Prog wizard Steven Wilson was recently Interviewed by EON Music. When asked about Prog music, he said:
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“People use the word ‘Prog’ a lot with regards to me, and I never use it with regards to myself. I don’t really think of myself as a generic artist.
“[Steven’s latest album, 2017’s] ‘To the Bone’ is a classic case in point, because it has a lot of different kinds of music on it. It has pure pop on it; there is one song on there particularly, which is called ‘Permanating,’ which very much comes from my memories of growing up listening to my mum’s ABBA records and things like that.
“It’s a pure piece of joyous pop, and as far as I can tell, and it has nothing to do with the world of prog. So I think I’ve always been fairly ambivalent about that. I think other people have made me, to use your word, the kind of ‘Gatekeeper’ of modern prog music.
“Maybe that’s why I’ve been put into that position; because I haven’t really contrived to get myself into that position, if you know what I mean. Maybe that’s exactly what a truly progressive musician would be like. I think a truly progressive musician doesn’t stand up and say, ‘Hey, I play progressive rock!’
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“As soon as you do that, you’re almost creating a set of parameters and limitations within which you work, and of course, that, in many ways, is the antitheses of being progressive, and of having a progressive spirit.
“So, if I’m kind of intellectualizing this, maybe that’s why people have kind of chosen me as this kind of guy, because I’ve never really tried to be progressive or said I was progressive. Maybe that’s indeed what makes me progressive, I don’t know.”