Experimental / All styles

Created in 1973 by two former MAGMA musicians, Yochk'o SEFFER (Saxophone) and François "FATON" CAHEN (Keyboards), ZAO displays a music both intriguing and complex. The band offers an original mixture between Progressive rock, jazz, traditional Magyar influences and modern classical composers (BARTOK, STRAVINSKI...). Sophisticated meters are punctuated by wind instruments and piano, putting the stress on strange-sounding themes. "Live !" is a never-issued album, recorded at the famous French club…

Created in 1973 by two former MAGMA musicians, Yochk'o SEFFER (Saxophone) and François "FATON" CAHEN (Keyboards), ZAO displays a music both intriguing and complex. The band offers an original mixture between Progressive rock, jazz, traditional Magyar influences and modern classical composers (BARTOK, STRAVINSKI...). Sophisticated meters are punctuated by wind instruments and piano, putting the stress on strange-sounding themes. "Live !" is a never-issued album, recorded at the famous French club…

At this point Wyatt was in between work with the Soft Machine and Matching Mole and was aided by the likes of Elton Dean (alto saxello), David Sinclair (organ), Mark Charig (cornet), Neville Whitehead (bass), Mark Ellidge (piano) & Cyril Ayers (percussion). Wyatt himself on drums, mouth, piano, organ. The album opens & closes with a baffling space-jazz 'cover' of Gil Evans' 'Las Vegas Tango' that is quite deep, and proceeds through various settings of psychedelic jazz, Gong-like jamming and free…

The Soft Machine plunged deeper into jazz and contemporary electronic music on this pivotal release, which incited the Village Voice to call it a milestone achievement when it was released. It's a double album of stunning music, with each side devoted to one composition -- two by Mike Ratledge and one each by Hopper and Wyatt with substantial help from a number of backup musicians, including Canterbury mainstays Elton Dean and Jimmy Hastings The Ratledge songs come closest to fusion jazz althoug…

In 1982 Philip Glass became the first composer since Aaron Copland to join the CBS Masterworks label. Glass had formed the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1968, but it wasn't until his opera Einstein on the Beach (1976) that he achieved great critical and popular success. His first album for Masterworks, Glassworks, tripled all sales projections, pleasing audiences, critics and Glass himself: "I'm very pleased with it, the way it's received in performance. The pieces seem to have an emotional quality t…

Performed by Daan Vandewalle (piano), 4 hours, 24 minutes worth. "Alvin Curran's music-making embraces all the contradictions (composed/improvises, tonal/atonal, maximal/minimal) in a serene dialectical encounter. His more than 100 works feature taped/sampled natural sounds, piano, synthesizers, computers, violin, percussion, shofar, ship horns, accordion and chorus. Whether in the intimate form of his well-known solo performances, or pure chamber music, experimental radio works or large-scale s…

Native Kentuckian R. Keenan Lawler speaks a private, fundamental language via his trademark metal-bodied resonator guitar. With an intensely focused technique, he sets bluegrass and blues-inflected tonalities against dense masses of harmonic overtones and sustained textures. It is a mesmerizing sound, one that conjures the effect of various global trance-musics and has beguiled a series of collaborators including Pelt, Matmos, Charalambides and My Morning Jacket. Inhabiting the mysterious string…

The Romans were one of Los Angeles' first super-groups with members of the budding art/punk scene sweeping Southern California in the early 80's. With members from Human Hands, Monitor, BPeople, Deadbeats, 45 Grave, Consumers, Tikis, the LAFMS and Green On Red, The Romans added a unique voice to the 'LA Punk' movement. While the explosive chemistry of The Romans was short lived, with only 2 full-length LPs ever recorded, band members went on to make rock history with Mazzy Star and Opal. On the …

Though they only released two albums (1974's Musik Von Harmonia and 1975's Deluxe), in their brief existence Harmonia were considered one of the most important and influential bands of the German Krautrock/Kosmiche scene. Composed of Michael Rother from Neu! and Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius from Cluster, this live recording captures Harmonia at their peak on March 23, 1974 at Penny Station in Griessem, Germany. Previously unreleased and featuring 5 extended, never before heard songs…

Collections of Colonies of Bees sweep in grandly, in billowing swarms of sound, borne aloft on a thousand wings of minuscule, elegant detail. Guitars chime and soar, recalling the best campaigns of the guitar armies of both Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham; deft yet intensely focused percussion propels towards an inevitable dawn; covering it all is a gossamer veil of subtly nuanced electronica. Their CD Birds is joyous, epic minimalism in exquisite registration, a sound that is dazzling -- and as s…

Steven R. Smith has had a hand in creating some of the most compelling & singular instrumental psychedelic music of the past ten years. As Ulaan Khol, Smith digs in deep with a palette of drums/guitar/organ to craft a monolithic & expansive freeform, feedback-heavy atmospheric din that bonds the disparate realms of Fushitsusha & High Rise with Popul Vuh & Flying Saucer Attack. Smith has planned a maximalist three-part suite, Ceremony. In this first installment of the trilogy, the tone is overwhe…

Essential reissue of this LAFMS cassette-only release from 1977 -- the first in a series of archival LAFMS release from the label based in the store that was ground zero for the orginal movement to begin with -- Poo-Bah Records! Great booklet with new liner notes by Dennis, design by Tom Recchion. "Dennis Duck Goes Disco was originally released as a hand-made cassette in 1977. Only 20 were made, numbered and given to friends. The album was made entirely with a phonograph and records, utilizing s…

Les Rallizes Dénudés, Haddaka No Rallizes in Japanese, and probably 'Les Valises Dénudés' in French, are the most obscure group from Japan. Their guitar-based music began at Kyoto University in late 1967 with their first official gig in 1968. While their self-released recordings from this time are structured in a loose Group Sound ('GS')/Folk Boom-type style, their live shows featured deafening volume, strobe lights and mirrors for maximum disorientation. This, of course, invites comparison with…

The controversial work which stepped into the forbidden territory of editing the performance of Haino Keiji. Yoshida breaks up their studio session boldly and restructures it from the unacceptable tune reproduced by extreme editing to the pop song thing that it is surprised. From the irregular hard core to heavy tune. From the modern music short piece, to the lyricism acoustic number. This album shows new possibility with union/condensing the music of Haino & Yoshida. This time they made 2 diffe…

Vulcano is limited to 1000 copies and is packaged in a deluxe embossed gatefold jacket made to emulate the embossed packaging for Kluster's album Klopfzeichen. Very deluxe. Vulcano is sourced from original master recordings recently discovered by Kluster member, and Tangerine Dream engineer, Klaus Freudigmann. Along with Admira, also being released at the same time on Important, Vulcano is presented here for the first time in this deluxe package. These intense sessions were made with Schnitzler …

Kind of unbelievable that this has been reissued -- out of nowhere and a very pleasant surprise. Sondheim released 2 of the most-out ESP-Disks (Ritual All 7-70 & T'Other Little Tune and here is his prior Riverboat label album. First ever reissue of The Songs, the debut recording by Alan Sondheim & Ritual All 770, originally released on Riverboat Records (later recordings appeared on ESP Disk). Recorded in March 1967 and included on the legendary Nurse With Wound list of experimental recordings, …

This Brazilian classic finally gets a proper U.S. release -- one of the greatest psychedelic albums of the late '60s, and a key part of the Tropicalia movement as well! The record is easily the most tripped-out album ever from Gal Costa -- far more sinister than Gal's debut of a few months before. The session was still recorded with full arrangements by the legendary Rogerio Duprat (who'd worked previously with Costa, Os Mutantes, and others), but it also features a lot heavier guitar and a blaz…

Smegma were formed as a reaction to the band's perceptions of how horrible things were in the '70s. 'We moved up to Portland just as the Los Angeles Free Music Society came out of the closet. There was the whole punk scene and a rebirth of things, but when we left, it was the deadest, worst time to be there unless you were into glam.' This disgust is reflected in the tone of the early classics Pigface Chant, Flash Cards, Disco Diarrhea and Glamour Girl 1941. The crown jewel, perhaps, of the earl…

Recorded on October 19, 1985 in Orfeum, Graz as part of the Sterischer Herbest festival. Originally released on Dieter Roth's Verlag as a double C90 in an edition of 200 copies.

Kodachrome is a sparkling collection of Raymond Scott's idiosyncratic orchestral music, performed by the 60-piece Metropole Orchestra. All compositions make their CD debut here. With Kodachrome, the Raymond Scott legacy grows yet again. After Scott disbanded his legendary 'Quintet' in 1939, he formed the first of his many orchestras. Scott continued to compose, this time for a larger canvas, and some of his more historically fascinating work often went commercially unrecorded, performed only on …