Psychedelia & Kraut / Avant-Garde Progressive

Like a mind-boggling combination of Summer of Love acid-rock, goodtime saloon music and a Middle Eastern jam session, Side Trips, the debut album by Kaleidoscope, stood out, even in the eye of the psychedelic hurricane, as something altogether different! Staffed by a hall of fame roster of multi-instrumentalists? David Lindley, Chris Darrow, Solomon Feldthouse, Chester Crill (aka: Fenrus Epp) and John Vidican's This San Gabriel Valley, Calif.-based combo cut their dazzling 1967 album with a star…

* Remastered repress. Comes with printed inner sleeve. * In Praise of Learning, the third Henry Cow album, released on Virgin in 1975, is where the band's politics and its music fused into a single hard object. It followed a brief, consequential merger with the pop trio Slapp Happy: after the collaborative Desperate Straights, the two groups joined, then came apart again, leaving Henry Cow with a vocalist for the first time in the extraordinary Dagmar Krause. Recorded at the Manor in February an…

* Remastered repress. Comes with printed inner sleeve. * Leg End is the debut of Henry Cow, recorded at Virgin's Manor studios in May and June 1973 and released that summer. The band had formed five years earlier around two Cambridge students, Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson, and had spent the intervening time building a reputation in London's experimental margins, running their own concert series under names like Cabaret Voltaire and Explorers' Club, sharing stages with Lol Coxhill and Derek Bail…

Recorded in an abandoned CBS studio in the cold winter of 1972, this is the historical first album of Matching Mole, Robert Wyatt's immediate post Soft Machine grouping featuring himself on drums and vocals and three of the most creative musicians from the legendary Canterbury scene. Guitarist Phil Miller (Hatfield & the North, National Health), keyboardist Dave Sinclair (Caravan) and bassist Bill McCormick (Quiet Sun). Matching Mole is the quintessence of Canterbury sound. A visionary mixture o…

Seemingly unable to find an immediately-available niche in the outside world, Jerry Solomon spent the '60s & '70s carving his own niche and world into the grooves of records. Gone are the wobbly rock ‘n roll beats of Jerry’s earlier contributions, and in their place are droning minor-key melodies, irregular percussive jabs, toy piano strums, and impenetrable lyrics delivered by his self-overdubbed and echo-laden vocals. Original copies were sold on the streets by Jerry himself and trade for four…

180 gram audiophile vinyl pressing. Fourth (from 1971) or 4 is the Soft Machine's first all-instrumental album and features a mix of Free Jazz, straight-ahead Jazz, and gong-like psychedelia. It was also the last of their albums to include drummer and founding member Robert Wyatt."Soft Machine's collective skill is hyper-complex and refined, as they are extremely literate in all fields of musical study. Fourth is the band's free purging of all of that knowledge, woven into noisy, smoky structure…

Swordfish proudly continues its reissue programme of vintage Arthur Brown recordings with Kingdom Come's classic 1971 debut. A stunning fusion featuring elements of psychedelia, prog and electronics. Whilst not a major commercial success at the time in terms of pioneering spirit it has become something of a landmark. Now some 45 years later the driving forces behind it are far clearer-a remarkable visionary work full of genuine progressive portent.Officially licenced, fully remastered and presen…

Swordfish is very proud to announce the start of its vinyl reissue of classic vintage recordings by the self-styled God of Hellfire-Arthur Brown. Opening the series is the legendary second album from the Crazy World of Arthur Brown "Strangelands" Recorded in 1969 but unreleased at the time, it was just too "out there" for Track Records. Now it reverberates with the spirit of the age as well as encompassing an almost contemporary feel. It is presented as a limited edition of 500 copies on psyched…

The third classic Art Bears record, and the most austere. Remastered and repackaged. If you thought Henry Cow was a pretty political band to start with, you may be even more taken aback by the Art Bears, which was put together following Henry Cow's demise by former Cows Chris Cutler (percussion), Fred Frith (guitar, violin), and Dagmar Krause (voice). On The World as it is Today and its predecessor, Winter Songs, the Art Bears move away from the long-form art rock of Henry Cow and get much, much…

RESTOCKED! A must for Magma fanatics, fans and freaks everywhere. An opportunity not to be missed. For the first time ever, the full set of 9 incredible studio albums - from Kobaia to K.A - in deluxe digipack form. Each volume has its own 32 to 48 page booklets, containing photos and previously unpublished documents re-telling the story of MAGMA in 9 detailed chapters. Also includes a bonus double CD of archive documents: the first demo recorded by the band in 1970, the original sound track from…

Rainbow Theatre's groundbreaking debut album, The Armada, was originally released in 1975. Influences as diverse as classical composers Stravinsky and Wagner to King Crimson and the Mahavishnu Orchestra came into play. With composer, arranger, guitarist and mellotron player Julian Browning at the helm, the band was never going to be easily pigeon-holed. Browning set about creating the unique music he had formulated in his mind. His classical influences began to emerge and in the meantime, he'd a…

Transcendent and phantasmagorical work from one of the premier visionaries of the Italian cosmic rock continuum that includes the likes of Franco Battiato, Pierrot Lunaire, Franco Leprino and Arturo Stalteri (to name check just a few), and his work here on "Comme Un Vecchio...", while absent some of the blasted rockist momentum of his debut LP "Aria" ripples and shudders across your consciousness with such palpable psychotropic force, a contact high is almost a forgone conclusion. The deeply fol…

A lost jewel in the crown of the French underground. Mosaic made this, their only album, in 1978. You'll hear similarities to Zeuhl bands, Hatfield and the North, King Crimson, National Health. The music is mostly instrumental fusion/progressive performed on acoustic and electric guitars, synths, cello, double bass, electric bass, keyboards, drums and percussion. This reissue includes their 1977 demo tape Cuvée 77 and two additional bonus tracks.