Prog Magazine have announced that Nick Mason is to be honoured with the coveted Prog God award at this year’s ceremony.

Photo courtesy of Laura Here

He will join such luminaries as Tony Banks, Jon Anderson, Carl Palmer and Peter Gabriel.

In an interview with Prog Magazine, Mason said “I’m all in favour of recognition for drummers, particularly when it’s me, so I’m really delighted to be recognised as Prog God. It’s hard to believe that it was over 50 years ago that the music we know as prog rock was born, and it’s still being celebrated, played and developed in the 21st century. Long may it continue!”

The 2019 Progressive Music Awards will take place on the 12th of September at the Underglobe Theatre in London.

Make sure to grab a copy of Prog Magazine on October 25th for the full list of winners. Check out their website for updates on the night.

The news that David Gilmour will auction 120 instruments from his awe-inspiring gear collection this June pretty much broke the guitar internet. Now the Pink Floyd man has announced a three-part podcast series – The David Gilmour Podcast – in which he discusses the collection’s highlights with host Matt Everitt.

The episodes will be released weekly beginning Friday 31 May ahead of the auction itself, which will take place on 20 June at Christie’s Auction House in New York.

Episode one (31 May) will focus on his 1969 Black Strat, which was first purchased in New York in 1970 and was extensively modded by Gilmour. It has been used throughout his career ever since, most notably on the solo for Comfortably Numb, not to mention Money and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Gilmour’s tech Phil Taylor literally wrote a book about this guitar’s history.

The second episode (7 June) will see Gilmour demo and discuss two Martin instruments – including a 1971 Martin D-12-28 – collectively dubbed the Wish You Were Here acoustics, due to their use on Pink Floyd’s 1975 classic.

The third and final instalment of the series is due 14 June and looks at Gimour’s White 1954 Strat. Noted for its 0001 serial number (although it was not actually the very first Strat off the line), it was previously owned by legendary pickup guru Seymour Duncan.

Click here to listen to the podcast and subscribe via your device

Released today is the long anticipated re-release edition of the 1984 Zee Identity album.

Identity is the only album by Zee, a short-lived side project of Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright, a duo partnership consisting of Wright and Dave Harris of New Romantic outfit Fashion, released in 1984. Wright later stated that he felt Identity was an “experimental mistake” that should never have been released. The album was written and produced by Wright and Harris and all the lyrics were penned by Harris.

The album makes heavy use of the Fairlight CMI, a musical synthesizer popularized in the 1980s. This creates a very electronic sound that persists through every track.

The new re-release features the album fully remastered in stunning audio quality, Digital transfers of the original demo ideas and a new previously unreleased demo track that was never finished until now.

You can purchase the album in its various formats from musicglue by clicking here

Congratulations, Nick, who received his CBE yesterday. On being awarded the honour, Nick said that he was “honoured and delighted” but “just surprised that the Award is given for services to music rather than to the used car trade!“