Hip-Hop and DJ Manchester mixer Andy Votel is no stranger to the obscure world of Prog, Folk, Krautrock, and the Brazilian Rock sound of Tropicalia. He is a true hero with his Mix CDs including Welsh Rare Beats 1 & 2, Folk is not a Four Letter Words 1 & 2, VERTIGO MIXED, Songs in the Key of Death, One Nation Under a Grave, and the 2005 compilation Prog is not a Four Letter Word. Listening to this Prog compilation, is like traveling to various countries around the globe and discovering various life-forms among the prog genre like you’ve never heard it before.

Whenever you think of Prog, you think of; Yes, ELP, Genesis, and King Crimson to name a few. But listening to this CD, you ain’t going to hear a rock opera version of Dungeons and Dragons perfomed by keyboard maestro Rick Wakeman, you are about to hear these obscure bands from the beginning of the 1970’s who never hit the mainstream pap audiences for Arena and Dinosaur stadiums to Madison Square Garden. Some of these bands have a cult following for a sunny side-up morning version of prog breakfast.

The Canterbury trio version of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Egg make a surprise appearance on the compilation by paying homage to their hero Johann Sebastian Bach on their classical rock take of Fugue in D Minor. It would have sounded great in Carnegie Hall or at any Coliseums, but Egg never saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

To get into the Prog universe, Andy Votel says in the sleeve notes “This is prog by default. Unique freaks who would push the boundaries of popular music to its fragile limits reinventing rock and roll out of necessity rather than free design” Which means in about 45 minutes, you are about to enter the weird experimental music that you are about to aboard the giant spaceship as the bands take you to bizarre worlds.

Some of the bands from the hey day of the 1970s wouldn’t cross the finish line from the Prog juggernauts. A perfect example is Korean’s San Ul Lim who put a garage rock sound by paying homage to the Japanese psychedelic proto-punk sound of The Mops meets Moby Grape meets Floyd meets The Doors with Frustration. But the Turkish Rock scene is the ultimate choice such as the proto-rap/middle eastern rock sound of the late Baris Manco’s Lambaya Puf De and hard rocker’s 3 Hur-El’s Omur Biter Yol Bimez which are perfect for some sexy belly dancing in Turkey to get the girls dancing like crazy.

The Jazz/Space Fusion scene would be a perfect concept to fly to the milky way. French’s version of Tangerine Dream meets Starcastle, Visitors self-titled track, an avant-garde space sound with heavy bass lines and pounding drums plus some sinister violins coming in the Outer Limits while Phillipe Besombes goes funky with his spaceship on Hache 06 from the Libra soundtrack album. It is superb, but fucking amazing!

The Krautrock genre shows up to pay tribute to Can, Amon Duul II, German Oak, Eulenspygel, and Amon Duul I & II with the cosmic sound of german’s Embryo’s take on the cosmic rock sound of the futuristic views on The Music of Today. The middle-eastern music comes back into the picture again with Jean-Claude Vannier doing his tribute on the classical music scene by putting the sound of Bulgarian and Arabic experimental influences on Le Roi Des Mouches while the Yugoslavian version of Jethro Tull’s heavy flute rock sound of Drugi Nacin’s Zuit List rides up the roller coaster.

And while Miles Davis, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Return to Forever started the wagon rolling with the Fusion-era, the party just got started with more Eggs cooking on the frying pan into the firing line. The soulful Bass lines and Spanish guitar sounds on the Ultimate Psychedelic trip of Czechslovakian’s Martin Kratochvil and Jazz Q’s Toledo in a spacey funky version of Malaguena.

Prog is not a four letter Word is almost the Prog Nuggets of underground music. For Votel, it looks like the bands were from different planets of the solar system to come to Earth and Jam together from Dusk till Dawn and it keeps on truckin’

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