Dreamy percussion exotica by a group of fourteen-year-old students (ten girls, including Evelyn Glennie, and one boy) in Aberdeen, 1978.

Jarvis Cocker’s thrilled to bits — ‘Here, at last, is the the soundtrack to maybe THE underground film of all time in all its crazy daisy glory’. A mental cut & paste of Czech orchestras, folk, jazz and experimental sounds.

Intensely sought-after, highly-considered, late-60s psych rock — homespun, funky, introspective — privately pressed in the dark, hazy twilight of flower power. Plus D’s back pages, expertly restored.

‘Experimental jazz, chanson, bluesy folk and various strains of outsider music permeate a rich layering of music boxes, walkie-talkies and plastic straws, plucked charrango and banjo, kazoos, flutes and snake-charming ocarina, accordion and melodica, found percussion and traditional tuned drums. The moods switch from child-like and epiphanic (Tarzan en Tasmanie, Madrigal for Lola) to babbling (Pocarina), mysterious and dark (Septième Ciel, Rugit Le Coeur) to tender and simple (Rainbow de Nuit, Chevalier Gambette); from murky, suspenseful melancholy (Levy Attend, Eno Ennio) to pensive psychedelia (Un Cercueil à Deux Places). A world of echoes. A tale of tales. You’ll be whistling and humming along on first listen.’

Old records of solo dulcimer, fairground mechanical pianos and music boxes, re-rendered via a slowed-down, pitch-modified turntable, with tape delay, EQ-fiddling and distortion.
Strange, atmospheric, poignant, folky dokey. Well worth checking.

Wow!

‘The BBC’s Third Programme aired four radio broadcasts between January 1964 and September 1965, collectively known as Inventions for Radio. Conceived by playwright Barry Bermange they consisted of the voices of the general public answering questions on four themes, one for each programme: dreams, the existence of God, life after death, and ageing. The Dreams, Amor Dei, The After-Life, The Evenings of Certain Lives. Delia Derbyshire was assigned by the Radiophonic Workshop to edit and add electronic music/ effects. The collaborative result is dreamlike and mesmerizing.’

Including one LP for each broadcast, and two further LPs of additional material, together with a twenty-page booklet, housed in a lidded box.

‘Recorded in an old church in the village of Mauzun in the Puy-de-Dôme, L’invisible est multiforme is an invitation to let these abstract songs erase our obsessive thoughts of the day, to open ourselves to the vibrant poetry of the air and the evening, to finally forget ourselves. Each note played by these four intertwined hands is like a slight break in the fabric of time, sliding one over the other, reminding us of mortality and its beauty. Ritornellas flow out of mechanical clocks, fragile, taking care not to hurt the silence. Both seek to dig and open up new paths to enrich their duet, to open up imaginary landscapes. Sometimes the guitar cuts. through the fabric of an organ, fractures the song, just as the rain erases a landscape, redrawing it. But very quickly, both of them continue to follow this new path, improvising what will serve as a framework, a perspective, a language. There is a kind of praise for slowness in this ‘invisible’, a desire to hold back the song, not to let it slip away, to let the listener’s ear enter its course, to share the last note, its illumination. Each of these thirteen short sound pieces merge into a common colour, a vibration close to the different tonalities, which inter-penetrate, like a cubist painting. Words cannot take away the mystery of this record, words can only fail to describe the music, you must hear it’ (Michel Henritzi).
Beautifully presented, with numerous photographic inserts.

‘The Complete Liberty And Imperial Singles, Volume 2.’