Reissues
Through The Looking Glass
Tip! *Limited 2023 Repress - 2x 180g, orig stoughton tip on Sleeve, Black Vinyl, 45rpm Cut Edition (Emil Berliner) - Last 500 with Original Stoughton Tip On Sleeve - sticker* Midori Takada's sublime debut album Through The Looking Glass is widely regarded the holy grail of ‘80s Japanese ambient & minimalist music. Originally issued in 1983, the composer and percussionist’s Midori Takada’s first LP Through The Looking Glass, has long remained one of the most coveted and sought after artifacts of …
Divin
*Packaged in a deluxe, gatefold Stoughton tip-on jacket. Hi-res download included* Junko Tange’s second and final album - a minimalistic, phantasmagoric masterpiece of distant, dreamlike voices woven through pulsating, dubbed-out drum machines, synths and static, originally issued by Osaka’s Vanity Records in 1981. Did this unassuming dental student (who vanished from the music world following this release) inadvertently invent dub techno? You be the judge. Label head Yuzuru Agi said this was hi…
Anonym
*Packaged in an old school, tip-on sleeve. Includes hi-res digital download* Legendary debut album by Junko Tange (mystery woman who showed up on the NWW list), originally issued by Osaka’s Vanity Records in 1979. Dadaesque recitations and sparse guitar, piano and electronic meanderings combine for a beguiling, hypnotic dreamworld. Officially licensed from the custodians of Yuzuru Agi's Vanity Records archives, this edition has been fully remastered from new transfers of the original analog tape…
Rare Bird
Rare Bird are perhaps best remembered for having the distinction of being the first act to be released on Tony Stratton Smith’s gloriously eclectic label Charisma records (also the home of Genesis, The Nice and Van Der Graaf Generator to name but a few) and for their excellent 1970 hit single ‘Sympathy’. Like fellow future Charisma stable mates Van Der Graaf Generator, Rare Bird was formed around the principle of keyboard dominated progressive rock which eschewed the use of guitars. In December …
Summertime To Spiritual Unity Revisited
Summertime from the LP My Name Is Albert Ayler made me discover Albert Ayler. His unique interpretation of Summertime motivated me to go to Lörrach crossing the border from Switzerland to Germany to listen to the concert of the Albert Ayler Quintet in Lörrach on November 7, 1966. This experience has indoctrinated me forever for the music of Albert Ayler. In 1975 I created the label Hat Hut Records and in 1978 I had the chance, thanks to the support of Joachim Ernst Berendt of South Western Germa…
Four For Trane To Live Newport 1965
Four For Trane became one of the classic, iconic albums of the post-bop era. The explanation is three-fold. First, the material. Rather than follow Coltrane’s lead into the most extreme of his free-blowing anthems, Shepp selected three songs from the Giant Steps album, and one from Coltrane Plays The Blues (although “Cousin Mary,” from the former release, is also a twelve-bar blues). This is significant because it illuminates the two sides of Archie Shepp’s conceptual perspective – an urgency to …
Africadeus
Bomb! Spiritual, intimate and revolutionary, yet firmly rooted in Brazil's folklore. Africadeus was the breakthrough album of the mighty Naná Vasconcelos, in which he discovered the berimbau to the world and took the instrument to a universal level. Having played in the shadows for other artists such as Milton Nascimento, Gato Barbieri or Som Imaginario, Naná is here finally in the spotlight. Recorded in 1973 in France for Pierre Barouh's Saravah label, this is the album that definitely imprinte…
Town Hall Concert, 1964
Charles Mingus brought together an amazing lineup spanning the totality of the nation's jazz scene with such luminaries as Eric Dolphy, Buddy Collette, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, Pepper Adams, Jaki Byard, Grady Tate, and more. Brought together to perform new Mingus compositions for the first time in public, the recording was initially considered weak due to limited rehearsal time but the years have been kind to this recording and it's a fantastic set of Mingus compositions, including the powerful "…
A Vulture Is Not A Bird You Can Trust
Another underground folk masterpiece back on the map. Forerunner of the british revival Ian A. Anderson licensed the album on his own The Village Thing on December 1971. Besides a couple of excellent cover- Black Uncle Remus penned by Loudon Wainwright III and a minor Bob Dylan classic as One Too Many Mornings – the album shows a more forward thinking production, with several bucolic progressive arrangements.
Downwelling
*2023 repress. 300 copies limited edition* Following Not Waving's stellar recent recordings with Jim O'Rourke, Colin Potter, and Jay Glass Dubs, Downwelling finds him in a striking Pas de deux with alternative rock god Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, QOTSA). It's one of those rare link-ups that truly transcends the sum of its parts, with Not Waving's rolling range of nuanced electronics acting as backdrops for Lanegan's smoky baritone storytelling. Delivered in a husky but pliable voice that has …
Gäste Bei Horst Jankowski
*2023 stock* Horst Jankowski was a classically trained German pianist, most famous for his internationally successful easy listening music. Born in Berlin, Jankowski studied at the Berlin Music Conservatory and played jazz in Germany in the 1950s, serving as bandleader for singer Caterina Valente.
Reaction
*2023 stock* "That this is the first release by the courageous pianist Mario Rusca, born in Turin in 1937, and thus not that young anymore, can only be explained (and not justified) by circumstances such as described above. But there’s more to it. Though I really strive to support Italian jazz and to discover new talents, often by going against the tide, I hadn’t yet heard the name of Mario Rusca three years ago. It was Joe Venuti who introduced me to him in the spring of 1971, while he was stay…
Ertlif
*2023 stock* "Despite the source of the band's name (derived from a fantastical myth that involves alchemy and leprechauns), the progressive aspect of Ertlif is not so much in the subject matter of the band's songs. There are no fairies or trolls or magicians drifting through the songs. Instead, Ertlif sing about subjects both earthier and easier to believe and relate to. That does not stop the music from taking on an edgy mysticism that lurks uneasily beneath the surface. There is a sense of Pi…
Io Come Io
*2023 stock* "Io come Io" could be regarded as the first Italian heavy metal effort. Ok, the sound results a little smoothed by a typical 1970s production, psychedelic influences can be easily found (most of all in the semi-power ballad "Non io" and the jazzy coda to "Io come Io") and the style of the band here is not so far from what Osage Tribe did the year before this album was released. Nevertheless, "Io come Io" has got such a real tension and straight-in-your-face approach you'd hardly exp…
Lähtö Matkalle
*2023 stock* "This band has a certain Finnish (and forestral?) nature, like e.g. Pekka Pohjola's music too. The composer is the guitarist Pekka Tegelman (who later wrote and played for singer Liisa Tavi among others, by the way). The sound is rather mellow, besides electric guitar the keyboards are in the key role. Lähtö Matkalle is progressive with longer compositions, the keyboardist had changed and some other new players arrived for this album - another reason for sounding a bit different. If…
Vesku Suomesta
*300 copies limited edition. 2023 stock* Actor/singer/flautist Vesa-Matti Loiri's debut album 4+20 was a largely instrumental piece of psychedelic jazz. The follow-up, Vesku Suomesta, from 1972, is more vocal-oriented but no less psychedelic. With guitar hero Hasse Walli, keyboard experimentalist Esa Helasvuo and free jazz guru Edward Vesala in the lineup and with the material consisting of Finnish folk traditionals, the outcome is an oddly captivating and unique set of vocal jazz caught between…
Fiddle
First, the music was obscured by history and now almost by the story behind it all.
Man With The Woman Face
Originally released on CD and 12" by United Dairies in 2002, the out-of-print sound source is finally reissued by Colin Potter's ICR. An important NWW-related work with strange sounds.
The Surveillance Lounge
Longtime collaborators NWW and Aranos align their visions to a deeply psychedelic, minimalist focus on their self-released 2013 double album. Also considered relative neighbours on the rugged West Coast of Ireland, Nurse With Wound and multi-instrumentalist Aranos here reprise a creative relationship ongoing since 1997’s ‘Acts of Senseless Beauty’, with just shy of 2 hours of metaphysical drift; departing with the anaesthetising atmospheres and creepy piano of ‘Letter From Torpor (Draft)’, and …
The Ladies Home Tickler And Other Exotic Devices
This expanded collection is the definitive version of The Ladies Home Tickler. An essential historical document for the new and lifelong Nurse With Wound follower. Classic tape cut ups, radio sludge, surrealism and abstract chaos. The birth of NWW, a project that is now in its 5th decade.