on Air Queen

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)…

Air Born: The MCA & Decca Years 1973-1984 is a new box set featuring the music of English prog-rock band Camel. The box features 27 CDs & five blu-rays and includes newly remastered versions of every Camel album and single issued between 1973 and 1984, but also includes new stereo and 5.1 Surround Sound versions of five albums, as well as new mixes of three concerts; The Marquee Club, London 1974, Hammersmith Odeon 1976 and Hammersmith Odeon 1977. The package also features previously unreleased outtakes from album recording sessions and BBC Radio ‘In Concert’ appearances from 1974, 1975, 1977 and 1981.

SYNDONE, as a reminder to the holy relic of Turin, is the Italian group releasing their 8th album, starting in 1992 their musical adventure for an energetic jazz-sympho-prog-rock trip, starting on ELP, QUEEN, AREKNAMES; cosmic hard rock, vintage moog and hammond, Nick has worked on pub jingles before and sets a symphonic tone based on keyboards, an album title about the Love of Life and its governing forces. A particularity, that of associating classical and opera with rock like QUEEN in its symphonic and baroque version, crazy and controversial…

Dutch band Alquin released four studio albums in the early to mid-'70s, initially playing prog rock influenced by Pink Floyd and Roxy Music. However, by 1975's Nobody Can Wait Forever (the only Alquin album released in the U.S.), the band turned to a more varied style encompassing blues and hard rock. The original group comprised guitarist/vocalist Ferdinand Bakker, vocalist Job Tarenskeen, bassist Hein Mars, drummer Paul Weststrate, and horn player Ronald Ottenhoff; Michel Van Dyke joined the band as lead vocalist in 1975. A live album appeared in 1976, and the best-of Crash! was released a year later. Bakker and Tarenskeen played in the new wave outfit the Meteors in the late '70s and early '80s.

On the strength of the immense success of Dido & Aeneas and King Arthur, in 1692 Purcell went on to produce The Fairy Queen, based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer-Night’s Dream. The work is, in fact, a ‘semi-opera’, or ‘opera with dialogue’, in which only some of the crucial scenes are provided with music. But this version of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream by the ‘Orpheus Britannicus’ became almost as famous as the play that inspired it, with its love scenes, its supernatural scenes and its innate sense of musical humour investing it with an irresistible savour and enchantment.