{"id":819,"date":"2009-11-06T14:58:50","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T14:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/2009\/11\/06\/friday-random-ten-1106\/"},"modified":"2009-11-06T14:58:50","modified_gmt":"2009-11-06T14:58:50","slug":"friday-random-ten-1106","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2009\/11\/06\/friday-random-ten-1106\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Random Ten, 11\/06"},"content":{"rendered":"
    \n
  1. Porcupine Tree, “Kneel and Disconnect”<\/b>: New Porcupine Tree! It’s
    \nalways great to get new stuff from these guys. It’s good, but it’s not
    \nup to the quality of their last two albums. (But given that their last two
    \nwere utterly amazing, that’s not much of a criticism.)<\/li>\n
  2. Mind Games, “Royalty in Jeopardy”<\/b>: Some prog that I recently found
    \nvia eMusic. They’ve got a sound that I describe as being sort of like a
    \nmix between Yes and Marillion. They’re very good – I wouldn’t put them
    \nin the top ranks of neo-prog, but they’re not at the bottom either.<\/p>\n
  3. Riverside, “Cybernetic Pillow”<\/b>: Now, these guys, I would
    \ndefinitely put in the top ranks of neo-prog. Riverside is a
    \nPolish prog-rock band, formed by members of a couple of other
    \nheavy metal bands. They’re absolutely brilliant<\/em>. This track
    \nis off their album “Rapid Eye Movement”, which I’d recommend as a first
    \nRiverside album.<\/li>\n
  4. Marillion, “Hard as Love (acoustic)”<\/b>: This is the version of “Hard as
    \nLove”” from their recent acoustic album. HaL was one of their louder,
    \npoppier, catchier tunes – a Marillion rocker. To call this just an acoustic
    \nmix doesn’t do it justice. They took the basic bones of the song,
    \nand completely rebuilt it. It’s an amazing change. The acoustic
    \nversion swaps the bridge and the chorus, completely changing the fell
    \nof the structure, and turning it into something that’s almost a ballad.
    \nAmazing, and much<\/em> better than the original version of the song.<\/li>\n
  5. Thinking Plague, “This Weird Wind”<\/b>: Thinking Plague is a group
    \nthat I have a hard time describing. To me, they sound like a very out-there
    \npost-rock group with classical influences, but I’ve been told that
    \nthey call themselves a “Rock in Opposition” band. What they are is
    \na distinctly peculiar ensemble. They’ve got vocals, but they use
    \nthe singers voice like it’s just another instrument in the mix – it’s
    \nnot leading the song in any way, it’s just part of the music. The music
    \nitself is frequently atonal, with a very peculiar sound. The guitarist
    \nsounds very<\/em> much like one of Robert Fripp’s GuitarCraft students – but
    \nwhen I mentioned that in the past, he showed up in the comments saying
    \n“Who’s Robert Fripp?” I love Thinking Plague, but I have a hard time
    \nrecommending them – they’re so strange that most people won’t like
    \nthem. If you’re a big fan of both neo-progressive rock and 20th
    \ncentury classical, then definitely give them a listen.<\/li>\n
  6. EQ, “Closer”<\/b>: IQ is back! IQ is a progressive band that
    \ngot started around the same time as Marillion. Also like Marillion, they
    \nstarted off sounding like a Peter Gabriel-era Genesis rip-off, but
    \nthey’ve evolved their own very distinct sound over the years. They’re
    \nabsolutely fantastic – I’d put them up in the top of neo-progressive
    \nbands with Marillion and the Flower Kings. And they just released a new
    \nalbum, which is absolutely fantastic.<\/li>\n
  7. Sonic Youth, “Rain King (live)”<\/b>: Very typical Sonic Youth – strange
    \ntonality. Loud. Tons of hidden complexity. Brilliant. And performed
    \nlive! No studio tricks here.<\/li>\n
  8. Kayo Dot, “The Useless Ladder”<\/b>: Another very hard-to-describe
    \nband. Roughly, they’re what you get when a progressive metal band
    \ndecides to start writing 21st century classical chamber music. Very,
    \nvery highly recommended.<\/li>\n
  9. Red Sparrowes, “And By Our Own Hand Did Every Last Bird Lie Silent In
    \nTheir Puddles, The Air Barren Of Songs As The Clouds Drifted Away. For Killing
    \nTheir Greatest Enemy, The Locusts Noisily Thanked Us And Turned Their Jaws
    \nToward Our Crops, Swallowing Our Greed Whole”<\/b>: It took me longer to type
    \nthe title of that than it did to listen to it. Red Sparrowes is a really
    \nexcellent post-rock band. But frankly, this track just annoys be because
    \nof the damn title.<\/li>\n
  10. Rachel’s, “A French Gallease”<\/b>: A beautiful track by my favorite
    \nof the classically-leaning post-rock ensembles.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Porcupine Tree, “Kneel and Disconnect”: New Porcupine Tree! It’s always great to get new stuff from these guys. It’s good, but it’s not up to the quality of their last two albums. (But given that their last two were utterly amazing, that’s not much of a criticism.) Mind Games, “Royalty in Jeopardy”: Some prog that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-dd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}