Music from United Kingdom

At its best Feldman's music can take our breath away, providing a revelatory experience, a transparency which has no need of argument. Thinking back to Piano and String Quartet there are moments of extraordinary beauty when, through a sudden change of register, darkness enshrouds the music; elsewhere the string sound enshrouds the piano arpeggios. Morton Feldman seems to occupy a metaphysical space and encroaches on the domain of spirituality normally associated with religion. Thus art w…

Mixing a lively folk troubadour style with a sunny voice that would befit that of Donovan, along with a sly, subversive humor that surely influenced the likes of Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch, “Circus Maximus” opens boldly and doesn’t let up. The playfully unconventional collection of songs delivers punchy doses of folk balladry and Judeo-Christian imagery that would rival the religious themes and prolific tendencies of Current 93’s David Tibet in theme, if not tone. And Currie’s beautifull…

2015 Reissue. With the oddly evocative choice of his third solo album’s title, appropriated from Richard Brautigan’s 1967 surrealist-pastoral novel Trout Fishing in America, Mike Cooper might very well have been describing his own mercurial musical practice. “Trout Steel” suggests a reflective, highly mutable, quicksilver riverine element, an apt metaphor for the lap steel runs summoned from his trademark National resophonic guitars and his restless, constantly evolving development as a singer, …

After two years of tireless work to liberate these long out-of-print masterpieces from the vaults, Paradise of Bachelors is proud to present the first artist-sanctioned reissues—and first-ever vinyl reissues—of iconoclastic English-born, Rome-based folk and experimental music legend Mike Cooper’s classic trio of early 1970s avant-folk/rock records: Trout Steel (1970), Places I Know (1971), and The Machine Gun Co. with Mike Cooper (1972). The latter two titles are presented for the very first tim…

  2008 release, restocked. "Fotheringay remain one of the great might-have-beens of British music. They lasted less than a year, and released just one album, but their disappearance robbed the early-'70s scene of a group of musicians capable of taking folk-rock to new heights of subtlety and musicianship. Now, the nine songs on that debut album; assumed for almost four decades to be their sole testament, are joined by the eleven that would have constituted a follow-up. Sadly the group broke up d…

Rusting metal junk, discarded as trash by a world that saw no value in it, but when filled with blood, flesh and bone it can be transformed into potent sources of energy. Those chunks of energy are designed to rouse once more our savage souls, to drag us out of our comfortable everyday reality into an imaginary world. TNB present us with a choking, vacuum-like, hermetically sealed space where you utterly lose touch with your senses, whereas ABH dwell with our senses then push them towards freedo…

"This 45-minute live fragment captures the Soft Machine at the Paradiso Club in Amsterdam circa 1969. The second incarnation of the band included Hugh Hopper (guitar/bass/vocals), Mike Ratledge(keyboards), and Robert Wyatt (drums/vocals). The trio heard here had originally been joined by Kevin Ayers (guitar) on the group's major-label debut Volume One (1968). Not only did that leave the band minus a lead guitarist but a primary contributor to the material as well. The songs are derived from Volu…

The first full-length album of The Fall, Live At The Witch Trials, is not actually a live album. Emerging out of a two-day studio session at Camden Sound in North West London during a sickly December of 1978, Witch Trials amounts to the sinister foundation of the band's diverse sound. Every song explores drastically different styles and wild terrain, leaving much to decipher over its eleven tracks. "Frightened" has magnetic attraction / repulsion that shifts between Martin Bramah's skelet…

Dragnet is arguably The Fall's best-known album. With the departure of Martin Bramah after Live At The Witch Trials, the band underwent yet another lineup shift in late 1979. Marc Riley switched to guitar and Steve Hanley joined on bass; the latter's signature basslines would become a major part of The Fall for the next two decades. Opening track "Psykick Dancehall" strikes like an elusive, working-class anthem with its bouncy tempo changes and Mark E. Smith's unfiltered vocals raining down on t…

Courtesy of the same folks who reissued that crazy 'Killing Melody' LP comes an amazing outing from British bluesman Mike Cooper. Since the early 60s he's been active supporting American blues artists such as Jimmy Reed, and Howling Wolf on their UK tours besides earning a crust backing many homegrown R&B bands. He also mastered the steel blues and Hawaiian lap guitar before veering into more avant-garde territory during the 80s, consolidating his various styles into a unique sound. The tracks h…

"An improvising trio absent the traditional markers of a rhythm section (bass and/or drums), the musicians on HASTE explore longer forms with a balance of gestural, painterly swoops and pointillist detail. The trio works through three collective pieces totalling just shy of an hour. Weston is an incredibly resourceful keyboardist, but his penchant for poise and deep listening ensure that his glisses and clusters remain on axis. It’s important to note that both Weston and Laubrock are accomplishe…

Miller's Tale is the high point of the collaboration of the distinctive musicians Sylvie Courvoisier, Mark Feldmann, Evan Parker and Ikue Mori. In September 2015, they recorded the fully improvised pieces for this album. The album's track sequencing of first four whole group pieces followed by five duo pieces offer multifaced aural impressions and a rich listening experience. Henning Bolte writes in the liner notes: "Our ears usually first adhere to the known, the familiar. But they 'squint' to …

Outside of the 2CD release ‘Never Too Late But Always Too Early’ (Eremite, 2003) there has been scant documentation of one of the most dynamic pairings in all free jazz. Featuring unique material on each format Song Sentimentale rectifies this anomaly with a full blown audio account of the breathtaking communicative heights obtained by these three legends of the living. Over 3 nights in January 2015 the trio seduced a winter worn crowd with the kind of organic interplay only these three can conj…

2016 restock. Soft Machine's legendary second album, originally released in 1969, bridging the gap between avant-rock, psych, jazz and stream-of-consciousness weirdo absurdism. "The Soft Machine plays music for the mind. In its strictest sense, it may impose some cerebral responsibility on the listener, because you can't really hum along or have the tune pass through head as you walk in the streets. But the ultimate good feeling that the Machine generates will always remain with you, and …

At the time of its original release in 1973, Morning Glory, seemed a surprising departure for saxophonist John Surman. It seemed to owe more to the music being made by Miles Davis, Weather Report andTony Williams' Lifetime in the USA or Ian Carr's Nucleus and Soft Machine in the UK than it did to the often abstract, free but determinedly acoustic music that Surman had pioneered up to that point. Hindsight tells another story. Morning Glory stands as both a consolidation of his work to date and, …

Fledg'ling are very proud to bring Westering Home to CD. Westering Homewas originally released in 1972. John Surman plays everything on the album, drawing together many of the threads of his earlier recordings with the possibilities offered by technology (and his own prodigious musicality). "I took a break from being on the road. This was just around the time when mono had become stereo, and then - in a flash - multi-track recording became possible. I was fascinated by the possibilities of, say,…

Everything But the Girl band member Ben Watt was strongly influenced in his first steps by mentor Robert Wyatt. This LP starts with Summer Into Winter, the legendary 1982 EP written and performed together by the duo of Watt and Wyatt, and continues with the English folk milestone North Marine Drive, originally released in 1983. Including a rare gem cover of Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," this album is a must for all fans of Nick Drake. Pressed on virgin white vinyl; limited…

1998 release. The first of two CD anthologies of the Organum/David Jackman back catalog, preceding Volume Two. The series is not exclusively limited to reissuing early vinyl releases in their entirety, but is rather a "collection" series that also includes alternate mixes as well as previously unreleased material. Remastered for truly maximum fidelity.Volume One includes material culled from the Tower of Silence and In Extremis 12"s (both originally released on L.A.Y.L.A.H. Antirecords in 1985).…

2000 release. The second of two CD anthologies of the Organum/David Jackman back catalog, following Volume One (ROBOT 017CD). The series is not exclusively limited to reissuing early vinyl releases in their entirety, but is rather a "collection" series that also includes alternate mixes as well as previously unreleased material. Meticulously mastered for truly maximum fidelity, Volume Two includes material primarily culled from theIn Extremis and Horii sessions (12" titles originally released on…

Goldsmiths gathers a distinguished sextet into an evocative session at St James Hatcham Church, South London: John Tilbury (piano), Angharad Davies and Lina Lapelyte (violins, Lapelyte also on voice), Michael Duch (double bass), John Lely (objects, electronics, melodica), and Rhodri Davies (electric harp, melodica). Against a backdrop of rich acoustics, the album presents four pieces - three composed (Sarah Hughes’ "A Reward is Offered," John Lely’s "DawnChorus," Jürg Frey’s "Für sieben" for sep…