Reissues
Septober Energy
A mammoth, fifty-person enterprise featuring the cream of the early-seventies jazz-rock brigade, Centipede's 1971 album 'Septober Energy' proved to be an exercise in both gargantuan excess and instrumental brilliance. Naturally, opinions on the release are divided. The line-up is far too numerous to list here, though it did include the likes of Soft Machine alumni Marc Charig(cornet), Elton Dean (sax), Roy Babbington(bass), Robert Wyatt (drums), Nick Evans(trombone), John Marshall(drums,…
The Rest
The first and only recorded meeting between two absolute giants of the soprano saxophone - Steve Lacy and Joe McPhee - finally sees the light of day after 36 years! On June 9, 1977, Lacy and McPhee shared a double bill in Basel, Switzerland. Lacy invited McPhee to join him for a duet to close his set, and McPhee brought out his own soprano saxophone for what would become a historic encounter. The main part of Lacy's performance was issued on the classic Clinkers LP back in the day, but this fina…
Drones
In the beginning there was the piano. As soon as he had mastered the basics, Jean-Philippe Goude discovered the spell of melancholy while working on a little musical piece: an etude ringing out in the style of a somber hymn. Not the dead meat smells of somberness that, according to Picabia, serious people emit, but the earthen gravity of an abyss dug by life itself. Everything is the result of this bedazzlement. At 11 years old, Jean-Philippe Goude closed his eyes. When his eyelids finall…
An Acoustic Confusion
An instantly captivating, all-original acoustic album of great depth and incredible maturity, the debut album (1971) by acoustic guitarist and songwriter, Steve Tilston. As for the making of the album: 'It was Ralph McTell who very kindly contacted Ian Anderson of Village Thing on my behalf,' Tilston explained. 'I followed it up and secured a meeting with Ian and a gig at the Troubadour Folk Club. I'd met Ralph through Wizz Jones at Les Cousins in Soho, and he'd been very complimentary abo…
This Forest and the Sea
Excellent 1976 private press acoustic album, self-recorded at various places in Colorado, and filled with beautiful fingerstyle acoustic guitar, plus some atonal bottleneck slide, string scrapes and drones (at times, very Ry Cooder/Paris, Texas about six years before that soundtrack existed). Although almost completely instrumental, what lyrics there are tend towards the dark and the satiric. The obvious points of comparison are John Fahey and Leo Kottke, although Scott Key certainly has …
Kesarbai Kerkar
restocked: "One of the greatest Indian classical vocalists of all time. Kesarbia Kerkar rose up from the bottom of the cast system in India to become one of the countries most respected vocalists. These recordings from 1947 - 1953 are beautiful ragas not to be missed. First LP issue of her material to be available in the US. A real treasure for fans of our Abdul Karim Khan and Pandit Pran Nath releases. Beautiful detailed liner notes by Ian Nagoski complete with photographs and sacred…
E Pluribus Unum
Long-awaited reissue of the first full-length album from 1980 by late '70s/early '80s UK DIY super-group The 49 Americans. The main instigator behind The 49 Americans was Andrew "Giblet" Brenner, who assembled a loose, disparate group of musical/non-musical practitioners as an experiment in equality and democracy. This democracy included David Toop, Steve Beresford, Max Eastley, Lol Coxhill and Peter Cusack, Nag and Bendle of The Door And The Window, Viv Albertine of the Slits, Vivien Goldman…
We Know Nonsense
LP version. Long-awaited reissue of the second full-length album from 1982 by late 1970s/early 1980s UK DIY super-group The 49 Americans. The main instigator behind The 49 Americans was Andrew "Giblet" Brenner, who assembled a loose, disparate group of musical/non-musical practitioners as an experiment in equality and democracy. This democracy included David Toop, Steve Beresford, Max Eastley, Lol Coxhill and Peter Cusack (coming out of the anything goes improv scene), Nag And Bendle of The Door…
Spiritual Jazz 4: Americans in Europe
Triple LP version. Housed in a deluxe triple gatefold sleeve with download card for the entire album. Jazzman Records presents the fourth volume in their Spiritual Jazz compilation series. It's well-known that throughout the 20th century, fed up with poor working conditions and racism in their home country, many American jazz musicians chose to leave the U.S. in order to live and work in Europe. What's less well-known is how their music developed and evolved during their time on the conti…
DNA on DNA
Limited edition 2LP version featuring newly-discovered songs exclusive to this LP: "Pompeii," "Shrinking Thing," "Drinking Water," plus two encores from DNA's final performance at CBGB's. Housed in a gatefold sleeve. New York's seminal no wave band, DNA, makes it's highly anticipated American CD debut with this definitive collection of studio and live recordings. Surviving two line-ups over a brief period of four years; this highly influential, strikingly original and extremely under-re…
Unseen Worlds
1994 release, Late-eighties works re-released by Spiegel's own label, after the demise of the original imprint Scarlet Records"I had started as an improviser, largely self-taught and playing by ear on "folk" plucked instruments. Once I began a formal study of music, only after college studies apart from music, I had to learn to adjust to writing silent notes on paper with a dim hope of possibly eventually hearing them played by others, though my lack of keyboard skills with which to compose and …
Obsolete systems
finally restocked: 2001 release. An overview of Laurie Spiegel's electronics works, ranging from 1970 to 1983. Utilizing analog synthesizers (Buchla 100, Electrcomp 100), tape, digital synthesis, Echoplex, Bell Labs' GROOVE Hybrid system, etc. Comparable to classic 70s-era Schnitzler streaming, this is a very memorable document of this obscure composer's best works. "Laurie Spiegel, electronic music pioneer, has been working with cutting-edge electronic instruments since the 1970s. She has…
Ethnic Minority Music of Southern China
The fifth Sublime Frequencies volume in Laurent Jeanneau's amazing documentation of vanishing indigenous music of the rural Asian frontiers, this CD focuses on ethnic minority groups of Southern China. Presented here are 17 tracks of supremely infectious vocals and folkloric instrumentals played on a wide variety of local traditional instruments. The centerpiece of this collection is the 13-minute "Do Djui Atsei" (track 5), an absolutely epic male and female group choral vocal piece which is imp…
Lux Aeterna
Legit CD reissue, Lux Aeterna, was originally composed to celebrate a friend of William Sheller's wedding, thematically driven by concepts of union and togetherness, and ostensibly based on the Catholic mass, this is far from any sort of religious music you've ever heard. Following in the footsteps of other iconoclastic composers, like Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Claude Vannier, Lee Hazlewood, David Axelrod, Scott Walker and of course Magma (more on that in a second), Sheller conjured up what i…
The Medium Is the Massage
When Marshall McLuhan proposed his idea to create an audio companion piece to his landmark 1967 book The Medium is the Massage, no one quite knew what to expect. The book itself brilliantly captured McLuhan's theories on media and technology, arguing that the medium by which information is transferred to people was more important than the actual content being relayed. McLuhan hoped that an audio recording would help give greater depth to his theories, and in the late 1960s he and producer …
The First Ear
First released on Vertigo in April 1972, this is the first LP by Miki Curtis (Samurai front man) following the break-up of the band. It's a fantastically otherworldly psychedelic LP and a totally different sound than Samurai. The First Ear finds Eastern-tinged psych of the highest echelon! Strange harmony vocals, a spacy guitar solo, queerly sawing synths, everything's efficient and even compelling! "Forty days on a stoned-out camel" moans Miki (yes, he knows some English, too) and that is just …
C.O.I.T. - A Collection of Isolated Tracks 1981-1988
**Edition of 300 double CDs and 7" plus 6 offset metallic printed postcards housed in black varnished wooden box with slide close lid** 'This amazing archival collection from Vinyl on Demand brings together 28 tracks of kinetic, dark and unusual French wave and industrial aces by Clair Obscur. Many of them formerly appeared on the 'A Collection Of Isolated Tracks' CD, but this compilation adds 13 previously unpublished gems bundled with the first ever vinyl issue of their 1982 tape, 'La C…
Superstitions
Amazing early works by Pierre Bastien & Bernard Pruvost as Nu Creative Methods. Originally released in 1984 on cassette by ADN tapes. Played with a bunch of exotic and self-made instruments. Vital 869 : '... the strange, chaotic, repeating sounds, which most of the times sound very acoustic (or very high end distorted such as in 'Barrio Chino'. A truly fascinating release, which has nothing to do with Bastien's later mechanical work, but which sounds crazy, fascinating and to my ears quit…
Live at the Montreux/Detroit Jazz Festival 1986/1989
World Premiere!! Available for the 1st time, this legendary live set by the near-mythical Roy Brooks' Sensational Aboriginal Choir. which used to be one of the highlight of the Montreux/Detroit Jazz Festival. unique & special ?! kind of.After the Improvisational Sphere & the Artistic Truth Roy Brooks recast his Artistic Truth band with a formidable, all-Detroit lineup and quickly established it as one of the region’s top groups. He teamed with established local jazz godfathers such as Kenny Co…
Ad Hoc Musi 1980-84
Dominik Steiger, born in Vienna 1940. Universty drop out. Joins the french foreign legion 1959 but was dismissed a year later for psychiatric reasons. 1961 ï¬Ârst poems and beginning of a bohemian life. 1961-64 vagabondage through europe and asia. Published several books of poetry and prose since 1961. First drawings published 1972 by Günther Brus in his periodical 'Schastrommel'. Exhibitions of graphic works since 1975 in galleries throughout Europe. Ad hoc musician. First LP of songs…