Agent Fresco - Destrier

When you wondered where to find some killer new prog rock, you didn't think Iceland, did you? Big mistake.Holy shit I love to be amazed by bands I've never heard of. It's like hearing music in a new way even after all of my years listening. And such is the case with the incredible musicians known collectively as Iceland's Agent Fresco and their sophomore album Destrier.

Billed as a progressive art-rock band, their sound is an exhilarating mix of progressive rock, metal, alternative, post rock and even jazz. But the whole listening experience is far greater than the mere sum of its parts. What this band has put together is an album of universal emotional struggle as interpreted through their masterful use of different musical textures. Dark Water is an excellent example of how this is done with lead singer Arnór Dan Arnarson's voice laying a fragile narrative over an aggressive rhythym in a deft counterbalance that captures the complexity of human relationships good and bad. The rest of the album follows this basic template, but the sound is anything but basic.

This is some of the freshest music of the genre I've heard in a long while. Arnarson is fantastic and sings with the earnestness of a young Freddie Mercury. And the rhythms are complex without veering into that music-for-sound-engineers-and-calculators territory that prog can sometimes go. Drummer Hrafnkell Örn Guðjónsson has a wonderful light touch to his playing that reminds me of guys like the criminally underrated Stewart Copeland that I never get enough of. Proggers should dig this.

The Bottom Line: Agent Fresco is a band that deserves to have its name out there being heard. They have the uncanny knack for mixing seemingly disparate rhythyms and sounds as though they belong together in a way that's catchy without losing depth. Fans of Spock's Beard or The Custodian should really dig this.

Tracks I Wish I Could Listen To On My Old Beloved Sony Walkman WM-F20: The whole damned album

- Genghis really did own a lot of Sony Walkmans in his time...