Rock /
Archaic Spines
2007 release ** "Brad Rose, the man behind the Digitalis and Foxglove labels returns with another solo album. Archaic Spines is an album that utilises only a bouzouki and a hint of vocals, spreading five celestial ragas over forty minutes of improvisation. Unlike the open tuned raga variations we've come to expect from the Takoma lineage, these pieces tend to be strummed with droning open strings as you'd find in classical sitar music. For all the nods toward Eastern harmonic patterns and improv…
Through The Gates Of Deeper Slumber
1997 release ** "2nd full-length by our favourite outfit from the Southern coast of Norway. They shifted their musical direction forward to structures in the vein of early 70's progressive mellotronic space rock while still keeping their "traditional" psychedelic influences. On side 1 TSOI take us into a floral fairyland: a 25-min. long conceptual suite in 5 parts where the music ranges from meditative raga rock bliss with sitar to percussive trance rock elements to a meadow symphony and electro…
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…
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…
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…
Talking Trees
2002 release ** "Debut album by band from Bicester, Oxon UK, who make the trees talk and the byrds sing. British psych pop with influences of American West Coast sound in Jefferson Airplane vein (the album contains a cover of Grace Slick's Lather"), folky 12-string Rickenbacker dominated Byrds-like harmonies, breezy Simon & Garfunkel touches. Also reminds of the current psych pop of Green Pajamas. In spite of all the influences mentioned Talking Trees are identifyiably British like a summer wind…
Abelard And Heloise
2025 stock ** "Recorded on 2nd and 3rd July 1970 in Munich for German Television, the music on this CD is the complete soundtrack of the short movie of Abelard and Heloise's story. The album contains six tracks - all untitled."
Smoke Ring For My Halo
2025 stock ** "Philly’s Kurt Vile can sound like Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp or Lou Reed — if those standard-bearers were murmuring through a speakerphone after a few salvia bongs. On Vile’s fourth LP, the stoner haze lifts a bit, and he settles on a mood: chilled-out but guarded, and wrapped in gorgeous folk-blues guitar-picking. The vibe is warmly psychedelic, but reality is banging at the door. “When it’s looking dark, punch the future in the face,” he slurs in “Runner Ups,” a Dylanesque rambl…
Wild Songs
2012 release ** "Estasy is the project of Emiliano Maggi, an Italian singer/songwriter who has spent the last couple of years releasing low-key CD-Rs and collaborating with artists and filmmakers in Rome. A lot of the time his live performances with other artists, well-documented on YouTube, are set to spooky visuals, and in those that aren't Maggi wears quite frightening masks. Sure, quite a bit of that does sound like the sort of standard gimmickry rife in 2012, but there's something about Emi…