Playlists

It's the end of 2007, an ordinary day. In the CD player of Johnny Wilks, head of sales & marketing at London label Snapper Music, a new album demo is spinning: it's "Tightly Unwound", the seventh record by British outfit Pineapple Thief. It was Steven Wilson, leader of Porcupine Tree and the label's flagship artist, who recommended he listen to it. The record is good, very good, and it seems the perfect trigger for a step that has been taking shape in Wilks's mind for a while: creating a space that could be home to other projects on the border between pop, progressive, independent music and experimentation. The plan revolves around a name, "Kscope", a contraction of "kaleidoscope" (and at the same time a nod to the 1970s label K-Tel), chosen in 1999 by Steven Wilson as the imprint under which to release his own projects within Snapper Music.

Wilks corners his colleague Tony Harris in the little kitchen next to the office and lays out the idea; shortly after, the two of them present the project to managing director Fred Jude, who approves it enthusiastically. "Tightly Unwound" is announced in February 2008 on the newborn label's website.

The initial press release states that in the years immediately prior, "an ever-growing movement of bands has begun to strip progressive rock of its excesses and clichés, restoring its original desire to experiment with eclectic musical sources and multiple sonic possibilities, in order to create something meaningful here and now". It then cites a highly diverse range of artists exemplifying this trend: Porcupine Tree, Radiohead, Amplifier, Oceansize, Muse, Opeth, Mars Volta in "nu-prog" and prog-metal territory, but also Sigur Rós, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Tortoise in post-rock territory, Rain Tree Crow, No-Man and Air as standard-bearers of "ambient-prog", Lewis Taylor ("soul prog") and even Neon Neon and Dälek ("prog-hop").

It's precisely Tim Bowness of No-Man, associated with the Kscope name ever since the 2005 reissue of "Flowermouth", who coins the phrase that will serve as the project's calling card from the very start: "post-progressive sounds". An effective way — and almost the antithesis of "neoprog" — to describe music that, while coming from stylistic paths often far removed from progressive rock as commonly understood, shares with it a taste for building shifting atmospheres, for the dialogue between song and exploration, and for strongly evocative instrumental textures.

Over the years, as the catalogue expanded and the Kscope sound influenced emerging artists, the category of post-prog would establish itself as a key point of reference for fans and journalists alike. Kscope would become the go-to name for the scene, and although its roster remained highly diverse, its imprinting would grow ever more evident.

This compilation attempts a synthesis, and at the same time a journey, through the label's many different souls. It ranges from the projects most visibly tied to Porcupine Tree (Steven Wilson, Pineapple Thief, No-Man, Blackfield) to the "fleeing metal" trajectories of artists such as Lunatic Soul (the one-man band of Mariusz Duda of Riverside), Katatonia, Anathema, Ulver, even venturing into synth-pop with The Receiver or Envy Of None (the latest venture of Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson).

Whether it's newcomers or old glories (Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull and Paul Draper of Mansun are both signed to the label), a few common threads emerge easily: the remarkable dynamic range that characterizes Steven Wilson's songwriting also turns up in artists who move within a single track from acoustic rock to metallic distortion; Gavin Harrison's "expanded" drumming seems to be the model for many rhythmic interlockings, discreet yet enveloping; the atmospheric keyboard framework of Richard Barbieri also echoes through Italy's own Nosound, in the suspended mood of folk-tinged Se Delan, and in the layering of many others besides.

Here and there, the pronounced pursuit of a gripping yet delicate expressiveness strays into the pretentious, and at times perhaps even the monotonous. On the whole, though, it's personality above all that comes through, with artists like Gazpacho, Gleb Kolyadin (keyboardist of Russia's Iamthemorning) and djent champions Tesseract managing to sound as grandiose and startling as symphonic prog once did, without directly echoing it in sonic terms.

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26/12/2025