VARIOUS ARTISTS

Wind Of Change: Progressive Sounds Of 1973 ESOTERIC

Four-disc box celebrating the diversity of one of prog’s pivotal years.

There’s always going to be friendly disagreement about which year in music stands out as being especially emblematic of a particular movement or creative watershed, the beauty being largely in the ear of the beholder. What’s not in dispute, however, is how enjoyable these yearthemed compilations are, acting at one level as persuasive advocates for their chosen 12 months, and also as vivid reminders of the rapidity of musical evolution.

THE UNIFYING FORCE IS THE WILLINGNESS TO PUSH EXPECTATIONS.

The five hours gathered over these four discs in which Family, Traffic, Curved Air, ELP, Caravan, Yes, Greenslade, Man, Procol Harum, and many others of a progressive persuasion are all the more remarkable considering that only 10 years previously The Beatles’ Please Please Me, Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday and The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan stood as different pinnacles of the pop market.

This collection also highlights the eclectic responses to the varied musical freedoms that typify the times as bands did increasingly weird and wonderful things to the blues and beyond. By way of proof of that diverse approach, despite both press and industry attempts to apply handy marketing labels such as ‘the underground’ and ‘progressive’, to what was going on, no two bands featured here can be said to sound exactly alike.

Away from the dominant acts of the day, space is given over to the bands who, although popular on the UK’s college and university circuits, never quite cut through to mainstream commercial success. Spirogyra’s gorgeously ornamental baroque pop, Help Yourself’s mellow West Coast stylings that merge atonal electronic experimentation, and Tempest’s sophisticated articulation with Allan Holdsworth moving between violin and guitar, all evidence artists interested in embracing something less obvious and tangential. Even the contributions from notionally solo artists such as Kevin Ayers, Robert Calvert and Al Stewart come with the air of outsiders looking in, without recourse to cliché or coasting. The unifying force at work throughout Wind Of Change’s four discs is the enthusiastic willingness to push expectations and boundaries.

Collectively, it provides a generous and informative commentary illustrating the details and lesser-known narratives that made the early 70s, with all its inspired brilliance and hubristic overreach, and all points in between, such an innovative era. That much of the output continues to exert not only a novel fascination but, in many cases, a direct influence upon many of today’s music makers several decades on should speak volumes about the period’s lasting value.