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)

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

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

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

From the same continental cosmic egg that hatched Marc Moulin, Marc Hollander and Belgian synth fusion combo Placebo comes your favourite new Franco-Flemmish pop discovery, COS.

Compact in name but wide-eyed in nature, it’s understandable how the 70s band known simply as COS has remained trapped in the tight cracks between pop stardom and prog indulgence where other like-minded names like CAN, Zao, Neu! And Egg have managed to squeeze into gaps of your record collection.

In presenting one of the band’s most infectious and potentially crossover legible tracks on this exclusive user-friendly 45, COS mastermind Daniel Schell not only breaks an unlikely new format for this lesser-known femme-fronted, electro/jazz fusion/prog pop opera/would-be disco cinematic six-piece but also sends a sonic telegram to a new generation of futurist pop aficionados ready to explore the deep realms of his band’s dense, expansive and consistently rewarding catalogue.

Placing the microscope over the central motif of the band’s onomatopoeic 1978 triptych known as ‘Mein Maschine Ist Schön’ (My Machine Is Beautiful) this very rare proposed single edit from the group’s third album combines the type of warm, brooding, discoid funk and nymphish Morse code vocals that unite fans of Stereolab, Curved Air, Jan Hammer, Emerald Web and Ursula Dudziak, not to mention Schell’s own close friends, the aforementioned Hollander, Moulin and Placebo.

A prog rock 45 might sound like a contradiction in terms but with a band like COS you can only expect them to defy convention. Backed here with another deeply conceptual sliced of deep orchestral symphonic psych from Schell’s short-lived FF Boom project from the previous year, this suitably compact introduction to your new favourite COSmonauts provides digestible versions of some of Schell’s finest moments and clears the decks for future explorations of a wider musical universe waiting to be explored.

TRACK LISTING

COS - Mein Maschine Ist Schön 
Daniel Schell & Dick Annegarn - The FF Boom

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

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

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!

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)

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.

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 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.

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.

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.