Listen to this collection, put together to capitalize on the explosive growth in the group's audience after Aqualung, and it's easy to understand just how fine a group Jethro Tull was in the early '70s. Most of the songs, apart from a few heavily played album tracks ("Song for Jeffrey," etc.) and a pair of live tracks from a 1970 Carnegie Hall show, came off of singles and EPs that, apart from the title song, were scarcely known in America, and it's all so solid that it needs no apology or explanation. Not only was Ian Anderson writing solid songs every time out, but the group's rhythm section was about the best in progressive rock's pop division. Along with any of the group's first five albums, this collection is seminal and essential to any Tull collection, and the only compilation by the group that is a must-own disc.

Galliard were in on the ground floor of the British progressive rock movement, releasing their debut album, Strange Pleasure, in 1969 and mixing jazz, rock, folk, and psychedelic influences. The following year, New Dawn pretty much picked up where its predecessor left off, with one key exception. The band had initially featured two wind players, Dave Caswell and John Smith; though Smith was absent from New Dawn, a whole brace of additional horn players had been brought in to augment the sound.

2013 mix from the original multi-track tapes by Robert Fripp, Tony Arnold and David Singleton at the Courthouse, Cranborne, Dorset.
As Robert Fripp had done with King Crimson's first live LP, Earthbound (1972), USA is a single-disc concert package documenting the quartet during its 1974 swing through North America. As with its predecessor, USA was also issued as a sonic cenotaph of the concurrently defunct Krim. So insistent that the band would not be resurrected, Fripp concluded the LP's liner notes at the time with another three-letter epitaph: "R.I.P." The 1973/1974 King Crimson included the collective efforts of Fripp (guitar/Mellotron), David Cross (violin), John Wetton (bass/vocals), and Bill Bruford (drums/percussion)…

Los Canarios created an outstanding 73 minute work based on Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Obviously, the music is very Baroque in nature because of the original but Los Canarios's version is much heavier because of the electric instrumentation of a rock band. You may instantly think of ELP's take on Pictures at an Exhibition but Los Canarios take a more refined approach relative to ELP's bombastic and sometimes erratic interpretation. But don't be fooled: Ciclos is a heavy and dynamic work in its own right with plenty of synth and organ work as well as guitar. Ciclos is a classic of the Spanish progressive scene. If you like heavy prog dominated by synth and guitar, check this out.

Galliard is a sextet formed in the summer of 68, and developed a psychedelic type of brass rock, fronted by twin wind players Caswell and Smith and singer Geoff Brown. They recorded two albums on the Deram Nova label (the subsidiary prog label of Decca records) around the turn of the 70's decade, when brass rock was the rage. Their first album Strange Pleasure By Galliard, released in 69, was quite eclectic, ranging from Medieval to Flamenco/Spanish music. For their second album New Dawn, wind player John Smith was gone, but the group adjoined a mega brass section of four player, plus keyboardist Morton.

Although it features the beautiful recorder of Leslie Penny and the Chieftains' Paddy Maloney playing the uilean pipe, Ommadawn didn't gain Mike Oldfield the success he was looking for. The album was released in the same year as the David Bedford-arranged Orchestral Tubular Bells and nine months after Oldfield picked up a Grammy award for the original Tubular Bells album. The most pleasing attribute of Ommadawn is its incorporation of both African and Irish music in its symphonic rock & roll mainframe. Boosted by a hearty amount of different horns, piano, cello, trumpet, and synthesizer, the album has its moments of rising action, but the whole of Ommadawn fails to keep its lovely segments around long enough, and there are some rather lengthy instances that include bland runs of unvaried music…

PFM were never a group prone to stand still, or repeat themselves from one project to another. Their second international album release, The World Became the World, was a case in point - rather than continuing in the same precise direction as its predecessor, Photos of Ghosts (1973), it presented a serious challenge to their existing fans even as it pushed the envelope of their sound. There are still places where the band's lyrical side, strongly in evidence throughout Photos of Ghosts, comes through, especially on the softer tunes such as "Just Look Away." But the real emphasis of the group's work, as demonstrated on the opener, "The Mountain," the main body of the title track, and the basic content of the crowd-pleaser "Four Holes in the Ground," lies in a much harder, more aggressive brand of progressive rock and a bolder approach to playing - they're much more of a hard rock band on this album…

3CD/3DVD Anniversary Collection Expands The Group’s 1980 Album With Steven Wilson’s Newly Remixed Version Of The Original, Plus Unreleased Studio And Live Recordings, And A Remixed Version Of The Slipstream Video Collection. After completing its acclaimed folk-rock trilogy in 1979, Jethro Tull returned a year later with A, an album that introduced a different sound and a new line-up. Originally intended as a solo record by the band’s founder Ian Anderson, the album’s single-letter title refers to the studio tapes, which were marked “A” for Anderson. When the album was finished, the group’s label Chrysalis insisted that it be credited to Jethro Tull, even though only two members from the band’s previous incarnation were featured: Anderson and guitarist Martin Barre. Despite that, the album and subsequent tour were well-received by fans around the world. To mark the album’s anniversary, Rhino will release A: THE 40th ANNIVERSARY EDITION.

Kuckuck was responsible for releasing many great albums in Germany in the early 1970s, including those by the wonderful Out Of Focus. Featuring Moran Neumuller (vocals, sax, flute), Remigus Dreschler (guitar), Hennes Hering (keyboards), Stephan Wisheu (bass) and Klaus Spori (drums), this legendary Munich based band were contemporaries of acts such as Amon Duul II and recorded three classic and highly collectable albums for the label. Their music is somewhat similar to early British prog but will gradually evolve to a certain jazz-rock while staying very politically and socially conscious (in the typical German style of those years).