09PROGRESSIVE ROCK
Long-form rock that borrowed structure from classical music and studio craft from Pink Floyd
WHAT IT IS / WHEN
Prog crystallised in Britain in 1969 with King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King: odd time signatures, suite-length pieces, Mellotrons, and lyrics that took themselves seriously. Punk buried it commercially by 1977; it returned in the 1990s through a quieter, darker strain — Porcupine Tree, Anathema, later Steven Wilson solo — that swapped the fantasy imagery for depression, suburbia and surveillance.
SIGNIFICANT ARTISTS
King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Rush, Camel. The modern lineage runs through Porcupine Tree (Steven Wilson's project, which began in 1987 as a fake band with an invented backstory), Opeth, Riverside, Leprous and Tool. "Trains" comes from In Absentia (2002), the album where drummer Gavin Harrison joined and the band pivoted toward heavier, Meshuggah-influenced riffing.
TRIVIA
"Trains" hides a banjo breakdown and a handclap section in the middle of what is otherwise a melancholy acoustic-to-heavy song — Wilson has said the album was built to be accessible on the surface and strange underneath. Wilson has since become the go-to 5.1/Atmos remix engineer for the entire prog canon: King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Yes, Tears for Fears and XTC catalogues have all passed through his desk.
SONIC SIGNATURE
Dynamic range is the whole point — verses at whisper level, choruses with layered vocal harmony and saturated guitar, and long instrumental middles. Acoustic guitar recorded close and dry, drums recorded in a real room with audible cymbal decay, and a deliberately wide stereo field where guitars sit hard left/right and vocals dead centre.
KEY GEAR
Classic era: Mellotron M400, Hammond B3 through a Leslie, Moog Minimoog, Rickenbacker bass. Porcupine Tree era: PRS and Fender guitars, Mesa/Boogie amps, an actual Mellotron plus Roland/Korg pads, Gretsch drums, and analogue-tape-emulation on the mix bus. Wilson is a public sceptic of loudness-war mastering and prints his records quiet.
RATIONALE & PRODUCTION
Prog is arranged before it is recorded — parts are written to interlock rather than jammed. In Absentia was tracked at Avatar Studios in New York with the drums given a large live room, which is why the 2017 remaster reads as spacious rather than compressed. The remaster exists because the original CD masters were squashed by 2002 standards; the reissue restores 6–8 dB of headroom.
TRACKS IN THIS GENRE
Each control plays a ten-second excerpt of the track, taken from its catalogue preview clip.
- Trains - 2017 RemasterPorcupine Tree
- Blackest Eyes - 2017 RemasterPorcupine Tree
- The Sound Of Muzak - 2017 RemasterPorcupine Tree
- Welcome To The Machine - 2011 RemasterPink Floyd
- Eye In The SkyThe Alan Parsons Project
- Old and WiseThe Alan Parsons Project
- TimePink Floyd