Psych /
Hiro Yanagida
*2024 stock* Gatefold cover. Second Yanagida Hiro album, with Kimio Mizutani at the helm, swirling acid leads, heavy psych moves: a fuzzed out guitar record reminding me a little of Human Instinct. Like this guitar was dipped in fuzz! The grooves are great, and there are folky Japanese tunes that are nice. The album stays on the lighter side of groove, even on the uptempo joints, but this album is worth exploring for lovers of that Japanese rock sound in progressive and soloing. The 50's homage…
First
*2023 stock* German proto heavy metal and proto doom metal has always been more of an underground topic due to the fact that most bands only reached a regional level in every aspect. Dies Irae are certainly something of an exception to the rule when it comes to the quality. What you get here is a heavy and dark music with open song structures that leave much room for experimentation. Despite the fact that the simmering fuzz guitar cuts through your burning soul like a chainsaw there are still ma…
Carmen Maki Blues Creation
*2023 stock* Folk singer-turned-rock singer Carmen Maki collaborated with Blues Creation on this album ('71).Immediately after the release of her masterpiece 'The Devil and the Eleven Children', Carmen Maki's youthful voice, which was influenced by Janis Joplin, fused with a sturdy sound reminiscent of Bruce Creation's Led Zeppelin, and it was a miracle of the early days of Japanese rock music. Later on, Kazuo Takeda's Blues Creation was active as Creation, and Carmen Maki formed OZ. This is a m…
Ben
*2023 stock* “A reissue of Ben's self-titled album, only album, originally released in 1971. Canterbury-based progressive jazz-rock act Ben only released one obscure album, issued on Philips' prog subsidiary Vertigo in 1971, but it's a lovely collective of extended instrumental jams, worthy of discovery for those that missed it the first time around. Peter Davey's saxophone and clarinet melodies push the material to high peaks, against an understated backing from future Nashville Teens bassist, …
Cymande
*2023 stock* Invigorating head music done Rastafarian style by Cymande. "Zion I" is a spiritual chant put to music, setting the mood for Cymande. A laid-back "One More" lulls you into subliminal meditation before "Getting It Back" jolts you into some scintillating Jamaican funk-fusion. There's a message in many of Cymande's cuts, with "Listen," and "Bra" (a recognition of the women's lib movement), the most inspiring. Both are sung with passion, and are skillfully executed; the former is slow an…
Larks' Tongues In Aspic
Larks' Tongues In Aspic is the fifth in a series of audiophile King Crimson vinyl reissues. Newly cut from masters approved by Robert Fripp, this super-heavyweight 200gm vinyl re-issue is housed in a reprint of the original sleeve. With its raw tone, inspired improvisations and hard hitting odd-metered rhythms, the album marked a radical departure for this most forward thinking of groups and was the first to include Bill Bruford and John Wetton as band members. King Crimson reborn yet again -- t…
Infinity
*2023 stock* "Infinity" is the only album by Planetarium, a band of which nobody knows who the players are, since the musicians are not listed on the LP. There is, as some reviewer noticed before, an evident Ennio Morricone's influence on this work, which is most of the time instrumental, with very few sung moments ( "The Beginning" and "The Moon"). According to the liner notes the musicians devoted their attention to the birth and to the flow of life from its origin to its end in infinity, ling…
Full Horn
*2023 stock* 1973's Full Horn was Cornucopia's only release, but the seven members of this German progressive rock band made sure that it was a worthwhile accomplishment. From the onset of "Day of a Daydreambeliever," the album's opening track, Cornucopia's misty, phantasmal sound is set adrift with the softness of numbing vocal harmonies that emerge from the background. But from here, the song begins to breed patient rhythms and a certain sci-fi milieu that wonderfully sets the mood, picking up…
Electric Sandwich
*2023 stock* This only album by the German band Electric Sandwich is a pretty strong record from the start to the end. It's a wonderful highly enjoyable album. Songs like "Devil's Dream" and "Archie's Blues" have some impressive guitarwork and some of the songs also have a jazzy feeling because of the sax playing. Electric Sandwich's S/T only LP is a very solid and also a highly consistent package. No bad moments on this album. These seven songs all do their job very well. While it's not a total…
Love And Poetry
*2023 stock* David Lewis was hardly eighteen years old when he and two friends, bassist Nigel Smith and drummer Gordon Barton uprooted themselves from Belfast and set their sites on the Big Smoke. With the move came a record deal with CBS and a rebrand from The Method to Andwella’s Dream. Now known as a cult psychedelic classic, their first and only LP under their full title Love & Poetry touched on just about every genre that was hip at the time, cross-pollinating folk, jazz, progressive rock, …
The Trip
*2023 stock* Reissue of debut album from this rare Italian prog rock group with some British members originally released in 1970 on the RCA label.
Continental Circus
*2023 stock* In the late 60s and early 70s, many bands within the psychedelic/progressive rock field were approached about producing OST soundtracks to accompany a certain film. Pink Floyd did Obscured by Clouds, Tangerine Dream spent virtually half of their musical career on producing OST soundtracks, and Gong even spent a bit of time providing music for the film Continental Circus, which, the film's fans would have you believe, is something of a cult classic. Yet these soundtracks made by psyc…
McDonald And Giles
Following the meltdown of the original King Crimson lineup, Ian McDonald and Michael Giles brought brother Peter Giles back, which helps to account, in some ways, for the resemblance of this album to the 1968 Giles, Giles & Fripp recordings -- though the songs here tend to go on at some length, combining prog rock's traits of length and multiple sections with some of the lighter feel of the GG&F days. The 20-minute "Birdman" tends toward self-indulgence, while "Tomorrow's People - The Children o…
Sweet Sister
"Tokyo psych monsters Up-Tight come out of the classically wasted/drug-damaged school of excessive fuzz and reverb, giving the nod to the endless jam style of Les Rallizes Denudes while spiking their sound with dark downer ballads that owe as much to The Jacks as they do to The Velvet Underground. If you can picture Spacemen 3 circa “The Perfect Prescription” produced by Ghost circa “Temple Stone” then you’re close to the outrageous levels of psychedelic excess captured here. Tomoyuki’s guitar t…
Cueille Le Jour
"Once in a while, a piece of music jumps out of the loudspeakers and grabs me by the throat. The opening track Couleurs is one of these pieces of music. The twenty-two minutes of music is a blend of symphonic prog, Canterbury prog and jazz. The opening salvos of moog is just heaven and utter heaven. The rest is a mix of superb vocals and the above mentioned styles of music, pretty much dominated by Claude-Marius David's superb flute and sopransaxophon pieces. Couleurs is a creative triumph for t…
I Can't Promise
Recorded between August 24, 1983 and September 9, 1984.
Krautrock Encyclopedia Expanded and Revised Edition
The definitive German rock disc guide is back! Covers major works from 70's Krautrock to 80's Neue Deutsche Welle.
Angel'in Heavy Syrup III
Although there were not that many psychedelic rock bands made up of all females in the world of the 1980s, Angel'in Heavy Syrup was the rarity one existing in the underground scene of rock and punk in Kyoto / Osaka area along with SxOxB, Outo, Nightmare and HijoKaidan etc. Following reissuing the debut album of Japanese female psychedelic rock band "angel'in Heavy Syrup" last year, P-vine proudly presents their succeed releases on vinyl for the first time! Their third album, with its brilliant p…
Live at Glastonbury Festival June 1971
Obscure British prog-rock band Mighty Baby evolved from a Mod group called The Action, but moved heavily into experimental psychedelia in 1969, when they cut an incredible debut for the Head label. Glastonbury Fayre Festival 1971 captures the legendary group in live action, ‘A Blanket In My Muesli’ being a free-form jam that remains their best-loved effort; ‘India’ is a similarly hefty instrumental mega-jam with lilting flute amidst the bluesy guitar work, and there are awesome renditions of ‘Vi…
Hot Summer Day
Multifaceted San Francisco psyche-delic band It’s A Beautiful Day drew on aspects of folk, classical, jazz and world music, their outstanding differences driven by the lead vocalist and violinist David LaFlamme, his keyboardist wife Linda, and harmony singer Patti Santos. This engaging compilation joins the anthem ‘White Bird’ and the spirited ‘Hot Summer Day’ with ‘Don And Dewey’ (based on ‘Wring That Neck’ by Deep Purple, who nicked one of their musical themes for the intro to ‘Child In Time’)…