Psychedelia & Kraut / Folk Rock

* 2021 Stock * Congregación was the most legendary of the many excellent bands of the early 1970's Chilean music scene -- one could easily say that for many people, this album has had the impact of a religious experience. There is good reason for that: Congregación's music has a highly evocative sense of space, using natural sounds, native Andean instruments, and acoustic textures to foreground ecologist and mystic Antonio Smith's soaring melodies and deeply felt, philosophical lyrics. The resul…

**2024 stock** Townes Van Zandt's third recording is an early guitar-and-voice singer-songwriter classic laden with memorable originals. Start with For the Sake of the Song, an oft-recorded classic here enlivened by tasteful percussion. Move on to a couple of Van Zandt's gritty, death's door laments - Waiting Around to Die (where the ex-con protagonist finds a friend in codeine) and a miner's sad tale, Lungs. Colorado Girl is another in a career-long series of paeans to Colorado, where Van Zandt…

Gryphon's 2018 comeback, their first studio album in 41 years: Brian Gulland, Graeme Taylor and Dave Oberlé joined by Graham Preskett, Andy Findon and Rory McFarlane, with the crumhorns and the humour intact.

Gryphon's fourth album from 1975, more song-based and electric, with Malcolm Bennett on bass and flute, a Beatles cover, Mellotron and Minimoog, and the 16-minute (Ein Klein) Heldenleben by Richard Harvey closing the record.

Gryphon's third album, from 1974: four long instrumental movements named after the moves of a chess game, joining crumhorn, bassoon and recorders to electric keyboards and rock drums. Toured in support of Yes.

Gryphon's second album from 1974, built around the 19-minute title piece by Richard Harvey, which grew out of the band's music for Peter Hall's National Theatre staging of The Tempest. Early music meets prog.

The 1973 debut of Gryphon, the London quartet that played medieval and Renaissance dances, folk songs and originals on crumhorns, recorders, bassoon, harpsichord and guitars. A key early music folk rock record.

The 2019 album by Celeste, the Sanremo group revived by Ciro Perrino more than forty years after its 1976 debut: pastoral, Mellotron-rich Italian prog with flutes, cello and saxophones, with a bonus track for Japan.

The second and, for more than forty years, last album by Scottish singer-songwriter Shelagh McDonald, recorded in 1971 with Richard and Danny Thompson and Robert Kirby's arrangements, here with nine bonus tracks.

Two-Piers' late-night compilation of 1960s and 70s songs for stargazing: Skip Spence, Fred Neil, John Fahey, Roedelius, Captain Beefheart, Eden Ahbez, Nina Simone, Lonnie Liston Smith, Tim Buckley, Bill Fay and Gene Clark.

German unofficial re-issue on BEO of the superlative 1971 eerie progressive/experimental folk masterpiece and a big influence on the freak folk of the last 30 years. NWW list.

By far the most rock-oriented of Fairport Convention's early albums, this debut was recorded before Sandy Denny joined the band (Judy Dyble handles the female vocals). Unjustly overlooked by listeners who consider the band's pre-Denny output insignificant, this is a fine folk-rock effort that takes far more inspiration from West Coast '60s sounds than traditional British folk. Fairport's chief strengths at this early juncture were the group's interpretations, particularly in the harmony vocals, …

*2022 stock.* The Fugs were the original outsider artists, releasing their first recordings on the legendary avant-garde label ESP-Disk' in the mid-1960s before signing to Reprise. Formed around the core of Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, The Fugs combined jug band music, smutty rock'n'roll, country ballads, Gregorian chants, canticles, and bohemian poetry into a stoned stew of anti-establishment freakouts! Now their first two albums for Reprise are available on vinyl for the first time since th…