Ut Gret is a progressive group from Louisville, KY who incorporate elements of rock, jazz, classical, zeuhl, world musics and minimalism to build their musical landscape. When Jackie Royce joined Ut Gret in May of 2010, the first thing they did was schedule a recording session. Mark Englert (the Tom Bombadil of Louisville music) offered his house, chock full of his musical instruments (many of his own design), for the purpose. There were two long sessions of over an hour each. These were edited down to the length of a single CD by long-time Ut Gret friend and collaborator Denny Whalen.

Zio Crocifisso is a musical project founded 2021 by Dario Magri (Yokoano, Sho), Paolo “SKE” Botta (Yūgen, SKE, Not a Good Sign) and Matteo Serenelli (The Appetizers), a trio with a multifaceted sound that has found fertile ground in the instrumental avant-prog realm, with influences ranging from King Crimson, Tool, Melvins, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Zu and Poil. The band made their debut in 2024 with the digital EP “Campana di Legno” and, after enrolling bassist Fabio Malizia (Orbe), thanks to a cross-genre, sinister and musically dynamic proposal, played live in both typical rock and cinema/animation contexts. In 2025 new material was ultimately recorded and, combined with the tracks of the previous EP, contributed to the final realization of “Campana di Legno + Trappola per Topi”.

Opus Avantra is considered one of the top avant-prog bands from Italy from the old school. Lord Cromwell Plays Suite For Seven Vices is their second studio album. As their name implies this is a group which mixes classical and opera with avant-garde passages and traditional melodies. To break it down even more Opus Avantra really have two sides to them on these first two 70s releases. There is their avant side which can sometimes be compelling and sometimes quite irritating, with instruments pressed into pursuit of the seemingly random. Their other side is the simply drop-dead gorgeous classical and opera over heavenly piano and flute melodies.

Frank Zappa's liner notes for Freak Out! name-checked an enormous breadth of musical and intellectual influences, and he seemingly attempts to cover them all on the second Mothers of Invention album, Absolutely Free. Leaping from style to style without warning, the album has a freewheeling, almost schizophrenic quality, encompassing everything from complex mutations of "Louie, Louie" to jazz improvisations and quotes from Stravinsky's Petrushka. It's made possible not only by expanded instrumentation, but also Zappa's experiments with tape manipulation and abrupt editing, culminating in an orchestrated mini-rock opera ("Brown Shoes Don't Make It") whose musical style shifts every few lines, often in accordance with the lyrical content…

An album which fuses the melodic sensibilities common of the RPI movement with a wild lust for invention, and variously tempers its rage with gentle beds of flute, piano and strings and focuses it into dissonant nightmare-scapes. The result is an accomplished record which oscillates between the avant-garde and almost pastoral, traditional folk songwriting and hardly approaches rock - if the drum track was removed only trace elements of rock would remain. Although this record is justifiably listed under avant-garde - and is bookended by somewhat freeform and contrary excursions - there's enough neo-classical and lushly folky frills to please the symphonic fans too.

No Secrets in the Family were a Swiss avant-prog band active during the late 1980's and early 1990's. They were heavily influenced by many of the RIO-related bands, in particular the more song-orientated groups like Art Bears, Slapp Happy, Etron Fou Leloublan and News From Babel. The result, as fans of these bands might expect, is playful, quirky art rock which balances discordant elements with melodic touches and places an emphasis on theatrical vocals and complex instrumental interplay. The core group consisted of Annette and Markus Schönholzer who played keys and guitar respectively and shared the main vocal duties, Christian Strässle on violin and saxophone, Daniel Meisenberger on bass and Martin Gantenbein on drums and flute.

Italy's premiere progressive rock outfit produced five albums of peculiar and outlandish music in the '70s. Fronted by madcap vocalist Demitrio Stratos, Area provided backing to the John Cage collaborator's extended vocal techniques and bizarre verbal utterances. The ensemble arrangements drew on progressive rock, jazz, and improvisation, and coalesced into a sound akin to Soft Machine, National Health, or Caravan. Maledetti is a critically acclaimed Italian progressive album, yet the group bridges many genres, including jazz and avant-garde.

Crac! is the third album from Italy's progresssive rock band Area. Favoring incredibly complex rhythms à la King Crimson, the group's fusion of folk and ethnic music, leftist political diatribe, and free jazz and hard rock coalesces into a distinctive sound further accented by the abstractions of vocalist Demitrio Stratos. His inimitable avant-garde vocal techniques are something to be heard to be believed, and the agility with which the ensemble cuts between genres and motifs is astonishing, deploying techniques way ahead of their time. Laced with high energy and abundant humor, Crac! is a standout concept album in avant-garde and progressive rock scenes.

The Argentinian ensemble MIA (an abbreviation of Musicos Independientes Asociados) was a project based around composer and keyboardist Lito Vitale, which had its main activity between 1974 and 1980. Friends and acquaintances came and went in the different versions of this ongoing project until it fell apart in 1980, although new material was made under that moniker for a few more years. "Archivos MIA (1974-1985) chronicles the musical history and heritage of this project on two discs, containing quite a lot of material is previously unreleased.
"Archivos MIA" comes across as a production seeking to satisfy two different audiences. Those unfamiliar with this ensemble will receive a good overview of the scope of their repertoire on the first of these CDs, while existing fans most likely will find the second one most intriguing due to the unreleased material that makes up this CD…

Appearing as it did in 1973, Area's debut album must have sounded to the average Italian pop critics like the end of the world. Issued on the Cramps label, the album highlighted Area's early sound, which featured overt folk melodies, Canterbury Scene prog rock, acid psychedelia, and vanguard jazz all filtered through a particularly Italian sensibility.
Those who came to love PFM later will not be able to handle the beautiful - yet very disciplined - weirdness of Area, at least on this disc. The Soft Machine comparisons are inevitable, especially in the free jazz sax blowing of Victor Eduardo Busnello. But in the deep funky guitarism of Paolo Trofani and rock-steady rhythmic invention of Patrick Djivasa on bass and Guido Capiozzo on drums, this band, fronted by keyboardist Patrizio Fariselli and vocalist-from-Mars Demetrio Stratos, Area was, at least in this early stage…

All That Might Have Been, issued in the same year as Other World, is Peter Hammill's excellent duet offering with guitarist Gary Lucas, and it's among the most intellectually challenging, conceptually sprawling, and musically satisfying offerings in his career. Given its heft, it is more than likely that this is a record he couldn't have made when he was younger. It is the work of a master in full control of his vision. Described by Hammill as "cinematic by design," it features 21 tracks which were deliberately edited to be incomplete. Taken together they create a conscious narrative; its scenes are sonic episodes that move backwards and forwards just as an actual film would. This is not the same thing as creating a soundtrack without a movie, this is both: a soundtrack and an aural movie. Hammill wrote and recorded the songs in full, then slashed them apart, and stitched the story together from the fragments…

The second set of the definitive collection of unreleased recordings, unrecorded compositions, one-off events, radio and concert recordings. These four CDs cover the period from 1976 to 1978 and include the legendary Stockholm and Bremen radio concerts, many otherwise unrecorded late compositions. With a substantial 60-page book of information, unpublished photographs, documents, recollections and substantial notes written by Lindsay Cooper, Georgie Born, Chris Cutler, Franco Fabbri, Fred Frith, Tim Hodgkinson and Chris Wangro.

"Okinawa" was the first LP recorded by the Baltimore group OHO. It was a private release in 1974. OHO started in late 1973 in Baltimore on the ashes of the band Little Hans. They played experimental progressive rock influenced by Frank Zappa, as well as British prog bands of the first echelon, such as King Crimson and Yes. "Okinawa" is astonishingly full of weirdness that falls somewhere in Syd Barret-era Floydland: some psychedelia, some art noise, some bizarre theatrics - but all around inventive and well-crafted.
The band name was an acronym of its core members' surnames (O'Sullivan, Heck and O'Connor). After two proper albums, Okinawa and Vitamin Oho, the band disbanded, with Jay Graboski and Mark O'Connor moving on to form the more new-wave influenced Food for Worms…

"An intelligent, completely unique mix of sheer power and playfulness that really shakes things up“ Jazzpodium

Here’s something in 2024 worth celebrating without reservation or caveat or vague dread that it might go away: a new album from Inner Ear Brigade. It’s been a long time since Dromology, but Perkunas is proof that the band not only still exists, but still has all of the qualities that made that album so great. The band’s mainstays are Bill Wolter (guitar, keyboards) and Ivor Holloway (saxophone, EWI), who have been part of the project since the first album in 2011, and Chris Lauf (drums, percussion), who was with them on Dromology. Many other musicians also take part, some of whom have appeared on previous recordings, though not on every track. Stylistically, IEB is in a class of their own, with complex compositions reminiscent of other avant progressive bands like Thinking Plague, Cheer-Accident, and MoeTar, but also a tinge of jazz in the same way that Canterbury bands like National Health and Hatfield and the North did it…