As our maiden voyage into an expansive vat of unreleased music by Polish composer Andrzej Korzynski, Finders Keepers Records originally presented his previously unreleased electro/ orchestral/experimental score for Andrzej Zulawski’s surrealist 80s horror classic, Possession in 2012. These 25 cues were written and recorded exclusively for the 1981 award-winning film starring Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neil, but due to the progressive, stark and modernist nature of the finished film less than half of them made it on to the actual director’s cut – leaving many ofthe tracks on this spackage totally unheard outside of Korzynski’s studio.

The intended Possession score in its entirety marks an important axis in Korzynski’s career where his various musical disciplines overlap. In one respect it marks his first forays into to synth driven electronics and disco drum machines, while other tracks epitomise the well honed techniques used in previous Zulawski scores, such as Third Part Of The Night and The Devil, which rely on his inimitable orchestral arrangements and combination of clavinet, Rhodes, piano and electric guitar.

Available once again on black 12” vinyl for the fist time since its original release some 11 years ago, our ongoing commitment to the important restoration of Korzynski’s music aims to shed new light on the seldom manufactured productions of the composer whose vast cinematic catalogue warrants overdue global status alongside other golden era Eastern European composers such as Kryzstof Komeda, Jan Hammer and Zdenek Liska – not to mention the best of the French and Italian soundtrackers, such as Roubaix, Vannier and Nicolai. Duplicated and carefully remastered directly from Korzynski’s original master tapes

TRACK LISTING

1. The Night The Screaming Stops (Opening Titles)
2. Opętanie 1
3. Meeting With A Pink Tie
4. Opętanie 2
5. Anna Rewards Mark
6. Possession - Orchestral Theme 1
7. Kreuzberg 1
8. Opętanie 3
9. Mark Looks In The Fridge
10. Heinrick’s Demise
11. Opętanie 4
12. Possession - Orchestral Theme 2
13. Blue Ford B-AZ6
14. Helen Has Green Eyes
15. Opętanie 5
16. Bloody Embrace
17. Kreuzberg 2
18. Detective’s Desserts
19. Kreuzberg 3
20. Kreuzberg 4
21. The Night The Screaming Tops (Tempo)
22. Mark Formulates A Plan
23. Mark Sees Everything
24. Closely Observered Anna
25. Opętanie 6
26. What Is It?
27. The Man With The Pink Socks

As one of the three inaugural 1976 releases to ignite the mythical Mustevic Music catalogue, David Wertman’s elusive Kara Suite LP was the first record to turn jazz drummer Steve Reid’s vanity imprint into an bona fide cooperative record label with a multi-artist repertoire. Entrusting his own bass player with the limelight, Reid’s unlikely A&R decision would typify his oblique strategies and challenge the common perception of a soloist within jazz’s shifting landscape.

Drawing few comparisons amongst independent label releases of the time, save for rare standalone LP by Ronnie Boykins (ESP 1975) and cellist Abdul Wadoud (Bisharra 1978), Wertman’s only solo album (preceding his work with Sun Ensemble and The New Life Trio) combined frenetic bow work, intricate spiritual exchanges and raucous rock solid cyclic riffage to underpin his own compositional complexities. Providing a platform for first-time players like Richard Schatzberg (French horn) and future avant jazz punk participant Ken Simon (tenor/soprano sax) Kara Suite provides an early indication of Wertman’s multilayered and non-conformist blueprint from which the hallowed New Life Trio would eventually illuminate. The album’s off-kilter commitment is further cemented by the inclusion of worldly free jazz luminary Charles Tyler (alto sax) and the naturalistic back-beat of Steve Reid himself to complete the dream team – albeit a sleepless one, on account of this one-off quintet’s wide-eyed innovation.

Presented in four parts, Kara Suite documents Wertman’s very first musical directorial commitment to vinyl, preceded only by guest appearances, months earlier, on Steve Reid’s classic Rhythmatism and the ultra-rare The Universal Jazz Symphonette LP which chronicles Wertman’s deep-end New York baptism alongside Billy Bang and Earl Freeman before his relocation to Northampton forged this unique and oblique chapter in America’s independent jazz narrative. As one of the final pages to be turned in the Mustevic reappraisal legacy this album perhaps remains the best kept secret for aficionados who actively choose to blur the lines between spiritual jazz and free jazz with no discrimination against art rock and the genre that might soon be christened punk (but not as we know it).

Finally resurrected via the Finders Keepers/Early Future unison, complete with full cooperation and sleeve note narration by David’s partner Lynne Meryl, it might come as little surprise that amongst these pillars of alternative, privately pressed jazz is a story that also intertwines names such as Alice Cooper, Archie Shepp, KISS and DJ Shadow and many mutating musical genres that have made this music so hard to pin down over the subsequent five decades.

TRACK LISTING

1. Kara Suite
2. Sunshine
3. Sharatarr
4. Devotion 

Back due to unprecedented demand and available for the first time since the original 2012 pressing, Finders Keepers Records is proud to once again present these twenty-two rare and unreleased vintage tracks from the secret vaults of one of the most enigmatic composers in 60s/70s/80s European cinema, Andrzej Korzynski.

Originally recorded in the best studios in Poland, Italy and France for experimental film, political allegories, lost television shows, sound libraries and radio – these tracks have been hidden behind the Iron Curtain on lost master tapes and film reels until now! Secret Enigma represents the first ever dedicated anthology of this great composer’s work. Originally released exactly thirty years ago In artistic cinema Andrzej Korzynski’s unique experiments with jazz, pop, rock, orchestral and electronic music make his name synonymous with the most praised (Andrzej Wajda) and the most provocative (Andrzej Zuławski) Polish filmmakers (counting many more in between).

As an early patron of the Polish New Wave and a key exponent of the development of conceptual Polish pop music his expansive portfolio has remained commercially unreleased and untravelled (like many of the original socialist era Polish made films) and has yet to find its deserved place next to the work of Ennio Morricone, François de Roubaix and John Barry.

Now enhanced by a renewed interest in vintage art house film and a subculture of open minded music collectors many Easter European artists, such as Krzysztof Komeda (Poland), Zdenek Liška (Czechoslovakia) and now Andrzej Korzynski, have finally begun to earn their place alongside their Central European peers. For lovers of film music and experimental pop, this debut anthology and appraisal of Korzynski’s work is long overdue, and stylistically, probably never more relevant.

TRACK LISTING

1. Trying To Catch A Fly
2. Le Grabuge (Pop Theme)
3. Agent No.1 From Agent No.1
4. Opętanie 5 From Possession
5. Saved From Oblivion
6. Tajemnica Enigmy
7. W Instytucie
8. Karawana
9. The Dziekanka Students’ Hostel - Dance
10. Landscape
11. Losy (Mid-Beat Theme)
12. Third Part Of The Night (Main Theme)
13. Diabeł
14. La Grabuge (Orchestral Pop Theme)
15. Roza Roza (featuring Arp Life)
16. Bossa Nova (featuring Ewa Wanat)
17. The Dziekanka Students’ Hostel - Rock Group
18. Łapanka
19. Le Grabuge (Orchestral Theme)
20. Losy (Mid-Guitar Theme)
21. Trying To Catch A Fly (Reprise)
22. Wszystko Na Sprzedaż Taniec

As one of the most triumphant and beguiling directorial debut features to emerge from the fruitful Polish New Wave, Andrzej Zulawski’s 1971 film Third Part Of The Night not only earned the 30 year old filmmaker a place next to other radical Polish directors such as Polanski, Skolimowski and Has, but also galvanised a creative bond with long running collaborator and composer Andrzej Korzynski, providing fans of foreign abstract/suspense cinema with a potent creative fusion to match those of Polanki/Komeda, Fellini/Rota and Argento/Goblin, amongst others.

Quite simply one of the heaviest psych rock film soundtracks of all time Andrzej Korzynski’s short and unreleased score matched the blueprint that adorned the drawing boards of conceptual French jazz orch rock composers like Jean-Claude Vannier, Francois De Roubaix and Alain Gourageur, creating a soundtrack that unknowingly begs comparison to Masahiko Satô’s Belladonna Of Sadness and Billy Green’s Stone.

As one of the first progressive pop writers to come out of the vibrant (but carefully scrutinised) Polish beat scene with his bands Ricecar and later Arplife (and composing for national heroes such as Czeslaw Niemen, Niebiesko-Czarni and Test) Korzynski’s growing passion for conceptual rock and jazz music soon lead to instrumental composition and soundtrack scores. His cinematic debuts scoring two consecutive transitional new wave films for Andrzej Wajda (in collaboration with the radical Polski pop groups Trubadurzy and Grupa ABC) also provided Korzynski with another significant cinematic muse in that of the stunning actress Malgorzata Braunek with whom they would both eventually achieve their finest performances under the direction of the ravenous first timer Zulawski.

Third Part Of The Night (1971) perhaps epitomises that triangular on-screen unison in its vibrant youth and feeds it through a hallucinogenic mangle finding astonishing beauty (within a repulsive synopsis) against a bleak and shattered backdrop and accompanied by progressive, psychedelic orchestral rock music - elements which would intensify for all three creatives with the next film, Diabel, which was banned by the Polish government the following year until 1988. Third Part Of The Night also marks the public unison of Zulawski and Braunek whose later private romantic relationship is said to form the basis for another defining Zulawski/Korzynski defining endeavour with the 1981 film Possession exactly a decade later, encapsulating a period that bequeaths a previously unopened vault of some of the composers finest and most inspired sonic adventures.

Emerging from behind the same clouds that kept formative Belgian progressive jazz records like Brussels Art Quintet and Kiosk’s ‘Mona Call’ in tangible obscurity, these impossibly rare early Euro jazz recordings shed a new ray of light on the intricate foundations of the scene that elevated COS, Marc Moulin, Placebo, Marc Hollander and Telex to Zen Master status, while also capturing one of Europe’s best female vocal artists in the midst of her wide eyed and uninhibited prime.

Never before released on vinyl, these tracks provide us with a sonic chalkboard of Daniel Schell’s ambitious musical equations, recalculated by precocious polymaths, then conveyed via Pascale Son’s inquisitive child-like vocal explorations.

TRACK LISTING

Sur Deux
L’admirable Amas cellulaire Oran
La Partie D’echecs
Achille
Fanfan La Tulipe

Part fantastical historic sonic biopic, part anthropologic journey into the deep roots of Belgium’s monstrous cosmic rock sound, this wholly individualistic concept album combines the lead members of the mighty COS (Daniel Schell and Pascale Son) with studio genius Alain Pierre (Ô Sidarta/Des morts) and celebrated Dutch progressive rock singer Dick Annegarn, for what many consider to be both the overlooked hiding place of Belgium’s deepest psychedelic moment and European prog’s lost map to the ‘Franco-Flemish Boom’.

Emerging from the wider musical family that counted Marc Moulin, Placebo and Marc Hollander amongst its creative kin, Daniel Schell’s most profound conceptual project ambitiously combines the tale of the heroic historical figure of Count Egmont (1522–1568), while simultaneously tracing the evolution of the ud, or oud, (‘the grandfather of the guitar’) in this multifarious hallucinogenic epic. Featuring key members of other collectable groups such as drummer Felix Simtaine from Solis Lacus and bass player Jean-Louis Baudoin from the mythical Classroom (COS predecessor), this best-kept secret vinyl release also harbours the voices of Dirk Bogaert (of Belgian hard rockers Waterloo) as well as Catalan singer Ilona Chale (Marc Hollander/Aksak Maboul) before her later tenure as the COS front woman.

Initially released in 1978 via Zeuhl school distributors Free Bird alongside French pressings of Don Cherry, Jacques Thollot and CAN, it is plain to understand the niche nature of this maligned “lost COS” LP as it finally blooms from between the cracked branches of European jazz-rock-synth-psych-prog-pop history… and beyond!

TRACK LISTING

1. La Ballade Du Zwin
2. Ein Kleiner Mann
3. UD
4. Piume Al Vento
5. Nelle
6. Granvelle
7. Sabina And First Variation
8. Un Instant Sous La Hache
9. Geuzenlied
10. Sabina And Second Variation
11. The Ff BOOM

Cult jazz soundtrack to supernatural Soho strangler epic ‘Der Wurger Vom Tower’ by Swiss electronic pioneer Bruno Spoerri that has been locked away since 1966.

Translated as ‘The Strangler In The Tower’, this lesser-known thriller possibly stretched the imaginations of cinematic crime buffs beyond the genre’s parameters before disappearing into obscurity.

Liberated from Bruno Spoerri’s meticulous master tape vault this, his first-ever feature-length soundtrack commission, can finally take its place alongside other recently resuscitated oblique jazz scores by the likes of Basil Kirchin, Krzysztof Komeda (Cul-De-Sac), Roger Webb and Jonny Scott.

The real sacred jewel in Bruno Spoerri’s crown as the leader and pioneer of Switzerland’s electronic underground (not to mention sample source amongst rap royalty) and a mysterious monarchial figure in European jazz and music technology.

TRACK LISTING

Der Würger Vom Tower (Big Ben’s Little Secret)
Der Würger Vom Tower (Oxfords On Oxford Street)
Staircase Strangler/Headlines For Harry
Don’t Blame Jane
Regent Jewellers (A Few Questions For Mr. Clifton)
Robbery In Robes
Jane Flees (Jazz Chase)
Kidnapped
Crashed Jag/Raymond’s Revuebar/Scotch & Pancakes
There’s A Devious Religious Sect...
To The Brothers Of Compensatory Righteousness...
Brogues In Robes
Kiddie’s Beat (More Tea Vicar/Something Stronger)
Reading The Killer
The Strangler In The Tower/Kiddie And Company
Flashlight/The Whole Finger
Spiral Staircase (Jazz Chase)
Inspiral Staircase (Jazz Chase Rock Version)
Check Out The Gravel Pit (Parkstrasse Percussions)
Plane To Peru (Parvati Smaragd)

Expanded reissue of mega rare 1979 unknown vanity pressing LP that blends ethnological field recordings, musique concrète principles and introspective synthesiser music from this cult European studio maverick and historic collaborator of COS, Philippe Druilet, Marc Moulin and John Surman.

Alain Pierre’s Mondo movie soundtrack to the controversial ‘Des Morts’ shares very few stylistic rivals, but fans of Jodorowsky’s ‘The Holy Mountain’ soundtrack and some of the more eldritch early sampling experiments of Jean-Pierre Massiera will certainly draw fragmented comparisons herein. Other listeners might file this album at the weirder end of your Smithsonian Folkways shelf, just before the Video Nasty soundtracks.

Presented in remastered form comprising extra vintage studio outtakes (in accordance with the film’s morbid narrative), ‘Des Morts’ serves as a would-be sequel to Finders Keepers’ previous Ô Sidarta release witnessing Pierre balance his allegiance to the Belgian bandes dessinée scene and Thierry Zéno’s shock cinema oeuvre from the heart of his uber-legendary Brussels based experimental recording studio through the 1970s.

TRACK LISTING

1.  Des Morts (Theme)
2.  Funérailles Chez Les
3.  Hmongs (Thaïlande)
4.  Clown
5.  Fête Des Morts Chez
6.  Des Morts (Alternative Theme)
7.  Chant D’un Mariachi (Mexique)
8.  Cryogene
9.  Funérailles Bouddhistes (Thaïlande)
10.  Des Morts (Final Theme)

It has been exactly ten years since Finders Keepers first intrepidly entered Andrzej Korzynski’s cavernous musical vault, but it is only today that they are able to proudly announce the safe retrieval of what is often considered the true heavy psych holy grail of the Polish composer’s mind-bending oeuvre.

By cruel coincidence, this welcome event has sadly come during the same year as the composer’s tragic passing. However, in true Korzynski style, alongside his previous Finders Keepers releases, the legacy he has left behind in this one final lost soundtrack project alone has come with musical riches beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

The comprehensive elusive archive of the deeply psychedelic soundtrack to Andrzej Zuławski’s forbidden film ‘Diabeł’ (The Devil) is perhaps the most detailed dossier one could wish to find - including audio sketches, rejected proposals and pre-butchered variations that play out like an intense and veritable creative conversation between the director and the maestro, both of whom are widely recognised as true mavericks of socialist-era Poland’s fertile artistic landscape.

This 7” record is more than just a companion piece, and it is far from a selection of the (non-existent) poppy title themes to promote a full featurelength album. This standalone release is wholly unique in its own right, giving Finders Keepers listeners a final Access All Areas snoop into the mind of one of the pillars of our alternative musical community.

As those familiar with Zuławski and Korzynski’s long-running relationship will understand (a methodology best exemplified in the schizoid soundtrack to the film ‘Possession’), their exchanges were deeply nuanced and often complicated, with lots of artistic ‘tennis’ thrown into the mix. The key plot in this behind-the-scenes fable is that after delivering his original off-kilter psychedelic score to the director, maestro Korzynski was asked to make the music “totally unique, like something from another planet,” to which Korzynski took his tapes, pulled down the vari-speed to a guttural grind and continued to recompose over the top using avant-garde electro-acoustic techniques while deploying psychedelic skills of guitarist Winicjusz Chróst.

This record proudly boasts Korzynski’s original uptempo awkward psychedelic pop music prior to the doom laden growls that make the official film’s soundtrack a true Goliath of Eastern European soundtrack composition. Which, when recontextualised, will stand as a veritable facemelter for stoner rock fans.

TRACK LISTING

The Devil Tapes Part One
The Devil Tapes Part Two

Sourced from the elusive original master tapes, with the full cooperation of the CeTA archives in Warsaw, this grinding psych rock score finally emerges on vinyl 50 years after the film’s original theatrical release.

One of the last groundbreaking releases from Poland’s prime progressive provocateurs Andrzej Zuławski and Andrzej Korzynski to finally see the light of day.

These unearthed recordings represent the crowning glory of the lifelong unison of Maestro Andrzej Zuławski and filmmaker Andrzej Korzynski, two genuine mavericks of Polish experimental cinema who challenged artistic and societal norms, on both sides of a politically restricted regime and on an international artistic stage, without compromise.

Friends since childhood, Korzynski and Zuławski may have become divided by limelight and geography (Zuławski the intrepid emigre), but they remained united in their kaleidoscopic creative vision, resulting in a fractured stream of troublesome and mind-bending golden era collaborations such as ‘Possession’, ‘The Silver Globe’, and ‘Third Part Of The Night’. This longawaited liberation of the psychedelic masterpiece known as ‘Diabeł’ finally completes the duo’s full vista with what many consider the most vital piece of the prism.

TRACK LISTING

The Devil
Freedom For A Promise
War-Torn Wasteland
Wretched Woodland
Wedding Dance Macabre
A Mute Reunion
The Devil Fits - God In His Youth
Through The Door - Theador
Your Father Is Dead Young Lord (Be Cursed)
Broken Boudoir
Theador And The Rifles
The Bordel
Mother
Daughter Of The Sin
Zakonnica
Rope Him To The Horse
Around You Is A Void Circle Save For The Stinking Corpses
Understand Nothing
No Blackberries In Winter
Cancel The Evil Gently
Mother Snake
The Fiery Sword
The Duel
Not The Horse
The Quill - What’s Not Written Does Not Exist
The World Is Beautiful (Climb The Tree)
Theador Go Back To God
The Black Dog

Cult jazz soundtrack to supernatural Soho strangler epic ‘Der Wurger Vom Tower’ by Swiss electronic pioneer Bruno Spoerri that has been locked away since 1966.

Translated as ‘The Strangler In The Tower’, this lesser-known thriller possibly stretched the imaginations of cinematic crime buffs beyond the genre’s parameters before disappearing into obscurity.

Liberated from Bruno Spoerri’s meticulous master tape vault this, his first-ever feature-length soundtrack commission, can finally take its place alongside other recently resuscitated oblique jazz scores by the likes of Basil Kirchin, Krzysztof Komeda (Cul-De-Sac), Roger Webb and Jonny Scott.

The real sacred jewel in Bruno Spoerri’s crown as the leader and pioneer of Switzerland’s electronic underground (not to mention sample source amongst rap royalty) and a mysterious monarchial figure in European jazz and music technology.

TRACK LISTING

Der Würger Vom Tower (Big Ben’s Little Secret)
Der Würger Vom Tower (Oxfords On Oxford Street)
Staircase Strangler/Headlines For Harry
Don’t Blame Jane
Regent Jewellers (A Few Questions For Mr. Clifton)
Robbery In Robes
Jane Flees (Jazz Chase)
Kidnapped
Crashed Jag/Raymond’s Revuebar/Scotch & Pancakes
There’s A Devious Religious Sect...
To The Brothers Of Compensatory Righteousness...
Brogues In Robes
Kiddie’s Beat (More Tea Vicar/Something Stronger)
Reading The Killer
The Strangler In The Tower/Kiddie And Company
Flashlight/The Whole Finger
Spiral Staircase (Jazz Chase)
Inspiral Staircase (Jazz Chase Rock Version)
Check Out The Gravel Pit (Parkstrasse Percussions)
Plane To Peru (Parvati Smaragd)

The first progressive girl group of the French Occitan language pop scene bring you folk funk, sun-baked bossa, Coltrane jazz and their own brand of punky ‘Dizco Rural’ against an untouched French Balearic backdrop spanning the late 70s and 80s.

If even the most assiduous of European record collectors consider the Occitan language music scene to be France’s best-kept secret then it’s as fair to say that the incredible multifaceted recordings of langue d’oc prog girl group Lei Chapacans have spent the last four decades hiding in plain sight. In all fairness this overlooked treasure chest of minority language excursions into folk funk, Balearic, bossa, John Coltrane-penned jazz, baroque psych, Palestinian poetry, comedic synth skits (and even the rawest form of femme-fronted multilingual punky disco) has been stowed away in inconspicuous photographic record sleeves, falsely evoking something closer to contemporary C&W while oft-misplaced in record shop cassette racks alongside ‘traditional’ spoken-word and scholastic albums.

So, for the uninitiated, don’t be too hard on yourself. The fun starts here. For those who are familiar with the rare and sought-after one-off solo album by Occitan singer Miquela and have craved for more, then you’ve come to exactly the right place. Lei Chapacans (a name that roughly translates to The Vagabonds) is the all-girl vocal group assembled by Miquela herself just two years after her debut release, having toured the word and snubbed major label record deal offers with a steadfast allegiance to the protection of the Occitan language in which this album is primarily penned and performed (minus a small amount of German and sarcastic English in one rebellious instance).

For European collectors with a penchant for French savoir faire, but have further yearnings for folkloric femme funk, then it’s time to look towards the Occitan sunset where you will meet Lolo, Miquela, Sophie, Irena and Denise.

These amazing, and undeniably culturally important recordings might have taken some time to find a wider audience, but for music lovers, crate diggers and vinyl vultures alike there are still a lot of tasty morsels out there to be scavenged and devoured, ask any self-respecting Chapacan and they’ll concur wholeheartedly.

TRACK LISTING

Au Jardin
Siau Pas Poeta
Tu E Ieu
A Cantar
Dizco Rural
Basta (Naima)
La Pub
Tais-toi
Dialogue
Airplane
Leberon
Me Demandes Pa
A La Guerra

Jean-Claude Vannier and Finders Keepers finally liberate two previously unreleased and fabled soundtracks.

This one black vinyl disc release features the only existing original historic recordings to his first ever 1968 collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, as well as the entire lost musical score for Vannier’s first major star-stuffed solo film commission.

As longtime custodians, Finders Keepers Records are proud to present both the hallucinogenic orchestral music to Robert Benayoun’s ‘Paris n’existe pas’ and the rhythmic onslaught and cyclic waltzes from Patrick Chaput’s ‘La bête noire’, complete with an extensive booklet of essays, interviews, secrets and rare images from both of these mythical cinematic obscurities.

TRACK LISTING

La Bête Noire (Intro)
Chasser La Bête Noire
Histoire De Daniel
The Black Beast (Effets Cords)
Rythme De La Bête Noire
Danse De La Bête Noire
Le Dealer
Karen/Antonia
The Black Beast 2 (Effets Cords)
The Writer/Yves
Chasser Bête Noire (Revenir)
The Juvenile Judge
La Bête Noire (Generique)
Paris N’existe Pas (Opening Titles)
Angela En Ambré
Télékinésie En Turquoise
Simon Slips
La Chambre Rose
Fantôme Félicienne
Le Feu
La Tête
Les Chemins N’existent Pas
Fantôme Soirée
Le Temps Passe
Flipbook
Fantôme Soiree (Outtake)
Flipbook (Outtake)

When a handful of broadsheet music columns and reputable blog pages began tomention the vaguely familiar name Jane Weaver in the ‘Here’s One We Missed’-themed features during 2014’s End Of Year round-ups, it became quickly apparent that the singer’s concept album,‘The Silver Globe’, had already independently garnered a ‘must have’ status amongst virtually any self respecting music buyers. But unlike so many other big label campaigns that vied for PR attention viaego-fuelled video promos and down your throat advertising, this unassuming, dedicated, focused piece of experimental female vocal pop was in no way spoon fed to editors nor playlisters. Nor did it fall within the lines of what might have been considered fashionable or culturally relevant.

‘The Silver Globe’ defied species, and for once, was judged on its own merit as a brilliant uncompromising pop record. The sixth album by a long-standing pillar of the North West music scene (loosely based on a lost Polish dystopian feature film and a French novella featuring a personnel of vintage Atari music composers next to Australian synth pioneers) was a simply typical product of the way Jane Weaver has always operated - as an independent and resilient female experimental songwriter, on her own label, on the outskirts of anything that resembles a music industry. Throughout her twenty-year career she has stayed focused, avoided whimsical fads and distractions and used her experience to work as hard as she can when she can. By Christmas ‘The Silver Globe’ had been announced as Piccadilly Records’ Best Album Of The Year, earned a Worldwide Top Ten Track Of The Year accolade by Gilles Peterson, gleaned across the board full-stars and thumbs up from the music press, benefitted unanimous repeat plays from virtually every specialist DJ on 6 Music (amongst many more global radio stations), found DJ mix support from Andrew Weatherall, and filled most of the pages in a twelve month diary with gig and festival requests. Meanwhile, Jane’s own BirdImprint (via Finders Keepers) had to worked around the clock to keep up with stock demands of her new (and old) music. Album collaborators such as David Holmes, Andy Votel and BC Camplight shared gushing pride in the project and with this unanimous critical support (and long earned respect) Jane reacted in the only way she knows best - to keep creating.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: An incredible album, a concept album, a whole world of dreams, a portal. With analogue synths, Krautrock grooves, strange wonky disco and whispy, dislocated folk, Jane created a world of sound you couldn't help but fall in love with and ultimately lose yourself in. The song-writing is top notch, the production incredible, the artwork absolutely beautiful. Everything is perfect about this record.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Silver Globe
2. Argent
3. The Electric Mountain
4. If Only We Could Be In Love
5. Don’t Take My Soul
6. Cells
7. Mission Desire
8. Stealing Gold
9. Arrows
10. Your Time In This Life Is Just
11. Temporary

‘The Amber Light’: Originally issued as a limited CD only bonus disc for ‘The Silver Globe’ album global re-release and a subsequent vinyl pressing, ‘The Amber Light’ surprised fans expecting B-sidesand outtakes with what, for many, stood up as its own isolated project, including some of Jane’s bestmaterial to date, including the pulsating synth anthem ‘I Need A Connection’, which since became aradio favourite also appearing on film and fashion shows throughout the latter half of 2015.

‘The Amber Light’ also included further collaborations with Finders Keepers’ Andy Votel, as well aslong awaited collaborations with Atari / Star Wars synthesist Suzanne Ciani, Tom Furse (keyboardistfrom The Horrors) and Sean Canty from Demdike Stare. Recorded over the course of two long weekends between tours with her custom-built band operating atan energetic optimum, ‘The Amber Light’ captures Jane exuding the passion, experimentalism andjustified confidence which is instantly reflected with some of her best songwriting to date. Currently gearing up for a US tour and within the final throes of recording a brand-new LP for FireRecords, it is a very exciting time for this unique multi-tasking independent female composer whoseloyal long-running fanbase multiplies with everyy closely recorded breath. Trepidation is not requiredhere, ‘The Amber Light’ means you can go.

TRACK LISTING

1. La Pomme D’Argent
2. I Need A Connection
3. You Are Dissolved
4. Cascade In Dark
5. Argent (Tom Furse
6. Extrapolation)
7. The Amber Light (Edit)
8. Parade Of Blood Red Sorrows
9. Neotantrik Globes (Excerpt)

Eighteen sacred psychedelic suppositories from the laboratory of mad scientist and scalpel-happy pop mutilator Jean-Pierre Massiera. Includes the rarest and most sought after fuzz funk, spooked surf and interplanetary prog from ‘The French Joe Meek’ and all his schizoid splitpersonalities and freakish friends - The Maledictus Sound, Chico Magnetic Band, Visitors, Human Egg, The Pirhana Sound and Jesus himself.

Let Finders Keepers introduce you to some old friends of theirs - Charlie Mike Sierra, Jean-Pierre Areisam, JPM and Co. Erik, The Horrific Child, Jesus, Les Maledictus Sound, Human Egg... This might sound like they’re flicking through the imaginary LP racks in the record shop from ‘A Clockwork Orange’ or perhaps congratulating the runners up in a Halloween fancy dress competition but for the previously uninitiated you have just been ordained into the congregation of the many split personalities of one Mr. Jean-Pierre Bernard Massiera. Bow down to the nine-headed monster as he mutates and shape-shifts back through time to his humble beginnings in a Buenos Aires province ravaging and pillaging the music of the European people for his own twisted benediction along the way.

This might, as intended, sound a little bit dramatic but if there is one single ingredient that gives the eccentric Jean-Pierre Massiera his distinct flavour it’s a large dollop of drama. Add sprinklings of schizophrenia, shock, myth and macabre and you are on the way to a Bmovie broth with an acquired taste that has, like all the best cheese, taken over thirty years to mature to perfection. Like all the best monsters, his split personality is the key to his infamy and the secret of his blood sucking success.

This is why Jean-Pierre Massiera is (un)commonly known for two key periods in his career which, like a worm, can be split down the middle to thrive and flourish independently. To cut a long story short, Massiera is, above all, a lover and purveyor of musique fantastique, and is willing and able to hijack whichever stylistic vehicle that passes him buy in order to do feed his lust. In the earlier part of his career he honed his sordid craft amongst psychedelic circles in Nice and Quebec. From late 1972 onwards he moved to Antibes and started a disco revolution and became an in demand cosmic record producer. For years, prog rock obsessives and disco aficionados have wondered if there was two unrelated freak merchants called Jean-Pierre Massiera but, in this rare instance, exploito-maniacs from both sides of the cosmic coin are united by the work of this singular, single-handed monstrous music manufactory.

Remastered and available once again on deluxe black vinyl since the initial Finders Keepers limited edition 2009 pressing.

TRACK LISTING

Visitors - Visitors
S.E.M. Studios - Ivresse Des Profondeurs
Jesus - L’Electrocute
Les Chats - Bizarre
The Starlights - Mao Mao
Basile - Itubo Del Anno
Chico Magnetic Band - Pop Or Not
Les Maledictus Sound - Kriminal Theme
Jesus - Songe Mortuaire
Basile - Engins Bizarres
Human Egg - Onomatopaeia
Les Monegasques - Psychose
Chris Gallbert - Sing Sing
Hermans Rockets - Space Woman
Piranhas - La Turbie Pirhanienne
Human Egg - Egg
Les Maledictus Sound - Inside My Brain
After Life - (Le Secret De) La Vieille Dame

From deep in the heart of Moomin Valley, frozen in time for many midwinters passed, comes a genuine treasure chest of never heard Moomin melodies and instrumental comet songs composed for the continued animated adventures of our Fuzzy-Felt freak folk friends who disappeared from UK TV pastures in the mid-1980s.

From the top of the Hobgoblin’s Hat and the bottom of Snufkin’s satchel, original Moomins composer Graeme Miller (‘The Carrier Frequency’) kindly shares this patchwork selection of spellbinding sound poems and percussive peons made using the very same selection of ocarinas, kalimbas, miniature squeak boxes, Waspy synths, cornflake box shakers and a seemingly endless array of talent and lo-fi home studio trickery. 

Regarded as one of the most enigmatic, beguiling and haunting imported children’s programmes to ever grace UK TV screens, ‘The Moomins’ was one of the first-ever commissions by Anne Wood (‘The Teletubbies’) who ingeniously replaced the original Polish/Austrian/Finnish soundtrack with homemade music experiments by unknown post-punk theatre students Graeme Miller and Steve Shill (aka The Commies From Mars) who, after the screening of two unforgettable series in 1983 and 1985, were left in eager anticipation of rescoring further Moomin adventures with new melodies, arrangements and sound designs, which then lingered in the ether waiting until the Groke awoke and Snorkmaiden sang once more. 

With future felt adventures screened exclusively in Poland and Germany for many years (often as feature films) these unheard recordings are the only genuine musical sequel to the bizarre UK version of ‘The Moomins’ and stand as important inclusions in Graeme Miller’s own portfolio of theatrical theme music and sound installations as part of The Impact Theatre Cooperative, including collaborations with artists and writers such as Russell Hoban.

Witnessed in fragmented form during a short run of incredible rare live screenings at The Barbican Theatre and various film festivals, this record marks the first time this music has been heard in its original full-length form, free from sound effects, dialogue and whimpers of euphoric joy and nostalgia from those who have continued to crave the company of our Moomintrolls and their mysterious music over the last five decades.

TRACK LISTING

1 .The Moomins (Occarina Theme)
2. Raft Journey
3. The Cave
4. Climbing The Lonely Mountain
5. The Moomin Hornpipe (Part One)
6. Woodland Band (Parade)
7. The Observatory (Unabridged)
8. Locusts
9. The Moomin Hornpipe (Part Two)
10. Indigenous Woodland Band
11. The Tornado
12. The Moomins End Titles (Occarina Theme) 

Back in 1968, a pair of Germanic behind-the-scenes sound librarians called Horst Ackermann and Heribert Thusek left a tiny but indelible pinprick on the history of German Pop in the misshaped form of a sexy horror cash-in concept album called ‘Dracula’s Music Cabinet’. Shelved at a micro-cosmic axis where Krautrock meets lesbian vampire Horrortica and easy listening meets psychedelia, the delayed reaction of this mutant concoction eventually exploded in the mid-1990s in the hands of a generation of ‘record diggers’ sending currency-crushing tremors through the wallets of mods, rockers, hip hoppers and psych nuts around the plastic-pillaging planet. The vinyl junkies had resurrected a monster but, like addicts do, they ravenously sucked it dry and moved on looking for the next fix to feed their habit.

Luckily for some, Ackermann and Thusek were also creatures of habit. And it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that they were holding the next dose, but by the turn of the millennium the mad scientists had been given a thirty-five-year head start on the pop archaeologists and their mythical sequel was literally light-years ahead of their previous draconian instalment. Encouragingly, the unclosed cabinet left a shiny white clue in the form of its closing track ‘Frankenstein Meets Alpha 7’.

The Ackermann and Thusek duo were far from dynamic. They were undercover agents hiding behind user-friendly mock-rock monikers and, like most B-Musicians, the only way to sniff them out would be to read the small print. But when an unidentified record on an unknown label with a title like ‘Science Fiction Dance Party’ crops up in the Eins Deutschmark crates it’s not exactly rocket science - although the track titles might suggest otherwise. ‘The End Of A Robot’, ‘Monster On Saturn 1’, ‘Galactic Adventures Of The Outer Space Fleet’, ‘The Whistling Astronauts’, ‘Death Rays Out Of The Universe’… The tell-tale signs are all there and if that doesn’t clench the deal then what will?

Even rarer than its horror counterpart, this ultra-rare record regularly reaches sums in excess of €400 plus online.

TRACK LISTING

The End Of A Robot
Monster On Saturn 1
Visitors Of A.D 2022
Galactic Adventures Of The Outer Space Fleet “Hope”
Hit Parade In The Light Year 25
The Whistling Astronaut
Murder In The Space Station
Flirtation On Venus
Dance On Mars
Man Out Of A Test Tube
Just Walking On The Moon
Death Rays Out Of The Universe

COS might not be the first genre defying progressive music group you’ve heard who share both wordless onomatopoeic vocals and a snappy three letter title (complete with philosophical leanings and alchemic penchants) but on listening to this first ever custom Cos compendium you might have just discovered a new favourite.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that COS share close spiritual, stylistic or social connections to the aforementioned bands, as one of the few longwithstanding single-syllable ensembles to remain utterly idiosyncratic and incomparable within their hyper-focussed and impenetrable creative bubble. But as a 1970s group that effortlessly mix head-nod prog, synthdriven jazz, cinematic sound-designs, dislocated disco, Arkestral operatics and high-brow conceptual anti-pop grooves, it’s easier to remember the name COS than thumb the vast amount of genre-dividers in your local record shop which COS could occupy. With the crème de la crème of Belgian jazz / prog / psych / funk within their ranks, their combined idea-to-ability ratio litters the Cos-ography with concepts that aficionados, future fans, collaborators and critics still haven’t began to unravel.

With their earliest roots in the compact jazz group Brussels Art Quintet the group spent their sapling years creating art-school prog under the name Classroom. This flourishing collective, cultivated by multiinstrumentalist mainstay Daniel Schell, would soon shed its leaves, dropping band-members and typographically reducing its moniker to simply COS (a multi-purpose, globally recognised word, with links to Alchemy and philosophy, with a hard phonetic delivery to suit the groups heavier rhythmic approach). In its new skin COS also shed all forms of orthodox language to find its true exclusive voice. Fronted, in the conventional sense, by the daughter of author and part-time jazz player Jean De Trazegnies, the band’s wordless singer changed her name to Pascale SON, to accentuate the French word for ‘sound’, drawing comparisons with sound poets like Polish jazz legend Urszula Dudziak or Hungarian Katalin Ladik but retaining the crystalline femininity (and funk) of Flora Purim, while effectively sharing an imaginary lyric book of non-words with Damo Suzuki, Magma or a future Liz Fraser.

The selection of tracks on ‘COSMIX’ intends to serve as a varied cross section of favourite pieces by the group which tick all the stylistic and conceptual boxes found in Finders Keepers Records’ previous discography, not to mention various family tree inosculations along the way.

Compiled with the full cooperation of the original COS architect Daneil Schell.

TRACK LISTING

Oostend, Oostend
Postaeolian Train Robbery
Flamboya
Nog Verder
Mein Maschine Ist Schön
Boehme
Halucal
Good Wind
L’Idiot Léon
Babel
Einstein, J’t’aime
Achtung TV-Watchers
Amafam
Perhaps Next Record

With his ongoing commitment to like-minded archivist label Finders Keepers Records, industrial music pioneer Steven Stapleton further entrusts us to lift the veil and expose “the right tracks” from his uber-legendary and oft misinterpreted psych/prog/punk peculiarity shopping list known as The Nurse With Wound List. Following the critically lauded first instalment and it’s exclusively French tracklisting both parties now combine their vinyl-vulturous penchants to bring you the next ‘Strain Crack & Break’ edition which consists of twelve lesser-known German records that played a hugely important part in the initial foundations of the list which began to unfold when Stapleton was just thirteen years old.

From the perspective of a schoolboy Amon Düül (ONE) victim, at the start of a journey that commenced before phrases like kosmische and the xeno-ignant Krautrock tag had become mag hack currency, this compendium is devoid of the tropes that united what many would accurately argue to be the greatest progressive pop bands in Europe (namely CAN, Neu! and Kraftwerk) and rather shatters the ingredients across a ground zero landscape for both inquisitive fans and socially rehabbing musos to begin to assemble a unique self-styled identity. If Krautrock was the music that journalist told us lurked behind schlager (German pop) in the 1970s, then this record includes the music that skulked behind Krautrock and perhaps refused to polish its backhanded name belt. Including lesser-known artists like the late Wolfgang Dauner, whose career proceeded and outlived the kosmische movement while consistently informing and outsmarting them whenever they got stuck in their metronomic ruts, or how about Fritz Müller, the man who was to Kraftwerk what Stuart Sutcliffe was to The Beatles but had more in common with Yoko and quite rightly couldn’t give a stuff about the Fab Four’s Hamburg roots.

Elsewhere we have a plethora of German bands made for German audiences as they try and shed secondhand flower power Americanisms and feel the benefits of much harder drugs and the realisations of difficult second album budgets while Kommune 1 newsflashes wipe smiles from everybody’s faces and replace them with opioid chic or acid-sarcastic grins. Bonzo Cockettes show us their Big Muffs and drummers ask for extra mics while Conny Plank goes for parliamentary office and gives babies good firm handshakes for the camera.

‘Strain Crack & Break: Volume Two’ is the sound of Steve Stapleton’s sponge-like mind and the dividends of anyone who was brave enough to even peek inside those brick-thick gatefold covers never mind drop the needle. Over forty years since Nurse With Wound’s first album was released, Finders Keepers Records and Steve Stapleton take connoisseurs of our kind of music back to the disused elevator shaft towards ground zero. Arriving at the same checkout from different departments, Finders Keepers and Nurse With Wound continue to sing from the same hymnal with this ongoing collaborative attempt to officially, authentically and legally compile the best tracks from Steve’s list, where many overzealous nerds have faltered (or simply, got the wrong end of the stick).

After ‘Strain Crack & Break: Volume One’ merely scratched the surface of this DIY dossier of elongated punk-prog peculiarities, this second lavish metallic gatefold double vinyl compendium drives a much deeper groove which, in accordance with Steve’s wishes, focusses exclusively on individual tracks of German origin - the country whose music forged the prototype of the NWW inventory in the form of his secondary school vinyl wantlist in the early 1970s, comprised of disassembled free jazz, unshowered stoner psych, hypnotic prog, deranged monk funk and fuzzed out Deutschmark bin bonzo beats.

TRACK LISTING

Wolfgang Dauner - Output
My Solid Ground - The Executioner
Association PC - Scorpion
Fritz Müller - Fritz Müller Traum
Exmagma - It’s So Nice
Anima-Sound - It Loves Want To Have Done It
Tomorrow’s Gift - Jazzi Jazzi
Out Of Focus - See How A White Negro Flies
Brainstorm - Snakeskin Tango9
Thirsty Moon - Big City
Gomorrha - Trauma
Brainticket - Black Sand

Within the elusive confines of this film awaits an album that defies categorisation by a musician who in a different time and space would be revered amongst some of the most important exponents of progressive rock, dark ambient, Krautrock and pioneering synthesiser composition - not to mention sound design and art-house film scores. As a protégé of François Bayle and Luc Ferrari who had studied classical music before immersing himself in found-sound manipulation and oscillators, Alain Pierre quickly became an enthusiastic go-to man for sound sculpture and technical studio proficiency in Belgium’s small film industry.

To the many generations of dedicated fans of the visual work of Philippe Druillet it might seem virtually impossible to adequately score the alien, futurist landscapes of the man who many called the ‘space architect’ (on account of his space age reductions of Gothic cathedrals, Art Nouveau and Indian temples) but once you have heard the sonic reactions of Alain Pierre on this first-ever dedicated Druillet documentary, ‘Ô Sidarta’, complete with his own equivalent sound palette, it will be difficult to ‘hear’ Druillet’s world via any other composer.

Despite Druillet’s truly incredible record sleeve designs for projects like cosmic disco ensemble Black Sun, concept albums such as ‘Attention’ by Jean-Pierre Mirouze (composer of ‘Le Mariage Collectif’), Parisian metal bands like Sortilège, gatefold portraits of Jimi Hendrix, later period albums by William Sheller and most relevantly on albums by Igor Wakhévitch (‘Docteur Faust’, 1971) as well as separate releases by both Richard Pinhas and Georges Grünblatt (both from the cosmic prog outfit Heldon), it is fair to say that this criminally unreleased album by Alain Pierre would conjure up the closest synergy between sound and vision that either artist would come close to. Backed with a rare recording of a one-off concert at the Université libre de Bruxelles in October 1976 - under its original title ‘Notions de physique intérieure’ (Notions Of Interior Physics) - revealing a very similar set of movements and soundscapes found on ‘Ô Sidarta’.

TRACK LISTING

Ô Sidarta
Notions De Physique Intérieure

Frozen in time over four decades, this 1984 ‘cyclic incantation’ combines electroacoustics, grazed euphoria, industrial aesthetics, sampled salvage and recycled mechanic folk to score a widely revered dystopian physical theatre performance from the UK’s hugely influential Impact Theatre Co-Operative. From a seminal post-punk art-action faction (formed in a Leeds warehouse space alongside Gang Of Four and The Mekons), this apocalyptic prophecy not only cracked avant garde stage boundaries but provided a captive audience with stunning set design and an incredible broken-music soundtrack before its swan song amidst Poland’s 1986 power plant panic. From the sonic workbench of the very same bedsitsituationists that created the haunting 1983 music to ‘The Moomins’ TV animation comes the eventual isolated music release to this pioneering theatrical spectacle of truly mythical status.

‘The Carrier Frequency’ (1984) was a legendary stage work that emerged from the collaboration between the influential performance company Impact Theatre Co-operative and cult novelist Russel Hoban. The incantation of Hoban’s text voiced in the broken verbiage of a post-apocalyptic broken language and the entranced physicality of Impact’s ritualistic performance in a pool of cold dark water printed deeply on those who witnessed it. It reached an impassioned crescendo on the rising score by Graeme Miller and Steve Shill who also performed in the work. The music exploited samples from Hoban’s own recordings of the shortwave radio broadcasts which he tuned in as he wrote, helping him order the green phosphorescent letters on the screen of his Apple computer. Shill and Miller mirrored Hoban’s channelling in their approach to making the score, following the notion that this was the broadcast of some Central Eurasian radio station doomed forever to circulate fragments of static interlaced with desultory public information broadcasts and ‘The Record’, its only surviving fragment of a lost culture.

The score was forged on an 8-track tape recorder sandwiching harmonium and accordion with the output of a digital delay machine that could trap and fragments of audio to be triggered and manually pitched. It is a knowingly crude montage where samples denote fragmentation itself and their reassembly, like Frankenstein’s monster, shows the stitches that join the stolen body parts.

Available for the first-time ever on deluxe vinyl with the full cooperation of the composers and Impact Theatre Co-Operative lynchpins Graeme Miller and Steve Shill.

TRACK LISTING

A Long Paleness
Reggie Windmill
Landschaft
And Now The Record
Longdream
Beat Frequency Oscillator
Without Impatience
A False Altar
The Girl From Tirana

“There was a time when the strength of a musician’s vision transcended all labels; here is a chance to dip into that pool again, and emerge not just refreshed, but alive again with the sense that we all can live in that world again, but most importantly raise the flag for excellence. Fantastic.” - Jim O’Rourke

An unholy grail of near mythical status finally joins the Finders Keepers Records discography in the form of this first-ever reissue of Masahiko Sato’s elusive sensual psychedelic free jazz score to the stunning Japanese witchcraft animation Belladonna Of Sadness (Kanashimi no Belladonna) directed by anime screenwriter Eiichi Yamamoto in 1973. An early feature-length example of a micro-genre in which Japanese anime producers collaborated with the “pink” film genre, Belladonna’s challenging occult, sexual and political subject matter was the cause of the film’s notoriety for many years, earning Yamamoto’s work a critical platform amongst some of the best counterculture animation films of the era such as La Planète Sauvage ( René Laloux / Roland T poor, France 1973), Marie Mathématique (Jean-Claude Forest, France 1967), Wizards (Ralph Bakshi, US 1977), Heavy Metal (Gerald Potterton, Canada 1980) and Time Masters (René Laloux / Moebius, France 1982). Drawing further stylistic similarities with Shuji Terayama / Tenjo Sajiki associated poster artist Aquirax Uno and the Hara-Kiri magazine cartoon strips Pravda / Jodelle by French artist Guy Peellaert, as well as the early flamboyant Klimtesque imagery of Jean Rollin collaborators Philippe Druillet and Nicolas Devil, Belladonna Of Sadness brought a strong European flavour to its sophisticated and stylish Japanese application which accentuated the French origins of the plot loosely based on accounts taken from the 1862 book La Sorcière (The Witch) by French historian Jules Michelet.

Over the last decade Belladonna Of Sadness has risen from the ashes and now shines brighter than ever. Now on the eve of its third or fourth global DVD release, fans no longer have to wait four months for third generation VHS telecine rubs from “that guy” in the States, or stuff their ambitious wish lists into the hands of any lucky friends visiting Tokyo in the summer. Belladonna has been used as nightclub projections by clued-up VJs and been restored by discerning feminist folk singers and improv bands while influencing illustrators, fashion designers and other creative types along the way.

Original copies of the soundtrack, however, are much less likely to rear their heads on a weekly basis, with prices literally doubling each time the original stock copies swap hands amongst the same Italian dealers at central European record fairs. Italian soundtracks are expensive anyway, but this one, as I’m sure you’ll agree, has got extra credentials. Finders Keepers Records, in direct collaboration with Sato himself, agree that this record should finally be liberated amongst those who know the magic words. With our decision to keep this album “strictly Sato” we removed a track – the main orchestral love theme by Asei Kobayashi and Mayumi Tachibana, which in all honesty is very much detached from Sato’s psychedelic soundtrack. Kept intact, however, are the songs sung and penned by Sato’s then wife Chinatsu Nakayama, including the track entitled 'TBFS' that only appears on the master tapes and never actually made it to the theatrical cut of the film.

This reissue project also marks the beginning of a longer intended relationship between Finders Keepers and Masahiko Sato, exploring his recorded work in both film music, jazz and avant garde composition.

TRACK LISTING

1. Andy Warhol
2. Belladoona
3. Valle Incantata
4. The Notice Is Notice
5. Mr. London
6. Little Flower
7. Funny Feeling
8. TBSF
9. Take It Easy

Five track EP of previously unreleased drum heavy Gallic hard-bop and risqué acidic folk.

The long-lost Parisian skin flick ‘Jeunes Filles Impudiques’ (AKA ‘Schoolgirl Hitchhikers’) marks a particularly vulnerable period in the career of one of the most underrated and misunderstood directors to emerge from the rising smoke of the 1968 Parisian social explosion.

From a director with early links with the Paris underground, the letterists, the surrealists, improv theatre and the free-press comes the reclaimed audio tracks from one of his rarest celluloid moments - but let’s not confuse this for high-art. Finders Keepers make no bones, this is Jean Rollin’s maiden voyage into adult entertainment, directed under the pseudonym of Miche Gentil with a flimsy plot, questionable acting skills and an awesome little schizophrenic soundtrack.

This long-lost movie has been buried for some 40 odd years, with a musical score bursting to jump out of the can and down your tone arm, now made possible by a recently renovated negative print and new source material. These original Pierre Raph (of ‘Requiem For A Vampire’ infamy) compositions from the publishing Library Of Paris’ Musicale Editions Dellamarre (of Acanthus / Unity fame) come straight from Rollin himself as an introduction to Finders Keepers’ new Rollinade series documenting some of the finest musical moments of the director’s career as an avant-gardener, counter-culture vulture and Gallic vamptramp, all housed in their original hand-painted promotional artwork.

TRACK LISTING

Gilda & Gunshots
Jeunes Filles Impudiques
An Intimate Relationship
Jewel Thieves
Schoolgirl Hitchhikers

From the cosmic creative musical mind of Swiss/Catalan studio whizz, Zeleste Nightclub engineer, video nasty film composer, occasional Jaume Sisa (Música Dispersa) collaborator and future electronic music therapy pioneer J. M. Pagán comes the synth-ridden, vocoder-loaded 1984 sci-funk soundtrack to Barcelona’s daytime TV response to the universal E.T. phenomena. Get ready to meet your new alienígena amic and the unidentified flying object of thousands of Catalonian kids’ affections through the 1980s as Finders Keepers present Pagán’s lost lunar modular synth score to ‘Kiu I Els Seus Amics’ (Kiu And Friends aka Kiu Is Your Friend).

From the same intergalactic phenomenon that brought such delights as Turkey’s exploito cash-in ‘Badi’ or South Africa’s lo-rent homage ‘Nukie’ to our unregulated small screens and the same craze which filled international airwaves with the likes of Extra T’S electro smash single ‘E.T. Boogie’ or the million selling Columbian ‘Cumbia De E.T. El Extraterrestre’ smash hit... not to mention a wide range of unofficial theme-tune cover versions from Holland, Austria, France and Germany (lest we forget an inspired late period Lee Scratch Perry Album).

In 1982 the diaspora from Steven Spielberg’s small fictional mid-American neighbourhood that played host to everyone’s favourite torch fingered, three toed, Skittle-scoffing space goblin touched virtually every family home in every major city resulting in one of the biggest cinematic merchandise phenomenas of the 21st Century, resulting in an unexpected high-demand / short-supply play-off in which bootleggers, copyists and counterfeiters rose to the challenge like never before.

When Spielberg regrettably told interviewers that he had no intention of making a sequel to ‘E.T. The Extra Terrestria’ it instantly became open-season for the imitators... but way before somebody squeezed-out ‘Mac & Me’, ‘ALF’ and ‘The Purple People Eater’, a team of kid’s TV executives in Catalunya were ready to fill the widening gap in the market without haste. Created in 1983 by Luna Films and Televisió de Catalunya (TV3) and screened exclusively in Catalunya, ‘Kiu I Els Seus Amics’ was one of the first E.T. ‘tributes’ to make it out of the gate and with a crew of five individual directors and writers to ensure that the five episode, one-off series hit the wave of phone-home-fever, Kiu has since remained a short but sweet micromemory in the hearts of an entire generation of Catalonian cosmonauts.

This special Finders Keepers edition comes complete with all of Pagán’s cosmic synthesiser soundscapes fully intact (barring striking comparisons with the likes of Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter, Vangelis and the soundtrack music of Suzanne Ciani), as well as some rare, unreleased, incidental TV edits. The bulk of this LP is made up of tracks taken from the rare full-length album, which was released after the TV programme had already been aired and coincided with sales of jigsaws and rubberised play figures in an attempt to catch-up with the unexpected mega-success of the show, needless to say, with a short promotional window, the LP (and cassette edition) did not benefit a re-press and with most copies sold to children, few vinyl pressings have escaped repeat needle scratches and decorated sleeves.

TRACK LISTING

Intro
Tema De Kiu
Un Dia Especial
Quan Jo Sigui Una Estrella (short)
Tema De La Lluno
Ball De Beth
El M¢n De Kiu
Un Dia Boig
Beat De Beth
Outro

Mesmerising minority language acid folk and wayfaring world music forges a river of revolution between langue doc and Côte d’Azur with this stunning seldom spoken 1978 intimate community pressing. Weaving a fragile thread through collectible outsider genres such as acid folk, French jazz, Braziliana and world music it is virtually incomprehensible that this incredible one-off solo album by mononymous Occitan language singer, songwriter and activist Miquela has managed to evade notoriety and wider affection zover five decades.

Captured via a humble makeshift studio setup in a classroom in 1977, this startlingly crystalline recording is one of the best examples you are likely to hear, not shying from ambitious small string arrangements and intimate Gallic jazz infusions this album represents the quiet storm erupting from the pride and protection of the ancient ‘romance’ language known as Occitan, as spoken by less than 1.5 million people in Southern France (as well as parts of Italy and Spain). Naturally combining a wide range of influences and fuelled by the same impassioned fervour found in privately pressed minority language records from Britanny, Catalonia and Wales, Miquela’s first and only solo record was recorded by request of poet Ives Roqueta for his exclusively Occitan language label Ventadorn.

Including players from Miquela’s surrounding area of Toulon the album also enlisted arrangements from important musicians such as co-author Jean- Michel Mariou, jazz contrabass player Didier Capeille (later affiliate of Marseilles’ Etron Fou Leloublan), and guitarist Gilles Cardon, who would regularly play for Britanny based label Nevenoe (knotting the ties between both French language rehabilitation movements). Released and well-received by a supportive and emotional Occitan fan base, this would be Miquela’s only ever solo album (preceded by a 7” picture sleeve EP, drawing similarities to Welsh label Sain) and laid the foundations for future releases with her folk rock girl group Lei Chapacans (The Vagabonds) which led to tours as far as Sardinia, Yemen and Moscow. As a vital forerunner of a maligned genre of Occitan femme-folk singers such as Estela, Nicòla, Jacmelina, Rosina De Peira E Martina and Claudia Galibert, this release marks the start of a journey that would eventually find its beloved protagonist at the heart of the galvanised Occitan language media.

TRACK LISTING

Tu E Leu
I A De Sers
Me Demandes Pas
Lo Baranguet
La Targa
Palunaia
Les Colonies
Lei Filairas
De Bon Matin
Magali
Retorn

From the same studio that brought us 48 Chairs (Gerry & The Holograms), The Fall and The Blue Orchids, while following the bonafide bloodline between Danny And The Dressmakers, Toolshed and 808 State, the ‘difficult second album’ by Biting Tongues (released on a minuscule cassette run by The Buzzcocks’ vanity label) has since become a near mythical artefact of Mancunian DIY.

Cementing the path between the Absurd label’s kitchen sink synth assaults and Factory’s 99 informed downtown aspirations, Biting Tongues’ bass-driven, pounding-sounding, schizo-skronking, squat- pop put the emergence of punkfunk under a blinding interrogation bulb then hid round the corner evading secret police. Pouring three letter words like ESG, DAF, PIL and ACR into Ken Hollings’ Scrabble bag would result in a unique form of wordy dictaphone agit-rap and closed-circuit commentary to Graham Massey’s overqualified punk ensemble, laying foundations of future Manc activity using uncertified sand and gravel tactics, only to be safety checked every 38 years, or thereabout. ‘Live It’, the lost Biting Tongues album, still breathes.

Including what the original members of this pioneering post-punk platoon unanimously consider their greatest work, Biting Tongues’ seldom-heard, second roll of the dice was presented to The Buzzcock’s own label New Hormones to coincide with full-length DIY debuts by Ludus, Dislocation Dance and a distinct tightening of purse strings. Recorded on half-price studio time (in the midst of a multitrack repair session) and duped on to compact cassettes to keep pressing costs down, the album ‘Live It’ even entirely bypassed the non-existent art-department before landing in the hands of a small readership of peculiar punk die-hards, instantly slipping into obscurity, evading official band future discographies and reaching an imaginary status in the history of unchartered Manc-manufactured messthetics.

TRACK LISTING

Evening State (The Wave State)
Forty-Two
Reflector (Bootleg Studio)
Denture Beach (Relentless)
Forty-Three
After The Click The Dialogue
Or With Eyes Closed
Libreville
Read This
Unhook That Boy

“After ‘Le Nouveau Jazz’ was released in early 1967, I worked for two years with Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and a few other friends on a happening loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Hunting Of The Snark’. There was a strong element of theater to it and we presented it in playhouses, museums, public places, institutions... It never made it to wax and I gave up on the idea soon after when Sunny Murray and Alan Silva showed up in Paris in late 1968. I had meant to upend the conventions of performance with this happening: now I was fully part of a similar revolution, the ‘New Music’, with its very originators.

“Nevertheless, the ‘Snark’ adventure was never over, and the bands I co-directed still used the musical themes (and methods) we had developed for the project. The headlines for the performances and the name of the band itself were still lifted from ‘fantastique fiction’ works: for instance we performed as the ‘Boojum Consort’ and used the title of the present LP was used several times at festivals. The music enclosed here is heavily indebted to Free Jazz but also retains various elements of the former happening (for instance I also play saw, marimba and organ and stray away from jazz references). My famous Shandar and ‘Dazibao’ albums are partially made up of the same material and were recorded at the same period/momentum which lasted roughly from the Spring of 1969 to late 1971 when I started to distance myself from free music. The final macabre incarnation of this work was the show ‘Who Killed Albert Ayler?’ whose political content stirred controversy. Gérard Terronès considered recording it, he even advertized it, but again nothing materialized.

“We found these recordings in my basement. The old reels and cassettes were unmarked or the cases (and sadly some of the music) damaged by time, water and rats! To the best of my recollections, and from posters and advertising of the events, the artists who took part in the 1969-1971 concerts who make up this record are Ronnie Beer, Joseph Déjean, Claude Delcloo, Earl Freeman, Beckie Friend, Eddy Gaumont, Beb Guérin, Noel McGhie, Jouck Minor, Barre Phillips, Aldo Romano, Alan Silva, Kenneth Terroade, Jacques Thollot and Bernard Vitet. Who, when, where (American Center quite often), exactly, I can’t say. Some of them are probably not even featured here. But maybe that’s for the best, as we can now focus on the spirit of the times.” - François Tusques

TRACK LISTING

Le Fumet Du Jubjub
La Voûte D’Un Caveau
Tout Le Pouvoir Au Peuple!

Forty years after Nurse With Wound’s first record, Finders Keepers Records, in close collaboration with Steve Stapleton remind fans of THIS kind of “lost” music, that there once existed a feint path which was worn away decades before major label pop property developers built over this psychedelic underground. As long-running fans and liberators of some of the same records, arriving at the same axis from different-but-the-same planets, Finders Keepers and Nurse WIth Wound finally sing from the same hymn sheet resulting in a collaborative attempt to officially, authentically and legally compile the best tracks from the list, succeeding where many overzealous nerds have deferred (or simply, got the wrong end of the stick)

Naturally our lavish metallic gatefold double vinyl compendium would only scratch the surface of this DIY dossier of elongated punkprog peculiarities hence out decision to release volume one in a series which, in accordance with Steve’s wishes, focusses exclusively on individual tracks of French origin, the country that unsurprisingly hosted the highest content of bands on the list.

Comprising of musique concrète, free jazz, Rock In Opposition, Zeuhl School space rock, macabre ballet music, lo-fi sci-fi, and classic horror literature inspired prog, this first volume of the series entitled Strain Crack And Break throws us in at the deep end, where the Seine meets the in-sane, introducing the space cadets that found Mars in Marseilles. Like the Swedish flat-pack record shelves that attempt to house the vast amounts of vintage vinyl that goes into a multi-volume compilation like this, its time to prepare your own musical penchants and preconceived ideas about DIY music and hear them slowly strain, crack and break.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Saving the younger generation (I think I still count) a lot of hard work and even more pennies, Finders Keepers begin the mammoth task of distilling the famed NWW list into a series of compilations. Volume 1 focuses on all things français, be it musique concrète, space rock, prog or free jazz.

TRACK LISTING

Jacques Thollot - Cécile
Philippe Besombes - La Plage
Igor Wakhévitch - Materia-Prima
Mahjun - Les Enfants Sauvages
Lard Free - Warinobaril
Etron Fou Leloublan - Le Désastreux Voyage Du Piteux Python
Jean Cohen-Solal - Captain Tarthopom
Z. N. R. - Solo Un Dia
Red Noise - Sarcelles C’est L’Avenir
Pierre Henry - Générique (Thème De Myriam)
Horrific Child - Freyeur
Dashiell Hedayat - Fille De L’Ombre
Jean Guérin - Triptik 2

A key figure during the birth of Turkish rock and roll, a founding father of Anatolian rock and the studio brains behind the first Turkish electronic pop records, Gökçen Kaynatan’s influence runs like the lifeblood through Turkish pop and rock. Having shunned the recording industry early in his career he remained a driving force behind the scenes and on TV screens, spearheading the explosion of synth technology in Turkish music with his pioneering use of the EMS Synthi AKS, the fruits of which would only be shared on stage, never to be repeated television broadcasts and in archival recordings that haven’t seen the light of day, until now.

A first-ever collection of the highly sought after and largely previously unheard EMS Synthi AKS recordings of the one of Turkish pop and rock’s best kept secrets.

Featuring two of Gökçen’s earliest synthesiser compositions and an updated recording made whilst recovering from brain surgery.

Compiled with unparalleled access to Gökçen Kaynatan’s private studio vault and mastered from the original quarter inch studio tapes with full cooperation from the man himself.

TRACK LISTING

Cehennem (Hell)
Anjiyo (Angioma)
Cehennem Yolu (Road To Hell)

Finders Keepers proudly present these previously unheard demo recordings, recorded following the demise of Turkish percussionist Durul Gence’s illfated Asia Minor Mission (AMM) group.

Co-produced by ex-Tee-Set frontman Peter Tetteroo in his own private studio.

Sourced from the original tapes taken from Durul Gence’s personal archive.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: More strangeness from the local firm as they turn to a Turkish percussionist for inspiration. The results, as usual from these cats, are both beguiling and bonza! Gerrit bought!

TRACK LISTING

Black Cat
Boo Song

Having been a firm fixture at the top of many European jazz collector want lists over the past decade Finders Keepers wouldn’t be alone when proclaiming this extremely rare, lesser-known two-track 7” from 1969 as one of the best jazz 45s of all time. Alongside Polish pianist Krzysztof Komeda’s soundtrack 7” for the film Cul- De-Sac and ranking closely with François Tusques’ commemorative Le Corbusier exhibition 45 (featuring Don Cherry), this format-specific release known only as Brussels Art Quintet might well sit at the top of the podium while striking similarities and arguably combining the best stylistic traits of both aforementioned contenders.

This is all speculative and clearly a matter of individual opinion but it’s not often that one should find a recording from this era, comprising such high production qualities, keen compositional values and robust craftsmanship spread across two equally spellbinding individual tracks, all of which awards this release justified hyperbole albeit subject to a 50 year delay. It is safe to say that this unique release is ‘rare’ on many levels. Like all privately pressed art projects this single comprises some serious outsider art trappings. However, on closer inspection it also stands as a pivotal record in the micro-genre of Belgian jazz, pin-pointing an early axis for some vital progressive jazz players who went on to become sturdy pillars of the central European happening.

Essentially as a five-piece, the short-lived Brussels Art Quintet neatly combine members of both the mythical Babs Robert Quartet (early exponents of Belgian spiritual jazz) and key players from the leading progressive jazz/rock/funk unit known as COS (formally Classroom) who would stand as close affiliates of the likes of Marc Moulin, Kiosk and Placebo through the 1970s.

Reproduced in close collaboration with COS leader Daniel Schell who, under the early guise of Daniel ‘Max’ Schellekens, authored both tracks that make up this facsimile 45 single, this one-off single includes the only known output by the Brussels Art Quintet thus marking the essential in-road to instantly start and complete your entire Brussels Art Quintet collection not without reliving the early germination of the forward-thinking jazz fusion that came to shape Belgium’s truly unique movement. Pressed in miniscule numbers, original copies of this sought-after piece of Belgian jazz history regularly exceed £300.

TRACK LISTING

Vas-Y Voir
Four Paul S.

As faithful custodians of Suzanne’s vault of vintage electronic music, Finders Keepers present the first-ever release of these vital archive recordings. As a genuine vanguard of electronic music composition at the forefront of the modular synthesiser revolution in the late 1960s, Suzanne Ciani’s forward-thinking approach to new music would rarely look to the past for inspiration, which makes this unheard composition from 1969 a rare exception to the collective futurist vision of Ciani and synthesiser designer Don Buchla. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There is something distinctly enchanting about Ciani's work, whether she is crafting ambient sketches on beautiful vintage modulars (the Buchla Sessions being a particularly beautiful recently released example), or in full, wistful melodic mode (like on my absolute favourite of her outings, "Seven Waves"). 'Flowers Of Evil' is a perfectly measured mix of the two, with more protracted sections being beautifully accentuated with warm pads and distant warped vocal samples. Stunning.

TRACK LISTING

Flowers Of Evil - Based On The Poem Élévation By Charles Baudelaire
Glass Houses
Token Spokes Part One
Token Spokes Part Two

With this previously unreleased 1963 score for Jindlich Polák’s "Ikarie XB-1", Finders Keepers present their third dedicated soundtrack by Zdeněk Liška. Beautifully remastered from the original tapes with the full cooperation of the National Film Archive in the Czech Republic. 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.

TRACK LISTING

Ikarie XB-1
Surveillance On Standby/Alpha Centauri
A Small Stone In Space
Sunflower For A New Star
The Backwoods Of The Universe
Silver Ball (Věra In Cameo)
E.V.A. Will Teach You
The Tigers Breath
The Dark Star
Do Not Eat The Fruit
The Awakening
Voyage To The End (Of The Universe)
The White Planet

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 of Finders Keepers’ ongoing dedicated Jodorowsky soundtrack series the label presents 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.

Cherrypicked from pre-recorded synthesiser-fuelled cosmic pop sessions by Skornik, these compositions provided ‘Tusk’ with arabesque new age synthesis alongside fullblown 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’s hidden in the trunk.

TRACK LISTING

Goodnight Ram
Elise On The Run
Elise & Tusk Reunited
Poo Lorn 1
Crossing The River
Elise Liberates Tusk
Poo Lorn 2
Poo Lorn 3

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 unblinkered 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 futurefolk to his magnetic mesh.

Presented here as the first ever dedicated Wize 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.

TRACK LISTING

Hedonic Rapture
Balfazzar
Machine Time Ship
Ya Alim-Kader
Celes
Alien Rock
Light As Air
Valhalla
Love In Foam And Surf
Andro

This manifesto of outsider orchestrations, teenage symphonies and cultivated concrete is the debut album of experimental Irish avant garde and electro acoustic innovator Roger Doyle - a pianist, composer and improvisational jazz drummer with a penchant for experimentation that would marginalise him from traditional seats of learning in his native homeland but embrace him to the bosom of Europe’s leading forward-thinking research centres for electronic and computer music. Here he would piece together two highly sought after experimental albums before returning home to channel his multi-disciplinary work ethic into the agit pop theatrical company Operating Theatre and play a leading role in the burgeoning Irish new wave scene as an early signing to U2’s Mother Records.

A collection of some of Doyle’s earliest works as an indomitable scholarship student of composition at the Royal Irish Academy Of Music in Dublin and then as founding member and drummer of experimental jazz rock outfit Jazz Therapy (who would later become Supply Demand & Curve), this patchwork 1975 debut long player draws from what was an already bulging portfolio that included academic assignments, living room compositions and soundtrack collaborations with Irish filmmakers.

Originally part-recorded and subsequently aborted when the would-be label vanished without trace overnight, Oizzo No was shelved indefinitely until a scholarship at the prestigious Institute Of Sonology at the University Of Utrecht in Holland afforded Doyle not only the opportunity to partially revise his humble opus in their state of the art studios (as well as those of the EMS Studios in Stockholm) but also the money to press a limited run of 500 copies and help further cement the foundations of his future status as one of Ireland’s leading and most versatile contemporary composers.

TRACK LISTING

Oizzo No
Ceol Sidhe
Bitter Sweet Suite
Obstinato
Why Is Kilkenny So Good
Two Movements For Flute
And Strings
Theme From Emtigon
Extra Bit

For the few people lucky enough to have heard the entire album in the five decades since its release, the mythical Popera Cosmic LP is now considered to be France’s first dedicated psychedelic album and the shrouded blueprint for the hugely influential Gallic concept album phenomenon that followed, including Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Histoire De Melody Nelson’ and Gérard Manset’s ‘La Mort D’Orion’.

Spearheaded by François Wertheimer (songwriter for Vangelis, Barbara and Byg Records), composed with future Jodorowsky soundtracker and genius all-rounder Guy Skornik and based on an embryonic concept co-conspired by a teenage Jean-Michel Jarre, this instantly-deleted 1969 recording is a true essential for any outernationalradicalised record collection.  With credentials that mark the birth of the cosmic funk (later disco) that helped shape the influential sound of France today, this album also includes the first pressed instrumentals by members of Space Art, some of the best orch rock arrangements by William Sheller (Lux Aeterna, Eriotissimo) and orchestrator Paul Piot (Jean Rollin), as well as sitar psych benchmarks courtesy of uber legend Serge Franklin - all pinned down by the rhythm section that would later be known to prog aficionados as Alice.

Subtitled ‘Les Esclaves’ (The Slaves), this street theatre / rock opera (influenced by the work of Julien Beck’s Living Theatre) now celebrates its 50th birthday standing firmly as a sonic tome to the birth of the no-no era (that rebuked France’s ‘yé-yé’ hamster wheel) leading directly to the thematic progressive network of Wakhévitch, Manset and Magma while comprising an inter-Gallic intergalactic super group from the early annals of France’s pop psych revolution. Imagine a rock opera where the cast of Mister Freedom perform ‘Clash Of The Titans’ at the foot of The Holy Mountain - then pinch yourself.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Screwball psych-Francais reissued by the digging brains at Finders Keepers - lunatic street theatre meets rock opera as a shadowy no-no flip to the ye-ye movement.

TRACK LISTING

Les Esclaves
Poursuite
Batman
Aurore Cosmic
L.S.D.
Quelle Audace
Philadelphie Story
La Chanson Du Lièvre De Mars
Etreinte Métronomique
Monsieur Noel
Filmore
Metropolitain
Ambiance
Indicatif

It has been exactly ten years since Finders Keepers Records first liberated Luboš Fišer’s immaculate soundtrack music for 'Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders' ("Valerie A Týden Divu") from the vaults of the Barrandov Studio in Prague. As the inaugural release of an ongoing discography of previously unreleased scores from the hugely creative ‘Film Miracle’ that occurred during and after the Czech New Wave (CNW), this score will always retain a special place in the heart of the label as well as listeners who consistently request an updated repress of this significant vinyl milestone.

Having grown in status from an obscure and misunderstood socialist-era art house oddity, via the hands of risqué foreign fluff merchants, to finally find its rightful audience as a bona fide surrealist cinematic masterpiece of world class standards, this 1970 film adaptation of Vítezslav Nezval’s 1935 avant-garde novella (a film that literally cross-pollinated Max Ernst’s ‘A Week Of Kindness’ and Lewis Caroll’s ‘Alice In Wonderland’) has garnered widespread critical acclaim. Inspiring ongoing generations of visual artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers - all of whom regard this truly individualistic and inimitable surrealist film poem to be an indelible influence - Valerie continues to impregnate their daily artistic referential fabric.

Commonly considered to be the swansong of the CNW, following a huge paranoia fuelled government film cull in 1969, owing to the fact it is the last government approved feature film of the post-Prague Spring era to combine the efforts of controversial filmmakers from the FAMU (Filmová A Televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzických Umení) film school, ‘Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders’ would also be the first of an exciting and essential new fertile strain of Czech made cinema fantastique. Successfully condensing the final drops of CNW lifeblood through a series of presumed apolitical scary/fairy tales, directors like Jaromil Jireš and Juraj Herz used surrealism, traditionalism and fantasy to rejuvenate the creative energy of apathetic filmmakers evading government scrutiny via creatively coded artistic allegories.

By strategically choosing to adapt a pre-war surrealist melodrama written by a communist convert author called Vítezslav Nezval and based in a non-specific traditional era, the previously censored filmmaker Jaromil Jireš was able to craft what many consider his finest filmic hour and what would later become his most universally received achievement. Enlisting the individual talent of some of the CNW’s most formidable stalwarts, in what might have been their most creatively challenging roles, Jireš managed to unintentionally establish a new genre format that was both stylistically and sonically tuned to the trends of the impending decade thus future-proofing his career and providing a woozy gateway drug to an otherwise time-locked lost movement.

Beautifully remastered from the original studio tapes with updated liner notes. Housed in two sleeve designs (Sleeve A / Sleeve B) based on the original theatrical posters.

TRACK LISTING

The Magic Yard
Talk With Grandmother
The Letter
The Sermon
Losing The Way
The Visit
The Work Of Death
Dinner
Dense Smoke
The Contract / The Wedding
The Punishment
Disquiet
Awakening
Brother And Sister
Sacrifice
The Letter 2 / Friends
In Flames
Puppets
Homeless
Questions And Answers
Confession
Forgiveness
And The Last

If ever a phonographic accomplishment could encapsulate the precise modus operandi of the Cacophonic label, then the ‘Expériences Musicales’ sessions made by French born painter, sculptor, music maker, wine merchant and founder of the Art Brut movement Jean Dubuffet would be a prime candidate. Originally released as an impossibly rare six record box set containing Dubuffet’s first long anticipated forays into sound sculpture and spontaneous artistic noise, these intimate early 1960’s recordings show a lesserknown side of this important artist’s personality.
From an original gallery promoted artefact (which can now command fees of up to 5000 Euros complete with its original art-prints intact) this highlighted version of ‘Expériences Musicales’ is now available again on authentic vinyl to the wider public.
Finally released to a wider audience and presented complete with Dubuffet’s signature style artwork, this abridged vinyl edition includes specific selections curated by the artist himself, in conjunction with experimental music pioneer Ilhan Mimaroglu.

From the shrapnel of the unlikely collision point where Mancunian post punk royalty collides with sci-fi cinema and art house animation, this obscure diamond in the rough shines a new light on the Northern DIY era providing disc detectives with a whole new punk funk perspective. Recorded in 1976 by Invisible Girls’ Steve Hopkins and Martin Hannett for a truly bizarre stopmotion animation called ‘All Sorts Of Heroes’, this hard edged funk instrumental theme reveals another side to this versatile production team, joining the hidden dots between Hannett’s own discoid experiments with ESG, Gyro, A Certain Ratio and the mythical Afro Express recordings from the same year. Embodying as much in common with 1970’s bass heavy European funk soundtracks by bands like Goblin and Placebo, as the expected parallels with John-Cooper Clarke’s backing tracks or early Happy Mondays, this early 1976 session is the perfect example of Hannett and Hopkins’ under-the-radar artistic commissions working to a storyboard brief in what has now become recognised as a fertile arena for lost filmic funk.

Drawing historic parallels with Leeds based Graeme Miller and Steve Shill’s home recorded DIY soundtracks for ‘The Moomins’ animation and accentuating the connection between Manchester based animation house Cosgrove Hall (‘Dangermouse’ / ‘Chorlton And The Wheelies’) and its employees Bernard Sumner, John Squire and members of Gerry And The Holograms, this lost recording adds kudos to a quirky micro-niche and reveals another dimension to Northern anti-pop’s snarky personality.

Pressed here by Finders Keepers for the first time on vinyl, in close accordance with the wishes of Steve Hopkins himself, this custom-composed track originally appeared on the short film by Rick Megginson and Steve Hughes which was shown at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 1976 where it might have otherwise remained, preserved in an 8mm film box up until now. As relevant today as it was then, this closely recorded, cosmic cartoon, slappy funk theme provided the films backdrop for a workshop montage scene where an aardvarkian spaceman constructs a giant metal face robot which might well leave fans of Madlib and MF Doom fans pondering time travel. Like much of the lost and unreleased projects that stalled on the peripheries of early proto-Madchester, including the disco-pogo music of Spider King, Gerry And The Holograms, The 48 Chairs, Naffi and The Mothmen, this record has been frozen in time waiting for the wider marathon of independent pop to catch up.

This 7” might well be another missing link between your Rabid, Absurd and Factory records, backed with another lesser-known Invisible Girls recording, ‘Scandinavian Wastes’, which has also been begging for its first vinyl outing since its recording in the early 1980s.

TRACK LISTING

All Sorts Of Heroes
Scandanavian Wastes

Further concrète explorations from the second generation of forward-thinking sonic auteurs that would push the boundaries of experimental music known collectively as the Groupe de Recherches Musicales - founded by the father of musique concrète, Pierre Schaeffer - which has influenced generations of artists across the world.

Undoubtedly one of the most influential experimental and electroacoustic musicians, Pierre Schaeffer is also credited as being the father of the theory of musique concrete as well as later coining the term itself. Having found a job in 1936 at Radiodiffusion Française (later Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française or RTF) as an engineer, Schaeffer developed a newly found interest in music and with the blessing of his superiors made the most of his access to the Radiodiffusion Française studios, utilising his abilities as an engineer to experiment with sound whilst collaborating with musicians and composers that passed through the station’s hallowed doors. In 1942 Schaeffer and influential theatre director, producer and actor Jacques Copeau founded the Studio d’Essai (renamed Club d’Essai in 1946) as part of RTF in order to experiment with radiophonic techniques.

With word of his theories and experiments spreading, Schaeffer was able to press the RTF management to further finance and in doing so expand his research. Having previously collaborated as part of his early research with a young classically trained composer by the name of Pierre Henry, Schaeffer had no problem convincing the RTF executives he was the right man of the job. By adding a third prong to this sonic fork in the shape of sound engineer Jacques Poullin, Schaeffer was able to complete a powerhouse, which he renamed the Groupe de Musique Concrète, that would push his experiments further than he could have imagined. In 1951 RTF handed the trio the keys to one of the earliest purpose-build electroacoustic studios (the other being the WDR Studio in Germany), furnishing it with state of the art bespoke equipment such as a Morphophone (designed by Poullin himself and capable of tape loop-delay) and a Phonogène (a multi-headed tape instrument also designed by Poullin). The studio went from strength to strength, attracting composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Edgard Varèse to collaborate and in that same year Schaeffer and Henry produced and premiered what is considered to be the first opera concrète, ‘Orphèe 51’.

As Schaeffer’s notoriety grew as did demand for his time and he found himself increasingly called away from the studio during which time he would hand the keys to over to his colleagues. Pierre Henry wasted no time in pursuing projects closer to his own heart, working with experimental filmmakers and choreographers like Maurice Béjart (the two would later collaborate with Michel Colombier on the cult classic ‘Les Jerks Électroniques De La Messe Pour Le Temps Présent Et Musiques Concrètes Pour Maurice Béjart’). In 1957, following a particularly prolonged absence on RTF duties, Schaeffer returned unhappy with the direction the group had taken and tabled an idea to revitalise both their approach as well as personnel. As a result, Henry and several other key members left the group the following year, leaving Schaeffer to lay the foundations in 1958 for a new collective called Groupe de Recherches Musicales - one of a number of theoretical and experimental groups overseen by Schaeffer’s Service de la Reserche at RTF - and set about recruiting new members including Iannis Xenakis, Henri Sauguet, Luc Ferrari and Michel Philippot as well as usher in a new steady stream of eager musicians eager to study within what had rapidly become (and still is) a national institution - including a young Jean Michel Jarre.

This record represents an important milestone in the development and progression of musique concrète.

Featuring early works from some of the most important and respected experimental composers of the 20th Century, including Luc Ferrari, Michel Philippot and François-Bernard Mâche, overseen by Pierre Schaeffer.

Beautifully remastered with the original liner notes translated here for the first time.

From the pumping heart of The Magnetic System comes the ‘dirtiest’ Da-Dadancefloor anti-jams with this lost 1979 blueprint of Italian conceptual cosmic disco played by the cream of the Goblin studio band. Ultra-rare and unscrubbed, Finders Keepers finally snip the trip from the cash machine to the trash machine.

Carving its own grubby niche as an early prototype of cosmic disco cum Italo space funk whilst simultaneously harbouring Dada hat stand satire with a junkshop glam aesthetic, this ecological illogical poplitical crab cabaret clearly broke the mould before way before the jelly had set.

Fans of ‘other’ obtuse outernational agit-camp might find a fantasy fusion between France’s JP Massiera and Sweden’s enviroMENTAL marvel Kaptain Zoom while trying to unravel the Madfilth tangle - but rest assured there were method men behind this madness and a portal to Italian funk royalty still festers at the bottom of the psych rap scrapheap. • Originally drip-fed out of Cesare Andrea Bixio’s Cinevox stable as one of a tight grip of non-soundtrack LPs, made to test the label’s commercial potential, Madfilth would follow the band Goblin (and their non-cinematic Roller) as well as the hens’ teeth eponymous long player by the group The Motowns in what was perhaps the last-ditch attempt at custom built popsploitation - combining the skills of overqualified composers with undercooked conceptual mind belches. Naturally, after almost 40 years in the barrel, this micro-brewed oddity finally quenches the acquired taste of a new breed of shambolic psychotropic guzzlers proving that 1979 was obviously good year for fool’s gold. The Madfilth medicine has finally come to cure your psychic ills so open wide and don’t bite the spoon. 

As a truly indispensable bookend to any listeners with the slightest interest in experimental music, French culture or the foundations of mechanical songwriting, this inaugural release by these Parisian musical revolutionaries not only predicts the future sound of modern composition by almost 60 years but detangles the deepest roots of European popular culture celebrating an important historical family unison in the process. Combining the infant steps of Magma, the sonic blueprint of 1970’s TV theme ‘Picture Box’ and the sculptural creations of Polly Maggoo, this important and groundbreaking EP takes us back to the very first aural glimpse of the future of pregressive Europe at the hands of physical sound sculptures glaring in the face of premature technology.

This EP and its varied three-pronged assault is the first step in the legacy of the Lasry Baschet unison uniting the husband and wife team of Jacques and Yvonne Lasry plus their son Teddy (who would later create Magma with Christian Vander) and hard material sculptors François and Bernard Baschet (who would later work with William Klein). It was this creative unison between visual art and experimental music - witnessing the Lasry family exchange their orthodox music skills in favour of crystal rods, balloons, wet bows and metal sheets - that would potentially change the course of European music which was already on the extreme verge of electrocution with the rise of tape music and embryonic synthesised instrumentation.

After decades in the making Finders Keepers Records proudly present us with the first-ever pressing of Serge Gainsbourg’s most elusive and coveted soundtrack studio recordings - co-written, arranged and orchestrated by the genius Jean-Claude Vannier (‘Histoire De Melody Nelson’) during what many consider to be the dynamic duo’s most definitive creative period.
Believed to have been lost in a studio fire by Gainsbourg enthusiasts for over forty years (a myth that also shrouds Morricone’s lost ‘Danger Diabolik’ soundtrack) the misplaced master-tapes for the drug-fuelled/Mai 68 cash-in/road-movie ‘Les Chemins De Katmandou’ have been widely considered the final audio jigsaw piece in an immaculate discography/filmography thus earning this soundtrack bone-fide Holy Grail status amongst the most avid disc detectives.
Featuring the original crack team of Paris based players now recognised as French library music royalty, this LP epitomises the inimitable musical direction and expert psychedelic pop musicianship that graced classic Gainsbourg/Vannier soundtracks like ‘La Horse’, ‘Cannabis’ and ‘Sex Shop’. Laying the stylistic, futureproof foundations for subsequent decades of forward-thinking Gallic funk mastery.
Comprising Vannier’s signature recipe of thick plucked bass lines, close-mic’d drums, biting Clavinet and Eastern influenced strings and percussion (and a sprinkling of subtle traditional French instrumentation) the soundtrack to ‘Les Chemins De Katmandou’ (aka ‘The Road To Katmandu’ or ‘The Pleasure Pit’) captures Vannier and Gainsbourg in the first year of their creative partnership capturing their unique embryonic energy.
This previously lost full soundtrack score now exists on vinyl for the first time ever as an infinitely important milestone in the early development of the duo who would shape the sound of French pop music for years to come.

TRACK LISTING

Les Chemins De Katmandou (Titles)
The Pleasure Pit
Colin-Maillard
Le Roi Des Phlébotomes
Flower Child
Cache Cache
Opium Den
Overdose
Oliver
Fallen Rainbow
Colin-Maillard (Vox)
Les Chemins De Katmandou

As faithful guardians of the Ciani Musica Inc. studio vault Finders Keepers Records twist the key and return to their collaborative series of previously unreleased music from one of the most important and influential composers in the history of multi-disciplinary electronic music. Open-minded, unpretentious, enigmatic and consistently inspiring, Suzanne Elizabeth Ciani would shatter the mould and invert the stereotype of electronic composers in the early 1970s with a bona fide education in classical music, a clear understanding of technology and a genuine will to communicate and naturalise electronic music.

All of these unique attributes, coupled with her natural charm and generosity, would win her success and notoriety in the colliding worlds of art, film, advertising, theatre, dance and eventually popular recorded music in the latter part of the 21st century - a multifarious achievement which remained unrivalled by any of her contemporaries, regardless of gender, conquering many male-dominated platforms and breaking creative ground in the process. It is exactly these key factors that would form the basis for this multifaceted musical project. This electronic soundtrack for an operatic, ecological, scholastic, science fiction theatre production for children of all ages not only further reveals Suzanne’s vibrant and versatile skills as an experimental musician and narrative sound designer but also highlights her European heritage - working to the script of Milanese librettist Gian Carlo Menotti and a cast of forward-thinking fellow Italian-American creatives (including Giorgio Armani and Fiorucci in the wardrobe department).

Originally written and performed in 1968, and gaining worldwide acclaim throughout the 1970s, Gian Carlo Menotti would update and revise his play for the turn of the 80s which called for a new approach to the music and sound effects - all of which would make their world premiere in New York high school theatres in April of 1980. “I was honoured to have been selected to create a new electronic score for Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera for children,” Suzanne told Finders Keepers. “The original production had been in 1968 and I felt that the electronic music component could be more playful and less abrasive than the original production.” For this task Suzanne would approach the brief with the same zeal and tenacity that she continues to apply to all her work by reinventing the process, challenging convention and supplying the audience with something they have never experienced before. For ‘Help, Help The Globolinks!’ Ciani would give Menotti’s well-travelled aliens a brand new voice and with reinvention she communicated with a young audience keen to hear the genuine sounds of the future while retaining melodicism and personality quite potentially overshadowing the ‘human’ casts exceptional abilities and challenging the director’s and writer’s authority in true Ciani style: “I recall meeting with Maestro Menotti at his home in New York City,” recalls Suzanne. “Later I was told that he was upset by the size of my credit on the poster.”

Unlike many successful electronic composers, Suzanne, as a serious and genuinely revolutionary artist, managed to evade the obvious typecasting of her music through the medium of shlock sci-fi cinema (Swiss composer Bruno Spoerri readily observes that all the best space film scores veered from this pairing) but within the realms of opera and education Suzanne found her perfect channel (scratching her other cosmic cinematic itches with android music in ‘The Stepford Wives’ and as “the first female composer to score a major Hollywood movie” with ‘The Incredible Shrinking Woman’ release one year after ‘The Globolinks’ redux debut). Furnishing a plot of an ecological alien intervention worthy of a Magma youth starter pack and realigning early pioneering electronic operas such as Karl-Birger Blomdahl’s ‘Aniara’ or Remi Gassmann’s ‘Electronics’ for family consumption, this virtually undocumented work by the hardest working woman in VCO business is finally preserved after just a handful of exclusive theatrical airings over 35 years ago. Having honed her craft in the close company of late synthesiser designer Don Buchla (a company of whose development she played a key role) it is plain to see how the young Suzanne Ciani combined roles as an abstract artist and an astute technician in equal measures.

As Finders Keepers’ disobedient little sister label reaches her 20th (release) anniversary, Cacophonic Records present a record that will not only leave rare record collectors salivating but will open ambitious ears to a truly pioneering album from the seldom celebrated and individualistic micro-genre that is French free jazz.

Comprising some of the earliest uninhibited performances from key musicians behind records by Serge Gainsbourg, Jef Gilson, Triangle, Don Cherry, Barbara and countless other groundbreaking European jazz records and freakish films, this album captures the birth of an exciting movement that would soon earn its Parisian birthplace as the go-to European spiritual home of improvised and avant-garde music.

Spearheaded by polymath pianist and composer François Tusques this 1965 French album coined the phrase ‘free jazz’ before the American genre of the same name had fully taken shape and packed its suitcase; laying the foundations (alongside Jef Gilson’s ‘Enfin!’) for a unique satellite brand of jazz that would later provide visiting afro American avant-gardeners with a vibrant Parisian platform. Having recorded a very rare single in celebration of the architect Le Corbusier in late 1964, Tusques was lucky enough to play live with Don Cherry (a key player on Ornette Coleman’s 1961 Free Jazz LP) thus planting a pedigreed seed for this vibrant cultivar.

With this record we not only hear the unique differences within the Gallic approach to the art form (combining masterful sombre cinematic changes with aerated freeform percussion and erratic reed and brass) but we also get to witness the early lesser savoured secret ingredients that would carry France’s mainstream pop culture into truly uncharted and unrivalled territories throughout the following decades.

Best known to faithful Finders Keepers fans as the soundtrack composer to the horrortica films of Jean Rollin, Tusques is joined here by sax and flute player Francois Jeanneau, whose electronic jazz album ‘Such A Weird Plane’ would later lead to his own band Triangle gaining recognition as France’s leading French language prog jazz rock act.

This glimpse into a seldom documented underground of a domestic, revolutionary, uncompromised spiritual art form successfully reveals the other side of abstracted French music which alongside musique concrète, protest pop, symphonic rock and Zeuhl-skool electronic prog created a homegrown, self-contained music industry that went on to influence a universe of Gallic magnetic inspiration.

Presented here on vinyl for the first time since its original, ultra rare micro press (original copies now fetching upwards of 1000 euros), this Cacophonic release is taken directly from François Tusques’ very own mastertape archive.

Features two rare original outtakes which did not appear on the original LP.

Presented in authentic packaging complete with external seams and a facsimile of the original Tusques-penned booklet, which, after 52 years, still evades the most fastidious collectors trying to unite mint copies with this oft estranged pictorial pamphlet.

Welcome to the parallel musical universe of Miss Maria Teresa Luciani, a landscape of sonic architecture and theoretical composition constructed by a family of engineers that reinvented the wheel before the vehicle even began the journey. Imagine, if you will, the musical equivalent of Peter Cook’s Archigram group or the soundtrack to Charles and Ray Eames’ private sketchbooks, hinting at a new municipal, utopian metropolis just hours before the blueprints are suspiciously misplaced by the courier. These 1972 constructions of progressive, cyclic, proto-industrial colour music were never intended for public habitation. These are the ‘Sounds Of The City’ in a galaxy far, far beneath our radar and above your expectations that was never built.
The story of Maria Teresa Luciani reads like an Alphaville caper full of foreign intrigue, low intensity identification fraud, secret codes, family bonds, mistrust and wanderlust. To say this rare Italian concept album is unbelievable is justified on multiple levels. This multi-storey storage facility of found sounds, radiophonic samples, tape loops, early electronic music experiments, mechanical folk, cinematic vision, sound design, educated music theory, political pop and high concept art-as-noise successfully layers more musical ideas within its unique structure than one would think possible for a solo artist within any musical genre.
This is why ‘Sounds Of The City’ presents us with a brand new genre defying compositional framework, pre-dating sampling culture, cut & paste plunderism and industrial music in the process. Pre-digital, indefinable and genuinely unbelievable.
Who is Maria Teresa Luciani? On hearing this record respected collectors and enthusiasts have suggested “the female answer to Basil Kirchin,” or “the Italian Daphne Oram.” Both with justified cause.

Combining all the traits of an international superhero or intrepid comic book adventurer, the true identity, whereabouts and history of the spectacular Italian composer known as Gerardo Iacoucci has been a mystery to record collectors for many years. As a result of the best efforts of secretive archivists and DJs as well as and the overprotective force field that surrounds the clandestine world of Italian library music, the commanding experimental psychedelic pop music made singlehandedly by this early pioneer of the anti-genre time after time rises to the top of collectors’ want lists, commands huge ransom notes, ignites dancefloors and decimates genre tags before returning to its mythical status as one of the kings of the underworld without removing his mask. Despite the fact that original Italian copies of records by Gerardo Iacoucci are amongst the rarest, enigmatic fixtures of European psychedelia, his music simply refuses to be ghettoised and as the name of this album suggests the history of this artist reads like the memoirs of a genuine musical adventurer as well as a well-travelled prophet of experimental music and unsung pillar of Italian jazz and sound design.

Recorded in early 1970, Iacoucci’s wide-eyed ‘L’Avventura’ suite spanned 6 sides of loud, heavyweight monophonic vinyl for Romano Di Bari’s Deneb label and created an epically detailed blueprint for independent mood music companies whilst sharing release schedules with likeminded workaholics Alessandro Alessandroni and A. R. Luciani. However, Gerardo’s adventure didn’t begin here...

As a published author, recorded musician, professor, film composer, gentleman, musicologist and scholar, Gerardo Iacoucci has managed to cram the stories of nine lifetimes into one heroic existence, while maintaining a humble, earnest and near-mythical status as one of the great lost progressive pop pioneers of one of the most important transitional eras of European music, cinema and general, seldom rivalled, creative super powers. When the needle drops, ‘L’Avventura’ has only just begun.

Continuing their mission to shine light on the genuine anomalies of 70’s Italian production music, Finders Keepers Records resurrects another unlikely transcription disc from the vaults of one of Rome’s most esoteric library music archives.

Finders Keepers Records, in continued collaboration with the Di Barri company, with the Casa/Ducros family blessing, proudly shine new light on this sonic sculptures and provide a fresh context where educated music listeners are ready to fill the gaps between Delia Derbyshire, Ennio Morricone, Suzanne Ciani and Harry Partch and patronise a very welcome considered alternative to the recent rise in popularity of Italian Giallo soundtracks from a seldom savoured feminine creative vantage point.

The mythical, mysterious and misfiled transcription disc of a lost Italian demonic religious rock opera recorded at Pierre Umiliani’s Sound Workshop by Stefano Marcucci - beat group veteran, Fernando Arrabal collaborator and Libra affiliate.

Featuring members of the wider Casa / Ducros family and future Federico Fellini collaborators, this previously commercially unavailable mini album features embryonic Minimoog, ecclesiastical organs and chorus alongside a tight psych funk rhythm section from Italian library music’s golden era.

Imagine Jean Pierre Massiera’s Visitors rescoring a scene from ‘Juliette Of The Spirits’, backed by a skeleton staff from Jean-Claude Vannier’s ‘Chorale des Jeunesses Musicales de France’ on a foreign exchange program, on Halloween, in the Vatican.

Continuing their mission to shine light on the genuine anomalies of 70s Italian production music, Finders Keepers Records resurrect another unlikely transcription disc from the vaults of one of Rome’s most esoteric library music archives. This bizarre one-off theatrical project, composed and recorded at Umiliani’s studio, was commissioned for a short-run demonic religious performance entitled ‘Tempo Di Demoni, Papi, Angioli, Incensi E Cilici’ under the musical direction of former Italian psychedelic beat-group member Stefano Marcucci.

Instantly recognised by Flower Records founder Romano Di Bari as having commercial potential beyond its handful of church and small theatre performances in the early months of 1975, Marcucci agreed that they should commit these bizarre recordings to vinyl as a form of preservation with hope of attracting a wider commercial audience through Di Bari’s Television and Films synchronisation contacts. Sitting slightly ajar to the custom-made projects of its label bedfellows (swapping schedules with experimental theme-music by Alessandro Alessandroni, Gerardo Iacoucci and Anthonio Ricardo Luciani), this album has slipped under the radar of many Library label completists over the years attracting confusion, scepticism, polarised opinion but nothing short of astonishment at the bizarre hidden synth-ridden psychedelic concept pop found behind some of the most striking duo-tone artwork to come out of Italy’s most experimental era.

Original copies of this highly sought after library disc fetch in excess of £300 on certain internet auction sites.

TRACK LISTING

Pange Lingua (strum.)
Alleluja
Inferno
Coro Dei Penitenti
Gli Occhi Di Tutti
Roma Nobilis
Rendete Grazie
Pange Lingua (vocale)

Imagine, if you will, a foreboding homemade electro-acoustic, new age, synth driven, proto-techno, imaginary world music Portastudio soundtrack for a Polish-made animated fantasy based on a modern Finnish folk tale, created for German and Austrian TV, composed in 1982 by two politically driven post-punk theatre performers from a shared house in Leeds!

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This one will obviously resonate with a lot of you. the Moomins is inseparable from the quirky library synth vibes and twanging cosmic blips and twee folky bloops. It's eminently nostalgic and essential.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Moomins Theme
2. Travelling Theme
3. Hobgoblin's Hat
4. Leaving Moomin Valley
5. Partytime
6. Hattyfatteners Row
7. Woodland Band
8. Most Unusual
9. Midwinter Rites
10. Piano Waltz
11. Creepers
12. Woodland Band Far Away
13. Comet Shadow
14. Comet Theme
15. The Moomins Theme (End)

Finders Keepers keep it obscure with the first-ever dedicated album release of pioneering female Italian film music composer / arranger / multi-instrumentalist Giulia De Muittis. These undercover pseudo-ethnological studio sessions made under her experimental alter ego Kema, combine the ethos of Can’s ‘Ethnological Forgery Series’ (EFS) with the studio trickery of Delia Derbyshire and cement Giulia’s unshakable credentials as one of the founding figures of Giallo film music and Italian psych soundtracks. Perhaps best known amongst fans of Italian production music and Giallo movie soundtracks as the wife of the legendary Alessandro Alessandroni, composer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Giulia De Muittis was an equally formidable force who emerged from the formative years of the aforementioned anti-genres and rose to a monarchic status within the country’s vibrant and seldom rivalled musical secret society. The cliché ‘behind every successful man, there is a strong woman’ might not do Alessandro and Giulia’s long-running creative unison justice but one thing that rings true that in the shadows of Senor Alessandroni’s limelight (illuminated by his work with Ennio Morricone for the films of Sergio Leone and Dario Argento) remained a darker musical feminine force which in time has come to represent the duo’s finest and most sought after sonic artifacts. In a career that spanned four decades, until her untimely death in 1984, Giulia’s collaborative work as a reliable creative all-rounder and pop polymath has stood the unshakable test of time like few other musicians. It is of no coincidence that Giulia’s nom de plumes - Kema and De Muittis - have in recent, more educated years, become trusted seals of approval which connect top choice composers such as Raskovich (aka Sorgini), Stelvio Cipriani, Morricone, Braen (aka Alessandroni) Amedeo Tomassi, Piero Umiliani and Bruno Nicolai amongst select others. It is, however, De Muittis’ seldom heard self-initiated solo work for small independent Italian library music imprints that reveal a unique multi- instrumentalist female composer working at her most intimate and uncompromised best. This set collects her contributions to the rare-as-hens-teeth Folkmusic releases ‘Alle Sorgenti Delle Civiltà’ to create her first-ever dedicated artist album under any of her recording monikers. Remastered from the original Flipper master tapes in collaboration with the Di Bari family, this is a must have for any library fans.

Previously unreleased schizo post-punk / Moogy folk score to 1983 British TV Scouse-ploitation drama ‘One Summer’ from the vault of Kate Bush, Serge Gainsbourg and David Bowie’s bestkept secret session man, Alan Parker.

From the one-man studio vault of the guitarist who adorned 'Histoire De Melody Nelson', 'The Kick Inside' AND 'Diamond Dogs' comes a post-punk, 80’s TV soundtrack that aims to restore the unforgettable names of Billy and Icky in your nostalgic consciousness while liberating lost music of a significant unsung UK composer.

Bringing back fractured memories of Scouse teenage rebellion, sports casual weekend wear, chip shop violence and escape missions to the Welsh Valleys (where baby birds are fed Mars Bars and shoplifting is the local currency), the series One Summer made an indelible impression of gritty realism, tragic heartbreak and woeful hope in the hearts of a dumbstruck generation in 1983.

Inducing abject fear in protective parents and a street smart swagger amongst clued-up youths, this adaptation of a coming of age pastoral thriller by a reluctant Willy Russell broke new boundaries pinpointing a cultural teenage void between post punk activism and the acid house years while arguably giving Thatcherite telly addicts a tiny kick up the arse.

Scored by legendary KPM / De Wolfe library musician Alan Parker, a renowned session player for Serge Gainsbourg, Kate Bush and Bowie (amongst many more) this score retains a genre defying personality, pinpointing the stylistic essence of the era while successfully switching from barren Rumble Fish funk, pastoral Moog noodlings, Pentangular folk, 80’s post-punk rhythms with hints of dubby melodica/harmonica. Composed to cue for the short five-part series (that TV commissioners were too scared to revisit), Parkers bursts of self-propelled small screen scoring came in one to two minute spells allowing Finders Keepers to comfortably fit the entire soundtrack on one neat eleven track limited 7” EP thirty-three years down the train line.

To mark 10 years of Finders Keepers the label present a new and improved pressing of the album where it all began. Within the last 10 years the resurgence of sixties Gallic pop, once known as Ye-Ye music, has escalated beyond an inter-stellar dizzy height. What might have been a waning, embarrassing genre destined for a shelf life / death gathering dust amongst the Eurovisions of yesteryear, the ‘jerk-beat’ psych-sploitation records of the latter day French disco had soon found new floor space in some of the most credible nightspots in London and Japan.

Without a shadow of doubt, the flagship LP with best odds on becoming a discerning household object was. An inimitable, 45-minute concept LP handcrafted by a bassdriven psychedelic rock group and a heaven sent, 1001 piece orchestral and choral symphony. The album left hip hop producers alongside progressive rock aficionados crying out for more and more for years to come. This LP was in a league of its very own… or was it?

The seldom-sung musical arranger for the classic ‘Histoire de Melody Nelson’ by Serge Gainsbourg has become one of the most enigmatic names in Frenchfunk; lorded by many as the French David Axelrod, Jean-Claude Vannier’s name is the lesser-spotted, tell tale seal of sample-friendly quality when it comes to crate-digging ‘en Francais’. Suitably, when rumours amongst French record dealers claiming “the band who played ‘Melody Nelson’ recorded a follow-up LP” became a legend of psychedelic folklore. Another unconfirmed rumour about Jean-Claude Vannier taking the remaining outtakes of the beloved ‘Melody Nelson’ to create a promo-only experimental rock LP left sample hungry producers and DJs in turmoil.

For those in the know the answers to these mysteries lay between the anonymous gatefold sleeve of an undiscovered conceptual album bizarrely entitled ‘L’Enfant Assassin des Mouches’ by a custom-built avant-rock entourage called Insolitudes. The treasure hunt began. For record collectors looking for that special something, this LP contains everything.

For those in the know the answers to these mysteries lay between the anonymous gatefold sleeve of an undiscovered conceptual album bizarrely entitled ‘L’Enfant Assassin des Mouches’ by a custom-built avant-rock entourage called Insolitudes. The treasure hunt began. For record collectors looking for that special something, this LP contains everything.

History denotes that when ‘our man in Paris’ Msr. Gainsbourg first heard the initial bones of this LP he took his poetic pencil to paper providing bizarre liner notes, thus consummating the most extraordinary concept album of all time. The story ‘The Child Assassin Of The Flies’ was to be included as the only information to grace the LP’s highly collectible concertina gatefold sleeve. The story in full is reproduced in its native-tongue on this very special re-release package.

DJs and producers such as Jim O’Rourke, Stereolab’s Tim Gane and David Holmes have spent sleepless nights in perusal of original copies of this perfect release and now regard it as one of the best. Recent copies on eBay have commanded ridiculous price tags and is now one of the most sought-after articles amongst the vinyl hungry hip hop community.

Lovingly remastered and repackaged in an authentic gatefold sleeve to celebrate the 10th birthday of Finders Keepers Records.

Featuring updated liner notes this is the album where it all began. Available once again, having been out of print for a number of years.

A genuine lost and unreleased full-length LP from one of the most mysterious figures of early Italian electronic sound and library music. A missing puzzle piece in the small discography of experimental tape and synthesiser music by the composer known only as Lamartine recorded (but never pressed) in 1974 by the archive that bought you the work of Daniela Casa and the wildest electronic experiments of Alessandroni, Giuliano Sorgini and Fabio Frizzi. Having sat in the can for over 40 years the similarities to the likes of Cluster, Tom Dissevelt and the Radiophonic workshop have yet to be recognised and celebrated.

The name Lamartine was a true mystery of library history.

In keeping with the habitual culture of library music the name Lamartine was very likely to be one of many creative nom de plumes designed to disguise the true identities of the artists – even the likes of Morricone and Bruno Nicolai had their own shrouded monikers (Leo Nichols and Leo Flag respectively). Having faded from the memories of the ex-employees of the defunct production music departments at CAM and RCA, the truth behind this uncelebrated electronic pioneer remained a mystery for over 30 years. As enthusiasts began to unravel the pseudonyms of other composers such as Tomassi and Alessandroni via cue sheets, invoices and interviews, suspicions around Lamartine being of non-Italian origin rose to the surface with rumours that he or she was most probably of German, Dutch or English decent due to his distinct similarities to artists like Kid Baltan from Holland, various electronic artists from the outskirts of the krautrock scene or British tape music composers such as Basil Kirchin or David Cain. All of whom had firm relationships with the international library music scene.

Although most of the records made for the RCA 1000 series were also repackaged for syndication in France via the April Orchestra series, it was unusual that Cronache Dal Mondo didn’t benefit the same service, bringing into question the fact that Lamartine may have secretly been a big name artist legally contracted to exclusive territories or simply the author of music that was too challenging for wider consumption. Even searching for other unconfirmed aliases within the huge independent Italian library network, based of musical similarities or pure speculation, rendered little answers convincing unsatisfied fans that Lamartine had carefully covered his tracks or let the birds eat the breadcrumbs.

It wasn’t until 30 years later that the Italian independent production music label Flipper - the parent company responsible for the imprints Union, Octopus, Flirt and Deneb amongst others - decided to digitise its catalogue that a gleam of hope via a sealed, misfiled master tape shone through the trees. While putting a small archive of back-up recordings through the baking (emulsifying) process the archiving team at Flipper found the name “Lamartine” written on a single tape box with the name 'Reportage' and corresponding legal papers pertaining to a little known Italian conductor and composer for stage and popular song named Mr. Radicchi. Fabio Di Barri at Flipper accounts that throughout the extensive paperwork at Flipper the music of Radicchi or Lamartine was never licensed out for synchronisation and doesn’t appear on any of the associated labels discographies. After cross-referencing track times and titles Fabio could also reveal the full name of the artist to be that of Odoardo (aka Eduardo) Radicchi – a senior member of the Italian music scene from the same generation as Nino Rota, Giorgio Gaslini and Gian Piero Reverberi. 

The late discovery of 'Reportage' by Lamartine provides vintage electronic music enthusiasts with a wider vista of the development of the genre in Italy. The aforementioned names make up a small but closely associated and like-minded family of pioneers exploring a new direction with solo recordings in a very unique industrial capacity. Rendered in the hinterland between Italian cinema’s penchant for psychedelic rock and the onset of the synthesiser music and Italo disco movements later in the decade, these artists and their records represent the laboratory projects that researched the capacity of electronic music before it swept the nation’s media quite unlike anywhere else in the world. Lamartine - once an anonymous, dubious, genius in the library micro-genre - can now be named and recognised as a unique artist with a distinctive sound, adding new colours to the vibrant palette of Italian studio artists and painting a wider sonic picture of the evolution of Italian pop and film music and we believe to understand it.

The Italian library liberation front keeps growing - the genre that keeps on giving. It’s time for artists like Lamartine to name and claim their places in electronic music history.

TRACK LISTING

Congresso Al Terzo Mondo
Disoccupazione
Corteo Della Speranza
Morte Del Mediterraneo
Desideri Di Pace
Riarmo Nucleare
Sceicchi A Congresso
Fame E Orgoglio
Angoscia Universale
Depurazione Del Mare
Soluzioni E Speranze

After a 23-year hiatus, The Dance of Reality marks the triumphant return of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the visionary Chilean filmmaker behind cult classics El Topo and The Holy Mountain. In the radiantly visceral autobiographical film, a young Jodorowsky is confronted by a collection of compelling characters that contributed to his burgeoning surreal consciousness. The legendary filmmaker was born in 1929 in Tocopilla, a coastal town on the edge of the Chilean desert, where the film was shot.

Blending his personal history with metaphor, mythology, and poetry, The Dance of Reality reflects Jodorowsky’s philosophy that reality is not objective but rather a “dance” created by our own imaginations.

Written, performed and recorded by Alejandro’s son, the acclaimed actor, director and musician Adan Jodorowsky, Dance of Reality’s original soundtrack expands from gossamer folk acoustic guitar themes and solo piano compositions to rich cinematic orchestral arrangements echoing the work of John Barry and Ennio Morricone combined with extrovert narrative traditional pieces executed in the vein of Nino Rota. This LP contains the sixteen original compositions that make up the score for Alejandro’s seventh feature film which witness a return to the ABKCO film company who produced his underground classics El Topo and The Holy Mountain both of which Finders Keepers will also release the soundtrack LPs in this series of special vinyl editions.

Sharing social circles and spiritual ideologies with artists such as Iasos, Connie Demby and Deuter, whilst splitting label release schedules with Laraaji, Laurie Spiegel and Wendy Carlos, the unique Florida raised soul mate duo known as Emerald Web released their privately pressed debut LP at an axis where post-prog rock met proto-new age and ambient electronic music.

At the turn of the 1980s Bob Stohl and Kat Epple embarked on a ten-year spiritual journey playing at planetariums and laser shows above the same Californian silicon city that devised the early computer music software, unifying their state of the art modular synth soundscapes and organic compositions of flutes, bells and field recordings and furnishing a self-pressed cassette tapeography of inimitable Emerald Web music for their self-funded Stargate label. Having first communicated via the medium of music as flute players at a South Florida jam session the future space music luminaries would be instrumental in assisting synthesiser companies via feedback and consultancy in developing instruments such as the Lyricon wind synth (favoured by Suzanne Ciani and Bruno Spoerri) and various sponsored machines for Arp, Buchla, EML, Computone and Orchestron. Named after a laser show formation and combining influences from science fiction films, fantasy novels and a broad musical spectrum including Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, It’s A Beautiful Day and Goro Yamaguchi, Bob and Kat would balance day jobs as synth programmers as well as TV and film soundtrackers under the moniker BobKat Productions (counting microscope nature documentarian Carl Sagan amongst their clients) with evening synthesiser shows at galleries, spiritual centres and even punk clubs. This compilation album comprises early tracks from Emerald Web’s debut vinyl release and the following four rare cassette only albums on Stargate Records from 1979-1982 before the band recorded their bestselling (and Grammy nominated) albums for labels affiliated with Germany’s Kuckuck and Larry Fast before Bob Stohl’s sad and untimely death in 1989.

Taken from original master tapes and recorded using revolutionary and prototypal music technology many of these tracks have never been on vinyl or CD until now. Finders Keepers are proud to have worked closely alongside Kat Epple as part of an ongoing Emerald Web / BobKat archival project making these important early electronic / organic musical hybrids available for fans of ambient krautrock, electronic soundtracks, musique concrete, electro and PINA enthusiasts alike. Welcome To The Valley Of The Birds.

TRACK LISTING

Dawn
The Dragons Gate
Ars Nova
Flight Of The Raven
Photonos
Doppler Bells 1
Rainforest
Voices Of The Sage
Valley Of The Birds
Reflecting Pool
Stepper
Openings
Nightsong
Chasing The Shadowbeast

Known amongst a small group of teenage friends as T.R.A.S.E (Tape Recorder And Synthesiser Ensemble) this previously unearthed and fully formed electronic music project was spearheaded by a 16-year-old schoolboy as an extension of his woodwork, metalwork and science classes in 1981.

Composed and recorded using a self-made synth, audio mixer and electronic percussion units T.R.A.S.E would bridge the gap between a love for sci-fi horror soundtracks, Gary Numan B-sides and an extra curricular hobby as a sound and lighting designer for school plays – bequeathing a backstory as unique and unfathomable as the individualistic sonic results that he would finally commit to C90. Having successfully recorded his only solo album, ‘Electronic Rock’ (which was never duplicated beyond his own demo copy), this early musical achievement by Andy Popplewell stands up as a rare self-initiated example of embryonic experimental electro-pop and genuine outsider music, marking the early domestication of synthesisers and the dawn of electronic home recording studios and the uninhibited results. Unhindered by adult concepts like self-consciousness, popular snobbery, fashion, pride and fear of failure, Andy, armed with the plans to the Chorosynth kit module, an old junk shop piano keyboard and some hand-me-down tools from his recently deceased dad, would fill an exercise book with plans, arrangements and self-penned new wave pop lyrics to fully realise the potential of his one-man synthetic symphony. Reaping the benefits of his own stencilled circuit boards and soldering iron skills (whilst occasionally enlisting the part time help of his younger brother on guitar)(see sleeve image) T.R.A.S.E’s homemade technology pop continued to bloom right up until the very cusp of adolescence when careers officers and real life responsibilities saw the end of Andy’s reel to reel multitracking which is finally presented here for the first time since it was sung and played. This ambitious cross section of robotic funk and moody soundscape sequences makes instrumental nods to John Carpenter and Kraftwerk next to unpolished vocal drones worthy of a sedated Human League or Joy Divison, all of whom shared radio dial digits amongst Giorgio Moroder, Tubeway Army and The Glitter Band as Popplewell’s clearest unabashed influences.

The T.R.A.S.E tapes, finally unearthed by Finders Keepers, show the full extent of the projects repertoire before the “group’s” final hiatus which, for Andy, was followed by a working education in London under BBC employ- ment as a trainee radio engineer (not far from the closed door of the Radiophonic Workshop) which has since led to a widespread reputation as one of the country’s leading independent tape engineers / editors / archivists indiscriminately splicing and baking vintage tapes for anyone in-between Alpha in Brussels and ZTT in London. Having worked with hundreds of reputable studios, pop stars and media companies throughout his career Andy claims he has rarely been asked about his own musical history in 30 working years, Finders Keepers are glad we Popped that very question.

Known amongst a small group of teenage friends as T.R.A.S.E. (Tape Recorder And Synthesiser Ensemble) this previously unearthed and fully formed electronic music project was spearheaded by a 16-year-old schoolboy as an extension of his woodwork, metalwork and science classes in 1981.

Composed and recorded using a self-made synth, audio mixer and electronic percussion units, T.R.A.S.E. would bridge the gap between a love for sci-fi horror soundtracks, Gary Numan B-sides and an extra curricular hobby as a sound and lighting designer for school plays - bequeathing a backstory as unique and unfathomable as the individualistic sonic results that he would finally commit to C90.

Having successfully recorded his only solo album, 'Electronic Rock’ (which was never duplicated beyond his own demo copy), this early musical achievement by Andy Popplewell stands up as a rare self-initiated example of embryonic experimental electro pop and genuine outsider music, marking the early domestication of synthesisers and the dawn of electronic home recording studios and the uninhibited results.

Unhindered by adult concepts like self-consciousness, popular snobbery, fashion, pride and fear of failure (while funded by paper rounds and odd jobs in his Mancunian community), Andy, armed with the plans to the Chorosynth kit module, an old junk shop piano keyboard and some hand-me-down tools from his recently deceased dad, would fill an exercise book with plans, arrangements and self-penned new wave pop lyrics to fully realise the potential of his one-man synthetic symphony.

Reaping the benefits of his own stencilled circuit boards and soldering iron skills (whilst occasionally enlisting the part time help of his younger brother on guitar) T.R.A.S.E.’s homemade technology pop continued to bloom right up until the very cusp of adolescence, when careers officers and real life responsibilities saw the end of Andy’s reel to reel multitracking, which is finally presented here for the first time since it was sung and played.

This ambitious cross section of robotic funk and moody soundscape sequences makes instrumental nods to John Carpenter and Kraftwerk next to unpolished vocal drones worthy of a sedated Human League or Joy Divison, all of whom shared radio dial digits amongst Giorgio Moroder, Tubeway Army and The Glitter Band as Popplewell’s clearest unabashed influences.

The T.R.A.S.E. tapes, finally unearthed by Finders Keepers, show the full extent of the projects repertoire before the ‘group’s final hiatus which, for Andy, was followed by a working education in London under BBC employment as a trainee radio engineer (not far from the closed door of the Radiophonic Workshop) which has since led to a widespread reputation as one of the country’s leading independent tape engineers / editors / archivists indiscriminately splicing and baking vintage tapes for anyone in-between Alpha in Brussels and ZTT in London.

Expect further previously unreleased archival releases from T.R.A.S.E., including their full length album, a compilation and a 12” single

Lost love songs and self-pressed pop acetates by this previously unheard Californian folk duo from beneath the shadows of the Hollywood Hills.

These recordings of unreleased and unknown American acidic folk and acoustic pop were made in the late 60s by husband and wife duo Don and Stevie Gere. For over 40 years they’ve sat untouched and unplayed in a box of unmarked studio tapes at their family home in Los Angeles.

As original pop songs and guitar based arrangements from the man who made the stoner psych soundtrack for cult movie ‘Werewolves On Wheels’, these rescued one-off pressings were sung in harmony with his teenage sweetheart and lifelong partner, Stevie Howard, and recorded at LA based walk-in studio sessions.

Sprouting a missing branch in the family tree of LA based artists like Curt Boetcher and Doug Rhodes (The Millennium), Waddy Wachtel (Buckingham Nicks) David Gates (Bread) and members of The Steve Miller Band, this LP includes original versions of tracks written for or featuring all of the above, as well as destroyed and unreleased film music.

What might have been considered lost treasure has until now remained previously unshared outside of the duo’s own private relationship, presenting fans of obscure folk and privately produced pop with a unique album that defies collectability and paints a fuller picture of a lesserspotted enigma in uninhabited unison with his closest musical confidant.

TRACK LISTING

American Lullaby
Live Our Life
Sweet Sugar
Talked About World
Keep An Eye On You
Another Blue Day
What Do You Think Of Me
Kindly
Tell Me Now
I’ve Been Wrong
Laying By The Riverside

For the uninitiated, the composer of the music on this record is also a master craftsman who throughout the 1980s combined his off-the-wall ideas and sky high expectations using craft, experimental technology and a trusted team of participants to help concoct some truly bizarre local produce in mass quantity without compromise. Ilaiyaraaja, known to his family as Gnanadesikan, and to many of his zillion strong fanbase as Isaignani (meaning musical genius in Tamil) represents the epitome of a nostalgic national treasure especially fora single solo composer in the Tamil micro music industry.

His euphoric electrified music of the 70s and 80s (and beyond) captures every essence of joy and jubilation and is still used in celebration as much as it is celebrated in its own right. Ilaiyaraaja, a man of humble physical stature, sparsely equipped with a self-sufficient studio of compact electronic devices literally commands celebration with his single handed symphonies.

Defying any fair comparisons in the Western world (besides inadequate parallels to Joe Meek and Jean-Pierre Massiera) it is also virtually impossible to find similar electronic mavericks in the East. Imagine a mixture between Turkey’s Ilhan Mimaroglu and the acidic synthesiser ragas of Charanjit Singh and you're still left short of the songs. Essentially, Ilaiyaraaja is to the local Kollywood film industry what RD Burman / Bappi Lahiri or M. Ashraf / Tafo are to Bollywood and Lollywood, but then remember that Ilaiyaraaja is a one-man band, with a single vision and zero competition.

This compilation reveals more tasty treats from Finders Keepers ongoing obsession with The Crown Prince Of Tamil Pop, focusing on his growth in the mid-1980s as a confident young composer adding freak pop fuel to the flickering flame of Kodambakkam’s Kollywood film industry, while embracing domestic synthesiser technology and fusing the power of electro and synth pop to his Carnatic canon.

Available for the first time ever away from their original rare as hen’s teeth, impossible to find Indian vinyl releases.

Known by adoring fans and devotees, throughout South India, as Chinna Kuyil (Little Nightingale) on account of her expansive vocal range and crystaline sweet voice, the uplifting and surprising sound of KS Chithra is, for many, best exemplified by the early plugged-in-pop she made in the 1980s with the man/machine who first introduced her to the Tamil film industry, Maestro Ilaiyaraaja.

There are few records you will hear this year that combine the sounds of a child's choir, a DX7 bassline, three types of drum machine, a mariachi trumpet cry, a resampled 40-piece orchestra and an electronic bassline that takes the Moog taurus by the horns and rides into the Indian summer. There is probably less chance of hearing a vocal performance so confusingly dazzling that it instantly detracts from the previously aforementioned wish list combination of bizarre instruments, but for those intrepid enough to dig a little deeper and take a detour due East, pick-axing right where Lollywood meets Bollywood - then prepare to be rewarded with a double, triple and quadruple whammy!

For odd pop fans with bad concentration spans, no musical staying power, or commitment issues then perhaps these schizoid ADD arrangements will push the right buttons and recharge your batteries. For some of you, records like this only existed in your dreams.

Often locally discussed behind the limelight of her wider continental contemporaries such as Asha Bhosle and Noor Jehan it is almost impossible to find adequate comparison to KS Chithra. Try taking the yearning vocal energy of Turkey's Selda and the falsetto range of Morricone's best Italian choirs, add the playful existentialism of Poland's Urszala Dudziak and the cinematic pedigree of Asha then sprinkle some saccharine Jane Birkinisms on top and set your turntable pitch at plus 8 while you dream of "Dots And Loops" era Stereolab or a Malayalam Mantronix - alternatively just buy this first-time compendium and press play.

This compilation focuses on a small and select handful of Chithra and Ilaiyaraaja's developing collaborations from the formative years of their relationship between - 1986 and 1991- a vibrant time where analog recording techniques and digital technology first overlapped and Chithra, as a developing vocalist, adapted to the the sounds and arrangements of a classic maverick composer pushing the boundaries.

The American Delia Derbyshire Of The Atari Generation.

With a sonic portfolio that boasts commissions for the Xenon classic pinball machine, the sounds for the Meco Star Wars theme, the Atari TV commercials and the electronic sound effects in the original Stepford Wives film (amongst many others) the mutant electronic music CV of Suzanne Ciani is proof that in a 1970s commercial world of boys toys, monopolised by a male dominated media industry, a woman’s touch was the essential secret ingredient to successful sonic seduction. A classically trained musician with an MA in music composition this American Italian pianist first came across a synthesizer via her connections in the art world when abstract sculptor and collaborator Harold Paris introduced Suzanne to synthesizer designer Don Buchla who created the instrument that would come to define Ciani's synthetic sound (The Buchla Synthesiser).

Cutting her teeth providing self-initiated electronic music projects for art galleries, experimental film directors, pop record producers and proto-video nasties Suzanne soon located to New York where she quickly became the first point of call for electronic music services in both the underground experimental fields and the commercial advertising worlds alike. Counting names like Vangelis and Harald Bode amongst her close friends Suzanne and her Ciani Musica company became the testing ground for virtually any type of new developments in electronic and computerized music amassing an expansive vault of commercially unexposed electronic experiments which have remained untouched for over 30 years... until now.

Finders Keepers Records are happy to announce a new creative archive based relationship with Suzanne Ciani, a very unique and celebrated experimental composer in her own right, who, as one of the very few female composers in the field (save Chicago's Laurie Spiegel, Italy's Doris Norton, and a post-op Walter Wendy Carlos) turned a hugely significant wheel behind-the-screens of many early computerised music modules throughout the 1980s dating back to her formative years studying at Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Labs in the early 70s. Suzanne Ciani's detailed and academic approach to music and electronics coupled with an impeccable sense of timing and melody (and a good sense of humour) shines throughout this new collection of previously unreleased recordings. "Lixiviation" complies and recontextualises both secret music and commercial experiments of Suzanne Ciani made for micro-cosmic time slots and never previously documented on vinyl or CD.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lixiviation
2. Atari Video Games Logo
3. ‘Clean Room’ ITT TV Spot
4. Almay ‘Eclipse’ TV Spot
5. Paris 1971
6. Sound Of A Dream Kissing
7. Atari Corporate Tag
8. Princess With Orange Feet
9. ‘Pop & Pour’ Coca-Cola Logo
10. ‘Discover Magazine’ TV Spot
11. Live Buchla Concert 1975
12. ‘Inside Story’ PBS TV Spot
13. ‘Liberator’ Atari TV Spot
14. Eighth Wave
15. Sound Of Wetness
16. Second Breath

The long-lost Parisian skin flick ‘Jeunes Filles Impudiques’ (AKA ‘Schoolgirl Hitchhikers’) marks a particularly vulnerable period in the career of one of the most underrated and misunderstood directors to emerge from the rising smoke of the 1968 Parisian social explosion. From a director with early links with the Paris underground, the letterists, the surrealists, improv theatre and the free-press comes the reclaimed audio tracks from one of his rarest celluloid moments - but let’s not confuse this for high-art. Finders Keepers make no bones, this is Jean Rollin’s maiden voyage into adult entertainment, directed under the pseudonym of Miche Gentil with a flimsy plot, questionable acting skills and an awesome little schizophrenic soundtrack.

This long-lost movie has been buried for some 40 odd years, with a musical score bursting to jump out of the can and down your tone arm, now made possible by a recently renovated negative print and new source material. These original Pierre Raph (of ‘Requiem For A Vampire’ infamy) compositions from the publishing Library Of Paris’ Musicale Editions Dellamarre (of Acanthus / Unity fame) come straight from Rollin himself as an introduction to Finders Keepers’ new Rollinade series documenting some of the finest musical moments of the director’s career as an avant-gardener, counter-culture vulture and Gallic vamptramp, all housed in their original hand-painted promotional artwork for the first time ever on vinyl.