Far From Normal

Is Nick Beggs an alien? Is he even a prog musician? And can you train a dog with a didgeridoo? All these questions and more will be answered as Prog peeks under the hood of Trifecta's The New Normal, an album that reunites Beggs with fellow virtuosos Adam Holzman and Craig Blundell. Just don't ask what his wife thinks of it.

- David West

"Ihave to be honest with you, I’m not really a prog musician,” confesses Nick Beggs. That’s a disarming proclamation from a musician who has played with Steven Wilson, Steve Hackett, led the prog power trio The Mute Gods, and who recently filled in for Pete Trewavas with Marillion on Cruise To The Edge.

“I’m really a pop writer,” insists the bassist and Chapman Stick player. “That’s how I learned, that’s what I schooled myself in, that’s how I started out and I’ve had some success doing it. But I think it runs pretty deep in me. Old habits die hard and when I start thinking about material, I start thinking about three-minute pop songs.”

That leads us to The New Normal, the second album from Trifecta, the trio of Beggs, keyboardist Adam Holzman, and drummer Craig Blundell, veterans all from Steven Wilson’s live band. Their latest release is a double album of delightfully wonky prog fusion, but the compositions are concise, filtering their flights of fancy through the discipline of pop songcraft.

“Adam is the one who will help to expand things into the more progfusion idiom,” says Beggs. “I do like that way of working, but the kernel of the idea has to be a song format for it to work, unless it’s a piece of a more surrealist idea, which is just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.”

The New Normal is the follow-up to 2021’s Fragments, which is a surprise to Beggs, who hadn’t expected Kscope to want another Trifecta album.