White Moth Black Butterfly - Atone album review

The best Prog you can get this month

By Jo Kendall
( Classic Rock )
published
Cover art for White Moth Black Butterfly - Atone album

Although delighted to front leading djenters TesseracT, forsome years now, Dan Tompkins haseschewed being just a shoutyfrontman, hunting for likeminded souls – such as New Dehli proggers Skyharbor – to help him carve (another) slightly different niche.

Following 2014’s well-received debut One Thousand Wings, Tompkins and Skyharbor collaborator Keshav Dhar have found the perfect new home for their majestic, cinematic explorations – Kscope. Amid Anathema, Pineapple Thief and Blackfield, Atone’s themes of loss and hope are beautifully rendered and WMBB’s take on Sigur Rós, Mew and Tool fits right in.

Joined by Devin Townsend string arranger/producer Randy Slaugh and East Midlands singer-songwriter Jordan Turner, textural bridges link Tompkins and Turner’s tender duets Rising Sun and The Serpent as a deep, Asiatic undergroove leads out from the sounds of war, peace and everything in-between.

Smart, elegant and, importantly, youthful stuff.

Jo Kendall
Jo Kendall

Jo is a journalist, podcaster, event host and music industry lecturer with 23 years in music magazines since joining Kerrang! as office manager in 1999. But before that Jo had 10 years as a London-based gig promoter and DJ, also working in various vintage record shops and for the UK arm of the Sub Pop label as a warehouse and press assistant. Jo's had tea with Robert Fripp, touched Ian Anderson's favourite flute (!), asked Suzi Quatro what one wears under a leather catsuit, and invented several ridiculous editorial ideas such as the regular celebrity cooking column for Prog, Supper's Ready. After being Deputy Editor for Prog for five years and Managing Editor of Classic Rock for three, Jo is now Associate Editor of Prog, where she's been since its inception in 2009, and a regular contributor to Classic Rock. She continues to spread the experimental and psychedelic music-based word amid unsuspecting students at BIMM Institute London, hoping to inspire the next gen of rock, metal, prog and indie creators and appreciators.