Prog Awards: The Nominees For The Limelight Award

The Limelight Award takes its name from the Limelight section in Prog magazine.

Although the first award presented on the evening, it is in many ways one of the most important awards of the night, highlighting the emerging talent that’s risen to the top of the prog ocean over the past 12 months.

Previous winners are TesseracT, who won in the Progressive Music Awards’ inaugural year in 2012 and Sound Of Contact, although sadly illness on the day prevented Simon Collins from accepting the Award on the day.

This year all the nominees have appeared in the Limelight section of the magazine, so most readers should be aware of their work. But in case you don’t, here’s your chance to catch up with all ten nominees and listen to their work. And then cast your votes at: awards.progmagazine.com.

Messenger: London quintet Messenger have only been going for just over a year, but they’ve made quite a splash signing to Svart Records (home to Tusmorke, Sabbath Assembly and Jess & The Ancient Ones) and releasing the celebrated Illusory Blues earlier this year.

Thieves’ Kitchen: A trio split between the UK and Sweden, Thieves’ Kitchen’s sound encompasses traditional symphonic prog with aspects of Canterbury, folk and even a dash of fusion.

Kitten Pyramid: A sextet from Burton, Kitten Pyramid’s sound has been described as blending glam rock, pop and punk with improvised prog sounds. Makes for colourful listening.

Purson: a mind-melting blend of Curved Air’s trippy, psychedelically splurged prog and deeper darker Black Sabbath style riffing.

White Moth/Black Butterfly: a more pop-orientated, proggy ambient vehicle for the talents of Dan Tompkins, recently back in the TesseracT fold and of course, singer with Skyharbor.

Hi Fiction Science: folky krautrock with an hallucinogetic edge, we said in the latest issue of this Bristolian quintet, recently signed to the Esoteric label.

Synaesthesia: these guys only stuck their heads above the parapet about a year ago, but they walked off with Tip For 2014 in the 2013 Prog magazine Readers’ Poll!

Agent: since appearing in the Limelight feature in Prog, the New Zealenders’ (now settled in London) intelligently crafted prog metal sees them making serious strides.

Schnauser: yet more Bristiolians, this quartet imbued with a wonderful take of pyschedelic prog and pop, and abundantly wonderful facial hair. Apart from Holly the bassist of course.

Coshish: this Indian prog band really won the Prog office over when they sent a load of copies of their debut album Firdous over. We’ve not stopped playing it since!

Don’t forget to cast your votes at: awards.progmagazine.com.

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.