3 diverse highlights challenge the boundaries of prog pop

“What if all the weird stuff actually is the album?” Guitarist and main songwriter Simen Hundere Ruud surely knew how to water the mouths of any progger when he was talking to us about Maraton’s new album “Unseen Color” on the latest episode of the Progtalks. And he’s right, the Norwegian 5-piece present themselves in various unseen colors from exuberant pop in the single ‘Perdurant Lives’ across various forms of intricate and complex, yet always catchy and song-centered modern progressive rock all the way to the downright insane closing double ‘A Body of Your Own’/’Unseen Color’, where they reach previously untouched depths and/or heights of emotion only to erupt into the proggiest song of the whole album. And by the end of this rollercoaster ride of emotions I’m convinced that I’ve just listened to a bonafide masterpiece of an album that will be talked about for a long time to come and won’t leave my heavy rotation anytime soon. Come see the unseen colors, you won’t regret it! Dario

Staying in Norway for our second highlight of the week, we delve even further into playful pop depths with Major Parkinson’s new opus “Valesa – Chapter 1: Velvet Prison”. They set out to record a musical homage to the glorious 80s, and what came out in the end is exactly that, but also so much more. The wonderfully deep baritone voice of Jon Ivar Kollbotn is guiding us through this curious tale of nostalgia and philosophical conversations about existential questions. “Synth anthems set in a disco of nuclear anxiety.”, as he puts it, and it strangely fits as much to an iconic decade that started over 40 years ago, as it hits home with today’s political climate here in Europe. Major Parkinson stay true to themselves as an eccentric music collective by re-inventing their sound, to create something completely out of the (Black-)box to bewilder and bedazzle any curious listener. Bold and hypnotic, like a flickering neon sign on Times Square. Dario

Completing this unusual trio of highlights this week (with Maraton easily being the most ‘normal’ of the three, but still not your average prog rock or metal), is “Rise Up”, the debut full length of Australian artist Jessica O’Donoghue, out now via the eclectic Art As Catharsis label. What starts like a Floydian synth drone in ‘Awakening’ quickly turns into one of the most enrapturing vocal albums of the year, with Jessica’s otherworldly voice both merging with the layered synth and string backdrops as well as shining on top of it elsewhere. The production is as immaculate as Woodkid’s 2020 masterpiece “S16”, industrial electronic percussions giving songs like ‘Good Grief’ a driving edge in an otherwise very ambient setting, while swelling orchestrations and soaring melodies are washing over you and capture your whole body and mind, embracing you like the cloak of night with its millions of stars and uncounted dreams to be dreamed. Let yourself be carried away with these spellbinding sounds. Absolutely breathtaking. Dario