Reissues
Birthday Blues
Release Date on May 5th. Bert Jansch's freewheeling fifth album, Birthday Blues, occupies a unique place in his solo discography. Released in 1969, the same year Basket of Light propelled Pentangle into the UK pop charts, Birthday Blues almost sounds like a Pentangle LP missing John Renbourn and Jacqui McShee. Backed-up by bandmates Danny Thompson and Terry Cox, Jansch neither holds back his characteristic moodiness nor takes himself too seriously. What's more, Jansch is in love. Heather Rosem…
Coat
Wasting little time, The Pin Group released Coat in November 1981, merely two months after their first single. On the title track, Humphries' distant vocals call out as tense rhythms gradually push listeners over the edge. B-side track "Jim" could easily have been recorded in Manchester circa 1979, but remains a master class in NZ post-punk atmospherics, menacing from start to finish.
Ambivalence 7
Ambivalence was not only The Pin Group's hypnotic debut, but also the very first release on Flying Nun. While guitarist Roy Montgomery, bassist Ross Humphries and drummer Peter Stapleton build off each other's jittery riffs, Montgomery's uncanny baritone pierces the torrential clangor. Conjuring both Wire's Chairs Missing and VU's White Light/White Heat, the band captures a truly unique sound – evocative, yet austere.
In Performance
Lucky restock! After studying with composers John Cage and Earle Brown, Joe Jones became a prominent figure in Fluxus, contributing to the movement’s first “yearbox” alongside La Monte Young, György Ligeti and Nam June Paik. Beginning in late 1961, Jones began constructing his own music machines – drawing inspiration from the calliopes, automata and orchestrions of the 19th and early 20th century to create self-playing ensembles of stringed instruments, percussion and woodwinds – “played” throug…
Propellers In Love
Arnold Dreyblatt has been called "the most rock 'n' roll of all the composers to emerge from New York's downtown scene in the 1970s." Arnold Dreyblatt founded the Orchestra Of Excited Strings in 1979, harnessing unusual tuning intervals to an exuberant performance style. Propellers In Love, the Orchestra's second album – originally released in 1986 on the Stasch imprint, in conjunction with the contemporary art space Künstlerhaus Bethanien – develops Dreyblatt's rhythmically exacting exploration…
Two Solo Pieces
For his second album, Two Solo Pieces, Jon Gibson forgoes the dense, multi-layered timbres of Visitations in favor of simple textures and tone. While Two Solo Pieces serves up further evidence of Gibson's centrality to American minimalism – witness its inclusion in Alan Licht's famed Minimal Top Ten list – this profoundly intimate record also reveals the beauty of enclosed spaces and infinite harmonic vistas. As its unadorned title suggests, Two Solo Pieces consists of a pair of side-long track…
Masterless Samurai
Oom Dooby Dochas present a reissue of Osamu Kitajima's Masterless Samurai, originally released in 1980. A more world music and definitely a more progressive fusion rock approach is what defines Masterless Samurai, the second album by Japanese prog warrior Osamu Kitajima. On Masterless Samurai, he takes his vision of merging Japan's traditional music with progressive rock and jazz music of the west even one step further than he did with his previous albums. Excessive flute lines of Eastern or…
Cosmic Remembrance
Merlins Nose Records present the first official reissue of Kali Bahlu's Cosmic Remembrance, originally released in 1967. In 1967, Kali Bahlu felt that it was time to "simply speak the truth as it comes to me from the other side". She believes that we're all tapped in a cosmic game, and her overall adorably wisdom folly, that she preserved into her old days, could lead to the assumption that she's been the grandmother of characters like Luna Lovegood. Cosmic Rememberance features four narrations …
Le Monde Fabuleux Des Yamasuki
The weirdest exploito-pop attempting to fuse western popular music with folkloristic elements of different origins came from the '60s and early-to-mid-'70s. Among tons of more or less entertaining releases a few diamonds could be found and Le Monde Fabuleux Des Yamasuki (1971), the brainchild of French composers Jean Kluger and Daniel Vangarde, is definitely a stand-out production in this field. "Yamasuki" is a fictional Japanese person about whom Kluger and Vangarde created a musical concept st…
Luna Africana
Clara Mondshine was a musical project of the late radio director, journalist, and composer Walter Bachauer, who worked for RIAS Berlin in the '70s and '80s. Mr. Bachauer was also involved as musician in projects with electronic artist Peter Michael Hamel and krautrock act Between in the '70s. With Clara Mondshine he was able to score three albums before his untimely passing in 1989; Luna Africana, originally released in 1981, is the first of these, and it fits exactly into that era, when the…
Djungelns Lag
First ever vinyl reissue of the 1972 Tall Records LP, expanded into a 2xLP set to house magical bonus material. These live recordings capture the band at its most open and transcendental peak, 1971/72. Features a monumental 34-minute expanded bonus track previously only available on CD, plus an entirely unreleased track. Scores of previously unseen ephemera adorn the lavish inside gatefold and inner sleeves. Includes download code with added unreleased material. Trad, Gras och Stenar whose name …
The White Album
"In this double album named after the famous Beatles' album but having little or no artistic relationship to the same, we have decided to throw aside all preconceived notions of what music has been and recreate the wheel in a rocking fashion, utilizing a myriad of miscellaneous and sometimes famous musicians to put together a concoction of je ne sais quoi. There is a giant spider picking away at and eating your face one piece of flesh at a time, Larry. I like slow songs, and I like fast songs. I…
Bad Moon Rising
Sonic Youth’s second full-length LP Bad Moon Rising was originally released on Homestead and Blast First in 1985. The album is a fascinating examination of “the junction where hippie idealism [meets] the cold hard world,” says guitarist Lee Ranaldo, “where Woodstock [meets] Altamont—Death Valley, Charles Manson, Brian Wilson, musicians, murderers, heroes and villains.” Its original eight-song tapestry of droning guitar feedback, distant clattering percussion, and sullen vocals, all held together…
Nell'Anno della Luna
**CD version** A deep mystery surrounds the movie “Nell’anno della Luna” (In the year of the Moon) and its soundtrack, which was released one year later. A beautiful work that lingers in between swing and melodies, in a fad that was popular a few decades earlier, complemented by some elements of novelty borrowed from beat and rock. The title track, “Alla brasiliana” and “Samba Querida” sound more traditional, while titles like “Afro Swing”, “Underground”, “Beatmania” (all featuring the vocal ens…
Un’ombra Nell’Ombra
Satan is beckoning your ears! Presented on vinyl for the very first time is Stelvio Cipriani's iconic score to director Pier Carpi’s 1979 Italian occult-themed movie, Un’ombra nell’ombra. A virtuous synth explosion composed by Maestro Cipriani and performed by the classic Goblin line-up consisting of Claudio Simonetti (keyboards), Massimo Morante (guitars), Fabio Pignatelli (bass), and Agostino Marangolo (drums). The result of this special Cipriani-Goblin rendezvous is an elegant and dark …
L'occhio Nel Labirinto (The Eye in the Labyrinth) 1972
First ever official release for this unbelievable giallo score by Roberto Nicolosi, composed for the experimental thriller by Mario Caiano in 1972. Previously issued on the Fontana label in 1973 with the title "Atmosfera", this is certainly one of most sought-after Italian jazz LPs for any serious collector, featuring a five-star collective of marvelous musicians such as Giovanni Tommaso (bass), Franco Tonani (drums), Angelo Baroncini (guitar), Antonello Vannucchi (organ), Franco D'Andrea (piano…
Divine Music
3CD version. History can be a motherfucker - its authors vindictive and deeply unfair. Though Jazz - long heralded as the great American art form, got its due, buried within its canon are the legacies of systemic neglect. Its narrative is a mere shadow of the truth. Robert Northern is a lost giant - a name that almost no one has heard - a prodigy once recruited by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Roland Kirk, Donald Byrd, Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, and S…
Sotto Il Segno Dello Scorpione
Quartet Records and Gruppo Sugar present the world-premiere release of Vittorio Gelmetti's experimental score for the cult movie Sotto il segno dello scorpione (also known as Under the Sign of Scorpio).
Directed by Vittorio and Paolo Taviani, the film takes place in a kind of fantastic prehistoric time when volcanos ravage and wipe entire civilizations off the face of the earth. When an island gets buried under lava and ash, a group of survivors manages to get away and reach a nearby islan…
Gente di Rispetto
"Gente Di Rispetto"is a dramatic 1975 film directed by Luigi Zampa and starring Franco Nero, Jennifer O'Neil, James Mason. Rotten atmosphere surrounding a young teacher who moves from Sondrio in Sicily. Here the young woman finds a home at the powerful lawyer Bellocampo’s house and she has a love affair with Professor Belcore. Her life is in constant danger after being finished in the gears of a very dangerous human society ...
Ennio Morricone has been able to perfectly represent in mus…
Contact (Silver Gatefold Sleeve)
Silver and black vinyl version. Silver gatefold sleeve. Numbered edition of 1000 copies. Rotorelief present a reissue of Silver Apples' second album Contact, originally released in 1969. Available in four versions: A black vinyl version with a color sleeve in a numbered edition of 2000 (ROTOR 056C-LP); a clear vinyl version with a color sleeve in a numbered edition of 1000 (ROTOR 056C-CLR); a black vinyl version with a silver gatefold sleeve in a numbered edition of 2000 (ROTOR 056S-LP); an…