It’s early June when Prog video-calls Voyager frontman Danny Estrin, guitarist Simone Dow and bassist/singer Alex Canion, and the trio are midway through being smashed back into reality. This time last month, the Perth-based band (rounded out by drummer Ashley Doodkorte and Dow’s co-guitarist Scott Kay) were jet-setting in luxury. They were traipsing across Europe and getting interviewed by countless glossy magazines, all part of the run-up to them representing Australia to more than 160 million TV viewers live at the Eurovision Song Contest. Now they’re back home – and getting hammered by a storm so violent that it routinely wipes out their internet connection and freaks out Canion’s dog, Seamus.
“We played the WA Day festival [in Perth] yesterday,” Dow tells us, camera off to put less stress on the struggling WiFi, “and our booking agent sent us a video of the backstage area after we left. You should have seen the flooding! It was insane!”
Although Mother Nature is trying to quite literally rain on their parade, there’s no denying that Voyager became progressive music’s newest superstars this spring. Eurovision is touted worldwide as an international celebration of top-shelf songwriting (despite it frequently showcasing the most OTT pop possible) – and the synthprog quintet had been chasing that rainbow from the moment Australia joined, in 2015. They came tantalisingly close with their pop-prog anthem Dreamer in 2022, finishing second in Eurovision: Australia Decides, the nationally televised competition to select the country’s representative. This year, they finally got sent to the semi-finals when they were held in Liverpool, thanks to the electrorock singalong of Promise.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Issue 142 من Prog.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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JAKKO M JAKSZYK
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Fourth Dimension
The stock of melodic Northumberland-based proggers Stuckfish has been rising since they formed six years ago. Their fourth studio album, Stuckfish IV, represents an important watershed in the band's musical evolution. Co-founders Adrian Fisher and Phil Stuckey tell Prog about the diverse influences that have helped to shape it.
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We've Not Been Expecting You
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FAR HORIZONS AND PANORAMIC AMBITIONS
Dutch five-piece Lesoir have been steadily gathering momentum over the last 15 years, and they hope to build on that with their latest release, Push Back The Horizon. Vocalist/ instrumentalist Maartje Meessen and guitarist Ingo Dassen discuss the creation of their sixth album, working with Muse's production team, and their dream of bringing their intricate music to new audiences.
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Never meet your heroes, or so the saying goes, but Opeth have had a blast working with Ian Anderson on their latest, The Last Will And Testament. Bandleader Mikael Åkerfeldt and guitarist Fredrik Åkesson discuss the band's proggiest album to date, the return of the growl and why blood isn't always thicker than water.
