The Soft Machine - Volume One

Yes, I'm back. My hard drive is fully recovered and I'm going to continue dishing out the wilde flowers related albums, hopefully one right after another for everyone to consume. Now whether or not anyone is going to notice my absence or my return, that is yet to be determined. But enjoy this, great tunes!

AMG Album Review:

A wild, freewheeling, and ultimately successful attempt to merge psychedelia with jazz-rock, Soft Machine's debut ranges between lovingly performed oblique pop songs and deranged ensemble playing from drummer/vocalist Robert Wyatt and organist Mike Ratledge. With only one real break (at the end of side one), the songs merge into each other — not always smoothly, but always with a sense of flair that rescues any potential miscues. Wyatt takes most of the vocals, and proves himself a surprisingly evocative singer despite his lack of range. Like Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Volume One was one of the few over-ambitious records of the psychedelic era that actually delivered on all its incredible promise.

Link: http://rapidshare.com/files/43371004/1968_-_The_Soft_Machine__Volume_One_.rar.html

Hope?

OK, here's how it goes:

Hard drive - completely fuckt. Bad controllers on the drive itself.

MP3s/Info - 99.9% safe thanks to a friend of mine.

I'm going to have to purchase a new hard drive in order to get the information back, but give me a week and I'll be back up.

Peazz

Update, Hard drive is dead for time being

I apologize, but I will be unable to make any posts from now until ?, as my hard drive has decided to hate me and fuck up. I don't know if this is a repairable situation or what the deal is. I just know that my 100gb of MP3s are fucking gone and I'm really lonely without them. I'll update this post as soon as any news has happened (going to do experimenting when I get off work).

I apologize once again, and please wish me luck in getting it back up and running.

The Wilde Flowers - Tales of Canterbury

Just so everyone is informed, I have decided to make the rest of the month dedicated to The Wilde Flowers and all things that spawned from them. The following month will hopefully capture how this band started the famous "Canterbury scene" in the late 60's and how they seperated into two of the most amazing and significant (IMO) bands of all time: The Soft Machine and Caravan; not to mention significant solo efforts, collaborations, live recordings, and various means in which makes this music so significant. To kick this off I present to you a collection of Wilde Flowers recordings with songs written by Brian Hopper, Hugh Hopper, Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt, Booker White, and a cover of "Almost Grown" by Chuck Berry. Enjoy!

AMG Bio: The Wilde Flowers never released a record during their existence, but their influence exceeds that of many groups with lengthy discographies. The band served as the wellspring of the so-called Canterbury sound: future Soft Machine members Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, and Hugh Hopper all played with the Wilde Flowers before the Soft Machine were founded, and Pye Hastings, David Sinclair, Richard Sinclair, and Richard Coughlan played in the group at various points before forming Caravan. The musicians who wandered through the Wilde Flowers (who went through several lineups between 1963 and 1969) came from a far more intellectual, artistic, and jazz-oriented background than was the norm for pop musicians in the mid-'60s. Thus, although the group played beat fare much like thousands of other British combos in their formative days, when they began to write their own material, it betrayed the bemused whimsy -- replete with odd jazzy flourishes, droll obtuse lyrics, and adventurous chord changes -- that would come to characterize the Canterbury bands, and prove influential on the development of psychedelia and progressive rock. At long last, a wealth of the Wilde Flowers' demos and unreleased recordings was released in 1994.

http://rapidshare.com/files/37285481/The_Wilde_Flowers_-Tales_of_Canterbury.rar.html

Woods - Ram 7"

I caught this band live in Lexington of last year, opening for those buck wild hooligans that are Raccoo-oo-oon. This two piece is comprised of Jeremy Earl and Christian DeRoeck, half of the bitchin' rock force that is Meneguar. Jeremy also runs both the Fuck It Tapes and Woodsist labels, releasing limited runs of lo-fi records and cassettes that are on a cosmic scale of 10. Their show was absolutely stunning and after chatting with Christian for a second after it, I had to purchase this beautiful little vinyl (pressed white). Stunning acoustic rhythms and vocal melodies that sounds like two guys recording a unique style of lo-fi folk, in a cabin, in the woods. Hope you all dig this as much as me.

Vinyl Rip from Yoshimura @ 320

http://rapidshare.com/files/35679042/Woods_-_Ram__single_.rar.html

Relatively Clean Rivers - Self Titled

I was introduced to this record after getting into one of Phil Pearlman's other bands, Beat of the Earth, and the great record label, Radioactive Records. Absolutely brilliant west coast rock, with a slick mid 70's Neil Young like production. This should be a great album for everyone to dig this summer. Love!

First ever reissue. Former "Beat Of The Earth" leader Phil Pearlman assembled Relatively Clean Rivers in the early '70s and eventually recorded this excellent rural rock album in 1975. Although it should be easy to pigeonhole the sound of Relatively Clean Rivers, it is actually anything but. At times sounding like The Grateful Dead in all their American Beauty pomp, or CSNY circa Déjà Vu, this tight, richly talented ensemble produces an album of almost majestic quality. The sound is superb, and clearly no time or expense were spared to produce an album which is probably the most flawless snapshot of Californian '70s under ground music that you will ever here. Originally there were 2 pressings of this unique album, each of only 500 copies each, and this is the first time that this, or any of Pearlman's other recordings has been reissued. An album highly recommended to anyone even remotely interested in '70s West Coast music or simply top-notch music in general.(Forced-Exposure)

http://rapidshare.com/files/31187933/Relatively_Clean_Rivers_-_Relatively_Clean_Rivers.rar.html

First Post: Cluster Live 77-80

I found this odd little rarity while surfing through some forums. Not a lot of information is available about this release on the internet, however it is 3 different live performances by the legenedary 'krautrock' group Cluster and guests. The first piece is a 30 minute ambient improv by Cluster and Eno, while the 2nd and 3rd tracks on the disc are from the Cluster and Joshi Farnbauer Vienna show in 1980. This is some great electronic music, especially for the time period and I highly recommend everyone to check it out. Not the MOST ACCESSIBLE first post, but hey, fuck you guys, it's my blog!

AMG Bio: The most important and consistently underrated space-rock unit of the '70s, Cluster (originally Kluster) was formed by Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler as an improv group that used everything from synthesizers to alarm clocks and kitchen utensils in their performaces. Continuing on as a duo, Moebius and Roedelius eventually recorded many landmark LPs — separately, as a duo, and with all manner of guest artists from Brian Eno to Conny Plank to Neu!'s Michael Rother — in the field of German space music often termed kosmische. Cluster also continued to explore ambient music into the '90s, long after their contemporaries had drifted into tamer new age music or ceased recording altogether.

http://rapidshare.com/files/30294349/Clus-Live77-80.zip.html