It's Prog's brand new Tracks Of The Week! Six brand new and diverse slices of progressively inclined music for you to enjoy.
Congratulations to young Leoni Jane Kennedy, whose ode to friendship, Jesse, won out in the end last week after quite the tussle with Chimpan A's cover of Wichita Lineman, and with young UK prog rocker Reubes in a very credible third.
The premise for Tracks Of The Week is simple - we've collated a batch of new releases by bands falling under the progressive umbrella, and collated them together in one post for you - makes it so much easier than having to dip in and out of various individual posts, doesn't it?
The idea is to watch the videos (or listen if it's a stream), enjoy (or not) and also to vote for your favourite in the voting form at the bottom of this post. Couldn't be easier, could it?
We'll be bringing you Tracks Of The Week, as the title implies, each week. Next week we'll update you with this week's winner and present a host of new prog music for you to enjoy.
If you're a band and you want to be featured in Prog's Tracks Of The Week, send your video (as a YouTube link) or track embed, band photo and biog to us here.
SAM VALLEN - VAST AND LUMINOUS
Caligula's Horse guitarist and musical director Sam Vallen needs little introduction to most Prog readers. Vast And Illuminous, however, is a brand new Vallen solo venture as he explores the guitar, the instrument with which he made his name. The explosive new instrumental track comes with a video which also features his Caligula’s Horse peer Josh Griffin on drums.
“Vast And Luminous is a deeply maximalist piece”, says Vallen. “Although my career has been pockmarked with moments of such technical indulgence, I’ve always kept them reined in, in the interest of subtlety and suggestion – ‘leave them wanting more’. Conversely, Vast And Luminous holds nothing back, and it was genuinely liberating to allow myself the space to lay it all out for the world. I’m overjoyed to finally share Vast And Luminous with you!”
HEATHER FINDLAY - MAY IT BE
Another name that needs little introduction to prog fans, Heather Findlay was the lead singer for Mostly Autumn for fourteen years. Since then, she's carved out an impressive solo career, and performs with her folk duos Odin Dragonfly and The Bee Tellers, as well as having worked with Mantra Vega and ZIO, to name but a few. May It Be is a beautifully crafted, heartfelt ballad, "a song of hope and love for a troubled world, imagining brighter times of peace and unity on our beautiful planet," from Findlay's recent Wildflowers solo album, out now through Black Sand Records.
“Feeling called to help amplify a vibration of peace and love at this deeply turbulent time on our planet, I received the nudge make a music video for May It Be, featuring beautiful, calm evoking nature imagery and an animation I made some time ago of a lotus breathing into bloom and back in to bud, initially inspired by a simple meditation practice by SatGuruNath," Heatlher explains. "The ‘Om’ symbol represents the word itself, and when intentionally intoned, serves as an invocation of peace. It’s not a flashy video, just my way of loving more loudly.”
ESTHESIS - THE FRAME
French post-progressive quintet Esthesis have returned with a suitably moody and atmospheric new single, The Frame. It's the band's first new music for three years, following on from the band's second album, 2022's Watching Worlds Collide. The band, who have appeared at Night Of The Prog and supported the likes of Opeth and Crippled Black Phoenix, wil relesase their third album, Out Of Step, through Misty Tones on October 3.
New single The Frame, say the band, invites the listener to explore "themes such as alienation, the feeling of being trapped in one's own life and routine, and the invitation to step outside the frame". Lyrically, both the song and the album point to the fact that more and more people feel out of step with society. In the vein of albums such as David Bowie's Outside or Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile, the brand new track and its music video reveal a smoky atmosphere, carried by a solid rhythm section blended with long, airy keyboard pads and an industrial touch."
ESOTERICA - INTO THE ETHER
Surrey prog sextet Esoterica are back with another new single, this time the darkly brooding Into The Ether, which follows last year's equally enjoyable Firefly. The band have just signed to Year Of The Rat Records, so we're hoping we'll be seeing a follow-up to 2020's In Dreams album sometime soon. Esoterica will also be touring throughout the UK in September and October.
“Into The Ether is a haunting and cinematic journey through grief, resilience, and transcendence," the band state. "With ethereal textures colliding into the heaviest moment of our career, this track pushes our sound to new extremes. Featuring both the London Oriana Choir and Choir Noir, it’s a powerful ode to the friends we’ve lost—and the echoes they leave behind.”
TRIBE3 - FALLS LIKE RAIN
South Wales prog trio Tribe3 featured in our Limelight section of the magazine earlier this year, on the back of their very impressive second album, 2024's Life Without Strangers, from which comes the uplifting Falls Like Rain. Vocalist, keyboardist and drummer Steve Hughes tells Prog the band have just signed to progrock.com's Essentials label, also home to Solstice and Ghost Of The Machine, which augurs well for the future.
"Falls Like Rain is about the power people can exert on those below them and the question of whether we can or even should change that," explains guitarist Jon Ginley, who wrote the song.
FIELDS OF NÆCLUDA - INNER DEMONS
Hailing from Grenoble, the capital of the French Alps, and drawing upon inspiration from pop, rock, and atmospheric metal, Fields Of Næcluda released their third album, UBUNTU, back in October, from which comes the complex and catchy Inner Demons. The band's name literally translates to 'Fields of the Cloud Tree', which echoes the band's more ambient and introspective moments, although these are often countered with crashing moments of heaviness.
"Moments of calm give way to powerful guitars and the lyrical flights of an emotional voice," the band say of UBUNTU. "This album is a journey through the feeling of belonging to something greater than ourselves, and the notion of interdependence that binds us all together, making us humanity."
