★Lion Productions
Puissance 13+2
Much needed reissue a famous double album originally released on the very collectable Theleme label that has all otherwise unavailable performances by a large number of French artists, recorded live in the park of the Chateau d'Herouville."The atmosphere was wonderful throughout all of the recording sessions, sessions recorded in the open air, in the sunshine, amongst friends. We were motivated simply by the desire to play music, the music we love the way we wanted to play it. All the tit…
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, …
La Petite Fenetre
Jacqueline Thibault (Laurence Vanay) often worked for other artists at the legendary Château d’Hérouville studio as arranger, keyboardist, co-composer, and assistant sound engineer. Between sessions she sometimes managed to record her own music. Several years after her two acknowledged masterpieces, “Galaxies” and “Evening Colours,” she was able to bring together the tracks for “La Petite Fenêtre” (The Little Window). As the 1970’s ended, trouble with the Château finances meant that again it was…
Drones
In the beginning there was the piano. As soon as he had mastered the basics, Jean-Philippe Goude discovered the spell of melancholy while working on a little musical piece: an etude ringing out in the style of a somber hymn. Not the dead meat smells of somberness that, according to Picabia, serious people emit, but the earthen gravity of an abyss dug by life itself. Everything is the result of this bedazzlement. At 11 years old, Jean-Philippe Goude closed his eyes. When his eyelids finall…
An Acoustic Confusion
An instantly captivating, all-original acoustic album of great depth and incredible maturity, the debut album (1971) by acoustic guitarist and songwriter, Steve Tilston. As for the making of the album: 'It was Ralph McTell who very kindly contacted Ian Anderson of Village Thing on my behalf,' Tilston explained. 'I followed it up and secured a meeting with Ian and a gig at the Troubadour Folk Club. I'd met Ralph through Wizz Jones at Les Cousins in Soho, and he'd been very complimentary abo…
This Forest and the Sea
Excellent 1976 private press acoustic album, self-recorded at various places in Colorado, and filled with beautiful fingerstyle acoustic guitar, plus some atonal bottleneck slide, string scrapes and drones (at times, very Ry Cooder/Paris, Texas about six years before that soundtrack existed). Although almost completely instrumental, what lyrics there are tend towards the dark and the satiric. The obvious points of comparison are John Fahey and Leo Kottke, although Scott Key certainly has …
Tomorrow Come Someday
(1969) from the home studio of future BBC RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP composer PETER HOWELL & his musical partner JOHN FERDINANDO, makers of legendary albums under the names Alice Through the Looking Glass, Ithaca, Agincourt, & Friends. This private press album was recorded as the soundtrack for an underground film production by (later to be) renowned television director Ian Hamilton
Up From the Sewers
A Chicago act was responsible for this underground album - sometimes referred to as Euphoria Blimp Works Presents Yama And The Karma Dusters Up From The Sewers, although Euphoria Blimp Works and Yama and The Karma Dusters were both alternate names for the group. An excellent album of varied musical styles, it includes high energy rockers (Revolution (not The Beatles song), CTA and the excellent Evolution, with its environmentally conscious lyrics). There are also folk-rockers (Don't Kill The Bab…
Mexico
Along with the two records by Nurse With Wound favorites Moving Gelatine Plates, Ergo Sum's weird and wonderful album Mexico is an unusual portal into the intense creativity of early 1970s French music. True, the bands are not musically similar; yet these three albums are distinguished not only by their instrumental richness, but by their unceasing sense of adventure. We'd go so far to say that Ergo Sum presents one of the most distinctive experiences in a rock idiom (apart from Zeuhl music jugg…