In the early 1980's, after disbanding the great trio Massacre, Fred Frith formed Skeleton Crew as a sort of a three person 1-man band, with Tom Cora (Curlew) and Dave Newhouse (The Muffins). Dave left pretty soon after, and for the next few years, the two man Skeleton Crew toured all over everywhere, bringing their unique blend of high musicianship (Fred on violin, guitar, half a drumset, vocals and Tom on cello, guitar, bass, the other half of the drumset and vocals) and low-tech protest song and...

“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...

Recorded live in 1984 at one of Sun Ra's many US concerts, this captures the Arkhestra in full big band mode, blowing up a storm that could probably be heard on Venus. This is a good, solid, representative mid 80's show with very good sonics (by Ra standards) by the Arkestra.

“This is a stunning late period Ra album. Beautiful space-chants and atonal keyboard freakouts plus a mix of Ellingtonian Ra-jazz as only the Arkestra could do it.
Maybe not the album to start with if you are unfamiliar..

"Originally released by Saturn in 1979, this is a studio recording by a large ensemble (including, unusually, electric guitar and bass). These are the first recordings of the titles included (though they were played live a few months earlier on German radio). Springtime Again is a floating, sonically open composition, with a distant sung ostinato, interestingly mixed. The door of the Cosmos, which features June Tyson, is a relaxed groove-driven piece in which electric piano, guitar and bass function as...

Wild, raucous show from Ra's early 70s prime (as opposed to his many other primes) features him in full glory in front of a big crowd who obviously are having a great time and 'get it' and are feeding back the energy to the band that the band are giving..

This Heat were a UK trio who were probably the closest that we've come to the original, groundbreaking Faust albums - a band that understood & used the studio as an integral part of their sound. Unlike Faust, they were (a) a great live act & (b) much..

"Between “Blue & Yellow” and “Deceit” came the EP, “Health & Efficiency”. It bridges a gap between the mostly improvisational former, and the highly composed latter, showing great diversity in the band’s sound in general, as well as nicely documenting their two extreme directions.
The title track is This Heat’s single most high-energy piece ever, and is a tour de force of singing, ensemble playing and sound texture; It is propelled along by Charles Bullen’s signature guitar strumming & ratcheting...

Great sounding and spirited shows from the John Peel show. Recommended.

"This Heat’s earliest public recordings came from two sessions for John Peel’s BBC radio show, in April and October of 1977. Peel was one of their greatest enthusiasts at the time, hearing excellence in the band’s mixed repertoire of post-krautrock songs and uniquely approached improvisation. Of special merit here is the band’s maverick use of real-time tape loops to augment their basic three-piece sound, as well as their...

"Repeat is This Heat’s fourth album proper, posthumously released in 1993. It harbours the most extreme musical side of This Heat’s experimental tendencies on disc, and is assuredly the band’s most radical offering. The title track is an oxymoron: An extended/edited version of the piece “24 Track Loop”, which had been previously issued on the Recommended Records’ double lp sampler in 1981, heard here sans the harmonizer effect. The original tracks were produced by David Cunningham (Flying Lizards)...

“A suite of fiendishly complex compositions for mixed real and virtual resources. Bob Drake, Djorge Delibasic, Pegja Milosavljevic and Chris Cutler make appearances - playing electric guitar, bass, drums and virtuoso violin between them, but mainly it is Stevan who plays all kinds of keyboards, strings, double bass, zither, samples and software.
Three thoroughly through-composed and finely articulated pieces make up this very concentrated suite: Concerto Grosso (for keyboards, string instruments and..

? known to this audience for his work with The Science Group. The part below about sounding like all possible musics being stuck in a bag together sorta sums up my very confused feelings about this after only one listening. More time is de...

"Keystone works from the various streams of musique concrete, electronic music, soundscape, electroacoustics and plunderphonics - including two masterworks from Eastern Europe, a territory traditionally overlooked in collections of this medium.
This is the classic collection of Contemporary, Concrete, Tapeworked and Processed works - and an indispensable survey of a crucial field:
It comprises: John Oswald's 'Parade', a complex work drawn and extended from Satie's celebrated ballet composition...

All otherwise unavailable recordings by Thinking Plague, Biota, ZGA, Blitzoids, Les Sales Combles, Biota, N.O.R.M.A., John Oswald, David Myers/Arcane Device, Cornelius Cardew, and much more. [ReR]

The ReR Quarterly was a series run by Chris Cutler and ReR in the middle / late 80s that included a vinyl lp and large magazine bundled together. It featured interesting articles - some quite in depth - about music and sound and art and music that 'related'.
Basically it was the sort of thing that was really fun and really handsome and that the internet killed off completely
This CD features some of the things featured on the first volume (4 issues) of the quarterly.
Included are...

Jack was the bassist of Forever Einstein, & a monster player. This record of solo bass (with live mutliple overdubbing, due to the wonders of digital devices) features 3 rock chestnuts: I Want You (Shes So Heavy) by The Beatles, Manic Depression by Jim...

One doesnt normally think of the tuba as a sexy, dark electronic instrument, fronting a megalithic industrial soundscape band. Here Michael Vogt, lead tuba player with the Berlin Symphony orchestra, seems to have done just that. One very childish trace...

"After a break of six years, Chris Cutler, Bob Drake and Lukas Simonis, now with added ingredient Pierre Omer, present the second volume of recordings by the elusive VRIL - a band who revive and update both the great institution of the guitar...

When Is Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Lars Pedersen. His music here is complex sound collages and dramatic narative (with words by Chris Cutler) mixed with music. This combines 40 minutes of new work with the 20' "Death In The Blue Lake".

Woof was Tim Hodgkinson's label. This release is a pretty big deal, if only for the inclusion of the really, really great "I Do, I Do...I Don’t, I Don’t" EP by Tim and Bill Gilonis, which has been unavailable for over 20 years, was a miserable grotty pressing to begin with, and was Tim's very first post-Cow recordings and the roots of The Work. Not to mention the inclusion of Houdini, one of The Work's greatest...uh...works!

"This CD comprises all four 7” releases by the British underground....

This is a really great album, although I didn’t appreciate it as much when it was first released, because I was a TOTAL fan of Slow Crimes by The Work, and only half that band appears here.
Having said that, as time has gone on, I’ve grown more and more to be aware of what a splendid performance is captured here AND ALSO to appreciate what a utterly slaying performance Chris gives on drums!
And now with the CD issue of this, Udi made what I always thought of a not very good live recording sound...

Here's something I *never* thought I would see; an album of 'new' (new as in unheard) material by The Work! If you don’t know The Work, they were formed by Tim Hodgkinson after Henry Cow and they are one of the greatest ‘difficult rock music’ bands of the 80s and one of the least heralded.

"The 4th World is the band's long-lost, never before issued, very last album, from 1994. Succeeding See by some two years, it shares that album's aesthetics and approach -- an economy of means, and superior...

Long out of print second ReR release by this Rigan electro-acoustic ensemble. “Stonery industrial with noise pop hints. Great and psychedelic.”

The 1st by the duo of Hector Zazou & Joseph Racaille plus guests. Primitive electronics, reeds, electric & acoustic pianos, noise, songs, & the hovering spirit of Satie. Not as divine as Traite De Mechanique, but still an excellent and essential releas...

“This legendary band, whose reputation continues to grow as time passes, were gone before anyone knew they were there. They played a handful of concerts, reformed very briefly to make a second LP, then immediately disbanded again. But the records attracted a cult following, especially in Japan.
Their existence became tenuous, flickering, mythological. How come there's an original Beefheart drawing on the inside cover of their first LP? Why were they invited onto France Culture to debate...