Affinity

The Esoteric label has finally gotten around to rounding up and reissuing the music from this little known band. Affinity was signed to the Vertigo label in '69 and released one album. The song "Night Flight" was probably their best known tune, but there were other things on the album like "All Along The Watchtower" that made it a worthwhile purchase way back then. John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) arranged brass and strings on two songs. A few years back the Japanese label Airmail collected the tracks found in this latest box set and issued it in a beautiful 12" X 12" box set. The Angel Air label also released the band's music on separate CDs.This new box set has good/very good sound. The booklet has good liner notes plus period photos. Disc 1 is the original album remastered plus eight extra tracks. Included is an Everly Brothers tune, a song by John Sebastian, a Dylan tune, Lennon/McCartney, plus Laura Nyro and Mose Allison, plus band originals. There's a live track featuring "All Along The Watchtower/It's About Time", a Dylan-Miles Davis match up. Disc 2 are jazz tracks by the band minus Hoyle, like "Jive Samba", "Dis Here", "All Blues", plus five extra tracks that include "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", and "A Day In The Life".Disc 3 has early ('65-'67) tracks when the band without singer Linda Hoyle and was known as The U.S. Jazz Trio. They played very credible versions of things like "Autumn Leaves", "Django", "My Funny Valentine", "Cubano Chant", "Jordu", plus three extra tracks including "On Green Dolphin Street". Disc 4 was a different band (known to fans/collectors as "Affinity Mark II") from '72 with tunes like "Moira's Hand", "Grey Skies" and a few other tunes taken from demos and rehearsal tapes for the never recorded second album. Hoyle was replaced by (the late) Vivienne McAuliffe on vocals. She previously was with the band Principal Edwards Magic Theater.The original band had a slight jazz leaning to it's sound which was fine because there was a nice feel of jazzy prog-rock to some of their music. Hoyle's voice fit into this band's instrumental arrangements perfectly--a combination of smoothness and grit--which lifted the overall sound away from a strict jazzy, prog-rock feel. The jazz sound is in full swing on the instrumental tunes mentioned above, both as a quartet and as a trio. But everything had that period feel to it and the album was a minor hit with fans who knew of the band. I have to say that Affinity (with Hoyle on vocals) has always been a favorite of mine since those early days. But sadly the band never released a second album. Vocalist Linda Hoyle went on to release a solo album ("Pieces Of Me") with some good performances, but overall the album had a scattershot feel to it. Some of the band issued an album in the late '60s previous to Affinity under the name Ice called "Ice Man" with Hoyle on backing vocals.With the limited Japanese box set going for big money if you can find it, you might want to seek out just the original album on the Angel Air label. But if you're into late '60s British prog-rock with a slight jazz feel, this album may whet your whistle for the rest of the band's music from across the early years. This latest box set is a little difficult to find as I write this, and why the price went up twenty bucks since I got mine a while back from Amazon U.S. is somewhat of a mystery to me. But the chance to hear some good/fine music from this band, collected here in one nice, neat box set with informative liner notes makes this set one of the best little known reissues in some time. Check them out.

actually i should have said ALMOST THE COMPLETE recordings by affinity as i do not know all to, to much about this band as ive done internet searches and there is indeed a lot of info there but it can be evasive at times, anyway this band was a great british late 60s prog rock band and as stated had a very strong jazzy sound wich was common in britain at this time and during this era, i first got into affinity & another outfit ANDROMEDIA around 20 years back as i was buying some good stuff on the angel air label at that time ( i think angel air are gone now) but regardless most of what is in this box set was issued on angel air a good 20 + years back, anyway disc three stands out the most as it goes back to collage days of the members of affinity from 1965 to 67 and as you will hear they had a different sound as a band then as opposed to there debut lp that was released in 1970, the live instrumentals on disc 2 sound great!!! and disc #4 has some great recordings from 1971 & 72 before affinity called it a day... great booklet comes with this and this comes in a very nice sturdy clam shell box!!!!! i enjoy affinity very much but not in large doses if you know what i mean, i do enjoy them enough to want to obviously have most all there recordings so that was why i invested in this nice box set!!!!! jazzy sounding late 60s/early 70s british & euro prog was very unique at that time and i like a lot of other bands from there from that era that fit this genre.......

...the average jazz club instrumental material you could hear in a local pub almost anywhere in the late 60's on CD 2 & 3 and the somewhat uninspiring and meandering recordings featuring a different vocalist and keyboard player on CD4. The presentation by Esoteric is, as usual, wonderfully done with 4 mini LP picture sleeved CD's, a nice booklet and artwork in a sturdy box but all things considered I won't be playing CD's 2,3 & 4 again anytime soon. Find a reasonably priced copy of the 1st CD and call it a day. IMHO