Reissues
African Songbird
Matsuli Music is proud is announce the re-issue of African Songbird, the masterpiece from South Africa's greatest jazz singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin. Originally released in 1976, African Songbird was a debut long overdue. The splendid vinyl reissue of African Songbird opens with a cavernous, spacious, enormous sound, Bea Benjamin’s voice is introduced by Dollar Brand’s plangent, lingering electric keyboards before the ensemble joins in like rolling thunder. The vibrant plucked bass (provided by L…
World Galaxy
''My Beloved Brothers and Sisters: I am overwhelmed with joy to see the entire youth of America gathered here in the name of the fine art of music. In fact, through the music, we can work wonders. Music is a celestial sound and it is the sound that controls the whole universe, not atomic vibrations. Sound energy, sound power, is much, much greater than any other power in this world. And, one thing I would very much wish you all to remember is that with sound, we can make—and at the same ti…
The Portofino Variations
1962 was the year Raymond Scott composed and recorded Portofino in many different arrangements. However, no recordings were released until Basta did include two versions on Manhattan Research, Inc. [MOVLP1855] The track became one of Scott's most popular electronic compositions: The track was recently featured in the Netflix hit-series Narcos (S2E10), opens the documentary "Best Of Enemies" and underscored a recent Gucci ad campaign. Hundreds of videos on YouTube and Vimeo use this compositio…
Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was Pt.1
The first part of Leyland Kirby, aka The Caretaker's, 'Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was' series, originally released back in 2009 and now finally reissued. It's a prescient hauntological elegy somewhere between Vangelis’ Bladerunner OST, Lynch & Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks score, Erik Satie’s solo Piano works, William Basinski’s gradual tape decompositions and James Ferraro’s washed out visions, like a slowly abstracted Berlin/Manchester night-scape. Tbh it seems to have even more …
Presque Rien
2017 Repress. Recollection GRM presents four musique concrète masterpieces by French electro-acoustic innovator Luc Ferrari -- all of the Presque Rien's collected together in one vinyl set for the first time. Presque rien n°1, le lever du jour au bord de la mer (1967-1970): "Following the complete disappearance of abstract sounds, we can regard this piece as a sonic snapshot and the culmination of an evolution. This is a realistic rendering (as faithful as possible) of a fishing village wakin…
Alpha Percussion
Mondo Groove present a reissue of Giovanni Cristiani's Alpha Percussion, originally released in 1985. Alpha Percussion is a cult groovy ambient album of acoustic percussion, pleasant to listen to and full of samples and breaks known very well by DJs and artists like Danny Brown, who used a sample of "Fragments Of Crystal" in "Really Doe", a song off his album Atrocity Exhibition (2016). Giovanni Cristiani is one of the most prepared and complete Italian percussionists. Born in Rome in 1952, h…
Sei still, wisse Ich Bin
Originally released on Klaus Schulze's Innovative Communication label in 1981, 'Sei still, wisse Ich Bin' is Popol Vuh's 13th LP. Fricke and Fichelscher worked under the production of Klaus Schulze himself and were helped for the occasion by Chris Karrer on soprano sax, Renate Knaup on vocals and the Chorensemble der Bayerischen Staatsoper. Two of its songs, Laß los and ...als lebtendie Engel auf Erden where used on the soundtrack of Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo, from 1982. There is also a …
MusikAutomatika
“Pioneers of electronic experimentation in Venezuela, Musikautomatika is one of the best kept secrets in Latin America’s experimental sound scene. They were formed in the late 70s by Luis Levin, Alvise Sacchi and Stefano Gramitto, and counted on the complicity of Mirella López and Gabriela Gamboa. They issued four albums (Musikautomatika -1983, Boston Tape - 1987, Kuba - 1987 y Frecuencias en peligro de extinción - 1993), which are nowadays highly sought after pieces among collectors from all ov…
Space Museum
Issued in a tiny cassette edition during 1982, Solid Space’s sole album Space museum, is an unveiling of the strange world of pop DIY music which grew from the spirit and ethos of punk’s early gestures. Formed by Matthew Vosburgh and Dan Goldstein - a spin off from the British band Exhibit A, the project was an endeavour in sci-fi inspired bedroom synth-pop - falling into similar sonic territory as The Normal, Silicon Teens, Telex, and They Might Be Giants. With original copies selling for hundr…
Drammatico
**sold-out at source, last copies around** Sonor Music Editions is very proud to release an absolute Italian Library HOLY GRAIL and maybe the most desired item of the genre, originally released in early '70s on the hot Panda Records - a totally insane Library album conceived by maestro Alessandro Alessandroni and Giuliano Sorgini under their pseudonyms Braen & Raskovich and surely their highest point of collaboration. Concept album where the music is just out-of-this-world and way ahead of its t…
Music for Movement
Sonor Music Editions is thrilled to release another terrific jam and a very obscure Italian Library record originally released in 1969 on RRC label (Droga, Traffico, Viaggio Attraverso I Problemi Dell'Uomo series etc.). Music is signed by the great guitar players and composers Angelo Baroncini and Bruno Battisti D'Amario, unmissable guitar man of Maestro Ennio Morricone. CRAZY early Fuzz beats with fast Western swings, Experimental Rock distractions, musical rhythmic movements with totally…
7 Hyden Park - La Casa Maledetta
The disturbing soundtrack of 7 Hyden Park - La Casa Maledetta, directed by Alberto De Martino in 1985 and composed by Francesco De Masi, author and Roman arranger already famous for classic B-movie soundtracks such as 1982's Lo Squartatore Di New York (The New York Ripper) and 1983's Fuga Dal Bronx (Escape From The Bronx). For a long time associated with "genre cinema", De Masi had an innate passion for primitive electronics. A long suite divided into 14 movements that best describe the clima…
Revival
This is a big one. Privately issued in 1979, Al Basim’s sole LP Revival, is one of the most sought after artifacts released at the end of the psychedelic era. Original copies are impossibly rare, and command astonishing prices. Recorded shortly after Al Basim immigrated to the United States from Iraq, the album is a stunning blend of jazz, prog, new age, and the sounds and structures of the Middle East - an image of a broader musical culture which existed in the region before political realities…
Naši Hostia: Experimental Studio Bratislava Series, vol. 3
This Series of electro acoustic music and Musique Concrète has started in 2015 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Experimental Studio Bratislava, Exs. Series 1 introduced us to Ina Hudba/Other Music from the first generation of Slovak avant-garde composers recorded in the Exs, mostly with self-built electronic equipment behind the Iron Curtain. Series 2 provided a platform for Nova Generacia/New Generation of Slovak composers using Western equipment – now integrat…
Based On A Novel
Svart Records is proud to reissue Olli Ahvenlahti’s first three LPs. This is his third and most difficult to find album, Based on a Novel. Olli Ahvenlahti’s first albums were issued by the independent company Love Records which then went bankrupt in 1979. Otto Donner, one of the founders of Love Records and the power behind the scenes of Bandstand and The Poet, decided to form a new recording company, Ponsi. The doors were once again open for Olli Ahvenlahti to enter the studio. Ponsi was, howev…
Mahmoud, Hassan Et Younes
A reissue of Les Frères Mégri's Mahmoud, Hassan Et Younes, originally released in 1974. Les Frères Mégri was a Moroccan rock band formed in Oujda, Morocco in the late 1960s. The band consisted of four members: the three brothers, Hassan, Mahmoud, and Younès, and their sister Jalila Mégri. Before the creation of the band, the Megri brothers were popular session musicians, composers, and producers in Morocco, starting in the late '50s. In the early '70s, Hassan and Mahmoud released four sing…
Springboard
The quartet of Ian Carr, Jeff Clyne, John Stevens and Trevor Watts - encounter here in their only recorded document, is among the most important gestures in the history of British free jazz. Issued in 1969, but recorded three years earlier, Springboard offers a window into the origins of an entire movement - the flowering of change within a music in geographies not its own. Free jazz always had a more receptive audience in Europe than in America. It’s not surprising that indigenous realisations…
Prophecy
ESP-Disk present a reissue of Albert Ayler's Prophecy, originally released in 1975. Recorded in concert at the Cellar Cafe, NYC, June 14, 1964. Three weeks before this trio recorded ESP-Disk's first jazz album, the epochal Spiritual Unity (ESPDISK 1002CD/LP), it was captured "live" by Canadian poet Paul Haines, who also recorded the New York Eye and Ear Control soundtrack (ESPDISK 1016CD/LP). This is one of the most influential groups in jazz history, a coming together of like-minded innovators …
Les Stances À Sophie
As if this batch couldn’t get any better, the Art Ensemble Of Chicago falls in our laps. Springing from the wonders of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians during the mid 1960’s, there are few bands of greater importance in the history of free jazz. Formed from some of the the most talented voices of their generation - Famoudou Don Moye, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors, Phillip Wilson, and Roscoe Mitchell, there has never been a band like them. Innovators …
You & You
DNA burst onto NYC's underground scene in the late '70s and recorded their lone single at Ultima Sound (the same studio where Suicide made their first album) in May 1978 just weeks prior to the pivotal No New York sessions with Brian Eno. Featuring the original lineup of Arto Lindsay (vocals/guitar), Robin Crutchfield (keyboards) and Ikue Mori (drums), You & You is DNA's indelible debut that perfectly captures the anti-movement of No Wave: clearly defined and purposely oblique with traditional r…