What album took the biggest leap as far as prog as you knew it?

[JKL2000]

That is, in your prog-listening life, which album bridged the biggest gap or made the largest leap between what you understood as prog and what you saw prog also could be? So it doesn't have to be what you now think is the most mindblowing prog album, nor does it have to have been your introduction to a new sub-genre. Maybe the best way to put it is, "what album impressed you the most after you were already into prog? Doesn't need to be your favorite album; don't think about it too hard. And it shouldn't be your first prog album, because then it could be Asia or something and still do it, right? However, let's not be genre snobs, it could theoretically be from most any sub-genre.

For me it has to be KC's "Discipline." I think partly because I'd been spending a lot of time listening to ItCotCK a lot at the time, then I went and saw KC on the Discipline tour without having heard the album yet and was blown away. So the next day I bought the album, skipped all my college classes, and just listened to it all day. It was very different from the other prog I'd heard! I guess I hadn't listened to League of Gentlemen yet at that point. I've still never listened to Gamelon music, so I don't really know what that sounds like either. So Discipline was wholly new. I'd also never heard Belew before. I don't think I was even aware of Tony Levin yet!

[battema]

I think it would be Deus Ex Machina's "Da Republica" for me. I think I read a review in Expose, got a copy from (I think) Laser's Edge when it was still newly-released. That was the album that draws the sharpest line between who I was ("Oh yeah, I love all prog...Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, even the edgier stuff like Marillion or Ozric Tentacles") to who I started to become.

Not that the album is THAT radical in the larger scheme of things, but I think it got me started. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it

[Steve F.]

My big gamechanger albums by decade

1970s : first Univers Zero
1980s : Mahamoud Ahmed ‘Ere Mela Mela’
1990s : Don Caballero ‘What Burns Never Returns’
2000s : Alec K. Redfearn and The Eyesores “The Quiet Room”

None of these are my favorite albums of the decade, but they are the ones that made me think the most about what I liked in music or was hoping to hear more of.

Whether these are prog or not and fit your criteria is your call.

[JKL2000]

I think it would be Deus Ex Machina's "Da Republica" for me. I think I read a review in Expose, got a copy from (I think) Laser's Edge when it was still newly-released. That was the album that draws the sharpest line between who I was ("Oh yeah, I love all prog...Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, even the edgier stuff like Marillion or Ozric Tentacles") to who I started to become.

Not that the album is THAT radical in the larger scheme of things, but I think it got me started. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it

I remember reading the write up of their debut in the GEPR and being really intrigued. The writer seemed to be describing it as a sort of prog Led Zeppelin! I wasn't completely convinced by it when I got it, but then I remember getting Da Republica when that came out a while after. I need to listen to that earlier stuff again.

My big gamechanger albums by decade

1970s : first Univers Zero
1980s : Mahamoud Ahmed ‘Ere Mela Mela’
1990s : Don Caballero ‘What Burns Never Returns’
2000s : Alec K. Redfearn and The Eyesores “The Quiet Room”

None of these are my favorite albums of the decade, but they are the ones that made me think the most about what I liked in music or was hoping to hear more of.

Whether these are prog or not and fit your criteria is your call.

It's YOUR criteria!

[Steve F.]

^^^^^

‘A sort of prog Led Zeppelin’ definitely fits certain aspects (imo) of De Republica!

[battema]

^^^^^

‘A sort of prog Led Zeppelin’ definitely fits certain aspects (imo) of De Republica!

I wouldn't disagree with that

[Steve F.]

I wouldn't disagree with that

Especially the guitar.....

[Sputnik]

Excellent question!

For me, it's easily Gentle Giant's The Power and the Glory (though it could have been any album from Acquiring the Taste through Interview, it just happens Power and the Glory was the first I heard). I was into most of the big-name Brit bands, but was always a bit hesitant when things got a bit too "out there." It wasn't until 1991 or so when I took a chance on a used copy of Power and the Glory that it opened my eyes to "dissonance done right." Once I got my ears around this, bands like AREA, Thinking Plague, Miriodor, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Henry Cow, VDGG, and a host of others entered my musical sphere.

I still have my limits with this kind of stuff and don't like it all, but I own and enjoy a fair bit of stuff that is a bit more tonally "out." And I have The Power and the Glory to thank for that. The album definitely upped my game, comparable only to discovering Yes and ELP, the bands I loved most from my late 1970s period of discovery, in terms of broadening my musical horizons.

Bill

[Dana5140]

For me, hearing the double record Magma Live, before I had any idea who they were, completely transformed my life and showed me how rhythm and intensity could be marshaled to phenomenal power. 45 years later nothing has changed that.

I have heard this hundreds of times, if not thousands:

[Proghound]

Lark's Tongue in Aspic, when it came out...it was out there, but I was inspired. Though i agree with GG, Power and the Glory, and Genesis SEBTP each were my first for both bands and eye openers. Good time to be growing up musically anyway!

[moecurlythanu]

Not really sure there is one. I guess I might say Van Der Graaf Generator -Godbluff, because it came pretty early on for me, and it has a level of intensity that the other stuff I listened to didn't match.

[JKL2000]

^^^^^

‘A sort of prog Led Zeppelin’ definitely fits certain aspects (imo) of De Republica!

Led Zeppoli

[JKL2000]

Not really sure there is one. I guess I might say Van Der Graaf Generator -Godbluff, because it came pretty early on for me, and it has a level of intensity that the other stuff I listened to didn't match.

When I first listened to VDGG it was Pawn Hearts, and it was too soon! I wasn't ready for it, and I reacted like a baby sucking a lemon. Later on, I got into it and a lot more VDGG. I listened to Pawn Hearts a few months ago and it actually seemed kind of tame!

[jazz2896]

I think Pawn Hearts tuned my ears to the usage of dissonance for dissonance' sake, but hearing Magma's Wurdah Itah is what opened the gate to the endless possibilities of music for me. The fact that it was kind of rock, kind of classical, kind of jazz, but also entirely it's own thing blew my mind and basically created a pathway for me to enjoy most "left field" music.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[loshammeros]

I thank the late great Frank Zappa for planting the seed.

[Kcrimso]

I think the biggest game-changer for me was Legend (1973) by Henry Cow. Even if the game changed for my quite slowly. I got Legend on CD maybe something like 1997 and was immediately intrigued by it. Love for it and toward avant-prog generally however developed more slowly and was a long long process. Nowadays Henry Cow is maybe my THE favourite group and avant-prog my favourite "sub-genre" of prog.

[thedunno]

Absolutely 'Cardiacs - A little man, a house and the whole world window' for me.

When this album came i was still listening to neo-prog bands like Marillion, IQ, Pendragon, Pallas and Twelfth Night.
When I heared Cardiacs it was a bit of a shock. I wasnt even sure if I liked it or not but there was this 'demonic' attraction that kept calling me back.

It was the start of the discovery of the darker and more obscure edges of prog.

[spacefreak]

ART ZOYD "Phase IV" back in 1983.


PS. I was already familiar with Van der Graaf, Magma and the Residents.

[Mascodagama]

There are a few I could pick but let's say Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden. That was certainly one that changed my outlook on music. Thirty-two years ago, bloody hell.

[proggy_jazzer]

Since I started my prog listening with CttE, Supper's Ready, SaBB, and other acknowledged touchstones, I'm not sure where I would have gone from there. Discipline is a good call, as it was decidedly different yet still felt "in the tradition". The european music mentioned by several posters above was way off my radar; no doubt it would have had an effect if I'd been exposed. Likewise with Cardiacs, whom I wasn't aware of until very recently For me, though, after a two-decade detour from the prog road through the lands of classical and jazz where I lived almost exclusively, I was turned on to Deadwing, and I clearly remember thinking "...so this is where the prog I grew up on has gone!". I loved it immediately, and in addition to re-igniting my love for classic prog it pointed me in new directions for listening, and not long afterwards to Progressive Ears, where I've been ever since.

[arturs]

1981: Discipline, definitely. Gamelan sounds, polyrhythms.
1990: Can, I started buying their CD's after reading an article about them and the reissues. A very different form of prog, based on rhythm rather than virtuosity. More Krautrock followed. Neu!, Faust et al.
2000s: Henry Cow. Bought Leg End in early 1990s. Didn't do too much for me. Not until the boxes did I really understand what they were all about. Improvisation in prog.
Also Nik Bartsch. Basically a brand new sub-genre. Not prog, not jazz, but this opened up a new musical world as well.

Great thread BTW.

[Poisoned Youth]

Believe it or not, it was Spock’s Beard - The Light. I was a teen in the 80s and went to college in the late 80s. While very into music, it was mostly 80s popular music and classic rock, but always had a love for Yes etc. Between ‘93-96, that when I was really beginning to understand what prog was and went to seek out the classics. Technically I could say that it was the ‘93 King Crimson comp that really was the first time I remember being “thrown off” by what I heard. I bought that because of Wetton and Yes connections. But it didn’t really send me down a path.

But it was when a friend and I were exploring new music that we came across SB and was really attracted to their debut album, with references I could relate to, but going out of their way to “prog things up”. That album served as a springboard, and within a year I was pretty obsessed with seeking out the possibilities. I got really into both the classics, 70s Italian, and 90s music.

The next time was probably Soft Machine, which really got me into jazz rock - and later jazz. And opening up to jazz was the biggest rabbit hole ever.

[Scrotum Scissor]

Winter Songs by Art Bears.

Interestingly, I was already into Zappa/Mothers, Beefheart and The Residents. But somehow "realizing" Winter Songs basically changed everything I ever thought I knew and figured about progression, development, evolution and transcendence within the confines of rock music. I got into HCow and UZero only -after- I'd heard the AB, and by then there was no dilemma in doing so. I could also return to a lot of more challenging and "out" progressive rock I'd already discovered but previously saw myself unable to handle, like GGiant, VdGG, Hatfield and the first four Softs, Can, AreA and especially Magma.

Finding out about post- and math-rock in the 90s got me going with that, as did the whole endeavour of Japanoise, the Czech underground scene, avant-folk, COMA (5uu's, Motor Totemist Guild, Thinking Plague, U Totem etc.), tech-metal and so on.

[chalkpie]

Zappa.

I was familiar with the big 5 or whatever but I couldn't believe my ears when I heard FZ for the first time (in college). Still don't, really.

[NogbadTheBad]

Great question Jed.

I've had a few of these moments and clearly from the posts so far I share a number bands/albums as aha moments, don't think I can break them down by decade like Steve but here they are:-

King Crimson - Larks Tongues In Aspic
In my teens I was very much a Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Camel, ELP type fan. I had and liked King Crimson - ITCOTCK but when I heard Larks Tongues In Aspic and that staccato chopping guitar my head spun. Opened up whole new areas of exploration.

Univers Zero - Ceux Du Dehors
Not sure who introduced it to me, it's was essentially the album that triggered the exploration all things Avant and Chamber Rock. It was early in my participation in PE & PA.

Upsilon Acrux - Live At Cuneifest
Bit of a cheat as it was a live performance by a band I'd never heard and could not understand at all what they were doing on stage, I was pretty stunned the whole of their show. Took a while to start getting it but it triggered an interest in that whole highly rehearsed dissonant complex brutal music.

Cardiacs - Sing To God
Had never heard a band so completely own the punk prog aesthetic, so different from everything else, opened up a whole new area for exploration.