★Lion Productions
Magic Landscape
* 2021 Stock* Fabulous grooving folk rock sounds with plenty of atmosphere, first released by the much beloved Village Thing label in 1972. Ian Hunt and John Turner first teamed-up in the late summer of 1970, the inevitable collaboration of two of the West Country’s most sought-after session musicians. String bassist and guitarist Turner had just left the infamous Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra and Hunt, a wizard guitarist and song writer who was already a ‘big-name’ on the Bristol scene, was looki…
Alice Through the Looking Glass
* 2021 Stock* The first release (1969) from the home studio of future BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer Peter Howell (he wrote the second version of the Doctor Who theme tune for BBC-TV) and his musical partner John Ferdinando, makers of legendary albums under the names Ithaca, Agincourt, Friends, and Tomorrow Come Someday. This private press record was recorded as a musical backdrop for a stage version of “Alice through the Looking Glass” by local amateur dramatics group the Ditchling Players. …
Fragile
**2021 Stock** The rarest, and I would dare to say best, folk/psych album from Peter Howell and John Ferdinando, musical brainchildren behind Ithaca, Agincourt, Alice Through the Looking Glass, and Tomorrow Come Someday. This fifth Howell/Ferdinando album had just been completed in or around 1974 when the partnership came to an end. Howell had been working at the BBC as a studio manager since 1970 (he’d provided a stiff upper lip voiceover for John Peels Top Gear shows), but he was now offered a…
Saat
**2021 Stock** Recording in a good studio in 1972 with an accomplished engineer/musician such as Dieter Dierks (Ash Ra Tempel, Cosmic Jokers, Tangerine Dream, and yes, the Scorpions), certainly enabled Emtidi to expand their musical style on “Saat.” The end result was a shimmering, lush cosmic folk trip, with multi-tracked and treated acoustic guitars plus electric piano, fragile angelic femme vocals, vibes, and mellotron, (punctuated by the occasional acid guitar solo). Yes, “Saat” is an elevat…
Para Castukis
* 2021 Stock * Here at last is a chance to discover why people have been willing to pay a very steep price to hear Sandhy & Mandhy, the duo who were not a duo, the band who were not a band, creators of perhaps the rarest and most expensive album from Argentina. To tell the story of Sandhy & Mandhy, we have to go back to 1967, when Alberto Infusino (Sandhy) and Alberto Vanasco (Mandhy) began their musical partnership in the beat band The New Free Men. Like many bands of that time, Los Shaker’s an…
Folklore Afro Uruguayo
* 2021 Stock. Edition of 300 * A masterpiece of South American percussion, recorded in 1977 by worldwide legend and Gipsy Kings percussionist Jorge Trasante—and impossible to find for decades—finally reissued! “In the mid-’70s I was struck by a young Uruguayan percussionist named Jorge Trasante. I met him accompanying Rada and Pippo Spera, in recordings in the Sondor Studio. He turned out to be an experienced percussionist and remarkable musical researcher, despite his young age, only 23 years o…
A Buen Puerto
* 2021 Stock. Edition of 250 * A record that sounds like a summertime sunset, if ever there was one. Lilting melodies, infused with an undercurrent of bossa nova and the drowsy, faded memory of sun-drenched islands. All of this melodic loveliness is made ever-so-groovy in an Afro-Cuban sort of way thanks to a mighty contribution from world famous percussionist Jorge Trasante, Totem drummer Roberto Galletti, and Limonada drummer José Luis Sosa. Pippo Spera came into the orbit of Uruguayan iconocl…
...And The Shredded Field Mice
* 2021 Stock * Every burgh in the 70’s that had a steady supply of weed and electricity provided a birthing ground for bands influenced by the likes of Jerry Garcia and Lowell George, and the Delaware area was no different. What was different was that in 1977 Snakegrinder made a record of their finest “homegrown” attempts, for the local admirers, and then quietly slithered away. Since then, the album has garnered accolades from the Acid Archives crowd and so we felt the time was right to give th…
On the Way to Eden
* 2021 Stock * It might be easy to think of Eden Rose as simply the first version of famed French progressive band Sandrose. Both bands had the same musicians; both existed at nearly the same moment in time (c. 1970). But Eden Rose is now seen, quite rightly, as something unique, a chimera from the misty past, a time during which the winds of change were blowing on the fixed universe of music. Rules were blown away, stagnant structures were swept aside, and musical conventions emancipated, this …
Dug Dug's / Lost in My World
* 2021 Stock * Here it is – Los Dug Dug’s self titled debut (also known as “Lost in My World”): the “must have” first album (1971) from psychedelic guru Armando Nava and his band, recorded after their failed trip to NYC did not produce the stardom they had been promised—pain and disappointment sparking great song-writing on this, the first Mexican psych album in English.
After an extended stint as the house band at Tijuana strip joint Fantasitas, Los Dug Dug’s relocated to Mexico City in 1966. T…
Groove Club Vol. 3: Cambodia Rock Intensified!
* 2021 Stock * There were no deluxe studios for the musicians who recorded the devastating tracks contained in this collection. Nothing so grand. Most of these tracks were recorded live, with traditional instruments finding a place alongside any keyboards or guitars that could be found.
And yet, it was these experiments of Khmer rock musicians which transformed the nightlife of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh—and which many years later have seduced countless listeners around the world with the…
Groove Club Vol. 1: La Confiserie Magique
* 2021 Stock * Fabrice, 17 years old, is a minet, or to say it better, a mod from one of the posh neighbourhoods, the 16th district in Paris and such “golden ghettoes” as Auteuil, Neuilly and Passy. Fab’ likes to have his “ronron at the Dugstore”, as Dutronc sang it (an untranslatable wordplay on ronron, “cat food”, and a minet – “a kitten” – purring). Fabrice attends Henri IV prestigious high-school; his father, a businessman who made a fortune selling plastic flowers, and his mother, a former …
Zone of Swans/Lucid Actual + 1/2 Dativa
* 2021 Stock. 8-page insert booklet contains the Daszu manifesto, poetics for most tracks, a measure of band history, and Part 1 and 2 of Mark Rudolph’s poetry from the Daszu era. * If there’s one thing we’ve learned from doing reissues for twenty years, it’s that there is often a lack of justice in the arts. All too often, the intensely talented are shunted aside, or not able to access the means to a greater hearing, or marginalized (or eradicated) by larger societal (commercial) (racial) (poli…
Dino & Montevideo Blues
Among the greatest artefacts of 1970s Latin American music, Lion Production’s first ever vinyl reissue of Montevideo Blues lone, self-titled LP, stands as a rare document of revolutionary music being made in Uruguay, and a crucial counterpoint to the sounds of Tropicália from Brazil. Fusing the rawness of rock with indigos Uruguayan rhythms, not to mention plenty of heavy grooves, it’s easily one of the most captivating records of its day.
Aura a.k.a Sativa
* 2021 Stock * Aura was a San Francisco Psych-Funk band that formed in 1974 and played extensively throughout Northern California. By 1976, the band recorded their first and only album at Pacific Recording Studio in San Mateo. The original title of the album was meant to be “Sativa”, but out of fear that promoting the joys of marijuana would be too controversial, the band omitted the title and just left it as “Aura”. Over the ensuing decades, the Aura album has grown in stature to become a major…
Ptarmigan
* 2021 Stock. Edition of 300. Rated by many as the best “folk/progressive” and/or “folk/psych” album ever made. Sourced from the master tapes. Huge insert comes with lyrics, liner notes from the band, and more * Hypnotic, mystical, largely instrumental tracks, all based on a complex interplay of recorder, hand drums and acoustic guitar—one of those hidden gems that make life better when you discover them all these years later. Ptarmigan recorded the basic tracks for what would eventually become …
Michael Oosten
* 2021 Stock * Keeping a band together was difficult in the late 1960’s. Tough too, because Michael Oosten was writing songs that veered away from pop-song structures. There was also the relative ease and lack of responsibility required for hauling around a guitar. So, Oosten took off, with a Martin guitar in tow, playing coffeehouses and clubs across the country. By the end of 1973, he was ready to record an LP—five psychedelic folk/rock tracks, ranging from the brightly smiling ‘Sunny Day’ to …
49th Parallel
* 2021 Stock. One of the top Canadian rock albums of the psychedelic era. Comes with color insert with band history and photos * In the spring of 1969, 49th Parallel had a hit in with ‘Twilight Woman’, a lovely song that sounds like a poppier version of what bands like Tomorrow were doing in England. That success led to the release of 49th Parallel’s only album. All hyperbole aside, it is easily one of the top Canadian rock albums of the psychedelic era. The album is strong throughout—from the p…
Sidewalk Talking
* 2021 Stock* I love this record. For me, it has a trace or two of Arthur Lee and Love at their best (‘Krishna Dov’ would not sound out of place on “Forever Changes,” for example), with dashes of maybe Terry Callier in some of the jazzier tunes. I also like that Hollins & Starr wrote a gentle tribute to one of my favorite old-time bluesmen, Mississippi John Hurt. At times this album is a gorgeous, ethereal blend of psychedelic folk and offbeat pop; but there are some funk and avant-garde moves t…
Daily Dance
After meeting at a Stooges/MC5 concert, drummer Bob Thompson and guitarist Doug Snyder met one fine day in October 1972 in Thompson's kitchen and bashed out this set of fiery improvisations, seemingly influenced as much by Iggy's proto-punk moves as John Coltrane's whole sheets of sound ethos; the result is a mythical frenzy of distorted guitar and improvised drums, creating walls of psychedelic noise; its sound is unparalleled for its time, preceding its closest kin, New York's no-wave explosio…