"Look is a concentrated soundscape experience inspired by Japanese synth guitars from the 1970's. An exciting excursion from his previous singer-songwriter material, this release fits in line with similarly groundbreaking records such as Brian Eno's "Music for Airports".”

“Blake Mills earned a reputation as producer and guitarist who prized authenticity in his work, which is what makes this 2018 album Look so startling. Consisting of five tracks of wordless, formless ambient music, Look is...

One of the legendary fiascos of modern music, which deserves a second look and reconsideration.
The concert was originally conceived as a "live workshop" of newly composed music which would be recorded for release by United Artists (this was also a way to save money) but rescheduling, lack of rehearsal time, poor sound and interruptions led to the event and subsequent album, which featured only about half the material recorded, being considered a disaster, it features the leader performing...

“Was there ever a more paradoxical band than the Minutemen? Comprising Dennes D. Boon, Mike Watt and drummer George Hurley, all natives of working class seaport San Pedro.
Forever jocular and unpretentious to a fault, the Minutemen were alt-rock's blue-collar, union heavies of the 80s underground while also profoundly avant-garde. This was the age of Reagan, ripe for tearing apart and kicking the crap out of, but rather than get lost in a verbal revolt and a street riot, the Minutemen made their own...

This 1976 release is one of Joni’s very greatest of great works. She’s in her full exploratory period here, using jazz influences and crazy tunings and a relatively small number of musicians, all of whom turn in stunning, restrained performances which are perfectly subservient to the needs of the songs. Even Jaco Pastorious, one of the most tragically talented musicians ever, and who never met a performance need that he couldn’t over-play on, is simply perfect on here.

“Joni Mitchell's Hejira is...

“Throughout the 70s, Joni Mitchell established herself as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, with albums such as Blue, Court And Spark and The Hissing Of Summer Lawns pushing the boundaries of what was expected of the “singer-songwriter”.
Moving to a new label, Geffen, at the start of the 80s, and embarking on yet more wide-ranging excursions that took in the burgeoning synth-pop sound, Mitchell staged the Refuge tour of 1983, in support of her then latest album, Wild Things Run...

“New album by Sweden's long-standing project Moljebka Pvlse. The source material and foundation for this album are field-recordings by Mathias Josefson collected on a journey through the deserts of the American Southwest and translated into an acoustic travel journal through a spectral landscape, where the edges of memory and imagination are blurred.
Joining Mathias on this album is John Björkman, who performs on instruments acquired on his travels to Nepal and whose performance was recorded at the...

Live, professional (radio?) recordings by Monk and his long-standing group (Charlie Rouse, Butch Warren, Ben Riley), recorded in Paris in 1964.

Thelonious Monk-piano
Ray Copeland-trumpet
Clark Terry-trumpet
Jimmy Cleveland-trombone
Phil Woods-alto sax
Charlie Rouse-tenor sax
Johnny Griffin-tenor sax
Larry Gales-bass
Ben Riley-drums

This excellent recording of a show from 11/3/67 has been released a zillion ways, but it’s a very rare chance to hear Monk with a larger group in front of an audience.

“Pianist/composer Thelonious Monk led a quartet throughout the 1960s but on a European tour in

“Thelonious Monk (piano/arranger) began his illustrious relationship with Riverside Records on the pair of July 21 and 27, 1955, dates needed to complete the eight sides for Plays Duke Ellington (1955).
Monk commands a trio that also presents the talents of Oscar Pettiford (bass) and Kenny Clarke (drums) on all the tracks sans "Solitude," which appropriately enough features an unaccompanied piano. The delicacy and inherently intricate melodies that Duke Ellington is best known for are perfectly....

This is the demo tape from late 1965 that got them their Polydor contract and led to their early 1966 album, as well as including their 1964 pre-Monks single.
It’s a little less primal and unhinged, but it’s also six months earlier! It’s still shocking to believe that anything even remotely like this existed in 1965
The Monks were a crazy, pre-punk reductionist rock band made up of five US soldiers stationed in Germany, who stayed in Germany after their discharge from the service and who...

“Due to interpersonal strife, the Moody Blues called it quits between 1972's Seventh Sojourn and 1978's Octave. Presumably attempting to satiate hungry Moodies fans, Threshold released this vintage concert recording from a 1969 Royal Albert Hall show. The band was young and at the peak of its popularity, and they sound full of promise and ambition. Most of the songs come from their classic concept album Days of Future Passed and its two successors. Having not yet settled into a more comfortable ballad...

“Oddly enough, this was the group's poorest-selling album of their psychedelic era, taking a lot longer to go gold -- for all of their presumed connection to their audience, the band was perhaps stretching that link a little thinner than usual here. The material dwells mostly on time and what its passage means, and there is a peculiar feeling of loneliness and isolation to many of the songs. This was also the last of the group's big "studio" sound productions, built up in layer upon layer of overdubbed...

Moondog was a mostly self-taught blind composer who was a fixture on streetcorners in Manhattan from the 1940's through the early 1970's, playing his compositions for whatever passersby would give him and also selling printed music. He befriended Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman among others, and my wife remembers cutting out of high school, hitch-hiking to NYC and seeing him on the street corner.
He belongs to that rare and wonderful American maverick composer school that produced Charles Ives and...

Released in 1984, this was the final recording the made as "A. More / Anthony More" (and his last solo album), this was his last 'indie rock' release of the late 70s/early 80s.
Moore was a classical composer, doing very avant garde/minimal music ala John Cage, etc in the very early 1970s, and then somehow he fell into the sphere of Faust and Peter Blegvad and Dagmar Krause, and formed Slapp Happy with Krause and Blegvad and collaborated with all of them. Then onto Henry Cow, then onto a solo career...

Take a bunch of old, traditional English ballads, a young man who loves them but also loves electronica and this is what you get. Not for traditionalists, but then again, neither was Fairport Convention...until one day it was! Conditionally recommended!

"This is just folk music from the point of view of someone that has heard hip-hop and The Smiths and Radiohead and S-Club"-Jim Moray

"This the lowdown on Moray: the man is only 21 and has un undying love for old, traditional English folk...

"A mistaken but widely-held view of Japanese music is that it consists of two completely separate and non-communicating areas: on one hand the disposable J-pop music scene based on Western models, on the other the traditional classical music world with...

“With the brilliant 'Tupelo Honey' due for release the following month, Van Morrison performed this remarkable set in San Francisco on September 5th 1971 for broadcast on KSAN-FM. Featuring a crack band, it finds him playing a variety of gems, including material from 'Astral Weeks', 'Moondance' and 'His Band & The Street Choir' as well as classic covers. A stunning overview of his solo career to date, this remastered concert is presented here in a six panel digipak together with 8 page booklet containing...

“A laid back mix of spoken word poetry from Gilli Smyth and jazzy, classic Gong textures, vignettes and humor. A lot of sax, chilled out synth and glissando guitar on this one. Overall a relaxing and artistic effort that will soothe and inspire if you approach it with an open mind. A work of art and one of the best post-70s Gong-affiliated releases I've heard.”–rym

Mountain was a New York trio of hard rockers who formed during the first generation of proto-metal and featured a dense, blues-based sound performed by Leslie West (guitar & vocals), Felix Pappalardi (bass & vocals - who, although he was a musician first, had made his name as the producer of Cream) and Corky Laing (drums). This was their first album.

"Often billed as a junior-league version of Cream, Climbing!, Mountain's debut, had a lot of things going for it as well. Indeed, West was a...

One of a number of early/mid 70s albums featuring the great and still undervalued guitarist Ray Russell in a progressive/hard rock vein. The music is definitely of its time, but Ray's talents were and still are timeless.

"Mouse had their one and only album release during 1973 and its rareness has guaranteed it a place in the Record Collector Rare Record Price guide at £80 per copy! Now released on CD for the first time with 4 bonus tracks. The remastering and artwork has been overseen by Ray...

Two pretty hot performances from two stages of Muddy’s career. The previously unreleased Boston show is good quality if a bit ‘oversaturated, sounding like a radio broadcast or soundboard, while the Newport show was his first live album and has him with truly a classic lineup of his band.

“Muddy Waters shows all new comers how to play the blues live in Boston back in 1976. Smoking hot renditions of all his best songs: Caledonia, Hoochie Coochie Man, Mannish Boy.
Muddy's back up band is...

"Na Margon is a Bauta label release, written by Ronnie Ehrs with the intention "to capture the uttermost evil and the uttermost good put to music". Ehrs says, "I do not know if I did succeed, however I would like to think that certain parts of the musi...

I actually saw this concert; it was the second time I saw Naked City and my first time at the Victo Festival!

“Naked City, live at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Quebec on October 9, 1988 Led by composer and saxophonist John Zorn, Naked City featured a phenomenal concentration of talent from downtown New York's experimental music scene. Their line-up also included bassist Fred Frith, guitarist Bill Frisell, keyboardist Wayne Horvitz, and drummer Joey Baron...

Lelo was the keyboardist for Grupo Um, a very good Brasilian fusion band. This solo album was recorded in 1987 and has never been on CD before. Remastered from the master tapes, with photos and information (all in Portuguese only). It also includes almo..

“We welcome Berlin based Italian Vince Gagliardi and his audiovisual project The Nent, who’s dream-like aesthetic is rooted in a passion for broken ambient textures, eerie field recordings and poignant percussive elements. His debut album “Vulner“ (mastered at Dadub Studio) offers 3 long progressions with explosive culminations. Mostly composed with field recordings and samples collected over the last sixteen years, all with a deep personal meaning. All tracks are interconnected and draw a path from...