★Fifth Dimension
Rock Satellite
Funk is the magic word on this record here. Puccio Roelens (1919 – 1985) was an Italian composer, orchestra leader and pianist active from the mid 1940s to the time of his passing in 1985. You can easily place him in the “library music” category with his heavily rhythmical instrumental funk with a jazz / fusion edge. Layers upon layers of different rhythm patterns get shifted here and your body moves at full throttle to the sensual, steaming hot grooves. Signore Roelens moves through a bunch of …
Electronic Hair Pieces
Mort Garson was the master of the moog and a pioneer in electronic music from the late 60s and 70s where he participated in some unforgotten projects such as Lucifer, The Zodiac, Ataraxia and Plantasia. The following review centers on his album “Electronic Hair pieces” from 1969 on which he tickles your senses with instrumental adaptions of the songs from the musical “Hair”. He performs all the tunes on a contemporary moog synthesizer system even with electronic percussion. Since you might recog…
Speedball Experience
In stock now!! Okay, as the title already suggests, this compilation is made entirely of early 70s library music which was recorded for so called music libraries from whose stores, movie makers and TV producers could license certain titles for their productions. In most cases the compositions were a conglomerate of popular music genres such as funk, psychedelic, rock and soul. I have experienced a few French productions of that kind before, but now it is time for some Italian stuff. I am quite p…
Light Flight / More And More
There are synthesizers, there are guitars, bass guitars, real drums and vocals in the first song. Components of rock and pop unite here in this lone 1977 effort and make way for elements of dark slow funk and soul that take you a couple of years back to the early seventies. The garment of swirling synthesizers keep it all together. The atmosphere can be soft and gentle like the touch of a lover’s hand but it can also become more and more mysterious and gloomy generating a feeling of paranoia as …
Astromusic Synthesizer
Another great but late (1928 – 2003) synthesizer artist and pioneer, this time from Italy. His works date back to the early 60s and maybe even beyond considering his age. In the mid to late 60s he became quite active in the field of western movie soundtracks for example. This album I have the honor to review is a concept album on the zodiac signs and the music it contains could not be more diverse.
The elements that unite all the tunes are the entirely synthetic, yet warm analogue sound and the …
The Unexplained
Electronic impressions of the occult, reissued for the first time. The late, great Mort Garson (1924-2008) was a hotshot of electronic music's pioneering days, known for his groundbreaking occult works such as The Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds (1967) and Lucifer: Black Mass (1971). A different side of his creativity emerged in his 1976 Plantasia project (FD 5003CD/LP), an inspired album of Moog compositions to be played for growing plants. The previous year he released this hypnotizing album, which ta…
Mindbender
An incredible album that's as evocative as its title – one that blends together strings and electronics into a sublime suite of sound library grooves. Originally released in 1972, can be put in the field of so-called "library music," records made for use in movies and TV productions, commercials, and for similar purposes to enhance the tension of the atmosphere in very dramatic scenes or accompany the more mellow and relaxed moments with lush harmony carpets. And of all these library albums, thi…
Progressive Percussions
Eddie Warner, born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1917, was one of the leading figures in European exotica in the 1950s, operating from France, where he ended up at after the war. His repertoire of styles included several kinds of jazz- and Latin-based dance music such as mambo, baião, and chachachá, but, as a tireless explorer, he also found refuge in the library music and electronic sounds department. A cornerstone of his work in that field, Progressive Percussions, was originally released i…
Opens the Seven Gates of Transcendental Consciousness
CD Edition. First reissue of this stunning, dark, mysterious instrumental 1972 work by Wilburn Burchette, mystery of 1970s experimental guitar music. In place of regular songs there are several layers of chord and melody patterns shifted upon each other, performed on a semi-distorted electric guitar with a strong echo effect. A few other instruments may have been used as well, but it's also possible that there are only electric guitars on this album. Even the oscillating buzz of "Transformation"…
Memorymetropolis
Walter Bachauer has been an active part of Berlin's but all in all Germany's electronic and progressive music scene as long as he lived with his greatest achievements being the Meta Music festivals in Berlin in 1974, 1976 and 1978 while he worked as a line producer at RiasBerlin, the city's biggest radio station. In the early to mid 80s he got back to compose and play music under the pseudonym Clara Mondshine and this is his second out of three albums from 1983 “Memorymetropolis”. So let me take…
Luna Africana
Clara Mondshine was a musical project of the late radio director, journalist, and composer Walter Bachauer, who worked for RIAS Berlin in the '70s and '80s. Mr. Bachauer was also involved as musician in projects with electronic artist Peter Michael Hamel and krautrock act Between in the '70s. With Clara Mondshine he was able to score three albums before his untimely passing in 1989; Luna Africana, originally released in 1981, is the first of these, and it fits exactly into that era, when the…
Jungle Obsession
2016 re-edition in green-black splatter vinyl. Released in 1971, under the blanket of library music anonymity, Jungle Obsession is one of those rare and precious records whose extraordinary personality is instantly recognised by the ear of the listener. Timelessluminous!! Though it may look like a sexy piece of exotica from the heyday of tiki culture -- the '50s and early '60s -- Jungle Obsession was originally released in 1971 by the French Neuilly label. Nino Nardini was a master of library mu…
Song of the Second Moon
Considered one of the most influential recording in the history of electronic music, Song Of The Second Moon is far more than an historical curiosity. For the very first time electronic music was conceived as popular music, an incredibly listenable mélange of jazz and musique concrete. Composed by Dutch Philips Research Laboratories employees Tom Dissevelt and Dick Raaijmakers (Kid Baltan) between 1957 and 1961, Song Of The Second Moon’s dynamic and playful futurism would inspire legendary figur…
Pop Electronique
Remarkable record of 1960’s French electronic library music, of a somewhat experimental bent. Cecil Leuter (whose birth name, implausibly, is Roger Roger) was a busy, ‘proper’ bandleader at the time, but it turns out he had a real knack for crafting wildly unusual electronic miniatures. Pop Electronique is full of them! Reissued on Fifth Dimension. France seems to be the secret kingdom of electronic music, experimental music and movie soundtrack music also known as library music. Roger Roger…
Rock Satellite (LP)
Funk is the magic word on this record here. Puccio Roelens (1919 – 1985) was an Italian composer, orchestra leader and pianist active from the mid 1940s to the time of his passing in 1985. You can easily place him in the “library music” category with his heavily rhythmical instrumental funk with a jazz / fusion edge. Layers upon layers of different rhythm patterns get shifted here and your body moves at full throttle to the sensual, steaming hot grooves. Signore Roelens moves through a bu…
Hare Rama Hare Krishna
** pre-order, delayed to Jan 20th ** Now we drift deep into the world of Bollywood. “Hare Rama, hare Krishna” is an Indian movie from 1971 which features an odd story about family problems, the flight of a young girl into the hippie lifestyle far from home and the quest of her brother to bring her back home. The musical framework of this movie has been created by Rahul Dev Burman (1939 – 1994), one of the most prolific soundtrack score composers from India. And the music alone plays a movie in y…
Paradia
Orifginally released on the legendary Cobra label (best-known for some legendary French electronic based acts: Heldon, Hydravion and Lard Free, Urban Sax and the Magma spin-offf Weidorje). Roland Bocquet who created this album has been the keyboard player for the French rock band Catharsis from the late 1960s to 1977. "Paradia" is his first solo album and there were more to come. “Paradia” is a mostly instrumental record with a very lightweight expression. Melodies and rhythms are quite ge…
Osorezan / Doh No Kembai
**restocked again, very last copies around** Their transcendental debut, from the lendary Geinoh Yamashirogumi, a music collective formed in Japan in 1974. Their approach psychedelic music with from a rather Krautish point of view and their first album from 1976 about which I write this review is rather a collage of strange noises, screams, a few rhythms patterns and wide open structures that seem to be borrowed from late 1960s psyched out free jazz. And you can bet, this is an ever flowing…