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Winter Songs
A reissue of the brilliant second album by Art Bears, a band/project featuring Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause, formed in 1978 after disputes over the musical direction within Henry Cow. 'Winter Songs', originally released in 1979, placed Art Bears in the forefront of the Rock In Opposition Movement. Art Bears' intense and brutal avant-garde approach on the album comes across as primordial expression, which is nailed down by Krause's violently charismatic voice. As a piece of music re…
Stoned Age Man
Rooted in the steamy backroads of Texas and deep-fried at a Memphis recording studio, Joseph’s Stoned Age Man was served up like a sizzling hot rattlesnake appetizer slathered in fuzz-blooz grease in 1969. Legend has it that the titles of eight of the album’s nine songs came before they were written on the spot, which speaks volumes for the talents of Joseph (aka, Joseph Longeria) — who A&R man Steve Tyrell signed to Scepter Records after witnessing the Lone Star State bluesman gig with B…
Safe As Milk
Captain Beefheart’s 1967 debut album Safe As Milk introduced the world to a one-of-a-kind visionary whose unique output had no precedent in contemporary music. Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet, filtered the raw influence of the blues and R&B through his own singular musical sensibility and left-field lyrical wordplay, and surrounded himself with some of the most talented and inventive young musicians around. The result was an album that, even in the heady year in which it was released, sounded…
Philosophy of the World
Limited repress; LP version. "In 1968, three sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire strapped on their instruments and declared themselves The Shaggs. At that moment begun a peculiar tale that would last far beyond the group's five-year run. Dot, Betty and Helen (and occasionally Rachel, the fourth sister) played in the group on the insistence of their father, Austin Wiggin Jr., who was convinced they were going to be big. Years earlier, Austin's mother gave him a palm reading, predicting that her s…
Flat Baroque And Berserk
Hyper-expensive edition on LP, but quality is over the top. Flat Baroque and Berserk was the first record of Roy Harper’s to go into the charts. Peter Jenner was assigned by EMI Records to produce the recording – the two have been good friends ever since. EMI Studios, Abbey Road was at that time the most advanced studio in Europe, and over the next ten years Harper was to record in near-perfect conditions.Over those years, the studio buzzed with four separate Beatles, some Stones, The Pink Floyd…
Stormcock
Hyper-expensive edition on LP, but quality is over the top. Stormcock was born in 1969 as Roy Harper began to stretch his wings. He’d been there a few times before, but this time he gave himself the space to go deep and stay there. “Hors D’Oeuvres” is perhaps the lightweight in the collection, but after all, it’s the starter… The Same Old Rock records Harper’s opposition to continued dependence on the cheap opium of convenient mass religion. This year marks two important milestones for Roy Harpe…
Lifemask
Hyper-expensive edition on LP, but quality is over the top. Roy Harper's Lifemask was made at the height of the ‘flower power’ expression/boom in 1973. The songs catalog spontaneous interpretations of how we are interacting with the planet. It was never aimed at mass market and is just a poem for friends and kindred spirits. The poem was inspired by a collage of Geronimo in an eighteenth century English landscape drawing given to Harper by his friend and artist James Edgar whilst he was in the m…
DeLuxe
Beautiful legit 2015 reissue on Groenland, truly a brilliant little album from Harmonia – quite possibly their greatest record ever, and a set that's wonderfully balanced between progressive and electronic modes! There's a live drummer on the set – Mani Neumeier of Guru Guru – and although he still plays with a spare, circular mode that recalls the Harmonia rhythms of before, there's also a slight bit of propulsion here too – one that pushes the keyboards and guitars alongside nicely. There's al…
Documents 1975
Grönland casually drop a rocket's worth of virgin krautrock fuel with the previously unreleased 'Documents 1975' tape capturing Moebius, Roedelius, Rother and Eno playing live between their idyllic Forst studio and venues in Hamburg. With likely reams of reels to pick from, they've carefully chosen to highlight four performances best showcasing the group's pioneering work from a variety of aspects. The two pieces recorded at Forst are little short of magick, capturing two sublime and uplifting f…
Phallus Dei
Amon (from the Egyptian sun god) Düül (a German-Turkish derivative of Moon) were a 60s student hippy commune based in Munich, in what was then West Germany. Among their various expressions of free living they occasionally performed rudimentary music where anything went, and being at all proficient was more of a hindrance than a way in to one of their performances, which were mainly for their own amusement anyway. Guitarist and violinist Chris Karrer, frustrated at the lack of direction, along wi…
Yeti
Released in 1970 as a double album, “Yeti“ was a major achievement for Amon Düül 2. In England they won over cult DJ John Peel as friend and supporter; for the readers of the German magazine “Musik Express“ the guys from Munich were the most popular underground band, and “Yeti“ was voted best album of the year. A double album on vinyl, Yeti consists of a set of structured songs and a second disc of improvisations. It's testament to the group's fluidity and improvisational grace that the two albu…
Stuck in Paradise
Sweet Marie was formed in late 1969 amidst the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the wild music scene of Hollywood. Twentyeight year old Prince Teddy, a producer at Capitol Records and a songwnter.'musician. had a vision tor a rock-n-roll trio with rich harmonies and psychedelic undertones He approached Sonny Lathrop, a 25 year ok) guitarist and recording musician who was known around the hip Hollywood night dubs, about his idea and together they recruited Willy Bims on drums Bims. 32, had been the…
Ak Musick
CD Edition. Mental Experience present first ever reissue of AK Musick, originally released in 1972. Radical, freaked-out sound with hints of free-jazz, improv and avant-garde, AK Musick was an improv collective assembled by clarinetist Hans Kumpf to "make music in a very democratic way". The five players had a classical education but they were also influenced by avant-garde composers like Helmut Lachenmann and Johannes Fritsch. Their only album, AK Musick, was recorded at the famous Bauer Stud…
Gal (1969)
This Brazilian classic finally gets a proper U.S. release -- one of the greatest psychedelic albums of the late '60s, and a key part of the Tropicalia movement as well! The record is easily the most tripped-out album ever from Gal Costa -- far more sinister than Gal's debut of a few months before. The session was still recorded with full arrangements by the legendary Rogerio Duprat (who'd worked previously with Costa, Os Mutantes, and others), but it also features a lot heavier guitar and a blaz…
Sternzeit
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Adelbert Von Deyen's debut album Sternzeit, originally released in 1978. Adelbert Von Deyen is a protagonist of the so-called Berlin School (Berliner Schule) of electronic music. On his debut album, he takes his time to develop sound structures, often drifting, floating blissfully into tonal interference. The listener also requires time and patience, but will be rewarded with a Zen-like state of contemplation. Adelbert Von Deyen's musical backstory follo…
Hingus
LP version. Bureau B presents a reissue of Sven Grünberg's Hingus, originally released in 1981. Sven Grünberg is a famous musician for film and theatre in Estonia - an old hand in the field of electronic ambient music. In 1974, whilst still a music student, he and Härmo Härm founded Mess, a progressive rock band. Grünberg was the first musician in Estonia to use a synthesizer. The ambient electronica of Hingus (Breath), recorded between 1978 and 1980, was spiced up with prog rock and a nod to th…
The Maria Sessions
Summer of 1990 was glorious. The Legendary Pink Dots entered the studio on a high as The Crushed Velvet Apocalypse seemed to be embraced by a broad audience. Our label Play It Again Sam had been generous with the budget for a new record, and there was a spirit of daring adventure firing up the band. For the first month we pretty much jammed... and Bob captured many of these sessions on a small tape recorder placed in the middle of the studio. Bob had dusted off his sitar, Niels unearthed his mon…
Collage
After his adventure with My Solid Ground, Ingo Werner formed Baba Yaga. Named after the Slavic folklore character his new adventure seemed to be more a solo project. On this second LP Ingo Werner chose to join forces with santur, sitar, tabla player Nemat Darman, an Iranian musician who also contributed congas, cymbal, gong, timpani, drums and vibraphone, and record the whole album as a duo. Werner would play EMS, Davoli and Solina-string synthesizer, clavinet, electric piano and grand piano, be…
Featuring Ingo Werner
After his adventure with My Solid Ground, Ingo Werner formed Baba Yaga. Named after the Slavic folklore character his new adventure seemed to be more a solo project (he plays electric piano, piano, mellotron, synthesizer, organ, clavinet, bassoon and gong, besides being the composer of the music), but it is made with the cooperation of other musicians - most notably Bernd Weidmann who, in addition to singing and playing bass also contibuted with some lyrics. Other musicians in the recording are …
It Don't Bother Me
Bert Jansch recorded his second album in 1965, just after his self-titled debut earlier that same year. The sessions were a step-up from the intimate, field-recording setting of his first album, although still not labored over too much in the studio. 'I figured that the faster I put down the tracks, the faster I could get out of the place,' Jansch told NME, 'so I just ordered about a dozen bottles of wine, put the microphone in front of me and off I went, for three hours.' The lyrics of I…