Reissues
Paternoster
Paternoster, that UFO of a rock album released unceremoniously on a custom-pressed CBS Austria long player in 1972, is the stuff of legend. It's been known to the rock collecting elite since the 1980s, when it was first rediscovered, and it quickly became one of those rock records, the records you hear about only if you know someone who knows someone with a copy, much like Damon's Song of a Gypsy. Paternoster is a terrifying album, a collection of songs that traverses the sublime, and thus neces…
Dreptul De A Visa
The '70s were the decade of progressive rock music of all calibers. And it seems not one country of this world was spared when the new kind of sound spilled over like a giant wave of inspiration. Even the European Eastern Bloc countries, where rock music was regarded as subversive by the authorities, had their share of rock bands with a hippie, heavy, or freaked-out direction. These include Omega from Hungary, SBB from Poland, Modry Efekt from the Czech Republic, and, of course, Phoenix from Rom…
The First
Gentle garage-psych with a dreamy west coast flair and tons of awesome fuzzed-out guitars... with Korean-language lyrics. Originally released in 1977, South Korean trio San Ul Lim's debut album sounds like the best psychedelic power pop and garage stuff you could get in the UK and USA ten years before its release. One of the most popular acts on the Korean scene, San Ul Lim had exactly this typical 1966 garage sound, with fuzzy axes and some thin but sympathetic Farfisa organs. These composition…
The Faerie Shaman
Gwydion Pendderwen was one of the more chatoyant figures of the folk music underground. Both of his albums -- Sings Songs for the Old Religion (1975) and The Fäerie Shaman (1982) -- were far above the average standard folk of his time, especially on his second album from 1982, reissued here for the first time. The Neo-Pagan and environmentalist tried a different path seven years after his haunting debut album, mixing bluegrass, country, gospel, and dixie into classic folky singer/songwriter tune…
O Mistério Dos Quintais
Quintal de Clorofila's O Mistério dos Quintais, originally released in 1983, contains a wild and captivating crossover between Celtic and South American folk from the Andes plus many elements of traditional music from Southern Europe and some more contemporary singer/songwriter aspects with a mystical atmosphere. All the participating musicians are enormously skilled, and the distinctive multi-voice vocals capture your attention in just a second when you take a closer listen to the 12 songs on t…
Reflection
AKA's 1970 debut album Do What You Like (GM 201CD) combines earthy, heavily buzzing, and fuzzed-out rock monuments in the vein of classic UK and US bands with a few tunes in the Continental European heavy rock style, with big chorus lines and a bit of a pop thrown in for good measure, plus great melodic ballads and pop tunes in their native Indonesian language. The Indonesian band carried their trademark sound through whole recording career, including Reflection, their fifth album, originally re…
Something Different! The First Recordings Vol. 1 & 2
The complete session finally back on CD! Recorded in Stockholm on October 25th, 1962, this session marks one of Ayler's earliest recordings, featuring a European backing group he assembled during his brief stay there, before returning to the States in 1963 and beginning his legendary run with ESP-Disk and Impulse! Though his genius was not yet fully formed, one can easily hear he's headed that direction, and this rare and long out of print recording is an essential piece of the history of one Am…
Mindbender
An incredible album that's as evocative as its title – one that blends together strings and electronics into a sublime suite of sound library grooves. Originally released in 1972, can be put in the field of so-called "library music," records made for use in movies and TV productions, commercials, and for similar purposes to enhance the tension of the atmosphere in very dramatic scenes or accompany the more mellow and relaxed moments with lush harmony carpets. And of all these library albums, thi…
Progressive Percussions
Eddie Warner, born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1917, was one of the leading figures in European exotica in the 1950s, operating from France, where he ended up at after the war. His repertoire of styles included several kinds of jazz- and Latin-based dance music such as mambo, baião, and chachachá, but, as a tireless explorer, he also found refuge in the library music and electronic sounds department. A cornerstone of his work in that field, Progressive Percussions, was originally released i…
African Rhythms 1970-1982
**Feature a 12” sized 4pp booklet featuring rare photos and a comprehensive interview with Plunky Branch within liner notes by Chris Menist** Strut present a comprehensive 3LP compilation of the seminal Oneness Of Juju, led by Plunky J. Branch. Tracing their career from the band’s earliest work in 1970 with South African exiled jazzman Ndikho Xaba in San Francisco, the compilation covers the band’s journey to New York’s loft jazz scene, forming Juju and releasing two landmark albums of hard-hitt…
Chanteuse
Since the early 1970s, Jacqueline Humbert has collaborated as performer, visual artist, and designer with leading innovative artists, filmmakers, choreographers and composers worldwide. Her approach to vocal performance has influenced many composers, and the works in Chanteuse represent a new and exciting extension and reinterpretation of the "song" genre. Humbert on the release: "Chanteuse is a collection of new or previously unreleased songs, many of which were written for me by a broad range …
Breaking the Surface
Two of Annea Lockwood's dramatic works dealing with issues of spiritual wholeness. Duende (1997), about shamanic transformation, is written with and performed by Thomas Buckner. Lockwood selected sounds which reminded her of certain vocal transformations heard in recordings of shamanic ceremonies. In such singing, changes in the voice mirror and also help to bring about changes in the singer's mind and awareness. Within an improvisational framework, Buckner explores the possibility of change of …
Circus Days: A Collection of Demos and Studio Recordings 1967-69
Sink into a vision of a dreamy psychedelic universe which seems to have been Peter Dunton's own on Circus Days, the third collection of previously unreleased recordings from Dunton's late 1960's British psychedelic band, Please. If Sonny Rollins is the 'Saxophone Colossus', surely Peter Dunton is a top contender for Underground Psychedelia Colossus: Neon Pearl (1967); the Flies (1968); Please (1967 and 1969); Gun (1969); songwriting for Infinity (1969-70); and of course, the band he is best know…
Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard
Highlighting Wyatt’s interests in township arrangements and ensemble playing, made explicit by calling a track "Team Spirit", Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard inverts the inward meditations of Rock Bottom outwards. The result is a set that startles with its rhythmic instinct and shape shifting composition. Drawing on both Wyatt’s breezy way with a time signature, and his ability to use his voice as a truly resonant instrument, the record contains not so much songs as abstract chamber pieces that ba…
Electro Violet
Electro Violet is the career spanning retrospective from legendary avant-garde composer Irmin Schmidt, out on Mute / Spoon Records on 20 November 2015. This 12 CD deluxe box set takes you on a journey through his entire solo work from 1981 to the present day. Irmin Schmidt is a founding member of Can, the German band whose unparalleled genius remains unquestioned, timeless and immeasurably influential. When all Can members decided to part and explore new sounds, Irmin teamed up with Swiss jazz a…
The Growing Concern
This self-titled album by The Growing Concern curiously first saw the light of day in 1969 on Bob Shad's Mainstream label, an imprint more familiar to jazz and blues fans than devotees of psych/pop. Shad, who had worked as an A&R man for Mercury, Savoy and Emarcy in the '50s, working with the likes of Sarah Vaughan, Blue Mitchell and Curtis Fuller, had the fortune to sign the then-unknown Big Brother And The Holding Company, whose contract, along with that of the band's vocalist Janis Joplin, Sh…
Un Beau Monstre
Greek born composer and conductor George Garaventz really complies with any expectations on his 1970 album for the French movie "Un beau monstre“ (A beautiful monster). This is a rather atmospheric and moody effort and except for the opening tunes of both sides this is entirely instrumental despite a few wordless female choirs adding an even deeper atmosphere to the compositions. The luscious arrangements and insistent melodies truly drag one into a colourful world of their own. Pop, psychedelic…
Sarofeen And Smoke
Hailing from New York, the band was led by singer Anne Sarofeen, who's described in the album's own liner notes as 'a lady both fierce and gentle, whose music knows truth, tragedy and beauty. We don't really know if she's fierce or gentle, but her incredible voice has often been compared to that of Janis Joplin, Ellen McIlwaine and Mariska Veres (of Dutch stars Shocking Blue); unfortunately rock history is cruel and she never received the credit she deserves for being right at the top with other…
Why Don't You Listen? - Live at LACMA, 1998
CD Version. This previously unreleased concert recording by the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra of pianist-composer-bandleader Horace Tapscott and a chorus under the direction of vocalist Dwight Trible is a wonderful example of how Tapscott channeled the political and cultural aspirations of a community into music of deep beauty and lasting value.
The album opens with a big band version of “aiee! The Phantom,” a Tapscott original propelled by a vamp that spurs Michael Sessions into a melodic tenor…
Bohemian Vendetta
Reissue of legendary and classic, one and only, 1968 album by US Psychedelic Rock band! The Bohemian Vendetta are also known for playing as backing group for Faine Jade on their '68 album "Introspection". This is one of the best acid-punk CDs ever! Excellent Vox organ/fuzz teen garage psych and the covers are pretty fantastic as well. The cough syrup high school play vibe of 'Deaf, Dumb & Blind' must be heard to be believed. Easily one of the best on the label with lots of classy psych-punk orig…