VA - Beyond The Pale Horizon: The British Progressive Pop Sounds Of 1972 (2021)

From a musical perspective, the Seventies didn't really begin until 1972, when the sudden appearance of pioneering art-rock adventurers Roxy Music saw them spearhead a new generation of bands making the first genuinely post-Sixties music.

But 1972 was also a year in which established blues and progressive rock bands found a new level of popularity. Free, Family, Thin Lizzy, Argent, The Moody Blues and a re-emergent Status Quo all issued pivotal hit singles, Mott The Hoople and Strawbs finally made commercial breakthroughs, Hawkwind took everyone by surprise with the success of “Silver Machine”, while The Move completed their long-delayed metamorphosis into The Electric Light Orchestra.

Away from the singles chart, underground behemoths like Yes and Uriah Heep continued to thrive, while the likes of Caravan, Home and Medicine Head were regulars on the college/university network. Kevin Coyne painted his harrowing masterpiece with the album 'Case History', and the equally uncompromising Van der Graaf Generator made an unlikely bid for chart success with the single “Theme One”.

Boasting four hours of music and a lavishly annotated and illustrated 40-page booklet housed in a stylish clamshell box, Beyond The Pale Horizon features all of the above as well as the usual array of cult bands and obscure studio creations.

We include a significant number of Top Ten singles, some glorious misses, a few turntable hits (including much-loved 45s by Pagliaro and Mike Hugg), superior B-sides and several key album tracks, together with a handful of cuts that didn't appear at the time or were only issued as limited edition private pressings – indeed, we even feature a previously unheard alternative recording of a track from 'Dark Round The Edges', one of the most valuable albums of all time. It's all here, and, with the noble exception of Stackridge's vegetarian call-to-arms “Keep On Clucking”, it's all meat.