Professor Sakamoto gives a lesson on what is practically a different style of music with each track on Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia, beginning with a sure-fire hit: the extroverted, quintessentially Japanese synth workout "Field Work" (with Thomas Dolby). From there, Sakamoto hits riff-ready crossover jazz-fusion ("Etude"), electronic minimalism ("M.A.Y. in the Backyard"), and Oriental dub ("Paradise Lost"). There is a return to sampladelic Eastern synth-pop with "Steppin' Into Asia," but for the most part Sakamoto displays his impressive stylistic range on this solo album.

10 Comp (Lorraine) 2022 documents six live performances with Anthony Braxton's Lorraine Trio featuring trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, accordionist/vocalist Adam Matlock, and Anthony Braxton and four studio recordings featuring Braxton, saxophonist James Fei, and bassists Zach Rowden and Carl Testa.

Edition of 900 copies issued with a printed inner sleeve for Record Store Day. The runouts are laser-etched.All tracks previously unreleased.

Religion, Revolution & Railways is a forthcoming archival 7CD box set featuring ‘The Complete Recordings’ of The Dream Academy.The Dream Academy were a British band that featured singer/guitarist and songwriter Nick Laird-Clowes, multi-instrumentalist Kate St. John, and keyboardist/songwriter Gilbert Gabriel. In I985 the group achieved worldwide success following the release of their first single ‘Life In A Northern Town’ which saw their subsequent debut album going into the American Top 20.

The Residents are an American art collective best known for their over 60 studio albums that were recorded over a period of over forty years. They also created some outstanding multimedia works, mainly three CD ROM projects and ten DVDs. Working as an anonymous collective, their identitites were kept secret until in 2017 Hardy Fox revealed himself as their primary composer. Hardy died in October 2018, but the group continue to record and perform. Sam's Enchanted Evening is a theatrical performance by Randy Rose, lead singer of The Residents. It was performed between October 2011 and March 2012 in Berkeley, California and New York City. Rose's only companion on stage was long-time Residents collaborator Joshua Raoul Brody on piano. A one-man cabaret performance consisting largely of re-interpreted renditions of popular songs from the mid-to-late 20th century, interpreted by Rose in the guise of Sam the Stranger, it was the first Residents-related performance piece to be credited to an individual member of the group.

The 1973 album was her fourth solo release – another collaboration with John Cale – and was recorded in 1973 in London. Cale chose Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music to work on the album with him; between them they provided the entire instrumental framework for Nico and her harmonium.This issue of The End is remastered here for the first time, and comes with a bonus disc of tracks including The End and a previously unreleased version of Das Lied der Deutschen performed live at London’s Rainbow Theatre on June 1, 1974, and some John Peel session tracks which are either unreleased or new to CD.

Desertshore is Nico's third solo album, recorded and released in 1970. It was co-produced by John Cale and Joe Boyd. Like its predecessor The Marble Index (HE 68005LP, 2023), it is an avant-garde album with chamber music elements. The back and front covers feature stills from the film La cicatrice interieure by Philippe Garrel, which starred Nico, Garrel and her son Ari Boulogne. A few of the songs from the album were included on the soundtrack of the film.

Nico's second solo album, 1968's 'The Marble Index', has long been out of print. This reissue includes audio mastered from the original tapes and previously unreleased photos of Nico by Guy Webster. Nico's haunting vocals predicted the Gothic movement and co-producer and Velvet Underground's band mate John Cale's startingly modern classical production ensured 'The Marble Index's timeless appeal. The iconic music journalist Lester Bangs wrote, “The Marble Index is the greatest piece of 'avant-garde classical', 'serious' music of the last half of the 20th century so far,” and the New Yorker recently hailed both records as “austere miracles of will and invention.”

Snakefinger surely needs not much of an introduction. Born Philip Charles Lithman in London, he moved to San Francisco in 1971. His roots lie in the British blues scene, but he soon became friends with The Residents who also gave him the name Snakefinger based on a photograph of Lithman performing, in which his finger looks like a snake about to attack his violin. In 1972 Lithman returned to England and formed the pub rock band Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers. After the lack of success of the second album, he returned to the states and work on his first solo album began. "Chewing Hides The Sound" came out in 1979 on Ralph Records. It includes classics such as his Kraftwerk cover "The Model", "What Wilbur?" and "Picnic In The Jungle". The songs on the album were co-written with The Residents. The music showcased Lithman's distinctive slide guitar playing and often surreal imagery. At the same time, a string of singles was released. All tracks that were exclusive to these releases are added as bonus tracks here. Very recently, a so far unknown remix of the whole album was discovered in the Residents' archive. It was made in 1987 in preparation for the Snakey Wake by The Residents and has never been published in any form. Klanggalerie are now proud to present you this lost gem for the first time ever.

ENDE VOM LIED is a genre-spanning collection of punk, post-punk and avant-garde bands from the former East Germany, chronicling the work of free spirits pitted against government restraints and implied genre limitations. The underground scene in the GDR was a hydra, a noisy mix of musicians, poets, pain¬ters, photographers, filmmakers, punks and freaks. In the immediate aftermath of the primal scream that was punk, music often bred with poetry or painting in short-lived liaisons or enduring collaborations to produce a new generation of genre bastards. With the lines blurring between forms, a search for new shapes began. In the German Democratic Republic, this search constituted a tightrope walk, a dance for expression between subculture and a dictatorship.

Big tip! Lunching into 2024 after after a stellar 2023, Week-End Records delivers one of their most important offerings to date, the first vinyl reissue of Fred Frith’s seminal 1974 solo debut, “Guitar Solos”, in more than 40 years, marking the album’s 50th anniversary. A groundbreaking work in the field of avant-garde recordings that changed everything in its wake, incorporating a startling range of sonorities and approaches within constrained means, to celebrate its half-century mark, Frith has returned to its groundwork and recorded a brand new solo effort, “Fifty”, which now makes up an entire second LP of material for this very special release. Truly incredible and as historically important as records and reissues come.

“Culled from three 1985 gigs in the UK during a transitional and transcendent time in the band’s story, Sonic Youth’s The Walls Have Ears appeared / disappeared as a 2LP set in 1986, not just a live album but an artful tapestry full of live experimentation with songs, between-song tape segues, darkness, humor and audio verité. It’s now issued for the first time officially under the band’s auspices.

Seven songs performed live and naked by these slightly off-kilter Texan envelope pushers. Remember: before Pepper, there was an entire decade that the band probably doesn't even recall, but damn, was it good for the rest of us! Recorded at the Meridean in San Antonio, TX in 1984. Now remastered under supervision from the group.

More than 20 years after Captain Beefheart's last musical outing, the Magic Band (sans the Captain) reconvened for the 2003 All Tomorrow's Parties festival. Actually, it's a Magic Band that never was, consisting of Drumbo (John French) on drums, vocals, and harmonica; Rockette Morton (Mark Boston) on bass; and guitarists Mantis and Feelers Reebo (Gary Lucas and Denny Walley, respectively). (For the live shows, Robert Williams – another Magic Band alumnus – took over the drum chair when Drumbo had to sing and play harp.) Of course, these guys knew the material, but they don't just play the tunes, they attack them, summoning up the controlled chaos that made the original Captain Beefheart recordings such singular achievements.

In the final quarter of 1975 and early 1976, Frank Zappa and his entourage were as busy touring as ever. Playing largely in US locations during 1975’s closing month (but including one strange stop in what was then still Yugoslavia, in November), the final show of ’75 was played on New Year’s Eve in Inglewood, California. By January 20, 1976, the band were in Sydney Australia to begin their Pacific and European tour of the year, playing six dates in the country. From there, they moved to Japan, where they performed four further shows. Playing in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, the Osaka concert remains the very finest of the Japanese shows, recorded as it was for live FM radio broadcast and still a fan favourite to this day. This new 2CD set now features for the first time the entire gig Frank Zappa and his band played at Osaka’s Kosei Nenkin Kaikan on 3rd February, 1976.