NEKTAR’s Roye Albrighton Has Passed Away

One of the most underrated prog artists, Roye Albrighton, a mastermind of NEKTAR, has passed away peacefully, aged 67. Maybe it was because his band found their initial base in Germany, rather than in the U.K., such Albrighton-devised classics as "A Tab In The Ocean" and "Remember The Future" didn’t attract as much attention as YES records of the same epic scope released at the same time. What also went overlooked was Roye’s introduction of funk – and, thus, fun – to art-rock, while his sci-fi observations through the eyes of aliens have always remained rooted in terrestrial sociopolitics. Albrighton’s last record with the band, "Time Machine" from 2013, demonstrated it as vigorously as the classics from ’70s, Roye delivering criticism of current events on his Facebook page. The activist to the end, he will be sorely missed.

July 27, 2016