Centrefolds 1970

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)…

Awakening… (1969). From the legendary hard rocking South African psych rock scene, alongside such greats as Freedom’s Children, and Suck, comes The Third Eye. Awakening is the Third Eye’s debut full length, originally released in 1969, and is a masterful and complex album of late sixties South African heavy psych, featuring fuzzed out guitars, great brass arrangements and virtuosic organ work, provided by the young Dawn Selby, who, at the time of recording was all of 14 years old…

Marsupilami were an English proto-prog outfit who relocated to the Netherlands. The complexity of their music is quite unusual for the times - we're talking 1970 here, when the big guns such as Yes, Genesis and Crimson were barely coming out of the woodwork. A mixture of blues, experimental jazz and hints of folk, their music is often dark and foreboding, favouring perilously complex structures. Try to imagine a mixture of King Crimson, Jethro Tull, the Strawbs and East of Eden. Their two albums feature weird/oblique melodies and harmonies, lots of heavy keyboards, electric guitar and flute (at times purposely off key), with the drummer pounding on his skins as if his life depended on it. This is very early prog and you particularly feel this in the organ work, which has a typical early 70's psych feel. Their second album, which features an additional member on flute and sax as well as the appearance of the Mellotron, is an ambitious concept album about the brutal culture of ancien Rome - quite a sordid affair, really, but well done.

Some musicians are very closely associated with the name of Duke Ellington because they played in his orchestra for most of their career. Johnny Hodges and Harry Carney are obvious examples, and another is Ray Nance, whose violin lent the orchestra a touch of class. The tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves may only have been with Ellington for a relatively short time, but for the Duke, he and his mammoth solo in "Diminuendo And Crescendo in Blue" at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival were a fresh start after years of stagnation. Despite their close links with the Ellington orchestra, many of its musicians kept forming their own bands and cutting records with them. Paul Gonsalves and Ray Nance went into the studio with their sextet and played with the backing of a mainstream rhythm group and another wind player they knew from the Ellington orchestra…

Paul McCartney retreated from the spotlight of the Beatles by recording his first solo album at his home studio, performing nearly all of the instruments himself. Appropriately, McCartney has an endearingly ragged, homemade quality that makes even its filler - and there is quite a bit of filler - rather ingratiating. Only a handful of songs rank as full-fledged McCartney classics, but those songs - the light folk-pop of "That Would Be Something," the sweet, gentle "Every Night," the ramshackle Beatles leftover "Teddy Boy," and the staggering "Maybe I'm Amazed" (not coincidentally the only rocker on the album) - are full of all the easy melodic charm that is McCartney's trademark. The rest of the album is charmingly slight, especially if it is read as a way to bring Paul back to earth after the heights of the Beatles. At the time the throwaway nature of much of the material was a shock, but it has become charming in retrospect.