There are ‘lost’ albums and there’s Procession’s Still, which, it’s fair to say, was never really found in the first place. Back in the mid-90s, when Bradley Sroka and some college friends formed a band in Maryland, they bravely vowed to ignore the prevailing trends of postgrunge and smart-ass college rock, took their cues from The Cure, Pink Floyd and Rush, and found themselves roundly ignored.
Twenty-five years later, though, he’s offered up their sole LP and two EPs for re-appraisal via Bandcamp, and there are undeniably tantalising glimpses of what might have been. Ginseng has a seriously captivating symphonic prog sweep that endures despite the lo-fi production’s glaring inability to do justice to the banks of celestial synth atmospherics engulfing the piece (it was remastered from an original cassetteonly release, so there’s only so much we can expect on that front). Fermata is similarly bewitching, as Petra Safarova’s folky, untutored voice taps into mezzosoprano territory as Sroka’s keyboard skyscraping recalls Popol Vuh’s spiritually charged soundtrack work for Werner Herzog. At other times, their youthful guilelessness lets them down: Safarova’s voice lacks the strength to bring All The Best Things to life, but there are appealing echoes of Elizabeth Fraser in her ethereally inclined take on closing meditation Silent.
Fatherland EP (1996) takes a more guitar-led approach, with hints of Slint’s post-rock blueprint now visible, but the songs are meandering, unfocused affairs suggesting a band losing sight of their strongest suits. Guitarist Wes Stitt doesn’t seem like a natural choice to take over on vocals from the collegebound Safarova for the five tracks of 1997’s Living In Between, but his wobbly indie kid tones are backed by some likeably melodic alt-pop. It’s in the unorthodox time-signatures of Post that Procession intrigue, though, suggesting a proggier direction they might have expanded on had the crushing indifference of their peers not caused them to split soon afterwards.