2005 remastered reissue of this classic album recorded by Peter Blegvad, Dagmar Krause and Anthony Moore in 1973. Produced by Uwe Nettelbeck (Faust's producer), engineered by Kurt Grauner (Faust’s engineer) and backed by Faust themselves at their legendary studio in Wumme, Germany.
Amazingly, this incredible album – maybe their best – was turned down by Virgin who made them re-do the album in a much less interesting way (and without Faust) in the early 70s and it lay unreleased until the mid 80's...

In May, 2000, hot on the heels of their excellent (if a bit over-produced) reunion album Ça Va, Slapp Happy embarked on their first ever tour of Japan. The original trio of Dagmar Krause (vocals), Peter Blegvad (guitar, vocals) and Anthony Moore (piano, keyboards) perform a wonderful selection of tunes from their earliest times to the then present, but with the most notable fact being the startling recasting of a large number of tunes from Ça Va in a very acoustic format where they work wonderfully well...

“Slapp Happy meanwhile was planning its second record for Virgin. One night the trio showed up at the quartet's door and proposed that the two groups make the second Slapphappy LP together...Henry Cow jumped at the chance and Desperate Straights was the result. It's still a gem to my ears, and now at last it's possible to release it, properly re-mastered (by Bob Drake), its sound closer to the original tapes even than our earlier Nimbus vinyl pressing. Great songs, great arrangements, great performances...

"Fiercely uncompromising with equal allegiance to jazzy improvisation, funky backbeats and sonic experimentation, the audacious power trio Slaughterhouse 3 dwells in a place where fellow renegades like Garage a Trois, Bobby Previte & Charlie Hunter’s...

An excellent Brooklyn-based band of jazz musicians who take the instrumental folk music of the Balkans and Macedonia and give it their own twist. Recommended for ethnic music fans who aren't sticklers for 'tradition'! "Teknochek represents a new era...

I found out about this band when I was doing early prepatory work for our Upsilon Acrux album and saw them compared to this group. Sleeping People are an instrumental dual guitar, bass and drums band from San Diego and this is their second album...

"The seven-piece Slivovitz reside in Napoli (Naples), and are devoted to a poly-stylistic mangling whose forebears include Frank Zappa and John Zorn. Much of their core material also arrives from the folkloric knees-ups of the Balkan regions. Despite...

You’ve heard harmonica played like this and you’ve heard synth music like this, but you have definitely never heard them together, especially in 1980...in Alaska!

“Originally released as a privately funded 1000 copy vinyl run in 1980 this rare album by Alaskan electric harmonica player Gary Sloan and his interchangeable synth trio known as Clone is a record that pushes the concept of American outsider music to its furthest geographical limits.
With few physical copies travelling beyond their..

Excellent progressive/jazz-rock band from Montreal who recorded two extremely well regarded and hugely sought-after albums in the mid 1970s and who then basically dissapeared without a trace. To me, they combine elements of Canterbury jazz-rock with...

Alastair Milton: keys and sax
Calum Calderwood: electric-violin and vocals
Peter Fleming: bass and backing vocals
Steve McNamara: drums and percussion
with:
Alistair Homer: trumpet
Eilidh Harris: backing vocals
Nick Gaughan: synths and backing vocals
Randolph Edwards: backing vocals and sloth personifications

Somewhere between a sort of twisted folk/progrock blend and Cardiacs lies Sloth Metropolis!

“SLOTH METROPOLIS is a musical.

Third release by this interesting group who combine modern classical with rock and post-rock. Funnily enough, what at least some of this REALLY reminds me of is "We are the Rowboats" by Krakatoa! So definitely more 'rock' this time around...

"33 1/3 is Smegma's tribute to their twentieth-century avant-garde and out-jazz influences. The title is one part reference to the happy revival of passionate vinyl listening in the twenty-first century, and one part celebration of over thirty-three...

Walter Smith III – saxophone
Matthew Stevens - guitar
Kris Davis - piano
Dave Holland - bass
Terri Lyne Carrington - drums

Walter Smith III and Matthew Stevens are two musicians at the forefront of developments in jazz and improvised music, listing the likes of Terence Blanchard, Ambrose Akinmusire, Esperanza Spalding and Christian Scott as collaborators. The pair started working together in 2017, and four years later, they're back for the third iteration of their highly commend

"Recorded in Los Angeles over four months in 1970, this double album is one of the most personal and involving statements to have emerged from California's psychedelic underground. Backed by a fine band including Daryl Dragon (later to find fame as...

Shara Lunon - voice and vocal processing
Anna Webber - flute
Oscar Noriega - clarinets
James Brandon Lewis - tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley - trumpet
Jennifer Choi - violin
Kyle Armbrust - viola
Michael Nicolas - cello
Shahzad Ismaily - bass and keyboards
Ches Smith - electronics, programming, vibes, drums, tubular bells, glockenspiel, timpani, tam tam, metal percussion

“California-born, New York-based drummer, percussionist and composer Ches Smit

Tim Berne, alto sax / Tony Malaby, tenor sax / Mary Halvorson, guitar / Andrea Parkins, accordion, electronics / Ches Smith, drums.

Do I need to mention what a simply great band this is?

"Though drummer Ches Smith has a penchant for...

Solo improvisations, recorded on electric stereo guitar, recorded direct to DAT, sans any delays & in sequence as released. [FMR]

This unites drummer/electronic percussionist Joe (still playing a similar sounding electronic set as he used on Cruel But Fair) with Gary's wild/calm guitarwork

"If the mark of a great player is that you can recognise them from just one note, then look no further than Gary Smith. His electric stereo guitar sound is as distinctive as the sound of Miles, Getz or Hendrix, as individual as DNA. Using real-time electronics and pedals, Smith has the capacity to bend, shape and move notes in the air....

"Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith composes her swirling, colorful electronic songs on Buchla synthesizers, particularly the portable, user-friendly Music Easel. Her warm, vibrant music inevitably recalls the work of Buchla masters such as Suzanne Ciani and Laurie Spiegel, but it's playful and exuberant enough to land her opening gigs for Dan Deacon and Animal Collective. It's bubbly and tranquil enough to elicit comparisons to 21st century underground synthesizer artists such as Panabrite or Dolphins into the...

This is a fabulous modern electronic music album from a newcomer and a veteran. Spacey, shimmery, fun, optimistic! Highly recommended!

"The 13th entry in RVNG Intl.'s Frkwys series follows the template of most of its predecessors in that it pairs one music veteran with a relative newcomer. That said, seldom have two artists been better paired than Suzanne Ciani and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. The former is an electronic and new age music pioneer who has received renewed attention thanks to a series of..

Note that this has a tiny (and I mean TINY) cut-out notch. It's there but it's barely there. Still, it has to be mentioned!

"Lonnie Liston Smith had somehow escaped my attention over the years. I just recently discovered his music. And I’m glad I did. What an amazingly talented musician. If you think you’d like to hear some spacey jazz-like funk with a little soul thrown in to mellow the mix then you’d probably like Lonnie Liston Smith. He’s released many albums over the years but I’m....

“Ray Smith was really one of the best rockabilly performers of his day and there are some killer tunes on this CD. Not as well known as other Sun recording artists but Ray had a real rocking voice and these sides jump!!! Ray Smith deserves to be better known. No rockabilly collection is complete without his work.”