1. Tunderground (Romania) – Miirtil
Tunderground are a phenomenal space prog world music fusion band from Csikszereda in Transylvania, Romania. This album is an epic journey of over 70 minutes over FIVE tracks that takes you through a beautiful instrumental canvas of traditional eastern folk rhythms, gypsy music and mind-melting space music. Instrumentation includes, three keyboards, flute, Jew’s harp, violin, guitar and the most insane rhythm section you can imagine.
2. Agent Fresco (Iceland) – A Long Time Listening
This Icelandic quartet have created a masterpiece work of space prog combined with jazz, hip hop, and rock fusion. It’s a multi-dimensional piece of work that expands the boundaries of how prog can be perceived, a must listen!
3. Sonar (Hungary) – On Air
From Budapest, Hungary, SoNaR are instrumental space groovers who have captured a three dimensional album that pricks your ears with fresh sounds and guitar layers that create aural landscapes for the mind. It’s a crazy electro guitar mesh of insanity.
4. Meniscus (Australia) – War of Currents
Sydney’s cinematic art-rock band Meniscus have created what feels like a deeply personal palette of sounds that delves deep into the psyche, simply elevating the listener to the astral plane. Not only a work of art, but truly a piece that allows you to travel beyond this world without moving an inch of your material body.
5. El Bicho (Spain) – Dos
The cover of this album is a blue flamenco alien woman floating in space and beautifully sums up this album. The opening track La Toba starts with a Sitar that slowly delves into gentle but spacy acoustic flamenco guitar work before the flutes kick in and somehow the album takes you on a partially intergalactic journey of the human heart. The Spanish vocals explore themes of the honesty of the human heart in the context of the wider universe in such a personal and emotional manner, that the record impacts you. An album that cannot be replicated!
