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Suddenly One Summer
Summer. It's as much a state of mind as it is a season. This is particularly true for those who are still attending school. Whether you're a first-grader or a college senior, the magical lure of summer vacation, fraught with possibilities, is a powerful force. Like New Year's resolutions, many ambitious summer plans quickly fragment and are left unfulfilled. In these cases, the answer to "I know what you did last summer" is "not much."However, some student summers prove more productive. In that …
Smell Of Incense
Shining a multi-hued spotlight on the heavenly harmonies of Dan Seals and John Colley (soon to become the chart-topping duo of England Dan & John Ford Coley), Southwest F.O.B.’s lone album Smell of Incense joins their angelic vocals to fuzz-drenched guitar and Farfisa organ. This Sundazed colored vinyl edition of the original 1968 Hip Records LP will immediately transport you to a ballroom full of sweet smoke with kaleidoscopic patterns flashing on the wall, free apples at the door and people sw…
Side Trips
Like a mind-boggling combination of Summer of Love acid-rock, goodtime saloon music and a Middle Eastern jam session, Side Trips, the debut album by Kaleidoscope, stood out, even in the eye of the psychedelic hurricane, as something altogether different! Staffed by a hall of fame roster of multi-instrumentalists? David Lindley, Chris Darrow, Solomon Feldthouse, Chester Crill (aka: Fenrus Epp) and John Vidican's This San Gabriel Valley, Calif.-based combo cut their dazzling 1967 album with a star…
One Man's Journey
One Man’s Journey is a compilation based on Alan Munson's real life happenings, a blend of singer-songwriter music and his experiences, accompanied by beautiful guitar and voice. It would be unfair to place Munson's music in a single genre — it’s a fusion of mellow psychedelic folk rock with the amazing atmosphere of the times.Originally released as private pressings, his recorded songs have a very intimate feel. Wonderful harmonies and meaningful lyrics will get deep under your skin, and the st…
Past The 20th Century
Seemingly unable to find an immediately-available niche in the outside world, Jerry Solomon spent the '60s & '70s carving his own niche and world into the grooves of records. Gone are the wobbly rock ‘n roll beats of Jerry’s earlier contributions, and in their place are droning minor-key melodies, irregular percussive jabs, toy piano strums, and impenetrable lyrics delivered by his self-overdubbed and echo-laden vocals. Original copies were sold on the streets by Jerry himself and trade for four…
Virginity For All
The rarity and bizarre content of Jerry Solomon’s releases have music connoisseurs clamoring for them, though he funded, wrote, recorded, and self-distributed his uniquely fascinating music for no reason other than to simply put it out there. Equal parts strange, entertaining, and foreboding, Jerry’s music is always engaging, and one can’t help but feel these recordings offer a glimpse through a murky portal into the unadulterated creative experience. Approximately fifty years after their initia…
AndOarAgain
AndOarAgain provides unparalleled access to what David Fricke calls “the most harrowing and compelling artifacts of rock & roll’s most euphoric era” across three dozen unheard tracks! In addition to the quintessential original album, AndOarAgain features nearly two hours of unheard music on the way to Oar–along with roads not taken–that both clarifies and muddies the enigma of how psychedelic legend Alexander “Skip” Spence determined the final state of his iconic masterpiece. The time: December,…
The Saga Of Padani
The Oakland Elementary School Arkestra presents the odyssey of 4th, 5th & 6th grade students from novice musicians into an avant garde ensemble. An ensemble that engenders an array of sonic textures which never remain static or stagnant, but flow in a way that it's always surprising, often startling and astonishing.These schoolkids have traveled the spaceways of Modernism, Minimalism, Impressionism, Exotica, film soundtracks and more. They have ingested the lessons of Iconic artists like Sun Ra …
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…