Reissues
Buone Notizie
This soundtrack composed and conducted by Ennio Morricone is just as such intense as any other score composed by the Master. This music involves the audience so deeply inside the plot. It captures the viewers mind, and makes them to share in the drama from the first to the last shot of the movie. Maestro Morricone is not new to this kind of magic. If we close our eyes and we indulge in our memories, we will have the feeling of famous notes, such as those of Once Upon a Time in the West, Metti un…
10 Bianchi Uccisi Da Un Piccolo Indiano
The film music composed by Maestro Piero Umiliani is very appropriate, the orchestration is really good and the workmanship is excellent. The various musical atmospheres accompanying the scenes are very live. They create the pathos that binds viewers and force them to hold their breath for the duration of the film.
What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?
2014 repress. "Compilation of 78's by Washington Phillips, in print again for the first time in over 7 years! Washington Phillips is one of the most unique gospel artists of all time. He played an instrument that was either the dolciola (a now extinct chimey sounding piano) or something entirely home made. No one knows for sure. Phillips sings with a beautiful voice and his instrument provides a celestial and otherworldly background. His songs are like lullabies straight from the spirit …
La Ciudad Secreta: The Experimental Sounds of Barcelona 1971-199
At the end of the 1960s, perhaps due to its proximity to Paris, Barcelona had become the forefront of the avant-garde and the entryway in Spain of new forms of cultural expression from Europe and the United States. Musically, that characteristic resulted in a middle-class underground that would play the part of a late local counterculture which gave birth to the so-called Barcelonés progressive rock of 1969-1973. It featured bands such as Máquina!, Om, Música Dispersa, and so on. Material from t…
El Poeta del Ruido
Recorded in 1978, the instrumental El Poeta Del Ruido by Decibel could be labeled a prog album but don't expect it to sound anything like Yes! This is more in the spirit of Art Zoyd, Univers Zero, Henry Cow, Faust, and Gong, which is to say, quite experimental, a bit dark, complex, and generally highly-structured (though it's also sometimes deliberately disjointed). Classical instruments form an important part of the group's sound, but it is augmented by interesting sound effects and there are e…
A Period of Review - Original Recordings 1975-1983
Incredible 30 track anthology ranging from spaced-out Kosmische to blunted & skewed pop - honestly one of the most eye-opening and worthy archival discoveries of the year RVNG Intl.'s issue of 'A Period of Review (Original Recordings: 1975 - 1983)' is a wide-reaching and revelatory survey of Kerry Leimer's prescient output operating on the cusp of ambient, 4th World and industrial musics. From his base in Seattle, Leimer accumulated a unique catalogue of recordings created on a Micromoog, drum m…
Music From Tomorrow's World
Music From Tomorrow's World is a fascinating document and a boon to Sun Ra collectors. It gathers previously unheard tapes from two sources: one from the Wonder Inn club and one from Majestic Hall, probably a rehearsal. Both were recorded in 1960, toward the end of the Arkestra's Chicago period. The Wonder Inn tape is especially revealing, as it presents the Arkestra in front of a crowd. And although Saturn album releases from the period feature Ra compositions almost exclusively, this set shows…
Sunrise In Different Dimensions
This CD features a live concert by Sun Ra & the Arkestra in Switzerland. The only fault to the set is that the two drummers (Chris Henderson and Eric Walker) fail to swing and often sound wooden on the vintage standards, which might be due to the lack of a bassist. However, the nonet (which also includes Ra on piano and organ, tenor great John Gilmore, altoist Marshall Allen, baritonist Danny Thompson, the reeds of Kenneth Williams and Noel Scott, and trumpeter Michael Ray), despite its slightly…
Live In Cleveland
A fascinating live document that captures Sun Ra & his Arkestra performing an eclectic set for a Cleveland audience in 1975. Though the recording quality leaves something to be desired, this remains an inspired performance and includes a chaotic take on Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” as well as “Astro Nation,” a clamorous foray into disco rhythms that anticipates Ra’s pioneering 1978 effort Lanquidity. (AMG)
Calling Planet Earth
The Paris concert was supposed to be the last of this ill-fated tour -- but at the last minute, Sun Ra decided to go to Egypt. Someone had tipped him off to cheap airfare from Copenhagen to Cairo and a handful of gigs in Denmark were cobbled together to pay for a trip to the Land of the Pharaohs (see Campbell & Trent p.178). Egypt was a place of obvious spiritual importance to Sun Ra, but half of the rapidly shrinking Arkestra bailed out and returned home. Nevertheless, the core musicians dutifu…
Friendly Galaxy
A very "jazzy" performance of uninterrupted Sun Ra's standards diluted with "Prelude to a kiss" by Duke Ellington and "Blue Lou". An excursion into the history of jazz encouraged by an ecstatic crowd.
Sonic rivers
Tzadik introduces its new Spectrum series with a very special and exciting new group featuring three of the most creative wind players in new music. Friends and colleagues since the ’70s, these three musicians share a vision of improvisation and composition that is unique, virtuosic and cooperative. Performing compositions and collective improvisations, they sculpt sound and silence with masterly assurance. Surprising yet completely inevitable, this is an essential document of improvisational mu…
Discography
This discography of musical work by the bassist Peter Kowald, who died in 2002, was compiled in honor of his 70th birthday. It includes an alphabetical catalogue of all 143 published recordings up to 2014 by and with Peter Kowald, as well as the cover designs and additional information relevant to the discography. The 208-page book also contains an index of all the films that Peter Kowald was involved in, texts by Bert Noglik, Floros Floridis, Wolfgang Schmidtke and Günter Baby Sommer, and sever…
Tutto deve finire
A band from near Rome, Seconda Genesi, have become famous among prog fans for one of the rarest (and much looked after) Italian albums of the 70's, Tutto deve finire, released in 1972 in just 200 copies, all with different painted covers, that has finally achieved a vinyl reissue thirty years after its initial release.The album is very good, with nice flute, Hammond organ and guitar playing to the fore, starting with the impressive Ascoltarsi nascere with a stunning rhythm acceleration, a…
Il gatto a nove code
"Il gatto a nove code" (The cat o 'nine tails), filmed in 1971, is the second film by Dario Argento, a horror thriller still distant from his horror works for which he will later become famous on an international level. The collaboration with the composer and conductor Ennio Morricone, already known for his work on Sergio Leone’s western movies, is here renewed after the success of "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage", and will continue with the third installment of the 'zoological trilogy', "Fou…
Cosmos
"Cosmos" is a hard-to-find, alternately chaotic and tightly organized mid-'70s session that was issued on the Cobra, and then Inner City labels. Sun Ra provided some stunning moments on the Rocksichord, while leading The Arkestra through stomping full-band cuts of atmospheric or alternately hard bop compositions, peeling off various saxophonists for skittering, screaming, at times spacey dialogues. (AMG)
The Nubians of Plutonia
In the late '50s, Sun Ra emerged from big band to modern/progressive big band status, began to employ electronics, and used a more Afro-Centric percussive focus. This recording perfecly demonstrates those qualities, and more. There are several definitive themes from The Arkestra included, such as "Plutonian Nights," "Nubia," "Africa," "Watusa" and "Aethiopia." Dig for this one on vinyl if you can (the cover art is stunning,) but it is nigh impossible to find on Saturn Research. (AMG)
Angels And Demons At Play
Sun Ra's Angels & Demons at Play is a diptych created by merging two recording sessions. The first is a laid-back introspective affair ("angels?") recorded in 1960. Even frolicsome, these bouncy melodies follow the percolating rhythms with a gently leading reed, as Marshall Allen exemplifies on flute in "Tiny Pyramids." Also dating from before the truly experimental Sun Ra period, the last three tracks were recorded at RCA Studios in Chicago in 1956. Still very accessible, here several horns, am…
The Other Side Of The Sun
The Sun Ra Arkestra looks both forwards and backwards in time on this obscure small label LP. Ten years earlier, one could not have imagined Ra and his men romping through "On the Sunny Side of the Street" or reinventing "Flamingo." However, those versions certainly sound quite original, and there is no mistaking the band for any other orchestra on "Space Fling," "Manhattan Cocktail" and the trademark "Space Is the Place." The music on this album features a version of the Arkestra consisting of …
Live at Montreux
The excellent Live at Montreux set from 1976 was released on vinyl by both Saturn and Inner City before disappearing from print for many years. In 2003, the set was reissued by both Universe/Akarma and P-Vine. A full 20-member Arkestra (plus dancers) turns in a typically freewheeling set. From "Take the 'A' Train" (featuring a killer solo from Marshall Allen), to the gospel-influenced "El Is a Sound of Joy," to the almost exotica "Lights on a Satellite," to the free and raucous "Gods of the Thun…