EntertainmentmoviesNew Releases
Overlooked 90s Spacey Prog-Rock Albums.
While the conventional narrative pins progressive rock's golden age to the 1970s, with its sprawling symphonic suites and mythic concepts, a fascinating and often overlooked evolution occurred in the shadow of the 1990s' grunge explosion and hip-hop dominance. This was not the prog of your older sibling’s record collection; it was a different beast altogether, one that traded capes for flannel-inflected introspection and swapped Tolkien-esque fantasies for cosmic, internal explorations.Bands like the UK’s Porcupine Tree, with their 1995 opus 'The Sky Moves Sideways,' didn't seek to replicate the past but to re-contextualize it. Frontman Steven Wilson acted less as a traditional rock star and more as a sonic architect, building vast, atmospheric soundscapes where the ghost of Pink Floyd’s 'Echoes' met the textural guitar washes of shoegaze.This was prog for a disillusioned generation, where the space travel was psychological. Similarly, the Norwegian outfit Airbag, though emerging at the tail-end of the decade, carried this torch, their sound a direct lineage from David Gilmour's emotive phrasing but filtered through a colder, more electronically-aware Scandinavian lens.Then there were the American outliers like Ozric Tentacles, who operated in a league of their own, fusing psychedelic space-rock with ambient electronica and dub rhythms, creating a purely instrumental, trance-inducing experience that felt more like a festival happening than a traditional album. These artists weren't filling stadiums, but they were cultivating dedicated followings through tape trading and early internet forums, proving that the genre's spirit of musical ambition and improvisation hadn't died—it had simply gone underground, adapting to a new era's aesthetics and distribution channels. Listening to these albums now is like unearthing a secret history, a collection of B-sides from the soul of a decade remembered for its raw angst, revealing that the desire for cosmic escape and complex musical journeys never truly faded.
#featured
#progressive rock
#90s music
#obscure albums
#space rock
#music discovery
#editorial picks news
