British Band

Esoteric Recordings is pleased to announce the release of “The Albums 1969 - 1972” by the Climax Blues Band; a 5 CD set comprising the band’s first five albums, originally issued on EMI’s Parlophone and Harvest labels between 1969 and 1972, namely The Climax Chicago Blues Band, Plays On, A Lot of Bottle, Tightly Knit and Rich Man.
Formed in Stafford in 1968 by Colin Cooper, the band (originally known as The Climax Chicago Blues Band) recorded their debut album in September & November 1968. Issued early the following year on EMI’s Parlophone label, the album saw the band gain a wider audience. Shortening their name to the Climax Blues Band, the group recorded and released their excellent follow-up album, Plays On, later that year. By 1970 the band had moved to EMI’s “progressive” label, Harvest, and issued their third album A Lot of Bottle later that year…

2009 five CD live set from the veteran British band. Manfred Mann's Earth Band has toured consistently since their inception in the early '70s. No wonder then, that there are countless bootleg recordings doing the rounds. The band is renowned for shaping their songs on a gig-by-gig basis and this collection shows how the sets have been molded and developed over the years. The CDs contain recordings from various European venues, dating from 1981 to 2007. Apart from Volume One, they are all taken from single concerts. For timing purposes, some sets have been edited, but no other enhancements, re-records or overdubs have been added. The performances on this set were recorded in Europe 1981, Austria 1986, Germany 1991, Norway 1999, and Germany 2007.

Released in 2015, Grapefruit’s 3-CD multi-artist British underground folk compilation Dust On The Nettles was widely praised, with a five-star review in The Times hailing it as “a delight from beginning to end”. A long-overdue follow up to that set, Sumer Is Icumen In tightens the mesh by focusing on the point when traditional folksong and the burgeoning late Sixties counterculture collided, largely courtesy of seminal acts like the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and Pentangle.

Crawling Up A Hill is a fascinating document of a genre that, though relatively short-lived, would have a seismic influence on the subsequent development of rock music.

Shirley Collins' collaboration with the Albion Country Band for No Roses is considered a major event in the history of British folk and British folk-rock. For it was the first time that Collins, roundly acknowledged as one of the best British traditional folk singers, sang with electric accompaniment, and indeed one of the first times that a British traditional folk musician had "gone electric" in the wake of Dave Swarbrick joining Fairport Convention and Martin Carthy joining Steeleye Span. The album itself doesn't sound too radical, however. At times it sounds something like Fairport Convention with Shirley Collins on lead vocals, which is unsurprising given the presence of Ashley Hutchings on all cuts but one, and Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol on most of the selections (Dave Mattacks plays drums on a few tracks for good measure).

One thing is certain in this uncertain world – you can trust Ashley Hutchings to do interesting things with various areas of British folk and rock music. In the case of the Albion Dance Band, under its various names, the focus was on mutating traditional English dance and folk music, which led to escapades involving traditional tunes, Morris dancers, double drummers, dance callers, Philip Pickett's entire collection of medieval instruments, and serious rock guitar front lines that tend to leap onto the hay cart and start blazing away. The Prospect Before Us is particularly unusual, even for Hutchings and the Albions – a number of the tracks were recorded live in the studio, complete with dancing by the Albion Morris Men, an effort that resulted in some especially raucous moments: the bonus version of "Merry Sherwood Rangers" is far more staid than the live rendition that made it to the original version of this album. An essential purchase, we think.

Battle of the Field was recorded by the Albion Country Band in 1973, but it wasn't released until 1976. The delay didn't really matter, since the group's music – traditional English folk played on electric instruments – is essentially timeless. The group wasn't quite as skilled as Fairport Convention, but they were nevertheless extraordinarily talented, and this arguably remains their finest moment.