[engl] • First ever anthology of Les Primitifs du Futur with new exclusive cover artwork by legendary comic book author Robert Crumb Nicknamed the Primdufs, they are neither Smurfs nor cave dwellers, just a happy collective of musicians who always have their instruments at the ready. They all have an inexplicable passion for a musical genre that some could consider obsolete, outdated and antique: the French ‘valse musette’ (a kind of popular swing waltz music, ndlt). But let’s be clear, this has nothing in common with the smutty chords of popular balls and singalongs in little town halls, nor with the trills of another generation linked to names like Horner or Verchuren in afternoon tea dances. No, this is ‘bal musette’ with balls, genuine, virile, authentic, and athletic, which used to get the blokes and the birds jivingin the no-man’s land of demolished forts around what the Parisians call Paname. Seen like that it is easy to imagine that the Primitifs du Futur, for that is their name, enjoy carefully recreating in minute detail museum pieces from the pungent remains of past festivals. It is more than that. Because though these noble savages like rummaging around in 1920s Paris, they don’t shy away from including rhythms from all over the planet, rhumba from Zaireto, gypsy jazz, Hindu waltzes or Argentine tango, blues, ‘paso doble’ or ‘chanson réaliste’. It all began in 1986, when Dominique Cravic, ‘’ukukeke’’ champion and a renowned guitarist who learned from jazzmen like Lee Konitz or Larry Coryell and also played with Georges Moustaki and Henri Salvador, met a certain Robert Crumb. Yes, the legendary comic book author from the great days of the US psychedelic underground in the 70s, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr Natural in person, the same man who also created the cover for ‘’Cheap Thrills’’ by Janis Joplin. Crumb plays banjo and mandolin, collects 78 sof blues, jazz and… musette. The two cronies then composed their own made-to-measure orchestra, alongside many famous names including accordionist Daniel Colin, clarinettist Bertrand Auger, saxophonist Daniel Huck, bassist Jean-Philippe Viret or singer Claire Elzière (sorry, it’s impossible to name them all). This great group has recorded four albums since 1986 (all with sleeves drawn by Crumb), some including guest stars such as Pierre Barouh, Jean-Jacques Milteau, AllainLeprest, Sanseverino or Olivia Ruiz. For thirty years, the Primitifs du Futur have carried the torch of musette to the four corners of the earth, from fiestas to festivals, and today release a double vinyl, entitled ‘Résumé des épisodes précédents’ which brings together the best of their adventures. It is a refreshing and heartening cocktail of ‘’world tribal musette’’, as they call it, which, in these electro digital times, has a rejuvenating effect, amagic swing potion. Les Primitifs du Futur take us back to the future. ‘’THE PRIMITIFS DU FUTUR travel on sound waves back in time to the early twentieth century and make the world seem like a far better place than it ever actually was. I cant get the band's music off my turntable or out of my head. Accordion, mandolin, harmonica, saxophone, musical saw, and beautiful haunting melodies—what’s not to love? Even their sad songs make me happy.’’ Art Spiegelman. • 2xLP with 20 page booklet with all Crumb previous artworks for the band’s albums plus unseen photos 1500 copies - No Repress

[engl] Official repress! Comes in the original artwork! West-German Punk-band from the city of Freiburg, active from 1980 until 1983. Unfortunately the bands only release! Here's the official repress!

[engl] Synth indie pop album by this canadian outfit.

[engl] Th Da Freak is the project of Thoineau Palis, a young musician from Bordeaux who is obsessed with 90's slacker rock and the likes of Pavement, Sonic Youth or Sebadoh, which he mixes with dream pop, garage rock and bedroom pop influences. He's extremely productive (2 albums, 2 EPs and a double album of B-sides since 2017) and quite active in the city of Bordeaux, where he started a collective of musicians dedicated to promoting the local scene through concert organisation and cassette releases. This album is the first one that was recorded collectively as a group, with the musicians who have been accompanying on stage since the beginning. It's called 'Freakenstein' and was influenced by Palis' interest in classic Sci-Fi and Horror films

[engl] Cathedrale are a four piece garage pop band from Toulouse, in the south-west of France. In the ten tracks of this second album entitled ‘Facing Death », they mix punk, pop and garage, in a formula made of very tight drumming, edgy riffs, and a pop-infused melodies. The album was recorded in Toulouse at Swamp Land analog studio by Lo Spider and is illustrated by French artist Matthieu Freak City!

[engl] Cathedrale are a four piece garage pop band from Toulouse, in the south-west of France. In the ten tracks of this second album entitled ‘Facing Death », they mix punk, pop and garage, in a formula made of very tight drumming, edgy riffs, and a pop-infused melodies. The album was recorded in Toulouse at Swamp Land analog studio by Lo Spider and is illustrated by French artist Matthieu Freak City!

[engl] Two albums and a few tours later, the gang is about to make its come back with its third album ‘Glimpses’. Quite like the sketches appearing on Emma Kadraoui’s artwork, this new album lets the auditor ‘glimpse’ at the recording process, as unfinished tracks, tape recording sounds or odd mixing ideas were left in the album for all to hear. And yet, ‘Glimpses’ turns out as the band’s strongest, most cohesive album, perfectly  encapsulating the band’s own personnal vision of pop music.

[engl] A great mix of Zouk, Afro-Funk and Boogie from the Ivory Coast, 1983. Cool synths, electric guitar, Afro-Caribbean rhythms... Four long tracks, including the massive afro-disco-boogie “Africa Mawa” plus two cool afro/Zouk tracks and a deep ballad with psych guitar. Featuring Congolese musician Denis Bibi Den’s Thsibayi and his band The Best, “Sensible” was recorded at Abidjan, Ivory Coast, after Denis Tshibayi was requested to play live there. M. Sacko helped with the production / edition and the album was originally released first as a tiny private pressing in the Ivory Coast and later in France on the Tangent label. During that time, Denis Thsibayi also recorded for Earthworks/Rough Trade and in the following decades he recorded with Adrian Sherwood (On-U Sound Records), Alpha Blondy, etc.

[engl] Kaviar Special was born in Rennes, France in 2012. Four kids who met while studying Biology in College and tought it would be a fun to start a band together and record an album. 

[engl] Screaming psychedelic garage from L.A. with fuzzed out guitars, Vox organ, killer vocals, early Oriental vibes...Recorded in 1967-68 but not widely released until 1972. File next to Music Emporium, Tiffany Shade, Seeds, Rebecca & The Sunnybrook Farmers … Formed in California in 1967, Lite Storm was the first incarnation of spiritual seekers Johnima & Kalassu Wintergate (later on Lightstorm, One…). A pioneering psychedelic band, Lite Storm played at all the hip Sunset Strip clubs, were friends with Kali Bahlu and travelled to the Orient and Far East, touring in Vietnam in 1970. “Warning” was recorded at a four-track studio in 1967-68, first released as a custom tiny pressing before being licensed to the Beverly Hills label for a proper release. This is the first ever vinyl reissue.

[engl] Berlin's Amoeba-Underground-Surf-Lineup is back on their fourth release with eight tongue-shearing hip-shakes in the corner of Black Hole & Beach Boulevard and cracks open nuts of all angry German potato-citizens with the opener Potato Mash Bash, wonderful! At the other end "DINTE" as chainsaw ripper graduation with the active support of many guests on the mic, friendship without borders, punk with exclamation marks! Between? Whether it's an amphetamine addiction cream cut from the ZERO BOYS tube, or MODERN ACTION / BODIES sounding mode in the vein of Hardcore Classics from the Agnew School or simply nude bathing with THE CROWD... GULAG BEACH will make you feel like being in a Posh Boy porn. (Dirk Klotzbach)

[engl] KOMPLIKATIONS fifth release is yet another 12" that proves they just don't run out of great melodies, awesome harmonies, smart lyrics and aggressive dance beats. No Good News starts with synthesizers that sound like a car with engine troubles but don't get fooled - these 5 songs will take you on a wild ride through a mixture of emotions. Joy, hate, disbelief, frustration and mourning. No guitar, no bass, just synthesizer, drums and vocals. Still Punk as fuck!

[engl] First ever vinyl reissue of this German private press from 1978. Produced and recorded by the group and only sold at local shops and venues. Excellent and perfectly executed Latin-Funk / Jazz-Fusion with heavy Brazilian vibes. Heavy latin percussion / congas / berimbao, electric guitar, sax, flute, synths, Rhodes, male/female vocals in English / Spanish... Including club classics like “Sol y Sombra” (pure Balearic sound, championed by Jazzanova), “Just Like The Rainbow” (fab bossa-scat-jazz), “You Keep Me Running” (killer disco-boogie), "La Salsa" (hot latin-funk-rock jam) and much more.

[engl] Ok, wow! If you liked the first LOST TAPES album you will definitely love their second record. This fantastic post punk band out of Aachen just came up with 10 brand new songs that merge the dark and punk sound of early 80's Joy Division/The Cure/Wipers with contemporary bands like The Estranged or Grave Pleasures. What the fuck is the sophomore jinx? These 4 guys are better now than ever and happily serve you 40 Minutes of inconvenient joy. Awesome.

[engl] To all of you who eagerly waited for some new songs from the great Miscalculations - Here‘s the best news. We pressed six awesome tracks into a single-sided vinyl record and screenprinted the flipside to make this slice of plastic a really beautiful piece of art. More synthies this time and still the best blend of post punk a la Wire, Joy Division mixed with some electro in the vein of the Units, Screamers, Vicious Visions and a dose of Scandinavian / Euro punk like Masshysteri, Tristess, Invasionen etc.

[engl] Hailing from Tel Aviv, these 4 Israeli Power-Punk-Poppers are finally back with their sophomore album after the great debut in 2013. „Two Men“ comes with twelve marvelous Punk Rock / Power Pop hymns in the vein of Sonic Avenues, Steve Adamyk Band and Radioactivity so expect a lot of speed, melody and background choirs. The Sweatshop Boys really do excel in making you happy through a record – try to stay mad at the world/yourself/your boss while listening to this album…you won’t succeed. It’s like MDMA without the serotonin hangover.

[engl] If you like your Punk Rock with just the right amount of dirty organ and snotty Garage, you might have found your new favourite band right here. Van Dammes from Helsinki are four guys who perfected the mixture of catchy hooks, melodic riffs and scruffy noise. For fans of Marked Men, Sedatives and Statues. There’s even a little bit of Zebrassierers in there, if you remember that band. 6 Songs on this 7" – all killer.

[engl] Perhaps one of the most unique and unlikely exponents of the highly collectible genres of ambient electronics, experimental tape-music and PINA (Private Issue New Age) this English born Jamaican raised sound designer, artist and existentialist furrowed his own ublinkered path through lesser chartered electronic fields for many moons before eventually teaming up with Bill Laswell (with Material) and Daevid Allen in New York to bring self-taught synthesis to Gong during their most oblique periods. Creating two impossibly rare self pressed vinyl LPs of conceptual inner-visionary outer-galactic angular tonal-dronal alien-art soundscapes in the process, the man known under figure shifting guises such as Dennis Wise/Denis Weise/Dr. Wise etc, combined a culture of sound system circuitry and radiophonic trickery adding Tea-pot poetry and sci-fidelity future-folk to his magnetic mesh! Presented here as the first ever dedicated ize Music collection this record combines compositions spanning 1979-1984 in both a solo capacity as well as small-group projects featuring members of the Emerald Web band. Imagine a comic book where a Funkenstein monster called “Laraaji-Scratch Perry” invaded your record shelf while Komendarek and Holger Czukay kept lookout… Dr. Dennis might be the only one Wise enough to outsmart all of them with his powerful amorphous anaesthetic.

[engl] Liška, the Czechoslovakian word for fox. Beguiling in its beauty, cunning in it’s charm. Said to be one of the most intelligent animals on the planet its global family consists of thirty-seven varieties; all of them recognised, respected and feared for their persuasive, creative, resourceful and elusive nature. The Liška we will talk about today is no exception to these hereditary rules and within the grooves of this record Finders Keepers present an “elusive” musical artefact that best exemplifies every facet of this composer’s animal namesake. Had he not been born in the small Bohemian town of Sme?no in the early 1920s the story of The Fantastic Mr. Liška might have well taken a different course. Alternatively, fettered by the hampers of communism, this lifelong resident of Czechoslovakia would never quite find his seat at the same table as the likes of John Barry, Ennio Morricone, Michael Nyman and Stanley Myers, nor drop enough phonographic breadcrumbs to track his legacy. But having waited patiently behind the borders of the wider landscapes of international cinema, Liška’s musical brood, spanning multiple stylistic decades and generations, has now started to walk proudly amongst his would-be, latter-day compeers. In an era where music lovers have almost become immune to adjectives like “lost”, “rare” and “unreleased” in a climate where previously lesser-known off-kilter master composers such as Vannier, Kirchin and Axelrod have become widely revered, it is perhaps the perfect time for discerning listeners to advance above the feeding trough and seek out this truly pioneering and revolutionary Eastern European composer. Rivalled only by the likes of Krzysztof Komeda and Andrzej Korzynski in Poland, alongside Alexandr Gradsky in Russia, and often splitting workloads with fellow Czech composers like Luboš Fišer, Zdenek Liška’s filmography of over almost 300 fully formed movie scores virtually eclipses the achievements of these socialist era luminaries. Respected unanimously in both Czech and Slovakian by studio bosses, producers, directors and actors alike Liška is widely known for his ability to take the existing energy in a reel of film and literally change the polarity to suit his own interpretation while maintaining the full support from his “client” who would in-turn end up working under this composer’s creative direction. Not only was Liška a genius of emotive orchestral and coral composition, his grasp on small group arrangements and intimate, minimal scores set him above the competition. By utilising primitive sample techniques by “looping” a films existing ambient noise, or rearranging found sounds and dialog into subtle melodic arrangements, Liška would independently develop his own techniques which had simultaneously become known in Paris as musique concrète. It is a direct extension of these experiments that saw Liška also draw parallels with Walter Branchi (Ennio Morricone’s main electronic sidekick) in Italy as well as Daphne Oram in the UK, making Liška a relatively untravelled pioneer of early electronic composition and sound design due to his unlikely global environment. Imprisoned, preserved or reserved; time has been kind to Liška’s music.

[engl] A mythical and misplaced masterpiece of lost soft rock and acidic folk funk by a one-hit wonderer lost in the wilderness for four decades. From the producer of Margo Guryan, writer behind Wool, Gerry Mulligan collaborator, Tarantino soundtracker and Wendy & Bonnie confidant, Paint A Lady now emerges from folkloric obscurity, to bring a wash of soft psychedelic colour to your vinyl collection and quench the repeat requests of a thirsty new found audience waiting for the rain. Within certain record collecting circles, especially those who gather under the umbrella that covers fragile niches like “acid folk” and “soft rock”, it’s difficult to imagine a time when the legendary Susan Christie album didn’t exist. When Finders Keepers Records first shared the unheard 60’s songs like Paint A Lady, For The Love Of A Soldier and Echoes In Your Mind with a wide-eyed audience thirsty for organic soul and festival friendly acoustic funk, Susan’s new found fan base instantly felt like they had known these songs all of their lives, and with a single needle drop we saw the birth of what could rightfully be described as an “instant classic”. Which is why it’s hard to believe that the music on this lost 60s acetate was only pressed 12 years ago. As our lucky seventh release in an international discography that now surpasses the 100 mark (and one of a small clutch of English language recordings on the label) Paint A Lady has slowly become one of our most requested re-releases, and with this 2018 edition it is technically accurate to say that this pressing is the first-ever reissue of this elusive and essential LP. The oft over used term mythical applies to this album on many levels. Perhaps it’s the woozy nostalgia found within the pop craft of Paint A Lady that has led to false rumours that original 1960’s copies used to exist on the collectors market, or the bizarre claim that songs like the head-nodding title track, and the acid-drenched sound effects on Yesterday Where’s My Mind were just a product of a contemporary studio band trying to create a fake folk funk red herring. As a result Susan Christie and her producer and husband of 40 years, John Hill have happily taken the repeat phrase “unbelievable” as a compliment to their songwriting skills and foresight. In all fairness, with a decade to ponder, the original 1969 song titles alone do seem custom-built for the nostalgia market… No One Can Hear You Cry might lament the unrequited yearning for a record deal which never quite followed Susan’s won one-hit wonder novelty hit I Love Onions; similarly When Love Comes might allude to the subsequent 35 year wait for the right label to eventually come along. Echoes In Your Mind and the aforementioned Yesterday… could easily allude to the haunting melodies that sat in the can on John Hill’s studio shelf while his projects for Margo Guryan, Wool and Pacific Gas & Electric sat proudly in record racks before benefitting successful French cover versions or making their way on to Quentin Tarantino soundtracks. The track Paint A lady itself, complete with it’s future-proofed sample-worthy rhythm section, seems like the perfect title for a mock rock pseudo psych contender – at which point you eventually step back and see the bigger picture. These guys were simply one drop too far ahead of their time; a family force of experimental pop perfection that late 60’s America simply wasn’t ready for. It is just over 12 years since champion record rustler Keith D’Arcy (who you’ll meet on the inside sleeve) stumbled upon one of the original acetates that led to the final release of Paint A Lady, and it’s almost a longer 50 years since Susan and John added their final touches to these recordings which tragically went into hibernation for over four decades. Whether this album has been on your wish-list for what seems like a lifetime, or you are taking a plunge into this deep puddle for the first time, when the needle drops on the first track you’ll find that Susan Christie, John Hill and Finders Keepers have been saving up for a very rainy day

[engl] From Guy Skornik, the composer and arranger behind Popera Cosmic and Pour Pauwels, comes the enigmatic instrumental cues that provided fellow existentialist and notorious auteur director Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain) with the soundtrack music to what is now considered his rarest and most overlooked feature film, Tusk. As part as Finders Keepers ongoing dedicated Jodorowsky soundtrack series we present the original film edits from the 1979 studio sessions featuring Steve Hillage (Gong) and members of Cossi Anatz. Following his mind melting masterpieces Fando & Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky’s “disowned” attempt at a family film retains the director’s ongoing demand for intense, experimental film music resulting in what is undeniably one the best kept sonic secrets from the darker corners of this coveted filmography. Cherry-picked from pre-recorded synthesiser fuelled cosmic pop sessions by Skornik, these compositions provided Tusk with arabesque new age synthesis alongside full-blown ambitious electro rock, as well as classic French Fender Rhodes driven romanticism during some of this lesser-spotted movie’s most memorable moments. Presented here in isolation, Guy Skornik’s multifarious futurist-pop evokes worthy comparisons to Ash Ra Tempel, Eno’s Bowie and Suzanne Ciani, mapping an unlikely journey between Magma and 10cc in the process. Don’t ignore Jodorowsky’s “elephant in the room” – you never know what is hidden in the trunk. As part of Finders Keepers’ ongoing commitment and adoration for the cinematic work of Alejandro Jodorowsky the label now follows-up on the soundtrack releases of The Holy Mountain, El Topo and The Dance Of Reality with a record that not only unearths a lesser-known Jodographic gem but forms another spiritual circle in the label’s alternative pop universe, forming new twines in the Finders Keepers family tree.