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WORK TITLE: Reinventing Pink Floyd
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 12/5/1963
WEBSITE: http://blog.musoscribe.com/index.php/welcome/
CITY: Asheville
STATE: NC
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2017057635
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Kopp, Bill, 1963-
Birth date: 19631215
Field of activity: Music
Profession or occupation:
Music journalists
Found in: Reinventing Pink Floyd, 2018: t.p. (Bill Kopp) ecip data
(b. 12/15/1963; music enthusiast, musician, collector,
and-since the 1990s-music journalist; writing has been
featured in music magazines including Bass Guitar,
Record Collector, Prog and Shindig! (all in Great
Britain), as well as Billboard, Electronic Musician,
Goldmine, Trouser Press, Ugly Things and more than a
dozen alternative weekly newspapers)
Associated language:
eng
================================================================================
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PERSONAL
Born December 5, 1963; married.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist, music enthusiast, musician, collector. Background in marketing and advertising; Skope, editor in chief; Spill magazine, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, copy editor; BLURT, jazz desk editor and prog editor.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Bass Guitar, Record Collector, Prog and Shingdig!, Billboard, Electronic Musician, Goldmine, Trouser Press, Musoscribe.com, and Ugly Things. Wrote liner notes for CD reissues of albums for Brotherhood, Iron Butterfly, Rick Wakeman, Bobby Lance, Diamond Rio, The Ventures, Edgar Winter, Larry Coryell, Survivor, Ben Folds, Dan Fogelberg, Dave Mason, Julian Adderley.
SIDELIGHTS
Bill Kopp is a journalist, musician, and music history enthusiast with an encyclopedic knowledge of the popular music of the last fifty years. His music collection contains more than 6,000 albums. Kopp has interviewed hundreds of musical artists, reported on numerous music festivals, and written articles about music and musicians for many publications, including Billboard, Bass Guitar, and Ugly Things. He is also a copy editor for Spill magazine and the jazz desk editor and prog editor at BLURT.
In 2018 Kopp published Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to the Dark Side of the Moon. Following the 1968 departure of lead singer and guitarist Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd, the band reinvented itself and went on to produce landmark albums that still resonate today. Providing a history of the band from 1968 through the release of the “Dark Side of the Moon” album in 1973, Kopp highlights key moments with the band, innovations and musical breakthroughs, detailed evaluations of songs, and the creative development of the band members. The band experienced failed experiments and musical diversions into electronic experiments and film soundtracks but also developed its distinctive musical identity and influential conceptual albums. Kopp also explains how Dark Side of the Moon was created to be a unified work through live performances and studio sessions. Writing in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer noted how Kopp demonstrates succinct research into Pink Floyd’s work and influence and concluded that “Kopp’s smart and well-researched history is a welcome addition to the Pink Floyd library.”
Noting how lucky the band was that their label did not abandon them after the loss of their lead singer, Kopp explained in an article by Vincent Harris on the Greenville Journal Online: “The fact that they got to continue when they lost their creative center could only have happened in the ‘60s. Artists were given time to develop a musical personality and develop an audience.” Online at Critical Blast, Dennis Russo lauded Kopp’s extensive knowledge of the band and declared: “It is as if he lived all those days one by one with them. The research that must have gone into this undertaking, and being able to put it in order to make it readable, is something indeed.” Russo added: “This book does a nice job of bridging that gap, explaining what went on and how it happened.” In a review on the Write on Music website, Donald Gibson remarked: “Kopp exerts a keen perspective throughout, contextualizing each project by dissecting each one’s artistic direction. … Such explanations never succumb to sounding too technical or abstract for casual fans to appreciate.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, January 29, review of Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to The Dark Side of the Moon, p. 185.
ONLINE
Critical Blast, http://www.criticalblast.com/ (April 30, 2018), Dennis Russo, review of Reinventing Pink Floyd.
Greenville Journal Online (Greenville, NC), https://greenvillejournal.com/ (March 7, 2018), Vincent Harris, “Music Journalist Bill Kopp Chronicles an Overlooked—but Fundamental—Era in Pink Floyd’s History.”
Write on Music, http://www.writeonmusic.com/ (July 9, 2018), Donald Gibson, review of Reinventing Pink Floyd.
About Bill Kopp / Musoscribe
UPDATE: Bill’s first book, Reinventing Pink Floyd, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield in February 2018. It’s currently available for pre-order.
Depending on one’s interest, one is either amazed and entertained or bored to tears with Bill Kopp’s encyclopedic knowledge of the popular music of the last fifty years. A rock/pop music historian, he has amassed a collection of way more than 6,000+ albums, nearly half of those on vinyl.
“Even when I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be a Rock Journalist™. People who have seen the film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity say that John Cusack’s character reminds them of me. I don’t know if that’s meant as a compliment or not.”
In addition to Musoscribe (this site), Bill writes weekly (or nearly every week) for the altweekly Mountain Xpress (Asheville NC). He also writes and/or has written for No Depression, Trouser Press, Ugly Things, WNC Magazine, City Paper (Pittsburgh), Flagpole (Athens), Creative Loafing (Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Charlotte), New City (Chicago), Style Weekly (Richmond VA), Colorado Springs Independent, Metro Silicon Valley (San Jose), The Laurel of Asheville, Brooklyn Paper, Salt Lake City Weekly, Mature Living (Toledo), Bass Guitar (UK), Shindig! Magazine (UK), Record Collector (UK), Goldmine, San Diego Reader, Electronic Musician, Living Blues, Prog Magazine (UK), 60sgaragebands.com, the long-defunct print magazine Skope (where he ran things as Editor-in-Chief for two years), Billboard, Stomp and Stammer, Best Classic Bands, Capital at Play, Tangents Magazine and Jambase.org, among many others. He’s also worked as a copy editor for Spill Magazine (Toronto) and he’s currently the Jazz Desk Editor and Prog Editor at BLURT.
Bill has written liner notes for CD reissues of albums by Brotherhood (a Paul Revere and the Raiders spinoff group), heavy rock giants Iron Butterfly, progressive rock keyboardist Rick Wakeman, Bobby Lance, Diamond Rio, The Ventures, Edgar Winter, Larry Coryell, Survivor, Ben Folds, Dan Fogelberg, and Dave Mason. He’s also authored liner note essays for four reissue albums by jazz legend Julian “Cannonball” Adderley.
Bill has interviewed and written features on hundreds of musical artists. He’s reported on the Bonnaroo, Moogfest, Hopscotch, YepRoc 15, Dig!, Ponderosa Stomp, Big Ears, Americana Music Association, Mountain Oasis, Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival, Asheville Electro Music Fest, San Jose Jazz Fests, Lollapalooza and Echo Project festivals, and written about consumer products including the Microsoft Zune, Rock Band: The Game and (huff, puff…) many others.
He lives in a nearly century-old house in Asheville, NC with his wife, two cats, that mountain of vinyl, and way, way, way too many synthesizers and guitars.
About the Author
Bill Kopp is a lifelong music enthusiast, musician, collector, and – since the 1990s – music journalist. His writing has been featured in music magazines including Bass Guitar, Record Collector, Prog and Shindig! (all in Great Britain), as well as Billboard, Electronic Musician, Goldmine, Trouser Press, Ugly Things and more than a dozen alternative weekly newspapers. He is the Jazz Desk Editor and Prog Editor at BLURT online, and has written liner note essays for nearly 20 albums, including titles by Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Larry Coryell, Edgar Winter, Rick Wakeman, The Ventures, Dave Mason and Iron Butterfly.
He has interviewed several hundred musicians and music industry figures of note, and his musoscribe.com blog has featured new content – thousands of music reviews, essays, interviews and features – every business day since 2009. He lives in a nearly century-old house in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife, two cats, many thousands of vinyl records, and perhaps too many synthesizers and guitars. He's active on social media on Facebook and Twitter at @the_musoscribe and @reinvpinkfloyd.
Available now, Reinventing Pink Floyd is Bill Kopp's first book, published worldwide by Rowman & Littlefield.
Music journalist Bill Kopp chronicles an overlooked — but fundamental — era in Pink Floyd’s history
By
Vincent Harris -
Mar 7, 2018
There’s a time-honored tradition when it comes to the music of Pink Floyd, at least there is for many music fans. You start with the band’s multimillion-selling 1973 concept-album masterpiece, “The Dark Side of the Moon,” and move forward, taking in 1975’s “Wish You Were Here,” 1977’s “Animals,” 1979’s “The Wall,” and so forth. After that, if you’ve studied the band’s history at all, you might go back and check out its 1967 debut album, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” released before the group’s main songwriter and guitarist Syd Barrett began suffering from a gradual mental breakdown that would eventually drive him from the band.
But there’s a period between 1969 and 1973 that doesn’t get nearly as much attention, a period when Pink Floyd — bassist Roger Waters, drummer Nick Mason, keyboardist Rick Wright, and new guitarist David Gilmour — had to recover from the loss of their leader and forge their own way forward. That era consisted of six albums, multiple abandoned or fully realized concepts, and the band’s gradual blend of the psychedelic pop of its early days and a more experimental, wide-screen sound that stretched its ideas and songs to album-length epics.
It is that era that Asheville, N.C., music journalist and author Bill Kopp studies in his new book, “Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to The Dark Side of the Moon.” Kopp, who’s been published in “Billboard,” “Trouser Press,” and many other music periodicals and written liner notes for 20 albums, took the opposite path than most after hearing “Dark Side.”
“I was a kid when it came out, and once I heard that I was hungry for more,” Kopp says. “I wondered, ‘What else is out there?’ So as ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘Animals’ and ‘The Wall’ came out, I was working my way backwards.”
What Kopp found in albums like “A Saucerful of Secrets” and “Atom Heart Mother” was the roots of what would eventually become an era-defining album.
“I really feel like with the benefit of hindsight that the seeds that made ‘Dark Side’ special were planted in those intervening years,” he says.
But the secret to the best-selling works that Pink Floyd would create in the 1970s didn’t just come from the band’s studio work, and Kopp has plenty of bootleg live shows to prove it.
“I have hundreds of Floyd shows going back to 1967,” he says. “There’s a tour they did performing two pieces called ‘The Man’ and ‘The Journey’ in 1969. Those were loosely conceptual works designed for the stage, with narratives from beginning to end. That’s a real prototype for what they would use on ‘Dark Side.’”
Kopp, who will be reading from and signing copies of “Reinventing Pink Floyd” at Fiction Addiction in Greenville on Saturday, says these narrative works weren’t the result of a specific vision the band had; they were motivated more by uncertainty than anything else.
“If you listen to the first few things they did in the wake of Syd’s leaving, they weren’t too good,” Kopp says with a laugh. “They were self-conscious attempts to run with the vibe that Syd had developed, and it just didn’t suit them. So they began fumbling their way forward. It’s also worth pointing out that in any other era, if you were a band signed to a major label and your lead person is gone, your label wouldn’t be nurturing you. They wouldn’t say, ‘Here’s some money and some more time; go make another album.’ They’d say, ‘Hit the street; you’re fired!’ The fact that they got to continue when they lost their creative center could only have happened in the ’60s. Artists were given time to develop a musical personality and develop an audience.”
Ultimately, Kopp says the band found some of its direction in its soundtrack work, on albums like “More” and “Obscured by Clouds,” and partially through the gifts of David Gilmour’s vocals and guitar.
“For lack of a more delicate way to put it, they were writing to order,” he says. “The director would say, ‘I need a really pounding, hard-rock song for this scene,’ or ‘I need something atmospheric.’ That gave them a prompt. They were the sort of people who worked well under those conditions.”
As for Gilmour, “He was incredibly important,” Kopp says. “It’s impossible to imagine them being anything like they were without David Gilmour. He was not a lyricist, but his strength was as a guitarist and most importantly in his voice. It’s unmistakable and it sends shivers down your spine.”
Bill Kopp
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Bio
Depending on one's interest, one is either amazed and entertained or bored to tears with Bill Kopp's encyclopedic knowledge of the popular music of the last fifty years. A rock/pop music historian, he has amassed a collection of way more than 6,000+ albums, nearly half of those on vinyl.
Bill has written for the now-defunct Skope (where he ran things as Editor-in-Chief for two years), Billboard, No Depression, Trouser Press, Ugly Things, WNC Magazine, Mountain Xpress, Bass Guitar, Goldmine, Record Collector, Stomp and Stammer and Jambase.org, among others. His work appears almost every week in more than a half-dozen altweeklies across the US.
With a background in marketing and advertising, Bill Kopp got his professional start writing for Trouser Press. He rose through the ranks at Skope Magazine, eventually becoming Editor-in-chief. When that magazine ceased publication, readers and associates encouraged Bill to start a blog. Musoscribe launched in 2009, and has published new content every business day since then. The interviews, essays, and reviews on Musoscribe reflect Bill's keen interest in American musical forms, most notably rock, jazz, and soul. His work features a special emphasis on reissues and vinyl. Bill's work also appears in many other outlets both online and in print. He also researches and authors liner notes for album reissues (nearly 20 so far), and co-produced a reissue of jazz legend Julian "Cannonball" Adderley's final album.
Bill has interviewed and written features on more than 300 music artists. You've heard of most of them.
He's currently working on a couple of book proposals (music-related, of course). He lives in a nearly century-old house in Asheville, NC with his wife, two cats, a vintage motorcycle and way, way, way too many synthesizers.
Bill Kopp
Born April 17, 1962 (age 56)
Rockford, Illinois, United States
Occupation Animator, actor, film and voice director, voice actor, writer
Years active 1981–present
Bill Kopp (born April 17, 1962 in Rockford, Illinois) is an American actor, director, animator, voice actor, and writer.
Contents
1 Career
2 Filmography
2.1 Film
2.2 Television
3 References
4 External links
Career
He studied animation at the California Institute of the Arts. In 1984, he won an Academy Award-Student Film/Animation for Mr. Gloom and in 1985, he won his second Academy Award for Observational Hazard.
Kopp animated the Whammy on the 1980s game show Press Your Luck, and voiced the title character on Nelvana's Eek! The Cat and Kutter in The Terrible Thunderlizards, which he created with Savage Steve Holland. He also voices Tom in the Tom and Jerry films Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars and Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry.[1]
He was also an animator for The Tracey Ullman Show "The Simpsons" shorts, but left after a season.
He created The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show and Mad Jack the Pirate, worked as an executive producer and writer for Toonsylvania, produced and directed the current Tom and Jerry cartoons, wrote Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Incredible Crash Dummies and did the story on two Roger Rabbit Shorts; Tummy Trouble and Roller Coaster Rabbit. Was the writer/director/co-producer on Tales from the Crypt's series finale "The Third Pig".
He is also the director of most of The Twisted Whiskers Show episodes.
Kopp is also a regular on Cartoon Network's Mighty Magiswords providing the voice of Man Fish the Fish Man, a character creator Kyle A. Carrozza developed as a kid for Nintendo Power's then-contest for Robot Masters for the game Mega Man 6. Kopp's animation work, specially Shnookums and Meat, were Kyle's favorite as a kid.
Filmography
Film
Year Film Role Notes
1985 Jac Mac and Rad Boy Go! Rad Boy
Better Off Dead animator
1986 One Crazy Summer character designer
animation supervisor
chief animator
1989 Tummy Trouble story
animator
1990 Roller Coaster Rabbit story
animator
2005 Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars Tom, Press Guy #1 writer
director
voice actor
Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry Tom, Frank writer
director
voice actor
Television
Year Film Role Notes
1987 The Tracey Ullman Show animator
1991–1994 Taz-Mania writer
1992–1997 Eek! The Cat Eek, Pierre creator
writer
narrator
supervising producer
voice actor
1993/1995 The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show creator
writer
producer
voice director
1994 The Baby Huey Show creative consultant
1995–1997 The What-A-Cartoon! Show Yuckie Duck voice actor
1996 Tales from the Crypt writer
director
animation director
character designer
storyboard artist
Episode 7.13: "The Third Pig"
1998 Toonsylvania creator
writer
executive producer
voice director
1998–1999 Mad Jack the Pirate Mad Jack creator
writer
executive producer
casting director
voice director
voice actor
2001 Capertown Cops writer
2002 House of Mouse writer
Episode 3.10: "Humphrey in the House"
2010 'Til Death Dolphin, Whale Episode 4.21: "The Wedding"
The Twisted Whiskers Show Mister Mewser, Jack writer
director
voice actor
2011 Dan Vs. Additional Voices director
2015 Wabbit writer
2016 Mighty Magiswords Man Fish the Fish Man, Eel voice actor
Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to The Dark Side of the Moon
Publishers Weekly. 265.5 (Jan. 29, 2018): p185+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to The Dark Side of the Moon
Bill Kopp. Rowman & Littlefield, $35 (200p)
ISBN 978-1-5381-0827-7
Music journalist Kopp debuts with a succinct look at Pink Floyd's work from 1968 to 1973, focusing on the musical rather than the personal developments that led to the creation of The Dark Side of the Moon. Kopp expertly analyzes how the band developed from the idiosyncratic yet "concise pop songwriting" of its founder Syd Barrett, through a range of "musical excursions" including electronic experiments and film soundtracks, to more conceptual albums such as Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother. By offering detailed evaluations of songs such as "Echoes"--"a glacial and majestic twenty-three-plus minute piece of music that distills all of Pink Floyd's accumulated musical virtues circa 1971 into a fully realized work"--Kopp shows that nearly "everything the band did would, in one way or another, provide clues to the band's eventual and wildly successful direction." He also provides new insights into how Dark Side was crafted into "a unified work" through live performances and studio sessions. Hard-core Floyd fans will delight in Kopp's sensitivity to the intricacies of the band's work, while people only familiar with Dark Side will be alerted to the often "overlooked development of Pink Floyd's music" that led directly to that masterpiece. Kopp's smart and well-researched history is a welcome addition to the Pink Floyd library. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to The Dark Side of the Moon." Publishers Weekly, 29 Jan. 2018, p. 185+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526116583/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2358ea9b. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A526116583
Submitted by Dennis Russo on Mon, 04/30/2018 - 08:14
REINVENTING PINK FLOYD, published by Roman & Littlefield, is written by Bill Kopp, who, as the book denotes, is a lifelong music enthusiast, musician, collector and, since the 90s, a music journalist. The book covers the Pink Floyd's history from the time founding member Syd Barrett left the band in 1968 through the release of the album DARK SIDE OF THE MOON in 1973, detailing how the band members interacted, grew, and evolved along the way.
For those only familiar with Pink Floyd from DSotM, it may be hard to grasp why someone would write a book concerning such a narrow, though important, time frame, when everything they did since kind of went along the same path. But as you dig into early Floyd and listen to the music from that time period, you realize the music was indeed very different pre-DSotM, as with THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN, A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS, ATOM HEART MOTHER, and others, highlighting the eccentricities of the group's leader, Syd Barrett.
It doesn’t take one long to come to the conclusion that Mr. Kopp is all those things the brief bio says he is.
The length and breadth of the details surrounding those times (now over a half century old some, of them) is nothing short of encyclopedic. It is as if he lived all those days one by one with them. The research that must have gone into this undertaking, and being able to put it in order to make it readable, is something indeed. I’d say it is almost exhaustive in its completeness (one need only peruse the extensive bibliography to think this).
That amount of detail though can have is pitfalls though.
If you are a superficial Pink Floyd fan, or perhaps even a huge fan but not to the extent of fanaticism, you might find the reading a bit arduous--almost like reading a history book, albeit a lot cooler.
That aside there is so much here to drink in, from the development of the music style pre- and post-Barrett, to the development of the individual performers themselves.
Kopp details everything from the radio shows and concerts they did before and after PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN to the albums and then down to the songs on every album, getting into the minds of every member of the band--what they were going through, what they were trying to accomplish, and how all this was received by critics and fans alike, even going into the solo albums Barrett did during those years.
I found many interesting things in it that I was not aware of, such as how many soundtracks they did in those early years, mostly for indy films like MORE and ZABRISKIE POINT.
Of course having all the studio albums mentioned here, it begged that I A/B PatGoD to DSotM--and in doing so, the book made me realize the distinct differences between them. While no musician myself, I can’t tell one technical musical aspect from another. But as one who appreciates music based on the sum of its parts, the author paints a very vivid picture here of how the band morphed, and as I played the other albums in progression, it became clear that the author is spot on.
I also liked how Kopp spent time leaping ahead, giving a synopsis of the band from DSotM forward.
Lastly, it was interesting for me to read in print something I had always felt but never read before--that being how many people, while feeling differently about the music Pink Floyd did with Barrett and without, prefer the band’s music more one way than the other, for one reason or another, but still appreciate the band’s music as a whole.
That’s where this book does a nice job of bridging that gap, explaining what went on and and how it happened, giving a new appreciation to those who sit on one side of the fence or the other. I have always appreciated Pink Floyd for being Pink Floyd, and never really gave any thought to how or why they developed the way they did. I just felt they did what they did because that’s who they were. Its nice to have a new perspective…
So if you’re a really dyed-in-the-wool fan, you’ll eat up the information contained herein like candy. If you’re just a real fan of the music, you”ll find a lot to enjoy too. If you're just getting into there music, it might be a little tough not knowing who’s who, or what's going on, but I believe it will whet your appetite for more Floyd. In any case, I suggest buy the book, buy the records, sit back, listen and see if you can hear with your ears and sense with your mind that which yours eyes have read.
Book Review: Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to The Dark Side of the Moon
By Donald GibsonNo comments
For more than half a century Pink Floyd produced some of the most fabled and successful albums in popular music history yet the singular British band has nevertheless remained, at least in some respects, an enigma.
Much of that enigma surrounds Syd Barrett, the Floyd’s principal songwriter and eccentric visionary behind the band’s earliest efforts. The music he created with Pink Floyd in the mid-to-late sixties—enriched by his distinctly puerile songwriting style and psychedelic eccentricities—contrasts so boldly from the music the Floyd made following his termination from the lineup in 1968 so as to sound like a different band altogether. Even still, Barrett’s legacy loomed over the band (bassist Roger Waters, keyboardist Richard Wright, drummer Nick Mason, and Barrett’s replacement, guitarist David Gilmour) for decades thereafter.
In Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to The Dark Side of the Moon, author Bill Kopp reframes the band’s legendary oeuvre by surveying those earliest efforts to illustrate how they presaged and ultimately informed the Floyd’s most celebrated subsequent discography beginning with 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon. He delves deep, for instance, into the band’s nascent recording sessions and performances, including early studio albums like 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets as well as experimental forays into film-soundtrack recordings.
Kopp exerts a keen perspective throughout, contextualizing each project by dissecting each one’s artistic direction with the knowledge of one who is not only intimately familiar with the band’s expansive output but with rudimentary music principles as well. Such explanations never succumb to sounding too technical or abstract for casual fans to appreciate, thankfully, as Kopp offers just enough expert analysis to enlighten—rather than overwhelm—the reader. Overall, Reinventing Pink Floyd sheds light on a pivotal and all-too-often overlooked era of one of the all-time great bands just as it was evolving into an undisputed commercial hit-making behemoth of progressive rock. Highly recommended.