Reissues
Viral Shedding
Originally released on Illuminated Records in 1983, "Viral Shedding" is surely one of the most important references for the industrial/funk dance music. Between pure noise and electronic beats, 'Viral Shedding' creates a twisted and percussive rhythmic urge, a funky disco sound permeated by digital industrial beats. Nigel Ayers and Caroline K take their inaccessible best and thrown it into the melting pot with a set of pumping rhythms. The result is the frustrated son of mutant disco, swimming i…
Songs of Love and Revolution
"Songs of Love and Revolution" was a big step forward for Nocturnal Emissions, having a full colour cover and turning their sound further towards electronic pop music. Classics such as "No Sacrifice" and "Never Give Up" have made this an essential album for every fan of electronic music. As Nigel Ayers reminds, they were buying lots of equipment at the time and seemed to have naturally acquired some skill over the years so they thought, ‘Let’s make some pop music.' He continues: "The Miners’ Str…
Les Trois Fou's Perdégagnent (Au Pays Des...)
Second album by Etron Fou Leloublan, the mythic avant-rock / rock-in-opposition incredible trio, that happily destroys all rock structures and performs a delirious music, full of humour and rhythm. Etron Fou Leloublan had definitely moved up a notch with this release and things would actually get even better with the next release! Still, this album, originally published in 1979 is quite a juicy steak that will take quite some time to devour with the end results exceeding beyong the initial anti…
Musica Per L'Immagine II (2LP) Lost Italian Library Music
Handily compiled selection of lost Italian soundtrack recordings from the 1970s and '80s. Massive props to Fly By Night Music for doing the groundwork and digging up this selection of impossible to find or verging on priceless gems... Highly recommended for fans of Trunk, Finders Keepers and Soundway
Isis and Thoth
Body Without Organs were a duo from New York City consisting of Richard Behrens (lyrics, vocals, guitar) and Carl Howard (electronics, effects) formed in 1982. The pair brought together skill and ideas from such diverse areas as writing, poetry, ceremonial magic, studio technology, and mass media sounds and images. The name Body Without Organs could mean several things: a body, being an organization, without organs, or hierarchy; a form of anarchy, certainly opposed to the capitalist system, and…
Aguia Nao Come Mosca
Golden-era, 1977, Brazilian jazz-funk-fusion album from the legendary, Azymuth. Lush Rhodes, soaring synths and fusion guitars from Malheiros and Bertrami combine with the inimitable drum grooves from Ivan “Mamao” Conti that create the signature Azymuth sound.The album moves from mellow soulful moods, into screaming disco-jazz-fusion, samba funk, synth boogie and ends with a tough 160bpm Batucada workout. This is actually the first Azymuth album that we have released on Mr Bongo, which came as a…
Singe Tema
The return of the Zanzibara series: a Deep Taarab masterpiece from legendary singer Zuhura Swaleh, recorded in Nairobi in 1981.
Zuhura Swaleh & Party rose to fame on the Mombasa scene in the 1970s
with a new fast-paced taarab style based on local ngoma rhythms and its
melodies. The group sound was lead by an electrically amplified
tashkota (actually a Japanese instrument correctly spelled as
taishokoto), its shape best rendered as being a kind of “typewriter
banjo”—a trio of strings shorted…
The Road Forward
Be With Records have raided the KPM archives to reissue another favorite from the KPM 1000 series, Alan Hawkshaw's The Road Forward,
originally released in 1977. A comprehensive collection of descriptive
contemporary scores, the track titles swoon just by their names:
"Strangelands", "A Man Alone", "Sheer Elegance", "Mystique Voyage",
"Cruising". Don't you just want to hear those? The maestro Alan Hawkshaw
really spoils his listeners on this, one of the most sought after KPM
greensleeves. …
Jazz Rock
Be With Records have raided the KPM archives to reissue another favorites from the KPM 1000 series, John Cameron's Jazzrock,
originally released in 1972. A dramatic suite of themes, montage,
sequences, and generics -- an enormously influential and heavy KPM set
of timeless, killer funk breaks from 1972 by the mighty John Cameron. Jazzrock
is an aggressive, percussion-heavy album with an energy that leaves
jaws on the floor. Breaks and beats for days with electric piano, bass
loops, and po…
Afro Rock
Be With Records have raided the KPM archives to reissue another favorite from the KPM 1000 series, Alan Parker and John Cameron's Afro Rock, originally released in 1973. Hard Afro pop featuring large percussive rhythm section and front line. One of the best-loved of all the KPM LPs. Afro Rock was recorded at Morgan Studios by John Cameron and Alan Parker in London in 1973 as a collection of stripped-down African rhythms, virtuoso jazz instrumentation, fuzzed-up wah wah guitars, and spaced-out li…
Beat Incidental
Be With Records have raided the KPM archives to reissue another favorite from the KPM 1000 series, Alan Hawkshaw and Keith Mansfield's Beat Incidental, originally released in 1969. Underscore moods and links, contemporary beat music idiom -- Includes some of the most sublime, sub-ten second, tracks you're ever likely to hear, alongside more adequately sized library funk heat. The dream team of Alan Hawkshaw and Keith Mansfield are here at the helm of one of the most legendary of the legendary KP…
Gazuline - Le Plein De Gazul Pour Pas Cher
This stunning compilation includes titles by Etron Fou Leloublan, Les Nouvelles Lectures Cosmopolites, Toupidel Limonade, Sotos, Arthur et Les Robots, Spirits Burning, Pataphonie, Finnegans Wake, Palo Alto, Present, David Vincent, Eskalation and Triple Zero.Rock In Opposition, Progressive rock, chamber music, new musics or avant-garde... There's something for every taste and every age!
Fall of Saigon
An ephemeral trio formed at the very beginning of the '80s, Fall of Saigon take a special place within French rock. A voice (Florence Berthon), an organ (Pascal Comelade) and a guitar (Thierry Den), supported by a foregrounded drumbox, suffice to maintain a minimalist and essential construction, full of class and inventiveness. More conventionally rocky than musics recorded by Comelade in those years, although subtly peculiar, the compositions show influences marked by the New York seal. Thus th…
Vibrato
Cyril Lefebvre recorded this remarkable and fanciful album in 1979 with three veterans of the French underground, namely Guigou Chenevier (Etron Fou Leloublan, Les Batteries, Volapük...), Jean-Pierre Grasset (Verto) and Jean-Pierre Arnoux (Mahjun), and the hawaiian guitar virtuoso Harry Hougassian. This reissue comes with no less than six bonus tracks recorded with the help of some of the best names from the free music scene (Mike Cooper, Lol Coxhill, Steve Beresford...) and the rock scene (Elli…
Music as a second language
2019 Repress. Speech melodies extracted from sources as various as language instruction recordings, hypnotists and televangelists are re-synthesized and applied to digital musical instruments, becoming eerily beautiful, "the singing of voices more ancient than language." Performed by Paul DeMarinis Hidden beneath speech's words and music's melodies I hear the singing of a voice more ancient than language. Brain's secret convulsions making muscles articulate, shaking the world with a song now lo…
Oscillations
Led by Dominique Grimaud, Vidéo-Aventures is the gathering of numerous musicians hard-to-classify, such as Gilbert Artmann andr Cyril Lefebvre… They offer a music full of references and winks to Erik Satie, Captain Beefheart and The Residents. During the Eighties, the band was noticed for its innovative use of synthesizers, in particular the famous Synthi AKS. Vidéo-Aventures even entered the charts in New Musical Express, and the following decade, their first opus was chosen as one of the twent…
Il Paradiso Dell'uomo
Alternative Fox present a reissue of Piero Umiliani's Il Paradiso Dell'uomo, originally released in 1963. Italian film composer Piero Umiliani enjoyed a long and illustrious career, creating nearly 200 film soundtracks, along with 40 music library LPs, and some 35 television themes. Born in Florence in 1926, he was first recognized internationally for his work on the soundtrack of 1958 crime caper I Soliti Ignoti (AKA Big Deal on Madonna Street, Persons Unknown or Le Pigeon), which featured note…
There's No Heaven Like Hell
One of the strangest and most enigmatic groups in the history of rock n' roll, Les Rallizes Denudes, also known as Hadaka no Rallizes or Hadaka no Rarizu, were a Japanese experimental rock band that is often cited as a pioneering force of the noise rock movement. The story of the band is as strange and difficult as the music they made and although much of the tale is shrouded in mystery, everything apparently begins around Kyoto's radical anti-establishment communes of the late 1960s, where andr…
Live at Antibes Jazz Festival in Juan-les-Pins 1968
Temporary super offer! Pharoah Sanders, live at the Antibes Jazz Festival in Juan-les-Pins on July 21, 1968. Experimental jazz titan Pharoah Sanders made a lasting impact with his unorthodox approach to tenor saxophone. Born Farrell Sanders in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1940, he was given the nickname Pharoah by grandmother, in reference to the potential regal lineage of his African heritage. Playing clarinet at church services during his youth, he began playing tenor sax at high school. In 1959 …
Mandatory Reality
Mandatory Reality, the new album by Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society, is here. Setting aside (for the moment) the electric instrumentation of Simultonality (GB 048CD/MTE 068LP, 2017) and Magnetoception (MTE 063-64LP, 2015), Joshua Abrams conceived Mandatory Reality for an eight-piece acoustic manifestation of NIS, consisting of himself on guimbri, Lisa Alvarado on harmonium and gongs, Mikel Avery on tam-tam and gongs, Ben Boye on autoharp and piano, Hamid Drake on tabla and tar, Ben…