... CD

A great illustration of the sorts of qualities that always made the British scene so interesting over the years – as even in the big year of hits that was 1972, these groups still had a way of coming up with all sorts of interesting modes and really fresh styles – maturing the earlier experiments of prog rock, going for some continued inventiveness in more edgey groups, and furthering a new generation of songwriting that took things way past too-familiar pop themes! The depth of music here is really great – and although the set features a few bigger names, they're easily matched with a number of groups who never charted on our side of the Atlantic, and who were really part of the record-buying cognoscenti on both sides of the ocean – represented here by the kind of album nuggets that really pushed this generation past singles and 45s! As with other Esoteric packages in this series, the choice of cuts is great – never too familiar, but also never too obscure for obscure's sake – as the 55 track package moves through work by Khan, Bombadil, Pretty Things, Ten Years After, Skin Alley, Rare Bird, Edgar Broughton Band, Uriah Heep, Hawkwind, Atomic Rooster, Barclay James Harvest, Mellow Candle, Van Der Graaf Generator, Help Yourself, Matching Mole, Bond & Brown, Vinegar Joe, Nektar, Family, Free, and others! CD