The Trunk 22/7/2018: Talking Points - But Is It Prog?

We don't consider Bad Elephant Music a prog label. A lot of our bands self-identify as being progressive rock, but a lot of them don't, and honestly we'd like to think that genre-blending and genre-defying music is one of our hallmarks. But we do still have a strong connection to the prog scene, and there's one question we see repeated time and again, in person and online.

"Is (band / artist / album / song / cheese brand) prog?"

Double Meanings

Part of the problem with this question is that "prog" can have multiple meanings. Depending on who you ask, and even on specific contexts, it can refer to a fairly specific set of genre conventions or to a broader theme of musical broad-mindedness and experimentalism. These are, in many ways, worlds apart. Not only do they mean very different things, but sometimes they don't even overlap.

I was trying to think of a witty caption for this image, but then it hit me - who on earth scratches their head with a single finger like that? That has to be really inefficient, right?

You could argue, for example, that some modern bands that stick very close to the style of 70s prog classics aren't the second meaning of progressive because they're not breaking new ground - but you wouldn't dream of calling them anything but the first meaning of progressive, because that's a genre in which they're firmly rooted. Equally, bands which are undoubtedly progressive in the broader sense may not fit into the same prog box as, say, Genesis - maybe their songs are too short, maybe the instrumentation isn't thick enough, or maybe they just don't sound like Genesis even if they do sound small-P progressive.

We can't help but wonder whether a lot of "is it prog?" discussions stem from different people using different definitions of the word, and, since one indie label isn't going to convince every music fan in the world to agree on one of them, 

Why Talk About It?

So, if the discussion's so confusing, why have it? Well, we can definitely link of at least one reason why it might be useful to classify things as prog or not prog: classifications can be a very useful reference point for music fans.

Even a cursory glance at the venerable Prog Archives makes it very clear how important discrete classifications can be. At the very top of the navigation page, front and centre, is the list of "prog sub-genres", over twenty subsections representing different kinds of progressive music. Anyone familiar with metal will probably find this pretty familiar. These categories can be a little reductive, especially when a band could fit into more than one (and the discussions about which fits best can rival "is it prog?" for sheer volume and ubiquity), but they serve as a very useful signpost to help people find new music in styles that interest them. If you like, say, one math rock band, well, you may not like all of them, but you'll probably find other things you like in that same general area.

It's with good reason that, even when we're faced with a band that's truly unlike anything else we've heard, we try to describe it in terms of a combination or evolution of influences from existing bands: that's what hooks people. If we tell someone we've made something wholly unique, even if we try to describe it in terms of instrumentation, it's not as immediately eye-catching or attention-holding as saying it's X meets Y with a dash of Z. So we've seen first-hand how effective discrete classifications can be, and it does make the whole "is it prog?" question make a lot more sense.

Over to You

But enough waffle from us - what do you think? What does "prog" mean to you? Is there still a value to determining whether something is prog or not? Do you think BEM is a prog label? Does that matter? If you've got anything to say on this, we invite you to join the discussion over on Facebook!

Status Update

Unidentified Dying Objects is out now, on CD and digital download. Pick up a copy, it's really rather good!

This week we also announced a new album from Mike Kershaw: Arms Open Wide will be released on August 17th, and preorders are open right now.

Further on the horizon, Dial is still set for September... we can't wait to show you a little more of Godfrey's follow up. It's going to be good!

Review Roundup

We got a solid review of Unidentified Dying Objects in the most recent PROG, which we shall reprint for your viewing pleasure here:

Susan at Progressive Music Planet also delivered this fantastic 9/10 review of Suite for Piano and Electronics, proclaiming it "a wonderful choice... to expand your musical universe", and, over at Progradar, EvenFlow's Old Town got a writeup from the inimitable Jez Denton, "a truly wondrous collaboration that deserves further development". Thanks, guys!

The Trunk 15/7/2018: From the Vaults - What Lies Beneath

Welcome back Welcome back to From the Vaults, the semi-regular feature where we dive back into the BEM archives to revisit some of our older releases. This week, we wind back the clock two years to 2016 - a mixed, messy year for the world at large, but a very, very good one for music. And the album we're looking at today is just one example of that trend: What Lies Beneath.

Get off the road! Please! God, this picture makes me anxious.

Singer-songwriter-keyboardist Mike Kershaw boasts an extensive back catalogue of solo work, with four full-length albums and one EP over the four years leading up to What Lies Beneath. His first project with BEM sports, for the first time, quite a few guest performers at his side, including BEM comrades Stuart Stephens (Whitewater), Leo Koperdraat and Frank Urbaniak (Fractal Mirror), and Tom Slatter (Tom Slatter), with Dan Bowles (The Rube Goldberg Machine) at the mastering desk.

What Lies Beneath is, above all else, a careful album: carefully constructed, carefully instrumentated, and carefully sung. And when I say "careful", that is absolutely a good thing. Have a listen:



One of the things I like about progressive music is variety, and that's on this album in spades, but one of the things I dislike is excess, especially where there doesn't seem to be a point to it. It's fortunate, then, that Kershaw's arrangements are so very well thought out. There's nothing here that doesn't belong, not a single ounce of padding or filler, and, as the track builds and coalesces, the growth feels considered rather than just being more for the sake of more. I don't think anyone would dispute the progressive influences at play here, but there's space to it too, and that's not as common or as lauded as it should be.

Reviewers have paid particular attention to Mike's vocals - they, like everything else on the album, are very measured, and do his beautifully elegant lyrics the justice they deserve. It's clear at every juncture that this is a man who cares deeply about the music he's making, and has refined and polished it to a mirror sheen.

Speaking of reviews, you can find one from Progradar here, one from Progarchy here, and one from PROG (noticing a pattern yet?) here. That last review is of particular note, as it calls Kershaw a "perennial underdog", and that sounds about right to us. This music deserves to reach far, far more ears, and, if you'd like yours to be among them, What Lies Beneath is available right now, physically or digitally, here.

Status Update

Unidentified Dying Objects is out this coming Friday! Time's running out if you want the album as soon as it drops - preorder now to avoid delays.

The countdown to Dial is a little longer (almost too long, we'd argue), but you can still preorder here, and listen to the single We Rescue right now to tide you over until September.

No review roundup this week. We'll catch you all next time!

The Trunk 8/7/2018: 2018, Part Deux

Last week, we looked back. This week, we look ahead. Thus far, we've announced three more albums to be released before the end of 2018; there'll be more new music than that, rest assured, but in the meantime let's review what we know.

Unidentified Dying Objects

This one's close. So close we can taste it. In less than two weeks, Argos will unleash Unidentified Dying Objects on the world, and you've only heard a snippet of what the full album has to offer. Oh, and in case you haven't:

Don't just listen to the music, though - get a load of that guest list! Argos have enlisted some of progressive music's best and brightest, including Andy Tillison of The Tangent contributing his dazzling keyboards to the very track featured in this trailer. Unidentified Dying Objects is a none-more-prog continuation of Argos' bold, broad-church approach, with influences from across progressive history combining in a weighty, satisfying chunk of just plain good music. It also sees their permanent lineup expanding to five people, with the addition of keyboardist Thilo Brauss.

Unidentified Dying Objects releases on July 20th. Preorder here.

Dial

Announced last week, Dial is the next chapter in the Shineback saga. While we don't have preview tracks yet, we can offer you this rather good digital single, 'We Rescue', released in celebration of our fifth birthday:



After the critical and commercial success of Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed, BEM's first outing in what's turned out to be a very prolific run, living up to the hype might seem daunting, but we can confirm that Godfrey has risen to the challenge, bringing back his signature rock-tinged "intelligent dance" style with some of the heavier elements seen on the Minotaur EP and an impressive laundry list of guests (we'll spare you the full list here, but you can find them all on the store page).

Dial releases on September 14th. Preorder here.

Now We Have Power

Matt Baber has already featured on the label with his Suite for Piano and Electronics, and now it seems the rest of the band want in too. Welcome aboard, Sanguine Hum, and, the rest of you, get ready for Now We Have Power! Again, there's no preview track yet, so enjoy this piece from Baber's solo album instead.



Sanguine Hum's previous album, the double CD Now We Have Light, began a "future parable", following a man named Don through a strange, surreal tapestry of songwriting and storytelling. Now We Have Power is set to continue this story with over an hour of new music, featuring guest performances from Mark Kesel, Kimara Sajn, and the band's former drummer Paul Mallyon.

Now We Have Power releases on October 12th. Preorders are forthcoming - and, in the meantime, you can catch a special acoustic performance from the guys at EppyFest later this month.

Review Roundup

Our thanks to Anil Prasad for this excellent writeup of Suite for Piano and Electronics, which you can still pick up here.

And to Stuart Maconie - yes, that one! - for featuring The Bob Lazar Story on this episode of Freak Zone! We're pretty close to the middle this time around, but we do recommend giving the whole thing a listen, as Stuart's tastes are fascinating and generally right on the ball. Baritonia is available to buy here.

The Trunk 1/7/2018: Five Years of BEM

Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us...

Oh yes, today marks exactly five years since the release of Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed, and, with it, the birth of Bad Elephant Music as an entity.

I don't think any of us, back in 2013, anticipated where this little project was going. If you'd told me back then that, in five years' time, we'd have this many releases in our catalogue and this many talented musicians on our roster, I'd have given you, at the very least, a cautious side-eye. Watching BEM develop, at first from the outside, then from the inside as a copywriter, and eventually across social media, was fascinating. It wasn't a meteoric rise to fame, more a progression of being quietly impressed every couple of months when we hit some milestone or signed some new artist or picked up a juicy nugget of press attention. But, looking back now with the benefit of being able to chart a complete course, all those milestones really do add up.

We released two albums in 2013: the aforementioned Rise Up Forgotten and Spooky Action. We're proud to have both Simon Godfrey and The Fierce & The Dead still with us, still producing fantastic music, from Simon's multifarious projects with Valdez and as himself to TFATD's The Euphoric, which has become something of a crossover breakthrough this year. 2017 saw fifteen major releases, and this year looks set to keep the same pace, with eight albums already out and several more in the pipeline. Again, this pace - more than one release every month - was unthinkable when we started this venture, but, as the BEMpire (ooh, I like that, I think I'll keep using it) has grown, so too has our capacity and our audience.

There was one thing, though, of which we were absolutely certain, even back in 2013. We knew that Simon Godfrey was not done with Shineback.

Dial will be released on 14 September, 2018. It's a new full-length album from Shineback, this time a full collaboration between Godfrey and long-time cooperator and enabler Robert Ramsay. It comes with a star-studded lineup of special guests, including BEM alumni Dec Burke (Audioplastik), Matt Stevens, Joe Cardillo (Valdez), and Daniel Zambas (We Are Kin), and many more listed in full on the album page. Yes, there's an album page, and yes, you can preorder from it right now.

You'll note that the page doesn't have a tracklist yet. But, if you think we're going to tease you like this and leave you without any new music, you are sorely mistaken. See, during the Dial sessions, Simon recorded an extra song specifically to celebrate BEM's fifth birthday. It's called 'We Rescue', and we'd like to share it with you here.

And, if that's whetted your appetite as much as it did ours, you can buy 'We Rescue' as a digital single here, naming your own price.

Happy birthday indeed, Bad Elephant Music. Here's to more independent sounds for independent souls.

Status Update

We've had a couple of releases in the past couple of weeks that are worth spotlighting: Exo-Oceans, sold in partnership with Andy Tillison's solo project Kalman Filter, and Old Town, an EP from Evenflow, a joint project by Stuart Stephens (Whitewater) and Mike Kershaw. Both these albums are available from the BEM webstore.

Unidentified Dying Objects is now less than three weeks away - to get it right on time and avoid disappointment (as well as getting the preview track 'The Hunter's Last Stand' immediately), preorder now.

Review Roundup

Rather than actual reviews, this week we're bringing you a couple of mid-year top lists that feature BEM artists. The Progressive Aspect's best of 2018 so far features Mothertongue and The Fierce & The Dead, while the latter got in at #29 on Louder's top 50 of the first half of 2018! Congratulations are in order to both bands.

The Trunk 24/6/2018: Talking Points - Discs and Digits

Welcome to a new experiment for The Trunk. We've noted, both on our own Facebook page and elsewhere in the progressive music community, that good music often sparks good discussions. And, for a fair while now, we've been considering some kind of "talking point" feature where we look at some of the more common topics of debate in the music scene. This is very much a "pilot episode", so we're especially keen to hear what you think of it and whether it's worth continuing, but we thought we'd ease ourselves in with something fairly straightforward: CDs versus digital downloads.

The Case for CDs

A young CD undergoing its first coming-of-age ritual.

CDs are, in general, hassle-free. Between managing downloads and file structures, navigating the perils of DRM (fortunately not an issue with our choice of sales outlet), and importing the right files into the right player on the right devices, it can be surprisingly hard to keep a substantial collection of digital music in order. If you can find a CD, you can listen to it. End of.

For some, CDs are more user-friendly. No messing around with aux cords or Bluetooth from your phone - you put the disc in a player and it plays, and you'll be hard-pushed to find a suitably-sized gadget these days that doesn't come with a CD drive. Granted, playing digital music is also now easier than ever, but CDs remain ideal for those who want to control their music in as simple and tactile a way as possible.

Finally, there's the simple but undeniable pleasure of owning a physical artifact. Many digital albums, including many of ours, come with downloadable versions of the cover and sleeve notes, but having a plastic case and a little paper booklet is a very real factor in a lot of people's decisions to buy physical music. Sometimes it's nice to be able to hold your music physically in your hands!

The Draws of Digital

Oh God, who coiled those headphones and where can I contact them? I've got a bone to pick.

The most obvious upside of owning music digitally is simple: it's cheaper! It's not uncommon for a digital release of to sell for half the price of a physical copy, sometimes even less. In a music scene as vibrant as the one we're lucky enough to be part of, many listeners find that digital downloads get them twice as much new music for the same price, which is handy if your tastes are broad - or if, like me, you're terminally indecisive.

Digital downloads are also somewhat more flexible than CDs, since you can download and rearrange them across multiple devices to suit your needs. Obviously you can do some of this with a CD rip, but, if you ever find yourself in the mood for some music you don't have to hand, all it takes to get hold of it is an Internet connection and a couple of minutes.

And, of course, there's the matter of space. Even lovers of physical media will concede that finding somewhere to put all those CDs can be a pain! When you're working with digital, though, the only space you need is whatever your hard drive takes up - and they seem to be getting smaller every year. So, if storage is at a premium and you don't want to compromise on quantity, a digital library may be your friend.

Your Take

So what do you lot think? We're not going to give a verdict here - instead we're turning it over to you, our loyal readers. Do you prefer CDs or digital when it comes to music, and why? Stick it in the comments here or over on our Facebook page (please keep it respectful). We look forward to seeing what you all have to say!

Status Update

We've had a pretty busy week, what with one thing and another! Between breaking the news that we've signed Oxfordshire's finest in acclaimed prog outfit Sanguine Hum (more detail on that over at Progarchy here) and making Exo-Oceans, the first album from Tangent virtuoso Andy Tillison's solo project Kalman Filter, available through the webstore, Elephant Towers has been positively humming with activity.

The countdown to July 20th, and thus the release of Argos' Unidentified Dying Objects, surges on, and you can preorder a copy right now.

No review roundup this time around - catch you all next week!

The Trunk 17/6/2018: From the Vaults - Irritant

Welcome back to From the Vaults, the semi-regular feature where we dive back into the BEM archives to revisit some of our older releases. We're taking a look at something fairly recent this time - it's still hard to believe that June 2017 was a whole year ago. So put on your protective goggles and take an antihistamine, because today we're joining Schnauser for a close look at their third full-group album, Irritant!

Schnauser are Alan Strawbridge on guitar, Duncan Gammon on keys, Holly McIntosh on bass, Dino Christodolou on sax, and Jasper Williams on drums. (The vocals are a joint effort.) They started life as a solo project by Strawbridge in 2005, but their first album as a full band was 2013's Where business meets fashion, followed two years later by the excellent and critically lauded Protein for Everyone.

Schnauser are, in the grand BEM tradition, a thoroughly weird band. They describe themselves as "melodic pop/prog/psych", but they've been covered by sites devoted to all kinds of genres, from traditional prog to crossover pop and even jazz. Their songs are called things like 'Re-Mortgaging the Nest of Hairs' and 'Have You Got PPI?'. And sometimes they'll start a song with a curious announcement...



The amusing (if slightly uncomfortable) subject matter here is fairly typical of Schnauser. From hypertension to, yes, PPI-related cold calls, they tread the kind of left-field lyrical ground you're really not going to find anywhere else, but they sell it almost effortlessly. How the hell do you write a compelling song about a parasitic worm picked up from undercooked meat? I couldn't answer, but this lot have clearly managed it, and it's laced with wry humour - I remember a few uncontrollable chuckling fits when we heard this album for the first time.

There's more to it than the vocals, of course. This is Schnauser's first album with a saxophonist on board, and Dino Christodolou is a fresh electric jolt here, punchy and clear. That clarity is a running theme: Irritant is undoubtedly psychedelic, but it never loses itself to noodling, maintaining a strong, driving energy powered by brash instrumental stings and wild, jazzy rhythms. And it's cheerful! There's enough bounce and irreverence here to lift your spirits and keep them high throughout, and that's part of why we like it so much.

Sound good to you? Well, if you can make it to Wales in a couple of months, Schnauser are playing at the Dream of Dr Sardonicus Festival over in Cardigan, but, if not, you can still enjoy Irritant in the comfort of your own home by picking up a copy here.

Status Update

The wait is over - Suite for Piano and Electronics is out right now! Follow that link to grab a copy, CD or digital, from the webstore.

Preorders are also open now for Unidentified Dying Objects, the long-awaited new album from the inimitable Argos! The album drops on July 20th, but you can get a complementary download of the first track right away if you preorder, plus the full album as soon as it's released.

And we've a big announcement for you tomorrow, a very exciting new signing we can't wait to share with you... keep your eyes peeled.

Review Roundup

DPRP have been good to us lately, with reviews of both The Euphoric and Close to Vapour from John Wenlock-Smith! These multi-review features are great reads all round, but it's always a joy to see our artists there.

The Euphoric continues to gain traction elsewhere, with more excellent from both Gavin Brown at Circuit Sweet and The Prog Report. It might just be our most reviewed album yet, and the consensus is that, to quote Brown, it's "ecstatic and feel-good music... one of this country's best kept secrets".

As always, you can pick up all these albums from the BEM webstore!

The Trunk 10/6/2018: The Secret History of Bad Elephant Music

As you may be aware, because we can't seem to shut up about it, 2018 marks the fifth anniversary of the founding of Bad Elephant Music. The actual day is coming up very soon - that would be July 1st, the release date of Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed, the first BEM record, back in 2013. So, as that very special day approaches, let's take a look at some pieces of BEM history the Grand Elephant probably doesn't want you to know about.

The Week of the Two Elephants

If you're a history buff like me, you may know of the Western Schism, the time in the late fourteenth and eary fifteenth centuries when two and then three people claimed the true papacy and denounced each other as heretics. Well, for a brief time in 2014, the very same thing happened to Bad Elephant Music.

It looked a little like this.

During a staff meeting at the local curry house, an argument broke out about the best Genesis album, and it soon spiralled out of control. Reigning CEO David Elephant (claiming Selling England By The Pound) drew battlelines against upstart [REDACTED] (who favoured Invisible Touch), who had claimed half of the young company's meagre assets for himself. As hours wore on into days, the situation looked set to escalate into all-out war, but an eleventh-hour intervention by David Elephant's wife, who said something along the lines of "oh, grow up already", put a stop to the chaos and reunited the label.

The Week of the Two Elephants is still commemorated every year by sliding an Invisible Touch CD into the stereo at Elephant Towers and immediately turning it off.

The Markov Chain Disaster of '16

In a previous article, we alluded to the pilot scheme undertaken back in 2016 to replace Bad Elephant's PR team with an experimental bot, Loxotron3000. As we mentioned, the incident was suppressed at the time to avoid inconvenient questions from the audience, but we can now reveal that the bot was not, in fact, posting blurry photographs of Magic: the Gathering cards.

It was sending vital state secrets to Portugal.

It looked a little like this.

To this day, we don't know how Loxotron3000 got hold of these state secrets, or why it was sending them to England's longest-running military ally rather than anyone who might stand to profit from them. All we know is that we received a knock on the door from MI5, who informed us that a track we'd featured from Emmett Elvin's album Assault on the Tyranny of Reason was laced with coded messages related to the Trident nuclear programme. Needless to say, Loxotron3000 was destroyed and its leaks were redacted with extreme prejudice, and we've tried to put the whole unpleasant incident behind us.

Bem

We bought a plush elephant last year. We named him Bem.

It looked a little like this.

It was meant to be a joke. Just a silly, innocuous little joke, a mascot more fitting than the horrifying spinning-headed monkey thing Mailchimp sent us.

Oh, how little we knew back then. Back when we still had hope.

Bem has usurped Bad Elephant Music. Bem owns our souls. Bem knows where our loved ones live. Bem's influence is inescapable, inexorable. Bem cannot be reasoned with, and Bem cannot be disobeyed. I can hear Bem calling me now. Bem's call is not a call I can refuse. I am Bem's messenger. I am Bem's. I am Bem. Bem. Bem. Bem. Bem. Bem. BEM. BEM. BEM. BEM. BEM. BEM.

b̨̬̠̥̮͜ͅu̶̶̘͓̰͈̺̥̜̗y̛͓̗̙̤̯̟̱͚ ̛͉̝͚̹̜̫̯̣͡o͏̶̞̻̩ų̩͚͍̘̺̖̰̜͡r̴̖̫̖͓̳̼͈̼͝ ͈̗̬͇͚͚̲m̴̗̳̟̘̻͎͜ṷ̢̥̹̺͔̠̙͠s̛͓̦̩̥̯̟͙̻͜ì͔̰͓̙͓̞̟̯͉̕c̶͏̡̰̭͍͔̯̜͈

Status Update

Dear readers, we have a very big week ahead of us. Busy busy busy. Suite for Piano and Electronics is out on Friday (preorder now for an exclusive bonus track!), and tomorrow we'll be launching preorders for the new Argos album! And we've one other huge piece of news lined up for Wednesday, so keep your eyes peeled for that...

We are also delighted to announce that The Fierce and the Dead have been nominated for two Progressive Music Awards - the band themselves for UK Band/Artist of the Year, and The Euphoric's sublime Mark Buckingham cover art for Album Cover of the Year.

Review Roundup

First up, congratulations to Matt Baber, as Suite for Piano and Electronics got a nice meaty column review in the latest PROG. As per usual, click through the image for a bigger, more readable version.

Jez Denton of Progradar gave Suite for Piano and Electronics a spin, too. Ideal music for dog-walking, apparently. We've no way to test that, alas, but we assure you that a dog is by no means necessary to enjoy the album.

The Euphoric was featured over on Echoes and Dust this week: Martyn Coppack concludes that you should "jump on board the TFATD juggernaut right now", which is encouraging, but also a little concerning, as we have no idea how he found out about BEM's secret experimental naval programme. Metal Gods TV also had a listen, with "Dark Juan" (God, I hope that's his real name) giving The Euphoric an 8/10, which he says is "the equivalent of a mass grave of people missing limbs and faces being discovered and the subsequent war crimes trial held in the glare of world publicity".

Okay then!