alfred, I’d forgotten how much I like your highly informative music posts 
“A representation is pretentious if, and only if, it fails to satisfy the claims that it sets itself.”
Katz, fwiw, when I use the word pretentious in relation to art, I don’t mean it pejoratively (though I realise JQ was). I mean it as something fundamental to the performance. ie. it doesn’t matter if the artist is believable or not, the act is always a pretense, and the pretense is the representation. Identifying the ways in which this is so (what they’re pretending), is a crucial part of working out what the artist wanted to say (what they were intending)…to my mind, that holds for stockhausen as much it does for muse or brittany spears.
Re. is Tubular Bells prog rock? The dense layering of parts, heavy compression on every instrument, double tracked distorted guitar solos panned left and right, muted pick playing throughout, builds and flourishes drenched in reverb, are all classic rock production techniques – not those of minimilism.
More than anything, I’d argue it’s just an enjoyable tour through the guitar sounds/styles/collaging techniques of Page/Beck/Harrison/Iommi/etc…glad I had a listen for the first time in years. The MC’s voice is as hilarious as ever – it’s like it was designed to be played at some World Fair for the Current State of The Art In Recording…or, alternatively, a piss-take of the BBC produced (iirc) classical audiophile records of the era, where a very British voice over person (pictured on the cover at a mixing console in front of a window overlooking a beautiful summer garden or some such) would solemnly tell you what instrument you were listening to right now, and what was the microphone and its placement, so that you could set up your stereo properly, check the phase, and also learn a little about what a mixing console does, and why flutes probably shouldn’t be close-miked etc. They’re actually very good.
Something like that anyway. I could be way off!
