Hello ladies and germs - posting a little early this week. Some good stuff, I hope everybody finds something! As always, comments appreciated.

Ashra - The Making Of

This is so good that I wanted to buy it, because I only have it @ 192 with a smallish front cover - then I found it was out of print and the only copy I could find was 85 USD! Well, then I figured that 192 is good enough! This is a 3 disc set of material recorded live in the studio during the sessions for Ashra's "Correlations" album in 1978. The tracks, though, sound nothing like the songs on that album. This isn't the slick Ashra, this stuff sounds more like the old Ash Ra Tempel. This is three discs worth of 3 guys putting it out there like maniacs. The first track, "Paradise Express", is 46 minutes long! Man they musta been beat after that, especially the drummer. A real treat for all fans of 70's synth/guitar. A big download, almost 300 megs, but well worth it!!

Manuel Göttsching - guitar, synthesizer, sequencer
Lutz Ulbrich - guitar, synthesizer, piano, mellotron
Harald Grosskopf - drums, percussion, synthesizer

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Demon Thor - Written In The Sky (1973)

Demon Thor was an Anglo/Swiss outfit, with Geoff Harrison from Twenty Sixty Six & Then doing the male vocals. I've never heard their other release but on this album anyway they seem to have a split personality. The title track, one half of the original album, is an all-out, heavy, keyboard-based prog workout. The rest of the album is also very tasty, but it is more in the mainstream, being blues-based and with R & B leanings, especially on the vocals. Very good though, nonetheless! My rip @ highVBR.

Download

Indigo - A Collection Of Tales...From Past To Present

This Indigo is a different band than the one I posted a month or so ago. This is keyboard player and songwriter Gerald Krampl, formerly of the great Austrian progressive rock group Kyrie Eleison. A compilation of material released and not released from 1983 to 1992, mainly fantasy-type stories, sung in English with a definite German accent. This will go down well with fans of progressive rock groups like Genesis, Yes, Marillion, etc. And Kyrie Eleison of course!

Part 1 Part 2

If - If3 (1971)

Third album from this huge British jazz-rock outfit. I mean huge in that there were a lot of members - seven on this album! They were kinda popular in Europe but despite repeated touring in the US, they never made much of an impact here. This is great improv oriented, jazzy, laid back stuff, very appealing, still sounding very fresh 30-something years later. They should have been much more popular than they were, but that's show biz I guess.

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Bedemon - Invocation To Doom

This is a bootleg, a lot of the material was released legitimately later on "Child Of Darkness". These are tracks randomly recorded between 1972 and 1975. I'm not sure if Bedemon was an actual working band or not, but it was a probably changing group of players recording the songs of Randy Palmer, from a Maryland band called Pentagram. The front cover will give you a clue of what we're up against here! This is some heavy, heavy stuff, dealing with Death, Drugs, Satanism, etc. Amazingly strong guitar playing and songwriting from Mr. Palmer. If you like early Black Sabbath, you will probably wet your pants when you hear this!

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Yatha Sidhra - A Meditation Mass (1973)

Ok now we need to calm down a little, and this is the perfect album to do it with. German band Yatha Sidhra had only this one album, and it's very very relaxing. Like the title says, it's basically a 40 minute long meditation, using moog, keyboards, guitar, flute, vibes, and of course bass and drums. Ethnic, jazzy, pure cosmic Krautrock, almost magical! Two of the players, brothers Fichter, went on to have a band called Dreamworld - if anybody has that to upload that would be terrific, I'd love to hear it.

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Missus Beastly - Nara Asst Incense (1970)

The story of Missus Beastly is mighty confusing. There might have even been two bands using the name. This is supposedly the same as their first, self-titled album - it was bootlegged by a former manager and released with a different cover and track order. Or something. Whatever, this is early underground German rock at it's best with some crazed guitar, wild organ, lots of flute - sometimes jazzy, sometimes bluesy but jammy and psychedelic as hell! Some members were also in Xhol and Embryo, and the sound is like a maybe more psychedelic Out of Focus. A must-hear for anyone interested in Krautrock.

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One - Come (1972)

Not to be confused with the British band One, this here is a bunch of hippies from Marin County, California. Originally released on the Jefferson Airplane's Grunt label, there is not much information on them, they don't seem to have played much at the San Francisco venues of the time. Anyway, this is some sweet, gentle hippie music, blending jazz, Eastern, and renaissance music.

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Right, then - see ya!