(4 cd boxed set, Esoteric Recordings / Cherry Red Records)
This is an ‘Underground’ Aladdin’s Cave whose location has long been known and the contents appropriated over the years to have already been spread far and wide. I could comment on those few less brightly known gems collected here, but what such an assemblage immediately prompts is an inventory of the familiar – or in most cases, the obvious. Glaringly so: my familiar, obvious, glaring favs to be precise.
There are out there more esoteric and intentionally obscure collections available from this ‘heavy’ period – 1970 here – but this is the western canon. As a primer for those new to the era and genre, the music selection and accompanying booklet provide a reasonably broad education about the time. Those my age will listen to hear a personal past in varying degrees of clarity – for example seeing Curved Air at the Ipswich Arts Centre in 1970, and much more recently acquiring an original copy of their picture disc