Reissues
Home Sweet Home
Featuring the recording debut of Big Star's Chris Bell, this outrageously enjoyable blend of psychedelic rock, Memphis soul and dirty R&B kicks off with one of the most audacious and successful Beatles covers ever. A feast of fuzz guitar, sweet vocals and funky rhythms that makes its longoverdue CD debut here (complete with full liner notes and three bonus tracks), "Home Sweet Home" is a tongue-in-cheek blast from start to finish, and guaranteed to thrill fans of power pop worldwide.
Holy Music
Recorded in San Francisco in August 1966, and originally released on the M.G.M./Verve label, this collection of lengthy, acid-tinged folk instrumentals is one of the earliest specifically psychedelic albums ever recorded, and it makes its CD debut here. As the original sleevenotes state: "Malachi's music transcends the traditions of East and West, and represents the new synthesis which is still being worked out in aesthetics, philosophy and religion by those participating in the psychedelic revo…
At Home
Dennis Lambert and Craig Nuttycombe had been on the fringes of LAs music scene for some time, including stints with bands such as the East Side Kids and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, when they decided to proceed as a duo. This beautifully intimate 1970 release was recorded live at the home they shared in Sausalito, California, and co-produced by David Anderle (The Doors, Love), Chad Stuart (Chad and Jeremy) and Glyn Johns (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones). A mellow collection of self…
Light Of Day
This higly original 1966 collection has been called the first acid folk record of all time. Certainly its hippy themes and exotic instrumentation are well ahead of their time, but Kilroy died tragically young and his album has largely been neglected ever since, despite featuring legendary guitarist Stefan Grossman. This is its first CD appearance, and comes complete with explanotory liner notes making it a must for all fans of psychedelic singer-songwriters. Eastern dreamy and trippy trance/dron…
Far Cry
"Their music reaches from blues to jazz into space," proclaimed the original liner notes to this highly unusual psychedelic jazz blast, originally released in 1968. The demented seven-piece band hailed from Boston, which was in the throes of the notorious "Bosstown hype" when their album was recorded. Though it can be compared to contemporary acts such as Captain Beefheart and Blood Sweat & Tears, it has a distinctive sound of its own, blending howling vocals, biting electric guitar and avant-ga…
East
This band of Japanese exiles released just one album, which first appeared in 1972 and makes its long-overdue CD debut here. A melodic and musicianly set featuring Japanese instruments such as the shakuhachi, koto and taisho-goto alongside the traditional trappings of Western rock and roll, it's a hugely enjoyable collection that will appeal to all fans of Eastern-tinged psychedelia.
Moyshe McStiff And The Tartan Lancers Of The Sacred Heart
Featuring Incredible String Band founder Clive Palmer, COB (an acronym for "Clive's Original Band") made some of the most imaginative and moving music of their time, and this 1972 masterpiece is considered by many to be the finest folk record ever to emerge from the British Isles. Along with members Mick Bennett and John Bidwell, Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart is an overwhelmingly beautiful and compelling collection of songs set to Eastern-tinged arrangements and Celti…
Pléïades
Cheap mid-line pricing on these classic avant garde titles out of the Harmonia Mundi catalog. Pleiades is a percussion piece performed by Les Percussions de Strasbourg (vibraphones, marimbas, xylophones, etc.); richly defined, timeless music that will sound good for the rest of your life. "The whole source of this polyrhythmic composition is the idea of periodicity, repetition, duplication, faithful, pseudo-faithful, unfaithful copy... still greater variations of an even greater complexity, due …
Phlegra, Jalons, Keren, Nomos Alpha, Thallein, Naama, A l\'lle d
This Apex reissue includes two discs at a low price -- the Ensemble Intercontemporain (EI) performing three 1980s Xenakis works along with two solo works, and on the second disc, four pieces that X wrote for harpschordist Elisabeth Chojnacka. In general Xenakis excelled with large forces, an orchestra or large ensemble. It was his organization of sounds, chaos careening nearly out of control, yet somehow also moving purposefully, that was his genius.
Descending Moonshine Dervishes
With their rhapsodic, Eastern-inspired melodies, spiraling rhythms and mesmerizing repetitions, Descending Monnshine Dervishes and Songs for the Ten Voices of the Two Prophets deftly illustrate just why an entire generation of musicians has looked to Terry Riley for inspiration. Hailed as the godfather of minimalism, Riley spent his early years exploring the possibilities of electronic keyboards through enigmatic, multifarious improvisations. Two classic albums documenting this significant cha…
Acustica
Composed between 1968 and 1970, Acustica, for experimental sound-producers and loudspeakers, is one of Mauricio Kagel's radical and extraordinary works, in which his constant search for ways of escaping from the restraints and conventions of traditional musical performance took him into a world of exotic instruments and almost surreal invention. The instrumentation for Acustica is a huge array of sound sources: there are folk instruments collected from around the world and from different periods…
Musique Pour Piano Solo
Mention "minimalism" and certain names will pop up, both within and outside of the classical world: Terry Riley, Steve Reich, John Adams. The most famous one, however, would be Philip Glass. Unlike most 20th Century composers, Glass has reached far beyond the concert hall: his work includes film soundtracks (THE TRUMAN SHOW, THE THIN BLUE LINE), multimedia presentations ('1000 Airplanes on the Roof"), and collaborations with pop/rock writers/performers (his SONGS FOR LIQUID DAYS album). With SOL…
Einstein on the Beach
First in a Glass Trilogy of operas about men who changed the world through the power of their ideas, "Einstein"'s sub-text is science. The opera is non-narrative in form, and the producer has two options: to reproduce the original Robert Wilson production (which exists on videotape), or to create a new series of stage and dance pictures based on themes relating to the life of Albert Einstein. Opera in four acts, composed in 1976. Remastered reissue of the original 1979 Tomato Music Company / CBS…
Analog
Unreleased recordings from the late 70s, performed by Glass (Farfisa, Yamaha & Hammond organs, Fender Rhodes piano, Arp synthesizer). New release which contains three seminal works in Glass's musical history. In the late 1970s, Philip Glass was asked by two film producers, Francois de Menil and Barbara Rose, to write music for a film they were producing. The film was Mark di Suervo, Sculptor and it was Glass's first film score, predating even Koyaanisqatsi. The score took its titles from the nam…
Bill Fay
Bill Fay's first, originally released in 1970 on Deram Nova; this is presumably the same 2005 24-bit remaster from original tapes as Eclectic used, with 2 bonus tracks from his staggeringly great1967(!) single, new liner notes by Mark Powell , etc. Very well done. Bill Fay is an enigmatic UK based singer, songwriter and pianist whose work is impossible to categorise. His late '60s and early '70s work has a strong cult following, is highly regarded by many music journalists and is dark and haunti…
Requia & Other Compositions
In his liner notes to this release, John Fahey mentions his desire to have an entire world orchestra in his guitar, Western to Eastern, bagpipes to gamelan. Perhaps it's this mental approach that sets his music so deliciously far apart from other so-called folk guitarists. Requia is essentially in two sections. One is a series of blues-based pieces in line with music he had previously recorded. These include the lovely "Requiem for John Hurt" and a wry "Fight On Christians, Fight On," both of wh…
Of Rivers And Religions & After The Ball
This German Warner Bros. reissue is a nice repackaging of the late John Fahey's 1972 album Of Rivers Religion and his wonderfully genteel 1973 release After the Ball from his all too brief sojourn with the label. These recordings represent a shift for Fahey, playing both solo and with an ensemble. On Of Rivers Religion, the ensemble included many of the New Orleans players who performed on Walt Disney's Song of the South film soundtrack. Gorgeous, slow, ringing slide and fingerplucked tones esta…
Happy Sad
One of the best albums of the late '60s and Tim Buckley's most underrated album, Happy Sad was a change-up pitch for the eclectic L.A. singer/songwriter. Sounding like a bit like Fred Neil's Capitol-era albums, Buckley and his small, acoustic-based ensemble create beautiful, jazz tinged folk-rock.
Dream Letter: Live In London 1968
Recorded in London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on July 10, 1968 this impressive 2-hour live concert presents the Washingtonian prodigy folk singer at his best. He was only 21 years old when he had this incredible chance to show the world his talent which would carry him through a short but prolific career -- 9 albums released between 1966 and his death in 1975. Accompanied by Lee Underwood, David Friedman and Pentangle's bass player Danny Thompson, Buckley caressed his 12 string acoustic guitar in an…
Seal Of The Blue Lotus
Seal of the Blue Lotus is the 1965 debut from the extraordinary folk guitarist Robbie Basho, who released numerous albums for John Fahey's Takoma label during the '60s. His mystical approach to six- and 12-string guitar improvisation shares many similarities to John Fahey in that Basho, too, was inspired by Eastern modalities -- his six-string melodies recalling the Indian ragas of Ravi Shankar's "Dhun in Musra Mund." "Mountain Man's Farewell" is an outstanding piece that displays the early seed…