Classic Rock 304 Items

33 minutes of pure, unadulterated, psychedelic Krautrock courtesy of PYRAMID: an obscure studio project produced by Toby Robinson aka The Mad Twiddler. These sessions were recorded circa 1975-76 in Cologne for the underground Pyramid label, which was operated by Toby and his friend Robin Page (the Fluxus artist). During that time, Toby worked as engineer and assistant at various studios in Cologne, including the famous Dieter Dierks studios, where most of the albums from the Ohr/Pilz/Cosmic Courier catalogue were registered. Having access to the studios during dead hours, Toby recorded lot of sessions just for fun without any commercial interest, featuring friends and musicians who frequented the studios and the underground art/music scene of Cologne. Some of these sessions were later relesed as hand-made vinyl micro pressings on his Pyramid label with help from artist Robin Page.

A master of the mixing board, from the late '60s until the '90s Bernard Estardy was the wizard of French musical recordings. As head of CBE studios, he shaped everything from Gérard Manset's concept albums to Claude François' hit singles, Françoise Hardy's delicate tear-jerkers and Michel Sardou's soul-stirrers. This "giant" had his hand in the whole range of mainstream French music by making his studio a veritable playground for experimentation. His legendary album 'La Formule Du Baron,' released in 1969, and the eight LPs of production music he made between 1974 and 1978 for Tele Music are vivid proof.

Limited edition for Record Store Day 2017!

Copy is close to NM!

The Third Sound is the solo project of Icelandic singer-songwriter Hákon Aðalsteinsson, formerly of Singapore Sling and currently touring in Brian Jonestown Massacre. Now residing in Berlin with a fleshed-out live line-up, The Third Sound are gearing up for the release of their fourth album ‘All Tomorrow’s Shadows’ - arriving via Fuzz Club Records on May 11th. Recorded by the band themselves over the harsh Berlin winter, the new record is their most refined yet – offering an expansive exploration into krautrock-tainted post-punk and dark psychedelia.

Following on from their 2016 LP ‘Gospels of Degeneration’, the new album takes a much more sparse and rhythmic approach than we’ve seen before, combining hypnotic guitar drones, motorik rhythms and haunting vocals – the last track boasting a guest feature from Anton Newcombe, who released the band’s debut album on his own imprint A Recordings.

Historical Graffiti is the band’s fourth full-length, out in 2016. Gary Arce, the guitarist, seems comfortable sitting on a single vamp throughout the opener ‘The Wind Cries Edalyn’, allowing the additions of violin and bandoleon accordion (played by the tango musicians Sara Ryan and Adolfo Trepiana, respectively) to weave melodies in between. Despite the titular connection to the Jimi Hendrix song, it bears no discernible resemblance to ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ and it is a deceptive number; what seems such a simple, almost easy-listening song reveals more colour with every listen. ‘Her Phantom Finger of Copenhagen’ is slightly darker and almost sounds, with the slight distortion on Arce’s guitar, as if it could have come from Pot Head, the EP the band released in 2005. Mario Lalli, the bass player, begins the third song, ‘Naomi Crayola’ with a throbbing single note, aided by Bill Stimson’s metronomic drumming. Imagine if Can grew up near the beach, it’s that sort of vibe. The only problem with the song – and the album, as it happens – is that it is too short. Ryan’s violin returns in ‘The Secret Language of Elephants’, this time playing the role of keeping the main vamp alive while Arce’s guitar generates an evocative soundscape that opens in your mind a wide, violet sky like that above a desert the moment after the sun disappears for the night. The closing song and title track is the most free of the five on the album, with Stimson’s beat conjuring memories of Kyuss’s more mellow moments from Welcome to Sky Valley, Lalli’s bass marking the simplest of bottom ends and Arce having a ball over the top. (taken from the band's Bandcamp)

With CD.

Limited edition.

Pressing error on side D, piece of paper pressed in to vinyl, audible. Besides that vinyl is close to NM. Original inner sleeves. With booklet.

Cover close to NM

Squadra Omega is one of the bands which best represents the vast spectrum of the Italian underground. Psychedelic, avant-garde, jazz-rock, improvisation, kraut-rock, rock in opposition and ethno-tribalism blend seamlessly into the work of a collective that moves and expands depending on the urgency of the moment, focused around a core that rotates around the two members OmegaMatt and OmegaG8. In the band's wide discography we find compositional freedom, improvised jam-sessions in and a amplitude of references, all of which move between different spaces and times.

Materia Oscura (Dark matter) offers a glimpse at the same time the soil of the "rock" matter as well as the alien, seen from multiple points of view, neighbors and materials distant and mysterious. Three tracks that stretch their eyes at Orient or Africa as well as into the depths of the cosmos, landing on the side of the art-rock of the '70s and towards some psychedelic, visionary, cinematic drives then explode into a real ecstatic trip. Inputs from Coltrane, Canterburian jazz-rock, Grateful Dead and Synthy-Space views are melted into free-form landings until they discover their own personal form of prog. Different Universes collide and coexist in the band in a constant mutation, maintaining faith in one single ideal: "music for the third eye”.

The album comes in a thick carton cover and with a central hole.

Six volumes worth of licensed tracks released in just three years: doing the Dark Lord’s work isn’t an easy job, but somebody’s gotta do it, so here is Brown Acid - The Sixth Trip, with more lined up. The heads just can’t get enough obscure hard rock, heavy psych, and proto-metal from the late‘60s and ‘70s!

This time around Riding Easy present ten deep cuts from across the continental USA and one from the neighbors up North. This trip kicks off with an outrageous number from Gold out of San Francisco circa 1970. The band used to open their sets with this over-the-top frantic jammer which is absolutely mind-blowing! Delving deeper into the depths, Canadians continue to prove that they could bang heads with the best of ‘em! Heat Exchange from Toronto released the rollicking ripper “Inferno” on the Yorkville label way back in 1968 and it’s still thumping almost fifty years later.

Some more examples of the mind-melting tracks on this platter: Missouri isn’t a state that brought us a lot of heavy 45s, but there are a handful of outstanding tracks, one of which is the funk-laced anthem “Give Me Time” by Backwood Memory from Kansas City. Youngstown, Ohio, meanwhile, might have been the Hard Rock Mecca back in the day. Travis is yet another Youngstown group that aimed to get asses out of seats and out in the streets. Truth & Janey had their incredible proto-metal masterpiece 1976 album No Rest For The Wicked; released four years earlier, “Midnight Horseman” was a 45-only track, included here!

Those are just some of the fruits of months worth of record digging and detective work included on this latest installment. This is the stuff that makes life worth living, at least until the next Trip…

Spiny Normen were an incredible mid-’70s Houston hard rock, progressive, psychedelic rock band that featured mellotron, Vox Jaguar, crunchy, heavy guitars, flute with echo effects, and lots more. A totally lost relic, this self-titled album was recorded at a community college and never released. The recording is very English, dark, mysterious and proggy, but also very acid-drenched.

2022 repress

I was invited to perform in Melbourne, Australia. It happened thanks to my dear old friend Mick Glossop, who made the suggestion to Sophia Brous, at the time the curator of a music-festival called “Supersense” at the Melbourne Arts Centre in summer 2015. In addition to the solo performance I’d planned, Sophia proposed an additional collaboration or session performances with some of the other participating musicians. I had never been very happy in performing “public sessions". I’ve always tried to first look for a conceptual approach, and my wife, Ilona J. Ziok, came up with the idea of performing some Ash Ra Tempel classics. That’s when the idea for an “Experience” was born. I decided that pieces from the second and third Ash Ra Tempel albums “Schwingungen” and “Seven Up” (both from 1972) would be most appropriate for a group performance with Ariel Pink, Shags Chamberlain and Oren Ambarchi. We conversed by email, and much to my surprise, they all claimed to be very familiar with this music. … It felt a bit like pushing at open doors - or, to put it another way - it felt like being welcomed with open arms!

Solar Project don´t try to impress with technical craftsmanship, fast licks or complex passages, but concentrate with a Pink Floyd-like overall sound. This overall picture is filled with excellent keyboard and guitar parts, various singing voices, mysterious sound effects and nice solos. The fact that Solar Project are heavily influenced by Pink Floyd only contributes to the overall idea. On Here I am, you hear that Solar Project do have a sound of their own. The core of the band is formed by keyboardist Robert Valet and guitarist Peter Terhoeven, two German musicians with a progressive heart of gold. They are assisted by several guest musicians, who are the backing band for Solar Project. Complex art rock, sometimes heavy, sometimes floydian-style filigrane, sometimes psychedelic, this perfectly describes the musical spectrum.

The releases comes in a fold out cover.

Issued in 1983 as a limited private pressing, ‘Die Erde und Ich sind Eins’ was Florian Fricke’s first ‘solo’ LP. It features the guitar of his Popol Vuh partner Daniel Fichelsher and vocals by Anni Morris Wieland, Bettina Fricke Waldthausend, Dieter Prym, Florian Fricke, Friedemann Berger, Friedemann Wieland, Gisela Von Doering, Ingeborg Jahnke, Jan Lorck-Shjmerning, Jana Faust, Karl F. Weber and Klaudia Wieland.

‘You could label it as ‘body-space-music’ (Körperraummusik) where you sing inside the body and take it in such a way that every cell in the body, from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, starts to vibrate. In order to be able to realise this I have experimented to find where speech resonates in the body. The consonants vibrate at the body walls, the bones and flesh and the vowels fill the body spaces. And that sounds like a gong-concert: it also has a great therapeutic effect.’ (FLORIAN FRICKE)

Being a private pressing 'Die erde un ich sind eins' has become one of the rarest LPs in the Popol Vuh saga, a mint original may cost you over 400 euros. Comes in original artwork plus the 50 page book that Fricke wrote for the release but was never published (until now!), plus an insert with liner notes by Dolf Mulder & Original insert all in a limited edition of 500 copies only.

In 1995, Zao released their first album, "All Else Failed," on Steadfast Records. Never a band to repeat a past success and always searching for new boundaries to push within their own music, "The Well-Intentioned Virus" finds Zao utilizing just as many familiar touchstones from their catalog as introducting new ones. Dense and clastrophobic one moment, beautiful and spacious the next. Vinyl version includes digital download.

Signed cover! Stuffed corner. Original inner sleeve. Vinyl is close to NM.