Illuminating the remarkable, and largely otherwise undocumented, creative ferment within and between the British and American scenes of experimental music during the mid to late 1970s, Dialogo’s box set - made in full collaboration with all of the composers or their estates - contains the entire ten album output of the label, completely remastered and housed in faithful mini-replicas of their original covers and liner notes, as well as an extensive booklet.

Over the last few years, the Italian imprint, Dialogo, has showed a remarkable dedication to the history of experimental music via reissues of seminal artefacts from the Cramps catalog, and important albums by Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, Enrico Rava, and others. This initiative now takes on a towering scale with the first ever box set gathering the entire ten album collection of Brian Eno’s Obscure Records, originally issued between 1975 and 1978. A truly groundbreaking body of recordings - many of which have remained out of print and difficult to find for decades - it contains some of the most important, influential, and enduring music to emerge during the second half of the 20th Century, which collectively reconfigured the terms of Minimalism and laid the groundwork for the emerging movement of Ambient music over its short, three year run.

One of the great anomalies and triumphs of 20th Century recording, Obscure Records was initially conceived by Brian Eno as a vehicle for the work of his yet to be recorded friend, Gavin Bryars, before taking on grander ambitions. Having left Roxy Music in 1973 and launched his own solo career, during this period Eno had become immersed in London’s thriving experimental music scene - occasionally playing with Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra and Portsmouth Sinfonia - cultivating a deep connection with the avant-garde that had begun in his student years, finding a deep sympathy with his own ideas and approaches among the artists he encountered there. Among these were Bryars, Christopher Hobbs, David Toop, and Max Eastley, who, in addition to Eno and a lone American, John Adams, would contribute the first suite of works: Gavin Bryars’ “The Sinking of the Titanic”, Christopher Hobbs, John Adams, and Gavin Bryars’ “Ensemble Pieces”, Brian Eno’s “Discreet Music”, and David Toop and Max Eastley’s “New and Rediscovered Musical Instrument” - released by Obscure in 1975.

Backed, manufactured, and distributed by Island Records, working under the curatorial direction of Eno, Bryars, and Michael Nyman (then primary known as a writer), Obscure would rapidly emerge as a rare example of a record label entirely committed to the radical ideas of the artists it involved, releasing two more suites of albums in 1976 and 1978 - containing the debut recordings of Nyman, Jan Steele, Simon Jeffes / The Penguin Café Orchestra, and Harold Budd, in addition to important works by Eno, John Cage, Tom Phillips, and John White, before Eno followed the path toward Ambient music and moved to New York.