Soft Machine is once again in the magazines. The September edition of Record Collector says that Bundles “is the first of Soft Machine’s Harvest albums to be remastered and reissued by Esoteric, allowing us to reassess the part of their career during which the credibility quotient sank with all hands, but the musicianship shot into the stratosphere. Time has in fact been reassuringly kind: there are some furious performances in here – not least from drummer John Marshall, the pasha of polyrhythms – and Mike Ratledge’s once-quaint ring-modulated synth sounds have somehow become a bit cool in the intervening years...Bundles offers jaw-droppage in spades courtesy of short-term guitarist Allan Holdsworth.”

Allan Holdsworth is also the subject of an extensive interview on Innerviews. Of his period in the band, he has this to say “I really enjoyed playing with that group a lot. Before that, I was playing with Tempest, Jon Hiseman’s group. That was more rock and roll. I met John Marshall and Karl Jenkins through the Musicians’ Union. There was a guy at the union who was organizing some clinics for Soft Machine, but he wanted a guitarist in there as well. He asked Soft Machine if they would consider doing these clinics with an extra guy and they said “Sure.” So I rehearsed with the band and we did four or five clinics. After, they asked if I would join the band and I said “Yeah.” There was a lot of freedom in the group. Most of their pieces were quite simple harmonically, but they were in odd time signatures which was something going on at the time. I can’t count anyway, so everything is in one to me, but I really dug it. I love Karl, John, Roy Babbington, and Mike Ratledge. It was a lot of fun.” You can read the whole thing here .

Finally, The Parlour Band’s only album, Is A Friend?, is reviewed in the July edition of Classic Rock Presents Prog. “”It’s an album bristling with quality songs, but what really marks it out as a very good album is the equally good musicianship and particularly the arrangements...[this] is an album that grows in stature and gets more enjoyable and engaging with each listen.”

Aug 07
It’s great to see our four PFM / Manticore reissues continuing to excite the aural taste-buds of the critics. In Classic Rock Presents Prog, Dom Lawson singles out Chocolate Kings as “the true apex of PFM’s canon.” He goes on: “Listening to the turbo-charged thump of Harlequin and the Yes-on-steroids rumble of the title track, it becomes hard to think of a prog rock album that comes close to equalling the boundless energy and compositional verve on display here.”

However, for Geoff Feakes at Dutch Progressive Rock Pages it’s their first album on Manticore, Photos of Ghosts, which represents the very best of the Italian band. “PFM were not just another prog band (there was certainly plenty emerging at the time), their level of sophistication put them amongst the prog elite which included ELP, Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull and Genesis. This is clearly evidenced in the symphonic majesty of the opening River Of Life right through to the meticulously structured and concluding Promenade The Puzzle.”

The July edition of Classic Rock Presents Prog has been listening to our recent reissues of the Schicke, Führs & Fröhling . “Esoteric Recordings been responsible for unearthing some great prog from the archives over the last few years but these latest tidbits from mid-70s Kraut-proggers Schicke, Führs & Fröhling have been an extraordinary revelation. This is what re-releases are all about - elevating treasures that fell between the cracks years ago and have been largely forgotten...As you’d expect from Esoteric, the sleeves are full of original detail. You should hunt down the entire SFF back catalogue. Fascinating.”

The Head Full of Snow blog was also impressed with Symphonic Pictures by Schicke, Führs & Fröhling. “The musicianship is faultless, with each member playing a wide variety of instruments, and in the case of Führs and Fröhling, a Mellotron each. Heinz Fröhling was also the man who overcame the band’s lack of resident bassist by splicing together a guitar and a Rickenbacker bass and playing this hybrid bastard child of all that’s musical in the studio and on the stage. Electronic noises fuse seamlessly with symphonic extravagance throughout, ably fired along by the breathless rock drumming of Eduard Schicke. This is what gives Symphonic Pictures the edge over other instrumental prog albums. It remains diverse, painting dramatic, multi-hued soundscapes that work equally well as individual tracks, as the album does an epic whole.”

Finally, the August edition of Record Collector says of our Clark-Hutchinson compilation, Free To Be Stoned “It’s all about (Mick) Hutchinson’s guitar really. An incendiary player with a pinging, plectrumy tone (viz Dave Edmunds on Love Sculpture’s Sabre Dance), he lifts everything with his inspired note choices: check the flamenco thrums of Acapulco Gold and the cascading flurries of Improvisation on an Indian Scale.”

July 30
We’ve had a lot of queries regarding our forthcoming limited edition 3CD clamshell box set of PFM’s Cook. Here’s the tracklisting.

CD One - "Cook" Remastered: 1. Four Holes in the Ground / 2. Dove...Quando / 3. Just Look Away / 4. Celebration 5. Mr. Nine 'til Five / 6. Alta Loma Nine 'til Five

CD Two - Live in Central Park August 31st 1974: 1. River of Life / 2. Four Holes in the Ground / 3. Is My Face on Straight 4. Dove...Quando / 5. Guitar Solo / 6. Just Look Away

CD Three - Live in Central Park, August 31st 1974: 1. Mr. Nine 'til Five / 2. Alta Loma Nine 'tilFive / 3. Celebration / Drumsolo / The World Became the World

The September edition of Mojo has no less than four of our titles covered in their short-but-sweet reissues extra section. Aphrodite’s Child picks up three stars here as does Brainticket’s Celestial Ocean . “Swiss-based psychsters cranial fry-up of ‘70s based on the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Freeform synths, spoken weirdness, flutetastic, serenity, but beware the cosmic flatus in To Another universe.”

Escalator by Sam Gopal, described here as a “Methedrine-induced 1969 cult classic” also gets three stars and is particularly recommended for “fans of bad-trip psychedelia.” However it’s High Tide’s Sea Shanties which picks up four stars. “Its title suggest long-forgotten acid-folk driftwood. In fact, the Ladbroke Grove quartet’s 1969 debut delivers classic, freaky, hard-rock jams. File between the Edgar Broughton Band and violinist Simon House’s future outfit, Hawkwind.”

Soft Machine’s Bundles has proved to be so popular not only has it had to be re-pressed but it made the No.2 slot in Cherry Red’s best-sellers list, coming in just after Marc Almond’s new album! All About Jazz observe “Back in print and a tremendous improvement over the previous See for Miles CD, it's a chance to revisit an album that fired an important shot across the bow of the largely American-dominated fusion movement” You can read the whole review here.

Soft Machine off-shoot, Soft Heap were featured on Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on BBC 6 Music last weekend. Stuart played the opening track, Circle Line. The reviewer for the Dutch Progressive Rock Pages admits to not being a huge jazz fan but says “Their self-titled album follows the lead of Soft Machine’s fourth and fifth albums, with a modern jazz sound, chiefly lead and coloured by Elton Dean’s playing style and free-jazz leanings. However, Gowen’s presence ensures that things do not stray too far from the melodic and tuneful. Hopper’s opening composition is a grower, it’s mournful cadences slowly charming the listener, despite some squawky sax from Dean.” Over at Progarchives, the same track also caught the ear of Sean Trane, who notes “Starting slowly , as if from a Terry Riley album, the gorgeous Circle Line is the only Hopper- penned track, but certainly the most poignant on this album, in no small part due to Elton's impression of Coltrane.”

July 23
The August edition of Record Collector has praise for our recent Bob Downes reissues. Downes, the reviewer observes that Bob “worked upon Electric City and Open Music more or less simultaneously; both emerged in 1970, and both present contrasting aspects of the man’s questing stock-in-trade.” Of Electric City Record Collector notes “From soup to nuts, this is a busting, appropriately urban blare, reminiscent of Colosseum in its sustained brutality and in the Roland Kirk-derived twin sax skronk of Piccadilly Circles.” The bulk of Bob’s other album, Open City, was composed for a ballet piece. “Open Music is more of an ask overall, with its impressionistic free-form instrumental. The avian flute solo Birth Of A Forest is, however, rather lovely”

The same magazine also covers the 1969 Deram debut of The Alan Bown! “as a clutch of songs these are stylistically all over the map. The underplayed jazz/soul crossover of Strange Little Friend works well, as do the claves, conga and acoustic guitars of All I Can Do, while Children of the Night deserves to be a Northern Soul staple if it isn’t already. The Prisoner however, is a what-the-fuck 10-minute high drama set piece which reels from proto-Iron Maiden bellowing to Bee Gees-style nanny goat balladry. Schizodelic...”

Classic Rock Presents Prog highlights several Esoteric releases in its July edition. Writing about Home’s third and final release, The Alchemist, the magazine notes “If you’ve never heard this album before, you must rectify this oversight immediately. Musically, Home are reminiscent of a less wispy Caravan, the spiky guitar playing of a pre-Wishbone Ash Laurie Wisefield adding an agreeable edge to proceedings. The Alchemist is an imaginative and deeply involving album; our only criticism would be its somewhat basic production. Imagine what it would’ve been sounded like with Trevor Horn or Bob Ezrin at the helm. Well, we can dream...”

Brainticket’s Pyschonaut is warmly received at Head Full Of Snow. “The standout, however, has to be the progressive sixties throwback ‘Like a Place in the Sun’, the chorus of which evokes the spirit of Grace Slick heralding in a new dawn from a makeshift stage somewhere in Golden Gate Park. Contrast this with the spoken word verses, which languish on a far darker level – somewhere between the acid trip turning bad and the heroin flooding the veins of the once beautiful flower children of Haight-Ashbury – and you have the uneasy alliance of light and shade that ‘Like a Place in the Sun’ represents.”

Finally this week, don’t forget Esoteric’s essential guide to the broad spectrum of the progressive era, Feed Your Head. This two-disc download-only sampler is available via iTunes or Amazon.July 21
Re-releasing albums that have long been out of print is one of our cherished aims. So we love it when one of our reissues helps to rehabilitate opinions of a band that was either ignored at the time of its release, or has been undervalued. One such example of this is our recent reissuing of Soft Machine’s eighth album (and their first for the Harvest label) Bundles, and this review from the August edition of Classic Rock magazine.

“Though conventional wisdom decrees that Soft Machine’s most interesting days were already behind them by the time of this under-loved gem from 1975, as off-centre proggy jazz-fusion goes it comfortably holds its own next to the more renowned material from Weather Report or Mahavishnu Orchestra.”

The same magazine cops a listen to Escalator by Sam Gopal, saying that it’s “a strange little record, Gopal favouring tablas over drums and the quartet delivering a churning psychedelic soup that fairly reeks of patchouli oil. If you can get over the oddness of Lemmy trilling about dappled woods and singing trees, it’s often rewarding stuff. The title track and Midsummer Night’s Dream, especially, ride out on deliciously nasty grooves.”

The Dutch Progressive Rock Pages praise our recent reissue of. Out Of Our Hands by Flash . “This final offering from Flash proved to be a very approachable and likeable album. Unlike many of the prog releases at the time it gave little concession to the rising popularity in massed keyboards allowing guitar, bass and drums to do much of the talking which was true to Banks’ original intention for the band.” Read the whole review here.

Shiver me timbers! Head Full of Snow goes all nautical on us whilst listening to High Tide’s Sea Shanties . “So what have we got here? Well there’s the six tracks from the original 1969 release and a further five bonuses augmenting the recent Esoteric CD reissue. Easily the pick of a more than generous crop is the vocally challenged (instrumental) ‘Death Warmed Up’. Riding on a psychedelic riptide of intense sound, its violin fuelled undercurrents threaten to take hold and drag you down for the full extent of its nine minutes. If you manage to keep your head above the waterline for the duration of this lysergic voyage, then there’s plenty more from this hirsute band of bluff old coves to keep the sirens at bay and rocky outcrops on the horizon.”

Finally, in the July edition of Classic Rock Presents Prog our Clark-Hutchinson compilation, Free To Be Stoned is praised. “Collecting together these tracks, recorded over a comparitively short period of time, underlines the fact that Clark-Hutchinson refused to be bound by any conventions...From trance rock to quirky blues and on to experimental acid rock, the pair always proved to be radical, sometimes restively atonal. All these years later, there’s still something unnervingly fascinating about their music.”

July 16
We’re really thrilled to announce the release of Feed Your Head, a download-only sampler of some of the best progressive music sounds. Whilst there might well be other prog rock samplers on the market we’d argue there’s none as incisive or as insightful as Feed Your Head. There’s nearly two hours of music which gives the full breadth of different styles, complexities and flavours covered by prog-rock, many of which are often overlooked in other compilations that stick firmly to a well-trodden path.

Artists featured on Feed Your Head includes Hawkwind, Brainticket, Schicke, Fuhrs & Frohling, Web, Space Ritual, Soft Machine, Peter Sinfield, Jan Schelhaas, Barclay James Harvest, Kingdom Come, Claire Hamill, PFM, Hardin & York, Stray Dog and Woolly Wolstenholme’s Maestoso.

You can download the two-disc set either at iTunes or over at Amazon.

Tao from Symphonic Pictures by Schicke, Fuhrs & Frohling was played on Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on BBC6 Music last Sunday, with Stuart enthusiastically commenting that he may well make one of the reissues his featured album in a future show. The German trio have also excited the earbuds of the reviewer in the August edition of Record Collector. “It’s easy to fall prey to the common assumption that most German rock music from the ‘60s and ‘70s drank from the same exhilarating well of revolutionary primitivism; but it was a far broader church than received wisdom allows...SFF boasted sufficient instrumental nift as to attract the attention of Frank Zappa, who was in the frame to produce the 1976 debut album, Symphonic Pictures, until rival commitments intervened.”

The July edition of Classic Rock Presents Prog also reviews the SFF releases. “For me” says reviewer Tim Ponting, “the second album, Sunburst, is the masterpiece but debut Symphonic Pictures as a double with live outtakes is probably better value if you have to purloin just one...As you’d expect from Esoteric, the sleeves are full of original detail. You should hunt down the entire SFF back catalogue. Fascinating. Check out the full range of SFF releases here.

July 09
We begin with an announcement about our Aphrodite’s Child reissues...

Esoteric Recordings are pleased to announce that the reissues of the Aphrodite’s Child albums “End of the World” and “It’s Five O’Clock” will now be remastered under the supervision of Vangelis himself. The Maestro will also supervise the entire artwork package of both albums. We at Esoteric are honoured to have Vangelis’ involvement, making our reissues of these classic titles the first CD editions to be endorsed by the Maestro. As release dates were set before Vangelis’ involvement in these projects, we have postponed further shipping of these titles for approximately four to five weeks until Vangelis’ remastered versions are completed and ready for shipment and distribution, when they will become the official versions of these classic albums. Further news will be posted as soon as we have it.

The Alchemist by Home gets rounded up in the current edition of Classic Rock who say “Musically, Home are reminiscent of a heavied-up Caravan, the guitar playing of a pre-Wishbone Ash Laurie Wisefield adding an agreeable edge to the proceedings.” Also in the same section is Ken Hensley’s Proud Words On A Dusty Shelf. The reviewer baulks at what he regards as the record’s “cloying sentimentality” but says “The reissue begins strongly with the very Heep-like ‘When Evening Comes’...If Billy Joel went Prog, he’d sound something like this”.

The same magazine also finds room to review all four of our PFM reissues on Manticore. “By 1974’s The World Became The World, they were opening for Santana and ZZ Top in the US, their sound now a little, jazzier. But Chocolate Kings, released two years later, was their finest hour. Here they drafted in singer Bernardo Lanzetti - his voice not unlike Peter Gabriel’s - for a concept piece about American greed, at its most bitter on the monolithic keyboard riffs of the title track and the strangely menacing Harlequin” The album is awarded 8 out of 10 stars.

Our totally fab 3-CD compilation of the Pye and Dawn labels, Cave of Clear Light , is reviewed in the pages of folk-rock mag, R2. “Unloved and unsupported the label [Pye and Dawn] was not to match its rivals’ hippness or commercial success yet there’s much to marvel and enjoy and little to skip on this near-four-hour journey into its varied if mostly obscure artists roster.”

Sam Gopal’s album “Escalator” finds favour on the Head Full of Snow blog which takes the view that “Yes, Sam Gopal’s Escalator is a crackling, fuzzed out journey through the murkier waters of British psychedelic rock, underpinned by the menacing snarl of a perpetually throbbing bass, courtesy of one Phil Duke. I could pick out individual tracks, such as the bowel-loosening ‘Cold Embrace’ or the trippily mellow ‘Yesterlove’, but that would be pointless. It’s all good stuff! There’s even room for an unsettling cover of Donovan’s ‘Season of the Witch’, which is no bad thing.”

Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come albums are reviewed by the Dutch Progressive Rock Pages . Whilst not entirely convinced about some of Arthur’s outre antics on the Kingdom Come record, they nevertheless conclude “This re-release will please fans of the original with a definitive remaster enhancing the sound and a booklet that features some rare, and wild, photographs. Definitely a product of its time, the album will largely be a curio for others and despite a few excellent songs its inconsistent nature hardly makes it an essential purchase. However, this, and the re-release of the other Kingdom Come titles, should prompt a worthy re-evaluation of Brown's position in musical history.”

Finally, Soft Machine drummer, John Marshall, is briefly interviewed in the June/July edition of Shindig! He’s asked which album for him best represents Soft Machine. “I suppose as a complete album, Bundles, not least of all because Allan Holdsworth plays in a way that I don’t hear him play in other contexts. He has this wonderful style where he soars above things, with these immaculate seamless lines...But he really digs in ona couple of places, particularly on Hazard Profile. And that’s why that particular track is on there, because the sound on that wasn’t the best; it was the first take, but it was a real performance.”

July 02
Welcome to another round-up of what the press have been saying about some of our recent releases. The Alchemist by Home is reckoned to be “A MOJO Buried Treasure, inevitably” in the July edition of that magazine, whilst over in the current Record Collector, Home are hailed not only for being the starting-out point for Laurie Wisefield and Cliff Williams who went on to Wishbone Ash and AC/DC respectively, but The Alchemist for being a “proper late prog heavyweight in conception.” It goes on to note “The Alchemist is surprisingly fleet-footed in execution. Wisefield’s silver-toned lead guitar runs like a rivulet of mercury through Time Passes By and illuminates the diaphanous riff of A Secret To Keep, while Mick Stubbs’ vocals are consistently brisk, committed and accessible.”

The Parlour Band’s Is A Friend? also receives some attention in the same magazine. “Listening to the album today, it’s clear at a stroke just why Deram snapped them up in the first place, but also why they failed to make any significant headway in a 70s Britain torn between glam and glum. Their smoothly assured professionalism betokens long hours of honest toil in the rehearsal room – or parlour, presumably – but their songs, while uniformly pleasant, lack bite and distinction ... Honourable exceptions are Evening, an uncharacteristically dark-hued and exploratory soft prog gem, and the melodious Little Goldie, which locates the exact midpoint between Hello It’s Me and Spooky.”

The July / August edition of Shindig! features our three Alan Bown albums with the reviewer feeling “great sympathy for this knight of the road and his noble band - lightning struck them full in the face twice in a row, firstly when singer Jess Roden left on the eve of release of ’69’s psych/soul curio The Alan Bown! - necessitating the replacement of his vocals with those of new boy Robert Palmer - and then again when Palmer in turn flew the coop after the sessions for ‘70s Listen. Palmer’s vocals were hastily re-recordedby new boy Gordon Neville, who rose to the occasion with admirable sang-froid despite some songs being awkwardly sited on the on the edge of his range...Album closer Get Myself Straight, however, is a mellow precursor to the altogether more euphonious jazz-rock of ’71’s Stretching Out, their most convincing set of songs by some distance.

Our Reaction label releases by Schicke, Führs And Fröhling are going down well with fans of German prog rock. Of Symphonic Pictures, the Dutch Progressive Rock Pages concludes “This is very much a keyboard driven album, which at times can test the ear. As you would expect though, this German band, as with others within the genre, have produced a defining debut album which I highly recommend. The album has it all, fantastic keyboard work, dark mellotron passages, strong percussion work, deep bass lines and melodic guitar refrains. It’s bombastic without being arrogant and a very good starting point for someone to dip their toe in, which I can assure you, will open other avenues.”

Writing about Schicke, Führs And Fröhling’s next album, Sunburst, the same reviewer notes “Well this album is both bombastic and arrogant, make no doubt about it. It is a more polished product, its musical prowess is unbelievable, which mustn’t have been easy as Symphonic Pictures was by no means a poor album, but you the get the feeling that the inclusion of the forth member allowed them to develop. This is an album you don’t really want to miss out on, a second time round.” You can read the whole review here.

June 25
Uriah Heep’s keyboard player Ken Hensley’s solo album “Eager to Please” gets reviewed in the June edition of Classic Rock magazine. Hugh Fielder notes that several songs on the album “put clear water between Hensley and Heep. There’s a couple of fine ballads, the lavishly orchestrated “Through The Eyes Of A Child” and the wistful, acoustic “The House On The Hill”, plus the country rock “Secret”. There’s also a couple from short-lived Heep bassist Mark Clarke, the soulful “In The Morning” and the dramatic “Stargazer” that intriguingly predates Led Zeppelin’s Trampled Underfoot.”

In the same issue Tommy Udo considers the recent reissue of Jackson Heights’ three albums. “The album “Ragamuffin’s Fool” is a more English affair, again very acoustic and folky, though “Catch A Thief” and “Chorale” hark back to The Nice, and nods in the direction of early Yes and Genesis. Despite the ghastly pub-rock title and seedy concept about groupies, “Bump ‘n’ Grind” remains the best of their four albums, with “Public Romance” being a minor Prog classic full of techno-flash Synth and Mellotron...”

Jackson Heights are also discussed in the June edition of Record Collector. “The low-key fare unveiled on 1972’s brace of albums “Fifth Avenue Bus” and “Ragamuffin’s Fool” gradually builds in ambition and musicality, as the langour of the debut album’s “Luxford” gives way to the galloping piano triplets of “Maureen” on the follow-up. “Bump ‘n’ Grind” from 1973 is the pick of the bunch, even if it trades the intimacy of yore for decadent production values and sumptuously augmented instrumentation.”

Made In Sweden are given the once over in the May/June edition of Shindig. “Support slots and consequent friendships with the wallahs from Colosseum led Made In Sweden to record their fourth album in Olympic Studios in London with Tony Reeves at the faders - hence “Made In England”... What do you know, they turn out to have been superb,blessed with a tumbling lightness of touch borne 0f a shared grounding in ‘the filthy jazz’.”

Supersister also gets a thumbs-up from Shindig, who describe “Spiral Staircase” as departing from the “straight-faced jazz rock of ’73’s “Iskander” and returns the band to what they do best, ieflexing their subversive funny bone and musical shadow puppetry in the service of some bracingly unusual compositions...Imagine The Mothers of Invention fronted by The Northettes and The Smurfs and you’re getting there. Single “Coconut Woman” dripping with amused insincerity, takes the piss out of commercial viability to a positively heroic degree.”

May 26
Esoteric is lifting the lid on another cult favourite from the days of the British underground scene with the reissue of Sam Gopal’s Escalator. Sam was a veteran of the UK’s psychedelic scene, sharing the bill with luminaries such as Pink Floyd, Arthur Brown, and the Deviants. The band attempted a fusion between eastern and western influences into something they called raga rock. In 1968 the line-up changed and included Ian Willis who would later be better known as Lemmy. At this point he was still playing guitar rather than bass.

June
Aphrodites Child - End of the World (rain and Tears)
Aphrodites Child - Its Five O clock
Soft Machine - Softs
Brainticket - Psychonaut (Reactive)
Brainticket - Celestial Ocean (Reactive)
High Tide - High Tide
High Tide - Sea Shanties
Flash - In the Can
Lloyd Langton Band-Night Air (atomhenge)

July
Soft machine - Land of Cockayne
Fields - Fields
Jade Warrior - Waves
Jade Warrior - Floating World
Asgard - In the Realm of Asgard (cant do that funny ae together as per the
album) Eela Craig - One Niter (Reactive) Trifle-First meeting (jazz rock)

Talking to Record Collector in 1999 Lemmy was asked about his time in the band and his departure for Hawkwind. “We didn't even break up, it just petered out. It just sank to the ground, coughed weakly and expired (laughs). I thought that album [Escalator] was half good. I wrote every song on that in one night on Methedrin. Those were the days, eh?” Recorded in 1968 and originally released in 1969, Escalator has now been re-mastered from the master tapes and comes with restored artwork. Sam is still going strong and you can catch up with what he’s up to over on his website.

The latest edition of Classic Rock Presents Prog magazine contains a four-page feature on Arthur Brown. As part of their Mavericks series in a new interview Arthur reveals “I was never prepared to be just part of the flock. I wanted to make my impact by just being myself , and I did whatever I wanted. If I felt the need to be naked onstage, then that’s what I did.” The interview also delves into some of the wild ideas had for his post-Crazy World outfit. “On the tour for the 1971 album Galactic Zoo Dossier, he wanted to link members of the audience to an electro encephalograph, and use their brainwaves to drive the light show.” Check out the other Arthur Brown and Kingdom Come albums.

There’s a lot of praise for our PFM retrospective double album set, River Of Life. In an extensive review, the Dutch Progressive Rock Pages website was excited by the live material found in the set.

“Next up is yet more previously unreleased live rarities this time recorded at Nottingham University during their 1976 UK tour. Dove Quando, which was also a highlight of Cook, is a delicate affair with dreamy electric piano and flute whilst Out Of The Roundabout (from Chocolate Kings) also features electric piano this time sparring with acoustic guitar. No PFM collection would be complete without the playful Celebration and although the live performance here is a tad rough around the edges it compensates with its sheer drive and energy.” You can read the whole review here.

Freelance writer and occasional Esoteric sleeve note contributor, Sid Smith, was similarly enthusiastic about the new album over on his blog.

May 12
There’s great excitement here at Esoteric Towers with the announcement of the next releases for June and July. As you can see from the list below, we continue with our mission to make some truly great back catalogue material available once again, and celebrate some of the neglected bands from the progressive rock period.

June 
Aphrodite’s Child: “End of the World”
Aphrodite’s Child: “It’s Five O’clock”
Soft Machine: “Softs”
Brainticket: “Psychonaut” (Reactive)
Brainticket: “Celestial Ocean” (Reactive)
High Tide: “High Tide”
High Tide: “Sea Shanties”
Flash: “In the Can”
Lloyd Langton Group: “Night Air” (Atomhenge)

July
Soft Machine: “Land of Cockayne”
Fields: “Fields”
Jade Warrior: “Floating World”
Jade Warrior: “Waves”
Asgard: “In the Realm of Asgard”
Eela Craig: “One Niter” (Reactive)
Trifle: “First Meeting”

Jade Warrior were forging a kind of cross-genre / cross-cultural, new age / world music years before those terms were invented. Kites picks up strands of jazz, folk and oriental influences weaving them into a beguiling aural tapestry.

Prog website Sea of Tranquility notes “Usually when we describe music as having an eastern inspiration, there are a few notes, an instrument, some sound bites ... and that's about as far as it goes. Jade Warrior approaches it from the other end of the scale, and the oriental influences are far deeper and, oddly, less immediately obvious. It affects the melodies, the rhythm, the minimalist styles, he song structures, the moods ... it permeates everything. Yet on first spin, many listeners would simply think that it's an unusually innovative, delicate piece with a dreamlike ambience, and a light jazz sound in the forefront.”

Writing about Way of the Sun, Jade Warrior’s last album for the Island label, SoT takes the view that the final album actually makes a great start for those not familiar with the work of the band. “So why should newcomers start with Way Of The Sun? Because it neatly summarizes their Island records period, which most critics agree represents the pinnacle of the band's output. It's probably the most diverse of the four Island LPs, arguably the most elegant, and unquestionably, a wonderful all-round listen to both - some of progressive music's formative moments, and an early forerunner of new age music.”

In other news Soft Machine guitarist, John Etheridge gave an extensive interview last week which will be used in the liner notes for the forthcoming reissue of their second Harvest label album, Softs. During the interview John talked about the music scene of the day. “Progressive rock became something to be sneered at but there was a programme on BBC 4 recently (Prog Britannia), and you realise that there were many, many admirable qualities about the period.

Soft Machine were more of a progressive rock band with jazz leanings. I’m not saying this is all timeless universal music but the aspiration, skill and integrity of trying to push yourself to the limit either in playing or composition was and is something to be admired.” Soft Machine’s Bundles - featuring John’s predecessor, Allan Holdsworth- is out at the end of this month.

May 5
One of the joys of Esoteric Recordings is bringing lost or forgotten albums to a new generation of listeners. The music can be definitely of its time but clearly with merit, whilst other titles transcend the date of recording altogether to acquire a cultish status. One artist who fits both bills would be Ramases. The May edition of Mojo gives Glass Top Coffin three stars: “Believing himself a pharaoh reincarnated, Martin Raphael dressed in robes and cut a singular figure in ‘70s Sheffield. Ge made two albums on Vertigo; this is the more ambitious and abstruse.”

Writing in Seattle PI, Jeff Perkins was definitely intrigued by Glass Top Coffin. “It is not a rock album, and not lightweight by any stretch of the imagination. This is something altogether deeper. It is progressive, eclectic, seductive, and melancholic, full of deeply sensitive and heartfelt vulnerability...There are brief shades of something akin to Jefferson’s Airplane's more reflective, early Surrealistic Pillow moments amongst that rich orchestration. Ramases and Selket’s voices blend together almost seamlessly harmonising perfectly within the atmosphere created by the album’s twelve pieces.”

Cave of Clear Light, our top-notch vintage psych and underground compilation from the Pye and Dawn labels continues to attract attention. The May edition of Record Collector describes it as a “brilliant introduction to the freaky side of Pye. Spread over three discs, the set chronicles the label’s move into the underground market, at first with psych and then into varying degrees of prog, hippy folk, jazz, and hard rock...Genre experts won’t find anything new, but its nice to have it all in one place wrapped up in some gorgeous Phil Smee artwork.”

Back in April, Mojo devoted a half page feature to the three disc set and prompted Jim Irwin to declare “There have been compilations of this muisc before, but none as thorough...Dawn was strong on folk-rock - with the atmospheric Comus, the rousing thrash-folk of Titus Groan, the pretty Trader Horne...and also organ-led prog-blues, like Jonesy (heavy on the Mellotrons) or Atomic Rooster. Dawn closed, a commercial failure, in 1976. It had been the home to many for whom obscurity was the only fair result, but also produced music made with spirit and optimism which thoroughly deserves this respectful exhumation.”

The same edition of Mojo also covered Camel’s I Can See Your House From Here, giving it three stars and concluding that it was “a superior brand of adult pop.” Peter Sinfield’s Still also gets three stars but slightly more qualified praise: “A soup of melodic post-prog, it straddles epic (Song of the Sea Goat) and ridiculous (Wholefood Boogie)” - which to be fair, is not too far removed from Sinfield’s own assessment as per his interview in the sleeve notes. Short takes on other Esoteric titles from previous editions of Mojo include this crop from March.

Armageddon: “Ex-Yardbirds frontman Keith Relf gets heavy with Steamhammer guitarist martin Pugh, bassist Louis Cennamo and drummer Bobby Caldwell for this ill-fated solo ’75 LP. Cue five heavy nuggets of prime apocalyptic proto-metal.”

Stray Dog: “Before Snuffy Walden become a composer of TV themes (The West Wing, Ellen, etc) he fronted this Texan blues-rock trio. This ’73 debut remains crunchy-yet-funky and includes Chevrolet, Walden’s co-write with Billy Gibbons.”

April 28
With the reissue of Flash’s debut album having been so well received by fans and media alike, we now follow this with the release Out Of Our Hands from 1973. Their third album was sadly to be the group’s last when guitarist Pete Banks quit. Back in February the Gibson website featured a short interview with Peter and asked him why the band folded. “Things got a little crazy. On our final tour, I wasn’t exactly objective about a lot of things going on around me. Now, I realize I was having a nervous breakdown. A lot of stupid things happened, things that I regret. We sort of flew apart for all the wrong reasons — matters of ego, and frustration, and lack of time with regards to rehearsing.” You can read the whole interview here.

The May edition of Uncut magazine clearly liked tapping their toes the new expanded 2 disc version of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown . “The album’s organ-driven fin de siecle freakbeat sounds hugely improved via this scrubbed-up remaster” says reviewer Rob Young awarding the record no less than four stars. Record Collector also throws 4 stars in its direction asking “

Can there be a record more quintessentially the sound the no-holds-barred psychedelic end of the swinging 60s than this one?” Ian Abrahams goes on to conclude “An interview with Brown peppers the excellent sleevenotes, while a second disc gathers up singles, mono mixes, an unreleased BBC session of Come & Buy and an early cut of Fire. An absolutely cracking reissue, no mistake.”

Finally, the May edition of Mojo devoted a whole page to Robert Calvert’s Captain Lockheed and The Starfighters , noting that it was “quite possibly the only album to feature both Lemmy and Brian Eno”. Ray Wilkinson’s eulogy to the album features an interview with Calvert’s Hawkind colleague, Nik Turner, and places the record as “in effect, a British counterpart to Krautrock.”

April 21
Germany’s Schicke, Furhs & Frohling are part of this month’s releases and make an excellent new addition to our new REACTIVE imprint. Their debut album, Symphonic Dreams was originally released in 1976 and is made available here having been newly remastered with liner notes from guitarist and bass player, Heinz Frohling. The album comes with an extra disc of live material recorded in 1975.

Last month’s release, Bob Downes’ Open Music, has been reviewed by All About Jazz, with writer Roger Farbey clearly enthused about the title track, Dream Journey. “Divided into two parts, the first eleven minutes of the track are devoted to flute and percussion, with special emphasis on the sporadic, dramatic interspersions of timpani. The whole piece is very cinematic and reflects music of a more classical nature, but the second half is considerably more jazz informed. The ensemble sax sections are dynamically engaging, underpinned by acoustic bass and drums building to repeated crescendos with Downes providing an exciting flute solo.” Farbey concludes that Open Music is “an unusual and innovative collection of flute mastery.” Read the whole review here.

Daryl Way’s Concerto for Electric Violin is described by the current edition of Shindig! as being “unimpeachably performed neo-classical gravitas from ’78, redolent of Bartok if they’s had flangers and ARP.” Over at the Dutch Progressive Rock Pages , reviewer Geoff Feakes said of the album “It’s certainly a unique concept with a virtuoso performance from Way supported by authentic orchestrations from Monkman replicating strings, brass, woodwind and percussion with convincing results.”

Over on the Freak Zone show on BBC6 Music, no less than three Esoteric artists were featured on Stuart Maconie’s 4th April show. First up was Chocolate Kings by PFM from the River of Life compilation.

Golden Landing from the 1971 Vertigo cult album, Glass Top Coffin by Martin Raphael (better known as Ramases) worked its magic on the airwaves.

Finally, a track from the 3 CD box set Cave of Clear Light was played - Hall of Bright Carvings by Titus Groan. Cave of Clear Light which gathers together some of the best moments of the Pye / Dawn labels. Of the set Classic Rock Presents Prog recently noted “This is a show of how prog rock pretty much came into being...this is one trip down memory lane that really is well worth taking.” Over at Head Full of Snow, they reckoned that Cave Of Clear Light “shines the fiery torch on the label that’s been dismissed as a poor relation to the more dedicated exponents of the psychedelic and progressive sound. Unfairly so, one might add, as Pye/Dawn had an impressive roster of artists on the books, even if the vast majority never so much as tickled the public conscious".

April 1
It might be April 1st but you’d be a fool not to take a look at this month’s releases. First up is our anthology of classic guitar playing from Clark-Hutchinson. Mixing blues licks and eastern influences the duo produced some memorable genre-bending albums at the end of the sixties and in to the new decade. Incredibly underrated, guitarist Mark Hutchinson played at the seminal sixties event, 14 Hour Technicolour Dream in 1967 and is still active today. If you want a primer in how rock music began the process of stretching out and evolving then this two disc set will certainly help.

The April edition of Record Collector heaps praise upon Wigwam’s The Lucky Golden Stripes & Starpose. “The title track is a tightly-wrapped prog-pop jewel, as is the insular - and Latinate - Sane Again. In A Nutshell applies Hatfield and the North whimsy to a melody line of bloody-minded awkwardness, while the single Tramdriver is among their most streamlined compositions. In the same magazine, Pekka Pojhola’s B The Magpie is described as “a masterful display of neo-classical compositional clout.”

All fans of Man were saddened to hear of the death of Micky Jones last month. As any visitor to Esoteric knows, we are huge fans of the band and offer our condolences to Micky’s family. On march 28th, Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone honoured Mickey’s memory by playing It Is As It Must Be from 2oz’s Plastic with a Hole in the Middle which we reissued last year. By way of celebrating Micky and his work, we’ve been playing Back Into The Future which was released in expanded box set form in 2008.

Classic Rock magazine had this to say: “Lavish doesn’t really begin to cover this reissue of Man’s 1973 breakthrough record. Not only do we have the original half studio/half live double presented on one CD but a further two CDs presenting the Roundhouse concert in full – complete with Welsh Male Voice choir – and a single from the time. The deluxe packaging contains sleevenotes by guitarist Deke Leonard (not actually a member at the time) who offers hilarious insights into the Spinal Tap – like band politics. It’s a shame Man have been overlooked somewhat. As this set reliably proves, their West Coast, Floyd-tinged jam-rock is both passionate and articulate enough to justify renewed interest. This superb package should help with such long overdue rehabilitation.”

March 24
Decca’s Deram label has long been known to fans of the underground and progressive scene as a place where buried treasure can often be found. Always an eclectic, and occasionally eccentric company, two more titles from the vaults have been remastered and given a new lease of life.

Is A Friend? is the one album The Parlour Band recorded for Deram in 1972. It’s a likable mix of sun-kissed harmonies, driving guitar grooves, some nimble arrangements and occasional deployment of shock-tactic dynamics. Stalwarts of the support slot in their heyday, some members would later go on to form A Band Called O. This is the first time the album has been released on CD, providing us with an opportunity to get a little more friendly with this long-forgotten group.

The Alan Bown! were an early signing to Deram and their one and only album for the label captures the group in transition, moving from their soul band origins into something that sought to blend underground dynamics with pop music sensibilities. This is also notable for being the recording debut of a young Robert Palmer and includes the ten-minute concept piece, The Prisoner, which had been part of their stage show in 1969.

In The Press Flash continues to excite members of the press. Tommy Udo writing in the latest edition of Classic Rock mag argues that Flash were “an alternate reality version of Yes” and noting “Flash were enormously popular in the US and toured heavily, resulting in serious competition for Yes. And for those who fealt that Yes went up their own rectums not long afterwards - and that includes some of the members of Yes - then Flash were a remind of the more eclectic though approachable sound that Yes left behind.”

Manticore signing, Stray Dog, are warmly praised by Geoff Barton in the pages of Classic Rock Presents Prog (14). “Stray Dog begins with the warning ‘Fasten your seat belts!’ It’s a wise precaution because what follows is akin to driving a Toyota with the accelerator pedal stuck firmly to the floor.” Of this album and its follow-up, While Your Down There, Barton observes “both albums are jam-packed full of bonus tracks, including live and previously unreleased recordings - making even the lacklustre second album nigh-on essential.”

The same magazine also contains a half-page review of Robert Calvert’s classic, Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters , which declares this Esoteric release to be “a brilliant monument to the great psychedelic warrior poet of the English Underground.”

March 17
Out this month The release schedule for March continues to throw light on some long-neglected albums. Home were a fine rock outfit that graced many a stage in the early 70s, whose line-up included guitarist Laurie Wisefield who would go onto join Wishbone Ash. Perhaps their best known work is the concept album, The Alchemist, which was first released on CBS in 1973.

Elsewhere, two vintage recordings by jazz maverick Bob Downes are making their way into the wider world this month. Newly remastered from the original master tapes and with commentary from Bob himself in the sleeve notes about the making of the albums, Open Music and Electric City provide a entertaining whirlwind of jazz, psychedelic, folk and rock influences.

New to Esoteric!
Esoteric Recordings is pleased to announce that we well be reissuing all of the titles Soft Machine recorded for the Harvest label in the late 70s Bundles, Softs and Alive And Well - Recorded in Paris, and from 1981, Land of Cockayne. The first title to be released in May will be their classic Harvest label debut, Bundles, featuring Allan Holdsworth.

Fans of the guitarist may also like to know that we recently reissued Allan’s very first album, Igginbottom’s Wrench. Recorded in 1969, Record Collector notes “In an era of Marshall stacks and Big Muffs, Holdsworth and fellow ’Igginbottom guitarist Steven Robinson favoured intelligently-arranged tone clusters performed with no amp distortion and the treble rolled off. At times, as in Sweet Dry Biscuits, they sound like The Magic Band if Sun Ra had been cracking the whip instead of Beefheart.” Criminally under-rated you can grab the album here.

Meanwhile, the latest edition of Classic Rock Presents Prog magazine (issue 14) had this this to say about the album. “Of course, the guitar work is particularly outstanding, switching from laid-back jazz runs to blistering plank spanking and finally shooting off into outer space where no musical boundaries exist. Listen and weep.”

A track from Wigwams Nuclear Nightclub was featured last week on the always excellent BBC 6 Music show, Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone . You can catch up with all of the titles recorded by this Finnish prog outfit here.

Finally, following the recent publication of the Jack Bruce biography, Composing Himself (Jawbone press) by Harry Shapiro, it’s timely to remind visitors that if you’re looking for a comprehensive musical account of Jack’s diverse career then you won’t find much better than Can You Follow, our own six CD retrospective of the music scene’s great pioneers. All About Jazz praised the set, commenting “With the majority of his life spent as a professional musician, the legacy of legendary recordings graced by Bruce's musical presence is immense and his innovation unique, touching the worlds of rock, jazz, blues and ethnic music. As one of popular music's most respected innovators, Bruce is in a class of his own.” You can read the full review here.

March 10
The Sides of March! It’s another busy month for Esoteric with the release of the PFM English language albums for the Manticore label. PFM titles include Photos of Ghosts, The World became the World, Jet Lag, and 2 CD overview, River Of Life. All of the original albums come with restored artwork and bonus material and there’s previously unreleased live tracks on the PFM collection.

Two albums from the legendary Arthur Brown - recently seen in fine form on the BBC documentary, Heavy Metal Britannia - are also released this month. Arthur Brown and Kingdom Come’s 1972 self-titled album and it’s follow-up Journey have been remastered and come with bonus tracks.

Here’s a quick round-up of reactions to some of the Esoteric and Atomhenge releases in the press and the cyber-pages of the internet. The set of Jackson Heights reissues get an enthusiastic thumbs-up over at progarchives. “Esoteric continue to surprise with their rehabilitation of more forgotten gems from rock's golden age” says Beebfader. Describing Fifth Avenue Bus as “music of exceptional quality” the album is awarded the album no less than four stars. What might surprise a lot of newcomers to Jackson Heights is the extent of the three-part harmony vocals that dominate the albums and which, in his assessment of Ragamuffin’s Fool, Beebfader declares “At times they are good enough to challenge Crosby, Stills and Nash.”

Flash and Two Sides of Peter Banks have been warmly received in the pages of the March/April edition of Shindig!, with reviewer Marco Rossi getting highly excited about both albums but Flash in particular: “It’s extraordinary frankly. It pelts you with sunlight. It’s like sitting among the reflectors at the top of a lighthouse on the brightest May morning since mornings began”. Er, we think that means he likes it! Just so there’s no doubt, the review goes on to nominate ‘Small beginnings’ which opens the Flash album as Peter Banks’ “finest recorded moment”. We’ve also noticed that Two Sides of Peter Banks is currently on the playlist of Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson.

Finally, the late, great Robert Calvert’s Captain Lockheed And The Starfighters is lauded as a Hawkwind album in all but name in Classic Rock, with Neil Jeffries declaring that “When it’s rocking (the album) is a close cousin of Hawkwind circa 1973 (the Doremi Fasol Latido album).” Over at Shindig!, Grahame Bent takes the view that Lockheed is “either the late-lamented Bob Calvert’s meisterwerk, or the great lost Hawkwind album - or maybe it’s a bit of both.”