*300 copies limited release* We brought you Rialzu, Skryvania, Cheval Fou, and now it’s time for the first vinyl reissue of Alpha Centauri’s diamond: Alpha Centaury. Originally privately released in a limited pressing of 300 copies in 1976, and equally hard-to-find as the aforementioned titles this gem is shrouded in mystery, for the simple reason that Alpha Centauri didn’t even pursue publicity during their short-lived existence. Yet, being equipped with extremely scarce resources, including having to borrow friend’s cars to travel at the few provincial venues they managed to book live-shows, did not bar them from composing an absolute must-have for prog/psych made-in-France collectors.

This is an album that marries both psychedelia and prog, in a delicately eerie and melancholically tempestuous way. A sheer ear-pampering experience that sits as comfortably on your cochlea as suffusing the darkest moments of Mémoriance with the haunted passages of Dickens’ Royal Incarnation on the empty Downer street of Common People and Zerfas, interspersed with the guitar virtuosity of Bruno Névez. This long-in-the-making edition, as befits the restoration of outstanding cultural artefacts (and not in the least thanks to the support of Hubert Laot, the album’s lyrics composer, and later a curator at the Museum of Louvre), is available in only 300 hand-numbered copies (150 on black and 150 on marble vinyl), extenuatingly remastered for your maximum audio pleasure (and for minimizing the horrible bass sound that dominated the original edition) by the sound-meister Gustavo Bolasini, with a 2-page insert including, at last, a proper biography of this shooting-star.