Psych /
The Thorn
The Thorn is the second album by Large Plants. This time round there's a folkier, proggier more fantastical feel than the heavier biker-rock of the 2022 debut, The Carrier. It was partly recorded at the same time as the The Carrier, with more songs added subsequently. However, all tracks for both albums were recorded and performed entirely by Jack Sharp in a barn, since demolished. “It was a dirty, rusty, metal shack with no insulation or sound treatment, and it was full of junk, but it sounded …
Banda Da Capital
Som Imaginário are the stuff of MPB mythos. Integral to Brazil’s Clube Da Esquina movement in the early 1970s, a heady blend of progressive rock, folk, psychedelia, jazz and traditional Brazilian rhythm flows through the three studio albums the band recorded between ‘70 and ‘73. Flying the countercultural freak-flag amid the context of military dictatorship, the Brazilian prog lords shared much of the sense of experimentation and bountiful fuzz bequeathed by their tropicalismo forbearers. But ar…
Cosmic Sounds
*2024 reissue* Cosmic Sounds is a collaborative concept album, based on the signs of the Zodiac and originally released in 1967 by Elektra Records. Mort Garson, who is known for his collaborations with Doris Day and Glen Campbell, was asked to compose the psychedelic rock music and record it together with producer and The Limeliters co-founder Alex Hassilev. Different session musicians were brought in to contribute to the recordings, including most notably Moog synth guru Paul Beaver and narrato…
The Complete Liberty Recordings
Formed in London in 1969, High Tide featured the intense guitar playing of Tony Hill (formerly with The Misunderstood), the violin and keyboard skills of Simon House, bassist Peter Pavli and drummer Roger Hadden. The band was managed by Clearwater, also home to Hawkwind, Skin Alley and Cochise and were signed to Liberty Records soon after their formation. Their debut album, the stunning ‘Sea Shanties’ was recorded at Olympic studios and some of the heaviest gothic psychedelic rock record ever re…
Lueur
Univers Zero's new album (since 10 years) follows the lineage of 'Phosphorescent Dreams', originally released only on CD in Japan in 2014, and reissued as an LP on the Sub Rosa label in 2019. Lueur is the fruit of two years' work and reflection, the foundations of which were laid by Daniel Denis (keyboards, drums, percussion...), then enriched by the contributions of Nicolas Dechêne (guitars), Kurt Budé (clarinet / bass clarinet) and Nicolas Denis (bass, percussion, vocals), all three present on…
Five Dolls For An August Moon
* 2023 stock, copies show long-storage wear. * Norwegian supergroup DEL's Five Dolls For An August Moon. Dedicated to crazy moonbeams everywhere.
Without Introduction
*2023 stock* "Halfway between Tarkus and the much darker, weirder, and more complex longform prog bands of the 70s like Gnidrolog, Il Balletto di Bronzo, or Island. There are also mild psych vibes throughout, most prominently from the vocalist who's singing through some seriously tasty echo and reverb most of the time... and yet one of the album's more unusual qualities is that the lead singer doesn't do a ton of singing. I'd be willing to bet that if you took all the parts on the album with voc…
Hannibal
*2023 stock* Hannibal was a band from England. Their debut album, released back in 1970, offers a tasty, psychy, bluesy and jazzy progressive rock, with use of saxophone and organ. Wasted vocals and an original, cryptic underground approach. Solid guitar by Adrian Ingram. Elements of Raw Material, Aquila and Colosseum, but with their own identity.
Fusioon
*2023 stock* First album released in 1972 by these Catalan psych-progsters. Traditional Spanish songs receive a psychedelic / progressive / jazz-rock treatment with tremendous rhythm section (drum breaks galore!), fuzztone guitar, Hammond & analogue keyboards plus occasional string arrangements.
On a Day of Crystaline Thought
Beyond rare private press album from 1974, a fantastic mix of progressive rock with acid-folk, spaced-out psychedelia and cool conceptual / soundtrack vibe. Pete Fine is a virtuoso acoustic and electric guitarist and also a self-taught composer and orchestrator. After playing with psychedelic hard-rock trio Flow in the early 70s in New York, Pete, influenced by classical composers like Anton Bruckner, started to focus on his 12-string guitar, composing music in a symphonic style.
“On A Day Of Cr…
Music Or Not Music
*2023 stock* "Produced by Erick Van Huls, Recreation's sophomore release "Music or not Music" featured 15 tracks, many of them quite short and linked together in a continuing suite arrangement. With all three members sharing creative duties the all-instrumental set simply wasn't the lost classic slice of progressive magic some dealers would have you believe (the fact it was included in one of the Hans Pokora books merely added to the hype). The three members were all quite talented, but the majo…
It's A Beautiful Day
*2023 stock* "It's a Beautiful Day were no less memorable for their unique progressive rock style that contrasted well with the Bay Area psychedelic scene...It's a Beautiful Day remains as a timepiece and evidence of how sophisticated rock & roll had become in the fertile environs of the San Francisco music scene." - All Music
Heavy Petting
*2023 stock* On their first album, Irish band Doctor Strangely Strange declared themselves to be "strangely strange but oddly normal," and by their time of their second effort, 1970's Heavy Petting, it's possible that "oddly normal" no longer applied. The spiritual cousins of the Incredible String Band, although less rooted in folk traditions, their music flitted around like a butterfly, rarely settling anywhere for long -- and certainly never for the length of an entire song. "Gave My Love an A…
Hiro Yanagida
*2024 stock* Gatefold cover. Second Yanagida Hiro album, with Kimio Mizutani at the helm, swirling acid leads, heavy psych moves: a fuzzed out guitar record reminding me a little of Human Instinct. Like this guitar was dipped in fuzz! The grooves are great, and there are folky Japanese tunes that are nice. The album stays on the lighter side of groove, even on the uptempo joints, but this album is worth exploring for lovers of that Japanese rock sound in progressive and soloing. The 50's homage…
First
*2023 stock* German proto heavy metal and proto doom metal has always been more of an underground topic due to the fact that most bands only reached a regional level in every aspect. Dies Irae are certainly something of an exception to the rule when it comes to the quality. What you get here is a heavy and dark music with open song structures that leave much room for experimentation. Despite the fact that the simmering fuzz guitar cuts through your burning soul like a chainsaw there are still ma…
Ben
*2023 stock* “A reissue of Ben's self-titled album, only album, originally released in 1971. Canterbury-based progressive jazz-rock act Ben only released one obscure album, issued on Philips' prog subsidiary Vertigo in 1971, but it's a lovely collective of extended instrumental jams, worthy of discovery for those that missed it the first time around. Peter Davey's saxophone and clarinet melodies push the material to high peaks, against an understated backing from future Nashville Teens bassist, …
Infinity
*2023 stock* "Infinity" is the only album by Planetarium, a band of which nobody knows who the players are, since the musicians are not listed on the LP. There is, as some reviewer noticed before, an evident Ennio Morricone's influence on this work, which is most of the time instrumental, with very few sung moments ( "The Beginning" and "The Moon"). According to the liner notes the musicians devoted their attention to the birth and to the flow of life from its origin to its end in infinity, ling…
Full Horn
*2023 stock* 1973's Full Horn was Cornucopia's only release, but the seven members of this German progressive rock band made sure that it was a worthwhile accomplishment. From the onset of "Day of a Daydreambeliever," the album's opening track, Cornucopia's misty, phantasmal sound is set adrift with the softness of numbing vocal harmonies that emerge from the background. But from here, the song begins to breed patient rhythms and a certain sci-fi milieu that wonderfully sets the mood, picking up…
Electric Sandwich
*2023 stock* This only album by the German band Electric Sandwich is a pretty strong record from the start to the end. It's a wonderful highly enjoyable album. Songs like "Devil's Dream" and "Archie's Blues" have some impressive guitarwork and some of the songs also have a jazzy feeling because of the sax playing. Electric Sandwich's S/T only LP is a very solid and also a highly consistent package. No bad moments on this album. These seven songs all do their job very well. While it's not a total…
Love And Poetry
*2023 stock* David Lewis was hardly eighteen years old when he and two friends, bassist Nigel Smith and drummer Gordon Barton uprooted themselves from Belfast and set their sites on the Big Smoke. With the move came a record deal with CBS and a rebrand from The Method to Andwella’s Dream. Now known as a cult psychedelic classic, their first and only LP under their full title Love & Poetry touched on just about every genre that was hip at the time, cross-pollinating folk, jazz, progressive rock, …