A very cool little genre – one that overlaps a bit with UK folk and some of its prettier pop of the period – and which often gets the same sort of top-shelf studio and production help as the best of the psychedelic generation! The music here is heavy on strings, woodwinds, and other larger instrumental elements – but all used in a way that's very hip, and quite different from the slicker pop modes of just a few years before! The cuts here are all made by longer-haired, open minded folks from the time – helping to reshape folk styles towards their acid generation to come, or introducing a more thoughtful mode of
songwriting amidst the freakier period of the psych years – all with results that are completely sublime. You'll recognize a few names here, including a number you might not think of as "baroque pop" – but together, they work well with some of the lesser-knowns – to craft music that helped draw together generations of British musical expression, at a level that's still pretty darn fresh today. 3CD set features a great booklet of notes, and 80 tracks by artists who include The Factotums, The Move, Fickle Pickle, Donovan, Gilbert, Tony Hazzard, The Strawbs, Freedom, Clifford T Ward, The Money Jungle, Jonathan Gill, Bert Jansch, The Matchmakers, Picadilly Line, Briget St John, Bill Fay, Procol Harum, The Majority, Five Steps Beyond, Festival, Stackridge, Muffin, Agincourt, The Orange Bi
cycle, Mike Batt, Billy Nicholls, Wil Malone, Julian Brooks, Lean Nixon, Harmony Grass, and many more!