Ultimate musical improvisation/creativity

[Carl-Richard]

The first time I've heard "progressive deathcore", i.e. Knocked Loose sound merged with prog noodling and even saxophone:

 

Even when simply mixing genres, I think you sometimes find interesting divergent gems popping up that you wouldn't have found otherwise.

[Guest Nilsi]

8 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

The first time I've heard "progressive deathcore", i.e. Knocked Loose sound merged with prog noodling and even saxophone:

 

Even when simply mixing genres, I think you sometimes find interesting divergent gems popping up that you wouldn't have found otherwise.

Incidentally, one of my favorite metal records - if you can even call it that; it’s more post-metal, really - also employs saxophone, but more in the spirit of no wave or late John Coltrane than anything prog-related.

Honestly, I don’t like progressive rock all that much. It feels too modern in the sense that it’s always trying to weave some grand narrative and impose coherence on all these disparate parts. Whereas something like no wave or other avant-garde music embraces the gap - the rupture that ultimately can’t be resolved.

[Carl-Richard]

On 28.6.2025 at 8:19 PM, Nilsi said:

By the way, the second video you sent doesn’t seem to load on my end.

Does it load now? 3:45 is when the monstrocity of a riff starts (and again, the one after at 4:16 too is a monstrocity). The time starts a bit before where you get the buildup leading to it. I couldn't let that one slide 😤

 

Edited July 14 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

On 29.6.2025 at 11:59 AM, Nilsi said:

Incidentally, one of my favorite metal records - if you can even call it that; it’s more post-metal, really - also employs saxophone, but more in the spirit of no wave or late John Coltrane than anything prog-related.

Honestly, I don’t like progressive rock all that much. It feels too modern in the sense that it’s always trying to weave some grand narrative and impose coherence on all these disparate parts. Whereas something like no wave or other avant-garde music embraces the gap - the rupture that ultimately can’t be resolved.

Some kinds of music play on innovation and surprise, while other play on refining and maximizing specific well-established qualities. For example, Freddie Mercury's voice, while mostly expressed in a "classic" rock format, absolutely blows the quality of "rock vocals" out of the water.

Progressive rock for me is somewhere in the middle. You have the deep loyalty and precise refining of the rock format but also elements of innovation. And that produces a very unique balance of refinement and familiarity sprinkled in with surprise and idiosyncrasy. Someone like Gentle Giant is arguably an example of pushing more strongly in the direction of innovation.

But this all kinda depends on the time horizon you're viewing it from. Because you can also take progressive rock as its own format and refine that again, which is arguably what someone like Steven Wilson has done (he is not coincidentally a renowned audio engineer, so much so that he has gotten to remix the old music of bands like Yes and Jethro Tull).

Edited July 14 by Carl-Richard