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Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina
**2019 stock, reduced price** The baroque pop band The Left Banke formed back in 1965 in New York City. With their debut album Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina they hit the charts and both title songs became hit singles in the US. They're known for their vocal harmonies, which can be heard on most of the tracks of the album. With their pioneering use of strings, harpsichord and woodwinds they created a unique baroque sound. The beautiful and emotional vibe they laid down in their music can be …
The Road
**2019 stock, reduced price** Formed in Lancashire in 1969 around the nucleus of three brothers, John, Lea and Neil Heather - also known as The Heather Brothers - Quiet World was a studio recording project best known for being the first album to feature future Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett and with a guest appearance from Steve's brother, John. As was common practice in those early days The Road is a conceptual album, and in this case flavored with religious leanings (actually based on the cul…
Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters
**2019 stock, reduced price** Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters is the solo debut album by Robert Calvert, former singer of the space-rock band Hawkwind. It's a satirical concept album with both songs and spoken interludes based on the story of the poor quality of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter planes. The sputtering and sprawling planes starts up the album, which portrays the West German minister of defense as a psychopath who's furious about the Luftwaffe. It's the effective combination of…
Help Yourself
**2019 stock, reduced price** Help Yourself, known to their fans as "The Helps", were an English rock band of the early 70s. Formed in London, originally as a backing band for singer-songwriter Malcolm Morley, who had left Sam Apple Pie and had been signed as a solo act by Famepushers. The band was assembled by John Eichler who, as well as working for Famepushers, was a production manager at Strand Cosmetics. Their eponymous debut album Help Yourself was recorded from late 1970 to early 1971 wit…
Flames / Salisbury Plain
**750 copies - 2019 stock, reduced price** Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera, at various times also known as Velvet Opera, was a British Rock band active in the late 1960s. The group emerged from a soul / blues band called The Five Proud Walkers, and after supporting Pink Floyd on tour, they were inspired to change their approach and become a more psychedelic outfit. Their first recording was the single Flames b/w Salisbury Plain - published in November 1967 - which was later covered on stage by Led Z…
Wonderwall Music
With the release of Wonderwall Music in November 1968, George Harrison was the first Beatle to step into the spotlight on his own. Recording sessions actually began a year earlier - when the Beatles were recording their annual Christmas message - with India and Swordfencing, both working titles that would be changed before release. In January 1968, Harrison traveled to EMI's studios in Bombay for a whirlwind five-day session. There, he employed various local musicians, wrapping up work on Jan. 1…
Psychotic Reaction
Most fans of garage know Count Five as the group behind the classic single Psychotic Reaction – a three minute and eight second distillation of everything that’s great about the genre, from its immediately recognizable opening fuzz riff to its last wigged-out break. Eminent garageologists all agree on the track’s importance in the canon, and its inclusion on the original Nuggets LP cemented its hall-of-fame status long ago. But make no mistake, the sum of Count Five is much more than that one si…
Live At Royal Albert Hall, London 13th August 1970
Classic Soft Machine performing live at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall, right after the release of the milestone Third on CBS. Classic line up with Hugh Hopper (bass), Mike Ratledge (keyboards), Robert Wyatt (vocals / drums) and very special guest Elton Dean on alto saxophone and saxello. Canterbury goes to heaven!
Lights in the Center of Your Head
**300 copies** Great debut album by the new trio led by Detroit / Boston guitar legend Roger Miller. Roger has been going at it since he was a tiny baby, with a recording career that stretches back to Sproton Layer in 1970. He is still probably best known for his work with Mission of Burma, but cognoscenti wallow in his work with the original Destroy All Monsters, F.U.K., Empool, the Farmers, his crazy solo stuff, and recent jamming with M2. With Trinary System, Roger manages to get wild trio ak…
Manifest Being
** 250 copies ** "A lot of people flipped out over how amazing Mako Sica's last album, "Ronda" (FTR 409LP, 2018), was. "Ronda" was a 2LP set whereupon the Chicago trio collaborated with legendary local percussionist Hamid Drake. This pairing seemed like a natural to us, but for some reason people have been woefully unaware of Mako Sica despite the fact they've been releasing killer records for a decade, and playing live shows that submerge your brain in a sonic soup that recalls the Sun City Gir…
Joe's Garage Acts 1, 2 & 3
2015 Release. Triple LP. Needless to say, it is a grandly absurd undertaking, full of scatological comedy and hard-rock-jazz-fusion. "Frank Zappa’s satirical rock opera, Joe’s Garage, is ambitious and mad, brilliant, peculiar and incoherent — epithets that have also been applied to German expressionist Georg Buchner’s unfinished play, Woyzeck. This may seem like a ludicrously lofty cross-cultural reference to attach to an album most notorious for a song about Catholic girls’ aptitude for fellati…
Weasels Ripped My Flesh
2017 Release. 180 grams, sourced from the original 1970 Analog Master. A fascinating collection of mostly instrumental live and studio material recorded by the original Mothers of Invention, complete with horn section, from 1967-1969, Weasels Ripped My Flesh segues unpredictably between arty experimentation and traditional song structures. Highlights of the former category include the classical avant-garde elements of "Didja Get Any Onya," which blends odd rhythmic accents and time signatures wi…
Zoot Allures
2018 Release. Zoot Allures, released in October 1976, is mostly a studio album (there are some basic live tracks, as in the title track and "Black Napkins") featuring a revolving cast of musicians who, oddly, do not correspond to the ones pictured on the album cover (for instance, Patrick O'Hearn and Eddie Jobson did not contribute). Compared to previous releases like One Size Fits All, Roxy & Elsewhere, or even Over-Nite Sensation, and to upcoming ones such as Zappa in New York, Studio Tan, or …
Cruising With Ruben & The Jets
2017 Release. 180 grams, sourced from the original analog master. "It's all one album. All the material in the albums is organically related and if I had all the master tapes and I could take a razor blade and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order it still would make one piece of music you can listen to. Then I could take that razor blade and cut it apart and reassemble it a different way, and it still would make sense. I could do this twenty ways. The material is definit…
Burnt Weeny Sandwich
2018 release. Burnt Weeny Sandwich is the first of two albums by the Mothers of Invention that Frank Zappa released in 1970, after he had disbanded the original lineup. While Weasels Ripped My Flesh focuses on complex material and improvised stage madness, this collection of studio and live recordings summarizes the leader's various interests and influences at the time. It opens and closes on '50s pop covers, "WPLJ" and "Valarie." "Aybe Sea" is a Zappafied sea shanty, while "Igor's Boogie" is na…
Afro-Progresivo
LP version. Includes download card. Pharaway Sounds present the first ever reissue of Cuasares' Afro-Progresivo, originally released in 1973. A wild, esoteric mix of psychedelic funk, Afro-Latin grooves, jazz, and Italian/French-styled library sounds courtesy of Cuasares, an enigmatic studio project created by pianist/arranger/visionary Waldo Belloso. Acid fuzz guitar, cosmic synth splashes, distorted organ, flute, vibraphone, and trippy studio effects. Originally released in Argentine in 1973 …
Kingdom Come
Edition of 500. Swordfish proudly continue its reissue programme of classic vintage Arthur Brown recordings with Kingdom Come. The self-titled second album is the last recording of the original ‘Galactic Zoo Dossier’ line-up and sees the band developing even further the elements of Prog and Psychedelia played on the first album and stretching out into an almost Zappa-esque orbit. It also features two of Arthur’s most poignant recordings in ‘Love is a Spirit that will Never Die’ and ‘The Whirlpoo…
Hot Rats
2017 release. Hot Rats was originally recorded in 1969 and is a predominantly instrumental album that Frank Zappa described as "a movie for your ears." The sound is largely jazz fusion based with extensive soloing, eschewing the satirical vocal performances and musique concrète of earlier Zappa releases. There are many notable musicians featured on the album, including drummers John Guerin, Paul Humphrey and Ron Selico, a teenage Shuggie Otis on bass, electric violinists Don "Sugarcane" Harris a…
Nordborg
"Electronic musician Adelbert von Deyen’s debut and sophomore album were released just a year apart from each other. “Sternzeit” was followed by “Nordborg”, which featured only one track on each side. Again, von Deyen took his time crafting a meditative maelstrom of ambient sounds. The B-side, “Iceland”, is actually an acoustic interpretation of a snowstorm in Nordborg, Denmark, as remembered by von Deyen.
Von Deyens debut album “Sternzeit” had caused quite a stir in 1978 in his home tow…
Latinoamérica
Sole release by this Colombian band that surfaces briefly after the Speakers, Young Beats, Ampex and Time Machine era comes to an end. The band boasts an Italian jazz-rock drummer Roberto Fiorilli and legendary Genesis Bassist Humberto Monroy. The record consists of one theme divided into two long experimental progressive ventures (Viaje I and Viaje II) of fierce, fluid and free collective improvisation with spacey feels and a rich texture of Hammond organ, guitar, bass, tenor sax, percussion an…