By Nick Tate
It may be an oversimplification, but progressive rock artists (and fans) tend to fall into two camps — those who like prog with catchy melodies and those who prefer more challenging music without easily-accessible hooks. (“If I can’t sing along, it’s too complex,” some say, while others feel: “If I can sing along, it’s too simple.”)
A handful of bands bridge the gap, delivering enough depth and accessibility to satisfy both camps. Classic Yes, for instance, combines radio-friendly melodies with densely complex experimental rock. (Exhibit A: “The Gates of Delirium,” from 1974’s “Relayer” album, opens and closes with tuneful vocal lines that bookend a cacophonous middle section with the Yesmen playing in seemingly different time signatures). Contemporary bands like Haken and Opeth also walk the line successfully. But few acts consistently straddle the melodic-avante prog divide as well as Echolyn.
The American collective’s latest works — issued in a sumptuous two-album set, released simultaneously titled “Time Silent Radio vii” and “Time Silent Radio II” — showcase this long-running quartet’s knack for crafting complicated music that’s loaded with a tacklebox of melodic hooks. Thirty years after Echolyn’s major-label debut (the landmark 1995 neoprog classic “As the World”), the band has produced the best albums of its 36-year career. Both records have been in the works for nearly a decade, but the wait was worth it.
As the titles suggest, the first of the two albums (“vii”) features seven shorter tracks spanning 45 minutes of music. The second (“II”) contains two epic pieces that add up to another 45 minutes. Both were produced by the longtime writing team of Ray Weston (bass, lead, vocals), Christopher Buzby (piano, keyboards, backing vocals) and Brett Kull (guitars, keyboards, glockenspiel, percussion, sound design, vocals), along with drummer Jordan Perlson (who first joined the band for 2000’s “Cowboy Poems Free”) and guest backing vocalist Katie Barbato.
There is no prescribed order of play, in terms of listening to these two stellar albums. Each recording stands on its own. But hearing these two recordings back to back offers a deeply immersive experience. In a recent Prog Report podcast, Weston suggested listeners start with “Time Silent Radio vii,” with the seven shorter tracks serving as a sonic appetizer for the two epic main entrées of “Time Silent Radio II” to follow. “If you’re still interested after ‘vii,’ here’s no way you’re going to turn ‘II’ off,” he says.
So, with that in mind, let’s first dive into “Time Silent Radio vii.”
On the whole, there is no overriding concept — lyrically or musically — linking the seven tracks on this album. But several related themes inform much of the record, so much so that several tracks almost work as companion pieces.
For instance, the two opening tracks — the double shot of “Radio Waves” and “Silent Years” — play like a two-part mini suite. “Radio Waves” is an ebullient celebration of the joys and optimism of youth (“Laughing with the roof down at 65, smells like sunshine and being alive…I’m waiting on the wonderful”). “Silent Years” is a darker, wizened look-back at those coming-of-age years, built around the key lyrics: “30 years between us” and “We pass through time, billowing curtains, dying light shines through our shadows.” Emphasizing the connection between these two pieces, “Silent Years” closes with the opening line from “Radio Waves” — “trapped in the back seat” —suggesting: the more things change, the more they remain the same.
The three pieces that follow — “Cul-De Sacs and Tunnels,” “Boulders On Hills” and “Our Brilliant Next” — are introspective semi-acoustic laments that speak to the ups and downs of life, fraught relationships and the inexorable march of time. All three are built around gorgeous vocal melodies but are by no means insipid or syrupy sweet. Up next, “On We Blur” echoes similar lyrical themes as the previous three tracks, but turns up the volume a notch musically, as the band races through a gnarly series of musical styles, tempos and melodies.
The album closer, “Tiny Star,” is a thick slice of melodic-prog ear candy that ends the record on a more positive note — musically and lyrically — than the prior six tracks. An ascending chord progression anchors the track and drives the band forward — and upward — as Krull and Weston sing the signature line: “Between your hope and hopelessness you are a tiny star.” The song ends the album with this prayerful affirmation: “From all the weight comes a beautiful center, a blinking diamond and little light inside, inside you.” It hits like a ray of sunshine bursting through the clouds after a thunderstorm. Comforting. Uplifting. Nice.
The second album, “Time Silent Radio II,” contains two extended tracks — “Time Has No Place,” which clocks in at just under 17 minutes, and the 29-minute, seven-part opus, “Water in Our Hands” — that cover more territory than the shorter songs on “Time Silent Radio vii.”
“Time Has No Place,” is a four-piece song cycle introduced by cinematic sound effects from what sounds like a busy train station, foreshadowing the wide-ranging journey ahead. After a beat, a jazzy guitar line introduces the main theme of the piece (Part A, subtitled “Into the Green”) over a locomotive bass-drum-piano line. Two minutes in, the band falls away, giving way to a lush two-part vocal harmony from Brett Kull and Ray Weston over angular acoustic guitar arpeggios. It manages to be both lovely and foreboding, as they sing: “What makes you weep, in the minutes left behind?” Then the ensemble returns for a series of shape-shifting passages that play like a musical travelogue through rousing anthemic rock intensity (Part B: “The Air of Ivy Hill”), Beatles-esque balladry (Part C: “Emerald Green”) and electrifying prog-metal theatricality (Part D: “Forever Anymore”). What is notable is how the band seamlessly merges these widely varying styles into a cohesive whole — changing keys, time signatures and musical styles on a dime, never staying in one place for long. The ending section is a masterpiece that brings everything together, reprising the initial musical theme to end this satisfying musical excursion where it began.
“Water In Our Hands” is the more expansive of the two epics on the album, but it contains not a moment of filler. It is a masterwork that showcases everything Echolyn does so well — from the band’s compositional and lyrical prowess to the players’ virtuosic chops to the collective’s knack for fitting oppositional musical styles together like polished tongue-in-groove woodwork. The piece is built around a piano progression Buzby came up with, showcasing his classical training and jazzman instincts, with the other players adding to the color and textural palette. Lyrically, the piece is a very personal meditation on the passage of time and advancing age, with individual vignettes reflecting the musicians’ own challenges and experiences. (Here’s a nugget for music theory/math-rock fans: All the changes in tempo are odd prime numbers, so all the BPMs — beats per minute — are primes.)
In the opening section (Part I) folk meets jazz, as Weston sings: “Find your way in the song you hear.” It’s followed by a propulsive up-tempo break in 5/4 time (Part II), featuring a gorgeous vocal harmony, and edgy symphonic-rock passages (Parts III and IV), before the track returns to the opening folk-jazz theme (Part V) with Weston reprising: “Find your way in the song you hear.” The ending sections (Parts VI and VII) move from a spare vocal-acoustic-guitar intro to a thunderous musical crescendo that is breathtaking in its sweep and scope, as Weston and Krull sing: “It’s water in our hands.” The closing section is a magnificently crafted sum-up of the album, on par with such stirring epic-prog highpoints as the uplifting “Soon” section from “The Gates of Delirium.”
In a recent Prog Report podcast, Krull and Weston (the band’s co-lyricists) noted the two albums were written in fits and starts in the decade since the band’s last album, “I Hear You Listening” from 2015. “[It’s about] how much time we have left in our lives and the appreciation, recognition of it,” said Weston, who said his work in a nursing home informed the main lyrical themes of the records. “I see the passage of time, minute by minute, with some of the residents that we work with,” he said. “So, it’s precious, every little thing that we do, and we don’t want to waste it.”
With “Time Silent Radio vii and II,” it’s clear that Weston’s observations underpin and buttress all nine tracks on these two outstanding albums: Over the 90 minutes of music delivered here, Echolyn makes every moment — every note and word — count.
Get the albums here:
https://echolyn.bandcamp.com/album/timesilentradio-vii
https://echolyn.bandcamp.com/album/timesilentradio-ii
Released on March 7th, 2025
Time Silent Radio II Album Track Listing:
1. Tim Has No Place (16:37)
2. Water In Our Hands (28:51)
Personnel
Jordan Perlson – drums and percussion
Ray Weston – bass, lead & backing vocals
Christopher Buzby – piano, keyboards, and backing vocals
Brett Kull – guitars, keyboards, glockenspiel, percussion, sound design, lead and backing vocals
Guests
Katie Barbato – backing vocals (2)
Time Silent Radio vii Album Track List:
1. Radio Waves (7:01)
2. Silent Years (4:31)
3. Cul-De Sacs and Tunnels (7:09)
4. Boulders and Hills (6:53)
5. Our Brilliant Next – 5:47
6. On We Blur – 5:41
7. Tiny Star – 8:29
Personnel:
Jordan Perlson (drums and percussion)
Ray Weston (bass, lead and backing vocals)
Christopher Buzby (piano, keyboards and backing vocals)
Brett Kull (guitars, keyboards, glockenspiel, percussion, sound design, lead and backing vocals)
Guest: Katie Barbato (backing vocals)
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