Best progressive acts these days?

I like Minimum Vital from France alot, but they can be a bit pompy. Happy Family (JP) has its moments. On the spacier side: Ozric Tentacles, DarXtar, and the Anubian Lights/Farflung/Pressurehed family.

Rwwear: Opeth? If death/prog is your thing, you might like Katatonia. Or Cynic... or Disharmonic Orchestra (post Expositionprophylaxe), or Death circa "Human". Of those, Disharmonic is the hidden gem.

Duane, been meaning to drop you a line. Good taste, as always.

Xiekitchen, I've got "Crafty Hands" and like it quite a bit. Interesting to hear they're back together! Stanley Whittaker apeared on Ten Jinn's "As on a Darkling Plain" around '99, which I found to be a bit on the "pomp" side, but I like many tracks on it so guess I've gotta say it's pretty good. I've seen it for free on Ebay several times ; )

I had "Orchid" by Opeth, but I never connected with it. It seemed like a transitional phase between black metal and something more goth and stylized. That's interesting to hear they've really moved far in the direction they have. That's "progressive" for you!

Thanks for the tip on the Ozric DVD, that's right up my alley. I didn't know they had one. I'm definitely going to check this out. Do you happen to have "Darker" by Darxtar (their 2nd)?

Impossible to find, that's why I asked ; ) Tombola is much more progressive than their older stuff. If you like Hawkwind, you would absolutely love "Daybreak", their 3rd release. "Sju", their 4th, is in between styles of classic spacerock a la Hawkwind and more progressive stuff like Tombola. It might be worth looking into if you like both.

I haven't gone into Crimson beyond "Lizard"... I heard part of Thraak or something like that and said, "whoa, missed my exit!" I like the psychedelic old stuff - I have the 1st three, with "Wake of Poseidon" being my favorite.

Cool - I'll have to add 21st to my list of bands to check out.

The DarXtar recording quality is usually horrible, no surprise there! Thanks for mentioning their website. For a couple years, all there was on the web about them was links to their old (even older than the "old" website they mentioned) website, which has been gone since the late 90's.
I just checked out the new one and it's nothing I've seen before.

As for Mr. Q's B., I ran across them on Jerry Kranitz' website, Aural Innovations (for all things space, talk to Jerry!) http://www.aural-innovations.com/ Great catalog, great guy.

I went to the record label page for Mr. Q's B. - they have several nice .MP3's you can legally download. Here's the link, in case you haven't been there: http://www.btinternet.com/~freakyfungi/mrquimbysbeard.htm

I really dig the track "Mossy". That's some groovy stuff!