1. **Porcupine Tree, “Prepare Yourself”**. Porcupine Tree is a strange bad, which started out as an elaborate joke. This is off of their most progressive album, “The Sky Moves Sideways”. It’s a brilliant piece of work.
2. **Dream Thater, “Blind Faith”**
3. **Dirty Three, “Dream Evie”**. Ah, Dirty Three, one of my favorite post-rock ensembles. Very classical sounding group, wonderful.
4. **Tortoise, “By Dawn”**. More post-rock; unfortunately, I find Tortoise rather dull.
5. **Harry Bradley, “Miss Thornton’s”. Traditional Irish music played in exquisite style by one of the great masters of the Irish flute. Not to be missed if you like Irish music.
6. **Tony Trischka Band, “Feed the Horse”**. Tony Trischka is one of the great masters of the banjo; he’s Bela Fleck’s banjo teacher. Tony was doing the jazz thing on the banjo long before Bela. This is off of Tony’s first album with his new band. It’s a terrific song, but it’s got some of the most nonsensical lyrics I’ve seen.
7. **The Flower Kings, “Bavarian Skies”**. A track from the latest album by the gods of neo-progressive rock.
8. **Flook, “Wrong Foot Forward”**. More Irish. Flook is one of the most amazingly fun, high energy, creating trad Irish bands around. Basically, take one of the best Irish tinwhistle players in the world; put him together with one of the top Bodhran players, a solid rhythm guitar player, and a terrific *tenor* flute player, set them loose and watch what happens. I’ve yet to find *anyone* who’s heard them who doesn’t love Flook.
9. **Rachel’s, “Last Things Last”**. Rachel’s… Another really great post-rock ensemble; like the Dirty Three, they’re very classical. But they’re even better at it than the DT or the Clogs. (And the name of the group is “Rachel’s”, not “The Rachels”, not “Rachels” plural, but the possessive of “Rachel”.)
10 **Marillion, “The Damage”**. Marillion’s my long-time favorite prog-rock band. “The Damage” is a track off of their latest album. Not an exception track by Marillion, but almost anything by Marillion is at least good.