The prog scene was a big part of where Organ starred, down the Marquee with cutting edge of IQ, the majesty of Pallas, the bite of Twelfth Night and the rest of them back there and while the prog scene is maybe a little too polite and maybe not that progressive these days it is still worth checking out what the now rather insular scene offers now and again. We are still shouting about the really properly progressive things of course, the things the prog scene and their glossy magazines seem to mostly be oblivious to, the bands on the real progressive cutting edge, bands like Cheer Accident, Yowie or Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Extra Life or Kayo Dot or Slift or anything truly progressively exciting and the brutal prog of those Flying Luttenbackers would probably send your average porcupine bothering big big pineapple tree fan running to the hills. There are still some more conventual “prog” things worth your time though so let’s go down that rabbit hole we like to go down now and again. This time we start with Vancouver-based Brass Camel…
Brass Camel – Camel (Dromedary Records) – Well now, this is the no holds bared real deal, Brass Camel aren’t hiding anything back here, that twelve minute album ending that is Another Day is totally utterly over the top. This is a kitchen sink and everything else thrown in old school gloriously backward looking prog rock delight. They kind of declared it all in the first minute attack of the eleven minute opener Zealot and just carried on right through with the powder keg, the burning fuse and the whole damn thing going up. Forty-odd minutes of completely over the top bombastic (sometimes galloping) prog rock that at times has a more than healthy serving of funk thrown in there as well. Harder and heavier than last time around but the funk is still very much there.
“Vancouver-based Brass Camel return with their second full-length record: Camel. Clocking in at 40 minutes across just six tracks, the album is an unapologetic artistic statement from a band whose sound resists easy classification…” so says the press release and well, no, this is very very (very) easy to pigeonhole, this is no messing bombastic over the top sometimes funk-flavoured progressive rock and of course there’s nothing progressive about it, not in the real sense of the word. There’s nothing here you haven’t heard before, plenty here you’re going to want to hear again though. At times think Emerson Lake and Palmer meets early king-killing Rainbow or maybe a broken-winged Gillan at their most over the top and crying with glass in their feel and all served up with more than a healthy hint of classic Kansas and a 21st century what was that? And yes that is yet another explosive Minimoog solo by keyboardist Aubrey Ellefson and another big drum fill and great big slice of groove and more over the top keyboard lines and one thing leads to another and yes, this is how we want it! Ridiculous! Ridiculously good! Count those double necks on stage there!
We’re not done yet, this album needs more words thrown at it and when Brass Camel do get over there On The Other Side, when they do hold fast, when they get on the gas and get a touch funky (well more than a touch) it comes over like a North American take on Free or Deep Purple (hey, Deep Purple has loads of soul at times, so do Brass Camel). Hang on, are they sounding a little Max Webster right now? That’s meant as another massive compliment by the way, this party probably is higher than the Eiffel Tower, a party that now and again touches on Wall period Pink Floyd drama and there goes another gloriously proper proggy keyboard line, righteous stuff! Hey look, this is completely over the top bombastic old school prog rock and my god what have you done? You’ll either love it or you’ll run a mile from it but then as you know, there’s nowhere to run when the hammer falls, one thing will almost certainly lead to another so let the heretics and the non-believers burn! Properly proper brilliant (utterly unprogressive) gloriously over the top prog rock with at least six massive kitchen sinks thrown in. Love it!
And…
Soft Hearted Scientists – The Phantom of Canton – A sixteen track double album that is loosely speaking, a mellow psychedelia infused concept album of sorts, they say they’re “dealing with themes such as alienation, lost love, and the sometimes high personal price of obsessively pursuing creative projects, or indeed any job or calling”. The album is a warmly breezy flowery sixties flavoured thing that hints at early Pink Floyd, Beatles and hello hello, we’re real, we’re not AI, actually they’re from Cardiff and single of Mexican beans that jump for ever as well as fireflies, foxgloves and well, a very very psychedelic thing…
Edensong – Our Road To Dust (Laser’s Edge) – Another band (and label) who’s releases got healthy coverage from us back in the day, not heard from either party in quite a few years now until today that is. I guess the New York band added us to some kind of mailing list aimed at their fans, they just hit us with the pre-order hardsell and well it seems there is a new Edensong album due out any moment. Right now we can hear a couple of tracks via Bandcamp and another that they just posted on YouTube.
And well here’s our take on what we can hear of Our Road To Dust along with a bit of their hype; “Hailed as a “a great example of contemporary Progressive Rock” by Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, Edensong have delighted audiences throughout the US and abroad with their genre-bending blend: a hard driving rhythm section, flute playing that ranges from serenely melodic to avant-garde, lush vocal harmonies, and more than a touch of orchestral ambition. They have supported diverse acts including Kings X, Ozric Tentacles, Pain of Salvation, Neal Morse Band, and Anglagard, and have headlined their own tours throughout the US, UK, and Canada”
What they still appear to be doing, from the bits of the new album we can hear, is making slick contemporary prog flavoured flute-enhanced hard-edged rock that yes, does mix very healthy hints of the mighty Tull with bits of things like Dream Theater and such, they always did add a bit of colour of their own back there and good to hear they still are adding that vital bit of colour. We’re no fans of where bands like Dream Theater have taken the notions of prog these days, the rathee tedious Steven Wilson idea of what it was and is, the bits we can hear of the new Edensong album seem rather enjoyable though, melodically challenging in the right ways. Yes, rather like the bits of the new album that are casting their light this way via various bits of Bandcamp and YouTube. We’re not talking groundbreaking properly progressive here, we may not not talking cutting edge Cheer Accident or Sleepytime Gorilla Museum progressive vitality, we’re not talking Extra Life or Kayo Dot or anything truly progressively exciting but hey, these bits of this new album sounds neat enough.
Hang on, we’ve got our hands on the whole thing now, Our Road To Dust is an album that really comes together once you have the whole thing to unwrap properly. Plenty of light and shade, an unexpected moment or two along with a genuine musical personality, a fingerprint of theit own – James Schoen offers, “This album marks a time of deep change for the band, both personally and sonically, and Our Road To Dust is the thread that binds us to our past. It’s a song about getting older, losing loved ones, and the death of a dream, but also about brotherhood, taking stock of what really matters, and choosing – perhaps misguidedly – to keep traveling that dusty road. Oh, and there are plenty of odd meters and polyrhythms and other proggy nonsense along the way…”.
A rather fine mostly conventional modern prog rock album that more than does what you need it to…. Here’s the Bandcamp and other links
The Book of Moons – Strange And Wylde Majick – A duo from Norfolk and a debut album that blends songs that “delve into a world of ghosts and vampires, strange creatures and ancient magic, forbidden love and those things in which mere mortals should never dabble” while they (sometimes dramatically) dance around some kind of healthy mix of folk rock and early 80s prog that tastes of bands like Red Jasper, Coltsfoot, the early days of Solstice and of course a big helping of Jethro Tull. The band, who take their name from the seventeenth century Bedlam ballad Tom o’ Bedlam are Leighton Melville and Tim Lane, singer and guitarist respectively in Norwich alt folk group the Punch House Band. The album is out on May 29th 2025, they appear to have no presence on line whatsoever which isn’t great when they’re sending out their album looking for reviews ahead of the release. It would kind of help if we could offer you a link or two should you be interested. They do their folky proggy thing well enough, The Harlequin Rides is an epic adventure well worth your thirteen minutes of attention, does it have a touch of Pallas about it? That’s a compliment by the way. The best we can offer you in terms of further investigation as the dogs bark and the guitars cut, is Tim Lane’s Bandcamp page or indeed the Stealing The Fire Bandcamp page, Stealing The Fire being a maybe slightly more (melodically) prog flavoured band who also feature Tim Lane and who also do that early 80s prog thing well enough.
While you’re waiting for The Book of Moons, Stealing The Fire‘s 2023 album, A Raven for a Dove, is more than well worth you checking out if you like seventeen minute melodic prog rock epics that take in hints of space rock alongside a touch of (shooting at) beagling on the Downs, edgy eggs, queing cumbers and seats sold on the ghost train that more than satisfy especially when they get into their long instrumental flights and just let it go. Old school Progressive rock from the wild flatlands of Eastern England, and a Stealing The Fire album that’s far better than that album cover would have you think! Do watch out for that new Book of Moons album, especially the closing piece The Harlequin Rides..
Links: Stealing The Fire Bandcamp / Tim Lane’s Bandcamp, oh hang on here’s a Book Of Moons Facebook page (I seem to be their only follower, go add to their following!)
And then there’s thing like this…
Pattern-Seeking Animals – Friend of All Creatures (GEP) – Sure, there’s long songs, and to misquote Jello, we love long songs, in our world Plague of Lighthouse Keepers or Supper’s Ready are almost too short, thing is though, those pieces of music and many others from back there took us on grand adventures, they went to several places during the length of a song, it was never long just for the sake of it, those glorious compositions had places to be, places to take us, places we wanted to go. This latest Pattern-Seeking Animals album opens with a ten minute piece and follows up with something that weighs in at just over a dozen minutes and yes a statement of prog intent you might say and yes they do reference things that hint of classic 70s Genesis or maybe the best days of Camel or the rest of them but really this is just some kind of watered down pedestrian prog-by-numbers politeness that kind of wears the right hat but really has no understanding of why the hat felt so damn good to wear in the first place. This is polite unadventurous clean-cut gently-paced neo-prog and really bares nothing in terms of relation to those glorious bands and albums from back there. yes, of course things need to move forward and there are glorious prog bands doing it now, doing it with all the art and soul of the thing we know and love as prog rock, bands like Cheer Accident, Extra Life, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Slift and quite a few more, all regularly covered on these pages, all properly progressive in the most adventurous of ways. Had this album on here most of the morning, first gave it a go a few days back, been back to it several times now and I do keep trying to get in to all these things the glossy Prog rock mags champion these days (whilst mostly missing out on the the really progressive bands we’ve just mentioned) and no, a dreadfully boring album, the kind of thing that gives prog rock the bad reputation is has… Awful artwork as well.
“Described as an ‘American progressive rock supergroup’, Pattern-Seeking Animals were formed in 2018 by Ted Leonard, Dave Meros, John Boegehold and Jimmy Keegan, all of whom are current and former members and collaborators of fellow vert unprogressive neo-progressive rock ensemble Spock’s Beard”, get it out of here, it stinks! What an insipid pile of…
Here’s some Brass Camel live footage, Brass Camel are fun…
Previously on these pages, further reading for you prog heads…
ORGAN THING: A new IQ album? Do they still have it? IQ’s new album Dominion explored in full…
THE ORGAN 
4 responses to “ORGAN: Down that prog rock rabbit hole, this time new albums from Edensong, Brass Camel, The Book of Moons, Soft Hearted Scientists and more…”
[…] And here’s those rather heroic Canadians Brass Camel performing Zealot to open their sold out performance at Vancouver’s Wise Hall on April 19th, 2025. Zealot is the first track from Brass Camel’s rather fantastic second album, Camel. Find our album review via the link just coming up – ORGAN: Down that prog rock rabbit hole, this time new albums from Edensong, Brass Camel, The Book of… […]
[…] And here’s those rather heroic Canadians Brass Camel performing Zealot to open their sold out performance at Vancouver’s Wise Hall on April 19th, 2025. Zealot is the first track from Brass Camel’s rather fantastic second album, Camel. Find our album review via the link just coming up – ORGAN: Down that prog rock rabbit hole, this time new albums from Edensong, Brass Camel, The Book of… […]
[…] And here’s those rather heroic Canadians Brass Camel performing Zealot to open their sold out performance at Vancouver’s Wise Hall on April 19th, 2025. Zealot is the first track from Brass Camel’s rather fantastic second album, Camel. Find our album review via the link just coming up – ORGAN: Down that prog rock rabbit hole, this time new albums from Edensong, Brass Camel, The Book of… […]
[…] ORGAN: Down that prog rock rabbit hole, this time new albums from Edensong, Brass Camel, The Book of… […]