The great escape

Bringing a hard-rock swagger and the majesty of metal to their own brand of prog rock, Magic Pie break a six-year studio silence with Maestro . Frontman Eiríkur Hauksson tells Prog about being a metalhead in a prog world, writing songs at bus stops, and feeling the heat on Cruise To The Edge.

Q&A

WE WERE THE first band of our generation that started to grow up,” Billy Corgan says, reflecting on the making of the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1995 grand opus, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. “The b

Truth can be stranger than fiction, and that’s something Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate embrace on their latest album, The Uncertainty Principle . Moving away from sci-fi and exploring themes of science and human interaction, Malcolm Galloway and Mark Gatland explain why they took a deep dive into the history books to uncover tales of scientists, spies and nuclear bombs.

Mark King went to see David Gilmour play at London’s Royal Albert Hall recently. Impressed as he was, it brought home to King the varying degrees of busyness in Gilmour’s music and his own with Level

Born in the titular Kent city in the late 60s, the Canterbury scene spawned some of prog’s most creative and quirky acts. From The Wilde Flowers and Soft Machine to Caravan and Gong, each had a distinctive sound and, in many cases, image that captured the hearts and minds of their followers. But the scene’s impact didn’t end in the 70s. Phil Howitt, Facelift editor and Hugh Hopper’s biographer, explores the new breed of progressive acts inspired by it, both consciously and unwittingly, and unearths the secrets of the ‘Canterbury chord’.