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To Allen Ginsberg
Regarded as the link between Italian acid folk, Library music and Krautrock, Living Music was a collective of Italian Musicians, artists and poets active in the counterculture and student movement of Rome in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Taking their name and concept from the New York experimental theatre group ‘Living Theatre’ husband and wife duo Umberto Santucci (jazz critic, graphic designer (Brainticket) and photographer, library composer) and Gianfranca Montedoro (Jazz and rock singer, m…
The Cheerful Insanity Of...
2019 repress. Originally released in 1968, and selling less than 500 copies -- according to Robert Fripp's royalty statements -- The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles, & Fripp is, of course, the pre-cursor to King Crimson. Drawing its influence from folk, pop, classical, and religious music, the album is a masterpiece on par with the greatest records that the British psychedelic and progressive movements had to offer. Reissued on LP by Cherry Red Phonograph.
L' apres midi chaud
The only solo album by Armand Mirallès (Heratius leader) recorded in Montpellier between 1984/1985 on a cassette tape
Anywhere
***180 gram orange vinyl, 2019 stock*** Phoenix Records present a reissue of Flower Travellin' Band's Anywhere - originally released in 1970 - the debut album from the legendary Japanese rockers fronted by Yuya Uchida. Although consisting mainly of cover versions, Anywhere still exhibited many of the musical traits that were to come to the fore on the band's next release, the classic Satori, an album of original material delivered with panache by the increasingly confident Uchida in 1971. Anywhe…
Bill Fay
Enigmatic UK-based singer and pianist Bill Fay's dark and haunting work gained him a strong cult following in the late 60s and early 70s. He released two albums on the Deram label in the early 70s and promptly disappeared into relative obscurity for 30+ years. In the last 10 years or so those albums have finally begun to get the recognition they deserve, and 4 Men With Beards is proud to be able to bring them back into circulation on 180g vinyl. First up is his self-titled 13-track debut from 19…
Faust IV
Exact replica, officially reissued by EMI. 180 gram audiophile pressing with printed inner sleeve; digitally remastered from original tapes. This reissue was "researched, spearheaded and co-ordinated" by Tom Recchion who has supplied rare artwork for the inner sleeve -- and, in general, this is a state-of-the-art edition. The fourth and final album to be released during Faust's original lifespan, originally released by Virgin Records in 1973. "As an album, IV matches the band's trajectory: Jumbl…
Memória das Águas
Selva Discos returns to the LP reissue game with a bang – by giving a new life to the stunning and very sought-after Memória das Águas album by Fernando Falcão. Originally recorded in 1979 in Paris but only released independently in Brazil in 1981, the album comes complete with genre-hopping explorations that swirl around ambient soundscapes, lively jazz, experimental-leanings, Afro-rhythms and a unique blend of Latin grooves and French pop with a Brazilian accent, but it also comes with a story…
Napoli Violenta
First 200 on Red Transparent Viny. LP Gatefold 180 Gram + Poster. 500 hand numbered copies. The original soundtrack of the 1976 cult movie 'Napoli Violenta', composed by Maestro Franco Micalizzi, sees a deserved reissue. A classic 70s Italian crime soundtrack – presented here in full format for the first time ever, and filled with wonderful tunes in a variety of styles! There's a quality to the music that really matches the badass image on the front – a bold, forceful approach that has th…
Italia a Mano Armata
LP Gatefold 180 Gram + Poster | 33 RPM500 Hand-Numbered. A driving Italian soundtrack from the height of the cop/crime years – done with really full arrangements by Franco Micalizzi, in a way that easily rivals some of the best American work of the genre in the 70s! This score from 1976 (here reissued on wax) features an amazing band, spacey grooves, some jazz atmospheres, timeless brass-crescendos, the charm of '70s funk and the untameable talent of the maestro! Most of the orchestrat…
Le Altre
LP 180 Gram. Black vinyl edition. Easily comparable to the vaste number of movies from the erotic-dramatic genre popular between sixties and seventies, Alessandro Fallay’s Le Altre – a pretty much unknown director of Iranian origins – boasts an amazing soundtrack from the unforgettable Piero Piccioni, one of the acclaimed masters of the genre. The album moves between easy listening atmospheres to jazz and lounge, among Roma and Cinecittà’s summers parfumes. Everything topped off with woods, Hamm…
Ambient 4: On Land
Brian Eno's masterwork album from 1982. Standard 1 LP version. On ‘Ambient 4 (On Land)’ – the final edition in Eno's ambient series – his palate shifted from electro-mechanical and acoustic instruments towards “non-instruments” like pieces of chain, sticks and stones. “One of the big freedoms of music had been that it didn't have to relate to anything – nobody listened to a piece of music and said, ‘What's that supposed to be, then?’, the way they would if they were looking at an abstract painti…
Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
Continuing the twisted pop explorations of Here Come the Warm Jets, Brian Eno's sophomore album, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), is more subdued and cerebral, and a bit darker when he does cut loose, but it's no less thrilling once the music reveals itself. It's a loose concept album -- often inscrutable, but still playful -- about espionage, the Chinese Communist revolution, and dream associations, with the more stream-of-consciousness lyrics beginning to resemble the sorts of random conne…
Femmine Insaziabili
First 200 on Orange Marbled Vinyl. 180 gram audiophile vinyl LP; Gatefold sleeve + movie poster. Second release from the vaults of Spettro and another classic Italian gem of the late Sixties, a wonderful score from the genius of Bruno Nicolai, renowned for his long collaboration with Ennio Morricone and for countless and beautiful works for tv and cinema. Femmine insaziabili – also known as Carnal Circuit – is a 1969 Alberto De Martino giallo flick (with a young Romina Power) whose best part is…
Horoscope
First 200 on Transparent/Pink Vinyl. Rome was, of course, the pulsating heart of Italian library music – it is the place where tv and movies are made, so editors and musicians tend to gather there. But we must not forget what was happening, at the same time, in Milan – where there was a very active music industry, but leaning more on the pop and jazz side. The Roman style was more connected to the classic and orchestral tradition, but the musicians in Milan adopted …
Discreet Music
Brian Eno's pioneering Ambient album from 1975 re-pressed for 2018. Standard 1 LP version. While his earlier work with Robert Fripp on ‘No Pussyfooting’ and several selections from his own ‘Another Green World’ feature similar ideas, ‘Discreet Music’ marked a clear step toward the ambient aesthetic Eno would later codify with 1978's ‘Ambient 1: Music for Airports.’The inspiration for this album began when Eno was hospitalised after an accident. Whilst bed-ridden and listening to a record of eigh…
Galassia M81
Fabio Borgazzi – aka Fabio Fabor – played literally every known style of music, from baroque to “satanic” electronic, in his library music albums released during his career which lasted almost seven decades.Born in Milan in 1920, Fabor was one of the great artisans of post-war Italian popular music. Author, arranger and conductor with a classical background, he started writing songs (in the 1950’s and 1960’s) for popstars such as Nilla Pizzi, Johnny Dorelli and Milva; he then turned to music for…
Ambient 1 (Music For Airports)
Brian Eno's Ambient album from 1982. Standard 1 LP version.. Though not the earliest entry in the genre (which Eno makes no claim to have invented), ‘Ambient 1 (Music For Airports)’ was the first album ever to be explicitly labelled ‘ambient music’. Eno had previously created similarly quiet, unobtrusive music on albums ‘Evening Star’, ‘Discreet Music’, and Harold Budd's ‘The Pavilion of Dreams’ (which he produced), but this was the first album to give it precedence as a cohesive concept. He gav…
Clouds
First 200 on Yellow Vinyl. More than to reward the artistic ambitions of the artist, the majority of Library records were generally functional to sonorizations and conceived for a commercial use. So the main difficulty for the artist was to demonstrate his compositional versatility that allowed the use of his songs in different contests : documentaries, spaghetti western movies, television programs and dramas, news reports. “Clouds”, fourth chapter of this new and exciting Spettro series, is a c…
Metamorphosis
First 200 on Green Marbles Vinyl. The early Eighties marked a transition in popular music, especially for a generation of musicians (still heavily influenced by the previous decade) trying to assimilate the changes in aesthetics and technology which were occurring. Disco music is dead, so is prog, synths are still too expensive and unreliable, jazz is lost somewhere and the term “fusion” has become really popular. This the environment in which this album …
Crazy Colours
Rome was, of course, the pulsing heart of Italian library music – it is the place where tv and movies are made, so editors and musicians tend to gather there. But we must not forget what was happening in the library music world, at the same time, in Milan – where there was a very active music industry, but leaning more on the pop and jazz side. The Roman style was more connected to the classic and orchestral tradition, but t…