Chrome-ALIEN SOUNDTRACKS (1978)

With Helios Creed recruited to replace original member Mike Low (though allegedly Edge initially turned Creed down after the latter appeared wearing a pirate outfit or something similar), Chrome started kicking into high gear at last. While Spain and Lambdin weren't out of the picture yet, cowriting half the songs with Edge, Creed's mind-melting guitar swiftly took prominence, turning a wiggy band into a total headtrip. Rather than just aiming at acid-rock styling, Creed stuffed his fretbending into an evil, compressed aggro-sound, at once psychedelic and totally in-your-face. Edge equals the activity by stepping into the vocal role himself, sounding like Iggy on a live wire with occasional attempts at weird, wailed crooning, while his electronics and drumming starts sounding a lot more vicious and totally scuzzed as well. It's not the short sharp shock of punk rock per se -- it just sounds like the title puts it, alien, sounds and TV samples firing out of nowhere and throwing the listener off balance. That many numbers are constructed out of short fragments adds to the weird overlay. Even the quieter numbers like "All Data Lost" play around with echo and drone to create disturbing results. The songs themselves allegedly were recorded as the soundtrack to a live sex show, which probably goes a long way towards explaining the sex and sci-fi combination of much of the lyrics. Not to mention the titles -- to quote some at random: "Nova Feedback," "Magnetic Dwarf Reptile," and the truly hilarious "Pigmies in Zee Dark" (there's some creepy crooning on this one) and "Slip It to the Android." The artwork adds to the weird effect -- a hand-colored late fifties 'cool' living room and busty babe setup with the band's and album name hand-scrawled in usual Chrome fashion over it, plus huge disembodied eyes and lips that make everything really disturbing. Overall, the combination of screwy sound and art on a budget placed Chrome as something like West Coast cousins of early Pere Ubu and Destroy All Monsters -- not a bad place to be.

-Ned Raggett, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Chrome-ALIEN SOUNDTRACKS (1978)
320kbps

THE POP GROUP

When The Pop Group first came onto the scene in late 1978 they were being hailed in the UK press as one of the saviours of rock and roll, and with good reason as the group's music made almost everything being created at the time seem old hat over night. The Pop Group's debut single "She Is Beyond Good and Evil" released in 1979 was an instant classic and one of the landmark recordings of the 1970's, it was a seething tense piece of aggressive funk/punk/dub/free jazz that demanded attention. It sounded like nothing in the world at the time of it's release and gave me the same feeling as when I heard Public Image Ltd.'s first single, it seemed to hint at endless possibilties for rock and roll. The B side "3:38" should also mentioned this was a pulverizing dose of mind-numbing dub that seemed to look ahead to Pop Group lead singer Mark Stewart's trailblazing work in the 80's with Mafia. A CD re-issue of "Y" in 1996 strangely omitted this great track from the release, WHY?

Anyway the original release of "Y" opened with a stick of dynamite called "Thief of Fire" which was the group at it's best, this is a blistering ride through the bushes of Viet-Nam highlighted by Simon Underwood's funk/dub bass playing, the twin Beefheart guitar attack of Gareth Sager and John Waddington, and Mark Stewart's shrieking "my face is on fire" vocals, Sager also provides some squealing saxophone in the song's mid section. I remember a Melody Maker piece on the group around the time of the release of this album where the band admitted to listening to loads of King Tubby and Ornette Coleman's "Free Jazz" while they recorded the album, which makes perfect sense.

The next track on the album is a very experimental piece called "Snow Girl" which is driven by some Cecil Taylor type piano, shotgun blasts of guitar from Waddington and Sager and gutwrenching bass slaps by Underwood, Stewart provides a bizarre but strangely catchy vocal. The next track is the truly frightening "Blood Money" which is a nightmare soundscape where Stewart screams bloody murder in the background, he seems to be screaming about spiders being all over his chest, he sounds like Damo Suzuki on that track on Can's "Tago Mago" where Damo seems like he's being tortured, the music on "Blood Money" is thrilling it's a real meltdown of all the instruments into one, Gareth Sager plays some sax lines that sound like the bagpipe wizard Rufus Harley.



"We Are Time" is my favorite track on the record and comes at you like a commando raid on your brain, this track is truly terrifying and singer Stewart sounds like he is coming out of his own skin, the guitar playing by Sager and Waddington is dazzling. The group then throws you a big league curveball called "The Savage Sea" this one opens with an almost melodic piano and it could almost be a Pop Group ballad!, Stewart is a little more restrained on this number, I think the piano part was nicked by The Teardrop Explodes on their great B-side "Window Shopping For A New Crown Of Thorns" and The Pop Group's influence can also be felt on the Teardrops other freakout B-side "Strange House In The Snow".

"Words Disobey Me" is another wildly experimental piece in the style of "Blood Money". "Don't Call Me Pain" opens with a sax riff that sounds like it is being played by Traffic's Chris Wood, on this one Stewart screams "Don't Call Me Pain, My Name Is Mystery" and who am I to doubt him, the song is wrapped up with a fine free jazz baching track. With "The Boys From Brazil" it's back to free jazz territory, again Sager's sax reminds one of Chris Wood while Underwood plays a great funky bass riff, the guitars collide with each other at the end and it is just plain awesome. The record finishes with a stripped down dirge called "Don't Sell Your Dreams" where Stewart sounds totally spent and on the verge of collapse, the musical backing is superb, full of space and it reminds me of the Pharoah Sanders group on "Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt" the guitar playing is full on Sonny Sharrock!, the record then just fades quietly into oblivion leaving you feeling totally drained.

After playing "Y" you wonder how the group ever hoped to top it, they never did, but their second album was great as well but just not as good as "Y", few albums are. The Pop Group finished in 1981 and splintered into groups like Rip, Rig and Panic, The New Age Steppers and most importantly Mark Stewart and Mafia, Stewart really carried the flame from the original Pop Group and much of his work with Mafia is on par with the best of The Pop Group yet his records have been totally ignored.
"Y" is the best place to start to get to know the music of Mark Stewart and company, in my opinion it's one of the most original and inspiring records ever made.

-Dave Furgess, headheritage.co.uk

DOWNLOAD:
Y (1979)
FOR HOW MUCH LONGER DO WE TOLERATE MASS MURDER? (1980)
WE ARE TIME (1980 compilation)
WE ARE ALL PROSTITUTES (1998 compilation)
320kbps

Chrome-HALF MACHINE LIP MOVES (1979)

With Lambdin out and Spain barely there at all, everything rapidly became a Edge/Creed show in the realm of Chrome by the time of Half Machine Lip Moves. The basic tropes having been established -- aggressive but cryptic performance and production, jump cuts between and in songs, judicious use of sampling and production craziness and an overall air of looming science fiction apocalypse and doom -- all Edge and Creed had to do was perfect it. Starting with the fragmented assault of "TV as Eyes," which rapidly descends into heavily treated conversational snippets from TV and deep, droning keyboards, Half Machine sounds like a weird broadcast from thousand of miles away where rock is treated as an exotic musical form. Creed fully gets to shine here, his pitched-up/pitched-down guitars as good an example of psychedelic assault as anything. Sprawled all over the beeps and murmurs of the songs, not to mention Edge's still self-created drumming and Iggyish vocal interjections, it makes everything sound utterly disturbed. If not as obsessed with tempo shifts and full oddity as, say, Faust, Half Machine is still pretty close to that band's level of Krautrock playfulness and explosion. Two of the relative saner numbers are practically power-pop, at least in Chrome terms. "March of the Chrome Police (A Cold Clamey Bombing)" has Edge sneering an actual vocal hook over a brisk beat, even while Creed gets progressively more fried on the guitar and rumbling echoed laughter and barks erupt in the mix. "You've Been Duplicated," meanwhile, also has something of a vocal hook, only buried under so many levels of distortion that it might as well be a malfunctioning keyboard being played among the clattering percussion and other sounds. A suitably strange cover shot of a fully head-bandaged mannequin seemingly floating in space completes the package.

-Ned Raggett, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Chrome-HALF MACHINE LIP MOVES (1979)
320kbps

Hüsker Dü-NEW DAY RISING (1985)

For New Day Rising, the follow-up to their breakthrough double-album Zen Arcade, Hüsker Dü replaced concept with conciseness, concentrating on individual songs delivered as scalding post-hardcore pop. New Day Rising is not only a more vicious and relentless record than Zen Arcade, it's more melodic. Bob Mould and Grant Hart have written tightly crafted, melodic pop songs that don't compromise Hüsker's volcanic, unchecked power. Mould and Hart's songs owe a great deal to '60s pop, as the verses and choruses ebb and flow with immediately catchy hooks. Occasionally, the razor-thin production and waves of noise mean that it takes a little bit of effort to pick out the melodies, but more often the furious noise and melodies fuse together to create an overwhelming sonic force. It's possible to hear the rivalry between Mould and Hart on the album itself -- each song is like a game of one-upmanship, as Mould responds to "The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill" with "Celebrated Summer." Neither songwriter slips -- both turn in songs that are catchy, clever, and alternately wracked with pain or teeming with humor. New Day Rising is a positively cathartic record and ranks as Hüsker Dü's most sustained moment of pure power.

-Stephen Thomas Erlewine, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Hüsker Dü-NEW DAY RISING (1985)
320kbps

Hüsker Dü-ZEN ARCADE (1984)

In many ways, it's impossible to overestimate the impact of Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade on the American rock underground in the '80s. It's the record that exploded the limits of hardcore and what it could achieve. Hüsker Dü broke all of the rules with Zen Arcade. First and foremost, it's a sprawling concept album, even if the concept isn't immediately clear or comprehensible. More important are the individual songs. Both Bob Mould and Grant Hart abandoned the strict "fast, hard, loud" rules of hardcore punk with their songs for Zen Arcade. Without turning down the volume, Hüsker Dü try everything -- pop songs, tape experiments, acoustic songs, pianos, noisy psychedelia. Hüsker Dü willed themselves to make such a sprawling record -- as the liner notes state, the album was recorded and mixed within 85 hours and consists almost entirely of first takes. That reckless, ridiculously single-minded approach does result in some weak moments -- the sound is thin and the instrumentals drag on a bit too long -- but it's also the key to the success of Zen Arcade. Hüsker Dü sound phenomenally strong and possessed, as if they could do anything. The sonic experimentation is bolstered by Mould and Hart's increased sense of songcraft. Neither writer is afraid to let his pop influences show on Zen Arcade, which gives the songs -- from the unrestrained rage of "Something I Learned Today" and the bitter, acoustic "Never Talking to You Again" to the eerie "Pink Turns to Blue" and anthemic "Turn On the News" -- their weight. It's music that is informed by hardcore punk and indie rock ideals without being limited by them.

-Stephen Thomas Erlewine, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Hüsker Dü-ZEN ARCADE (1984)
320kbps

Black Tambourine-COMPLETE RECORDINGS (1999)

Black Tambourine was one of the first (and finest) bands to grace the Slumberland catalog -- the label's reissue of their work collects all of the material from the short string of singles they released before moving on to other projects. Slumberland's decision to collect and reissue the material is commendable -- Black Tambourine's work can truly be described as seminal, not only because the band's members moved on to such excellent projects (Archie Moore and Brian Nelson to Velocity Girl, and Pam Berry to the Glo-Worms and the Castaway Stones), but also because the band's sound practically defines the state of indie rock in the early '90s, when many American bands were looking to Britain's shoegazing trend for inspiration. As one might expect, Black Tambourine's noisy guitars and ethereal female vocals tend to sound like a more conventionally indie pop-based warm-up to the blissful noise of Velocity Girl's Copacetic -- in fact, the material on Complete Recordings frequently surpasses Copacetic, with its shambling and C-86 influences lending it a purity and indie charm that was traded for focus and complexity at the onset of Velocity Girl's career. The album also serves as a time capsule for the indie-pop culture of its contemporaries -- there's the inordinate number of songs about crushes, songs about crushes on Stephen Pastel ("Throw Aggi from the Bridge"), a high level of attention to British music, and all of the other indie-pop hallmarks that spread during the '90s (as typified by some wonderfully nostalgic liner notes). It's doubtful that too many of the bands that followed in this vein drew their inspiration specifically from Black Tambourine, but there's still a heavy debt owed to them, and Slumberland's reissue of Complete Recordings is an excellent way to pay it.

-Nitsuh Abebe, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Black Tambourine-COMPLETE RECORDINGS (1999)
mirror
320kbps

The Who-THE WHO SELL OUT DELUXE (1967, 2009)

I had a vinyl rip uploaded earlier today, but I just found out about this new special edition that tops it, so I yanked the old rip. Sorry for the confusion, duders. This has both stereo and mono versions (listen to the mono, I beg you) and a ton of bonus tracks and outtakes that all would have been top tracks on any Who album. Even though I love WHO'S NEXT and TOMMY and stuff, my heart is really with the pre-stadium rock version of the band. -Ian!

Pete Townshend originally planned The Who Sell Out as a concept album of sorts that would simultaneously mock and pay tribute to pirate radio stations, complete with fake jingles and commercials linking the tracks. For reasons that remain somewhat ill defined, the concept wasn't quite driven to completion, breaking down around the middle of side two (on the original vinyl configuration). Nonetheless, on strictly musical merits, it's a terrific set of songs that ultimately stands as one of the group's greatest achievements. "I Can See for Miles" (a Top Ten hit) is the Who at their most thunderous; tinges of psychedelia add a rush to "Armenia City in the Sky" and "Relax"; "I Can't Reach You" finds Townshend beginning to stretch himself into quasi-spiritual territory; and "Tattoo" and the acoustic "Sunrise" show introspective, vulnerable sides to the singer/songwriter that had previously been hidden.



"Rael" was another mini-opera, with musical motifs that reappeared in Tommy. The album is as perfect a balance between melodic mod pop and powerful instrumentation as the Who (or any other group) would achieve; psychedelic pop was never as jubilant, not to say funny (the fake commercials and jingles interspersed between the songs are a hoot). The 1995 CD reissue has over half a dozen interesting outtakes from the time of the sessions, as well as unused commercials, the B-side "Someone's Coming," and an alternate version of "Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand."

-Richie Unterberger, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
The Who-THE WHO SELL OUT DELUXE (1967, 2009)
320kbps from FLAC

Weird....

...And Tom Scharpling is playing "Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand" on The BEST SHOW on WFMU.

I'm gonna re-up THE WHO SELL OUT because I just heard there was a super deluxe new version that includes the mono mix. -Ian!

Petra Haden-PETRA HADEN SINGS THE WHO SELL OUT (2005)

I was a little embarrassed to realize I was enjoying my own music so much, for in a way it was like hearing it for the first time. What Petra does with her voice, which is not so easy to do, is challenge the entire rock framework ... When she does depart from the original music she does it purely to bring a little piece of herself -- and when she appears she is so very welcome. I felt like I'd received something better than a Grammy. -Pete Townshend

So many times the title of an album is peripheral to what the contents actually hold. In the case of Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out it is perfectly descriptive because, yes, Petra Haden does sing the Who's Who Sell Out album right down to the make-believe ads that link the songs. Not just the vocals but all the instruments too. Working from a suggestion from Mike Watt (who may or may not have remembered the Who's own foray into singing instrumental parts on "A Quick One, While He's Away" when they had to sing "cello, cello, cello" because they couldn't afford to hire the real thing), Haden spent time during the span of three years (2000-2003) re-creating the sound of the Who's pop-art masterpiece using her voice and an old eight-track recorder. The results are pretty amazing. Apart from an occasional rhythmic stumble and the tendency for the drum sounds to sound like synsonic drums, she really nails the layered, flowing and psychedelic in the true sense of the word feel of the original album. She pulls off the feat of being reverent to the original material while also sounding completely out on a limb artistically. Never trying to imitate instruments exactly, she instead goes for the feel and texture of them. It would have been impossible to sound like Keith Moon anyway and she wisely limits the drums to an occasional piece here and there.



The astounding moments are many but some of the best are the guitar plinks and twangs from "Our Love Was," the drum hits and wailing guitar solos on "Relax," the chant-like bass on "Silas Stingy" and the choral effects of "Rael." Maybe the most impressive feat was managing to account for all the parts and pieces of "I Can See for Miles," a task which would have driven a lesser artist insane but one that she makes sound effortless. The song that actually competes with the original is " Sunrise" as she imbues the song with a feeling of joy and light equal to the original and her lead vocal is perfect. The aspect of the album that will probably be overlooked is the actual vocals -- the vocals that sing the lyrics, that is. She has a crystal-clear, beautiful voice that really soars and her harmonies are consistently breathtaking. It would have been lovely enough just to hear her sing the Who's melodies and lyrics without all the backing "instruments." The likelihood that you will reach for Petra Haden's version of Sell Out before you will reach for the Who's will vary with each listener's tolerance for novelty. Even the strictest Who purist should hear Haden's version at least once though and anyone who likes to hear artists taking wild chances and succeeding wildly should hold up Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out as a shining example.

-Tim Sendra, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Petra Haden-PETRA HADEN SINGS THE WHO SELL OUT (2005)
256kbps

Minutemen-POST-MERSH, VOL. 3 (1987 compilation)

The third and final volume of Post-Mersh crams an extraordinary amount of music on one disc, compiling the EPs Paranoid Time (1980), Bean-Spill (1982), and Tour-Spiel (1985), the 1981 "Joy" single, and the 1984 rarities and outtakes collection The Politics of Time.

The Minutemen had as high a batting average as any band that came out of the California punk scene, releasing a number of superb records that confirmed their status as one of the finest, most intelligent, most forward-thinking, and most individual bands of their time. However, there isn't an awful lot of that on The Politics of Time; this compilation ties together a bagful of studio outtakes, rehearsal recordings, and live tapes of highly variable quality (one of which is thoroughly inaudible; it's a joke, but not necessarily a funny one). The album leads off well enough with seven tunes the band recorded for an unreleased album. Stylistically, the songs fit comfortably between the ambitious What Makes a Man Start Fires? and the magnum opus Double Nickels on the Dime; on their own, they would have made for a superb EP, and "Working Men Are Pissed" and "Shit You Hear at Parties" are excellent. But side two is bogged down with far too many unfocused, lo-fi live tapes, and while the selections by the Reactionaries (an embryonic version of the Minutemen) are historically interesting, ultimately they're little more than juvenilia from a band destined to create much stronger music. The Minutemen were far too gifted to make an album that wasn't worth hearing, and completists will be more than willing to forgive the duff tracks to get at the handful of great songs here, but ultimately The Politics of Time is the band's least essential release.



The Minutemen's debut EP Paranoid Time is a startlingly coherent set of primal minimalism -- a cross between Californian hardcore punk and the succinct experimentalism of Wire. It speeds by too quickly for any particular song to stand out, but the band's terse, frenetic energy is invigorating, as are their imaginative ideas.

-Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Mark Deming, allmusic.com


DOWNLOAD:
Minutemen-POST-MERSH, VOL. 3 (1987 compilation)
320kbps

Minutemen-DOUBLE NICKELS ON THE DIME (1984)

If What Makes a Man Start Fires? was a remarkable step forward from the Minutemen's promising debut album, The Punch Line, then Double Nickels on the Dime was a quantum leap into greatness, a sprawling 44-song set that was as impressive as it was ambitious. While punk rock was obviously the starting point for the Minutemen's musical journey (which they celebrated on the funny and moving "History Lesson Part II"), by this point the group seemed up for almost anything — D. Boon's guitar work suggested the adventurous melodic sense of jazz tempered with the bite and concision of punk rock, while Mike Watt's full-bodied bass was the perfect foil for Boon's leads and drummer George Hurley possessed a snap and swing that would be the envy of nearly any band.



In the course of Double Nickels on the Dime's four sides, the band tackles leftist punk ("Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing"), Spanish guitar workouts ("Cohesion"), neo-Nortena polka ("Corona"), blues-based laments ("Jesus and Tequila"), avant-garde exercises ("Mr. Robot's Holy Orders"), and even a stripped-to-the-frame Van Halen cover ("Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love"). From start to finish, the Minutemen play and sing with an estimable intelligence and unshakable conviction, and the album is full of striking moments that cohere into a truly remarkable whole; all three members write with smarts, good humor, and an eye for the adventurous, and they hit pay dirt with startling frequency. And if Ethan James' production is a bit Spartan, it's also efficient, cleaner than their work with Spot, and captures the performances with clarity (and without intruding upon the band's ideas). Simply put, Double Nickels on the Dime was the finest album of the Minutemen's career, and one of the very best American rock albums of the 1980s.

-Mark Deming, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Minutemen-DOUBLE NICKELS ON THE DIME (1984)
320kbps

Minutemen-POST-MERSH, VOL. 2 (1987 compilation)

Picking up where the first volume left off, Post-Mersh, Vol. 2 contains the Minutemen's 1983 Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat LP and the 1985 Project Mersh EP.

What Makes a Man Start Fires? marked a real step forward for the Minutemen, and while Double Nickels on the Dime was where the group would reach their peak, there were plenty of signs pointing to that album's diverse brilliance on this eight-song EP. While "Dreams Are Free, Motherfucker!" and "The Toe Jam" are goofy, noisy throwaways (hey, this was a EP sandwiched between albums), the rest of the songs found the band consolidating their strengths and growing even tighter and more confident. "I Felt Like a Gringo" and "Cut" merge funky rhythms with a punk rocker's sense of concision, "Self Referenced" and "The Product" reveal how far this band's writing had progressed since The Punch Line, and "Little Man With a Gun in His Hand" showed the Minutemen could reduce the tempo and the volume and still create stunning music. It's hard to think of a stronger rhythm section in an independent band in the 1980s than Mike Watt and George Hurley, and D. Boon was by any standards a superb guitarist, with smarts, style, and a keen sense of how to edit himself. Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat remains a superb record from a band just edging into greatness.



"I got it! We'll have them write hit songs!" some nameless record company executive says in the cover painting to the Minutemen's 1985 EP Project Mersh, and that joke covers about half of the record's formula. While the Minutemen had been writing more melodic and approachable songs with each release, the massive barrage of 90-to-180-second songs on the epic Double Nickels on the Dime was at once an embarrassment of riches and a bit much for a casual listener to chew on. So for this tongue-in-cheek experiment in making a "commercial" (or "mersh") recording, D. Boon and Mike Watt wrote a few actual three-minute-plus rock tunes, complete with verses and choruses and melodic hooks. On top of that, the band made a game stab at cleaning up their act in the studio; while hardly on the level of something Bob Ezrin or Richard Perry would come up with, Project Mersh boasts a good bit more polish than anything the band had released up to that point and even featured horn overdubs and keyboards on a few tracks. But the punch line was that the Minutemen had used all this fancy window dressing on songs that weren't all that different from what they'd been doing all along -- "The Cheerleaders" and "King of the Hill" are typically intelligent, clear-eyed polemics from Boon, and Watt's "Tour-Spiel" is one punker's bitterly funny ode to life on the road (it stands comfortably beside their cover of Steppenwolf's variation on the same theme, "Hey Lawdy Mama"). While the Minutemen were a band that followed their own creative path from the beginning to the end, Project Mersh made clear they could have followed a more easily traveled road and still made good music with plenty to say.

-Mark Deming, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Minutemen-POST-MERSH, VOL. 2 (1987 compilation)
320kbps

Minutemen-POST-MERSH, VOL. 1 (1987 compilation)

The Minutemen's Post-Mersh is a valuable series, collecting all of the group's official discography, with the exception of Double Nickels on the Dime, 3-Way Tie for Last, and Ballot Result, over the course of three discs. Post-Mersh, Vol. 1 starts at the beginning, combining the trio's first two albums, The Punch Line (1981) and What Makes a Man Start Fires? (1983) on one disc.

The Minutemen may have come out of the same California hardcore scene that produced Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Fear, but they not only bore little resemblance to their West Coast contemporaries, they didn't sound much like anyone else in American rock at that time. The Punch Line was the band's first album, packing 18 tunes into less than 25 minutes, and if the music shares hardcore's lust for speed and assaultive rhythmic punch, their sharp, fragmented melodies, complex tempos, and overtly poetic and political lyrics made clear they were rugged individuals; imagine James Blood Ulmer teaching Wire how to get funky and you start to get an idea of what The Punch Line sounds like. It wasn't until the band began to slow down a bit on What Makes a Man Start Fires? that the strength of the group's individual songs became clear, and The Punch Line works better as a unified sonic assault than as a collection of tunes, but moments do stand out, especially "Tension," "Fanatics," and the title cut, which certainly lends a new perspective to Native American history. The Punch Line was as wildly inventive as anything spawned by American punk, and the band would only get better on subsequent releases.



But on their second (relatively) long-player, What Makes a Man Start Fires?, the three dudes from Pedro opted to slow down their tempos a bit, and something remarkable happened -- the Minutemen revealed that they were writing really great songs, with a remarkable degree of stylistic diversity. If you were looking for three-chord blast, the Minutemen were still capable of delivering, as the opening cut proved (the hyper-anthemic "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs"), but there was just as much churning, minimalistic funk as punk bile in their sound (bassist Mike Watt and drummer George Hurley were already a strikingly powerful and imaginative rhythm section), and D. Boon's guitar solos were the work of a man who could say a lot musically in a very short space of time. Leaping with confidence and agility between loud rants ("Split Red"), troubled meditations ("Plight"), and plainspoken addresses on the state of the world ("Mutiny in Jonestown"), the Minutemen were showing a maturity of vision that far outstripped most of their contemporaries and a musical intelligence that blended a startling sophistication with a street kid's passion for fast-and-loud. It says a lot about the Minutemen's growth that The Punch Line sounded like a great punk album, but a year later What Makes a Man Start Fires? sounded like a great album -- period.

-Mark Deming, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Minutemen-POST-MERSH, VOL. 1 (1987 compilation)
v0

Philip Glass-GLASSWORKS (1982)

Glassworks remains Philip Glass's bestseller from the middle period of his career, the recording by means of which many listeners familiarized themselves with his music. Conceived as a thematically whole instrumental studio album taking advantage of the promotional and marketing capabilities of what was then Glass's new major label (CBS, now Sony Classical) and targeted at consumers intrigued with his newfound notoriety, Glassworks features six parts (three per side on the original LP and cassette), alternately meditative and frenetic, that have since broken free and developed lives of their own.

The most frequently rearranged and recorded part, "Facades," is an outtake from the score to Godfrey Reggio's film Koyaanisqatsi, which before editing had spent more time panning across the flat modernist surfaces of New York City skyscrapers, imparting a sense of alienation and despondency. Glass frequently performs the first part, "Opening," in solo piano recitals. When his ensemble performs the second part, "Floe," in concert, he adds a female voice where, in the recording, the horns perform the Sibelian accompaniment of stately rising and falling crotchets. Throughout, Glass popularizes his earlier idiom of relative rhythmic and harmonic stasis by enriching the instrumentation as well as modulating quickly and even--as in the case of "Rubric"--at a vertiginous pace.

This album was one of the first by a contemporary composer to be recorded digitally, and it has held up remarkably well since 1982 despite the slight harshness and hiss. (CBS remixed the cassette version to satisfy users of portable stereos--back then a fairly new technology.) Fans of Glass will have added this title to their collections long ago, but if you're new to the composer's tonal, reiterative music, Glassworks is still as good a place to start as any.

-Robert Burns Neveldine, amazon.com

DOWNLOAD:
Philip Glass-GLASSWORKS (1982)
320kbps

Aphex Twin-VENTOLIN (1995)

I've only read negative reviews of this EP, which combines the original single and the remixes together. It's really unfortunate because I think this is a great little lofi, bedroom take on mid-period Aphex Twin like I CARE BECAUSE YOU DO, with lots of places and hooks to get lost in. -Ian!

DOWNLOAD:
Aphex Twin-VENTOLIN (1995)
320kbps

Frank Sinatra-IN THE WEE SMALLS HOURS & ONLY THE LONELY (1954/1958)

Expanding on the concept of Songs for Young Lovers!, In the Wee Small Hours was a collection of ballads arranged by Nelson Riddle. The first 12" album recorded by Sinatra, Wee Small Hours was more focused and concentrated than his two earlier concept records. It's a blue, melancholy album, built around a spare rhythm section featuring a rhythm guitar, celesta, and Bill Miller's piano, with gently aching strings added every once and a while. Within that melancholy mood is one of Sinatra's most jazz-oriented performances — he restructures the melody and Miller's playing is bold throughout the record. Where Songs for Young Lovers! emphasized the romantic aspects of the songs, Sinatra sounds like a lonely, broken man on In the Wee Small Hours. Beginning with the newly written title song, the singer goes through a series of standards that are lonely and desolate. In many ways, the album is a personal reflection of the heartbreak of his doomed love affair with actress Ava Gardner, and the standards that he sings form their own story when collected together. Sinatra's voice had deepened and worn to the point where his delivery seems ravished and heartfelt, as if he were living the songs.



Originally, Frank Sinatra had planned to record Only the Lonely with Gordon Jenkins, who had arranged his previous all-ballads album, Where Are You. Jenkins was unavailable at the time of the sessions, which led Sinatra back to his original arranger at Capitol, Nelson Riddle. The result is arguably his greatest ballads album. Only the Lonely follows the same formula as his previous down albums, but the tone is considerably bleaker and more desperate. Riddle used a larger orchestra for the album than he had in the past, which lent the album a stately, nearly classical atmosphere. At its core, however, the album is a set of brooding saloon songs, highlighted by two of Sinatra's tour de forces — "Angel Eyes" and "One for My Baby." Sinatra never forces emotion out of the lyric, he lets everything flow naturally, with grace. It's a heartbreaking record, the ideal late-night album.

-Stephen Thomas Erlewine, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
IN THE WEE SMALLS HOURS (1954)
ONLY THE LONELY (1958)
320kbps

V/A Mississippi Records-OH GRAVEYARD, YOU CAN'T HOLD ME ALWAYS (2009 compilation)

There isn't a review that explains how perfect, deep, and haunting this compilation is, and I feel dumb and white for even trying. -Ian!

Despite the George Romero nomenclature, this LP from the Mississippi stable brings together a selection of gospel recordings from various parts of the twentieth century. The songs cover all kinds of different contexts, from choral church recordings to rollicking R&B dirges, with all kinds of rousing solo performances in there too. In fact, the album finishes on an especially moving moment with an anonymous child singing 'We Shall Overcome' acappella, which is a real emotional sucker punch. Another splendid selection from the house of Mississippi.

-boomkat

DOWNLOAD:
V/A Mississippi Records-OH GRAVEYARD, YOU CAN'T HOLD ME ALWAYS (2009 compilation)
256kbps

Steve Hillage-RADIO DOME MUSICK (1979)

Rainbow Dome Musick is too avant-garde to be classified as a new age album and too sleek sounding to fit into any progressive rock subgenres, but no matter how it's categorized, it's an excellent example of Steve Hillage's adeptness and vast musical background. His time spent with Daevid Allen's Gong and their far-out, space-fused grooves has rubbed off on him, as he has channeled his learned musical experimentation into an equally entertaining but more refined style of music. Playing guitar in Soft Machine and working with Kevin Ayers doesn't hurt either, but the 20-plus minutes of both tracks on this album harbor some intelligent and mature-sounding instrumentation thanks to a distinct array of sequencers and percussion. "Garden of Paradise" is a lush, intricately woven melange of guitar, piano, and synthesizer which are all pioneered by Hillage. Giving the track its feel and sustenance are the Tibetan bells and the powerful undertow of Miquette Girandy's double sequencer. The instruments gracefully converge to craft the non-existent paradise in which Hillage has musically created. "Four Ever Rainbow" contains much more rhythm and current thanks to the electric and glissando guitar and the subtle hovering of a harmoniser played by Rupert Atwill. The final result of the culmination of both tracks is a relaxing and pleasantly divergent journey through a sorted spectrum of instruments, making this album one of Steve Hillage's best solo pieces.

-Mike DeGagne, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Steve Hillage-RADIO DOME MUSICK (1979)
320kbps

The Alan Parsons Project-PYRAMID (1978)

Where do I even begin? Alan Parsons is beyond epic. He never leaves my turntable, car, or iTunes playlists. Always on repeat.

At 18, Alan had his hands on the Abbey Road tapes while working at Abbey Road Studios, and shortly thereafter engineered The Dark Side of the Moon. This guy was a machine.

Pyramid is my favorite release of the group, though AllMusic calls it “average,” and claims that isn’t a necessity. Shame on them.

-Scott Hansen, ISO50

DOWNLOAD:
The Alan Parsons Project-PYRAMID (1978)
320kbps

Rockets-ON THE ROAD AGAIN & PLASTEROÏD (1978/1979)

Despite being renowned in certain parts of the world (especially in Italy and their hometown of Paris), the space-age outfit Rockets remains largely obscure -- even though they arrived on the scene at almost he same exact time as Kraftwerk and prefaced Devo by several years. The multi-membered outfit originally formed in 1972, under the name Crystal, performing on-stage in their regular street clothes. But by 1974, Crystal had evolved into Rocket Men, issuing a debut self-titled single, while its members began to assume the identities of aliens; complete with silver makeup covering their skin, grey contact lenses, space suits, and bald heads. It was also around this time that the group hooked up with producer Claude Lemoine, who would remain behind the studio boards until the early '80s. Over the next year, the group went through another name (Rocketters), before finally settling on Rockets, and issuing further singles, including such titles as "Rocket Man," "Future Woman," and "Samurai."

Come 1976, Rockets was finally ready to release a self-titled full-length debut (only available in France, however), as the band's theatrical live show began to take on a life of its own; complete with vocoders, lasers, colored lights, smoke, and flames. Rockets' sophomore outing, 1978's On the Road Again, turned out to be their first release to be available domestically (and the first to be supported by a North American tour), although their U.S. record label, Tom n' Jerry, insisted on printing their name on the cover, leading some to assume that the group was called "Tom n' Jerry's Rockets." An Italy-only compilation album, Sound of the Future, followed in 1979, the same year that the band issued their next studio album, Plasteroid, which became Rockets' biggest album yet (obtaining gold status, 200,000 copies sold, in Italy). 1980 saw the arrival of another Italy-only release, Live, as well as their fourth studio album overall, Galaxy, another massive hit in Italy (selling over a million copies) which many Rockets aficionados consider as the group's musical peak.



By the time of 1981's P-3,14, the group teamed up with another similarly styled outfit, Visitors, as new characters were introduced to Rockets' live act (including wizards, doctors, cowboys, and motorcyclists). Shortly thereafter, interest in Rockets began to dwindle; despite the masked outfit issuing several more albums, 1982's Atomic, 1984's Imperception, and 1986's One Way (the latter of which saw the group change the spelling of their name to "Roketz"), before going on hiatus for six years. By 1992, Rockets had reunited, issuing an album of new tracks and remixes of older tunes, Another Future, which failed to spark interest in the group once more (the same year, the very first Rockets hits collections surfaced, Galactica: The Best Of). 1996 saw the release of two more compilations, Greatest Hits and Hits & Remixes. Another set was released four years later, The Definitive Collection, which coincided with a pair of original bandmembers (Fabrice Quagliotti and Alain Maratrat) resurrecting the Rockets name with several new members.

-Greg Prato, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
ON THE ROAD AGAIN (1978)
PLASTEROÏD (1979)
192kbps

Pascal Rogé-CLAUDE DEBUSSY's PRELUDES I & II (2005)

This disc is Roge's first complete recording of the Preludes (I presume from the liner notes that he had recorded a selection in the analogue era) and that this marks the start of a complete Debussy cycle. To that I say "bring it on, Pascal".

I have heard Gieseking (two versions), Jacobs, and Zimerman in both books, as well as Arrau, Dino Ciani, and countless other pianists in one book or in selections from both. The set by Paul Jacobs was the benchmark to which I compared all other performances (I found Zimerman wimpy, and some rhythms simply misread - more on that later.)

And for me this Roge set outshines them all.

If you wish to buy Zimerman, you must do so with TWO separate full-price DG discs, one for each book. Here Onyx squeezed both books on one full-price CD, a considerable saving. But price is the least reason why I prefer this set.

Roge displays individual touches throughout the cycle. And he dares to play "La cathedrale engloutie" the way Debussy himself played it, NOT the way it was printed. He differentiates between 3/2 and 6/4 meters, with the half note or quarter note the beat unit where appropriate. He's not afraid of rubato, even if excessive (some places in "Minstrels" for example, for reasons of humor.) In the liner notes he talks of his study with Marguerite Long, and her corrections to the printed text.

Perhaps this explains the "missed rhythm" that Zimerman plays at the very end of the second page of "La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune" - Roge does the same thing. The three quarter notes in 6/8 time are played as three eighth notes in 3/8 time. These two are the only pianists whom I have heard play this measure this way. It sounds reasonable, but it's not what's on the page, and both play it as quarters when the theme recurs later in the prelude. Did Debussy change this measure in printed copies? Both of these musicians are "too fine a musician" to make such a gross note-reading error in such a standard and familiar piece. "La terrasse" is an important piece in my repertoire, and I would like to solve this puzzle.

Roge even seems to breathe life into the preludes I tend to dislike, such as "Danseuses de Delphes" and my absolute least favorite Debussy piece, "Des pas sur la neige". His subtle rubato helps make clear the despair Debussy wished to portray.

I won't say that if you must own only one set, it should be this one, however. Mainly because there is much to enjoy in the sets by Zimerman and Jacobs, and of course Gieseking still commands respect. But this is an excellent set, "in modern sound", and may be preferable to Zimerman for the novice because of the difference in cost.

This set makes me impatiently await the remainder of the cycle.

-Rick Robertson, amazon.com

DOWNLOAD:
Pascal Rogé-CLAUDE DEBUSSY's PRELUDES I & II (2005)
320kbps

I Made This Mix

It's a little bit different than just a bunch of mp3s in a zip file. I used this laptop, a shortwave radio (not to be confused with samples of shortwave that I also used), a turntable, a bass amp with a condenser mic, all fed into a sampler that functioned as an effects box and mixer, which was then fed into the desktop.

The whole thing is two live takes cut together, at one point running a song out of an amp to catch the natural reverb while mixing it on the fly with a bitcrushed drone of a shortwave radio playing a ballroom song.

Anyway, the theme was a mix of Cold War Civil Defense-era vibe and 80s post-apocalyptic movie "driving" themes. I didn't write any of the music.

LISTEN:
ZAMBONISOUNDTRACKS.BANDCAMP.COM

Manuel Göttsching-E2-E4 (1984)

E2-E4, one of the few records Göttsching released under his own name, has earned its place as one of the most important, influential electronic records ever released. It's also the earliest album to set the tone for electronic dance music; simply put, it just sounds like the mainstream house produced during the next two decades. Similar to previous Ashra albums like New Age of Earth and Blackouts, it does so with a short list of instruments -- just the nominal drum machine and a pulsing guitar line in the background plus some light synthesizer work. What sets it apart from music that came before is a steadfast refusal to follow the popular notions of development in melody and harmony. Instead, E2-E4 continues working through similar territory for close to an hour with an application to trance-state electronics missing from most of the music that preceded it. Though the various components repeat themselves incessantly, it's how they interact and build that determines the sound -- and that's the essence of most electronic dance music, that complex interplay between several repetitive elements.

-John Bush, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Manuel Göttsching-E2-E4 (1984)
320kbps

The Pretty Things-PARACHUTE (1970)

If S.F. Sorrow is the Pretty Things' Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, and Yellow Submarine wrapped in one, then Parachute is their more succinct White Album and Abbey Road. It's not just a time line comparison. The Pretties made this fascinating LP in the same studio as the Fab Four, London's Abbey Road, with Beatles engineer Norman Smith producing. "The Good Mr. Square" replicates the three-part harmony the Beatles were so proud of on "Because." Two songs later, the group assembles a brief, interconnected three-song suite like the famous ones on side two of Abbey Road. Bassist Wally Allen's vocals on tracks such as "Sickle Clowns" have the same throaty, mad anguish that John Lennon exhibited on "Yer Blues" and "Happiness Is a Warm Gun." If S.F. Sorrow is hard rock grandeur, then Parachute is its more bitter twist, the dream dying and the witching hour upon us. Yet, if this isn't as much of a triumph, the creative neurons are still firing throughout a multi-varied, cohesive LP. Like S.F. Sorrow, it's a surprisingly palatable concept LP. This time the topic is a generation caught between the conflicting calls of (rural) peace, love, and boredom, and (urban) sophistication, sex, and squalor in a harsh world. Somehow the departure of the band's main creative force, Dick Taylor, didn't diminish the writing and inspired variety. Allen stepped up big time into the collaborator role with singer Phil May. The harmonies remain a strong point on an otherwise rock-inclined record, and the nasty edge of perfectly balanced bombast in the best songs have been a lost art ever since -- it's not hard to see why Rolling Stone rated Parachute the best LP of 1970. (There are 18 minutes of good stuff tacked on the Snapper edition, taken from singles.)

-Jack Rabid, The Big Takeover

DOWNLOAD:
The Pretty Things-PARACHUTE (1970)
320kbps

Trees-SLEEP CONVENTION (1982)

Holy shit. This is like the ultimate find for me, this is like if guys who only made weird home recordings, like Bruce Haack or Bill Holt got a major label deal and decided they were going to record the ultimate New Wave/Synth Pop album. This has immediately become non-stop listening, and represents exactly the sort of high I am chasing all the time when it comes to discovering music. -Ian!



A one-man synth army from San Diego, California, Dane Conover (here dubbed Trees) offers a wonderful collection of modern musical ideas and clever tunes that efficiently combine up-to-date electronics with old-fashioned rock instruments, tossing in inventive production and intelligent, provocative lyrics. Sleep Convention is a stunning debut which shows remarkable originality and talent. That this record died the commercial death is not just incomprehensible, it's criminal.

-Ira Robbins

DOWNLOAD:
Trees-SLEEP CONVENTION (1982)
vbr

Curtis Mayfield-SWEET EXORCIST (1974)

This goes great with THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE AMERICA TODAY. Look at that album cover! -Ian!

Curtis Mayfield hit a stride during the '70s that was unparalleled among R&B/soul performers from an album standpoint. He was writing, producing, arranging, and performing on great album after great album, then distributing them on his own label as well. This one included the big hit "Kung Fu," plus the title song, and once more perfectly blended rigorous message tracks and steamy love songs. Sadly, it hasn't been reissued on CD and isn't on the list to be at this time.

-Ron Wynn, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Curtis Mayfield-SWEET EXORCIST (1974)
192kbps

Marvin Gaye-HERE, MY DEAR (1978)

This is the expanded edition from a few years back, which is remastered well. I only include the second disc to be completist, it's a bunch of shitty remixes by a bunch of assholes. The original album is probably my favorite Marvin Gaye album, though. -Ian!

Pre-dating the voyeuristic tendencies of reality television by 20 years, Here, My Dear is the sound of divorce on record — exposed in all of its tender-nerve glory for the world to consume. During the amazing success of I Want You and his stellar Live at the London Palladium album, Marvin Gaye was served with divorce papers from his then-wife Anna Gordy Gaye (sister of Motown Records founder Berry Gordy). One of the conditions of the settlement was that Gordy Gaye would receive an extensive percentage of royalties as well as a portion of the advance for his next album. Initially, Gaye was contemplating giving less than his best effort, as he wouldn't stand to receive any money, but then reconsidered at the last moment. The result is a two-disc-long confessional on the deterioration of their marriage; starting from the opening notes of the title track, Gaye viciously cuts with every lyric deeper into an explanation of why the relationship died the way it did.



Gaye uses the album, right down to its packaging, to exorcise his personal demons with subtle visual digs and less-than-subtle lyrical attacks. The inner sleeve had a pseudo-board-game-like illustration entitled "Judgment," in which a man's hand passes a record to a woman's. One side of the sleeve has Gaye's music and recording equipment, while the other side of the board included jewelry and other luxurious amenities. Musically the album retains the high standards Gaye set in the early '70s, but you can hear the agonizing strain of recent events in his voice, to the point where even several vocal overdubs can't save his delivery. Stripped to its bare essence, Here, My Dear is no less than brilliantly unsettling and a perfect cauterization to a decade filled with personal turmoil.

-Rob Theakston, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
DISC ONE
DISC TWO
v0

Coil-TIME MACHINES (1998)

Overall impression: excellent. The line on the back of the cardboard two-fold sleeve probably says it best: "4 tones to facilitate travel through time." The four track names are all chemical names for hallucinogens. The music is drone-based, deep ... very deep ... sub-bass drones that somehow seem to entangle with your very thoughts and emotions as they carry you. I listened to this disc twice with headphones while at work earlier this evening, and although I didn't travel through time, feel like I was traveling through time or achieve an instantaneous erection ... it did give me a strange emotional sensation. I really can't explain it .. the drones maintain a similarity throughout each track, but they shift and become altered without you really realizing what's taking place. They remain what I would call "beautiful" drones, they never become too distorted or resonant ... very haunting yet affirming and all consuming. This disc is another welcome tool, alongside the likes of Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works II", Dead Voices on Air, Propeller, and of course, many Brian Eno and Coil discs, in my collection of ambient and/or ambient/drone works. I sometimes think that JB and PC have come across some greater plane of knowledge that allows them to subliminally communicate with your psyche through sound. Their work is remarkable. Also, be sure to check out the latest single, "Spring Equinox: Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull". Note: I have not, nor do I intend to use the above disc in conjuction with hallucinogens. I'll leave that to you.

-Mark Weddle, Brainwashed.com

DOWNLOAD:
Coil-TIME MACHINES (1998)
320kbps

Good News

Hell freezes over: The State DVD out in July? via The Onion A/V Club

Pyramid-PYRAMID (1976)

This is like an awesome mix of Vangelis with Pink Floyd, it's so good and look at that cover!

What kind of name is Rolf Sembrepon?

Anyway, I found this and a couple things I have fallen in love with at the amazing Dr. Schluss' Garage Of Psychedelic Obscurities, and I implore you to check it out! -Ian!

This was one of several mysterious albums released in limited batches in Germany by the Pyramid label in the mid-'70s, and it was apparently sold mostly through art galleries and other unconventional retail sources. After 1974 the major labels were no longer interested in creative Krautrock, and so Pyramid undertook to keep the spirit of this genre alive for another few years. As for the group Pyramid, their identities are apparently unknown, though their roster probably overlaps with that of the Nazgul, another group on the Pyramid label. Pyramid's self-titled release, recorded in Cologne in 1975 and 1976, offered just one track, "Dawn Defender," that took up both sides of the LP and has been reissued on CD as one seamless piece. "Dawn Defender" starts off slowly, with a gentle rhythm and strange mellotron sound setting down a soothing cosmic groove. Soon the piece picks up as the guitar and bass kick in with a driving, Hawkwind-like sound for several minutes before it calms down again. About 14 minutes in, the rhythm section kicks into a much more upbeat funk groove, but keeping the space rock ambience in place with more spacy synths and other sounds. The piece slowly ratchets gears to a less-upbeat tempo, and though at times the sound is a little more conventional, it is still quite good. Eventually listeners are left in a similar cosmic ambient territory that the piece began with. On the whole, "Dawn Defender" is a very nice work of instrumental space rock and cosmic rock, developing from a slow calm to furious and energetic, and then back to the slow calm.

-Rolf Semprebon, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Pyramid-PYRAMID (1976)
320kbps

BEATLES JAPANESE MONO RED VINYL RIPS by DR. EBBETTS

A re-up, since it was announced yesterday that the original Beatles albums were finally being remastered, with mono editions. While this is pretty cool, I'm kind of skeptical of the likelihood that they won't be completely brickwalled loudness war versions. -Ian!

It's kind of hard to explain these to the layman, but here goes:

The Beatles albums were only mastered officially for CD one time, in 1987. They did a very bad job. All the Beatles albums from the beginning up until like ABBEY ROAD were made for MONO, not STEREO. STEREO versions are FAKE STEREO, they just separate the treble instruments to one ear, the bass instruments to the other, and it destroys the mix. It's some 80s engineering goon's version of stereo.

DR EBBETTS is a bootlegger, and what he did here is buy ORIGINAL BEATLES VINYL IN MONO, first pressings, and recorded them with audiophile equipment. What you're hearing with these is how the Beatles albums were meant to sound when you bought them in the '60s.

Don't take my word for it, put on TAXMAN from your official cd version (with the bass drums on one side, guitar/vox on the other) and then play TAXMAN from the JAPANESE MONO RED WAX, and tell me which one sounds better.

Here are some of them, I will up others later. At the very least, if you're skeptical, do a comparison listening test.

DOWNLOAD:
A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964)
BEATLES FOR SALE (1964)
HELP! (1965)
RUBBER SOUL (1965)
REVOLVER (1966)
SGT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (1967)
MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR (1967)
THE BEATLES (WHITE ALBUM) (1968)
U.S. SINGLES COLLECTION 1-3
320kbps

Geometry Of Circles

From Sesame Street circa 1978ish, music by Philip Glass.

Cheap Trick-IN COLOR: STEVE ALBINI SESSIONS (1997)

In 1997 Cheap Trick was recording some stuff with Albini, and they got to talking about how the band felt like IN COLOR's original recording fell short, in their minds, for whatever reason. On the spot they decided to record it again from the bottom up.

As far as I understand it these are unmastered, so there are a couple rough spots, but it still sounds completely awesome.

I love Cheap Trick, but I'm still mad at them because when they play live now they say "Here's our theme for That 70s Show!" and never mention Big Star. Also, when they toured with GBV Bob went on stage and sang "Surrender" with them and later on they chewed him out for it. -Ian!

DOWNLOAD:
Cheap Trick-IN COLOR: STEVE ALBINI SESSIONS (1997)
vbr

The Tornados-TELSTAR: THE COMPLETE TORNADOS (1998 compilation)

That's the cover to the original Telstar album, not actually for this comp, which has a boring cover. You can totally just get disc one of this and be covered, if you want. -Ian!

Fifty-five Tornados tracks on two CDs may be 53 more than most casual listeners need, but this double-disc set justifies itself in the listening. To most Americans, and even most Britons, the Tornados were one-hit wonders, responsible for "Telstar" and not much else, but as this set shows, they did come up with some cool sounds and tunes under the guidance of producer/manager Joe Meek. "Robot" is nearly as pretty a tune as "Telstar" (it also charted in England at No. 17), and it sounds fresh, as something not nearly as widely heard for 36 years; "Life On Venus," the B-side, is a very close second, almost a "son of Telstar." "Ice Cream Man" was another British chart single, and offers the spectacle of Meek and the Tornados applying a Bo Diddley beat to their trademark sound.



Other highlights include lots of television themes, both material for actual use on the air and the group's covers of such as material as "Stringray" and "Aqua Marina" from the sci-fi kids' show Stringray. The material extends right into 1964 and the band's attempts to compete in the area of vocal records, when it became clear that the public wasn't too interested in instrumental rock & roll anymore. The annotation includes a beautifully detailed essay by Chris Welch, with extensive interview material on drummer Clem Cattini (the longest-tenured member of the Tornados) and Cattini's recollections on each of the tracks here. In the end, there's more to the Tornados' sound and history than most of us knew, all revealed here.

-Bruce Eder, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
DISC ONE
DISC TWO
192kbps

Various Artists-KOSMOS: SOUNDTRACKS OF EAST GERMANY'S ADVENTURES IN SPACE (2005)

Another Re-up. Consider this a necessary companion piece to RAUMPATROUILLE. -Ian!

During the 70s, socialist equivalents to Western Germany’s science-fiction series "Raumpatrouille Orion" or "Star Maidens" have seen the light of space. Now for the first time films like "Eolomea", "Signals" and "Stardust" are featured on this present album. The highlights from their original scores -spiced by exquisite titles from a long gone & obscure Amiga tribute to Sigmund Jaehn, the first German in Kosmos!(...) can be found here. Enjoy soundtrack-world-premieres featuring spacy music by the well-known composers Karl-Ernst Sasse & Guenther Fischer plus Amiga 1969 hit single "Kosmos" plus lots of dialogue highlights and sound effects! With the CD comes an additional medley of former GDR pioneer-hymns and more dialogue parts.

Believe it or not - the communists liked space-operas, too. Of course: The eastern bloc created milestones in science-fiction like the novels of Stanislaw Lem or the films by Andrej Tarkowskii ("Stalker", "Solaris") which – not at last – were responsible for the boom of this genre. But who knows about the DEFA-equivalents of Hollywood’s more entertaining sci-fi series or Western German tv-serials like "Star Maidens”? Well, here we go: This is exactly what "Kosmos!” is about!

Despite being determined anti-capitalistic, the DEFA science-fiction movies also (carefully) criticized the so called "real-existing socialism” in the former GDR. In contrast to the more action-orientated productions from outside the eastern bloc, the essence of these films could be summed up in the question of how socialist ideas can be realized in "space-communities” far away from earth.



With Karl-Ernst Sasse and Guenther Fischer (from their scores to the popular DEFA-western movies -> ASM 002 and ASM 008) the two most dominating composers of filmmusic in the GDR are responsible for the extraordinary soundtracks to these movies. Opposite to their western movie scores, their music for the science-fiction movies was pretty different from what you are used to hear in the "capitalistic” science-fiction movie. From strictly-avantgardistic orchestral sounds over electronic experiments to cosmic waltzes, beat guitars and influences of "Krautrock”. Thereby it sometimes sounds so fresh as if it has been produced in some new-electronic sound-laboratory right these days. Somehow strange sound the titles from the Amiga-LP "Die Erde dreht sich linksherum!" featuring e.g Stern-Combo Meißen and the Guenther-Fischer-Quintett.

-Amazon.com

DOWNLOAD:
KOSMOS: SOUNDTRACKS OF EAST GERMANY'S ADVENTURES IN SPACE (2005)
v0

Big Deal

The Free Design-KITES ARE FUN & STARS/TIME/BUBBLES/LOVE (1967/1970)

Imagine what a JC Penney catalog from 1970 would sound like. The exact opposite of those Caretaker albums. -Ian!

The commercial failure of the Free Design remains one of the most baffling mysteries in the annals of pop music -- with their exquisitely celestial harmonies, lighter-than-air melodies and blissful arrangements, the group's records were on par with the work of superstar contemporaries like the Beach Boys, the Association and the Cowsills, yet none of their singles even cracked the Hot 100. The Free Design originally comprised siblings Chris, Bruce and Sandy Dedrick, natives of Delevan, New York whose father Art served as a trombonist and arranger with Vaughn Monroe; when Chris moved to New York City in 1966 to attend the Manhattan School of Music, he recruited Bruce (now living on Long Island) and Sandy (a teacher in Queens) to form a folk group, and soon the trio emerged as a popular attraction on the Greenwich Village coffeehouse circuit.

"It's a young thing -- and it's a different thing!" -- so proclaimed the back cover of the handsome gatefold jacket on the Free Design's debut album, in words that couldn't have dissuaded more people under 30 from buying the album if the makers had tried. And that's a crying shame, because Kites Are Fun was a glorious product of the same zeitgeist that yielded the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album and a dozen other triumphant pop-psychedelic albums. Kites Are Fun is almost an East Coast answer to the work of the Mamas & the Papas or Spanky & Our Gang, falling between the former at their most subtle and the latter at their most ethereal. The album is very much a product of its era, a lyrical, boundlessly cheerful body of music featuring gentle orchestral accompaniment and glittering sound, and some of it -- such as "Make the Madness Stop" -- possesses a vaguely spiritual content. Sandy Dedrick gets a brilliant solo showcase on "When Love Is Young," while "The Proper Ornaments" returned to a group setting with elegant trumpet and cello accompaniment. There's at least one follow-up to "Kites Are Fun," entitled "Umbrellas," that should have gotten a hearing, and a swinging, upbeat showcase for all of the singers entitled "Never Tell the World"; and, in addition to the group members' originals, the 13 songs include highly ornate covers of Simon & Garfunkel's "Feelin' Groovy" and the Beatles' "Michelle" (beautifully deconstructing both songs and re-imagining them with new tempi and choruses), and the movie-spawned hit "A Man and a Woman." It's all worth tracking down in used-record bins (the jacket is a beautiful artifact of its era) or buying on remastered CD.



On the Free Design's 1970 record, Stars/Time/Bubbles/Love, not much has changed with the Dedrick clan. The group's amazing vocal harmonies are still very much in evidence, the lush arrangements are still fuller than Grizzly Adams' beard, and the songs, like the cute and silly "Kije's Ouija" and the finger-snappingly groovy "Keep Off Your Frown" (which sounds like an unlikely cross between Oscar Brown, Jr. and the Zombies), are still lighthearted and fun. Most of the songs sound like they exist in the the Dedricks' own strange little world of harmony and childlike innocence; the only one that sounds influenced by the times is "I'm a Yogi," which has sitars, a mild psychedelic break, and groovy lyrics. It sounds more like Yogi Bear than the Maharishi, but then that is the charm of the Free Design. The record is filled with some of the band's best work: the bouncy, perky "Bubbles" (a song later covered by Dressy Bessy on the Powerpuff Girls soundtrack record); the sweet "Butterflies Are Free," which features the Dedrick sisters on lead vocals; the brash (for them) "That's All, People," which sounds like a lost Jimmy Webb track, with great vocal interplay among the siblings; and the strangely bossy Christmas tune "Close Your Mouth (It's Christmas)." The only track that falls short is their cover of "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," which is the rare Free Design effort that sounds like run-of-the-mill elevator music. Pretty much any Free Design recording is going to be a treasure for fans of intelligent, witty, and above all, sophisticated sunshine pop. Stars/Time/Bubbles/Love is no exception.

-Tim Sendra, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
KITES ARE FUN (1967)
STARS/TIME/BUBBLES/LOVE (1970)
256kbps

The Caretaker-SELECTED MEMORIES FROM THE HAUNTED BALLROOM/A STAIRWAY TO THE STARS (1999/2001)

This stuff is so cool. I recommend going to The Caretaker website to get the very cool THEORETICALLY PURE RETROGRADE AMNESIA free mp3 set. -Ian!

Dusty and forgotten memories, echoes and vibrations from the past. Using as source, recordings from the 1920's and 1930's era of Ballroom music. Often painful and desolate memories, recalled and replayed from beyond the grave of our senses. In amongst this darkness lies the solace of a semi-recognisable melody or phrase, a beacon of light in this often dark and distant ocean of haunted recalled audio.

The Caretaker project began in late 1996, undoubtedly inspired from the ballroom scene in Stanley Kubrick's "Shining". The first release played and extended this theme of altering 1920's and 1930's ballroom music creating an eerie and haunted soundworld. Subsequently the sound has become darker and often more abstract over time, moving away from the initial idea of a haunted ballroom into territories involving the mind and its abilities to recall memories.

Currently The Caretaker is inspired by the topic of "Amnesia" and the brain's abilities to recall situations from the distant and immediate past. This work is best recalled in the monumental "Theoretically pure anterograde amnesia" release, a release which accurately echoes and recreates aurally the disease itself which is no mean achievement.

The Caretaker is building an ever expanding following for his audio memories. Fans of the darker isolationist ambient work of modern composers such as William Basinski, Nurse With Wound, Aphex Twin, Fennesz and Brian Eno would find elements to admire and enjoy and also parallels to The Caretaker's output. It can be a harsh world at times but ultimately exposure is always rewarding. Immerse yourself in the darkness and give into the spirits and tales recalled and retold in his unique way.


DOWNLOAD:
SELECTED MEMORIES FROM THE HAUNTED BALLROOM (1999)
A STAIRWAY TO THE STARS (2001)
256kbps

Thin Lizzy-BAD REPUTATION (1977)

If Thin Lizzy got a bit too grand and florid on Johnny the Fox, they quickly corrected themselves on its 1978 follow-up, Bad Reputation. Teaming up with the legendary producer Tony Visconti, Thin Lizzy managed to pull of a nifty trick of sounding leaner, tougher than they did on Johnny, yet they also had a broader sonic palette. Much of this is due, of course, to Visconti, who always had a flair for subtle dramatics that never called attention to themselves and he puts this to use in dramatic effect here, to the extent that Lizzy sounds stripped down to their bare bones, even when they have horns pushing them forward on "Dancing in the Moonlight" or when overdubbed vocals pile up on the title track. Of course, they were stripped down to a trio on this record, lacking guitarist Brian Robertson, but Scott Gorham's double duty makes his absence unnoticeable. Plus, this is pure visceral rock & roll, the hardest and heaviest that Thin Lizzy ever made, living up to the promise of the title track. And, as always, a lot of this has to do with Phil Lynott's writing, which is in top form whether he's romanticizing "Soldiers of Fortune" or heading down the "Opium Trail." It adds up to an album that rivals Jailbreak as their best studio album.

-Stephen Thomas Erlewine, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Thin Lizzy-BAD REPUTATION (1977)
320kbps

Gary Numan-TELEKON (1980)

Gary Numan's follow-up to the flawless The Pleasure Principle was 1980's Telekon. Although it was another mega-hit back home in England (his third consecutive number one album), Numan could not follow up his massive new wave hit "Cars" in the United States, where he was unjustly slapped with the one-hit-wonder tag. Telekon would also turn out to be the last true classic Numan album, as monetary problems and an unfocused attempt to try different musical forms (as well as a short-lived retirement) would steer him away from his original vision. Although Telekon was indeed a strong album, it could have been even stronger if it included the U.K. Top Ten singles "I Die: You Die" and "We Are Glass" (both were recorded during the Telekon sessions). Numan experimented with funk for the first time in his career ("Remind Me to Smile"), but there were still plenty of chilling synth excursions to keep the Numan faithful satisfied -- "This Wreckage," "The Aircrash Bureau," "I'm an Agent," and "I Dream of Wires" are all choice cuts. The 1998 Beggars Banquet re-release eventually did include both the U.K. singles, as well as several other rarities, including a bare "piano version" of "Down in the Park." [Note: In addition to bonus tracks, all of the Gary Numan/Beggars Banquet re-releases contain classic photographs and informative liner notes by Numan biographer Steve Malins.]

-Greg Prato, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
Gary Numan-TELEKON (1980)
320kbps