Album art by Carl Glover

Style: Progressive rock, neo-prog, krautrock, electronica (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Airbag, Porcupine Tree, Lunatic Soul, The Pineapple Thief
Release date: 14 November 2025

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When reviewing underground artists, few things are more challenging for a critic to handle than a mediocre album. If an album is really good, we get to experience the pleasure of discovering genuinely great music that may have otherwise flown under the radar, and spreading said discovery to others. If an album is truly awful, meanwhile, there’s a certain humor and catharsis to be found in playfully roasting those baffling musical choices that you seldom get with bigger prog artists. But if an album is just okay, then you’re stuck in a bit of a no-man’s land, with an album that isn’t sufficiently well-made to earn a recommendation, but doesn’t have enough wrong with it to earn any real venom either. There’s plenty to criticize, but also enough promise and talent on display to make one feel kind of bad for criticizing it too much. And unlike more well-known artists, there’s no established legacy or career arc to easily anchor readers in a balanced discussion of which parts do or don’t live up to the hype. 

Apologies, readers – I usually try to leave you in at least a bit of suspense regarding my opinions on an album, often by ending my intro spiel with some thematic variant of the time-honored rhetorical question: “Does this record succeed in its ambitions, or does it fall short?” But it is immensely telling that the only hook I could think of to open my review of the latest album from English synth-prog auteur Daniel Vincent is a brief treatise on the problems of criticizing mediocrity. Means of Escape is hardly the work of some untested young amateur, either; Vincent has been prolifically traversing the realms of neo-prog, dark ambient, and electronica for over two decades now, both as a solo artist and as part of underground experimental act The Resonance Association. This latest work aims to combine the many disparate sounds he has pursued over the years into one cohesive project, but does it… ah, shit, you guys already know the answer, huh?

To be fair, Means of Escape does at least manage to deliver in terms of sonic variety. With a roughly even split between vocal tracks and instrumentals, the album incorporates everything from blissed-out, serene soundscapes (“The Waiting Room”) to tense, roiling musical panic attacks (“Red Flag”), with Vincent’s skills as a synth programmer and curator of sonic atmospheres frequently taking center stage. And to his credit, the man does show considerable skill as a producer; many of the more ambient-leaning tracks envelop the listener in a pleasantly brain-tingling haze of sound. Tracks like the two-part “Means of Escape” and “Hubris/Defiance”, while not the most energetic and gripping things in the world, work excellently as background music to zone out to, with synths that scratch satisfyingly along one’s eardrums while tasteful layers of distant choirs and orchestration add a sense of depth. For an entirely independent solo release, there’s clearly a lot of polish that’s been put into the way everything sounds.

Unfortunately, that same level of panache isn’t nearly as present in the songwriting department, which often winds up sounding forgettable at best and painfully amateurish at worst. The cracks start to show practically from the very start, with the very first, head-scratchingly awkward couplet of opener “Far Beyond the End of the World” fumbling a seemingly intuitive rhyme setup (“There is a house / Way up on the hill”) with a weird fakeout that dodges the intuitive ABCB rhyme in favor of sort-of-rhyming its last two lines (“Everyone wants to go there / But nobody… lives there”). It’s not the worst sin in the world, but it really is indicative of the general lack of quality control on some of these more conventionally structured tracks; the man’s got plenty of experience in ambience, but writing proper songs is evidently a taller order for him. When his songwriting isn’t falling on its face, it’s often floating in old neo-prog cliches that feel like discarded Steven Wilson demos (“Moment In the Sun”) or plastering otherwise-strong instrumentals with goofy spoken word (“The Waiting Room”)

Of course, shoddy songwriting isn’t the only issue holding Means of Escape back by a long shot. For one, the vocal performances are decidedly barebones, eschewing any semblance of range, power, or acrobatics in favor of the plainspoken charm of a simple fellow doing his best to carry a tune. And while this does sometimes work well, with the floaty, dreamlike ballad “Boy in Space” particularly benefiting from Vincent’s soporific singing, the album’s commitment to variety ends up creating quite a few different shaped holes for his square peg of a voice to try and fit into. Most notably, any time the music gets remotely heavy or distorted, such as the back half of “Far Beyond the End of the World”, his vocals try to bring the requisite energy levels but wind up sounding weak and uncomfortably strained. This effect is particularly tragic on “Red Flag”, whose otherwise engaging, frenetic instrumental is ruined by awkwardly shouted vocals that somehow manage to feel both overwrought and half-assed. It’s not just a problem with the vocals either; while the production on the synthy, ambient stuff is uniformly excellent, the heavier, guitar-driven instrumental material feels far less immaculate. This is especially notable on “Obfuscation”, a track whose decent groove is let down by awkward riffs that go nowhere and anemically mixed drum programming that sheepishly taps at the listener’s eardrums rather than hitting with any sort of force.

There is, I suppose, credit to be given for venturing outside one’s comfort zone, and Daniel Vincent has certainly done that here. And there’s also something to be said for a commitment to variety and taking creative risks, even if said risks end up producing something of a mixed bag quality-wise. In that regard, I suppose Means of Escape is an appropriate title, the sound of a creator trying his best to leave familiar ground behind, no matter how rickety his escape pod may be. Would this album have been much better if it had stuck to the gentle, synthy background music and sleepy, floaty neo-prog at which its creator excels, or would it have become a competent yet monotonous 50-minute snoozefest? This version may have veered off course, but it got a decent bit of flight beforehand, and perhaps later on Mr. Vincent can build upon these lessons and achieve escape velocity. And that record, hopefully, will end up being a bit easier to write about.

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Recommended tracks: Boy in Space, Means of Escape pts. 1 and 2, This Is All We Are
You may also like: Bjørn Riis, Esthesis, Oak
Final verdict: 5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Daniel Vincent is:
– Daniel Vincent (everything)