a career as a musician, a sound engineer, producer, and record company boss. Now, he has fulfilled his ambition to bring his love for English Progressive Rock into one album. A true representation of his pilgrimage, and a life in music.
Although this album is a "solo" project, it has been made possible by the wonders of modern technology, and through collaboration. This has allowed four friends from opposite sides of the Atlantic to re-visit a musical relationship which had its genesis at a UK Midlands University in 1979, where they formed a band known as "Tiny Lites".

Scratch the surface of early-seventies progressive rock and underneath all the classic albums and famous musicians you will find a series of lesser-known bands and artists who failed to hit the big-time but still managed to create all manner of excellent prog. Dig a little deeper and you'll find Mainhorse, a little-known European prog-rock group who produced one excellent album and introduced the world to the enigmatic swiss-born keyboardist Patrick Moraz, who would later on find fame with both Yes and The Moody Blues. The eponymously-titled Mainhorse debut was released to little fanfare in 1971 after the group had signed with Polydor Records 12-months previous, but dis-banded soon after the completion of their one-and-only album…

Short-lived Argentinian supergroup, that came to life in 1975 after the demise of Sui Generis. Initially Polifemo started as a Blues Rock trio with Sui Generis's Rinaldo Rafanelli on bass and Juan Rodriguez on bass along with guitarist David Lebón (ex-Pappo's Blues and a bandmate of Rinaldo Rafanelli in Color Humano). After a first single in 1975 the trio was joined by Espíritu's keyboardist Ciro Fogliatta and Polifemo, who had already singed with EMI, debuted in May 1976 with a self-titled debut.
While the basis of Polifemo's music was still a standard well-played Blues Rock, the presence of Fogliatta and the anxious spirits of the rest of the band make "Polifemo" much more than a rock release full of bluesy solos and grooves…