"You take the Progressive sound; keyboards, weird time signatures, yadayadayada. That's "Regressive" by it's very definition. "Progressive" says you take the perceived rules, you disregard them, and then you do what your art says you do." - James Bickers
To my mind, there's an interesting, rough-and-ready division in the world of "progressive" music (a category-name I don't like, in any event) between the more avante-garde/experimental or "free-spirited" wing, and, say, the more -- how to describe it? -- "working-in-a-kind-of-tradition" approach, which could be described in terms of certain dominant characteristics that *almost* sum to a kind of "formula": long songs, working in odd times (and working in them in a definite way), conveying an "epic" feel, addressing "deep" topics lyrically, employing certain sounds, timbres, and textures, and so on. Though I'm certainly guilty of having worked in terms of the latter approach, my heart is definitely with the former -- to me that's where the real "action" is.
A simple way to illustrate the difference is to name a few bands that might plausibly fall under each category. In the latter, I'll put bands like Spock's Beard, Dream Theater, IQ, Kansas, Gentle Giant, post-Gabriel-pre-Abacab Genesis, post-Close-to-the-Edge Yes, etc. In the former, I'd put King Crimson (espec. from "Red" onwards), Gabriel solo, much of Rush, Radiohead, latter Porcupine Tree, and other more unlikely borderline cases -- like The Police, U2, Our Lady Peace, and other bands which don't so much exemplify a genre or sound as go to define one of their own (Primus or Rage Against the Machine even). As an aside, I think it's an interesting exercise to ponder where Marillion might go (or perhaps at different points they belong in different places?!)."-Paul Craddick former drummer for Enchant
