So what is the music? If you like prog, Legs On Wheels fits right in the tradition, crafting Gobble from the DNA of Wakeman-era Yes, Gabriel-era Genesis, The Mountain-era Haken, and loads of Zappa-era Zappa. Dramatic lead vocals; layered harmonies; plucky guitars over yet more electric and acoustic guitars; tight drumming; ripping bass; the occasional organ, piano, and synth. In no way do all these layers form an overwhelming sonic sludge. Instead, the band’s musicality paints a lush picture, and the engineers captured every stroke.

There’s a frantic energy from the opening track Oysters On The Half Shell through the end without much pause, though the band takes a few slow trips through melty, contemplative territory. From the alien bar music in A.P.E.S. to the infernal rock of Dinnertime for Rat, I was saying, yep! That’s prog™.

Lyrically, like all great prog, there are moments you scratch your head and ask, “What are you even talking about?” And, like any prog enthusiast, I wouldn’t really care as long as the words sound good. But the lyrics are not entirely dadaistic. With vivid imagery, they explore themes ranging from the exploitation of nature by the wealthy to the folly of humankind to the very purpose of life. The grandeur here suits the genre but more importantly carves out depth that makes Gobble worth revisiting with the lyric sheet in hand.

Indeed, a second listen, at least, is required to fully appreciate Gobble. Taking this frantic, ADHD-coded approach to music comes with the risk of throwing out so many musical ideas that the listener simply does not have enough to grab onto before the handle is yanked away for the next idea. I found myself lost a few times here, and found even my uncommonly high tolerance for progginess and musical dorkiness tested. But then the band hits with their quirky but irresistibly catchy chorus like in Peekaboo or the triumphant hell-yeah headbanging payoff at the end of Waiting For His Drowning, and I was back on board for the ride. Plenty of moments induced that gnarly frown-smile you get when music is absolutely so nasty it rocks. The ripping keys solo in Centipede in particular had my jowls[sic] on the floor.

No prog album would be complete without at least one ten-plus-minute track. The finale Masteroid satisfies the role. Here, the lyrics wrap up by the halfway mark, launching the instrumental into a sick journey through some afterlife suggested by those final words. The tune builds into an overdrive, evoking some hyperactive run into a speeding neon grid where you’re hopping waist-high fences and ducking electric bats while heading toward the light. Suddenly, the ticker gives out, and the music slowly devolves through a trippy and chill if somewhat depressed post-lude as the screaming feedback of a tape loop overtakes it all. Finally, in an even slower denouement, you’re back where you started, in space, almost feeling, as the lyrics say, “destined to drift forever”.

Here’s where I wish the album kept reaching and pushing, maybe recapitulating an earlier theme for an ultimate payoff. The 10-minute track, like elsewhere on the record, comes to a bit of an anticlimax. So, perhaps, the album didn’t quite reach that holy catharsis for me. It is dense with musical ideas, but maybe those musical ideas aren’t always fully explored or revisited. Nevertheless, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable ride with lots of highs and plenty to dig into again. And its existence is a testament: prog is alive and well.

Favorite track: Peekaboo

Listen to Gobble on Bandcamp:

The band has a particular taste for lush atmospheres and tones, especially the eerie-beautiful synth filling out Goodman or the gang vocals nah-nah-nahing over the stadium solo at the end of ZIELLO. The album reaches moving, goosebumps-inducing highs as Ozmun’s vocals and lyrics evoke the fear of being out of reach of a helping hand, of being left behind.

At times, it does risk flying too low, like in midpoint track Edgewater. For me, the composition here doesn’t give me enough harmonically or melodically to latch onto, so I struggled to follow it from the very low start into the intended high-point catharsis. But the wicked talent for tone, groove, and pure rock soon returns with the next track, the title track, a banger that ends so heavy I was begging for more.

In fact, the energy is even higher on the back half of the album. It’s not a quiet contemplative collection of tunes meant to be heard in private. It’s a journey worth seeing through to the end. Like in life, man. One day, you look back on all the homes you had to move on from and think: at least you were Always Living Somewhere.

Favorite track: Stray Black Dog

Listen to Claire Ozmun’s Always Living Somewhere on Bandcamp:

Los Angeles band Cheekface’s single Black Site doubles up every ingredient in the well-established Cheekface Cookbook to make enough sorta-middle-class protest power pop to feed the masses starved for meaningful rock: 2x driving beat, 2x ripping bass line, 2x painfully funny lyrics delivered irony-smothered but not masking the rage underlying them, and this one riff in the chorus that is so catchy literally everyone cheers when it happens, x2. Adding Cheekface to my favs on that morally-bad-but-too-convenient-not-to-use delivery app so I can get another slice of whatever they’re cooking on the double.

Listen to Black Site on Bandcamp:

This release culminates multi-year work from over a dozen contributors. Following the release of my previous rock opera concept album, a synth instrumental about the nuclear waste warning messages called Place of Honor, I felt the need to write a real rock opera with lyrics, singers, and real instruments. 20,000 Years & Still Going Strong was conceived as a six-track album exploring the concept of boundaries in interpersonal relationships. Eventually, it grew to 8 distinct tracks about an immortal man who, having lived through every artistic and technical revolution in human history since the last ice age, now in a new ice age faces a lonely and seductive AI that forces him to choose between false comfort and the risk of real connection.

Writing started early 2024. After an initial reading performance late 2024, the band and I went to GB’s Juke Joint in Queens to record most of the instrumentals. Guitarist Franco Vittore, bassist Josh Uguccioni, keyboardist Miles Wilkins, and drummer Murphy Aucamp blisteringly tracked seven songs in about 8 hours. The eighth song (which ended up as track 3) got written later when I realized the love story could use a sample of the relationship actually working at some point… which makes the eventual breakdown even more tragic.

After retooling the music and lyrics based on feedback from the reading, in the summer of 2025, we got back into the studio and laid down the vocals. We also added tenor sax by Daniel Berkey, more synth, more guitar, B3 organ, and grand piano. Plus we recorded the whole new song. Vocalist Jessica Greenfield, percussionist Daniel Sadownick, and dobro player Raymond Klassen contributed their parts remotely. I even added some of my own vocals and few splashes of flute, for the bit. Finally, Owen Mulholland, who mixed and edited earworm, did a great job editing and mixing the lengthy and layered album.

This album celebrates and carries on the classic prog rock traditions of Yes, Genesis, and Pink Floyd, with a strong dose of Broadway camp and tragedy, while lyrically deploying weapons-grade self-analytical neurosis in the vein of Poe and Woolf.

Whether you stream or listen on a CD (with 12-page lyric booklet), you’ll find lots to think about amid all the psychedelic solos in 20,000 Years & Still Going Strong.

Yucht eschews guitar and piano in his “chordless” ensemble made up of mostly-monophonic instruments, aside from the drum kit itself, to create reed and brass textures that resonate with the soul. There’s even a flute and bass clarinet at times in the album. The contributing players each brought masterful but accessible solos to the sessions, with fun and expressiveness blowing away any need for navel-gazing perfection. It gives the record a living feeling.

This first production by Future Imperfect is available as a translucent blue vinyl LP manufactured by Physical Music Products in Nashville with lacquer cut by Scott Hull of Masterdisk.

I met Leo at a gig at The Bitter End. I was tuned up enough to chuckle at his drum references to the “Poison” fill, so we hit it off. Then I saw his band at their Ornithology residence. Eventually I asked him, “When are you going to record this?” One thing led to another, and I signed on to produce it.

We booked a day at GB’s Juke Joint in Queens, where we banged out 10 tracks in a manic 12-hour session. The players are such pros.

Then we spent some overnight sessions at Owen Mulholland’s studio editing and mixing. It was just a matter of getting the excellent performances to really shine and sound as great in the final stereo product as they do in person.

The name “earworm” came up after listening to the music enough times we couldn’t get it out of our heads. We then got this idea for something with gummy worms for the front cover. We hired Xavier Kim to come snap some photos of handfuls of gummy worms thrown by Leo’s girlfriend bouncing off Leo’s face.

It was impossible to resist bringing this album into the physical world with a real LP. The translucent swirl that evokes the gummy worm motif turned out beautifully.

Whether you listen on vinyl or digital, I’m sure you will bob your head to its tunes as their catchy melodies work their way into your ears. For sure, this album is a proud first entry in the nascent catalog of Future Imperfect.

20,000 Years & Still Going Strong

https://tunitemusic.com/post/20-000-years-still-going-strong-a-modern-rock-opera/

https://returnofrock.com/review-computer-nerd-20000-years-still-going-strong/

https://www.analoguetrash.com/blog/album-review-computer-nerd-20000-years-still-going-strong

https://plasticmag.co.uk/2026/02/computer-nerd-releases-prog-rock-opera/

https://cosmonautaradio.com.mx/2026/02/17/computer-nerd-20000-years-still-going-strong/

https://www.mysticsons.com/article/computer-nerd-20000-years-still-going-strong

https://lacaverna.net/de-opera-rock-a-black-metal-introspectivo/

earworm (2025)

https://tunitemusic.com/post/earworm-by-yuchtet-a-chordless-masterclass/

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/news/yuchtets-debut-album-earworm-is-a-modern-big-band-jazz-statement-worth-hearing/