[engl] Debut album from 1982 by former Lounge Lizards bass player & founding member STEVE PICCOLO, featuring bandmate EVAN LURIE plus G. LINDAHL. A hidden gem of minimalist beauty, mixing a post–punk/DIY/lo–fi aesthetic with art–rock & spoken poetry. Steve Piccolo has been in active since the mid–1970s in music, theater, performance art, sound installations, video and film soundtracks. In 1979 he started with the Lurie brothers the "fake jazz" / No Wave band the Lounge Lizards. "Domestic Exile" was recorded one year after the seminal Lounge Lizards debut, at a time when Steve was living a kinda schizophrenic existence: working at Wall Street by day and going to clubs and art spaces almost every evening (he was one of the artists filmed for the No Wave documentary "135 Grand Street New York 1979"). Early on, he was influenced by Mose Allison, Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman and "people who put thoughtful witty lyrics onto rather standard pop music". In just two weeks, Steve wrote the collection of songs which would form "Domestic Exile". Somebody described them as "Neurotic City Folklore" – as the lyrics dealt with living in NYC, urban angst, isolation, yuppies, nuclear paranoia...Titles like "Young and Ambitious", "Modern Man", "Businessman’s Lament", "Bleecker Street", "Superior Genes"...The idea was to use these songs for a sort of "side project", originally conceived more like a soundtrack for performance art and less like a band. The recording took place at the ZBS Foundation in New York, engineered by Bob Bielecki (a collaborator of Laurie Anderson and La Monte Young). Steve sang, played electric guitar, bass / double bass and percussion. He was joined by Lounge Lizards bandmate Evan Lurie on Farfisa keyboard (the same one he used on the first Lounge Lizards album) and G. Lindahl on synth. The trio even played live a few times, including a benefit concert for Public Access Synthesizer Studio at CBGB. After "Domestic Exile" was finished, Steve played the tapes to some record labels in New York and although one of the tracks, the catchy "I Don’t Want To Join A Cult", was an underground hit in Manhattan – even Debbie Harry (Blondie) wanted to do a cover version – no one expressed interest in releasing the album. Soon after, Steve went to Italy and "Domestic Exile" was finally released on a local label, housed in a cover very similar to the first Lounge Lizards album. The result was a minimalist art–rock masterpiece which could be described as a lo–fi version of John Cale’s "Music For A New Society". Sadly, the quality of the original pressing was not very good (cheap, noisy vinyl) and there was a mistake with a couple of song titles / running order on Side 1. These issues have been fixed for this new reissue. "I was always fascinated by society’s total dropouts, and by the idea of surviving completely outside the system, without an identity, papers, money, job, family. But not without friends... that would be unthinkable, unnecessary cruelty." – Steve Piccolo

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

[engl] Ultra- rare recordings by 70s UK avant- rockers Red Square, the missing link between original free- noise practitioners like AMM, Nihilist Spasm Band and Peter Brotzmann and post- No Wavers ala the Blue Humans, Borbetomagus, Fushitsusha, and the Dead C. Named after the early Soviets Constructivists, Red Square is a pioneering free- improvising, avant- rock band. They bridged the worlds of psychedelic rock, noise and avant- jazz, and many of the techniques and approaches to music that they helped to pioneer have become common practice today. Pre- dating Sonic Youth by seven years, Last Exit by a decade and Matt Gustafsson?s The Thing by twenty five, their railing aural assaults were once considered too extreme for commercial release. Formed in Southend- On- Sea in 1974 by guitar player Ian Staples (fresh from gigging at the Middle Earth club with Ginger Johnson?s African Drummers, sharing stage with Pink Floyd and Marc Bolan among others), bass clarinet / sax player Jon Seagroatt and free- jazz drummer Roger Telford, their unusual sound was an amalgam of jazz, improv and avant- rock, fuelled by the loud electric guitar of Ian Staples, whose style has been described as a ?revolutionary blend of Hendrix and Beefheart, with the sonic palettes of Derek Bailey and Stockhausen?. Ian?s atonal guitar riffs referenced metal without ever becoming metal. Red Square shared stages with Henry Cow, Lox Coxhill, David Toop and National Health and they were also involved with Music For Socialism. But their extreme sound and attitude were too much for both audience and record companies. The band imploded in 1978 with only two ultra- rare private cassettes releases as their only legacy. In 2008, they reformed again and they?re still playing and recording to this date. ?Rare and Lost 70s Recordings? includes a complete never- before- heard heavy studio session from 1978 plus a thunderous live set opening for fellow "rock in opposition" mavens Henry Cow, recorded with perfect sound quality in 1976.

[engl] Dark progressive synth ambient meet Berlin-School sounds on this privately pressed, conceptual album which “tells the story of a world annihilation through nuclear war”. “Requiem” is full of delayed psychedelic electric guitar, effects, cold drum machines, waves of analog keyboards (Korg MS20, Casioton ct201, Crumar DS-2, Jupiter-4…) and cosmic atmosphere. George Speckert is a conceptual electronic composer based in Hannover but of North American origin. Working as a music teacher in Germany in the 70s, he started to write and produce music in his spare time, inspired by the European rock and electronic scenes of the time (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Jean Michel Jarre, Emerson Lake & Palmer, etc). He met another American expat, David Cassidy (no, not THAT David Cassidy), who ran a small record label / studio. That’s when “Requiem” started to take form. A chance meeting with a terrific guitar player named Massimo Grandi, led to Massimo adding some amazing electric guitar to the album. After six months, “Requiem” was finally released in a private edition of 1000 copies on the small Daviton label.

[engl] Continuing with our reissue campaign of the Toby Robinson’s Pyramid label catalogue, now it’s the time for Temple. Probably the most "rock" sounding of all the Pyramyd titles, Temple were an ad–hoc outfit born out of several late night sessions at Dierks Studios (where Toby was working at that time), involving local friends of Toby and other musicians from adjoining studios, among them Zeus B. Held (Birth Control). Temple played a kind of heavy, dark psychedelic krautrock with ahead of its time proto–Goth vibe. Loud guitars, Hammond, Mini–Moog, Mellotron, distorted & echoing vocals, effects... RIYL: AMON DÜÜL II, HAWKWIND, BIRTH CONTROL, POPOL VUH, ASH RA TEMPEL, EMTIDI... *24–bit remaster from the original tapes.

[engl] Originally released in 1975, "Sexphonie" offers a mix of acid–rock, hard–psych, polit–rock and progressive / folky sounds with some eastern influences. Great studio production and outstanding guitar playing courtesy of Teflon Fonfara (who once blew up Camel’s PA system with his tape and delay guitar effects!). Tyll was formed when Teflon was approached by Kerston Records with the intention of releasing a krautrock album. Teflon’s previous group, Tyll Eulenspygel, was not active at that moment, so he assembled a new studio band featuring members and friends of Tyll Eulenspygel. Shrouded in mystery until now, Tyll’s "Sexphonie" is a Krautrock curiosity that almost never happened, and it was all created within a matter of weeks from inception of the band through to finished LP. The story is similar to that of the legendary Mammut, with an ad hoc band brought together and given total freedom to do whatever they wanted. Tyll can be seen as the illegitimate step–sister to Eulenspygel, and there was much controversy and even legal action involved and some rivalry between the two bands, especially as Tyll had poached Eulenspygel drummer Günter Klinger. Yet, whereas Eulenspygel had pretty much now lost the plot by 1973, Tyll’s sole LP was one of those surprisingly creative gems of the mid 1970s that, to the few that knew it, was a welcome breath of fresh air.

[engl] 'Cologne Curiosities' collects, for the first time on vinyl, all the otherwise unpublished/un-reissued material that firstly appeared on the three "Unknown Deutschland - The Krautrock Archive" CDs released on Virgin during 1996. These CD only releases were originally compiled by Trevor Manwaring (Paratactile, Impetus, Virgin, Harmonia Mundi) from tapes supplied to him by Toby Robinson. Toby - aka The Mad Twiddler, aka Genius P. Orridge - is well-known to Krautrock collectors as one of a number of engineers working at Stockhausen’s WDR and Dierks Studio in Cologne in the mid-1970's, where he assisted on recordings by many famous Kraut bands such as Can, Birth Control, Mythos or Dzyan. The recordings included here were made between 1972 and 1976 using studios in and around Cologne, produced by Toby Robinson for his own amusement, just having fun on the studio. Bands would come in for practice sessions, to record demo's, and during slack periods impromptu jams would happen. Most of these sessions were recorded by Toby, and they feature Toby himself plus a revolving cast of friends and musicians (some of them apparently big Kraut names under pseudonym). Including lost-in-time bands / studio projects like Astral Army, Fuerrote, Spirulina and Baal among others, the music here ranges from killer proto-New Wave Kraut psych to wild space rock, proto-ambient electronic, dark psychedelia and raw Kosmische sounds with lot of analog synths / Moog. It was during that time in Cologne, that Toby, along with Fluxus artist Robin Page, gave birth to the mysterious and controversial Pyramid label, for which these tracks were originally made for.

[engl] Pyramid was an underground / homemade label created by Toby Robinson and his friend Robin Page (the Fluxus artist) while they were living in Cologne, Germany, in the ’70s. Toby – aka The Mad Twiddler, aka Genius P. Orridge – is well–known to Krautrock collectors as one of a number of engineers working at Stockhausen’s WDR and Dierks Studio in Cologne in the mid–1970’s, where he assisted on recordings by many famous Kraut bands such as Can, Birth Control, Mythos or Dzyan. Pyramid was home to a series of fascinating homemade albums by impossible and lost–in–time kraut–kosmische bands like Cozmic Corridors, Golem, Nazgul...all of them reissued by Mental Experience in the last years. One of the most celebrated tracks from the Pyramid catalogue is "Interstellar Shortwave" by The Astral Army, originally included on the "Cologne Curiosities" comp. It’s a heavy–disco–kraut–groove, DJ friendly, Hawkwind–inspired track recorded circa mid–70s, and it’s presented here in its original version – pressed at 45rpm for maximum and expanding sound quality – and also as an edit by Gareth Goddard aka Cherrystones, who also offers another edit of "The Dead Marshes", one of the tracks included on The Nazgul album. Here, Cherrystones transforms the spooky, avant–garde sound of the track into a kind of cinematic, horror Spaghetti Western soundtrack. To round up the 12", there’s an experimental Cherrystones rework of "Daruber", a dark ambient / kosmische classic by Cozmic Corridors. *300 copies pressing, includes digital download card.

[engl] Formed in Sydney in 1976, VOIGT/465 was a truly unique band from the exciting days of the Australian post–punk scene. Heavily influenced by such luminaries as the Velvets, Stooges, Syd Barrett, Pere Ubu, Can, Faust, Henry Cow, Slapp Happy and Eno’s Roxy Music, they created an abrasive sound in which Krautrock, DIY, avant–garage, post–punk, psych, art–rock and free improv–noise combined to form a sound unlike any other. In 1978 Voigt/465 released one of the first DIY 45s from Australia, "State" / "A Secret West", which showed their "pop–psych" side and was played by John Peel in the UK. The following year, their bass player Lindsay O’Meara decided to leave the band and join Crime & The City Solution in Melboune. Before parting ways, Voigt/465 decided to record one last album as a testament. "Slights Spoken", saw the light in 1979 and it’s without doubt one of the most fascinating albums from the post–punk /DIY era. Here it is including the two tracks from their first 45 as bonus tracks. It comes with free download coupon, featuring the complete album plus five studio / live bonus tracks from ’78–79, including killer covers of Faust, Can and Roxy Music.

[engl] Obscure Dutch private pressing from 1977. Laid–back instrumental psychedelic / progressive sounds with jazz–funk–groove and abstract / experimental / Latin–indigenous touches. Stoned homemade atmosphere with treated / distorted electric & acoustic guitars, flute, electric piano, primitive drum machines / homemade electronics...Much in the vein of the experimental–underground scene of France & Germany during the early 70s but actually recorded and released in Holland. Wild Havana was the project of guitar player Johan Smith, helped by his brother Cor on flute. Influenced by artists like Zappa and Herbie Hancock, Johan recorded the "Wild Havana" album at his home studio on a 4–track, using effect devices developed by himself, like a modified proto–drum machine taken from a Hammond organ. He also used effects like phase shifter, chorus, etc and experimented with putting wool on the guitar strings and electric effects on the mandolin. The result sounded like nothing else at the time. Buried for many years, we’re excited to bring to life this unique album. RIYL: HERBIE HANCOCK, RICHARD PINHAS, CHRISTIAN BOULE, OREXIS... *Insert with liner notes by band member Johan Smit.