Hey all right, now a couple years after the cd reissue, the UK's Acme label has also pressed this on vinyl! No BBC bonus tracks here though, just the original album. Some of what we said 'bout it before:
We KNOW this is gonna be one that the legions of AQ customers into psych, prog and other late sixties/early seventies heaviness will want. And even if that's not one of your primary musical specialties, this would be a good choice to check out anyway if at all curious.
British psych/prog power trio T2 released this one amazing album on Decca in 1970, the bizarrely-titled It'll All Work Out In Boomland. Somehow, that lp didn't make much of an impact at the time (although the band did play the Isle of Wight Festival) and has pretty much been forgotten by all except obsessive psych/prog record collectors. Until now, it's been pretty hard to come by - the previous cd reissues we know of were either crappy bootlegs or rare, expensive Japanese imports. We've always wanted to list it, though.
T2, composed of drummer/vocalist/songwriter Peter Dunton, guitar whizz Keith Cross, and bassist Bernard Jinks, played HEAVY psychedelic bluesrock (a la Cream, Hendrix, Blue Cheer), mixed with progressive stylings (incorporating acoustic guitar, piano, mellotron, strings). Their songs combine Cross's big fuzzed-out hard rock riffs and psych-skronk leads with mellow, melancholic pretty parts and Dunton's gentle, whispery vocals. Very melodic yet heavy, totally classy and special. For instance, the song "No More White Horses" perfectly weaves amped up electric guitar feedback fury into a tasteful tapestry that also glows with lovely piano and majestic horns. Boomland also features T2's side-long, 21+ minute long masterpiece "Morning", a massive, memorable epic of many moods, a track meant to musically and lyrically describe (or potentially enhance?) an LSD trip, as the text and elaborate diagram included underneath the cd tray explains! There's two other songs on the album proper, the storming opener "In Circles" (which reminds us of stuff on Stray's first album, if you know 'em) and the calmer, exquisitely beautiful "J.L.T.", replete with lush orchestration.
Definitely one of the best bands from those magical years of the early '70s! Certainly one that should be better known. Do you dig the fuzzy, proto-metal heft of the aforementioned Blue Cheer? And also heavy progressive Krautrock stuff like Amon Duul II, Gila, Necronomicon, and Out Of Focus? Well kinda put those two together and you'll have some idea of T2's genius. Or imagine Randy Holden's Population II project gone all symphonic. Also, if you're into early, pastoral British psych/prog like In The Court-era King Crimson, Wishbone Ash, or the more obscure Bachdenkel then you need to hear T2! And for weird, psychedelic cover paintings, this is up there with Culpeper's Orchard, another lost '70s heavy druggy psych classic that we could compare this with musically as well.
Boomland is the kind of thing that turns up in the personal "Top 10 of All Time" lists of those lucky enough to have heard it.
We KNOW this is gonna be one that the legions of AQ customers into psych, prog and other late sixties/early seventies heaviness will want. And even if that's not one of your primary musical specialties, this would be a good choice to check out anyway if at all curious.
British psych/prog power trio T2 released this one amazing album on Decca in 1970, the bizarrely-titled It'll All Work Out In Boomland. Somehow, that LP didn't make much of an impact at the time (although the band did play the Isle of Wight Festival) and has pretty much been forgotten by all except obsessive psych/prog record collectors. Until now, it's been pretty hard to come by - the previous cd reissues we know of were either crappy bootlegs or rare, expensive Japanese imports. We've always wanted to list it, though. So we're very happy that the Lion Productions (US) and Acme Gramophone (UK) labels have just teamed up to put out this nice new reish, which boasts three bonus tracks as well!
T2, composed of drummer/vocalist/songwriter Peter Dunton, guitar whizz Keith Cross, and bassist Bernard Jinks, played HEAVY psychedelic bluesrock (a la Cream, Hendrix, Blue Cheer), mixed with progressive stylings (incorporating acoustic guitar, piano, mellotron, strings). Their songs combine Cross's big fuzzed-out hard rock riffs and psych-skronk leads with mellow, melancholic pretty parts and Dunton's gentle, whispery vocals. Very melodic yet heavy, totally classy and special. For instance, the song "No More White Horses" perfectly weaves amped up electric guitar feedback fury into a tasteful tapestry that also glows with lovely piano and majestic horns. Boomland also features T2's side-long, 21+ minute long masterpiece "Morning", a massive, memorable epic of many moods, a track meant to musically and lyrically describe (or potentially enhance?) an LSD trip, as the text and elaborate diagram included underneath the cd tray explains! There's two other songs on the album proper, the storming opener "In Circles" (which reminds us of stuff on Stray's first album, if you know 'em) and the calmer, exquisitely beautiful "J.L.T.", replete with lush orchestration.
Definitely one of the best bands from those magical years of the early '70s! Certainly one that should be better known. Do you dig the fuzzy, proto-metal heft of the aforementioned Blue Cheer? And also heavy progressive Krautrock stuff like Amon Duul II, Gila, Necronomicon, and Out Of Focus? Well kinda put those two together and you'll have some idea of T2's genius. Or imagine Randy Holden's Population II project gone all symphonic. Also, if you're into early, pastoral British psych/prog like In The Court-era King Crimson, Wishbone Ash, or the more obscure (but recently highlighted here) Bachdenkel then you need to hear T2! And for weird, psychedelic cover paintings, this is up there with Culpeper's Orchard, another lost '70s heavy druggy psych classic that we could compare this with musically as well.
Boomland is the kind of thing that turns up in the personal "Top 10 of All Time" lists of those lucky enough to have heard it. This is an official reissue, done up deluxe with those bonus tracks (live BBC Radio sessions from '70, including two non-album songs among them) and a thick cd booklet crammed with insanely extensive liner notes (excerpted from a book about the album or something) that discuss not just T2's history but also provide in-depth examination of Boomland's songs in regard to both the lyrics and the musical theory behind the compositions. Talk about prog! This goes even beyond the usual thorough Acme/Lion packaging treatment. Highly recommended.
British psych/prog power trio T2 released one amazing album on Decca in 1970, the bizarrely-titled "It'll All Work Out In Boomland". That LP didn't make much of an impact at the time (although the band did play the Isle of Wight Festival) and has
T2, composed of drummer/vocalist/songwriter Peter Dunton, guitar whizz Keith Cross, and bassist Bernard Jinks, played HEAVY psychedelic bluesrock (a la Cream, Hendrix, Blue Cheer), mixed with progressive stylings (acoustic guitar, piano, mellotron, orchestration). Dunton's songs combine big fuzzed-out hard rock riffs and Cross' psych-skronk leads with mellow, melancholic pretty parts and gentle, whispery vocals. Very melodic, very heavy yet beautiful, totally classy and special. Definitely one of the best bands from those magical years of the early '70s! (If you dig the aforementioned Blue Cheer, and can imagine them crossed with heavy progressive Krautrock stuff like Gila and Amon Duul II, or even early, pastoral British psych/prog like King Crimson, you've got some idea about the genius of T2.)
The seven tracks on this self-titled, 45 minute cd were recorded in 1970, intended as the follow-up to "Boomland" -- but the band broke up and this material languished in the vaults until this cd release. Had it come out at the time, who knows -- maybe people would have caught on and T2 would be more than just a cult band today. But, that's the way it is, and here's your chance to join the cult...
FINALLY BACK IN STOCK. THE ULTIMATE DRONE RECORD.
We love this record so much. The Taj Majal Travellers are so utterly mind blowing. This is a double cd reissue of this legendary Japanese psych ensemble's second lp which has been unavailable for several years now, but when we did have it in stock, if anyone asked about drones, this is the record we would always suggest. One of the most hallowed artifacts of the psych-rock collector scum scene (originals on vinyl could set you back more than $1000!), this album is an epic higher key improvised drone extravaganza, all performed live on beaches and deserted hills in Sweden, India, Iran and England. Slow, complex, irregular throbbing waves of sound, broadcast through distant loudspeakers and recaptured and reincorporated. Feedback, time-space lag, horns, echo machines, and primitive handmade electronic devices all contribute to the ever shifting clouds of sound. So unbearably awesome. And this is not electronic music, or studio based carefully constructed drone music, this is massive and organic, dreamy and natural, waves of sound drifting through sun and sky, rain and fog, trees and electrical wires, the shape of the earth, the temperature, the wind, all affecting the sound, changing the timbre ever so slightly, band members spaced out over hundreds of yards, improvising on an impossible grand scale, the earth as their stage, nature as their recording studio, a deliriously abstract sound world of subtle drones and drifting ambience. Imagine some long hairded seventies Japanese psych rock combo, but filtered through the Jewelled Antler Collective, jamming with Chris Watson, set up on sandy dunes, grassy knolls, forest glades, each not necessarily -playing- their instruments, but instead coaxing sounds from within the instruments, setting those sounds free and sending them skyward, watching it drift downwind, where a bandmate snatches the sounds and coaxes complimentary sounds from his instrument, sending a sonic respone, until these messages, these sounds weave into and around each other, the sky full of warm warbly mysterious sound. Psychedelic for sure, but more a sort of eyes closed, mind open dream drift drone psychedelia. ONE OF OUR ALL TIME FAVORITE RECORDS!!
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The Taj-Mahal Travellers double cd 'August 1974' has to be one of the most essential drone music documents of the 20th century. Our description of that record describes the Taj Mahal Travellers sound perfectly: "epic higher key improvised drone extravaganzas
Three extended tracks of sublime and transcendental musique concrete/drone. Sparse and spacious. With vocals and electronic trumpets augmenting the violin, contrabass, harmonica, sheet iron, castanet, vibraphone, guitar, percussion and radio oscillators. Dreamy and otherworldly, three epic tracks of hum and rumble, squeak and skree, clatter and tinkle envelop you in a completely new world of sound. So essential.
This all time aQ psychedelic / drone favorite reissued for the first time on vinyl. One of our favorite groups of all time, whose rare recordings are psych-drone holy grails, we gushed extensively about the (now out of print) cd version ages ago, so for those of you who have somehow yet to discover the transcendental sonic beauty of TMT, or even if you've just been dying for this to come out on vinyl, read on�
In the AQ canon of all time essential artists, of groups who have shaped all the music that followed in their wake, somewhere very near the top spot would be Japan's Taj Mahal Travellers. This sprawling seventies�psych drone unit led by Fluxus legend Takehisa Kosugi, were crafting gorgeous abstract drone drenched ambience long before most of the current crop of dronesters were even born.�
The Taj Mahal Travellers were masters of the organic, of vibration, texture, timbre, utilizing bowed cymbals, violins, loudspeakers, tape loops and all sorts of unique source material, this collective created some of the�most enduring and unique psychedelic music ever recorded. Their music and performances were the physical embodiment of a philosophy, a way of life more than just simple 'playing music.'�
It's hard to imagine the Skaters or Birchville Cat Motel or the Yellow Swans or even Wolf Eyes without the Taj Mahal Travellers. Often referred to by the press as "La Monte Young on acid", in a review of another, unfortunately out of print TMT album, we described their sound as "epic higher key improvised drone extravaganzas performed on beaches, deserted hills in Sweden, India, Iran and England. Slow, complex, irregular throbbing waves of sound, broadcast through distant loudspeakers and recaptured and reincorporated into the sound. Feedback, time-space lag, echo machines, and primitive handmade electronic devices all contribute to the ever shifting clouds of sound."�
The music of the Taj Mahal Travellers thought is stubbornly indescribable. No words can possibly do justice to the spirits they were able to invoke, the atmosphere they were able to create, dark and dense and mysterious and ominous, but at the same time beautiful and brilliant and epic and spacious.
This double lp features nearly 100 minutes of improvised droning captured live in Stockholm, Sweden in 1971, the group run stand-up bass, tuba, trumpet, select percussion, violin, flutes, mandolin, harmonica and synthesizer, not to mention "suntool" and "electronic technique" through primitive tape loops and delay effects for an awesome ritualistic performance, predating the likes of Zoviet France and about a million others by decades!
The live sound is just as amazing as their records, which makes sense since their albums were essentially documents of live aktions.�
The first lp is a single nearly hour long low end ritual, strings buzz and reverberate, as do voices, and bits of bowed metals, all beating against each other and creating all manner of cosmic vibrations, all accompanied by simple bells, or a single plucked note repeated over and over. Near the end, the vocals are soaring, and the tones have become long buzzing streaks, with plenty of spacey echo and strange damaged FX, it's hard to hear this and not exactly where Sunburned Hand and No Neck found their inspiration, these guys were creating the same sort of primitive primeval sounds, nearly 4 decades earlier, and with so much depth and emotion. The fact that a music so minimal and abstract can be so utterly moving is testament to the Travellers' unparalleled skill.�
The second lp is much less low end rumble, and more a dizzying swirl of strange sonic events, here the horns are in full affect, sounding like a herd of alien elephants, moaning and bleating, the tones stretched out and draped across all manner of lower register rumbles and whirs. Percussion surfacing now and again like an angry rattlesnake roused from a midday nap, or a swirling cloud of tiny buzzing insects. Vocals drift in and out, shamanistic and chant like, moaning out strange melodies, mostly low and throaty but sometimes like curious feline mewling, all intertwined with the various other drawn out sounds. An incredibly intense organic ritual, purified by its intransitive nature, the improvisation guaranteeing that each performance belonged to the time and the place as much as the players. Absolutely and utterly breathtaking. Absolutely essential, and like pretty much ALL Taj Mahal Travellers records, probably more recommended than nearly any other record we've ever reviewed! REALLY!
Yay! Another old favorite finally reissued and back in stock. We first listed this back in 2000, and we still love it more than ever. First we had a Drone Syndicate edition, then a more expensive one on Walhalla, and now the DS version has been repressed, at the same cheaper price (though it lacks the liner notes, photos, and overall fancier packaging of the Wahalla one).
In the AQ canon of all time essential artists, of groups who have shaped all the music that followed in their wake, somewhere very near the top spot would be Japan's Taj Mahal Travellers. This sprawling seventies psych drone unit led by Fluxus legend Takehisa Kosugi, were crafting gorgeous abstract drone drenched ambience long before most of the current crop of dronesters were even born.
The Taj Mahal Travellers were masters of the organic, of vibration, texture, timbre, utilizing bowed cymbals, violins, loudspeakers, tape loops and all sorts of unique source material, this collective created some of the most enduring and unique psychedelic music ever recorded. Their music and performances were the physical embodiment of a philosophy, a way of life more than just simple 'playing music.'
It's hard to imagine the Skaters or Birchville Cat Motel or the Yellow Swans or even Wolf Eyes without the Taj Mahal Travellers. Often referred to by the press as "La Monte Young on acid", in a review of another, unfortunately out of print TMT album, we described their sound as "epic higher key improvised drone extravaganzas performed on beaches, deserted hills in Sweden, India, Iran and England. Slow, complex, irregular throbbing waves of sound, broadcast through distant loudspeakers and recaptured and reincorporated into the sound. Feedback, time-space lag, echo machines, and primitive handmade electronic devices all contribute to the ever shifting clouds of sound."
The music of the Taj Mahal Travellers thought is stubbornly indescribable. No words can possibly do justice to the spirits they were able to invoke, the atmosphere they were able to create, dark and dense and mysterious and ominous, but at the same time beautiful and brilliant and epic and spacious.
This double cd features nearly 100 minutes of improvised droning captured live in Stockholm, Sweden in 1971, the group (minus Kosugi for some reason) run stand-up bass, tuba, trumpet, select percussion, violin, flutes, mandolin, harmonica and synthesizer through primitive tape loops and delay effects for an awesome ritualistic performance, predating the likes of Zoviet France and about a million others by decades!
The live sound is just as amazing as their records, which makes sense since their albums were essentially documents of live aktions.
The first disc is a single nearly hour long low end ritual, strings buzz and reverberate, as do voices, and bits of bowed metals, all beating against each other and creating all manner of cosmic vibrations, all accompanied by simple bells, or a single plucked note repeated over and over. Near the end, the vocals are soaring, and the tones have become long buzzing streaks, with plenty of spacey echo and strange damaged FX, it's hard to hear this and not wonder where in the hell Sunburned Hand and No Neck get off, these guys were creating the same sort of primitive primeval sounds, nearly 4 decades earlier, and with so much more depth and emotion. The fact that a music so minimal and abstract can be so utterly moving is testament to the Travellers' unparalleled skill.
Disc two is much less low end rumble, and more a dizzying swirl of strange sonic events, here the horns are in full affect, sounding like a herd of alien elephants, moaning and bleating, the tones stretched out and draped across all manner of lower register rumbles and whirs. Percussion surfacing now and again like an angry rattlesnake roused from a midday nap, or a swirling cloud of tiny buzzing insects. Vocals drift in and out, shamanistic and chant like, moaning out strange melodies, mostly low and throaty but sometimes like curious feline mewling, all intertwined with the various other drawn out sounds. An incredibly intense organic ritual, purified by its intransitive nature, the improvisation guaranteeing that each performance belonged to the time and the place as much as the players. Absolutely and utterly breathtaking.
Absolutely essential, and probably more recommended than nearly any record we've ever reviewed!
In the AQ canon of all time essential artists, of groups who have shaped all the music that followed in their wake, somewhere very near the top spot would be Japan's Taj Mahal Travellers. This sprawling seventies psych drone unit led by Fluxus legend Takehisa Kosugi, were crafting gorgeous abstract drone drenched ambience long before most of the current crop of dronesters were even born.
The Taj Mahal Travellers were masters of the organic, of vibration, texture, timbre, utilizing bowed cymbals, violins, loudspeakers, tape loops and all sorts of unique source material, this collective created some of the most enduring and unique psychedelic music ever recorded. Their music and performances were the physical embodiment of a philosophy, a way of life more than just simple 'playing music.'
It's hard to imagine the Skaters or Birchville Cat Motel or the Yellow Swans or even Wolf Eyes without the Taj Mahal Travellers. Often referred to by the press as "La Monte Young on acid", in a review of another, unfortunately out of print TMT album, we described their sound as "epic higher key improvised drone extravaganzas performed on beaches, deserted hills in Sweden, India, Iran and England. Slow, complex, irregular throbbing waves of sound, broadcast through distant loudspeakers and recaptured and reincorporated into the sound. Feedback, time-space lag, echo machines, and primitive handmade electronic devices all contribute to the ever shifting clouds of sound."
The music of the Taj Mahal Travellers thought is stubbornly indescribable. No words can possibly do justice to the spirits they were able to invoke, the atmosphere they were able to create, dark and dense and mysterious and ominous, but at the same time beautiful and brilliant and epic and spacious.
This double cd features nearly 100 minutes of improvised droning captured live in Stockholm, Sweden in 1971, the group run stand-up bass, tuba, trumpet. select percussion, violin, flutes, mandolin, harmonica and synthesizer through primitive tape loops and delay effects for an awesome ritualistic performance, predating the likes of Zoviet France and about a million others by decades!
The live sound is just as amazing as their records, which makes sense since their albums were essentially documents of live aktions.
The first disc is a single nearly hour long low end ritual, strings buzz and reverberate, as do voices, and bits of bowed metals, all beating against each other and creating all manner of cosmic vibrations, all accompanied by simple bells, or a single plucked note repeated over and over. Near the end, the vocals are soaring, and the tones have become long buzzing streaks, with plenty of spacey echo and strange damaged FX, it's hard to hear this and not wonder where in the hell Sunburned Hand and No Neck get off, these guys were creating the same sort of primitive primeval sounds, nearly 4 decades earlier, and with so much more depth and emotion. The fact that a music so minimal and abstract can be so utterly moving is testament to the Travellers' unparalleled skill.
Disc two is much less low end rumble, and more a dizzying swirl of strange sonic events, here the horns are in full affect, sounding like a herd of alien elephants, moaning and bleating, the tones stretched out and draped across all manner of lower register rumbles and whirs. Percussion surfacing now and again like an angry rattlesnake roused from a midday nap, or a swirling cloud of tiny buzzing insects. Vocals drift in and out, shamanistic and chant like, moaning out strange melodies, mostly low and throaty but sometimes like curious feline mewling, all intertwined with the various other drawn out sounds. An incredibly intense organic ritual, purified by it's intransitive nature, the improvisation guaranteeing that each performance belonged to the time and the place as much as the players. Absolutely and utterly breathtaking.
A really nice reissue of this long out of print two disc set, with liner notes, a history of the band, the story of this recording as well as amazing photos. Not sure how long we'll be able to keep these in stock, so please be patient if we run out, and it takes us a while to track down more.
Absolutely essential, and probably more recommended that nearly any record we've ever reviewed!
Last list we highlighted two somewhat unusual "surf music" reissues, by Farm and Peter Martin & Finch, both brought to us by our favorite Japanese reissue label, EM Records, as part of their Summer 2007 "EM Under Water Series"! Those were quite cool, and now we've got the remaining three discs in the series, all of 'em (like those first two) soundtracks to several now-legendary surfing movies from back in the sixties/seventies. With the exception of Farm (from the USA) all the bands in EM's series are Australian, and in all cases the movies they were doing soundtracks for were Australian productions and/or featured Australian surfers. And as before, this isn't your typical SoCal Jan & Dean, Beach Boys style surf music... it's *psychedelic* surf music. Well 2 out of 3 of these anyway (the Tim Gaze Band album being more of a yacht rock outing).
Now this one is a bonafide Australian garage psych rock classic! It's also the only disc in the "EM Under Water" series that we'd ever actually heard before, as there'd been at least one (possibly non-legit) cd reissue in the past, and so we already know it was a good 'un, which boded well for the series as a whole. Tamam Shud, who took their name from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (it's Persian for "The End"), were a heavy (for the era), fuzz-drenched psych pop combo who recorded two albums in their brief career. This was their first, from 1969, and it served as the soundtrack to a motion picture on the subject of surfing (natch) called Evolution. Which was appropriate 'cause these guys were indeed surfers, even if their music sounded a lot more like The Amboy Dukes, The Litter, and The Count Five than, say, The Ventures (though apparently earlier in the sixties they did, when they were called The Sunsets). It's total Nuggesty stuff (why "Mr. Strange" or one of the other 11 tracks on Evolution didn't appear on the Nuggets II box set is puzzling), with a "progressive", Sgt. Peppers bent, full of ripping wild FUZZ guitar soloing, stomping riffs, and catchy hooks. The Shud could do wigged out blues rock jamming, or they could do totally poppy vocal cuts...as long as there was plenty of freaky freeform fuzz action to go 'round, which, there was. Like we said, a classic, one any '60s psych lover will be happy to spin. This reish is of course presented with the usual deluxe-level of care and attention characteristic of EM Records, complete with lyrics, photos, graphics, movie stills, and extensive liner notes by both Aussie "surf music historian" Peter J. McParland and Evolution's director, Peter Witzig. And EM has also dug up three bonus tracks, from a 1972 ep called Bali Waters, material which appeared on the soundtrack to another surf move, Morning Of The Earth. Who knows, maybe there will be another "Under Water" series next year wherein EM will reissue The Shud's second album, 1970's Goolutionites And The Real People, which was a concept album against pollution... we can hope.
Ready for an ecological concept album from an Australian psych/prog/pop act, circa 1970? We are, we've been waiting for a reissue ever since Tamam Shud's first album, Evolution, appeared on cd as part of EM Records' odd & enjoyable "Under Water Series" of psychedelic surf music last year. Released by the deluxe Aussie reissue imprint Aztec (who brought us Buffalo and Coloured Balls already), The Shud's wonderfully titled second album should charm all who loved the earlier one EM put out. And while we haven't really wrapped our brains around their whole Goolutionites concept, which probably is along the lines of "give a hoot, don't pollute!", we're certainly enjoying this groovy record.
The Shud's music here is mostly mellow and melodic, lazy and laidback and even loungey, but the album is littered (whoops) with sudden proggy shifts and somber mood swings (as befits the serious subject matter), and they are definitely capable of doin' some harder rockin' too, with the bluesy, fuzzy, acid-rock guitar leads getting whipped out often enough. It maybe reminds us of stuff like the Amboy Dukes, Cream, Vanilla Fudge, and (to cite another recently reviewed reissue) Mecki Mark Men. Plenty would qualify as Vertigo-esque "hairy funk" as Andy Votel would put it, like the loping riffery of "I Love You All".
This reish is handsomely digipacked, with a thick, info/photo packed booklet, and there's a whole bunch of bonus tracks too, weirdly some of 'em the SAME as the bonus tracks on EM's Evolution disc (the three cuts from the the Morning Of The Earth soundtrack, originally released as the Bali Waters ep) which you think someone would have realized was a bit redundant, but there's also four fairly rockin' (though sax-laced for some reason) numbers from a 1971 live performance, and a couple of especially sunny singles tracks too.
Fewer things could bring more delight for us kraut and space prog heads than a 2cd anthology of Tangerine Dream rarities compiled by Edgar Froese, and for such an affordable price! Froese, the one mainstay of the band through 13 different lineups (the band including in their ranks at one time both Conrad Schnitzler and Klaus Schulze), has provided a compelling overview of the musical evolution of the band from their psychedelic roots to their later period as electronic film score stalwarts and everywhere in between.
The double disc set begins way back before TD, with their 1967 pre-incarnation 7" single as The Ones, a band more rooted in the sixties psychedelic rock of Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead than the spacey sounds they embraced later on. But the real highlight of this set is the inclusion of TD's rare first 7" single from 1971, "Ultima Thule", an epic two part space rock excursion that begins in stratospheric Hawkwind territory in part one, but in part two takes a Magma like instrumental prog trajectory, that prefigures the minimal electronic direction the band would take through records like Electronic Meditation, Zeit and Alpha Centauri. The rest of disc one explores these sci-fi themed gaseous realms of gorgeous brooding ambience.
Disc two covers the bands' later, mostly early eighties output, which saw the band more as composers of action film music with a definte increase in rhythms and sequencers, but still with a spacey electronic edge. While John Carpenter may get all the credit as progenitor of all the latter day eighties arpeggiated synth worshippers like Jonas Reinhardt, Majeure, James Ferraro, and Umberto, Tangerine Dream was equally influential in this regard. A lot of the later period Tangerine Dream output can be sometimes cheesy, but the careful curation of this compilation shows there were also plenty of gems as well. This may prove to rethink the general attitude that TD had completely lost the plot, when they started turning to film score commissions, and rhythmic dance music in the eighties and nineties.
With one or two exceptions, most of this music here, as far as we can tell, has not been released on any of their major records, but there is little information to tell if these tracks ever saw proper release at all. So this is a very worthy exploration for the newly curious as well as for seasoned fans. Highly Recommended!!!!
First things first: yes, this album IS every bit as cool as the cover looks, the cover being a photo of a pink skull! There's no relation to Glenn Donaldson's Pink Skulls cd-r label, of course, these guys thought of it first, way back in 1971!
So yeah, here's another vintage '71 gem for all of you into hard progressive bluesy psych rockin' action. Last list we had Japan's Strawberry Path, this time around, from the fertile underground of Franco's Spain, we've got the power trio Tapiman, which features the burning electric guitar heroics of one Max Sunyer, later of Spanish jazz rock outfit Iceberg. He'll definitely make hard rock guitar fans happy, though -- Tapiman is riffy, heavy rock, full of psychedelic poppiness.
The main riff of storming opener "Wrong World" is sorta "Sunshine Of Your Love" mixed with "Lord Of This World", and the track is full of energetic, impressive guitar soloing and wild vocals. Some subsequent songs are more gentle and moody, though you're never far from some wailin', cranked-up amplifier worship on this disc. It's a groover, and a grower, too, from a classy band who knew what the heck they were doing. For all of you who dig the obscure '70s sounds of stuff like Blues Creation, Buffalo, Eduardo Bort, and other things along those lines we've recommended before...
Newly remastered for this reissue, with four bonus tracks and detailed liner notes in both English and Spanish.
What's this? Maybe the cover, all-black but for the name Tarkus, caught your eye? Holy grail time here, people. We've been wanting to get this album on cd FOREVER. There was a hard-to-find LP reissue some years ago, but we'd never yet found a cd version -- until now, at last, and it's a totally legit one from the master tapes! Released (barely, in an edition of just, like, 50 copies) in Tarkus' native Peru back in 1972, this is an album to go down in the annals of heavy rock, proudly belonging to the pantheon of proggy proto-metal!!! We'd definitely rank this with favorites of ours in that truly cult realm, other early '70s stuff like Necronomicon and Night Sun and Eduardo Bort and Steamhammer's Speech!
It may be that they're named after the ELP's 1971 album Tarkus (you know, the one with that freaky armadillo/tank on the cover), but they don't sound much like ELP in any event. While progressive rock is part of their sound, this Tarkus come across more like a bizarro hybrid of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and some of the more out-there and baroque Italian prog outfits of the era, rather than ELP. It's music that's dark and doomy and powerful and psychedelically dosed, sometimes with really weird operatic vocals -- and always with about a zillion cool, heavy guitar riffs. It's meant to be played LOUD. Shouldn't be hard to comply!
With some very pretty melodies and acoustic moments, Tarkus somehow seem like a '60s garage psych act (which they previously were, Tarkus being formed by members of Peruvian psych-pop group Telegraph Ave.) in possession of a crystal ball that enabled them to gaze into the future to be anachronistically inspired by Black Sabbath's Sabotage album, which was released three years later in 1975 (we'll have to assume that crystal ball had a place to plug in earphones).
This comes packaged in a gatefold, miniature LP styled sleeve. There's a folded color insert, another black and white lyric sheet, and also separate liner notes in both Spanish and English, which make mention of the band dressing like monks when they made one of their rare live appearances.
And by the way, we'd somehow suspect that Portland's Danava have heard this record. If not, they should -- we think they'd like it! And we think you will too, if any of the above raving and referencing strikes a chord!
Sunbeam brings us a lost classic of '60s modern British jazz, the 1965 debut as leader from ill-fated pianist Mike Taylor, who, at the tragic end of a drug-induded downward slide, died (drowned in the River Thames) just four years later in 1969 at age 30, after making only one other album. As a result, not too many folks have heard of him, although he was a major young talent on the scene while he was alive. Reissued on cd for probably the first time, remastered and with new liner notes as well as vintage photos in the cd booklet, Pendulum is a both an historically important release to pique the interest of jazz buffs with its promise and originality, and also a thoroughly enjoyable, melodic and moody listen for more casual jazz fans as well. Taylor eases us into his personal sound-world by stocking all the first side with well-known standards, including pieces by Gershwin and Gillespie, adding to 'em a level of avant-garde abstraction that mirrors the way his sometimes saturnine original compositions, which occupy the entirely of side two, possess a certain foot-tapping familiarity.
Ghedalia Tazartes' Diasporas might be most famous at this point for being included on the infamous Nurse With Wound list, a list of artists that was included with NWW's 1979 classic album Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella, and was basically a list of musicians and groups that NWW head honcho Steven Stapleton was influenced by. Looking at it now, it almost reads like an aQ list: Agitation Free, Algarnas Tradgard, Zweistein, Iannis Xenakis, Throbbing Gristle, This Heat, Igor Wakhevitch, Ya Ho Wha 13, Taj Mahal Travellers, Supersister, Der Plan, Sperm, Achim Reichel, Moolah, Magical Power Mako, Basil Kirchin, Jan Dukes De Grey, Exmagma, Cromagnon, Crass, Il Balletto Di Bronzo and so many more.
And Ghedalia Tazartes fits perfectly amidst such esteemed and such gloriously twisted company, a French ethno-experimentalist and composer, whose sound is a dizzying concoction of mysterious vocal chants, traditional gypsy folk music, bizarre sonic rituals, sound collages and tangled tape loops, his records playing out like alien field recordings, often layering multiple sound sources into twisted psychedelic freakouts. Diasporas, originally released in 1979 (recorded in 1977), is the perfect example of Tazartes' idiosyncratic sound, a thick layered stretch of multiple voices starts things off, his gypsy croon wailing over a lopped snippets of opera, as well as looped growls and, sampled strings, the sound building to a deafening crescendo, before settling into a strange bit of hypnodrone, with the operatic vocals relegated to a clipped pulse, the sampled strings creating a hauntingly repetitive melody, over which he mumbles and growls, the sound building and building until somehow it's just piano, and strangely processed voices stretched out into a swirling undulating drone.
And it continues on in a similar fashion, each track beginning like some field recording, simple percussion, strange vocals, like some abstract alien world music, those voices underpinned by drones and murky loops, which seem to become more pronounced as the tracks progress.
A few of the tracks to play out almost like straight folk music, but even then, there's something slightly off kilter, whether it's the production, the arrangement, or some subtle sonics lurking below the surface but it's never long before the sound returns to something much more twisted, be it some growled almost throat singing, blurred into a weird almost scat singing dronescape, or thick squalls of rumbling growls over which, samples are draped, and Tazartes' feral wail, or machine like loops and mechanical skitter wound around super passionate howls and looped baby talk.
It's definitely WAY out there, but there's a reason even back in 1979 Stapleton had this on his list, cuz it's one of the strangest, most hauntingly beautiful and fantastically disturbing listens EVER.
We've been getting all riled up over some hot Afro-rock releases lately, first from those killer Nigerian comps put out by the Strut and Soundway labels and then The Peace's Black Power reissue. But the lo-fi fuzz that's really rocking our world is this gem from Chrissy Zebby Tembo & Ngozi family, 1974's My Ancestors. Though included on the Love Peace and Poetry African psych compilation, Chrissy Zebby Tembo may not be so memorable from that because their track was the one instrumental track from My Ancestors, and though it's great, it's not as good as the tracks where Tembo sings. Like an odd hybrid of Malcolm Mooney from Can and Sabbath-era Ozzy Osbourne, Tembo's English delivery over these fuzzed-out groovers is the reason to take notice. Hailing from Zambia, same as The Peace and The Witch (another Afro-rock group we'd like to see get more affordably reissued), Tembo wails over these rhythmically charged but largely western-style rock structures. The best being the Sabbath gone to South Africa "Trouble Maker". In constant rotation, since this first arrived a few weeks ago, we've finally managed to get enough to share with our customers. Don't hesitate, this whole record kills!
This ain't that new of a release - it came out in 2011 - but we hadn't yet reviewed it, and when we got some copies back in the other day, wondered, why the heck not? Haven't been able to stop listening to it lately, it's so dang electrifying and infectious. What we have here is a killer collection some of the best tracks recorded by one Takeshi Terauchi, who in the mid-'60s was known as Japan's "King Of The Electric Guitar". In fact, he may still be.
We all know what instrumental surf music guitar sounds like, give it a Japanese twist and you have "Eleki" (what they called electric guitar music). The "Tsugaru" of the subtitle refers to traditional Japanese folk songs, which were also adapted to the '60s rock n' roll invasion. Badass guitarist Terauchi was a pioneer of the Eleki craze, building his own gear, playing to crowds of screaming young girls with his bands The Blue Jeans and The Bunnys. So just imagine a Japanese version of Link Wray and/or Dick Dale, all exciting, exotic surf twang and groovy fuzz. There's some achingly romantic, folk based melodic moments, and we like that, but the best parts are when Terauchi is ripping it up on his fretboard to surfy, psychedelic excess!
FYI, they fit 25 tracks on the cd, and 14 on the vinyl.
Got some "early heavy" freakdom for here for ya, Shadoks digging up and reissuing this 1970 album by a bluesy acid rock power trio from Denmark. If you're familiar with some other Danish heavy psych bands like Moses and Blues Addicts, these guys are in that grungy ballpark, all appearing on the same label originally. There's some stormin' tracks here all right, with plenty of Iommi-ish guitar moments, topped by some quite unhinged, strangled-sounding vocals in English. Not sure if we'd call this proto-metal or not, the fuzzy guitars are loud and wild enough, with some urgent riffing, but really it's more like a mix of raw garage punk with some more mellowed out hippie stuff too, definitely very much of its time and ultimately quite charming in a ramshackle way.
This reissue's cd booklet includes cool old photos and show fliers, plus new liner notes by bassist/vocalist Joachim Ussing wherein he recalls the three days of extremely stoned recording sessions that produced this album, as well as the story of how in 1968 the band made it to the finals of a national pop group contest, in which in response to the "nice pop covers" played by their competitors, they instead unleashed a 15 minute psychedelic improv freakout on live radio. No, they didn't win...
Billy Childish has had quite a prolific career, and one that shows no signs of slowing. He is a writer and an artist, but perhaps he is most known for his music. Much of his musical output was written and recorded with his main band Thee Headcoats (although he also fronted such garage wonders as Thee Milkshakes). This is an impressive double disk collection of fifty (!) singles released by Thee Headcoats and friends between 1990 and 1999. Never bowing to trends or technology, the garage rockin' rawness of Billy, Johnny and Bruce's music continues to shine and inspire their fans and other bands. Comes with a very very thorough discography. All hail Thee Headcoats!
Holy moly, this is quite a discovery. A hitherto unknown album of wonderful Sgt. Peppery (flower) power pop, that ought to make fans of the Beatles, early Bee Gees, The Kinks, Big Star and so forth very, very happy indeed.
We admit were a bit skeptical when we first heard about it, 'cause there's so many reissues and whatnot these days that claim to be lost classics, but as soon as we put this on we were hooked! And more amazingly, while we'd certainly consider this a lost classic, it isn't even technically a reissue (despite the blurb saying "Original 1967 Release" on the back). Except for two songs here that appeared on a 7" single, this material was never actually released to the public, until now! Recorded in 1967, yes, but the tapes languished forgotten all these years, which is hard for us to understand - how could this gem stay unknown for 46 years?! These songs are so great! As always, makes you wonder what else is out there... And, at first, it also made us wonder if this was even really a group from the sixties - we suspected it could be a more modern-day band (a really good one!) emulating the sounds of yesteryear, a la The Dukes Of Stratosphear, The High Llamas, or Jellyfish. Especially since the production job, while vintage-sounding, is also so top notch (even though the liner notes tell us the whole thing was recorded and mixed in merely a weekend). Heck, a modern band trying to put one over could have added the analog tape hiss. But no, our skeptical conspiracy theories are all wrong, we have it from trusted sources that this is indeed for real, from 1967, the work of a bunch of talented, Anglophilic youngsters from Louisiana. But the vocals here are often (but not always) delivered in a lilting faux English accent, a common practice amongst the paisley-clad syke popsters of the day, wherever they were from, wanting to sound like they too were a part of the British Invasion. So, definitely Beatles-esque; as with Peru's We All Together, there's quite a few tunes here, like "Marigold", that sound like they were written by Paul McCartney - and the band name is an obvious homage to a certain Sgt.'s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Though this is sometimes more White Album than Sgt. Pepper's, really, the band even pushing into edgier sounds like the rather manic "Have You Been To The Light" - that's a weird one, and great. "Hope" is another of the album's harder, garage rockin' tunes.
But so much of this just delightfully sunshiney stuff, sometimes quite melancholic too. There's super melodic, energetic toe tappers and dreamy blissouts both, stuff that will get stuck in your head immediately, sounding so lovely and familiar right from the get go. There's the gentle, hushed intimacy of "Merlin", the lively, layered "Alexander Graham Bell", the heartfelt grandeur of the ELO-ish "Walk Out With Your Heart", the sweet & mellow soft pop of "Common Attitude" (which reminds us of Curt Boettcher's Millennium), and so many, many more highlights, that we can't possibly detail them all (and deciding which ones to make sound samples of was tough!). Oh, and the album's final track, a brief "outro" of druggy, tape-manipulated studio trickery, is titled "Dream Me Up Snotty"!!!
The only real complaint we have at all about this is that it's kind of too bad the prolific reissue label Gear Fab got to be the lucky ones to put this out, 'cause their attention to detail in terms of the physical product borders on shoddy. The crappy graphics they came up with for the cover of this digipack don't do justice to the music within; the quasi-informative liner notes (printed on the inside cover, there's no booklet) were written by someone who couldn't decide (or care to be consistent) between using all caps, bold face, or quotation marks to set off the various proper names mentioned; some proofreading could have helped in other areas too; and there's a strange one page, one sided insert with a thanks list on it that you don't really know what to do with once you've torn off the shrink wrap. Well, at least there ARE liner notes (from which we did learn, that the group's guitar prodigy Richard Orange went on to write music for the likes of Cyndi Lauper, Jane Wiedlin and even Terry Bozzio!). But there's many labels out there that would have done this a lot better, oh well.... perhaps someone else will eventually get to do a vinyl release...
We just hope this album isn't overlooked as a result of its Gear Fab-ness, it would be a shame if after 46 years it still went unnoticed. If people HEAR it, though, it won't - another reason we're doing our part by making it a Record Of The Week. So please grab this and get in on the ground floor with the first ever release of an unheard, utterly obscure '60s artifact that ought to be way up there in the psych power pop pantheon!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
You might remember a pretty cool, Nick Salomon curated comp called White Lace And Strange, from a few years back, full of heavy vintage fuzz psych from the USA, circa 1968-1972. Well that comp's title came from Thunder And Roses' contribution, also the lead-off track on the band's lone 1969 album, now reissued. The song was also later covered by Nirvana in 1987 (you'll find it on the rarities box With The Lights Out). So it's their most famous song, but the entire record is pretty cool too.
The Philly-based Thunder And Roses were a sorta poppy, spacey, proto-metal power trio, obviously inspired by the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream. They even cover Hendrix's "Red House" here... so it's definitely blues rock all right. But heavy psychedelic blues rock, the kind we like. There's a flower-power sixties vibe, naturally, and they're not quite so heavy as Blue Cheer or Sir Lord Baltimore, but fans of those bands should still dig this!
Plus, the head scratching "fire hydrant with angel wings" cover painting is kind of awesome.
Last list we highlighted two somewhat unusual "surf music" reissues, by Farm and Peter Martin & Finch, both brought to us by our favorite Japanese reissue label, EM Records, as part of their Summer 2007 "EM Under Water Series"! Those were quite cool, and now we've got the remaining three discs in the series, all of 'em (like those first two) soundtracks to several now-legendary surfing movies from back in the sixties/seventies. With the exception of Farm (from the USA) all the bands in EM's series are Australian, and in all cases the movies they were doing soundtracks for were Australian productions and/or featured Australian surfers. And as before, this isn't your typical SoCal Jan & Dean, Beach Boys style surf music... it's *psychedelic* surf music. Well 2 out of 3 of these anyway (the Tim Gaze Band album being more of a yacht rock outing).
Whoa. Or, "whoa-whoa". 'Cause that's what they're singing. Sunshiney '70s soft rock mellowness abounds here, disco-era goodtimes on a sandy beach Down Under. Surfer-musician Tim Gaze (the guitarist on Tamam Shud's second album, who also played with proggers Kahvas Jute) and his Band recorded this music in 1979 as the soundtrack to a surfing film entitled Band On The Run (nothing to do with Wings by the way). The original soundtrack LP was only released in a limited promotional run in 1982, and also featured several songs by J.J. Cale as well as the eight cuts by the Tim Gaze Band found here on this cd reissue. Such vocal tracks as "Lazy Day Fever", "Brothers And Sisters" and "Beautiful Lady" are full of melodic lushness, some rockin' with a smile, others more laidback and gentle. There's also some more jazzy, "soundtracky" instrumentals, our favorite being the spacey, organ-jammy "Bermuda". All of it conjures up images of sunsets and bikinis -- even if you weren't looking at the movie-poster album cover painting. Kitschy, yes, quite, but hey "yacht rock" is the new big thing isn't it?? This pretty yacht-y.
Includes liner notes both from Aussie "surf music historian" Stephen J. McParland and also Tim Gaze himself, along with lyrics and lots of vintage photos and graphics. Ok, this is probably the weakest entry in the EM Under Water Series as far as our tastes are concerned, but if you get into the spirit of the thing you'll want it, also to complete the collection -- and did we mention "yacht rock"?
Two new reissues of badass obscure African '70s garage fuzz rock on this list, hot damn! One from Witch (whose album Lazy Bones!! we were already big fans of) and this record from Nigeria's Tirogo, one of the bands who appeared on that rad Lagos Disco Inferno comp. Tirogo were labelmates with the band Blo, and ought to appeal to folks into Blo, Ofege, Sjob, and others from the Nigerian scene, as well as "Zam Rockers" like Witch, Amanaz, and the Ngozi Family from down in Zambia. Originally released in 1977, Tirogo's Float, their debut, is a stoned masterpiece of psychedelic garage groove with authentic African vibes. Seriously, at this point, can't we just say, if you like those others, you'll like this? 'Cause you will. Stinging fuzz guitar leads swirl and sizzle over seriously funky, energetic rhythms, as the vocalists chant about girls and the devil... yeah! The sort of thing that when you're listening to it, you can't help but think, "this is the best shit ever!"... and it's kinda true!!
Dunno how many more records like this they can dig up, it's hard to imagine, but we're grateful for what's been reissued thus far, winners like Tirogo and Witch, wow. And they do it right, the cd booklet includes an extensive, interesting interview with original Tirogo lead vocalist and bassist Wilfred Ekanem, conducted by African music collector and Now-Again head honcho Egon, who coordinated these reissues.
Why does anyone bother with the current crop of "stoner rock" when there's so much better stuff made back in the original stoner age (the '70s) now being reissued?? If you're into the Man's Ruin roster, and prone to buying albums by the latest Swedish Kyuss
The amazing, beautiful, anarchic, DIY psych-folk-pop of Tony, Caro & John's terribly rare "All On The First Day" LP (originally privately released in an edition of just 100 copies) has now been revived on CD for, hopefully, a larger audience! This comes to us from the label that's been responsible for bringing us those fab "Love, Peace & Poetry" psychedelic rock compilations (y'know, the Latin American one, the Asian one, the Japanese one, etc.). Among the most recent installments in that series was a disc devoted to British psychedelic obscurities. One of that comp's highlights, we all agreed, was a cut by this trio. That track, the amazingly Neutral Milk Hotel-ish "There Are No Greater Heroes" appears here as well, on Shadoks' reissue of Tony, Caro & John's entire sole album, from 1972. Now, we know that a lot of the time it's true that a great track selected for a compilation doesn't a great album make from whence it came...after all, the compilers are likely to pick the BEST song off an album for their comp. So we were wary -- but curious -- when we heard this whole album was being reissued. Happily, there's actually a lot of other great songs on here besides "There Are No Greater Heroes", although that one still reminds us the most of Jeff Mangum's stuff. Taken together, Tony, Caro & John's songs manage to strike a balance between creepy melancholy and kaleidoscopic pysch silliness. Not only that, but they have more than just a nostaglic vibe going for them -- they are good songwriters/performers with some delightful, weird ideas. Fans of the Incredible String Band and other British hippie folk psych of the period definitely need to hear this. Kudos to Shadoks for digging this up, and doing such a nice job of it too. The booklet has some charming color photos of Tony, Caro and John in their garden, modeling the latest in hippy fashions circa '72. There's also complete lyrics and liner notes from the band, who are still active making music together! AND, five bonus tracks appended to the album make this an even nicer find, consisting of stuff from the period that didn't make it on to the original LP, but *should have* (unlike the general run of bonus tracks!).
Shagrat was a British psychedelic "mystic-rock" group formed by Steve Peregrine Took after he parted ways with Marc Bolan and Tyrannosaurus Rex. This is apparently Shagrat's complete output, compiled from scratchy acetates and so forth dating from 1970 and
Tractor is the early '70s UK heavy-folk-rock duo of Jim Milne and Steve Clayton, who made two classic albums, one record under the name The Way We Live, and this one as Tractor, which was originally released in 1972 on John Peel's Dandelion label. Here it's reissued on cd as a '30th Anniversary Special Edition'. Probably the heavier of the two records, "Tractor" comes off like a combination of obscure UK folksters Tony, Caro & John (whose album reissue on Shadoks we recommended a few months ago) and heavy rock n' rollers Led Zeppelin or Budgie (or, to be obscure again, T2). Doomy fuzz guitars, conga drums, mystick lyrix, acoustic strum... This 'power duo' recorded in a bedroom studio but their sound is BIG. Anyone into either kick-ass '70s psychedelic guitar heroics or epic blissful folksy melancholia, or *both* especially, should investigate. There's one goofy blues number, but that's more than made up for by the epic, fierce "Little Girl In Yellow", a heavy rock classic if there ever was one.
Hisses and boos to the record label though, for crudding up this disc's front and back covers with little blurbs about the record (including the logos of the magazines from whence several of the blurbs were derived). What were they thinking? Save that stuff for a sticker on the shrink wrap! We're also not entirely sure that including two recordings (and photos) from the band's 2002 reunion as 'bonus' tracks was such a great idea, although the extra four demo tracks from Jim Milne, just acoustic guitar and voice, are quite nice, whenever they may be from (they don't tell us).
Unfortunately no '30th Anniversary Special Edition' of The Way We Live's "Candle For Judith" has come our way, but if it ever does we'll give you the heads up on that too.
MPEG Download: "All Ends Up" [/audio/tractorallendsup.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "All Ends Up" [/audio/tractorallendsup.m3u]
Yes! Maximum damaged Swedish guitar psych jamming in the house! Knowing how much we at AQ LOVE the sixties Swedish psych sounds of Parson Sound/International Harvester/Harvester/Trad Gras Och Stenar (multiple manifestations of basically the same band, whose crucial original LPs and unreleased recordings have been reissued on cd over the past couple of years, a boon to music-lovers everywhere -- see elsewhere on our website for reviews) you can imagine how excited we were to find out that TWO MORE Trad Gras Och Stenar LPs of early seventies vintage were now being reissued by new US label 1/2 Special, who indeed do a bang up job with these two discs. The booklets feature lots of photos and posters, a discography, and detailed liner notes from the band (delving into remembrance of the personal and social transformations of the hippie era). Plus, each disc's got a hefty bonus track (32 minutes on "Djungelns" and 27 on "Mors")! And of course it's the music that really makes these essential.
Influenced by Scandinavian folk music, drugs, radical politics, Terry Riley, the Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, Indian ragas, etc. this is some awesomely messed-up far-out rock music for sure. If these guys were German instead of Swedish, we'd be talking about a Krautrock legend. TGOS, as the final incarnation of group that started as Parson Sound, features a stripped-down line-up playing music that is perhaps more conventionally "rock" based than earlier formations, but definitely the heavy minimalism of Parson Sound and the Amon Duulish folked-out trippiness of Harvester remain important elements of their lugubrous sound.
"Djungelns Lag" ("Jungle Law" in English), originally issued in 1972, collects tracks recorded by TGOS on tour in Sweden and Norway during the summer and fall of 1971. You get extended dual guitar tangle and lovely sad folk laments, brief bouts of sunshiney nonsense vocals backed with acoustic guitar strum ("Dibio"), and even hippie hoedown jaw-harp jams ("Munfiol"). Wherever they wander, this is generally mellow yet moving, always measured and stately even when at its most abstract and electric.
Likewise with "Mors Mors" (aka "Bye Bye"), a 1973 album of tracks originating on tour in Sweden and Denmark in '72, which continues with both the gentle freakiness and distorted thud. The Rolling Stone's "Last Time" gets a TGOS treatment (not quite as blasted as their take on "Satisfaction" found on their self-titled album, though) and again their originals feature plenty of what we dig: moments of ragged Haino-worthy axe attack, tripped-out Quicksilver leads, and lovely pastoral folk-drone...
So it's appropriate that both discs were reissued simultaneously, if you want one you'll want 'em both. What else can we say...well, anyone who buys Acid Mothers Temple discs ought to be sure to take some Trad Gras Och Stenar home too, that's for sure. As with all the reissues from this camp, highly recommended.
Somehow, we never wrote up a review of this before, although it was probably the first document of anything by this longtime AQ fave Swedish psych rock band that we ever stocked. (Guess it took us a while to really get into 'em.) So, cool this disc has at last been repressed, for us to finally list, especially since their several other live albums are all out of print.
If you're new to Trad Gras Och Stenar (Trees, Grass and Stones) you should read some of our other reviews of records by them and the other bands they morphed out of, like for instance their earliest incarnation as Parson Sound! In short, the whole TGOS/Parson Sound/Harvester/International Harvester thing was Sweden's answer to krautrock: droned out, rhythmic hippie hypnorock, representing radical politics and alternative lifestyles, in an almost proto-punk, or primitive prog style. Seriously, if they were German they'd be up there with Amon Duul I&II, Faust, Can, etc. And fans of Hawkwind also oughta check 'em out.
This live recording is an instant timewarp back to the pothaze atmosphere of the famous underground Gardet Festival in 1970, sorta the Swedish Woodstock, giving the listener a dose of TGOS's magic, live and raw. While there's other albums maybe we'd suggest for first timers, since this is a tad lo-fi, this WILL demonstrate their mesmeric majesty pretty darn well. Like we said, it's raw, and it rocks in its druggy dreamy hella distorted way. Oh, and it was recorded (on Nagra tape recorder, with one mic) by their fan, none other than Joakim Skogsberg, himself responsible for the amazing Jola Rota album.
Six songs here, almost an hour of music, including their oh-so-woozy cover of the Dylan by way of Hendrix classic "All Along The Watchtower" along with a wild nine-minute rave up on the Stones' "Satisfaction", and of course several lengthy, and equally wild, jamming originals, like the rollicking (and bluesy/folky) "In Kommer Gosta".
Must have been amazing to have been there that summer day. You can tell the audience is enjoying it. Rad it was recorded (thanks Mr. Skogsberg!).
The cd booklet is full of liner notes and vintage photos from the festival. And, by the way, this is also available in a relatively recent double vinyl pressing that we think we'll be getting some more of in soon, too.
Yes! Maximum damaged Swedish guitar psych jamming in the house! Knowing how much we at AQ LOVE the sixties Swedish psych sounds of Parson Sound/International Harvester/Harvester/Trad Gras Och Stenar (multiple manifestations of basically the same band, whose crucial original LPs and unreleased recordings have been reissued on cd over the past couple of years, a boon to music-lovers everywhere -- see elsewhere on our website for reviews) you can imagine how excited we were to find out that TWO MORE Trad Gras Och Stenar LPs of early seventies vintage were now being reissued by new US label 1/2 Special, who indeed do a bang up job with these two discs. The booklets feature lots of photos and posters, a discography, and detailed liner notes from the band (delving into remembrance of the personal and social transformations of the hippie era). Plus, each disc's got a hefty bonus track (32 minutes on "Djungelns" and 27 on "Mors")! And of course it's the music that really makes these essential.
Influenced by Scandinavian folk music, drugs, radical politics, Terry Riley, the Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, Indian ragas, etc. this is some awesomely messed-up far-out rock music for sure. If these guys were German instead of Swedish, we'd be talking about a Krautrock legend. TGOS, as the final incarnation of group that started as Parson Sound, features a stripped-down line-up playing music that is perhaps more conventionally "rock" based than earlier formations, but definitely the heavy minimalism of Parson Sound and the Amon Duulish folked-out trippiness of Harvester remain important elements of their lugubrous sound.
"Djungelns Lag", originally issued in 1972, collects tracks recorded by TGOS on tour in Sweden and Norway during the summer and fall of 1971. You get extended dual guitar tangle and lovely sad folk laments, brief bouts of sunshiney nonsense vocals backed with acoustic guitar strum ("Dibio"), and even hippie hoedown jaw-harp jams ("Munfiol"). Wherever they wander, this is generally mellow yet moving, always measured and stately even when at its most abstract and electric.
Likewise with "Mors Mors" (a 1973 album of tracks originating on tour in Sweden and Denmark in '72), which continues with both the gentle freakiness and distorted thud. The Rolling Stone's "Last Time" gets a TGOS treatment (not quite as blasted as their take on "Satisfaction" found on their self-titled album, though) and again their originals feature plenty of what we dig: moments of ragged Haino-worthy axe attack, tripped-out Quicksilver leads, and lovely folk-drone...
So it's appropriate that both discs were reissued simultaneously, if you want one you'll want 'em both. What else can we say...well, anyone who buys Acid Mothers Temple discs ought to be sure to take some Trad Gras Och Stenar home too, that's for sure. As with all the reissues from this camp, highly recommended.
Along with the Algarnas Tradgard and International Harvester cds we re-listed last time, we're also super happy to have a couple other Silence label reissues back in stock, after a lengthy absence. This one is another entry in the discography of one of our absolute favorite Swedish psychrock band "families" that began with the group Parson Sound. The post-Harvester quartet Trad, Gras Och Stenar (Trees, Grass and Stones) was the most "rockist" outgrowth of the Parson Sound/International Harvester collective which you'll find celebrated elsewhere on our site. Indeed, this album starts with two covers of well-known rock tunes, one of the Dylan/Hendrix classic "All Along The Watchtower", followed by a version of "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" that is so depressed and wasted-sounding that it *really* sounds like they can't and won't get no satisfaction, ever! Pretty soon, though, they've given up on any Top of the Pops pretentions and are delving into twisted, waltzing, freak-psych compositions that draw more from traditional Swedish folk music than British/American rock n' roll (although the fuzz guitars remain). Some of the material here also recalls the minimalist throb of their earlier work in Parson Sound and International Harvester.
What Hrvatski said of the Harvester album applies to this as well: "Another piece to the incestuous little jigsaw that was the 1967-1972 Swedish druggist music school dropout sector." A jigsaw well worth spending some of your time with! And we'll add that if you ever get a chance to see these guys play -- they're still in action -- don't miss it. They've been to SF a couple times in recent years and blew us away. Still amazing, and really nice guys as well. If only we could be as cool as they are, when we're their age...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Inarguably an all-time classic of sixties psych. Peru's Traffic Sound might not be the most famous band from the era, but those in the know, know. At long last we have a cd reissue of their second album, Virgin, a masterpiece recorded in 1969. It's brought to us by the Repsychled label from their homeland, responsible also for that Tarkus reish we raved over a not long ago. And it's about time. Maybe you saw our review last year of the Traffic Sound compilation Yellow Sea Years? It included only one track from this album (the hit single in Peru "Meshkalina") for reasons we can't fathom, except that you'd want the whole thing anyway, and here it is! Psychedelic pop/prog perfection, featuring both dreamy melodies and some freaked out, flutey jazz/krautrock sounding passages, including a dose of backwards weirdness and several tracks of acoustic beauty. They were contemporaneous with better-known American and British acts such as the Beatles, Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, and Love, and influenced by the likes of them no doubt. But on Virgin, Traffic Sound make the case for their own spaced-out, groovy, early-prog creativity. And in fact this was the first album by a Peruvian rock band to feature all-original compositions. As albums of the era from Latin America go, this is one of the essentials, particularily if you've been digging, say, Mexico's La Revolucion De Emiliano Zapata, or any of those awesome psych titles from Brazil that we've seen lately...
Repsychled has some interesting packaging notions, this is in a sort of under-sized cardboard digi-folder thing. It seems like each title we get from them is in some different, non-standard sleeve. In any case, for this official reissue they've gone to the master tapes and done a careful remastering job, and the cd booklet is packed with vintage photos and suchlike.
Yeah! Yellow Sea Years is a great collection of tracks from this legendary '60s psych outfit from Peru. We've actually had this in stock since last year and always meant to list it but only got around to it now. Traffic Sound's early influences should be readily apparent from the cover versions that populated their first album, 1968's A Bailar GoGo: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Burdon, Iron Butterfly (nope, not "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" -- they did "You Can't Win"!), and Skip James's "I'm So Glad" (as featured on the Latin American installment of the Love, Peace & Poetry compilation series). Of those debut album tracks, only Eric Burdon's "Sky Pilot" is included here. By the time of their second album Virgin in '69, they'd definitely established their own, wonderfully spacey, groovy and melodic, sound. That brilliant LP is only represented on this disc by "Meshkalina" though this comp takes its name from the epic "Yellow Sea Days" (not included). Following on from Virgin, Traffic Sound continued to explore more mellow, Pink Floydy pop as well as getting into funkier Latin-tinged soul-psychedelia... the latter perhaps being the reason that Vampi Soul has opted to focus mainly on material from the band's third and fourth LPs, Traffic Sound (1970) and Lux ('71), cramming as much of those albums onto this 80 minute cd anthology as possible. And there's definitely some great stuff here! For example, the utter jazz-horns boosted psychedelic grooviness of "Tibette's Suzettes" (with a slightly Ozzy-ish vocal). Badass track that one. Yep, if you're into upbeat, '60s psych-pop rock that draws on prog, folk, and funk, you need to check out the Traffic Sound. Now if they'd only also reissue all of Virgin!
Not to be confused with Doug Martsch's amazing nineties outfit, the Treepeople, -these- Tree People are equally amazing, but are a whole different proposition.
This disc was originally released as a super limited lp way back in 1979 and managed to quietly disappear. Now, here we are nearly three decades later, and whattaya know? There's a whole movement of modern free folk, 'freak' folk and the like, and if you didn't know better, pretty sure we could pass this off as some strange super limited cd-r by some modern folk revivalists. But keen ears would certainly be able to tell. This is so entirely original (especially for the time) and genuine sounding. Mostly acoustic guitars, flute and vocals, the Tree People had two distinct sounds, the first, a lilting melancholy moonlit folk, like Cat Stevens or Van Morrison, a gorgeous lazy drawl, rich and lustrous, over simple folk and fluttering flutes, dreamy and gorgeous, sounding like some lost folk classic one minute, a strange "Girl From Ipanema" style shuffle the next. But even at it's sweetest and softest, the record seems to always have a hint of melancholy, sometimes even a trace of ominous foreboding. Which definitely gives the songs a subtly dark undercurrent. The majority of the record however is spent in full on hippy jam mode. Very Comus-like at times (especially on track two, "Sliding"), wild steel string excursions, dense tangles of fingerpicked melodies and aggressive strummed riffs, with a definite raga like vibe, all over a smattering of hand drums and tablas, a glorious drifting buzzing steel string dronefolk, that just sounds so incredibly timeless. Elsewhere, the same jams evolve into more tranquil acoustic dreaminess, with the flutes floating over sweet lilting melodies, but even then, the songs will be peppered with sudden bursts of buzzing slide guitar, or brief squalls of atonal fingerpicking. SO cool. And considering the current love of all things freaky and folky, it's sort of amazing that stuff like this was already being made 27 years ago!
Obviously, fans of the current crop of modern folk troubadours will find this absolutely essential, Devandra, Vetiver, Espers, Newsom, whatever your particular poison, the Tree People will fit in frighteningly well. Hard to say whether it speaks to the prescience of the Tree People, or just to how much these modern bands have actually been 'borrowing'. Either way, this is absolutely essential.
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese!
1970, England. Imagine a rock band that's equally into the sort of psychedelic electric guitar excursions you'd have heard back then wafting from London's hippy ballrooms, as well as ballads and jigs derived from British folk song tradition. With lovely, pure, delicately bird-like female vocals a la Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny... Yes, Trees were quite a bit like Fairport Convention, but rather more obscure. And now, at long last, we've managed to get a hold of these UK import-only cd reissues of their two albums. Gorgeous stuff indeed, utterly magical, definitely for fans of early Fairport, Shirley Collins, Pentangle, and the whole Brit-folk-rock thing.
Both of Trees' records ("The Garden of Jane Delawney" and "On The Shore") are from 1970 and come equally recommended (they may as well be two volumes of the same album). Both of 'em feature the vocals of Celia Humphris, along with both traditional acoustic instruments (dulcimer, mandolin) and electric guitars, and blend original songs and adaptations of traditional folk material.
"The Garden..." boasts a rather strange cover painting, and Windy's favorite Tree's track, "Nothing Special", whose sublimely pretty guitar strumming prefigured a whole movement of jangle pop bands (e.g. REM). Of their two albums perhaps *slightly* the more rock-based and produced, "On The Shore" features the song "Sally Free And Easy" which in recent years, you may recall, was covered by Flying Saucer Attack on a Drag City ep of that title, and also comes with lengthy liner notes telling the story of the band.
1970, England. Imagine a rock band that's equally into the sort of psychedelic electric guitar excursions you'd have heard back then wafting from London's hippy ballrooms, as well as ballads and jigs derived from British folk song tradition. With lovely, pure, delicately bird-like female vocals a la Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny... Yes, Trees were quite a bit like Fairport Convention, but rather more obscure. And now, at long last, we've managed to get a hold of these UK import-only cd reissues of their two albums. Gorgeous stuff indeed, utterly magical, definitely for fans of early Fairport, Shirley Collins, Pentangle, and the whole Brit-folk-rock thing.
Both of Trees' records ("The Garden of Jane Delawney" and "On The Shore") are from 1970 and come equally recommended (they may as well be two volumes of the same album). Both of 'em feature the vocals of Celia Humphris, along with both traditional acoustic instruments (dulcimer, mandolin) and electric guitars, and blend original songs and adaptations of traditional folk material.
"The Garden..." boasts a rather strange cover painting, and Windy's favorite Tree's track, "Nothing Special", whose sublimely pretty guitar strumming prefigured a whole movement of jangle pop bands (e.g. REM). Of their two albums perhaps *slightly* the more rock-based and produced, "On The Shore" features the song "Sally Free And Easy" which in recent years, you may recall, was covered by Flying Saucer Attack on a Drag City ep of that title, and also comes with lengthy liner notes telling the story of the band.
It's no secret that we have a soft spot for uncommon Christian music especially when it dwells on the fringe such as the "white metal" of the E.E.E. recordings label or the earnest out-pop of groups like The Shaggs and New Creation. Another fringe arena is in liturgical hippie folk with bands like Simaril, Parchment, and this beautiful reissue of the Trees Community first album, The Christ Tree. We had this previously only as a box set, which grouped their first album with 3 other cds of later live material. Not the most ideal way to ease yourself into their uniquely arcane and highly reverential sound. So it's nice to have this single disc reissue that adds several bonus tracks to the original album. If you are fans of wyrd minstrely acid-folk groups like Comus, Ougenwiede, Springuns, and Extradition, you will definitely dig this, a collective of male and female musical performers from New York who played traditional acoustic and eastern instruments such as sitar, folk harp, pump organ, flute, koto, tamboura and Chinese gong in long raga-like hymns with pretty male and female vocal harmonies and strangely mystical and spacious passages. Christ Tree was the their first album and it's a live recording of a performance at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1975. Oddly beautiful!
Some early '70s French psych-rock here, not so much on the proto-metal side of things but still totally groovy, and from the get-go not failing to rock the cowbell (well, the opening track on this 22 song collection, "Peut-etre Demain", is the number one cowbell culprit, gotta love it). We first heard of Triangle some years ago thanks to the amazing, AQ-fave six-cd Igor Wakhevitch box on Fractal (now, sadly, out of print). Wakhevitch was an avant-garde, electronic composer whose first few albums enlisted the fuzzed guitars of Triangle as part of their surreal soundscapes. So we'd been always curious to hear Triangle's own music. Of course it's not as far out as the Wakhevitch stuff, they're basically a pop band, tres commercial, yet with a freaky side to 'em. This disc, as the title reveals, collects some of their crucial cuts from '69 through '74... a lot of upbeat numbers with DJ-friendly beats, symphonic prog moves, catchy choruses, and swingin' horns. Really, judging from this disc, Triangle were all over the place, from synth-laced proto-disco to placid piano ballads to bubblegum hard rock. If you like stuff of the "B-music" persuasion (like the Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word comp), or that Total Freakout collection on Mucho Gusto, or rad '70s "library music" and things like that, we figure you'll dig these Triangle tunes.
This digipack includes pictures of all of Triangle's original 33 and 45 rpm record sleeves, which are nice to have -- the first album's got a piano engulfed in flames on it, the second has Triangle lined up for a firing squad, also comprised of the band members. But there's no liner notes to speak of, so we don't know a heck of a lot more about 'em, other than that they recorded three albums and a bunch of singles, had some hits, went on to back up pop singer Papillon on a solo LP of his (three tracks from that album, including their cover of Bowie's "Starman" en Francais, are to be found here).
The "Icelandic Invasion" continues, as Shadoks reissues some more crucial '60s/'70s psych-prog action from that island nation. Last time we highlighted the groovy "hairy funk" heaviness of Odmenn. This time, two more: the sole album by Svanfridur (1972), and this one, the debut from Trubrot (1969). Both bands demonstrate definite Beatles influence, and do so well, but also are quite eccentric in their own right, which perhaps can be ascribed to their Icelandic heritage?
Trubrot at their inception were already basically Iceland's #1 "supergroup", consisting of members of two popular R&B acts, Flowers and Hljomar. Big things were hoped for 'em, they even played for a few weeks in New York City, but they never really broke outside of Iceland, though they did go on to make several more well-regarded albums (which it would be nice if Shadoks would reissue as well). This one got them off to an excellent start, and as we also said about the Svanfridur reissue, we think it would go down well with fans of current Scandinavian psychsters Dungen. It's a mix of pop and prog, with bits of jazz and folk, and besides their own ambitious originals, it notably includes a diverse selection of cover songs, Trubrot doing Icelandic language interpretations of tunes originally performed by The Beatles ("Things We Said Today", to which they've added an amazingly kickass instrumental intro), Jose Feliciano, and The Supremes. And one more, the band's organist having worked up an arrangement of a song from the Richard Wagner opera "Tannhauser", which astonishingly enough got them some grief from the classical music authorities of the day. Ah, the old high brow/low brow battles fought by so many prog bands back then...
Likewise, their originals (also all sung in Icelandic, of course) also range all over the place, from the serious and sombre (in keeping with the Wagner) to much zanier fare, like the "dinner party" sound effects that take over in the middle of "Konopujufirinn" to the 24-second long "Bryjenda Boogie" which in its brevity is basically the boogie equivalent of Napalm Death, we guess. On the opposite extreme is the album ending programmatic nine-minute "Afgangar", a schizophrenic "rock opera" of sorts. Here, and everywhere, Trubrot will go from fuzzed out groove to gentle female vocals to vaudeville music hall numbers to musique concrete... hey why not? We said they were ambitious.
This reissue includes six bonus tracks mostly from a couple 1970 singles, and the cd booklet has lots and lots in the way of liner notes and photos.
