Samurai

Following TSOP's first Omnibus box set subtitled "The Early Years" from 2018, this new set contains the albums On We Sail (2017), Archiviarum (2018), Toki No Kaze (2019) and Beyond the Wardrobe (2020) with five bonus tracks.
A must for the festive period when one can spoil one-self, beautiful presentation mini LP style card box sleeve package with extensive booklet as ever by Ed Unitsky. 4 disc with bonus tracks, symphonic prog of the highest quality. Limited issue so don't miss out.

Mickey Curtis was born of English parents in Tokyo, Japan in 1938. After the end of The World War II he lived by singing in the Occupation Forces or Camps, and as a result he was approved as a rockabilly singer. Although he had been an active pop singer and a frontman of two chorus-pop outfits named 'City Crows' and 'Vanguards' in mid 60s, he was awakened to rock suddenly and finally formed Samurai (The Samurais in their early days) in 1967. During the first two years Samurai made a lot of gigs and released two albums - "Tenor Sax Of Love" (1968; as The Samurais) and "Samurai" (1970) - in Europe. In early 1969 their soundscape was completely shifted to progressive rock, and we can easily realize the fact especially in their eponymous album…

Samurai is truly a lost classic of the Progressive era. Released on the short lived Greenwich Gramophone label in 1971, the album was influenced by the experiments of groups such as King Crimson, Gentle Giant et al, but was more than a mere clone of these bands. Evolving from the equally excellent band Web (whose album 'I Spider' is a classic of the genre), the musicianship on the album was excellent and Keyboard player Dave Lawson's compositions were groundbreaking and memorable. Sadly the group disbanded shortly after the release of the record resulting in limited sales. However, the influence of the album was not lost as both Dave Lawson and Tony Reeves soon joined Dave Greenslade to form the group Greenslade, effectively taking up the musical mantle laid down by Samurai. This Esoteric reissue features a booklet with previously unseen photographs and an interview with Dave Lawson.

THE SAMURAI OF PROG was born in 2009, project and nickname of Marco BERNARD who worked on Colossus and Musea; its philosophy is to integrate guest musicians according to album releases; 15 including three per year since 2020, impressive. Kimmo PÖRSTI and Steve UNRUH forming the backbone, after covers of MARILLION and other groups, they embark on personal compositions from 2014 to make music of quality and emotion; themes on short stories such as Gulliver, Robinson Crusoe or Grimm's tales. Here it's S-F composed by Marco GRIECO for a symphonic prog stamped 70's. "Anthem To The Phoenix Star" on travel with the constraints of time and space as a preamble, a PINK FLOYD sound for bass, Marek's sax and Juhani's guitar, voice-overs including that of Clive NOLAN forming a spatial soundtrack where the synthesizer is king and where the universe shaped is indeed dystopia…

Multinational ensemble THE SAMURAI OF PROG was formed as a project lead by Finland-based Italian composer and bassist Marco Bernard. He's been active in the Finnish Association for Progressive Music since 1995, and have been involved in their Colossus Magazine since 1996 - and instrumental in the Colossus series of theme albums they have created in cooperation with French label Musea Records. It was for a contribution to one of those projects that The Samurai of Prog was born, and joining Bernard as permanent members we find US artist Steve UNRUH and Finnish drummer Kimmo Pörsti. Besides this core trio, the philosophy of this band appears to be to involve additional musicians as needed and wanted, and their debut effort Undercover from 2011 bears testimony to that line of thinking, with a list of guest appearances impressive in length, scope as well as quality.