In 1969, the CBS Realm label released Ray Russell's Dragon's Hill. It was followed in 1971 by Rites and Rituals. The live Forget To Remember Live Vol. 2, a session for the BBC Jazz Workshop series from January 1970, neatly bisects the two to illustrate how Russell's sextet evolved over this period to produce the convincing Rites and Rituals (that uses the same personnel as Forget to Remember). Rites and Rituals is now a highly collectable piece of vinyl Brit Jazz, but at the time, CBS Realm's efforts to document the cutting edge of British jazz of the period with albums by the likes of Russell, Howard Riley, Tony Oxley and Frank Ricotti quickly found their way to the deleted bins as all eyes were focussed on developments across the Atlantic with Miles Davis's entry into jazz-rock that was seen as the non plus ultra of extending the frontiers of jazz.

Russell's swarthy guitar tone on Forget To Remember was not divorced from what was happening in the US, but it came from his very personal conception of what jazz could become. The BBC Jazz Workshop sessions contain an early version of ‘Rites and Rituals’ where Harry Beckett emerges as a major force within the group, the central point around which Russell weaves his musical conception. He had been a constant from Dragons Hill, his lead voice and accomplished solos standing the test of time. Nick Evans on declamatory trombone fits Russell's musical context perfectly, especially on ‘Rites and Rituals’, while ‘Triple Goddess’ reveals what an exploratory soloist Russell was, who along with John McLaughlin and Chris Spedding pushed the boundaries of what a guitar could do in improvised music.