WAKING UP THE NEIGHBOURS

“IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE JUST JAZZ OR JUST METAL. WE MAKE MUSIC THAT WE WANT TO MAKE. WE’RE A MODERN BAND RATHER THAN AN OLD-SCHOOL PROG BAND.”
Andrew Lawrence

On a sunny autumn afternoon in London, Prog convenes with Chicago’s District 97 amid their third European tour. Their shows have been well-received and their fourth album, Screens, earned a very enthusiastic review in Prog 104, with Grant Moon hailing closing track Ghost Girl as sounding ‘like a Jim Steinman-Robert Fripp co-write’.

But District 97 don’t yet top the prog popularity league tables. That’s perhaps a consequence of them being challenging to pigeonhole.

“We are told all the time that we’re not necessarily prog. We’re not all the way metal either, but finalist Leslie Hunt theorises. She declares that is more experimental than the band’s previous albums. “There’s more improvisation and space. But also it’s our most accessible album. We’re hard to classify, but we bring in people who appreciate various qualities of prog and metal.”