Rock /
Jardim Elétrico - A Tribute To Os Mutantes
2007 release ** "The continuing impact of Os Mutantes' music as their work became more widely known outside Brazil is reflected in this enjoyable tribute compilation -- if, as with all such tributes, nothing quite compares to hearing the original versions, it's the feeling of celebration which such a collection can produce which justifies it, so long as the performances work in their own right. The bands range from all over the map, from some long-lived legends in their own right to up-and-come…
Walk In Africa 1979-81
2013 release ** "The National Wake's lone 1981 album, is a startling rock & roll document. Recorded by a multi-racial band in an increasingly tense and radicalized South Africa between 1979 and 1981, it offers the country's spirit at the time through punk and post-punk as they met reggae and township funk in a collision of rhythm, energy, and melody. The album embodies the best elements of Gang of Four's Entertainment, the Pop Group's Y, and the Clash's Sandinista!, as well '70s-era rowdy townsh…
Leila Saida
2008 release ** "This Harmony is an Italian instrumental quartet comprised of violin, guitar, bass and drums. The classically influenced violin is the star of the show, and Leila Saida is recommended to all who love rock with violin in the lead. This Harmony are similar to the Polish band Ankh, but more refined. Obviously they are most similar to the original Ankh that included violin in the lineup, but there is also a good deal of the dreamy, psychedelic feel that Ankh adopted after their violi…
Tsaca Tsap
20014 release ** "Estonian pop music is relatively rare to find north of the Gulf of Finland. In fact, Ramo Teder, who performs under the name Pastacas, also moved to Finland after making his album Tsaca Tsap. But more than the Finnish rural landscape that opens out of Teder's window, the songs on Pastacas' third album have been influenced by his musical background. A childhood spent in music schools and the influence of a jazz guitarist father clearly belong to Tsaca Tsap, which Ramo has mainly…
Night Watch
1998 release ** "Debut by Dutch art rock/folk band. Fine sensitive folk songs, Georg Trakl poems set to music, acoustic pop ballads, a progressive feel throughout. A multi-faceted album that contains all original material ranging from the 3 minute pop song to the 7 minute tribal folk suite and encompasses influences of Kurt Weill, British folk rock in a Comus/Spirogyra vein, 70's avantgarde art rock (Lindsay Cooper). The album is hard to classify, but achieves a wholeness due to the band's songw…
Welcome To The Weird World
2013 release ** "Plutonium Baby was born in the south-east quadrant of Rome, where Black Guitarra, formerly of Motorama, joins Fil Sharp and Feith Da Grave of the new-wavers Cactus. A guitar, a synth, the drums and above all a lot of reverb and distortion on the voices: Jay Reatard shouting at Suicide and Screamers, with the addition of Pussy Galore chewing on the B-52's. The result is an unusual mix of punk, wave and garage, expertly blended by Alex Vargiu (Bloody Riot / Bingo / The Dissuaders)…
Album 1 (Descuento)
2005 release ** "Combining rock, improvisation, and contemporary classical music with a distinctly exploratory spirit, the group is part of a small, but not necessarily insignificant, movement, sharing similarities with other projects from the late 1990s and early 2000s such as Prolapsus, Dolores Fiuler, and Turangalila. Their only studio album, "Álbum 1 (descuento)" (2005), is characterized by its unique approach focused on experimentation, with an interesting range of influences that, as we me…
Cross & Satellite Station
2010 release ** "Verdure is Donovan Quinn, who resides in Walnut Creek, deep in the East Bay of San Francisco. He's performed his songs with the Sky green Leopards (collaborating with Glenn Donaldson) and can currently be found performing solo, occasionally being joined by various friends and collaborators under the umbrella of the 13th Month. His Verdure alias draws influence from heavy collaboration with the Jewelled Antler Collective, that loose-fitting West Coast group of artists known for b…
Kc
2010 release ** "The Shipwreck Bag Show are Roberto Bertacchini (Starfuckers, Sinistri) and Xabier Iriondo. Survivors in the ocean of pop, refugees in a land without time with their suitcases full of metal, wood and electronic circuits. Avant-garage-rock with no time nor borders."
Good Night To The Bucket
2004 release ** "With their experimental tendencies increased beyond measure, Vedda Tribe's sound is now more electronic, cryptic and eclectic: if the intellectual adherence to the most cerebral King Crimson is still important, the psychedelic and neoclassical ambitions of their debut are largely left by the wayside or in any case widely camouflaged in a sonic chaos of cold synths with technological and space-like features, by bassist Mauro Pamiro... The musical discourse of "Good Night To The B…
Kaina
2003 release ** All music was completely improvised and not overdubbed. Originally released as a CDr with the same catalogue number, this reissue contains a bonus track. "Tsurubami is yet another side project by the prolific Acid Mothers Temple guitarist Makoto Kawabata, with Temple bassist Hiroshi Higashi and drummer Emi Nobuko. Comprised of improvisational tracks, the first, "Hitsumyo O Gotoshite," recorded at the Acid Mothers Temple studio, begins with a long, slow ambient interlude of shimm…
Striving For The Lazy Perfection + Singles
2005 release (RARE) ** Extended album with five bonus tracks from singles and demo sessions. "When indie pop fans speak of the fabled Sarah label and its roster, it seems that the Orchids are rarely afforded the same hushed, reverential tones received by the likes of the Field Mice or Heavenly, which is a great shame -- the Orchids were one of the finest bands Sarah ever produced, and their masterpiece Striving for the Lazy Perfection is as good as anything in the label's storied catalog. Encomp…
Rare Dreams: Solar Live 2.27.18
2025 stock On February 27, 2018, Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band (comprised, in this iteration, of long-time SMB bassist Peter Kerlin and Kerlin’s Sunwatchers battery mate Jason Robira on drums) were close to wrapping up an 18-date tour of the EU and UK with a two-set, one hour and 45 minute show at Cafe OTO, London’s premier venue for adventurous music.
Highlights of that show are included in this live release, RARE DREAMS: SOLAR LIVE 2.27.18, recorded before a packed house seated mere fee…
I Am
2004 release ** "M.O.P. come from the Verona area and this is their first work, even though the band, under another name, has been active for fifteen years (Notturno Volgare was their first moniker). "I am my own parasite..." Nirvana sang in Milk It (In Utero): the idea is a parasitic sound, suitable for film music (in this case our guys have created the soundtrack for some shorts by Toni D'Angelo, already assistant director of the magician of redemption Abel Ferrara. And excuse me if that's not…
Catbirds & Cardinals
2011 release ** "Catbirds & Cardinals is the latest psychedelic album lobbed into New World shores from Dan Melchior und das Menace. Coming down slow with a clear vision, it’s a sure hit. Since the late 90s, Shepperton, England native Dan Melchior has consistently delivered an avant-pop that is off-kilter and literate, with a sense of menace and a stronger sense of play. He’s a new Jesus of Cool, riding just about the underground like the antipodean Chris Knox. The sound of Catbirds & Cardinals …
Skiptracing
2016 release (VERY RARE!) ** "Mild High Club founder Alexander Brettin grew up playing flute in the school band and majoring in jazz studies in Chicago. In 2012, a visit to Los Angeles allowed him to connect with the Stones Throw crew. Within a year, after passing the early demos of what would become Timeline onto Peanut Butter Wolf, Brettin made the move out west. “The difference between Timeline and Skiptracing is detail,” Brettin said. “I was stubborn with the process for Timeline; it took al…
Sahara Dust
1993 release ** "Sahara Dust is Lindsay Cooper and Robyn Archer's collaborative score for a music theater production based on the Gulf War, and was recorded in 1992. Her accomplices number five and include vocalist and trumpeter Phil Minton. Scored in five movements, each with a textual element that serves as a meditation for the music, Cooper, who has long scored collaborative projects involving film, television, voices, dances, and theater, has outdone herself this time. The brooding score whi…
Nel Ventre Della Balena
1995 release ** Piume E Sangue disguised as Duo Portugal in two long tracks of bizzare interpretation of contemporary music.
Kokoro Mayikibo
2006 release ** "Kokoro Mayikibo are a Milanese rock band (I don’t like or agree with the definition that has been given to them as a case of deviant pop-rock, because the bourgeois concept of “deviance” is already sociologically – that is, where it originates, in sociology – very questionable). Therefore, it is a rock that looks forward and also looks back to look at the punk/new wave of the second half of the 70s, or to repay its debt to it. That New Wave that originated from the Stooges, the …
Il Giardino Dell'Ossigeno
2010 release ** "...scraps of ulcerated, painful, immensely precarious songs. how to continue using a polaroid to fix images and faces with the awareness that what will stand out in the image, afterwards, will be the absence, not the living detail. It is a harsh and not at all consoling songwriting by Stefano Giaccone, one of the few "true" names of libertarian musical antagonism. here Giaccone uses a technological "zero degree" that is not at all trendy, a sort of epitome of unplugged: the guit…