Sanctified, southern soul — lost, crying, frank harmonising, and swaying horns and organ — recorded at FAME, Muscle Shoals, in 1964, by cousins Johnny Simon and Ervin Wallace from Atlanta. Lover’s Prayer is a scorcher.
The vinyl is a facsimile of the original LP (on Russell Sims’ Nashville label); the ‘Complete Sims Recordings’ CD from Kent adds ten more sides.

A rare sighting of Eye from The Boredoms, kicking up a rumpus with Japanese noise-rock duo Gagakirise.

Startling, brilliant, minimalist experiments for percussion and electronics. Issued by Ayna as a tiny private pressing in 1972; re-mastered now from EM’s own master-tapes. Daring fun; warmly recommended.

Created in collaboration with Walter Branchi from the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, this soundtrack to Mino Guerrini’s 1968 film is among the most strikingly experimental of all Macchi’s music for cinema. A suspenseful, jet-propelled fresh mix of
psychedelia, jazz, and improv, threaded with beautiful melodies.
The first time out; from the master tapes.

In Anton Chekhov’s last play The Cherry Orchard, written just a few years before these Gramophone Company recordings in Odessa (mostly), the character Gayev hears off-stage ‘our famous Jewish orchestra… four violins, a flute and a double bass.’
In this period, klezmer music was venturing beyond its original role as Jewish wedding and celebratory music. It was proliferating in secular settings; sometimes disreputable, even underground. In the Odessa Stories, Isaac Babel mentions a bar with a house-band of ‘old Jews with dirty beards playing Romanian and Jewish tunes’; and klezmer would have been the soundtrack of the local brothels, pretty much all Jewish-owned. (One track here celebrates a new treatment for syphilis, Preparation 606… even lavishing a trumpet on proceedings.)
Tangy, exuberant, life-affirming music, high and low, mostly for dancing, featuring virtuosi like violinist Jascha Gegner and clarinettist Titunshnayder, presented with excellent notes.