The Laconic is a project whose goal is to create melodic, instrumental progressive rock, and in doing so, honor and revive a subgenre tragically abandoned by artists and audiences as progressive metal grew in popularity.

Originated by Chicago composer and multi-instrumentalist Marc Pelath, the personnel constituting The Laconic have varied from album to album, not unlike a prog Steely Dan, and range from up-and-coming artists to living legends, but always with Pelath and his artistic vision at its core, guided and produced by mentor and touch guitarist Markus Reuter.  Previous and current contributors to The Laconic have included Alexander Babikov, Luca Calabrese, Juan Dahmen, Aralee Dorough, Erik Emil Eskildsen, Colin Gatwood, Tim Gardner, August Hoerr, Gary Husband, Scott Pelath, Simon Phillips, Markus Reuter, Markus Schneider, Christina Ruf, and Fabio Trentini,

Personally inspired by legendary names in music’s history like Tony Banks, Chris Squire, Mike Oldfield, and Trevor Rabin, Marc began writing music in earnest during the global pandemic, the fruits of which were released in 2022 as his largely-solo debut album, Integrals.  This freshman effort established an emotional, evocative, and eclectic style that continued and evolved in subsequent releases.  2023’s Amor Fati enlisted an array of sensational talent to execute increasingly-mature compositions, and found some small critical acclaim.  Not really not progressive rock, but not really progressive rock either, Amor Fati drew liberally from other genres, from salsa to spaghetti western, but nevertheless included the joyfully-obligatory prog epic (“Refuge”). 

In 2024, Marc worked closely with algorithmic composer Kid Arrow to create his third album, Time And Tide, which saw Pelath explore his creative freedom, largely surrendering responsibility for composition in order to focus on instrumentation, which here illustrates the history of synthesizers and drum machines from the 1940s to the present day.  The fourth Laconic album, Ascension, is a spiritual successor to Amor Fati, and constitutes another leap forward in the composition and execution of the wordless opera that are becoming his trademark.  The fifth and newest album, Carbon, is a tribute to Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, and is his most experimental work to date.