1972 Albums

This double-album offers a chronological retrospective of Jethro Tull's career to date, compiling non-album singles and recordings from 1968-1971. However, with only four tracks from the previous studio albums, many (myself included) consider it an album of nearly all-new material. So given the bulky proposition of Thick As A Brick, released earlier in the year, many also found Living In The Past much easier to digest. In fact, the album did break into the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic.

Agitation Free's roots were in the same creative scene that most bands in late-60s Berlin shared. The group was founded in 1967 by bassist Michael Günther and guitarist Lutz "Lüül" Ulbrich. By the time their ranks had congealed enough to record their debut album, drummer Christopher Franke had already departed to Tangerine Dream, and guitarist Ax Genrich to Guru Guru. By 1971, keyboardist Michael Hoenig, guitarist Jörg Schwenke and drummer Burghard Rausch had joined Günther and Ulbrich, and teamed up with avant-garde composer Thomas Kessler and his Berlin studio.

Matching Mole was Robert Wyatt's post-Soft Machine group, its name a play on the French translation of Soft Machine, "machine molle." Wyatt first managed to draw keyboardist and fellow Cantabrian Dave Sinclair from Caravan, then continued to recruit a first-rate band: bassist Bill MacCormick was previously in Quiet Sun and guitarist Phil Miller came from Delivery, while Nucleus' pianist David MacRae rounded out the lineup as a second keyboardist.