Prog Songs or Albums About Time Travel?

[The Elf King]

Anything come to mind?

[Vic333]

Off the top of my head:
Iron Maiden - Somewhere in Time
Sound of Contact - Dimensionnaut

[JKL2000]

Edison's Children - A Million Miles Away (I Wish I Had a Time Machine)

^ This features Marillion's Pete Trewavas, and was somehow a hit single!

[JKL2000]

Steve Miller - Fly Like an Eagle (earlier, live versions a kinda proggy, IMO)

[Interstellar]

Spock's Beard - Bennett Built a Time Machine

[happytheman]

Does this count? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRc0yaMW7Mw

[Kai]

Ange: the last couple of songs of Au dela du delire (strictly speaking re-incarnation, but with a continuity of memory)
Dream Theater: "The Killing Hand"
Eloy: Power and the Passion, Dawn partially as well.
Ekseption: Beggar Julia's Time Trip
Kayak: "Journey Through Time"
Madison Dyke: "Zeitmaschine"
Magma: "De Futura" (supposedly about a journey through time to help perceive Orks)
Nimbus: the first side of Obus (more or less).

[interbellum]

Earth & Fire: To The World Of The Future

[spellbound]

"Traveller In Time" - Uriah Heep

[The Dark Elf]

Argue amongst yourselves about whether Queen was prog at the time '39 was released; whatever the case, an astrophysicist wrote the song about the time dilation effect in Einstein's special theory of relativity.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE8kGMfXaFU

[Interstellar]

Ange: the last couple of songs of Au dela du delire (strictly speaking re-incarnation, but with a continuity of memory)

Good point. The idea of time travel is also strongly present in the song "Exode" in the middle of the album.

[ThomasKDye]

Anything come to mind?

Wow, no one's said ELO's "Time" album yet. That has to be the most fun, in my opinion.

[JKL2000]

The Cosmic Jokers - Gilles Zeitschiff

[Steve983]

Do 10cc count? Old Mister Time. I'm sure there must be others, racking my brains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1v5j_0nn1w

[SteveSly]

Wow, no one's said ELO's "Time" album yet. That has to be the most fun, in my opinion.

You beat me to it. "Time" is a great often overlooked ELO album. In fact, it may even be my favorite album by them. It is a conceptual album of a man transported into the future. It did have the hit "Hold On Tight" on it, although that song is not particularly representative of the album iMO.

[Skeptrick]

What about VDGG-Pioneers Over c?

[Crystal Plumage]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APgqhlZrLW8

[Progbear]

Beggars Opera: “Time Machine”
Sadistic Mika Band: “Time machine ni onegai”


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0qXumQi-HA

In the first verse, she dreams of travelling back to the Jurassic period to watch a live Tyrannosaurus Rex and handle live ammonites.
In the second, she imagines going back to 1930s Hollywood to ride around in a Duesenberg and meet Humphrey Bogart.
In the third, she fantasizes about going back to 16th Century Paris to dance the waltz and meet Madame Pompadour.

[Trane]

AB's Kingdom Come's Journey album.

[BravadoNJ]

Alan Parsons- The Time Machine (concept album)
Electric Light Orchestra- Time (concept album)

[Sturgeon's Lawyer]

Really? Nobody's mentioned "One for the Vine" yet?

[ThomasKDye]

Really? Nobody's mentioned "One for the Vine" yet?

Hmm, I never thought of that, but I guess it is indeed about time travel, since the protagonist goes into a vicious cycle. I just thought of it as clever fantastic irony, the disbeliever becoming the leader he abhors.

[Progbear]

Really? Nobody's mentioned "One for the Vine" yet?

I could never figure out what it was supposed to be about.

[ThomasKDye]

I could never figure out what it was supposed to be about.

A soldier, disillusioned with his leader, deserts during a march and falls into a wormhole or something to arrive somewhere unspecified. The people who see him assume he's a messiah. The soldier denies it ("This can't go on, this will be all that I fled from") until he realizes the people need him as a leader ("They leave me no choice, I must lead them to glory"). He leads them on a march, but in the distance sees a deserting soldier who disappears as he runs away. The lyrics imply that they're the same people ("He thought he recognized him by his walk and by the way he fell") and the events are going in a circle.

[Lopez]

Then there's the Colosseum song "The Time Machine," but it's mostly a drum solo.

[Yodelgoat]

There's got to be a Moody Blues Song about it. - I can't recall a specific song, but they were all about Transcendental Meditation and the ability to slip in and out of time.

'39 is by far the most blatant attempt to describe Time travel, r the effects of traveling close to a black hole or traveling close to the speed of light. That's more about time warping, than actual time travel. Does Areon's Universal Migrator qualify somehow?

[arabicadabra]

Spiraling - Time Travel Made Easy

[bill g]

I suppose it's too obvious to mention 'One For The Vine'. Then there's the 'Curious Feeling' album where he goes back and causes a young person to lose his memory, not realizing it was himself, due to the fact that he lost his memory. Great concept.

And I suspect time travel in the convoluted 'Lialim High' album by Twin Age, but the story is both complex and vague enough for the actual meaning to be beyond my reach...

[yoyiceu]

'Time Machine', Beggar's Opera, on their Waters of Change album.

[Steve983]

There's an album by French band Mysterkah called Fresq which is a concept album about an alien who visits earth, doesn't like what he sees, builds a cryo machine , goes to sleep for thousands of years and wakes up after a nuclear holocaust has ravaged the earth and sets about rebuilding the world anew. It was released on Cyclops back in 2002, very strong musically with female vocals. Cant see any YouTube links sadly but its a good album.

http://www.musicaldiscoveries.com/reviews/mysterkah.htm

[Trane]

A soldier, disillusioned with his leader, deserts during a march and falls into a wormhole or something to arrive somewhere unspecified. The people who see him assume he's a messiah. The soldier denies it ("This can't go on, this will be all that I fled from") until he realizes the people need him as a leader ("They leave me no choice, I must lead them to glory"). He leads them on a march, but in the distance sees a deserting soldier who disappears as he runs away. The lyrics imply that they're the same people ("He thought he recognized him by his walk and by the way he fell") and the events are going in a circle.

I agree with almost everthing, except for the wormhole or time travel. part. No evidence of that.

... or did I miss it??

[ryder]

http://www.rwcc.com/product.asp?int_titleID=21

Rick Wakeman

[yamishogun]

The Time Machine Alan Parson

I used to have this album and grew to like the whole thing but not sure of anything specific about time travel apart from the first and last songs that were called "The Time Machine" Part 1 and Part 2.

Edit: I see that BravadoNJ already mentioned this album. From wikipedia: ""Temporalia" features a narration by professor Frank Close on the idea of the universe itself acting as a sort of time machine, whilst "Press Rewind" ponders what we might do if we were able to reverse time, and change decisions we have made."

[interbellum]

The movie Donnie Darko has a lot of time-traveling and so does Michael Andrews' soundtrack.
Here's an obvious one, Philosophy Of Time Travel:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_QcyPl32gg

[proggy_jazzer]

A soldier, disillusioned with his leader, deserts during a march and falls into a wormhole or something to arrive somewhere unspecified. The people who see him assume he's a messiah. The soldier denies it ("This can't go on, this will be all that I fled from") until he realizes the people need him as a leader ("They leave me no choice, I must lead them to glory"). He leads them on a march, but in the distance sees a deserting soldier who disappears as he runs away. The lyrics imply that they're the same people ("He thought he recognized him by his walk and by the way he fell") and the events are going in a circle.

Excellent synopsis. I don't really know if it was intended to be a reference to time travel or not, but I do know it's one of my all-time favorite Genesis compositions, and it reminds me that one of my favorite aspects of the band is the stories that are told in the lyrics of the albums up through, say, Duke or so. In a way, many of them are about time-travel in the sense that they have the ability to transport the listener to a different reality and set of circumstances.

[mellotron storm]

German bands seem to be all over this concept. Eloy has been mentioned, I like that one. Mythos' debut has a song on it called Encyclopedia Terra Part 2 but it's more about a machine he creates that allows him to sleep for however long he wants as he hopes to wake up eventually to a World of peace and tranquility. No it only gets worse.
Dzyan- Time Machine
Breaking Orbit- The Time Traveller

[ThomasKDye]

I agree with almost everthing, except for the wormhole or time travel. part. No evidence of that.

... or did I miss it??

You're right, there is no evidence of it, except how he got from the mountain to the "wilderness of ice" is glossed over weirdly:

"A misplaced footfall made him stray from the path prepared for him, off of the mountain, on to a wilderness of ice. This unexpected vision made him stand and shake with fear..."

So in other words, this was something he was unprepared for and he had no idea would happen. It could mean anything. To me, it means he disappeared from one world to the next.


I don't really know if it was intended to be a reference to time travel or not

It may not be. In any event, it's supposed to be about a sort of vicious cycle. To be fair, despite being a ten-minute song, Tony can only put so many words in there, so it's fair if he leaves stuff to the imagination.

[Progbear]

A soldier, disillusioned with his leader, deserts during a march and falls into a wormhole or something to arrive somewhere unspecified. The people who see him assume he's a messiah. The soldier denies it ("This can't go on, this will be all that I fled from") until he realizes the people need him as a leader ("They leave me no choice, I must lead them to glory"). He leads them on a march, but in the distance sees a deserting soldier who disappears as he runs away. The lyrics imply that they're the same people ("He thought he recognized him by his walk and by the way he fell") and the events are going in a circle.

Even after that description, I’m still confused.

11181

There is this, though. I think:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHiUUQcKik4

[Progtastic]

Frost* - Pocket Sun

[battema]

Not progressive rock but very definitely about a form of time travel (and IMHO a lovely ballad):


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4BDoQGA0L8

[gojikranz]

kate bush snowed in at wheeler street.

[rcarlberg]

Paul Desmond - Take Five

[Lino]

http://youtu.be/KS_uGBILlME

[Lino]

'Time Machine', Beggar's Opera, on their Waters of Change album.

Great track!...in a wierd cheesy kinda way lol. Love it.

[ghostsofpompeii]

Excellent album from the project band CYRIL "Gone Through Years" which is based on H.G. Wells "The Time Machine". Seems more like the remake of the film. The band is made up of members of Toxic Smile. Another of the many projects from keyboardist Marek Arnold ... with vocals from Larry B.

[Trane]

Cygnus X-1 on AFTK and Cygnus X-1 (or X-2 as I call it) in Hemispheres??

[alanterrill]

Peter Hammill's 'Traintime' - its not obvious what this is about -relativity I think, but there was a book by Dagmar Klein about Hammill's lyrics and she devoted a whole chapter to this track. If her anaylsis is anything like correct, this is a very deep song. http://sofasound.com/phcds/patlyrics.htm#5

[bill g]

You're right, there is no evidence of it, except how he got from the mountain to the "wilderness of ice" is glossed over weirdly:

"A misplaced footfall made him stray from the path prepared for him, off of the mountain, on to a wilderness of ice. This unexpected vision made him stand and shake with fear..."

So in other words, this was something he was unprepared for and he had no idea would happen. It could mean anything. To me, it means he disappeared from one world to the next.



It may not be. In any event, it's supposed to be about a sort of vicious cycle. To be fair, despite being a ten-minute song, Tony can only put so many words in there, so it's fair if he leaves stuff to the imagination.

Well, since he is seeing an earlier manifestation of himself, he had to go back in time to be the leader he was trying to flee from, right? At least that is how I've always perceived it.

[mnprogger]

Cloud Cult - Time Machine Invention (or many others from The Seeker)
Fates Warning - Traveler in Time
Pain of Salvation - Time Weaver's Tale

[Lino]

And the winner is.... Eloy - "Love Over Six Centuries" from The Power and The Passion


http://youtu.be/M68fie7SVDQ from The Power and The Passion

[jeffo621]

What about VDGG-Pioneers Over c?

I always figured that was about travelling to another planet at faster than light speed (or at least very close to light speed) and dealing with the affects of time dilation. I could be way off though.

There's a sortof time travelly-aspect to Dream Theaters's Scenes From a Memory.

[moecurlythanu]

Well, since he is seeing an earlier manifestation of himself, he had to go back in time to be the leader he was trying to flee from, right? At least that is how I've always perceived it.

I always viewed it as a depiction of a circular universe. My first exposure to such a concept was on an in-depth science theory program called Land Of The Lost.

[bill g]

I always viewed it as a depiction of a circular universe. My first exposure to such a concept was on an in-depth science theory program called Land Of The Lost.

Ah. Interesting. So you're thinking the person 'he thought he recognized' is not himself then, but someone else, continuing the cycle, in this case? And if so, would he recognize him?

[moecurlythanu]

Ah. Interesting. So you're thinking the person 'he thought he recognized' is not himself then, but someone else, continuing the cycle, in this case? And if so, would he recognize him?

No, not at all. It's himself, seen by himself, and enabled by a lack of the temporal and logistical restrictions of Space-Time.

Edit: I don't see it as Time Travel. I see him seeing himself in real time. The normal rules of time and distance don't apply in the place where he has landed, and after he has had the experience of becoming the warlord figure that experience had taught him to abhor, and having seen the dead end which it led to, he sees his own arrival on the mountain side, and he rejects the choice which he had previously made when he arrived and was acclaimed a savior. This results in his removal from this new world and presumably a return to his world. Though the same man, he sees the disillusioned warlord retreating up the mountainside, and though it seems he is watching from a distance, the circular universe allows him to actually watch himself, almost like an out-of-body experience.

The song is ultimately a morality play which uses the circular universe as a device upon which to frame the play.

[The Gak Omek]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbQvfmtGS5k

[Trane]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8UqOIROpo8

[Kai]

I always figured that was about travelling to another planet at faster than light speed (or at least very close to light speed) and dealing with the affects of time dilation. I could be way off though.


Yes, I think the idea is that they travel to stars at supraluminal speeds, thinking that centuries will pass on Earth while they are still happily whizzing along, only a few years older. Instead, they seem to get stuck in some kind of half-existence, outside "normal" spacetime (that's what you get for breaking laws of physics). So in a way, it is about time travel, just not about arriving in any specific time.

[Crystal Plumage]

Ayreon's The Final Experiment comes to mind.

[Kai]

Ayreon's The Final Experiment comes to mind.

The Universal Migrator could qualify as well. The protagonist apparently doesn't physically move to another time, but does visit past lives and eras via hypnosis.