Esoteric Vinyl & CDs

Review: A multi region Blu-ray edition of the classic album by the Alan Parsons Project.

Remastered and remixed from the original master tapes by Alan Parsons.

Featuring a stunning new 5.1 surround sound from the original multi-track master tapes by Alan Parsons and 4 promotional videos.

Includes an illustrated booklet with new essay.

First released in November 1980, 'The Turn Of A Friendly Card' was the fifth album by The Alan Parsons Project, the brainchild of composer, musician and manger Eric Woolfson and celebrated producer and engineer Alan Parsons.

Inspired by their time in Monte Carlo, this legendary album was recorded in Paris. The album sessions featured the contribution of musicians such as Ian Bairnson (guitars), David Paton (bass), Stuart Elliott (drums) with Eric Woolfson playing keyboards and providing lead vocals, along with Elmer Gantry, Chris Rainbow and Lenny Zakatek.

It became one of the biggest selling albums for The Alan Parsons Project, attaining gold status in many European countries and the USA.

Review: Family's final studio album, It's Only a Movie, celebrated its 50th birthday in late 2023. To mark the occasion, Esoteric has offered up this remastered, expanded edition. Disc one boats the original album, an extended fusion of blues, psychedelic rock, string-laden progressive rock and Country & Western-influenced Americana, as well as a handful of single B-sides, alternate takes and early versions of LP cuts. Over on disc two, we're treated to a mixture of BBC 'in concert' recordings (where their roots in the British blues explosion of the late 1960s are far more evident) and performances captured for BBC Radio One's legendary 'Top Gear' programme (which did much in the 1960s to bring Beatles performances to the masses).

Review: Not every live album makes the impact Vital did. Recorded at London's Marquee Club on 16th January 1978, it hit shops six months later, by which time the group had split (for the second time), making this more of a capsule of the past than was probably intended. It also turned heads for the often radical re-design of older tracks in the set list. The troupe had been known for on-stage intensity, but this tour was particularly ferocious. Captured using a 24-track mobile unit, the second of two performances in the UK capital was committed to tape, and then mixed down into Vital at Foel Studio by Guy Evans. After some serious magic was worked to clean up a sax track that suffered a technical fault, the finished product encapsulated the huge energy and atmosphere that defined the original date.