Esoteric - Homepage

Fans of Esoteric should also visit our sister labels, Atomhenge and Reactive

WELCOME TO Esoteric

Welcome to Esoteric Recordings, the home of good music. Established in 2007 and label managed by Mark Powell, Esoteric Recordings is the home of Progressive, Psychedlic & Classic Rock, with all releases finely packaged and remastered from the best possible sources to ensure the highest possible audio quality. Our releases cover both catalogue reissues and inspiring new works from artists with a fine history and heritage. Esoteric Recordings is an imprint of the Cherry Red Records group.

For a full list of Esoteric releases and to buy Esoteric CDs please check our Label Discography
To listen to sound samples from Esoteric’s release please check our Media page

Mark Powell is also the author of "Prophets & Sages" available on Cherry Red Books.

Esoteric News: 9th January 2012:

Arthur Brown’s Chisholm In My Bosom receives 4 stars in the pages of January’s Record Collector magazine. "Around the same time that Captain Beefheart was being pointlessly made over in an inevitably doomed attempt to render his music more palatable to mainstream audiences, similar moves were afoot to re-imagine Arthur Brown as a "colourful” AOR figure – less of an affront to delicate sensibilities than the demoniacal nuthatch of yore with his head on fire and his cock out. Amazingly, it worked: on record, at least. To say that "no one bought it” refers more to the simple fact of audiences failing to shell out for the relevant product rather than refusing to countenance the concept of Brown as a kind of hobo Robert Palmer. Chisholm In My Bosom has actually weathered the passage of time surprisingly well, given that it missed the zeitgeist by several light years on its original 1977 release. Let A Little Sunshine (Into Your Life) and Need To Know are definitive 70s AOR, the latter in particular, with its harmonised, lightly flanged guitar parts, somewhere between Killing Of Georgie-era Rod Stewart and The Sutherland Brothers & Quiver. Brown had never been in more supple voice; if Monkey Walk is like The Goodies fronted by a stripper vicar, the meandering 19-minute title track could also be an itinerant Astral Weeks.” The same magazine also awards 4 stars to Live ’75 by Jack Bruce . "That band, captured here in concert at Manchester Free Trade Hall on 1 June 1975, boasted the star power of former Stone Mick Taylor and the deservedly weighty jazz-rock rep of Escalator Over The Hill escalatrix Carla Bley; but it is the comparatively unsung drummer Bruce Gary and keyboardist Ronnie Leahy who most impress from this remove with their sensitively-judged contributions. The former en route to The Knack, and the latter migrating from Stone The Crows, bring exuberance and gravitas respectively to a set predominantly drawn from Bruce’s unimpeachable solo albums Harmony Row and Songs For A Tailor. Bruce himself is in gruff and lusty Caledonian soul voice throughout; and if the concluding Sunshine Of Your Love feels a bit like an if-we-must sop to the mewling, Cream-starved masses, the incendiary 24-minute Smiles And Grins that precedes it has already redressed the balance.” Classic Rock Presents Prog magazine has some words of praise for Tangerine Dream’s Alpha Centauri. "mainman Edgar Froese coined the term ‘Kosmische musik’ to describe this, the band’s second album, originally released in 1971. Inspired by the soundtrack to 2001:A Space Odyssey (as well as King Crimson’s In The Wake Of Poseidon at 16rpm!) it remains a chilling listening experience, 40 years on. Full of swirling, eddying synths and mystifying church organ sounds, you’re immediately enveloped in its nerve-jangling ambience. You really do feel like an astronaut cast adrift from the mothership, spinning aimlessly among the stars with your oxygen on the redline...The unsung hero is Steve Schroyder (organ, voice,several echo machine, iron stick). Prior to the recording sessions he had been arrested, high on LSD, and locked away in a Berlin mental hospital. The Tangs managed to secure his release only for him to disappear shortly after the album’s completion. Schroyder’s instability is undoubtedly at the core of Alpha Centauri’s spooky feel."

New & exclusive to cherryred.tv Bill Nelson talks to Esoteric Label Manager Mark Powell about his life and music exclusively for cherryred.tv: