The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other is the second album by the British progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator, released in February 1970 on Charisma Records. It was the group's first album to be released in the UK and the only one to chart in the top 50 in that country. The songs on the album were mostly composed by group leader Peter Hammill but arranged and rehearsed by the whole band. The lyrics covered a variety of themes including relationships with friends, witchcraft and apocalyptic catastrophes, while the music ranged from ballads such as "Refugees" to unusual and aggressive playing on "White Hammer" and "After the Flood". As well as a brief commercial success, the album was well received by critics and continues to be praised.

All That Might Have Been, issued in the same year as Other World, is Peter Hammill's excellent duet offering with guitarist Gary Lucas, and it's among the most intellectually challenging, conceptually sprawling, and musically satisfying offerings in his career. Given its heft, it is more than likely that this is a record he couldn't have made when he was younger. It is the work of a master in full control of his vision. Described by Hammill as "cinematic by design," it features 21 tracks which were deliberately edited to be incomplete. Taken together they create a conscious narrative; its scenes are sonic episodes that move backwards and forwards just as an actual film would. This is not the same thing as creating a soundtrack without a movie, this is both: a soundtrack and an aural movie. Hammill wrote and recorded the songs in full, then slashed them apart, and stitched the story together from the fragments…

"Alt" is a 2012 studio project by the legendary Van Der Graaf Generator and follows on from the release of "A Grounding In Numbers” in 2011. "Alt” is no ordinary Van Der Graaf Generator album (if the term "ordinary” could ever be applied to this visionary group). Peter Hammill explains: "Instrumental Improvs & Experiments - Most of the music on "Alt” was made while we weren't really looking, or perhaps only while the left side of our collective brain was engaged. The album is a mixture of improvisations recorded at sound checks and in the studio and more considered sonic creations which often verge on Musique Concrete. The fourteen pieces here offer a fascinating glimpse into an alternative Van der Graaf Generator sound world. Perhaps the closest comparison would be with the second CD of "Present", but even the link with those recordings is tenuous. Even by Van der Graaf Generator standards, this stuff's at the wacky end of the scale!” This instrumental album is another side of Van Der Graaf Generator, a truly unique listening experience.

In April 2010 Peter Hammill, Hugh Banton and Guy Evans undertook some intensive tracking sessions in Cornwall, arranging, rehearsing and recording the album in a week. Over the next few months the tracks were overdubbed, edited and adapted by the band in their own studios, and by September the project was ready to be mixed by legendary producer Hugh Padgham (the first time anybody outside the band has been entrusted such responsibility). After three weeks at Hugh's studio, Sofasound, "A Grounding in Numbers" was complete. With a fantastic clarity and depth of sound, and a helter-skelter stretch of tunes, "A Grounding In Numbers" sees VDGG pushing ever further forward into the twenty-first century, and their fanbase is certain to enjoy this strong, cohesive set.

"Do Not Disturb" is the band’s 13th studio album and was recorded in the closing months of 2015 and the Spring of 2016. A true group effort, Peter Hammill, Hugh Banton and Guy Evans continue to follow in the tradition of Van Der Graaf Generator by delivering an album that is both powerful and possesses and emotive beauty. "Do Not Disturb" is another highlight of the band’s career, during which their music has been influential on successive generations of musicians. It is surely one of the key album releases of 2016.

Esoteric Recordings is proud to announce the release of a new re-mastered limited edition boxed set of the classic debut album by Van Der Graaf Generator, The Aerosol Grey Machine.
This deluxe set celebrates the 50th anniversary of the very first Van Der Graaf Generator release and features the re-mastered album, an additional CD of rare & previously unreleased tracks including two previously unreleased demos from 1967, the complete BBC Radio Top Gear session from 1968 (including the “lost” previously unreleased version of ‘Octopus’) & the single tracks ‘People You Were Going To’ and ‘Firebrand’…

Since bootleggers were fetching high prices for Van Der Graaf Generator rarities compilations from fans, VDGG leader Peter Hammill decided to compile ten of the best tracks and give them an official release. Since some of the tracks were never even completed, some present-day overdubbing was required, but according to Hammill in the liner notes, "all dubbing was completed in nine hours, in order to stay true to the spirit of the venture." And although the listener is warned that these are not studio quality recordings, the overall sound is consistently good. Besides, most of the people who would buy this album in the first place are the VDGG fanatics, who will be happy just to acquire this material. Most of the material is worthwhile and deserves to be heard, such as "The Liquidator," "Rift Valley," and "Coil Night" (why these strong compositions were never put on an album is a mystery)…

The Long Hello was an instrumental progressive album (+ bonus track with vocals) recorded in August 1973 by David Jackson, Hugh Banton, Guy Evans & Friends (including another ex-Van Der Graaf Generator - bassist Nic Potter and guitarist Ced Curtis - both at the time of the session were members of Rare Bird) soon after VDGG was disbanded. The music on that album was truly beautiful, well-arranged, quite relaxing and very melodic (with plenty of flute, sax and classical guitar) but also dark, twisted and most of the time very similar to the early VDGG style. This unjustly underrated record was originally signed by the band members, titled 'The Long Hello’ and released in 1974 on Italian United Artists label. 2 years later it was reissued in the UK (with different cover and with reversed sides) by the band ‘The Long Hello’ themselves as a limited edition of 5000 copies. This CD has been carefully remastered from original, analogue source.

VDGG's second step on the mid-'70s comeback trail saw Peter Hammill attempting to meld the introspective and the cosmic throughout, though this did not stop him from taking a dead run at a grandiose concept or two - the consequences of immortality on the title track, and the grand fate of humanity on the epic "Childlike Faith in Childhood's End." The theme of humane cooperation informs the opening "Pilgrims," while "La Rossa" is an epic tale of desire fulfilled (a story that would be concluded on Hammill's solo album, Over). The true highlight, however, is the beautiful, pensive "My Room (Waiting for Wonderland)," with its echoes of imagination and loss. Hammill did not achieve such a level of painful beauty again until "This Side of the Looking Glass" on Over.

Esoteric Antenna are pleased to announce the release of the marvellous live album by Van Der Graaf Generator, "Merlin Atmos”. In June 2013, Peter Hammill, Hugh Banton and Guy Evans took to the road in Europe to present a series of live concerts that featured a set list that excited devotees of Van Der Graaf Generator like no other for many years. The band had decided the time was right to present their epic classic piece "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers” in its entirety on stage for the first time, along with Peter Hammill’s equally epic "Flight”.
As the centrepieces of the band’s live set, a series of wonderful concerts took place, drawing on the classic material from the band’s past, as well as their more recent albums such as "A Grounding in Numbers”…