Reissues
Music From The Mountain Provinces
In 1988, David Blair Stiffler risked life and limb to document under-recorded cultural groups living lives of extreme isolation in the mountainous Philippine regions of Nueva Ecija, Aurora, and Luzon. These are the fruits of that expedition. In the grand tradition of the ethnographic recordings that made up the majority of Folkways' vast and significant catalog comes Music from the Mountain Provinces. By the mid-1980s, David Blair Stiffler was already a most-decorated recordist, with eight Folkw…
The Hangman\'s Beautiful Daughter
The 1968 release of The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, the third Incredible String Band album, was met with wide acclaim, both critically and commercially, reaching # in the UK. Sitar, oud, panpipe, jaw harp, water harp, penny whistle, chananai, harpsichord and gimbri merged with traditional folk instruments in a multi-tracked musical extravaganza. This audacious aural experience proved to be heavily influential on the band’s contemporaries. The surreal imagery of the song lyrics and the group’s …
The 5000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion
The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion was the second LP by The Incredible String Band, released in July 1967. Since recording their debut album the previous year, the original trio had been reduced to two, Mike Heron and Robin Williamson. They recorded The 5000 Spirits... in London in early 1967. The album also featured Pentangle's Danny Thompson on double bass, Williamson's girlfriend Licorice McKechnie on vocals and percussion, master sitar player Nazir Jairazbhoy (credited as "Soma"), a…
The Inner Mystique
The Inner Mystique, the hypnotic second album by the Chocolate Watch Band, takes up exactly where its sacred predecessor left you: looking for your perfect match at the local Love-In. When Watch Band lead singer par excellence Dave Aguilar grabs you by the lapels and tells you "I'm Not Everybody Else," you have no choice but to believe him. He's not. And when he cools down enough to extol the virtues of "Medication," who could doubt his sincerity? Especially when he stokes the fires to the boili…
Ta Det Lugnt
2016 repress. Dungens' incredible breakthrough album which got an amazing appreciation and a 9.3 Pitchfork review upon release. Now the original 2LP version has not been available for many years but here it is again in it’s original design. Gatefold sleeve and 2 x LP on black vinyl.The album is presented here for the first time with the correct vinyl mastering. The original, and previously only available 2004 vinyl LP pressing, was incorrectly manufactured from digital master instead of analog, …
Trad, Gras Och Stenar
3xCD version. Anthology Recordings reissue material from the definitive lost Swedish prog rock band, Trad, Gras och Stenar. This set focuses on the band’s ferocious live performances, but also includes albums from 1971 and 72 at the peak of the bands counterculture freak-out. All albums are in deluxe gatefold jackets with printed inner sleeves containing liner notes by the band, and scores of images published here for the first time. Includes risograph reproductions of two rare original TGS…
Gardet 12.6.1970
2016 repress. The Gardet festivals were the Swedish equivalent to Woodstock, an outdoor gathering of underground bands and other counterculture freaks. Recorded live at the first Gardet festival in June of 1970 and not released until 26 years later as part of Subliminal Sounds' Swedish Undergorund Archive Series, this LP catches an early Trad, Gras & Stenar in top form, before the release of the band's eponymous first LP. The versions of "All Along the Watchtower" and "Satisfaction" are rawer th…
Cibernetica
In stock! Anguished atmosphere, obsessive mechanical patterns, dark disturbing music: in short, this is what we call a Masterpiece! "Back in 1971, when this real gem of electronic experimentation was released, the term “cybernetic” was used to refer to the future. Or, at least, to an obscure science in the hands of a few experts, conducting experiments in rooms filled with huge electronic calculators. Automated controls, auto-regulation, information theory… those were abstract, uncommon and rare…
La Fatica
Outstanding!! Quite possibly one of the best 'out-there' Italian library LP of that era." Massimo Catalano (who died in 2013) enjoyed a brief stint of fame after joining the cast of Renzo Arbore’s cult tv show "Quelli della notte", but he risked to be remembered only for those little, funny sketches he delivered on camera. Indeed, a few people are aware of Catalano’s great skills as a jazz trumpet player (he also played with Louis Armstrong in his career!), which he first nurtured with a band ca…
Il Dolce corpo di Deborah (Coloured)
In stock. is an early giallo movie with sexual coloring dated 1968 and the wonderful soundtrack is by Nora Orlandi, composer, violinist, pianist and singer born in Voghera (North Italy). The style of the giallo/thriller soundtracks of Orlandi is unmistakable, with a compositional use of semitone intervals accentuated by vocalizing and sound carpet of piano or distorted Hammond organ, all seasoned with rhythmic jazz. The orchestration is by Robby Poitevin and voices, as well as that of Nor…
La Ragazzina
La Ragazzina is an Italian sex comedy film from 1974, and you know what they say about Italian sex comedies from the 70’s right? They always have cool kitschy soundtracks! La Ragazzina is no exception, with Nico Fidenco providing bright, loungey accompaniments to the on-screen sexy antics. This is arguably one of Fidenco’s finest works, and it's a pleasure to see this vinyl reissue with remastered audio on Contempo. "The soundtrack composed by Maestro Nico Fidenco for the 1974 movie directed …
Concerto Per La Mano Sinistra In Un Solo Movimento
The Concerto For The Left Hand In One Movement, for piano, is the last unpublished composition of Walter Marchetti to be performed in public before the death of the author on May 12, 2015. This performance by Reinier van Houdt was recorded on April 29, 2015, at Onder De Linden in Valthermond, Netherlands, and is presented with liner notes by Gabriele Bonomo, translated from the Italian by Philip Corner. Composed in 1994, the Concerto For The Left Hand belongs to an ongoing series of works writte…
Absurd (Rosso Sangue)
Death Waltz Recording Company in conjunction with PentaMusic is proud to unleash another cult classic from the video nasty era (and their first in an ongoing series from the legendary CAM Records in Italy) with Carlo Maria Cordio’s musical score to Joe D’Amato’s notorious Absurd (aka Rosso Sangue). A pseudo-sequel to Antropophagus, the film reunited D’Amato with George Eastman, star of the previous film, and brought the action from Greece to America where the near-invincible Mikos escapes …
Inferno
* Limited edition on 180gr. crystal clear vinyl * "Inferno" is a 1980 film by Dario Argento, generally considered one of the masterpieces of the Roman director. At that particular time, the artistic partnership established with Goblin, who wrote the soundtracks for "Profondo Rosso" and "Suspiria", had essentially crumbled, while in the UK Emerson, Lake & Palmer had just disbanded; Argento was therefore able to make a dream come true: to collaborate with an artist from the English prog-rock scene…
Lisa Wants to Talk to You
Vinyl actualization of a Gary Wilson album originally released on CD in 2008. The second of Feeding Tube's Wilson retrievals (following 2011's Forgotten Lovers, FTR 065LP), the label considers this the most solid of Gary's post-revival albums. While it goes in a slightly different musical direction than the deranged porn-lounge inventions of You Think You Really Know Me (the classic '77 LP, heisted in toto by Beck during his Odelay phase), the naif-ache of the lyrics and the music's laid-back…
Jackson C Frank: The Clear Hard Light of Genius
The story of Jackson C. Frank is tragic. The victim of a school fire in his youth, struggling with homelessness and mental illness throughout his life, half-blinded in old age before his death in 1999, Frank met continuous obstacles. And yet he enjoyed a shining moment with the release of Jackson C. Frank on Columbia Records in 1965. The album would go on to be seen as one of the greatest folk albums of the decade—maybe of all time—and its opening track “Blues Run the Game” has become a standard…
Cru 1 (Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, Bernard Heidsieck)
CRU (Contemporary Radical Underground), is the annual magazine that documents what’s happening at La Plaque Tournante, a non commercial artist space in Berlin and run by French composer Frédéric Acquaviva and English mezzo-soprano Loré Lixenberg. This first issue of Frédéric Acquaviva and La Plaque Tournante’s audio / video hybrid magazine, includes a CD with music by Frédéric Acquaviva and Phill Niblock, a DVD with performances by Tomomi Adachi, Bernard Heidsieck, Katherine Liberovskaya, Jacque…
Quinta Dimensione
Superb and obscure Italian soundtrack featuring psychedelic mood music from the obscure RAI television program "... Con Un Colpo Di Bacchetta." centered around the 'Extra Sensory perception' phenomenon, released by an equally obscure group from Genoa, formed by students in 1978 and released this album and a single for the Eleven label (Franco Leprino) the same year. A trully bizzare effort of Avant Garde weirdness, Classical education, acoustic mysticism and deep experimentation, which breaks an…
Natural History
Beginning in the 1980s Edition Giannozzo Berlin released many works by famous artists like Rolf Julius, Bill Fontana, and Akio Suzuki. “Natural History” was a weird cassette, released on the label in 1983 by Alvin Curran, the founder of the Rome-based improv group MEV. It’s an unparalleled piece of musique concrete that takes uniquely observed images of everyday life and weaves lyrical interconnections between them.Remastered in 2016 by Kiyoharu Kuwayama (Lethe). Limited edition of 150.
Blue York
Jeanne Dielman present Blue York, a collection featuring unreleased tracks from Sun Ra's Arkestra from 1963. Herman Poole Blount, better known to the world as Sun Ra, lived more musical lives in his 79 years on this planet (and others) than seems possible. In the '30s he was the most rigorous bandleader in Birmingham, heading the Sonny Blount Orchestraand filling every waking moment with music or philosophical discussions, by the '40s he had moved to Chicago and performed with luminaries such as…