The Inner Mystique, the hypnotic second album by the Chocolate Watch Band, takes up exactly where its sacred predecessor left you: looking for your perfect match at the local Love-In. When Watch Band lead singer par excellence Dave Aguilar grabs you by the lapels and tells you "I'm Not Everybody Else," you have no choice but to believe him. He's not. And when he cools down enough to extol the virtues of "Medication," who could doubt his sincerity? Especially when he stokes the fires to the boili…
2016 repress. Dungens' incredible breakthrough album which got an amazing appreciation and a 9.3 Pitchfork review upon release. Now the original 2LP version has not been available for many years but here it is again in it’s original design. Gatefold sleeve and 2 x LP on black vinyl.The album is presented here for the first time with the correct vinyl mastering. The original, and previously only available 2004 vinyl LP pressing, was incorrectly manufactured from digital master instead of analog, …
3xCD version. Anthology Recordings reissue material from the definitive lost Swedish prog rock band, Trad, Gras och Stenar. This set focuses on the band’s ferocious live performances, but also includes albums from 1971 and 72 at the peak of the bands counterculture freak-out. All albums are in deluxe gatefold jackets with printed inner sleeves containing liner notes by the band, and scores of images published here for the first time. Includes risograph reproductions of two rare original TGS…
2016 repress. The Gardet festivals were the Swedish equivalent to Woodstock, an outdoor gathering of underground bands and other counterculture freaks. Recorded live at the first Gardet festival in June of 1970 and not released until 26 years later as part of Subliminal Sounds' Swedish Undergorund Archive Series, this LP catches an early Trad, Gras & Stenar in top form, before the release of the band's eponymous first LP. The versions of "All Along the Watchtower" and "Satisfaction" are rawer th…
In stock! Anguished atmosphere, obsessive mechanical patterns, dark disturbing music: in short, this is what we call a Masterpiece! "Back in 1971, when this real gem of electronic experimentation was released, the term “cybernetic” was used to refer to the future. Or, at least, to an obscure science in the hands of a few experts, conducting experiments in rooms filled with huge electronic calculators. Automated controls, auto-regulation, information theory… those were abstract, uncommon and rare…
Outstanding!! Quite possibly one of the best 'out-there' Italian library LP of that era." Massimo Catalano (who died in 2013) enjoyed a brief stint of fame after joining the cast of Renzo Arbore’s cult tv show "Quelli della notte", but he risked to be remembered only for those little, funny sketches he delivered on camera. Indeed, a few people are aware of Catalano’s great skills as a jazz trumpet player (he also played with Louis Armstrong in his career!), which he first nurtured with a band ca…
In stock. is an early giallo movie with sexual coloring dated 1968 and the wonderful soundtrack is by Nora Orlandi, composer, violinist, pianist and singer born in Voghera (North Italy). The style of the giallo/thriller soundtracks of Orlandi is unmistakable, with a compositional use of semitone intervals accentuated by vocalizing and sound carpet of piano or distorted Hammond organ, all seasoned with rhythmic jazz. The orchestration is by Robby Poitevin and voices, as well as that of Nor…
La Ragazzina is an Italian sex comedy film from 1974, and you know what they say about Italian sex comedies from the 70’s right? They always have cool kitschy soundtracks! La Ragazzina is no exception, with Nico Fidenco providing bright, loungey accompaniments to the on-screen sexy antics. This is arguably one of Fidenco’s finest works, and it's a pleasure to see this vinyl reissue with remastered audio on Contempo. "The soundtrack composed by Maestro Nico Fidenco for the 1974 movie directed …
The Concerto For The Left Hand In One Movement, for piano, is the last unpublished composition of Walter Marchetti to be performed in public before the death of the author on May 12, 2015. This performance by Reinier van Houdt was recorded on April 29, 2015, at Onder De Linden in Valthermond, Netherlands, and is presented with liner notes by Gabriele Bonomo, translated from the Italian by Philip Corner. Composed in 1994, the Concerto For The Left Hand belongs to an ongoing series of works writte…
Death Waltz Recording Company in conjunction with PentaMusic is proud to unleash another cult classic from the video nasty era (and their first in an ongoing series from the legendary CAM Records in Italy) with Carlo Maria Cordio’s musical score to Joe D’Amato’s notorious Absurd (aka Rosso Sangue). A pseudo-sequel to Antropophagus, the film reunited D’Amato with George Eastman, star of the previous film, and brought the action from Greece to America where the near-invincible Mikos escapes …
* Limited edition on 180gr. crystal clear vinyl * "Inferno" is a 1980 film by Dario Argento, generally considered one of the masterpieces of the Roman director. At that particular time, the artistic partnership established with Goblin, who wrote the soundtracks for "Profondo Rosso" and "Suspiria", had essentially crumbled, while in the UK Emerson, Lake & Palmer had just disbanded; Argento was therefore able to make a dream come true: to collaborate with an artist from the English prog-rock scene…
2025 Stock. In 1976, Joe McPhee recorded the landmark album Tenor, kicking off a solo period of finding and refining the distinctive voice that continues to inform his music to this day. Solos: The Lost Tapes (1980-1981-1984) is a collection of material from McPhee's personal archives that shines new light on the legendary multi-instrumentalist's work during this time. 'Wind Cycles,' for tenor saxophone, explores the permutations of breath on reed and brass, from quiet whispers to full-throated …
Vinyl actualization of a Gary Wilson album originally released on CD in 2008. The second of Feeding Tube's Wilson retrievals (following 2011's Forgotten Lovers, FTR 065LP), the label considers this the most solid of Gary's post-revival albums. While it goes in a slightly different musical direction than the deranged porn-lounge inventions of You Think You Really Know Me (the classic '77 LP, heisted in toto by Beck during his Odelay phase), the naif-ache of the lyrics and the music's laid-back…
The story of Jackson C. Frank is tragic. The victim of a school fire in his youth, struggling with homelessness and mental illness throughout his life, half-blinded in old age before his death in 1999, Frank met continuous obstacles. And yet he enjoyed a shining moment with the release of Jackson C. Frank on Columbia Records in 1965. The album would go on to be seen as one of the greatest folk albums of the decade—maybe of all time—and its opening track “Blues Run the Game” has become a standard…
CRU (Contemporary Radical Underground), is the annual magazine that documents what’s happening at La Plaque Tournante, a non commercial artist space in Berlin and run by French composer Frédéric Acquaviva and English mezzo-soprano Loré Lixenberg. This first issue of Frédéric Acquaviva and La Plaque Tournante’s audio / video hybrid magazine, includes a CD with music by Frédéric Acquaviva and Phill Niblock, a DVD with performances by Tomomi Adachi, Bernard Heidsieck, Katherine Liberovskaya, Jacque…
Superb and obscure Italian soundtrack featuring psychedelic mood music from the obscure RAI television program "... Con Un Colpo Di Bacchetta." centered around the 'Extra Sensory perception' phenomenon, released by an equally obscure group from Genoa, formed by students in 1978 and released this album and a single for the Eleven label (Franco Leprino) the same year. A trully bizzare effort of Avant Garde weirdness, Classical education, acoustic mysticism and deep experimentation, which breaks an…
Beginning in the 1980s Edition Giannozzo Berlin released many works by famous artists like Rolf Julius, Bill Fontana, and Akio Suzuki. “Natural History” was a weird cassette, released on the label in 1983 by Alvin Curran, the founder of the Rome-based improv group MEV. It’s an unparalleled piece of musique concrete that takes uniquely observed images of everyday life and weaves lyrical interconnections between them.Remastered in 2016 by Kiyoharu Kuwayama (Lethe). Limited edition of 150.
Jeanne Dielman present Blue York, a collection featuring unreleased tracks from Sun Ra's Arkestra from 1963. Herman Poole Blount, better known to the world as Sun Ra, lived more musical lives in his 79 years on this planet (and others) than seems possible. In the '30s he was the most rigorous bandleader in Birmingham, heading the Sonny Blount Orchestraand filling every waking moment with music or philosophical discussions, by the '40s he had moved to Chicago and performed with luminaries such as…
Anything can happen and often does. This is John Cage. A seminal example of indeterminate music from an icon on experimental sounds. This work was originally used as music for the choreographed piece by Merce Cunningham, "Field Dances," with stage and costume design in the original version by Robert Rauschenberg (from 1967 the designer was Remy Charlip). Variations IV is the second work in a group of three of which Atlas Eclipticalis is the first (representing 'nirvana', according to Hidekaz…
Complex re-release of the most remarkable and worldwide sought after series The Dark Side Of The Moog by German electronic pioneers Klaus Schulze and Pete Namlook (aka Peter Kuhlmann) in three slip lid boxsets, each with 5 CDs, incl. bonus material and new linernotes. The first box contains Vol. 1 to Vol. 4 and the Best Of-Album The Evolution Of The Dark Side Of The Moog. Their relationship between Klaus and Pete and the exchange of ideas was unorthodox from the beginning of their co-operation, …
The cycle « Sonorhc » is finally complete on Fractal Records with the 5 albums available on 3 CDs. « K’an » and « Musiques de Table » are very different musically : a « serious » dark ambient works for the first one, and a kind of a nice joke for the other, but they both join together perfectly around this contemporary music instrument invented in 1952 by François and Bernard Baschet : the Cristal Baschet which can be regarded as the main key point of this edition.This fifth album « K’an » is a …
Replica mini-LP edition. Terry Riley (piano, organ, soprano saxophone) & John Cale (bass, harpsichord, piano, guitar, viola, organ) collaborated on this one-off album, released in 1970. At this time, rock music was a serious movement, removed from the joke it once was, quite unaware of the joke it would eventually become, and things like this sometimes happened. Cale, classically trained on the viola, must have been pretty pleased to get a shot to record with the '60s king of minimalist pu…
2015 release. Strut follow up their hugely successful Marshall Allen - curated ‘In The Orbit Of Ra’ compilation with a newly curated set from the immense 125 LP back catalogue of jazz maverick, DIY philosopher and self-professed member of an “angel race”, Sun Ra. ‘To Those Of Earth… And Other Worlds’ is a hand-picked selection from BBC 6Music / Worldwide DJ Gilles Peterson, long-time champion of Ra’s music and the UK’s leading tastemaker for jazz-based sounds. It serves as perhaps the best intro…
2014 release. Sun Ra is one of the most respected, and perhaps most misunderstood creative minds in jazz music. To commemorate what would have been Ra’s 100th birthday, we’ve teamed up with Art Yard for a very special release. In The Orbit Of Ra is a new collection presented by the longest serving member of the Arkestra and current bandleader, Marshall Allen. Bringing together Sun Ra highights from over 25 years of music, the album is the first internationally released compilation to provide an …
"Suan" and "Naus", respectively published in 1972 and 1973, are the only two LP ever recorded by Neapolitan singer Armando Piazza; both see the participation of a very special guest, the American folk musician Shawn Phillips. Printed in limited quantities at the time on label B.B.B. (Beautiful Black Butterfly) and scarcely distributed, they went unnoticed for decades until a few years ago, when the recent interest in a certain type of music has lifted up the original editions prices, tran…
Agitation Free are one of the most highly acclaimed bands in the field of krautrock music. This fourth vinyl edition (after the successful releases of Malesh, 2nd, and Last) comes from Made in Germany and is limited to 1000 numbered copies.
Bamboo presents the first vinyl release of France Demo Tapes. "This just might be the single greatest side of OTT psych/noise guitar oblivion ever put to disc from the most legendary Japanese underground group of all time, Les Rallizes Denudes: the mysteriously-named France Demo Tapes have previously only circulated on wildly dubious CD-R burns, often with contradictory and conflicting track listings/material but the session (whether it was actually recorded in France or not) is consistently dat…
In 1975 I was doing a series of concerts in France with Lutz Ulbrich, where we were presenting 'Inventions for Electric Guitar' and other compositions, which we developed together that year. In August, we were invited for two concerts in the South of France, one in the wonderful Roman theater in Arles, the other at the Festival Palace in Cannes. This is where we met the musicians of the German band CAN and the singer Nico, who also played at the festival. After the concerts we stayed together a …
Tim Catlin built the vibrissa: twelve tuned aluminium rods, mounted vertically and stroked lengthwise by hand. Around them, quarter-tone bells, wine glasses, EBowed guitars and long wire instruments, with Philip Brophy and David Brown in the group.
Marc Barreca has been creating and performing electronic music since the mid 1970s. Following recent vinyl reissues of Marc Barreca's 1983 cassette Music Works for Industry via the RVNG spin-off Freedom To Spend, and a compilation of early cassette tracks on Vinyl On Demand's acclaimed American Cassette Culture, Palace of Lights has reissued the artist's first album for the label. 1980's Twilight was one of the earliest releases on Palace of Light, and is part of an ongoing program of documentin…
Following the RVNG reissues of A Period Of Review(ranked the #7 reissue of 2014 by The Wire) and Artificial Dance (ranked the #2 reissue of 2015 by The Wire), Closed System Potentials, recorded in 1979 and originally released in 1980, finds its way back to vinyl in a completely remastered and expanded edition. The LP includes two previously unreleased tracks, and the download card includes an additional two unreleased tracks, all taken from the original Closed System Potentials sessions. In thei…
Band Of Holy Joy were formed in the summer of 1983 when Johny and Max found a synthesiser in the cellar of the squatted house in New Cross Gate they were living in. They started messing about on this synth and started writing songs on it. The songs however were very messy and the discovery of an old plastic harmonium in a local junk shop only added to the chaos. They brought in Brett Turnbull to bring a sense of order to the noise they were creating. Brett brought along Martine Thoquenne with hi…
*2022 stock* Sante Palumbo was born in 1932 in Cerignola, a small village near the city of Foggia, in southern Italy. After studying at Foggia’s conservatory, he moved to Milan in 1954. Unlike other musicians who were rapidly recognised by the local jazz scene, Palumbo started to be noticed only at the end of the 60s. At the beginning of his career he was one of the most in-demand pianist for studio sessions. When in 1969 he became part of Giorgio Buratti’s trio, the critics praised him as one o…
Many words were spent on the long and fruitful collaboration between Piero Umiliani and the director Luigi Scattini: new light has been shed recently on some of their works, in lieu of the reissue of soundtracks such as “Angeli bianchi... angeli neri”, “Questo sporco mondo meraviglioso” along with “La ragazza fuoristrada”, “Il corpo” and “La ragazza dalla pelle di luna” (the famous trilogy starring Zeudi Araya as a main character).In 1977 Scattini, a world famous Mondo Movie author, directed “Bl…
The long and prolific career of Piero Umiliani, also consisting of dozens of collaborations for television and cinema, has given (and is still delivering, given the amount of material that is finally coming back to light) a long series of experimental albums and music libraries that showcase his songwriting skills, as well as a natural curiosity towards avant-garde and more ‘difficult’ sounds. We can attribute to the second category this “Percussioni ed effetti speciali”, a title that clarifies …
Temporary Super Offer! Having lived off the small change and 45 adaptors of each other's pockets since 2005, Finders Keepers and Cache Cache co-founders Andy Votel and Doug Shipton spread their wings and pool their DJ bags for a series of sporadic various artists compilations focusing on the global punk and makeshift electro records that have kept their beer-soaked dancefloors and distorted sound systems moving. Meet the younger, sarcastic sisters of some of the classic Finders Keepers family an…
A sculpture/happening an environment/collage by german Fluxus artist Wolf Vostell (1932-1998) from 1990. Sixty minutes with 2 stringquartetts, 4 wood-cutters, Zambombas, 20 TV sets, 5 soprano vocalists, 30 choir singers, 30 vacuum cleaners, trombone oboes, one car crash, 400 spectators, 10 scores, one "Equipmentmusic" (Satie). Comes in jewel-case with 6 page booklet.
Marion Brown (1931 – 2010) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and ethnomusicologist. He is most well known as a member of the 1960s avantgarde jazz scene in New York City, playing alongside musicians such as John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai. He performed on Coltrane’s landmark 1965 album “Ascension”, and around 1970, he provided the soundtrack for Marcel Camus’ film “Le temps fou”, featuring Steve McCall, Barre Phillips, Ambrose Jackson and Gunter Hampel. In 1976 he played alto s…
CD version. Peter Brötzmann and Swedish drummer Peeter Uuskyla, a veteran of saxophonist Bengt Nordström’s groups, first recorded together in 1999 with bassist Peter Friis Nielsen, and have since met numerous times in trio and duo settings. Previous to A Crack to Beauty was a 2LP set: Red Cloud on Silver, on the young Swedish label Omlott, which has also released Uuskyla’s solo music as well as reissuing part of their previous duo disc, Born Broke, as a single LP titled Dead and Useless. …
Kåre Kolberg (b.1936) is one of Norway’s foremost contemporary composers and is regarded as one of the pioneers of early electronic music and multi-disciplinarity art in Scandinavia. He has composed music for film, theatre and chamber orchestras to jazz acts such as Svein Finnerud Trio and Jan Garbarek. Kolberg’s Omgivelser (Surroundings) was a commissioned piece made for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) in 1970. It was made as a soundtrack for a short TV-film of the same name that w…