Masters Of The Airwaves - Masters Of The Airwaves (1974)

Never having had an official CD reissue, this is an album I have been on the lookout for ever since I got my first internet connection. Well last month I found it ... twice! I found a low bitrate vinyl rip on a p2p program, then when looking for info on the band (hardly any!) I found a professional vinyl to CD-R transfer available for purchase. This is it. Anyway, very little info on this band that seems to have been from Northern California, USA. A great album of 70's melodic rock, good songs, well played and produced. What makes this band a little different is a homemade guitar played by Jimmy Berick. Different websites say this was a 12, 14, and even 28 string double-necked (pedal steel) guitar. Whatever it was, it lends the already good original material an exotic, soaring, majestic feel. You know how sometimes when you look for something for a long time and when you finally get it you wish you hadn't, because it's not really as good as you remember? Well that didn't happen to me here - this thing is pretty damn good.

High VBR w/artwork Download

Brainstorm - Last Smile (1974)

This was the last album from an excellent German jazz-rock group fronted by Roland Schaeffer, who would go on to be a mainstay of Guru Guru. An excellent live recording of complex, inventive jazz-rock, sounding somewhat like a Canterbury band ... that had Frank Zappa for a leader!

Bitrate 192 w/artwork Download

Faust - Faust (1971)

First album from Faust, another German band that seems to have taken inspiration from Zappa's Mothers Of Invention! One of the first German groups to use the recording equipment itself as an instrument, this is full of studio wizardry, eerie sound collages, tape edits, unusual songs/not-songs. Highlight is 16 minute "Miss Fortune" which was taken from a live performance that must have left the audience bewildered.

Bitrate 256 w/artwork Download

The Chambers Brothers - Love, Peace And Happiness (1969)

The Chambers Brothers were early purveyors of "psychedelic soul", but this double album was kind of schizo - the only psych is the side-long title track which is a full on psychedelic epic. The rest of the album is conventional gospelly R & B, done very well.

Bitrate 256 w/artwork Part 1 Part 2

Joy Unlimited - Schmetterlinge (1971)

German band Joy Unlimited's first release was supposedly an album of blues covers, and after hearing vocalist Joy Fleming sing, that would seem to be a natural. This second album, though, is a step in the progressive, or at least not-blues-based, direction. A complex concept album, this is supposed to have been a suite of some kind I guess. What sounds like a huge ensemble puts out a versatile and ambitious album, ranging from raunchy blues to psychedelic rock to free jazz.

Bitrate 320 w/artwork Part 1 Part 2

Van Der Graaf Generator - H To He, Who Am The Only One (1970)

VDGG's third album, and some reviewers say this is their first 'mature' release. Alternately doomy and melodic, experimental and