Reissues
Emphasis
Emphasis was a Swiss fusion project featuring Pierre Cavalli (guitar, bass), Renato Anselmi (piano, synthesizer), Fernando Vicencio (flute, sax), drummer Nick Liebman and Curt Treier on percussion. Their only selftitled album from 1974 saw two original releases on the Swiss Pick label and in the UK on Jaycee and is darn tough to find: 12 tracks in all offer masterfully played European Jazz Rock, a combination of electronic Fusion and latinesque conga percussion. The sessions were con…
Spree Coast Jazz
This is the first presentation of a lost jazz concert from the Helmut Brandt estate, recorded March 1963 at SFB Sendesaal/ Haus des Rundfunks in West Berlin. That evening the Helmut Brandt Orchestra consisted of eleven soloists from the Berlin radio orchestras of RIAS and SFB, including Benny Bailey, Herb Geller, Nat Peck and Ack van Rooyen. They played a one-off concert of mostly unknown compositions, taped by producer Hans Gertberg for inclusion in the huge archive of NDR Jazz Workshop recor…
Jazz At Auditorium
Today it is well known that Austrian pianist and composer Friedrich Gulda was at home in two different worlds: classical music and jazz. He once mentioned “There are so many great musicians alive, but none of them was able to tear down the border that was created by the music industry, which is the border between classical music and popular music. Jazz is still considered to be something deserving less respect.” Gulda was one of the few who tried to cross that border, working in both realms, wit…
More Intra Musique
When glancing over the history of indigenous French free improvised music, there tends to be two observable categories of musicians - those who worked and collaborated with their counterparts from abroad, and those who worked independently. The former is generally more celebrated, and among those the drummer Jacques Thollot, who worked with Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Sonny Sharrock, Sam Rivers, Joachim Kühn, and numerous others, as well as with French pioneers like Barney Wilen and Jef Gilson, rank…
A Venezia Un Dicembre Rosso Shocking
Pino Donaggio is one of the great Italian composers often forgotten or obscured by more high-sounding names. Yet, along with names such as Umiliani, Piccioni, Rota, Rustichelli, he deserves a place of honor alongside the Master that the whole world envies us: Ennio Morricone.
A singer-songwriter of a notable fame in the ‘60s, he becames a soundtracks composer by pure chance when, at the beginning of the ’70s, while walking in front of the Venice station one morning he was noticed by a pr…
Nighthawks
John Avery, a member of Sheffield electro-funk outfit Hula, is an English composer and sound designer for theatre. He has been a collaborator with the theatre group Forced Entertainment since a long time and many of his solo projects fed into music for their performances. John's work has been described as a juxtaposition of melody and noise and is characterised by a sense of narrative. Improvised and recorded directly onto master tape at Vibrasound Studios, Sheffield on July 20th 1985, Nig…
Sozum Meclisten Disari
Originally released in 1981, this is another killer album by the Turkish legend, recorded with the same line-up as the previous “Yeni Bir Gün” album.Psych / Funk / Progressive sounds full of heavy drums & basslines, Moog / analog keyboards and psychedelic guitar. Featuring the killer duet with Deniz Tüney (“Alla Beni Pulla Beni”), the superb boogie-funk styled “Adem Oglu Kizgin Firin Havva Kizi Mercimek, cosmic-progressive sounds on “2025 (Üçüncü Ve Son Yolculuk) and more!
Temple
LP version. Includes insert with liners notes; Includes download card. Continuing with their reissue campaign of the Toby Robinson's Pyramid label catalog, Mental Experience now present Temple's self-titled release. Probably the most "rock" sounding of all the Pyramid titles, Temple were an ad-hoc outfit born out of several late-night sessions at Dierks Studios (where Toby was working at that time), involving local friends of Toby and other musicians from adjoining studios, among them Zeus …
Mouvements
Mental Experience present the first ever reissue of Mouvements, originally released in 1973. An impossible to find artifact from the Swiss underground avant-garde scene of Geneva, originally released as a private boxset limited to 150 copies in 1973, only sold at art galleries. A unique, instrumental mix of free-jazz, classical, psych-rock, folk, improv, kraut, funk, and musique-concrete with tape effects. In the late 60s, musician/guitar player Christian Oestreicher, "a savage in the era …
Magnetic Web
Magnetic Web was released in 1973. It appeared under the Nik Pascal monicker and showed a clear evolution in sound, favoured by the addition of an Arp 2600 and some rhythm boxes. It also included percussions and cymbals. The Two Headed Dog site thinks "this is his masterpiece in all of its acid-laced glory."Besides his musical explorations, Nik was also an interesting painter. His paintings are auctioned from time to time, and are consciousness expanding works influenced by abstract cubism and s…
Zero Gravity
**strictly limited edition of 500 copies** Nik's last album, Zero Gravity (Narco NR123) came under the Nik Pascal name and had a fantastic side long piece on the title track which reminisces of the works of Cluster. B side features four tracks that also bear some Conrad Schnitzler reminiscences. This was to be Nik's last LP before he would sell all his synths to ex car racer and future electronic/ambient music star Steve Roach. Besides his musical explorations, Nik was also an interesting painte…
The Sixth Ear
**strictly limited edition of 500 copies** 1972 saw the release of The Sixth Ear (Narco NR666), this time credited to Nik Pascal. A more complex work than Beyond The End..., it adds consistent rhythmic patterns to the mix with the addition of bongoes and also explores some interesting chord progressions. Besides his musical explorations, Nik was also an interesting painter. His paintings are auctioned from time to time, and are consciousness expanding works influenced by abstract cubism and surr…
Beyond The End... Eternity
Beyond The End... Eternity was released in 1971 under the Nik Raicevik monicker as Narco NR102. According to www.twoheadeddog.com, "Raicevic is clearly still in the early learning-curve stages," which it a key LP to understand Nik's evolution and setting the path for more evolved works to follow. Besides his musical explorations, Nik was also an interesting painter. His paintings are auctioned from time to time, and are consciousness expanding works influenced by abstract cubism and surrealism, …
Numbers
If you check the credits of The Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup LP from 1973 you'll find a certain "Pascal" listed on the percussion section. That is none other than Los Angeles based artist Nicolas Pascal Raicevik (1933-1994), aka 107-34-8933, aka Head, aka Nik Pascal, aka Nik Raicevic. Besides his hitting the bongoes on the Stones album, Nik was a great artist on his own, both as a painter and as a musician. As a musician, he was a pioneer in the use of synthesizers, preceeding the Berlin scho…
Negro É Lindo
Negro é Lindo is a worthy successor for the great album he had released in the previous year. Jorge Ben now takes his sound further toward a tropical Soul, a style that was his unique invention. But there are also still those hypnotic Samba grooves. Clearly, Negro é Lindo belongs to those master albums Jorge Ben bestowed to the world. With a good handful of records, Jorge Ben enriched Brazilian Pop and beyond, international Pop music. Negro é Lindo is one of them.
While many of the perform…
Concerto delle menti
There isn't probably a single fan of Italian Progressive Rock in the world that has never heard of Pholas Dactylus and their only opus (not just a simple 'record', in fact) "Concerto delle menti" (Concert of the minds), originally published in 1973. Pholas Dactylus have left, with Concerto delle Menti, a unique example of avantgarde prog containing only spoken lyrics that can be appealing to the most adventurous listeners even because the musical background is intense and mesmerising; the album …
8 Petites Pièces De Variété
Another evolution of Urban Sax concept, composed and directed by the visionary composer Gilbert Artman, conceived as a double quintet of talented multi-instrumentalists (featuring Jac Berrocal, Bernard Weber, Frederic Acquaviva and Emiko Ota among others) players working over a compositonal control of sound spatialization
Erosion Distillée
** 1969 previously unreleased album, this set must have been one of the weirdest albums recorded in France at the time** And that's saying a lot, given some of the avant jazz, experimental, and psych sets that were coming out of that scene! Jacques Dudon may be best known for his Ghislain pseudonym on other records – where he was much more of a straight blues guitarist – but here, he's very tripped out – and leads a collective of musicians through music that feels much more like a "happening" th…
Fartwind - Complete Discography (1967-1979)2Cd
Novaks Kapelle were one of the most legendary bands of the Austrian underground, famous and feared for their wild live performances and strict anti-establishment/music-business/audience/everything attitude. They went from raw psychedelic rock in the late '60s to proto-punk to some kind of weird glam/hard rock at the end. 1978 saw later jazz-star guitarist and Gipsy Love member Harri Stojka joining. Beside some bootlegs available on the internet, many labels tried over the years to release …
Evoluzione Interiore
**CD edition** Juri Camisasca is one of the towering artists of Italy’s remarkable musical avant-garde. Evolving across the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, as it continues today, this movement suffered under a long-lasting, one sided isolation - unheard by the world beyond. Recently, under the care of labels like Black Sweat, it has begin to emerge from the shadows, gathering a momentum of marvel and praise. Over the years, beginning with 1974’s legendary La Finestra Dentro, Camisasca has released a slow tr…