The Artchipel Orchestra, led by conductor / arranger Ferdinando Farao, is a Italian big band (over 20 participants) and Ferdinando is a big fan of the British jazz and jazz rock scene of the 70s, having previously covered tunes by Alan Gowen, Dave Stewart, Mike Westbrook & Fred Frith, among others.

Here, he's tackling the Soft Machine book, but even though the title is "Play Soft Machine", a more accurate title would be "Plays Hugh Hopper's Tunes For Soft Machine", as that's what this mostly is....

This is a fairly heavy prog/psych/folk release; maybe think Fern Knight or Espers but heavier.

“Alessandro Arturo Cucurnia (alias Arthuan Rebis ) is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, harpist, writer, sound operator, international concert artist. He is a scholar of musical and spiritual traditions of the East and the West.
His musical training is characterized by the study and practice of musical stylistic elements distant in space and time, which range from Nordic and Celtic folk to...

Lautaro Acosta – vioin
Furio Chirico – drums
Roberto Puggioni – electric bass
Gigi Venegoni – electric guitar
Piero Mortara – accordion, keyboards, piano

A revamped lineup of one of the best jazz/rock bands to emerge from Italy perform in front of a clearly excited audience in Japan. Happily this includes main composer and original leader Gigi Venegoni, who wasn’t with the band when I saw them a decade ago!

“One of the most important historical bands of Italian progress

Arti E Mestieri were one of THE great Italian bands of the early 70's. In the last decade, they reformed with three of the band's most important original members: guitarist/composer Gigi Venegoni, keyboardist/composer Beppe Crovella and drummer Furio...

"Arts & Sciences is a genre-bending quartet rooted in the jazz and improvising traditions but borrowing extensively from pop song writing and old field recordings. The group features a unique instrumentation of alto and tenor saxophones, monophonic...

Rodrigo Maccioni: Electric guitar, flute, synthesizer
Cristián Peralta: Cello
Alfonso Vergara: Clarinet, bass clarinet
Arianne Guerra: Violin
Alejandro Vera: Bassoon
Eduardo Rubio: Electric bass, upright bass
Leonardo Saavedra: Drums, percussion
guest musicians:
Oscar Pizarro: Piano
Pascal Montenegro: Oboe

The second release by this excellent chamber rock band from Chile. Like their first, this leans more towards the chamber (Julverne) than towards t

This was originally recorded and released in 2000 and was one of two efforts by 'Ash Ra Tempel", which is the meeting again after quite some time of Klaus Schulze and Manuel Gottsching.
This one was always hard to find and while it isn't going to shame their classic 70s work, it's more than quite good, trance music with MG actually really letting it rip HARD here and there. Conditionally recommended!

The very good, if somewhat overlooked fourth album by this legendary Krautrock ensemble, remastered by Manuel Göttsching himself!

The band's fourth album, this is the first time since their self-titled first that you have the trio of Manuel...

The second album by this legendary Krautrock ensemble, remastered by Manuel Göttsching himself!

Their 2nd album came out in 1972, & was quite a bit different from the first, as Klaus Schulze had split. So Manuel & Harmut enlisted some other...

The fifth album by this legendary Krautrock ensemble, remastered by Manuel Göttsching himself!

"The dubious reputation Starring Rosi has incurred over the years is, to these set of ears, altogether undeserved. The tightening of focus and....

“This recording was made at the Hebbel Theater, Berlin on May 12, 1995. The opera was also heard live at the Festival d'Avignon, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Musica Strasbourg, and Site Santa Fe.
Foreign Experiences is one of the opera tetralogy that Ashley wrote in the early 1990s, following Perfect Lives) and Atalanta (Act of God). He would give it the overall title (also the name of one of the component operas) Now Eleanor's Idea. These four operas would follow the stories of some of the...

“I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Good is a new recording collaboration of Sam Ashley and Werner Durand. Sam Ashley's mystic parables imbued with benevolent humor are drawn from a lifelong pursuit of a present-day shamanism. Werner Durand's wind work on invented and traditional instruments stems from the minimalist tradition, routed through his unique study of obscure world musics.
The two artists first met in Berlin in 1984 while Sam was touring Atalanta with Robert Ashley's opera company, with whom he...

This album, recorded in Berlin, and originally released in 1977 on Virgin, marks the first time Manuel Gottsching used the name Ashra (as opposed to Ash Ra Tempel). This was also possibly the first time that the term "new age" was used on a record!
It's another completely wonderful, flowing, spacey album, featuring just Manuel performing on sequencer, keyboards and a lot of guitar. He did one more great one after this, Blackouts, then took some time off and returned to utter greatness and glory with..

Setrak Bakirel / vocals, guitar
Eril Tekeli / flute, guitar
Evelyne Kandel / bass
Micha Rousseau / keyboards
Julien Tekeyan / drums

“How did I miss this? A new Asia Minor album? Finally, more "moon madness"! That's crazy! Asia Minor has long been shrouded in mystery to me. They released two excellent albums in 1979 and 1981 (including the great Between Flesh and Divine, in my opinion the best prog album of the 1980s, certainly holds its own with Moving Pictures and Misplaced...

"When it comes to seminal albums in alternative rock, Pixies 1988 debut Surfer Rosa qualifies as a true game-changer. With strong production and even stronger songs, the album tore a rift in the rock n roll continuum, influencing everyone from Kurt...

Very good second album by these San Franciscans who manage to genuinely sound like it is 1970/1971 at the Filmore West and it's space rock night. Not quite as good as their amazing 3rd album, When Sweet Sleep Returned, it's still really good and if you...

I didn't know much about Gustavo until I saw a clip of a couple of tracks from this CD/DVD set, but he's an amazing, fluid jazz/rock guitarist with a great tone. He can be amazingly fleet, although the music isn't in the Allan Holdsworth style of superfas

While it's pretty certain that Miles kick started the whole electric jazz-jazz/rock movement with In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew in 1969, there were other people working towards the same goals at aproximately the same time, some of them better known...

"Astral Son is the neo-psych-solo-project of the Dutch artist Leonardo. This is his second album A colourful soundscape like a fleet-footed dancing monument made of warm-hearted acoustic poetry, invites the listener into it's colorful world. A concept album full of wonderful songs blending into each other, so that the album appears as a complete work, like a psychedelic stage play - pictorial and enchanted. The sound is absolutely experienced and exalted but also saturated through a big dose of childlike...

"These days, it's quite an unlikely event that a non-Norwegian artist will end up releasing a record on Rune Grammofon. But when presented with these recordings, the label realized that this was simply too good to turn down. French group Astrïd began...

Long unavailable, this is the group's second album album from 1990. Now it's available again at a reasonable price, especially for a Japanese release, as a special blu-spec CD release!

"Structurally this one follows the same path as ''Circle in the forest'', three mid-length instrumental tracks are the the first menu, giving space to the 22-min. title-track. An even more mature album compared to the previous one, ''Brilliant streams'' actually recalls the music of MINIMUM VITAL around the same...

Long unavailable, this 1993 release was the group's third and their final album, until they re-emerged 15 years later.
Now it's available again at a reasonable price, especially for a Japanese release, as a special blu-spec CD release!

"On his third album album with Asturias composer Yoh Ohyama would make a slight stylistical turn. Akira Hanamoto was no longer a member of the band, instead Ohyama introduced two string instrumentalists, Udai Shika on cello and Tatsuya Murayamy on viola...

VASKO ATANASOVSKI - alto & soprano saxophone, flute (Slovenia)
SIMONE ZANCHINI - accordion (Italy)
MICHEL GODARD - tuba, serpent (France)
BODEK JANKE - drums & tabla (Poland/Germany)
Special Guest:
ARIEL VEI ATANASOVSKI - cello (Slovenia)

“The Adrabesa Quartet consists of four exceptional musicians, brought together by its long-standing founder and leader: composer and saxophonist, Vasko Atanasovski.
Vasko is a well-known and established European maestr

“I’m a singer songwriter and have been since I first started singing in 1984. As well as my solo I'm also the vocalist and co- writer with MOON HALO and RIVERSEA. I've previously been a member of NINE STONES CLOSE and MANDALABAND. Before that my early bands were GABRIEL, THE COMPANY, FRONTIER and EXPRESSIONS.
It was always my intention to record an all acoustic solo album during 2020 so I started putting together ideas in Early Feb. Around the middle of March the world suddenly shifted, Covid 19 had..