Esoteric Recordings is pleased to announce the release of a new clamshell boxed set featuring all four of Curved Air’s classic albums recorded between 1970 and 1973. “The Albums” features newly remastered versions of “Air Conditioning”, “Second Album”, “Phantasmagoria” and “Air Cut”, along with bonus tracks ‘It Happened Today’ (single version), ‘What Happens When You Blow Yourself Up’ and ‘Sarah’s Concern’, all originally issued as singles.
Originally issued on the Warner Bros. label in November 1970, “Air Conditioning” showcased the highly innovative talents of Sonja Kristina (vocals), ex-Royal College of Music student Darryl Way (violin), former Royal Academy of Music student Francis Monkman (electric guitar, piano, mellotron, VCS3 synthesiser), Rob Martin (bass) and Florian Pilkington-Miksa (drums)…

Audience was a London-based group that recorded their first album in 69 and had their eponymous debut pulled from the stores a few months after its release, which makes the album a major collectible (CD versions were also hard to come by until a recent reissue). They got signed by Tony Stratton-Smith of the Charisma label (Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator, The Nice and a few others) but although not a purely progressive group, they bore a lot of characteristics of the masters. Among which , a profound (and somewhat derangesome) singer whose voice reminds you a bit of Peter Hammill, a great wind players able to switch to from flutes to saxes and oboe and a bassist…

The first two albums by UFO featured an odd mix of crisp, focussed songs alternating with meandering electric guitar-led soundscapes. Flying starts off with perhaps their best of the former category, "Silver Bird." This story of a primitive islander seeing an airplane for the first time begins with a pleasant little acoustic guitar melody and builds into a soaring full-band musical expression of the wonder of flight. The next cut, all 19 minutes of it, conjures up the vaster expanses of space. To complain that "Star Storm" rambles is to miss the point; sometimes Michael Bolton's guitar is used as a pure sound effect rather than to convey any kind of rhythm or melody, and if you're patient, then listening can be an enjoyable, even absorbing, experience…

This reissue of Overdog features the bonus single edits of Roundabout, one of their best loved and most powerful works. Along with a reissue of The Time is Near, this release sees the beginning of a reissue campaign by Esoteric Recordings of the classic Keef Hartley Band albums.
After the subtleties and suppleness of 1970's The Time Is Near…, the Keef Hartley Band's third full-length, the group returned the following year with Overdog, a set that kicks them into overdrive. Opening with a dramatic flourish of wah-wah guitar, the anthemic "You Can Choose" instantly wipes all memories of the intricate design of the preceding album off the board. Big and brash, "Choose" pounds rock into funk with savage delight…

After the breakup, Beatles fans expected major statements from the three chief songwriters in the Fab Four. John and George fulfilled those expectations - Lennon with his lacerating, confessional John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Harrison with his triple-LP All Things Must Pass - but Paul McCartney certainly didn't, turning toward the modest charms of McCartney, and then crediting his wife Linda as a full-fledged collaborator on its 1971 follow-up, Ram.
Where McCartney was homemade, sounding deliberately ragged in parts, Ram had a fuller production yet retained that ramshackle feel, sounding as if it were recorded in a shack out back, not far from the farm where the cover photo of Paul holding the ram by the horns was taken…

Esoteric Recordings are pleased to issue the first ever Official UK CD edition of the self titled album by Fields. When the first line-up of Rare Bird folded in early 1971, keyboard player Graham Field formed this outfit with bass player, vocalist and guitarist Alan Barry and King Crimson drummer Andy Mcculloch. Although the band failed to emulate the commercial success of Field’s previous group, the sole album they recorded was a magnificent example of British Progressive Rock. Much sought after for many years, this official Esoteric CD edition has been re-mastered from the original master tapes, features two bonus tracks and an essay by Sid Smith and interview with Graham Field.

In some circles, Mickey Jupp is something of a minor legend, a roots rocker with excellent taste and a cutting wit, best heard on the songs "Switchboard Susan" and "You'll Never Get Me Up in One of Those," both covered by Nick Lowe. Basher's endorsement is a clear indication that Jupp is a pub rocker, a guy who specializes in laid-back good times, so it shouldn't come as a great surprise that his first band, Legend, was proto-pub, an unabashed celebration of old-time rock & roll, filled with three-chord Chuck Berry rockers and doo wop backing vocals. Nevertheless, listening to their 1971 LP is a bit of a shock, as it's completely disassociated with anything that was happening in 1971, even with Tony Visconti enlisted as their producer. Legend's sensibility is ahead of its time in its retro thinking, pointing the way to the rock & roll revival of the late '70s and not even that similar to the country-rock of Eggs Over Easy or Bees Make Honey…

Seven Tears finds Golden Earring continuing to develop its distinctive blend of hard rock and prog elements, but the end result is not as consistent as 1970's Golden Earring. The big problem this time out is that the group's adventurous genre-hopping tendencies don't always result in strong songs: "Silver Ships" is a soft, science fiction-influenced song that generates a potent atmosphere but lacks the strong arrangement and sense of dynamics that would allow it to take flight, and "You're Better Off Free" loses sight of its catchy tune with a lengthy midsection guitar jam that derails an otherwise interesting song.

After a scission of the avant-garde group "Kluster" due to the departure of Conrad Schnitzler, the two musicians Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim Roedelius go to work in duet as "Cluster". The band's first years were clearly orientated to Krautrock and to experimental electronic music. Consequently, the production of the band started with massive, radical improvisations, constructed around electric organ works, electronic collages, guitar sound manipulations, feed back. The result is rather similar to Kluster's underground, conceptual music, very chaotic with lot of distortion and reverb. With its repetitive, hypnotic guitar patterns and embryonic electronic collages, the second album "II" can be seen as a classic in 70's German electronic underground. This high quality experimental electronic music will progressively lead the band to something far from the krautrock scene and extreme music…

Scratch the surface of early-seventies progressive rock and underneath all the classic albums and famous musicians you will find a series of lesser-known bands and artists who failed to hit the big-time but still managed to create all manner of excellent prog. Dig a little deeper and you'll find Mainhorse, a little-known European prog-rock group who produced one excellent album and introduced the world to the enigmatic swiss-born keyboardist Patrick Moraz, who would later on find fame with both Yes and The Moody Blues. The eponymously-titled Mainhorse debut was released to little fanfare in 1971 after the group had signed with Polydor Records 12-months previous, but dis-banded soon after the completion of their one-and-only album. It's a genuine shame, because it's a wonderfully constructed and highly-original seven-track album that was made at a time when groups such as Yes, ELP and Genesis…

Heaven, a Progressive/Jazz Rock group from Portsmouth, burst forth onto the British rock scene in 1970 when they appeared at the legendary Isle of Wight festival sharing a bill with The Who, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix et al. Making a stunning debut, the band (now managed by festival organiser Rikki Farr), soon secured a recording deal with CBS Records who signed the band for a large advance. The resulting double album 'Brass Rock 1' appeared in 1971, adorned in a lavish fold-out sleeve. Well received critically, the album failed to achieve the expected success and Heaven soon disbanded, leaving behind a fine example of classic jazz rock. Officially released on CD for the first time, this Esoteric Recordings reissue is digitally re-mastered from the original master tapes and restores the artwork of the album in full.

In an era where it's not uncommon for a superstar act to wait three or four years between releases, it's astonishing to realize that Carole King wrote and recorded a strong follow-up to 1971's bazillion-selling "Tapestry" that was released before the year was up! "Music" was a big commercial success, but anything would pale next to the ecstatic commercial response to "Tapestry", which was still high in the charts when this follow-up was released. The generically-titled "Music" didn't spawn any hits as big as "It's Too Late" or "So Far Away," but with several decades' hindsight, it's clear that "Tapestry" was no fluke; in its more low-key way, "Music" is every bit as fine an album.
Highlights include two jazz-tinged tracks, "Brother Brother" and the waltz-time title track, which features a remarkable saxophone solo by Curtis Amy…