Progressive Rock
Self-released · 23 October 2026
Orion is the independent progressive rock project of British musician Ben Jones, and “Universe XXV” is the album he self-released on 23 October. According to the project’s website, it’s a concept record that takes American scientist John Calhoun’s Universe 25 experiment as its starting point and extends it to humans. “In a world where all things are equal, and all needs are met, what is a man to do?” Jones asks, before boiling the idea down to a single line: “Where do dreams go when there’s nothing to fight for?”
There are seven tracks and roughly forty-three minutes, running from the instrumental “Overture XXV” to “In The Wider World”, with the near nine-minute “Both Sides of the Coin” the longest piece. There’s a CD edition limited to fifty signed and hand-numbered copies, in a four-panel digifile with an illustrated booklet, plus a standard edition; buyers also get digital instrumental mixes of all seven tracks. The artwork is by Thomas Ewerhard.
Orion’s catalogue began in 2023 with “The End of Suffering” (5 June), which the website calls the project’s first concept album, and continued with “Passing Through” (1 December 2023), a three-song bridge between albums, “The Lightbringers” (16 August 2024) and “Into Darkness” (16 August 2025), which Jones himself describes as a darker, harder-edged third album.
Text by Guillem Cardós