You have jazz-fusion, New Age rock, progressive, and folk music and then you have Proud Peasant. A fully fledged ensemble of first-rate musicians, the Austin, Texas based band, led by guitarist / composer Xander Rapstine released Flight back in 2014 and after a series of ups and downs and assorted changes they released an eight-song 32 minute 2021 CD called Peasantsongs.

Mainly instrumental in scope, Peasantsongs as expected, continues onwards and upwards with Xander’s sequence of prog-rock and awe-inspiring symphonic rock magic that aptly displays U.K. prog influences like Gryphon, Mike Oldfield and King Crimson. In addition to the originals, Peasantsongs features assorted tracks that were previously available in limited formats as well as covers and unreleased tracks and serves as a stop-gap measure as they prepare their next full-length album, entitled Communion.

Assisting Xander on Peasantsongs are top players including fellow guitarist David Houghton on lead electric and classical guitar too. A trio of different drummers pound the skin for Xander and company and the album features a wide range of musicians on all sort of progressive symphonic rock attitudes. For example on track 6, “The Avatar” starts off as a neo-classical piece of music that escalates to an astounding crescendo that blends both instrumental progressive rock and heavy metal. Also the live instrumental classic by King Crimson, the almighty “Red” is resurrected and the result is quite pleasant and it’s a refined version of the KC original. The classics continue!

As expected, Xander Rapstine wrote most of the music on Peasantsongs while other tracks feature instrumental covers of prog legends such as Eloy, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and, of course King Crimson’s 1974 instrumental classic “Red”, with the Proud Peasant version recorded live at VoyagerFest in 2015. With such a diverse assortment of original and cover classics, there’s hardly a note out of place. Recorded between 2015 and 2018, Peasantsongs is a fascinating assortment of progressive instrumental rock that will clearly suffice until the official release of the next Proud Peasant album Communion, coming soon to a CD player near you.