My most exciting musical discovery of late is a purely independent artist named Rian Adkinson, who is based in Georgia. I hadn't heard of him until Prog magazine just asked me to interview him for its latest issue. Rian is primarily influenced by Steven Wilson, Marillion, The Pineapple Thief, Genesis, Yes, Rush, Talk Talk, etc., but his album isn't overtly prog.
Highly recommend you go to iTunes and just buy Rian's album, Villain, which is fantastic from start to finish. You can stream the album on his website here. For starters, listen to the songs "I'll Be the Lightning" and "Les Revenants"—in a perfect world, those two songs would be megahits. The whole album is brimming with great pop-rock melodies.
Also in the latest issue, I wrote a short news piece about Francis Dunnery's upcoming studio album, Vampires. Intriguingly, the great songwriter, guitarist and singer has elected to re-record 14 tracks from his first band It Bites. (If you only know It Bites for the band's top 10 hit single "Calling all the Heroes" in 1986, dig deeper - that song is about as representative of the band as "Hi Ho Silver Lining" is of Jeff Beck's ouevre.) Dunnery's looking to record some of that pop-prog band's best songs in a more organic style that won't sound as dated.
Read about that and more in the new issue of Prog, available at Barnes & Nobles, good newsstands, and also available digitally. Find out more at: https://prog.teamrock.com
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