The acoustic demos for the White Album recorded at Kinfauns, George's house in Esher, Surrey, May, 1968

Liner notes from the booklet: During their stay at the Maharishi's ashram in Rishikesh, India in the early spring of 1968, the Beatles had written an unprecedented number of songs. While late April and early May were busily spent launching Apple, the first sessions for their new LP (later known as "The White Album") were looming.

All these acoustic group demos were recorded sometime during May 20-29, 1968, when all four Beatles gathered at Kinfauns, George's comfortable little one-story house in Esher, not far outside of London. Derek Taylor's name is mentioned during the sessions, and he may have been running George's four-track Ampex reel-to-reel, on which these historic performances were preserved.

Four sources were used to compile this release: the CDs "Anthology 1" Apple/Capitol 34445, "The 1968 Demos" Genuine Pig 094 and "Unsurpassed Demos" Yellow Dog 008 and the LP "Lost Lennon Tapes No. 9" Bag 5081. Each track was painstakingly (and digitally) pieced together by the Silent Sea engineers, using whichever speed- and volume-corrected sources produced the best and most complete finished track.

The illustration of Kinfauns is by Roy Williams

My comments:

Because of the inclusion of 4 more Esher demos: Happiness Is A Warm Gun, Mean Mr Mustard, Polythene Pam and Glass Onion on Anthology 3 we now know that the source of Mark Lewisohn's knowledge of the demos was one of the bootlegs (or the source tape for the bootlegs). He obviously hadn't heard these 4 songs the Silent Sea people took off Anthology 3 to complete their release with. Silent Sea also stole Junk, Piggies and Honey Pie. The sound quality of these 7 tracks is far better than any of the booted Kinfauns demos.

For the time being this CD indeed is the best and most complete but Vigotone has announced an upgraded version from a tape source. If this new CD (to be expected soon) has the same sound as the demos on Anthology 3 it could well turn out to be the bootleg of the millenium!