2026-08-31 · Zeuhl & Canterbury
The full log for this week — every entry annotated and sourced. ▶ play the whole edition on Spotify
Week Two of the experiment: thirty-eight tracks pulled almost entirely from the week's editorial — Prog magazine's Tracks Of The Week, The Progspace's release roundups, The Progressive Subway's reviews, The PROG Mind, Arctic Drones on the fusion side, and the Free Jazz Collective. — ed.★ SPOTLIGHT · FEATURED SCENE ★
Each edition tips the hat to one scene — a geography, a family tree, a moment. This week: Zeuhl & Canterbury descendants.
PICK
PICK
National HealthTenemos Roads
FEATURED SCENE — Zeuhl & Canterbury. National Health is the Canterbury sound at full orchestral tilt: Dave Stewart's chords, Alan Gowen's keys, and Tenemos Roads as the gateway. 1978, and still ahead of most things.
KoenjihyakkeiAngherr Shisspa
FEATURED SCENE. Tatsuya Yoshida's volcanic Japanese zeuhl — Angherr Shisspa is maximum-prog chaos, Magma's lineage mutated through a Tokyo noise sensibility. The scene wheel's loudest stop.
ATHAKBhlüe
FEATURED SCENE. A one-man zeuhl act out of Hong Kong — proof the Magma lineage still has strange new branches growing in places the magazines don't patrol.
Hatfield & The NorthFitter Stoke Has A Bath
FEATURED SCENE. The other Canterbury cornerstone — 1975's The Rotters' Club, where Fitter Stoke Has A Bath turned the scene's wit into its signature. (The 30-second solo here inspired a generation of math-rockers, whatever else it did.)
DimhavThe Sunken Star
The Lindroth brothers' sophomore opus Ondine — "one of the most engaging and fun listens as far as Classic Melodic Prog Metal with a symphonic edge is concerned in quite some time," per The Progspace. Fusion-y synth leads, groovy riffing, and former Lost Horizon voice Daniel Heiman on top. Opening the playlist with a statement.
Hypno5eMolecular Angel
The French quartet's latest single from November's Trame Noire — and it's a busy season: a 13-album box set celebrating twenty years drops the same day, with their 2007 debut on vinyl for the first time.
"Direct and raw, the track unfolds over a relatively short span of time for an Hypno5e song… ending in a frantic chaos that announces the album's second half." — the band
ExxûlBlighted Deity
Epic doom crossed with US power metal from Canada — recommended by The Progressive Subway "for fans of Atlantean Kodex, Queensrÿche, Crimson Glory, Warlord, Lost Horizon, Fates Warning." That lineage list is a genre map all by itself.
KarmanjakahDove
Indonesian djent with genuine melodic patience — The Progressive Subway's coverage of the Dove sessions flagged them as ones to watch, and the title track bears it out.
Inner VitriolWeaker and Fading
Fourteen years after their debut, the Italian dark-prog metallers returned — and booked Geoff Tate (Queensrÿche) and Andy Kuntz (Vanden Plas) as guests. Weaker and Fading is the Tate duet. Semper Tacui: "I have always stayed silent."
ArgoviaThe Same River
Colombian prog-metal, first full-length — The PROG Mind first flagged their 2024 EP and now calls Primal Repetition "head and shoulders above" it. The Same River is the calm-center showcase.
Kristoffer GildenlöwThe Almosts
The former Pain of Salvation bassist's Humanised is a solo album in the fullest sense — The Almosts is its quiet, ringing center. Via The Progspace's release coverage.
Lost In PsalmsEnd of a Kalpa
Costa Rican multi-instrumentalist Gerardo Ruiz's project — End of a Kalpa (kalpa: an aeon in Hindu cosmology). The PROG Mind stumbled on it online and stayed. So did we.
VolubilisLe Flamboiement Stellaire
"Canada and Tech Death go together like France and wine," says The Progspace of this Quebec outfit — blistering leads, fretless bass, blast beats, and a title that translates roughly to "the stellar blaze." The second single from Theasterion.
The ProtomenHold Back the Night
WILDCARD. The Mega Man rock opera finally delivered Act III after seventeen years — dueling vocals, Blade Runner keys, pure Meat Loaf-scale theater. From Tennessee, of all places. The Subway's review lineup says it all: "for fans of Meat Loaf, Queen, Journey, Gunship, Dirt Poor Robins."
Chimpan AEye For An Eye
UK art-rockers who rang Andy Fairweather Low — "a Welsh hero," per the band — for the voice-of-reason role, and got a suitably dramatic video with it. A new EP, out now; not on the acclaimed Music Is Art — Vol. 1.
"He is a Welsh hero. We were looking for the voice of reason, so it had to be mature." — Chimpan A
The Paradox TwinLinter
UK neo-prog that pushed through considerable lineup upheaval — The PROG Mind: they "shadow-dropped their third album… and it is proving to be terrific." Linter is the tightest three minutes of it.
Lunar and The DeceptionThe Way Down
Art-rock from the Somnambulist sessions — found in the tags, sleepwalking its way into the middle of Side C.
Sum of SevenEternal Equation
Echoes of the Hypermind indeed — crossover prog with a metric screw loose, surfaced in The Progspace's weekly release sweep.
Museo RosenbachZarathustra- L'ultimo Uomo
FROM THE VAULT. 1973 Italian symphonic — Zarathustra is a concept album about Nietzsche's last man, and L'ultimo Uomo is its overture in miniature. Museo Rosenbach split right after; the record didn't.
EYRE LLEWEverywhere
From Prog's Tracks Of The Week: chiming guitars and mellifluous vocals that earned them the tag "Britain's answer to Sigur Rós." The album launch show is at The Nest, Nottingham, September 15.
"Britain's answer to Sigur Rós" — Prog
Could SeedDruids
A live-in-studio recording from Studio de la Fuie, ahead of second album Terminal (October 23, Klonosphere). The band on the track: about ancestors, and "bonds and interactions… more respectful of differences and more integrated into their environment."
"This track refers to ancestors and their knowledge." — Could Seed
Oh HiroshimaTree of Life
Swedish post-rock lifers, twenty years in. Tree of Life is the slow-build centerpiece of And The Dead Tree Gives No Shelter — r/postrock's find, the fringe lane's gain.
Blackwater HolylightSpades
Portland doom-psych on the heavier edge of the fringe lane — Spades rides a riff that would level a smaller band.
We Stood Like KingsAssassins
Brussels quartet scoring silent cinema live — Assassins comes from their Pinocchio soundtrack work: post-rock with an actual pit-orchestra sense of drama.
daouddijon
Self-titled, lowercase, lowercase track title — dijon is bedroom-recorded jazz-hop-adjacent fusion that Bandcamp's tags do better than any magazine could.
Mike MurrayStreetwise
Guitarist's-guitarist fusion from the Convergence sessions — another Week 1 pool holdover earning its slot on phrasing alone.
PAONMétamorphose
A "spectacular avant-jazz debut, driven by thrilling world-building and bold, imaginative arrangements" — Arctic Drones' own words on Philosophie du Soi. Métamorphose is the thesis statement.
"A spectacular avant-jazz debut, driven by thrilling world-building and bold, imaginative arrangements." — Arctic Drones
Spectrum OrchestrumCHerry Analog TexTurE
Wonky, analog-worshiping fusion — the idiosyncratic capitalization is the manifesto. Pool holdover, deployed where the sequencing needed a grin.
EtceteralGesualdo
Composer-led fusion from the Kimatika sessions — Arctic Drones' nu-jazz coverage keeps surfacing records that straddle composition and improvisation; this is one of them.
KnatsCarpet Doctor
Newcastle jazz-punk energy with a wit most fusion forgets to bring — Carpet Doctor sounds like its title, in the best way. Held from the Week 1 pool and deployed now.
Tim BerneOddly Enough
Berne's Snakeoil-adjacent chamber aggression — the Free Jazz Collective keeps the fringe lane honest, and Oddly Enough is alto-sax architecture at its most deliberate.
Myra MelfordDrift
Pianist-composer at the head of a room-filling ensemble — Drift is exactly what the title claims, until it isn't. The Free Jazz Collective's beat keeps the fringe lane's improv credentials current.
DünEros
FROM THE VAULT. French zeuhl-fusion, one album, 1981, then gone — Eros is its eight-minute argument for staying. Exactly the kind of record the archive lane exists to resurface.
We Used to Cut the GrassThe Comet Is Not Coming
Zappa-esque satirical chaos meets virtuosic jazz fusion. The most fun find of the week — a band whose name alone earns a slot, and whose music somehow lives up to it.
Mad VantageMatriarch
Cut-throat fusion with a composer's discipline — pulled from Arctic Drones' jazz-fusion roundup coverage of the Ictus sessions.
Ill ConsideredSatori
London improvisers whose Balm sessions capture the band's live telepathy on record — Satori runs nine minutes of slow-burning collective improv. Found in the Bandcamp tags, well beneath the editorial radar.
NiechęćNowe płuca
Warsaw noir-jazz — Niechęć means "reluctance/aversion," and Reckless Things plays like a Rybczyński film sounds: neon, rain, distrust. Nowe płuca ("new lungs") is the record breathing in.
Trust Fund OzuDie Hard
WILDCARD. Progressive hyperpop stream-of-consciousness that shouldn't work and absolutely does — The Progressive Subway: "Style: Hyperpop, VGM, progressive rock… for fans of Knower, Danny Baranowsky, Death's Dynamic Shroud." The two wildcards this week are the edition's two most gleeful left turns.