'Circle X new release ! An unreleased live by this legendary cult no-wave NY band after the group disbanded in 1995. In around fifteen years exitence since their formation in 1978, the history of Circle X can be divided in two parts and for each, with few but always powerful releases : the late 70s-early 80s with two singles + one vinyl LP, and for the second one : four singles, one CD and one miniCD for the early until mid-90s. Today, its a great delight to see the first official Circle X live album. And what a document ! The Circle X 'Historical concert at the University of Dijon, the first gig in France at their debut in 1979 when the group was established in that city. The performance of the band that night was short but truly outstanding... A very, very, high tension... Not need to say more !!! The players were : Dave Letendre on drum, Rik Letendre on guitar, Tony Pinotti on vocal and Bruce Witsiepe on guitar. The present 10inch vinyl edition includes also 3 unreleased bonus tracks with the first studio version of Beyond Standard (1979) and two other studio tracks from the last period (1994), plus insert with liner notes by Rik Letendre and some rare photos. The sound quality isn't perfect but good enough for make this object acceptable and valid. In fact, you have here, 30 years later... the real first Circle X record like it had to be released at that time !! Well, call it like you want... but its already and obviously ! a fantastic and an essential release. No excuse for all who will be late this time !'

'There were bands like Can in Germany, Nurse With Wound in UK, The Residents in Usa, and there were Déficit Des Années Antérieures in France. Formed in 1979 by 3 artists from the Beaux-Arts of Caen : Jean-Luc André, Sylvie Martineau-Fée, Jean-Philippe Fée ; DDAA is one of the leader of all the independent, experimental, industrial 80's French scene and also with their highly artistic, peculiar and thoughtful vision which is brilliantly illustrated by their own label Illusion Production (more than 40 references published). This undoubtedly makes DDAA as one of the most outstanding band of the French underground since the last thirty years ! Behind this radical and utopian group are three self-taught musicians of high creativity with a surprising and rich discography, around thirty titles released under all formats : vinyls LP, singles, 10 inch, tapes, cds and many compilations (some deleted titles are still very collectable today). From a post-punk-avant-garde-surrealistic music made by improvisations and collages, DDAA created an odd and captivating world, somehow naive but truly emotional. Eternal travellers from the imaginary (into space and time), after they ventured in Africa (1980), in the Maracayace land (2000), in the Russia of the Tsars from the 19th century ('Les Ambulants' 1984) or even with the French poets from the 16th century (Ronsard 1988), DDAA goes to Japan with 'Action and Japanese Demonstration' in 1982. And they will be well inspired by the land of the rising sun, so it's no surprise to see them, the next year, on the 'Paris-Tokyo' compilation and also in the Pascal Comelade album 'Detail Monochrome' (1984) on the track 'Pluie Japonaise'. First full-length vinyl album (Illusion Production Ð IP010) and a cornerstone in their history, 'Action and Japanese Demonstration' is considered by many fans as one of the best DDAA's works to date. A fascinating album ! 10 actions and poetic demonstrations like japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e), refined and entrancing atmospheres, drew and played by the 3 dadaïsts with synths, vocals, chorus, crazy guitars, percussions, rhythms box, flutes and noises + Bernard C and Marcel Kanche on sax. For a long time unavailable, this album is finally reissued on cd for the first time with 2 unreleased tracks from the same recording session + 18 minutes bonus 'Musique et Bruits du Bas Pa-Tât', a collection of 7 rare tracks from 1985 originally released on tape for the very limited Jean-Luc André's comic strip titled 'Mutants du Kwantung'.This is a dark ethnic report which brings you in the primitive southern China before Jesus-Christ. This cd reissue is an exact reproduction of the vinyl LP, and is packaged like the original in an heavy card sleeve hand fold + 16 pages color booklet with all inserts, texts and unreleased pictures (DDAA live in 1979!). Remixed and remastered from the master tapes, this gem is now available again after more than 25 years. 'Action and Japanese Demonstration' is a pure delight, a kind of improbable meeting between the famous artist Jospeh Beuys and the master of the ceremony Sen No Rikyu. Splendid!' Fractal Records

'Yea, the Japanese Underground Punk Blues Band continue more deeper his own psychedelic experience ! Diza Star 5th album is the last branch of the star after 4 titles released on Fractal Records. This toxic parfume is a direct wink to the 60's rebel spirit like The Godz, Amon Düül and Les Rallizes Dénudés. A unique example in this new century of a broken music in a perpetual movement...'

2007. New studio Ilitch 5th album, after “Periodikmindtrouble” (1978), “10 Suicides” (1980), “Hors Temps / Out of Time” (2004), “Rainy House” (1978-2005). In fact, “Lena’s life & other stories” can be really see as the suite album to “10 Suicides”. It’s beautifully composed in short tracks, as an electronica-screaming-melodies-trip full of guitar : indeed this album shows Thierry Muller returning to his first instrument ! And “Lena’s life & other stories” is absolutely the ultimate "spirit-Ilitch-sound" album which includes some of Thierry Muller’s best song ! With the collaboration of Nicholas Littlemore (Teenager, Pnau,…) and featuring Mami Chan, Patrick Müller, Roco, Laurent Saïet, Franckie del Tango.

2004. “It has been 24 years since Ilitch’s previous solo album. Following the critical acclaim of Fractal’s reissue of his two solo LPs (and his 1985 project Ruth), Thierry Müller (Ilitch’s mastermind) went back to work and, five years later, gave birth to "Hors Temps-Out of Time", a satisfying – if slightly outstretched – slab of electropop truly out of time. Ilitch tackles modern technology with talent, but his music still relies on elements taken from the heydays of Krautrock and Cold Wave, along with a special something that recalls The Legendary Pink Dots or Nurse With Wound. Electronics hold a key place in the arrangements, but Ilitch also put electric guitar, drums and samples to good use, creating stimulating sound environments that don’t get in the way of his simple intellectual songs. His main collaborators are percussionist Hervé Zénouda, guitarist Laurent Saïet and keyboardist Guillaume Loizillon music-wise, engineer Patrick Müller recording-wise, and poet Phillipe Doray lyrics-wise. "Hors Temps-Out of Time" is a sharp, relevant, bold, and downright good opus.”

Knead second album. Power group formed by Haino Keiji and The Ruins. Haino Keiji: guitar, vocal. Yoshida Tatsuya: drums. Sasaki Hisashi: bass. Live at Showboat, Tokyo, August 10th, 2001.

'A host of independent labels sprang up in France during the pivotal period of the 60s and 70s in the course of the cultural and musical revolution then unfolding; labels like the legendary Saravah, BYG, Futura, but also Shandar, a cult label par excellence set up in 1971 by gallery owner Chantal Darcy in collaboration with the journalist Daniel Caux (1945-2008) as artistic director. Just a glimpse at the Shandar catalogue makes one's head spin, as all of its productions have become key musical references and much-sought-after collector's items. The quality of the label's artists is quite exceptional, as this list clearly shows: Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Steve Reich, Pandit Pran Nath, Sunny Murray, Dashiell Hedayat, François Tusques, Cecil Taylor, Terry Riley, La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela, Philip Glass, Vincent Le Masne & Bertrand Porquet, Charlemagne Palestine, Ragnar Grippe, Abed Azrié, and Richard Horowitz. In 1976, Shandar released an album by the Guitares Dérive duo, founded in Paris in1974 by Vincent Le Masne and Bertrand Porquet co-composers and interpreters of their own original music on two classical guitars. It's a music that is written, structured and highly evocative thanks partly to its somewhat dreamy name, 'Guitares Dérive' ! The album, recorded live in the studio, is particularly original. It has a certain affinity with the American minimalist trend (whose artists are to be found on Shandar), yet its register is quite different by virtue of its writing, which avoids all systematisation in the repetition of musical phrases, but on the contrary, constantly evolves. Via its unique style, this fluid and pure sounding music slowly and comfortably bathes its listener in a kind of intoxicating quietude, without lapsing into sentimentality, as the work is underpinned by remarkable technical virtuosity throughout these three lengthy compositions. For this reissue, the Guitares Dérive duo's album was remastered by Vincent Le Masne himself along with Alexis Frenkel (Art et Son Studio, Paris). It also contains a previously unreleased bonus track from the same period. This new release is highly recommended to all fans of jazz, repetitive music, avant-garde music, flamenco, classical and contemporary music, but also to all guitar aficionados and especially to admirers of John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Bola Sete, Sandy Bull and Jack Rose. Over thirty years later, the rare Guitares Dérive album -never before reissued- has at last resurfaced. It is now available for the first time on CD, in a Digipack edition, complete with its original sleeve.' label info

'Brand new and third album by the 70's french underground free-rock cult band Mahogany Brain. Some cocktail suggestions (March 2005) is the logical and inevitable prolongation of the first two albums, With (Junk-Saucepan) when (spoon-trigger) (December 1970 - released in 1971) and Smooth sick lights (June 1972 - released in 1977), all in all the third shutter of a trilogy and which could be entitled: 'Mahogany Brain or how to play Russian roulette in the artificial paradises'. 35 years for an unexplainable trilogy ! However, if one symbolically looks at the first album on Futura as 'the injection of drugs' (the true original record cover was a photograph showing an arm with a syringe and following the stop to publish the famous stereotype for reason of censure of the time, the group chooses an entirely black cover as a mourning). The second on Pôle (with the title wink in 'Sister Ray') would be rather 'the action' as it the track headlight suggests which opens the album 'Green winter of revolvers' which is the soundtrack of the crazy short film of Michel Bulteau 'Main Line' or one sees the group in action of drugs injection, each one taken the camera and determined to film their dead if...! As for the last, the image would be 'the diffusion in the body and its effects' and it could have been the ideal soundtrack for the film 'Towers Open Fire' of Antony Balch. Mahogany Brain with always developed a music radical, unforeseeable, hard, voluntarily unfinished, and with this new album, they continue the adventure even further: decomposition of the music, recomposition of the juxtaposed voices, artistic blur, collages, mad guitars, all very amalgamates in a magma broken rock'n'roll. The harmony in the density of Some cocktail suggestions with this single and inimitable sound suitable for Mahogany Brain and with their bit of naivety and innocence touches here with quintessence to know to them to make. Then, all comes at the right moment to that which can wait ! Which strange destiny Mahogany Brain was created during the summer 1970, and was composed by two central personalities, the alter ego Michel Bulteau (leader and founder of the group) and Patrick Geoffrois (the man without whom Mahogany Brain could never have existed). Writer, film maker, Bulteau also carried out 5 albums in solo (whose 'Rinçures' on Fractal in 1999) it is the last of the electric poets and its meeting with Geoffrois was also electric Bulteau created a rock band but it is Geoffrois which created the dynamics of the group. Geoffrois was a sharp sectional view, and he recall a little the revolted and destroying spirit of a certain Peter Laughner (Rocket From The Tombs), he will join later the group of James Chance & the Contorsions in New York at the end of the Seventies or he will sow the discord besides ! Michel Bulteau superbly tells the incredible history of Patrick Geoffrois in his book homage 'Un héros de New York' (Editions de La Différence : www.ladifference.fr))Two complementary strong energies and spontaneousness, the process was engaged. Mahogany Brain is an atypical group in the Parisian underground, they play with their tripe and as with their veins, it is an experience out of the limit, not-conventional, with only one concert in all their history, and probably the most subversive formation as there was to see in France ! Some cocktail suggestions is incontestably matter dangerous to taste with great whiskeys.'

rare UK album from 1981. Musique Concret were an obscur London duo composed by Jim Friedman & Michael Mullen with a short lived musical history : their sole album 'Bringing up baby' was originally released on Steven Stapleton's label United Dairies and there is also one short track on compilation. This is a great experimental power electronics works with the use of many delay and echo, tape recorder manipulations, collages, rhythms box, noise, and others studio trickery, naturally close to Nurse With Wound first period, Faust or others german 70's innovative bands. Completely forgotten nowadays, 'Bringing up baby' is really much more than just an interesting curiosity, it's a true highly original recordings from the early 80's. A lost jewel !

'First album under his own name. This compilation is the best works of Thierry Müller during his first 10 years 1974-1984 ! Titled clearly, all tracks presented are rares and almost all are published here for the first time and came from the all 5 differents formations of TM's early days: Arcane (Never released before Ð 1974 TM's first band, dark underground madness), Ilitch (Unreleased live recordings 1975), Breaking point (Never released before Ð 1978 genius-synthi-pop), Ruth (1978 rare tracks, trash punk romantic) and Crash (1984 with Philippe Doray Ð Warning: the track 'Pile ou Face' is possible to be the best electro-pop song writing in all France in the 80's, absolute chef-d'œuvre). Selected carefully from all TM's archives, this music will be without a doubt, the holy grail for all Ilitch's and Ruth's fanatics. Full of creativity, imagination and energy, this album is definitely the level higher. All tracks here are french underground masterpiece! Cd edition, booklet 20 pages with many unreleased pictures and liner notes.'

A work of contemporary music performed in the rock idiom by Japanese underground rock legend, Asahito Nanjo. Nanjo is active in a wide variety of rock groups, but Group Musica exits in order to pursue a more universal musical vibration. Group Musica is an ensemble that pursues the free use of every type of Western and Eastern musical instrument, is propelled by the vibrations of very subtle rhythms, and that has internalized the methodology of minimalism. The concept behind this album is transform KAGURA, an ancient form of Japanese music and dance that was performed for the gods, and is to convert the ideas of 'Secret teachings' and ancient Chinese methods of divination (the I-Ching) into a metaphysics of musical vibrations. The concept of KAGURA allows Group Musica to create a unique work that is an experimental symphonic composition, which nonetheless has many rich improvisatory elements. In this unique work, the symbolic
philosophical nature of ancient esotericism is incorporated as improvisation, while the I-Ching is related to avant-garde symphonics. These are then fused into a total concept. Many different musicians from various genres participate in Group Musica, but their contributions are filtered through Nanjo's musical sense and thus altered, fused and structured. It is for this reason that remain anonymous - Group Musica exists as a total entity. Recorded in 1993 & 1994, this album is a colossal long studio works which has necessitated more than 400 overdubbings. An extraordinary adventure in sounds and the most astonishing musical project by High Rise's leader !

This album is a collection of early works from the late 60's by the French electro-acoustic composer Bernard Parmegiani. Born in Paris (1927) and rich of a 'catalogue des oeuvres' of more than 60 pieces, including classics such as 'Violistries' 1965, 'La Roue Ferris' 1971, 'Pour en finir avec le pouvoir d'Orphée' 1971/72, 'De Natura Sonorum' 1974/75, the 4 pieces presented in this edition is a perfect exemple for discovering the unusual territories and the eclectism language of the composer : 'JazzEx' for electronic tape and Jazz Quartet (Jean-Louis Chautemps: saxophone, Bernard Vitet : trumpet, Charles Saudrais : drums, Gilbert Rovère : bass) create at the Festival de Royan in 1966. 'Pop Eclectic' 1969, is an electro-acoustic divertimento composed for the Peter Foldés movie. 'Du pop à l'âne' 1969, is a collage plunderphonics work. And 'Et après' 1973, is an electronic tango featuring Michel Portal on bandoneon. The present version is unreleased and was recorded live at the Festival Manca in 1996. Liner notes by Jean-Louis Chautemps. Essential stuff !

'French musician Bernard Parmegiani has composed 'Chants magnétiques' in 1974, one of the most sough after Bernard Parmegiani's album - a monster rarity which is almost impossible to find. This obscure album was composed around the same time as 'De natura sonorum' during the mid-seventies, a particularly important and effervescent era for Bernard Parmegiani. Indeed, as if one can say that 'De natura sonorum' is one of the best Parmegiani's 'serious' works in terms of technics-sound-harmonic-tone, then there is no doubt that 'Chants magnétiques' is his chef-d'œuvre on his 'dark side', the 'Parmegiani's hidden face' that few peoples knows nowadays. A collection of 10 united tracks under the title album name 'Chants magnétiques-magnetic fields' - titled before Jean Michel Jarre's album - and musically, in summary, more experimental, more organic, more spacey in compare to his famous INA-GRM works.'

The Japanese underground band Johari was create in 1990 by the magic duo Asahito Nanjo (High Rise) and Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple) and will became later, in 1995, this shamanistic avant-garde formation Toho Sara. 'Hourouurin' is their third opus, after two albums on PSF 'Eastern most' (1995) and 'Mei Jou Tan Sho' (1999) and some live performances in Europe during the years 1996 and 1997. 'Hourouurin' is a weird unit who attempt to achieve a mystic fusion of ethnic music and rock, according to their own unique methodology. They create a strange musical aura where the vibrations of folk instruments from around the world and electronics merge weirdly. These bizarre recordings enbrace musical shamanism on the one hand, and a subversion of western musical concepts into the abyss of rock on the other. Toho Sara is here at their most mystic side. Acid.