ProgStock Festival, the American Northeast’s Only International Progressive Rock Festival, will triumphantly return to the stage for its fifth year in 2021. As the world is still emerging from the pandemic, ProgStock 2021 has been designed as a hybrid event, allowing fans to experience the festival in a manner that suits their personal choice. In-person attendance passes include a seat in the theater, access to artist meet-and-greets, and participation in after-parties. For those who wish to (or must) participate virtually from afar, we will offer live streaming and the ability to view performances for a limited time after the festival concludes.
The festival will take place on the weekend of October 1-3, 2021, in the Hamilton Stage building of the Union County Performing Arts Center (UCPAC), located at 360 Hamilton Street, Rahway, New Jersey 07065 (a short walk away from the Main Stage theater on Irving Street). The Hamilton Stage theater is of much smaller capacity than the Main Stage theater, so please act quickly once passes are placed on sale!
Details of the festival lineup, event timeline, ticket pricing, and partner hotels will be announced over the next few weeks. Passes for 3-day in-person attendance will go on sale in June. Details of how to participate in other viewing options will also be provided this summer.
ProgStock Festival was founded to give artists and fans in the genre of progressive rock a place to play and experience their favorite music in a great environment. ProgStock’s main stage will feature music that most radio hosts would find to be too long and too complex to play on the air. Dancing in 7/8, indeed, is left to fans who are accustomed to calculating high math in their heads. However, the festival presents a variety of rock that can be enjoyed by any music lover.
ProgStock Festival provides the artists, attendees, and their families with a great place to share their talents and love for music in a family-friendly environment. Artists mingle with the fans and share experiences as well as music and art. The venue provides everyone with a comfortable place to listen to music with phenomenal sound. The City of Rahway provides everyone with a hub where they can enjoy the festival, enjoy great food and beverages, shop, relax and recover in a beautiful hotel room, and easily hop on a train from and to Newark International Airport or New York City.
As Devin announced earlier this year, he has been using the Covid downtime to work on new material for upcoming albums, and for a current lack of touring possibilities and encounters with fans on the road he decided to do a series of live albums, quarantine albums, and generally interesting projects that keep people entertained while he’s busy on his next larger releases. The series is called the “Devolution Series”.
Devin comments in this video
“So we bring to you the ‘Devolution Series’: a grouping of oddities and interesting material that I would like people to hear, but don’t necessarily want to present as a ‘major release’. The series will include all the quarantine songs and concerts, as well as various live shows from the past few years. I’m am currently deep in the writing of my new projects and am very excited to be doing so. Thanks for facilitating my ability to do that, and I hope you enjoy the ‘Devolution Series’.”
The second release under the “Devolution Series” moniker will be the “Devolution Series #2 – Galactic Quarantine” album, scheduled for June 25th 2021. It was recorded in 2020 in various places around the world as a replacement show for the COVID affected “Empath Vol 2 European Tour” and cancelled Summer festivals. It originally aired on September 5th 2020 on StageIt.com.
For a first impression of what to expect, here’s the video for “Aftermath.” Enjoy!
DEVIN TOWNSEND “Devolution Series #2 –Galactic Quarantine” track listing: 1. Velvet Kevorkian (Virtually Live 2020) – 2:28 2. All Hail The New Flesh (Virtually Live 2020) – 5:32 3. By Your Command (Virtually Live 2020) – 8:18 4. Almost Again (Virtually Live 2020) – 3:42 5. Juular (Virtually Live 2020) – 3:50 6. March Of The Poozers (Virtually Live 2020) – 5:25 7. Supercrush! (Virtually Live 2020) – 5:15 8. Hyperdrive (Virtually Live 2020) – 3:42 9. Stormbending (Virtually Live 2020) – 5:21 10. Deadhead (Virtually Live 2020) – 7:55 11. Aftermath (Virtually Live 2020) – 6:51 12. Love? (Virtually Live 2020) – 5:21 13. Spirits Will Collide (Virtually Live 2020) – 4:35 14. Kingdom (Virtually Live 2020) – 5:05 15. Detox (Virtually Live 2020) – 6:20
July 30th, 2021 sees the release of ‘Common Ground’, the self-produced new album from Big Big Train on their own label, English Electric Recordings. The new album, recorded during the worldwide pandemic, sees the band continue their tradition of dramatic narratives but also tackles issues much closer to home, such as the Covid lockdowns, the separation of loved ones, the passage of time, deaths of people close to the band and the hope that springs from a new love.
Watch the new video for the title track, created by Christian Rios, here:
“This is unashamedly a love song. It is about finding things that we share and have in common with other people. When my partner and I first came together as a couple, we lived not far from Avebury in Wiltshire, a very Big Big Train kind of place. The chalk hills and standing stones were part of the imagery of our ‘Folklore’ album, and once again I was writing what was literally happening in the location in which we found ourselves. I remember seeing my white chalk dust footprints upon the black of the car mats after we’d been walking around Avebury. I’m pleased that we both get to have this time with each other and ‘Common Ground’ is about finding out the things that we have in common with each other and deciding what we want to do in life together.” – David Longdon
Tracklisting:1. The Strangest Times 2. All The Love We Can Give 3. Black With Ink 4. Dandelion Clock 5. Headwaters 6. Apollo 7. Common Ground 8. Atlantic Cable 9. Endnotes
‘Common Ground’ sees the band taking in wider musical and lyrical inspiration from artists such as Elbow, Pete Townshend, Tears For Fears, Elton John and XTC, as well as acknowledging their more progressive roots. As ever, Big Big Train will take listeners on a journey, be it waiting for the UK 5pm pandemic press conferences (’The Strangest Times’) to the library of Alexandria (‘Black With Ink’) to the bottom of the ocean (‘Atlantic Cable’).
For the ‘Common Ground’ tour, which will be their most extensive to date and which will culminate in the UK with a show at the prestigious London Palladium, Greg Spawton (bass), David Longdon (lead vocals, flute), Nick D’Virgilio (drums, vocals) and Rikard Sjöblom (guitars, keyboards, vocals) will be joined by Carly Bryant (keyboards, guitars, vocals), who contributes vocals to ‘Common Ground’, Dave Foster (guitars), who plays on two tracks on the new album, Clare Lindley (violin, vocals) and by a five piece brass ensemble. The band expect to announce North American tour dates shortly.
Big Big Train has taken lyrical and musical inspiration from periods of history that are recognised as great leaps forward. Now with ‘Common Ground’, they are making such a surge themselves.
BIG BIG TRAIN UK TOUR 2022 TUE, MARCH 15TH – YORK, BARBICAN WED, MARCH 16TH – CAMBRIDGE, CORN EXCHANGE FRI, MARCH 18TH – BIRMINGHAM, SYMPHONY HALL SAT, MARCH 19TH – BATH, FORUM MON, MARCH 21ST – GLASGOW, ROYAL CONCERT HALL TUE, MARCH 22ND – MANCHESTER, BRIDGEWATER HALL WED, MARCH 23RD – LONDON, PALLADIUM
Big Big Train was initially founded in 1990 and went through several line-up changes, but in 2009 the band decided on a fresh start, and the core of the current version of the band was born.
Since then, they have gone on to win four Progressive Music Awards, played sold out shows and seen their last album, 2019’s ‘Grand Tour’, reach #1 in the Official UK rock charts and break into the top 40 in the Official UK album charts.
The band toured the UK for the first time in 2019, culminating in a sold out show at London’s Hackney Empire, subsequently released as the critically acclaimed Blu-ray ‘Empire’, and 2022 will see the band performing their largest UK tour to date along with their first ever dates in North America.
While many of Big Big Train’s songs have been rooted in the history of Great Britain and Europe, it seems fitting that they are now indeed an international band. Bassist Greg Spawton, who founded the band, grew up in a railway household and named them after a 1970s train set he owned, is based in the UK, as is singer David Longdon, who joined the band in 2009 for the breakthrough album ‘The Underfall Yard’. The other two core band members, drummer Nick D’Virgilio and multi-instrumentalist Rikard Sjöblom, reside in Indiana, USA and Gåvle, Sweden, respectively
Los Angeles, CA – It’s a music hipster’s dream come true, a pairing that will make legions of fans weak at the knees. A recorded collaboration between the ever-innovating producer, songwriter and Rock Hall Of Fame nominee Todd Rundgren and one of the most eclectic, quixotic and highly celebrated musical acts in modern music, Sparks! Not since Sparks’ Rundgren-produced 1971 debut album have these two titanically talented acts worked so closely together.
And now Rundgren and Sparks are proud to release “Your Fandango,” the third single from Rundgren’s forthcoming Space Force album, which also features collaborations with Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo and hip hop artist Narcy, and the timing couldn’t be better. Rundgren just recently completed a highly publicized and hugely successful virtual tour, the “Clearly Human” Tour, while Ron and Russell Mael have been generating their own buzz ahead of the Cannes premiere of the Sparks-penned movie musical ‘Annette’ (starring Adam Driver & Marion Cotillard) and the full-length, Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver) directed documentary ‘The Sparks Brothers’ about their career. In fact, it was the filming of Rundgren’s interview for the latter that reunited him with Sparks and formed the idea of a collaboration.
The result is a masterful piece of polyphonic pop that elegantly layers Spanish music, Neopolitan cantatas, baroque fugues and glam rock for one truly epic composition.
“It’s been a truly heartwarming experience to once again be working with Todd, our first-ever producer, after a brief 50-year hiatus.” – Ron and Russell Mael
“It’s been a long way since Simple Ballet, but we finally got the old dance troupe back together!” – Todd Rundgren
In addition to making the track available on all digital platforms, acclaimed Finnish media artist Liisa Vääriskoski has created a mesmerizing and eye-popping video. The video will be premiering on Sparks’ YouTube channel Friday (April 23) at 6pm BST/10am PST/1pm EST.
KOSMODOME, another rising star in the firmament of Norway’s flourishing Prog Music scene, has found its way into Karisma Records capacious arms, with the label preparing to release the band’s debut full-length album later this year.
The brainchild of the two Sandvik brothers, Sturle on guitars and vocals, and Severin on drums, KOSMODOME’s music is riff-based Rock with Stoner elements all of which are placed within a progressive universe to great effect. Together, the duo have an explosive drive, where the melodic can often be found hand in hand with the hard and the heavy.
Having self- released an EP via streaming in 2019, KOSMODOME add a bassist and guitarist to their live performances, appearing on stage as a four-piece, and they are, understandably, excited to be working with Karisma Records for their first full-length release, as the band explains:
We feel very humble and honoured to have signed with Karisma Records alongside all their great and inspiring bands. This already feels like the start of a fun and lasting relationship, and we look forward to showing people what Kosmodome is all about!
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