Spirit Guide

Folk-proggers Kindred Spirit Band have teamed up with members of Gryphon, Stuckfish, Haze, Spriggan Mist and more on their seventh studio album. Bandleader Elaine Samuels tells Prog about the personal story that lies behind the conceptual The Journey Within, and the fantastical characters she conjured up to tell it.

- Words: Alison Reijman

Prog has always been a vehicle for exploring vast inner landscapes: phantasmagorical journeys through the imagination and into the depths of the human mind. For Elaine Samuels - founder, composer, singer, and rhythm guitarist of Kindred Spirit Band - her latest musical odyssey The Journey Within didn't begin in some distant cosmos.

It came from a grounded moment during the first proper get-together of the band's new line-up.

"We'd appeared at a couple of festivals where the band played some of our old songs, but they told me they wanted to work on some new material that we could all contribute to.

So I suggested we go on a creative day to see what makes us all tick." It was during this session that bassist Keith Buckman (The Far Meadow, The Gift) played a certain compelling bass riff, which happened to ignite something in Samuels' imagination. "Instantly, I could see in my mind a gloomy old house with all these broken and distorted mirrors," she remembers.

That vision became the conceptual cornerstone of The Journey Within, a fantastical yet deeply personal exploration of mental health. And the revised line-up - completed by drummer Paul Austin, multi-instrumentalist Stevie Mitchell and lead guitarist Piers Hogg became co-navigators in its immersive creative process.