Discography of
Philips' Prospective 21e Siècle series
by Ed
Maurer
This is an attempt to catalog all pressings of records that appeared in the Prospective 21e Siècle series. This series is known for its fantastic reflective covers. Many of these records were pressed several different times with different levels of faithfulness to the original cover design. Covers range from the reflective ones to a grey scale version to plain grey.
I need your help to make this discography complete. Please get in touch if you have a pressing variation not listed here. Thanks to everyone who has contributed.
This discography was last edited 31, December 2011.
A quote from an insert in Electronic Panorama
"Prospective 21e siècle" which was launched in 1967, quickly won its place as the most avant-garde, the most revolutionary of all record collections: "revolutionary" in its presentation (metallized record sleeves in keeping with their contents), in its exclusive repertory - concrete, electronic and experimental music - and in its price, putting it within the reach of all, and especially of young people, who are passionately interested in new sonic effects.
Most of the "Prospective" records have been best-sellers ever since they were issued, and they are distributed in many countries of the world with the success they meet in France. This collection, which now includes over twenty records, will grow in 1970/71 by some ten new recordings presented in sleeves with notes in three languages: English, French, and German.
The insert lists the titles in the series, and there are many numbering gaps.
Cover Properties
- metallic design: reflective design
using polarized, metallic inks. sometimes referred to as foil
- metallic: a metallic paper with
no design.
- grey-scale design: non-reflective,
grey-scale image. approximates image on original metallic design
- grey: non-reflective glossy
grey paper.
- white: simple flat white
paper.
It seems that copies with white paper on the back covers are first pressings. Some copies have "ELECTRONIC" printed on the cover underneath the Philips logo in the upper right hand corner. All of these that I have seen have white back covers. The covers with metallic back covers usually have the title printed on the spine of the jacket. The white backed versions don't have any printing on the spine.
Some further information regarding issue origin from collector Randall Smith:
I would also like to point out to you that all silver records with BIEM on the vinyl label were first edition and SACEM was second edition. Blue label was issued first with BIEM, green label came second with most having BIEM. Some of the later silver series have SACEM. SACEM and BIEM are the companies in France that provided copyright protection. BIEM was pre 1972 and SACEM came after 1972.
The list is broken down by country. Most records only came out in France, but some were issued in The Netherlands, England, and Japan. There is even evidence of Spanish pressings.
[Catalog number] Record
Title
artist work titles comments
- FRONT particular pressing characteristics:
front cover characteristics; BACK back
cover characteristics; LABEL label
color
References:
- Ed Maurer
- Kevin Spencer
- Lloyd Sitkoff
- OCLC
- Mark Milano
- Vince Mantia
-
- Hiroshi Matsumoto
- Clark Scheffy
- James Franklin
- Prasoon Goyal
- Stephane Rebeschini
- Jeroen Tenkink
- insert that came with Electronic Panorama
- Jan van Santbrink
- Eric Lanzillotta
- Ken Yao
- Shigeo Kida
- Stephen Ellis
- Donna Blicharz
- Peter Kaun
- Michel van Meersbergen
- Maurizio Romito
- Richard Foster
- Bruno Stucchi
- Fabio Carboni
- Andre from Montreal
- Kelly Thistle
- seen on eBay
- Guillaume Le Tallec
- David Puertas
- Marcel Koopman
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