‘Focus 12’ is a lovely throwback to the progressive rock albums of the mid-to-late ’70s, with all of their hidden synaptic secrets.

Elaine Palmer’s ‘Half Moon Rising’ is a lovely folk-Americana album floating on enriched earthy vocals that can possess a melody with magic.

The Strange Encounters have crafted an album that recalls the Beatles, R.E.M., the Byrds, the Posies, the Jayhawks, Badfinger and Robyn Hitchcock.

Nektar boldly carries on despite the loss of beautiful members with the upcoming double album ‘Journey to the Other Side: Live at the Dunellen Theater.’

This seeps into any prog lover’s soul as Emerson Lake and Powell embrace the classics, folk, rock and perhaps (if truth be told) a bit of pomposity.

Madlen Keys’ ‘Event Horizon’ is a very modern French progressive (for want of a better term) rock album, infused with pop sensitivities.

Two brilliant live LPs from Kevin Coyne, an idiosyncratic artist who defied the ’70s ethos of prog fantasy, hard-rock machoism, and folky sentimentalism.

King Crimson’s David Cross returns with ‘Ice Blue, Silver Sky,’ a modern prog-rock album of turbulence and minute intensity.

Brainiac 5’s new album ‘Memory or Dream’ is wonderful ’60s and ’70s stuff that has been tugged and transported into our modern world. But with a twist.

With ‘How I Learned to Love the Freaks,’ Vinny Peculiar emerges from the hazy smoke of late-’60s youth counter-culture with a clever psych-rock album.