As long term readers of this project might remember, during the divergence of Yes in the early nineties, when Chris Squire said “No” to Jon Anderson’s use of the band name
Yes
forcing the creation of the eponymous Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe (and later the creation of Anderson Rabin Wakeman (ffs!)), Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford, Rick “Keyboard Wizard” Wakeman and Steve “Carpet” Howe got together with Tony Levin, released an album and went on a world tour entitled An Evening of Yes Music. Incas Valley is the bootleg of one of those shows.
I remember being excited at the prospect of Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe touring the UK with their show and hoped that I would be granted permission from my parents to go to their gig, the closest to me at the time was in Birmingham. Sadly, my olds decreed that 16 was too young to go to Birmingham to see a rock band on my own and my older brothers couldn’t care less about their younger brother’s musical development so didn’t offer to take me. Instead one recorded onto a cassette a BBC radio broadcast of the gig instead so I had to make do with that.
Many years later I discovered the Incas Valley bootleg on a binary newsgroup and it was pretty much the same set but with extras. So now, to relive that experience, I often play Incas Valley on my stereo in the kitchen while I charge myself £40 to sit in the loft and pretend I’m in the Birmingham Arena. Win!
Incantations is Oldfield’s fourth album following Ommadawn and precedes Exposed. Musically, this album features themes and motifs that are repeatedly used throughout the four sides accompanied by Oldfield’s stylistically familiar circle of fifths. Through his guitar wankery, his use of choral and a folksy solo by his singer du jour, Steeleye Span’s Maddy Prior (doing a really good impression of 
The soundtrack for the 1993 film In the Name of the Father about the Guildford pub bombings of 1974.
I first learned about King Crimson following the amusing Bill Bailey fronted Channel 4 docu-countdown-show Top Ten Prog which was broadcast at the height of the prog revival of the late nineties/early noughties.
Tess Don’t Tell was the first song I ever heard from this, Ivy’s fifth studio album. I forget where it was but suspect that it was on a random “Music you might like” playlist from the earlier days of Last.FM before it was bought by Spotify and ruined. Of course having a band name like Ivy meant having to use hardcore advanced Googlefu so that Ivy, the American band, came up in searches instead of what other monstrosities came up instead.
We’ve seen 
Mrs Gnomepants V1.0 is the keeper of this album of which I have a digital rip. Weirdly, and possibly because of you know “internet downloading”, I appear to have a fusion of two versions of this album: the original 1998 CD rip and the 2003 Special Edition.
When she’s not wailing away hauntingly with Brendan Perry and the rest of Dead Can Dance, Lisa Gerrard likes to loan her distinctive siren call to other atmospheric music makers like Irish composer Patrick Cassidy (Hannibal {2001} and Salem’s Lot {2004}).
Not one of those CDs that you might find in an incense smelling floaty vagina new age shop in Avebury or Glastonbury but not far off.
This is the Sugarplum Fairies’ fifth album following 
This, it has to be said, is quite possibly the album that has been the most influential in my life. From as young as 11 years old, when introduced to the album by my brother who had won it in a competition, to my teen years where Shitbag Pulling and I would sit around his piano and try to deconstruct its intricacies and beyond into my late twenties, thirties and present day. Not a period of my life has gone by without something being connected or linked to this album.
Since rediscovering this in my collection, I have listened to it nearly every day since. It’s curious how the modern way seems to be more playlist orientated than album driven. As an exercise, I listened to the first album, Renaissance, this album, Illusion, and the following three albums, Prologue, Ashes are Burning and Turn of the Cards, in effect the first 5 albums by the band, to see if I could pinpoint something groundbreaking. I couldn’t but it was fun. But this Renaissance exercise has shown me how important music appreciation skills are in the full enjoyment of music by artists and appreciation of how sound develops over time.
Often seen as the quintessential gay album of the nineties, I was gifted If You’re Feeling Sinister by old gay pal Gay Jamie who, himself, had obtained it during the Great Internet Download Free-For-All of the mid to late 1990s.
The thing with Canterbury scene folk music is it is as incestuous as progressive rock in that band members swap around like couples swap partners at a swingers party. Indeed, along with the band members, so also comes a very distinctive sound that pervades the music like the sort of odour that lingers inside a musty old caravan. Moreover, Canterbury scene bands blur the prog rock/folk boundaries and it is often difficult to pigeonhole your selected band into the correct genre.
Experimental weird shit from American weird shit music makers Life Towards Twilight.
When this album was released back in 2000, the internet as we know it today was still in its fledgeling state. Websites were mostly created and owned by actual people rather than by corporations and users actually had to seek out their news rather than have it shown to them if an algorithm deigned to do so. As a result, I was only aware it had been released because I saw it while I was browsing the CD racks in HMV.
Trying to cash in on the popularity of grumpy skater chick Avril Lavigne, music execs yoink another young lady with attitude into the limelight. That lady was Michelle Branch.
Stegzy's Music Project 