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*shipping the next week* Sweet Marie was formed in late 1969 amidst the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the wild music scene of Hollywood. Prince Teddy, a producer at Capital Records and a songwriter/musician, had a vision for a rock and roll trio with rich harmonies and psychedelic undertones. Sonny Lathrop played guitar and Willy Bims drums. Bims had been the drummer for the songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart and played on the recordings of many of their hits from the 1960s and ‘70s includi…
Freedom's Lament
David Callinan is nowadays better known as a writer having published an amount of books moving from the thriller genre to children's stories and also some non-fiction essays, but in his younger days he spent many years on the road as a musician and singer-songwriter. He formed Irish folk band The Spalpteens prior to moving to what has been dubbed as "celtic swamo music" with Urban Clearway, with whom he toured with the likes of Elton John, Billy Connolly. Fairport Convention and Rod Stewart, a.o…
Rendezvous With The Sun
You may probably remember the name of Howard Wales due to his association with The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, but besides those important collaborations Wales has also produced some highly interesting solo material. Among it, one of the best jazz funk / psych fussion albums ever: Rendezvous With The Sun. Wales had played backing artists such as Ronnie Hawkins, Lonnie Mack, James Brown or The Four Tops as a session musician before becoming a member of psychedelic blues combo AB Shky, who moved…
Spectral Nether Street
Steve Howe's recording career began as early as 1964 under the production of Joe Meek when he was the lead guitarist of the savage R&B outfit The Syndicats. He then joined The In Crowd, who soon became Tomorrow, legendary pioneers of UK psychedelia who along with Pink Floyd and Soft Machine changed the face of pop music forever.
When Tomorrow's singer Keith West's first solo single became a huge success (it was a part of the "lost" Teenage Opera project by Mark Wirtz) all band members went thei…
E.s.p.
In Italy, the genre of documentary film has represented a particularly fertile field for a critical review of the musical contribution to cinema at least since as early as the 1950s. The Italian public television RAI used to broadcast disturbing paranoiac dramas, weird documentaries on the bottom of the sea and indigestible so-called “educational” movies. ESP was a television series produced by Rai in 1973, directed by Daniele D'Anza, and aired from Sunday, May 27 1973 to Sunday, June 17, 1973…
Atmosfere N.1/2
Spellbinding Italian Library masterpiece (originally released as two separate LP in 1971), a near mythical recordings with holy grail status made by Riccardo A. Luciani (credited as David Hoyt Kimball due to contractual reasons) with the help of Luigi Malatesta (also known by the pseudonym Peymont). Another two tracks are composed by Serena Marega, an obscure female electronic musician active in the late 60s and early 70s, who played extensively with Teresa Rampazzi, and was a founding member …
Les Soleile De La Vie
Following the international release of “Evening Colours” in 1976, Jacqueline Thibault (Laurence Vanay) continued to compose songs that she recorded on her multi-track Revox. But she had little time for her own music, working day and night at legendary international recording studio, the Château d’Hérouville. Still, Jacqueline managed to bring together the compositions for “Les Soleils de la Vie” (The Suns of Life), with the help of her perpetual musical accomplices—Serge Derrien (guitar, …
Sway
**CD version** Sante Palumbo was born in 1932 in Cerignola, a small village near the city of Foggia, in southern Italy. After studying at Foggia’s conservatory, he moved to Milan in 1954. Unlike other musicians who were rapidly recognised by the local jazz scene, Palumbo started to be noticed only at the end of the 60s. At the beginning of his career he was one of the most in-demand pianist for studio sessions. When in 1969 he became part of Giorgio Buratti’s trio, the critics praised him as one…
Percussioni ed Effetti Speciali
**CD version** The long and prolific career of Piero Umiliani, also consisting of dozens of collaborations for television and cinema, has given (and is still delivering, given the amount of material that is finally coming back to light) a long series of experimental albums and music libraries that showcase his songwriting skills, as well as a natural curiosity towards avant-garde and more ‘difficult’ sounds. We can attribute to the second category this “Percussioni ed effetti speciali”, a title …
Crossroads of Time
UK psychedelia moved into prog rock with spices of hard rock in the late sixties, some even coined a new label to describe the strong textures resulting of the mixture of rockier blues sounds, jazz, revolutionized freakbeat and the hardest side of popsike - ‘heavy psych’. Amongst the best works of the era were the two splendid LPs recorded by Welsh band Eyes Of Blue.The Eyes Of Blue where formed in 1966 and soon won the Melody Maker Beat Contest, a fact that secured them a recording deal with De…
Big Deal! (Weinberger Funk Library UK 1975-79)
Killer Library compilation full of highlights from the music archives of Josef Weinberger Ltd. in London, pulled from the most famous library albums on labels like JW (Josef Weinberger/ Theme Music), IA (Impress) or PM (Programme Music). First selection of 16 lost tracks by Toni Campo, Midas Touch, Trevor Bastow, Sidney Dale or Vick Flick, oscillating between jazz-funk, soul music, proto techno and eastern-tinged disco, with open drum breaks, fat bass lines and plenty of horns/ wah wah/ or…
Inchiesta Sul Mondo
Inchiesta Sul Mondo is a double experimental concept album, mainly electronic, on topical problems of the period in which it was released, the middle 1970’s. The two records have two different arguments: Stati d'animo and Diagnosei Ecologica. Maestro Luciani is a well-known artist in the library music scene. His very personal style is the result of musical studies from childhood that allowed him to achieve a diploma in composition, choral music, choral conducting, and more. The avant-garde and c…
L'Amica
L'amica (1969) is an intriguing Alberto Lattuada film starring Lisa Gastoni (portrayed in the cover photo of the LP), Gabriele Ferzetti, Elsa Martinelli, Ray Lovelock, Jean Sorel and Frank Wolff. The music is by one of the greatest pianists, composers, conductors and arrangers in the world of soundtracks, the Argentine naturalized Italian Luis Enríquez Bacalov, author of music for countless high-level films including “La Seduzione" "Quién sabe", "Django", "Roma Bene", “Milano Calibro 9" and winn…
A me stesso con simpatia
This 1975 album is a studio session organized by Maestro Giacomo Dell'Orso (the husband of Edda) here released under his given name and not the Oscar Lindok pseudonym under which he made a number of recordings including The Fine Machine. This album had the simple purpose of a fun and playful session without preconceived models.
The result is a carefree album, from the friendly cover (Orso means Bear) to the music that is interwoven with bossa nova, samba, jazz and funk in a style that rec…
Urbanistica
**in stock now** Gerardo Iacoucci's Urbanistica is one of the most elusive LP from the very sought after Octopus series. Released in 1971 as a non-commercial album of background music specially recorded for cinema, radio and television, Urbanistica is now come back to life in a special 180gr limited edition of 500 copies.
Gerardo Iacoucci is one of the men behind Flipper's sound scene, also known for L'Avventura and Simbolismo Psichedelico (both published for Deneb label), but this is defin…
Diapason
Totally brilliant and obscure psych era Italian library music. Originally released in 1971 for the microsmall label Vi.Di.Elle, the same label as another psych bomb, "The Black Fire - Cream". Behind the mysterious "The Green Birds" name is a marvellous trio of unsung composers like Franco Bonfanti, Romano Rizzati (Corfull)and Renato Sperduti (Myrval), playing here some really dope jams in the style of the Braen's Machine's Underground LP. The whole album is full of psych effects, synth m…
Hammond Explosion!
Jou Cogra’s rare 45 and LPs have been the object of desire for a long time among collectors. Born Josep Cortés Granero, this catalan musician moved freely from tropical / latin sounds to Hammond fueled rare grooves with influences of masters of those genres, from Pérez Prado to Jimmy Smith or Brian Auger. His first LP was a collection of popular latin tunes, rooted in his earlier work with latin orchestras. He then moved to the underground, releasing a mega rare privately pressed 4 songs E…
Fotografiert Bunny
First ever vinyl LP reissue of one of the best library / jazz / groovy albums from Germany. Conceived and recorded in 1965 as (sort of) the soundtrack for advertising-designer, artist and photographer Charles Wilp photo sessions, it was composed by classical trained musician Siegfried Ulbrich, credited here under one of his pseudonym Marvin Martin. The album is a fantastic sequence of jazzy easy listening sounds, sometimes spiced with the actual sound of Wilp and his models speaking through the …
The Folk Group
**CD version** Piero Umiliani’s rich and diverse discography got us used to bold experimentalism, to excursions into popular music as into avantgarde. Nonetheless, while “The Folk Group” makes no surprise, it still represents a peculiar work within Umiliani’s seemingly endless career. Originally published under the name of M. Zalla, an alias he especially used for those albums that were difficult to classify – and among which we must mention the extraordinary “Mondo Inquieto” and “Problemi d’ogg…
Asasin in Lege
The soundtrack to the investigative documentary Asasin in Lege by John Atkinson (of the long-running Brooklyn experimental rock ensemble Aa) is the inaugural release from Florabelle, a New York-based label for experimental music and media founded by Ned Milligan. Debuting on Romanian and Moldovan national TV in November 2014, Asasin in Lege (Killers Inc.) investigates the assassination of an influential Russian businessman, tracing a barely-underground war between Kremlin-connected businessmen a…