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Sunday's Child
John Martyn's follow-up to 1973's Inside Out is a much more song-oriented, less experimental effort which concentrates on the joys of home and family. Sunday's Child skillfully blends the sensual ("You Can Discover") with the sweet ("My Baby Girl"), the modern ("Root Love") with the traditional ("Spencer the Rover"), and the tormented ("Sunday's Child") with the satisfied ("Satisfied Mind," "Call Me Crazy") while retaining its cohesiveness. The record, his sixth on his own, shows the many facets…
Inside Out
Of all the musicians who attempted to marry modern jazz/rock ideas with
traditional British folk in the late '60s/early '70s, John Martyn was
the most challenging and aggressive. He had others giving him a run for
his money, sure -- Richard Thompson attacked the guitar with Sufi focus
and clarity; Bert Jansch often employed a sharp, metallic edge in his
work; and John Renbourn was capable of guitar maelstroms -- but when it
came down to it, no one was as out-there as Martyn, as experiment…
The Tumbler
John Martyn’s second album was released in December 1968. Another album in
the folk tradition but featuring the jazz flautist Harold McNair,
particularly on the romantic Dusty, The Gardeners and Fly On Home. As a
young man John stayed with his sister who lived near Hampton Court and
the song Dusty was inspired by his happy memories of Hampton Court Fair. This album was produced by Al Stewart and had more of a sparkle than
London Conversation and John said, “The album ‘sings’ a bit more than…
Bless The Weather
Though his earlier albums had merit, John Martyn truly came into his own with 1971’s Bless the Weather. The bittersweet grace of “Go Easy,” “Back Down the River,” and “Head and Heart” showcase Martyn’s agile folk-blues guitar touch as well as his delicate vocal shadings and sparse lyric style. A brooding Celtic atmosphere hangs over these tracks, reflected in the mellow fatalism of the title tune and the regretful yet accepting outlook of “Let the Good Things Come.” Whatever the feelings express…
Stormbringer!
**2018 HQ remastering** Originally released in February 1970 by Island Records this is the first and classic album by John and Beverley Martyn. After being rehearsed in Woodstock, NY Stormbringer! was recorded and mixed in only 8 days with engineer John Wood and producer Joe Boyd. John Martyn, inspired by the Band's Music from Big Pink, worked hard to find a distinctive guitar sound and in two tracks (Would You Believe Me? and The Ocean) introduced his pioneering guitar technique. Levon Helm gue…
Road To Ruin
**2018 HQ remastering. Presented in the original gatefold sleeve on 180gram vinyl, this is the first time that the album has been available on vinyl for over 20 years** John and Beverley Martyn’s 2nd album, also released in 1970, was Produced by Joe Boyd and engineered by John Wood at Sound Techniques, the Island Records studio. This album is John and Beverly's follow up to Stormbringer. In much of the same manner as that album, here Martyn recruited Pentangle member Danny Thompson on bass (who …
Pink Moon
The culmination of Nick Drake's emotional outpouring. Pink Moon is Drake’s deepest and most emotional record, originally released in 1972, following a long bout of severe depression. Whatever darkness he was in, he was able to channel those emotions into this final album, creating an opus that continues to grow in popularity and is reissued here on 180-gram vinyl. Unlike his other albums, this was recorded without a backing band, creating an even more intimate and personal experience. The title …
Bryter Layter
**2018 repress. Reissue on heavyweight vinyl in textured sleeve** With even more of the Fairport Convention crew helping him out -- including bassist Dave Pegg and drummer Dave Mattacks along with, again, a bit of help from Richard Thompson -- as well as John Cale and a variety of others, Drake tackled another excellent selection of songs on his second album. Demonstrating the abilities shown on Five Leaves Left didn't consist of a fluke, Bryter Layter featured another set of exquisitely arrange…
Five Leaves Left
Whether you know it or not, you've heard Nick Drake before. Maybe
it's from his other albums, maybe it's from that VW commercial, maybe
it's just the sound of that quiet bleakness we all feel when sadness
comes to the door and doesn't want to leave. This music lives with all
of us. It exists in quiet lonely nights, chilly autumn evenings, and the
muted grey of the world when it's been raining all day.During his too-short musical career, Nick used music to look at those
little feelings we a…
The Pink Years Albums: 1970-1973
Esoteric Recordings Reactive label is pleased to announce the release of a newly re-mastered 4 CD clamshell boxed set which gathers together the first four legendary albums by Tangerine Dream, originally released on the Ohr label in Germany between 1970 and 1973, known by fans as “The Pink Years” albums.“Electronic Meditation” was recorded in Berlin in October 1969 and featured the first Tangerine Dream line-up of Edgar Froese (guitars, organ, tapes, sound effects), Klaus Schulze (drums, percuss…
Canaxis 5
CD Edition. A few months after the foundation of Can, Holger Czukay recorded his first solo album ‘Canaxis’, in conjunction with producer/engineer Rolf Dammers, this album was assembled from thousands of snippets recorded from short wave radio, a long standing obsession of Czukay's which he also incorporated into some of Can's later albums. A refugee during the Second World War, Holger Czukay famously studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen in the early ‘60s. That direct exposure to the challenging a…
Joe's Garage Acts 1, 2 & 3
2015 Release. Triple LP. Needless to say, it is a grandly absurd undertaking, full of scatological comedy and hard-rock-jazz-fusion. "Frank Zappa’s satirical rock opera, Joe’s Garage, is ambitious and mad, brilliant, peculiar and incoherent — epithets that have also been applied to German expressionist Georg Buchner’s unfinished play, Woyzeck. This may seem like a ludicrously lofty cross-cultural reference to attach to an album most notorious for a song about Catholic girls’ aptitude for fellati…
Sheik Yerbouti
2015 Release. In order to finance his artier excursions, which increasingly required more expensive technology, Frank Zappa recorded several collections of guitar-and song-oriented material in the late '70s and early '80s, which generally concentrated on the bawdy lyrical themes many fans had come to expect and enjoy in concert. Sheik Yerbouti was one of the first and most successful of these albums, garnering attention for such tracks as the Grammy-nominated disco satire "Dancin' Fool," the con…
Weasels Ripped My Flesh
2017 Release. 180 grams, sourced from the original 1970 Analog Master. A fascinating collection of mostly instrumental live and studio material recorded by the original Mothers of Invention, complete with horn section, from 1967-1969, Weasels Ripped My Flesh segues unpredictably between arty experimentation and traditional song structures. Highlights of the former category include the classical avant-garde elements of "Didja Get Any Onya," which blends odd rhythmic accents and time signatures wi…
Zoot Allures
2018 Release. Zoot Allures, released in October 1976, is mostly a studio album (there are some basic live tracks, as in the title track and "Black Napkins") featuring a revolving cast of musicians who, oddly, do not correspond to the ones pictured on the album cover (for instance, Patrick O'Hearn and Eddie Jobson did not contribute). Compared to previous releases like One Size Fits All, Roxy & Elsewhere, or even Over-Nite Sensation, and to upcoming ones such as Zappa in New York, Studio Tan, or …
Chunga's Revenge
2018 release. 180 grams, Taken from the original 1970 Analog Master. It's 1970, and look what Frank Zappa's up to: The band now includes jazz
players like George Duke (keyboards) Anysley Dunbar (drums) and Ian
Underwood (guitar and keyboards) plus a mysterious pair of singers
called The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie -- who, it would turn out, were
singers Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan, who'd recently jumped ship
from LA pop group the Turtles (they weren't contractually allowed to use
their real …
Cruising With Ruben & The Jets
2017 Release. 180 grams, sourced from the original analog master. "It's all one album. All the material in the albums is organically related and if I had all the master tapes and I could take a razor blade and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order it still would make one piece of music you can listen to. Then I could take that razor blade and cut it apart and reassemble it a different way, and it still would make sense. I could do this twenty ways. The material is definit…
Sukram Gurk
'Sukram Gurk' was the title chosen for the Siloah second LP. It was the name of Markus Krug spelled backwards. Markus' name was chosen because it was the one that sounded better phonetically to the ears of the trio. The sound of the album takes it all one step further, turning into an electric storm, yet retaining the free psychedelic improvisation feel of its predecessor. The Wah Wah reissue is made in cooperation with Thom Argauer family, it has been cut from the original master tapes, has ori…
Siloah
Coming out of the boiling Munich scene of the sixties that also gave us the original Amon Düül (Thom Argauer had played in a dixieland band with Chris Karrer in the late 60s, actually), Siloah are one of the best kept secrets of the krautrock production. Siloah had a hard core including Thom Argauer, Manuela von Perfall, Heinrich 'Tiny' Stricker and Wolfgang Görner, plus a host of guests coming and going, everybody was free to join and play at any time, guest members often joining from the Baums…
Archive Box
Contains both original ZNR releases Barricades III and Traite de Mechanique Populaire, plus two extra CDs - one containing the whole of the post-ZNR LP Les Flots Bleus by Patrick Portella and Joseph Racaille as well as Joseph Racaille’s Pegase and his ReR Six Petites Chansons EP. The second CD collects early ZNR demos and lost tracks togther, appearing here for the first time. With a very substantial and definitive book of memories, histories, reflections, photographs, documents, interviews and…