New Arrivals
Music For Deathbeds
As with the first SchleiBen series, Emotional Response follows the
success of the second set of split releases with a stand-alone album by
one of the highlights, in Neil Tolliday. Recorded over a 17-year period,
the ambient, drone and noise pieces collected here offer a glimpse in
to the depth of a supremely talented, thoughtful and at times, troubled
musical mind. As his love for house music and the success of his Nail
moniker grew and waned during the ascent 90s boom, there followed his …
Infant Eyes
Doug Carn created a personalized strain of jazz music that expressed a loving hopefulness. He found a home at the Black Jazz label, where African-Americans called the shots and, of course, racial tension was nonexistent. Who was this 22-year-old whose first album, Infant Eyes, sold very well away from the machinations of the music industry? Once a child prodigy on piano and alto saxophone, Carn had attended Jacksonville University on a full music scholarship and afterwards performed on the Flori…
Nachtmuziek
Belgian artist Bernard Zwijzen, aka Sonmi451, has for over a decade now been quietly making some of the most luscious ambient we’ve heard here at AI-HQ. We are delighted to announce him as part of the Astral family with this six-track EP - Nachtmuziek - sit back, tune in and drift away.
Verboden Dromen
Shakti , a three-man formation around “Praga Khan”. With this first mini-lp Praga once more proves his capability to drill into new rhythmic territories. Demonic Forces is a dance record. Western discotheque rhythmics mixed with Eastern influences. A unique creation that certainly can be called astonishing. The use of original Eastern instruments gives the whole an extra mystik dimension. With the help of some friends amongst whom a.o. Naburak Pran, Shakti succeeds in attaining an unparalleled a…
Portastudio Ambient Tapes
Unreleased synth based ambient creations from mid-'80s by "After the break-up of seminal punk-funkers Liquid Liquid, band member Dennis Young found himself at a bit of a loose end. He busied himself by making funny little new age/ambient creations in his bedroom on some synths and a Tascam tape recorder. Many of these curios have never seen light of day, so it’s a real treat that Inner Mood have managed to lock down a trio of tracks for the Portastudio Ambient Tapes. These are gorgeous, often be…
Wahdon
Wewantsounds continues to pursue its exploration of great Lebanese music with the reissue of Wahdon, released in 1978 by legendary Middle Eastern diva Fairuz. The album includes the Lebanese dancefloor cult classic, Al Bostah. 1978 was a turning point for the Lebanese singer: the '70s had seen her rise as an international star, playing sold out concerts in the US and in Europe, and appearing on national TV in France. She had had a long-lasting artistic collaboration with her husband Assi Rahbani…
Ein Traum Für Dich
Black Truffle announce the release of this genuine head-scratcher, the first collaboration between DJ / mixtape-compiler Kayo Makino and underground legend Tori Kudo. Originally created to be played between acts at the launch of Eiko Ishibashi's acclaimed The Dreams My Bones Dream (2018) and then reworked and refined for LP release, the two side-long pieces are sonic environments constructed by Makino for Kudo's piano to inhabit, or, as the LP's credits suggest, a "cinéma pour l'oreille" in whic…
A Gain
**500 copies, sold-out at label!** Colin Potter’s vaulted classic A Gain bubbles up for reissue with Joyful Noise Recordings, presenting its first ever reissue proper of a UK synth classic (if we discount the augmented compilation of Entering Again released by Sacred Summits in 2014) Recommended to Joyful Noise for reissue by Benjamin John Power (F*ck Buttons, Blanck Mass), who states “…the lines are simple but perfect… It’s incredibly well constructed”, Potter’s best known release prior to join…
3 E / 11,000 Volts
"The group later known as Mars came together in late 1975 through a chance meeting of those involved. Common obsessions led directly to the music. "We started out jamming on Velvet Underground songs in a loft with Sumner Crane on piano, China Burg on acoustic guitar, myself on bass and Nancy Arlen on paper bags. This rapidly led to abstract expression far from the source. China and Nancy started playing their instruments at the first rehearsal. Sumner and I were self-taught. We all were ready fo…
Drums of Passion
**2019 stock, reduced price** Drums of Passion was the first album released by Babatunde Olatunji in 1960. Olatunji was a drummer, social activist and musician, born in Ajindo, Nigeria. In this album he has recaptured some of his early impressions in drum beats and giving them new zest. The African drum rhythms are not only musical melodies and songs but also ways of communication. For instance, the first track Akiwowo was the name of a train conductor who shouted his humorous cry against the fa…
Experiment In Terror
**2019 stock, reduced price** Suspense thriller Experiment In Terror (1962) was directed by Blake Edwards and written by Mildred & Gordon Gordon based on their 1961 novel Operation Terror. The film stars Glenn Ford, Lee Remick, Stefanie Powers and Ross Martin as the psychotic killer Garland "Red" Lynch. In the story, Lynch uses a campaign of terror to force San Francisco bank teller Kelly Sherwood to steal $100.000 from the bank for him. In the film, Henry Mancini's music is used to good effect…
Il Bidone
**2019 stock, reduced price** Nino Rota is the Italian composer responsible for the well known film scores for The Godfather series, though the breadth of his work extends to opera, ballet and concertos. He was born into a musical family and studied in Italy before moving to America in the early 1930s. By the 40s he was writing film scores and soon developed a long standing creative partnership with the respected and influential film director Federico Fellini. Fellini made Il Bidone (also known …
Anonimo Veneziano
**2019 stock, reduced price** Anonimo Veneziano is a 1970 Italian award winning drama film written and directed by the famous Italian actor Enrico Maria Salerno on his debut as film director. The film is a melancholic and beautiful romance, an elegy to a terminal man in a dying city. There is a parallel in the story between the healthy of Enrico and the decay of Venice. Although being from 1970, this movie has surprisingly resisted to time and remains absolutely updated. The film had a great suc…
Il Vizietto
**2019 stock, reduced price** Composed, orchestrated and conducted by Ennio Morricone. Il Vizietto (La Cage aux Folles) is a 1978 Franco-Italian comedy film based on a 1973 play by French actor Jean Poiret. It is co-written and directed by Édouard Molinaro and stars Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault. The film was followed by two sequels: La Cage aux Folles 2 also directed by Molinaro, and La Cage aux Folles 3: The Wedding (1985), directed by Georges Lautner. Between emotion and light-heartedness,…
Daktari
**2019 stock, reduced price** Cut in the birth pangs of electric fusion and afro-funk, West Coast drummer Shelly Manne's brilliant score for the popular '60's TV series Daktari still stands as a global fusion landmark. The album, recorded in 1967, made heavy use of the marimba with various percussion instruments, and served the score well contributing to its huge success. On the album, Mike Wofford plays a tack piano to evoke an African sound, and Manne is joined by percussionists Emil Richards,…
Silver Cycles
**2019 stock, reduced price** Still riding high from Listen Here, Eddie Harris really started experimenting here with a dazzlingly eclectic LP that must have left his new fans wondering just who the real Eddie Harris was. There is good old Latinized funk in the opening cuts, Free at Last and 1974 Blues, but what was one to make of the next one, Smoke Signals, with its interplanetary Echoplexed electric sax and ethereal wordless female voices? Then it's on to a long-limbed Coltrane tribute on pia…
Brilliant!
**2019 stock, reduced price** Why some artists achieve the recognition they deserve while other equally talented ones don't depends on many things. But one thing is clear, that obscurity does not always mean lack of talent. Regardless, it is always a pleasure to discover little known but immensely gifted musicians and it is really a great pleasure to hear the reissue of The Diamond Five's Brilliant!. The Diamond Five, a Dutch quintet led by pianist Cees Slinger, was founded in 1959 and lasted un…
Milestones
**2019 stock, reduced price** Milestones was Miles Davis' third Columbia release after 'Round About Midnight (1957) and Miles Ahead (1957). The recording was made during one of Davis' most creatively intense periods, preceding his recording of the soundtrack for Ascenseur Pour L'echafaud (Fontana, 1958) in late 1957 and the subsequent recordings of Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else (Blue Note, 1958) and the repertoire that would become Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959). Milestones is significant …
The Frank Cunimondo Trio Introducing Lynn Marino
**2019 stock, reduced price** Frank Cunimondo has an extensive discography, having recorded with nearly every artist from Pittsburgh. In addition, he has shared the stage with a number of jazz stars including: Sonny Stitt, Lou Donaldson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Urbie Green, Lee Konitz, Louie Bellson, Joshua Redman, Phil Woods and Frank Rosolino. The Frank Cunimondo Trio is also a fixture of the Pittsburgh Jazz scene. In the 80s Frank owned a jazz club in Pittsburgh called 'Cunimondo's Keyboard Jazz S…
Sagittarius
**2019 stock, reduced price** Frank Cunimondo has an extensive discography, having recorded with nearly every artist from Pittsburgh. In addition, he has shared the stage with a number of jazz stars including: Sonny Stitt, Lou Donaldson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Urbie Green, Lee Konitz, Louie Bellson, Joshua Redman, Phil Woods and Frank Rosolino. The Frank Cunimondo Trio is also a fixture of the Pittsburgh Jazz scene. Frank's most popular recording Feelin' Good (from the album The Frank Cunimondo Trio…