Recorded and released after a two-year stint in Europe, Until marks alto saxophonist Robin Kenyatta's American debut as a leader, after sideman tenures with Sonny Stitt, Bill Dixon, and Archie Shepp. For anyone (of the few) who followed the rather obscure reedman's career, this set - originally released on the Atlantic jazz subsidiary Vortex and produced by Joel Dorn - is indicative of the restless nature of Kenyatta's career on his own records: he was not only interested in, but attempted to play, the entire range of jazz. For starters, there are three different units scattered across the album. The opener, "Until," written by Barry Miles, is a tender, straight-ahead ballad that showcasesKenyatta's alto accompanied by pianist Fred Simmons, bassist Walter Booker, and drummer Horace Arnold…

Already established among the most successful songwriters Britain had ever produced, Graham Gouldman launched his solo career in 1966 after two successive band projects, the Whirlwinds and the Mockingbirds, met nothing but failure.
The Yardbirds, the Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Wayne Fontana, Jeff Beck, Cher, the Shindigs, Jeff Beck, the Shadows, and PJ Proby were among the high-profile acts who recorded Gouldman material.
Gouldman issued this solo album in 1968, featuring his own versions of the hits "For Your Love," "Bus Stop," and "No Milk Today" with eight other original tunes. The album blends pensive, acoustic-guitar driven compositions with light orchestral arrangements. It's a pleasant record, but ultimately does not measure up to the monster hit covers of his tunes…

Tones for Joan's Bones, Chick Corea's first session as a leader, is a blazing, advanced hard bop set from late 1966, with writing that reveals an affinity with McCoy Tyner's seminal hard bop structures from this period. Tenor player Joe Farrell and trumpeter Woody Shaw are ideal for this music. They deliver virtuoso performances that are both visceral and cerebral. Steve Swallow, while later focusing exclusively on electric bass, often with a melodic, impressionistic approach, is pure thunder here. In a blindfold test his acoustic bass could be mistaken for Buster Williams'. Drummer Joe Chambers is all relentless, propulsive energy, but subtle too. Corea is a torrent of harmonic and melodic imagination, couched in unerring rhythm. Anybody with an interest in this vital and exciting period will find this session indispensable.

By 1968, Norwegian jazz singer Karin Krog was already an international star. She had already won her country's most prestigious jazz award, the Buddy, had performed in the U.S. with Claire Fischer and Don Ellis, and had won a Talent Deserving Wider Recognition award in the 1966 Down Beat poll. She had also recorded three albums under her own name by this time. The recording of Joy with then-young lions Arild Andersen on bass, Svein (Jon) Christensen on drums, saxophonist Jan Garbarek, pianist Terje Bjorklund and percussionist Espen Rud signified a change in direction, from her previously straight swing and bop performance method. The set opens provocatively, even shockingly for the time with Annette Peacock's "Mr. Joy," a paean to a personal "toy" driven by Bjorklund's modal piano…

Esoteric Recordings is pleased to announce the release of a new boxed set featuring all of the albums recorded by Eric Burdon & The Animals for the MGM Records label issued between October 1967 and December 1968.
The set features the albums “Wind Of Change” (both stereo and mono versions), “The Twain Shall Meet”, “Everyone Of Us” and “Love Is”, all newly re-mastered from the original master tapes, along with ten bonus tracks drawn from the band’s single releases, including the classic B-sides A Girl Named Sandoz, Ain’t That So and Gratefully Dead, all remastered from recently located original master tapes. Also included is an illustrated booklet with new essay and a replica poster. “When I Was Young: The MGM Recordings” is a fine tribute to the music of Eric Burdon & the Animals…

Live Wire/Blues Power is one of Albert King's definitive albums. Recorded live at the Fillmore Auditorium in 1968, the guitarist is at the top of his form throughout the record - his solos are intense and piercing. The band is fine, but ultimately it's King's show - he makes Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" dirty and funky and wrings out all the emotion from "Blues at Sunrise."

Like several of Hammond's early albums, this 1968 effort would ultimately sound less impressive than it did at the time, simply because the original versions of the ten songs Hammond covered would become much more accessible. The material selected did testify to his good taste, but also stuck to the tried-and-true, including classics like "Dust My Broom," "Crosscut Saw," Sonny Boy Williamson's "Nine Below Zero" and "Don't Start Me Talking," and Howlin' Wolf's "How Many More Years." The title track, a slow Jimmy McCracklin piano tune, is about the least-familiar number on a program that's essentially revamped classic and still rather recent electric (and largely Chicago) blues classics with a very slightly more rock- and soul-oriented groove. Still, it's a lean and respectably hard-hitting electric blues set, comfortably integrating piano and (on occasion) Willie Bridges' saxes into the arrangements.

Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes picks up where Dynamic Duo left off, digging a little further into the one-time-only Wes Montgomery/Jimmy Smith sessions and coming up with more fine music – mellower in general than Dynamic Duo but first-class nonetheless. Unlike most of the studio sessions from this time, Montgomery gets plenty of room for his single-string work as well as his famous octaves, and both techniques find him in full, mature bloom, needing fewer notes in which to say more (Smith, of course, is precisely the opposite). All but one of the tracks on the original LP find Smith and Montgomery interacting only with themselves, the drums of Grady Tate, and the congas of Ray Barretto; Roger Miller's "King of the Road" (not often covered by jazzers) and Montgomery's "O.G.D." (later known as "Road Song") come off best…

Three CD set. Follow-up to Grapefruit's hugely popular US 1967 anthology 'March Of The Flower Children'. Hit singles, cult classics and tracks from 1968's key albums as the American music scene moved on from the Summer of Love. While psychedelia had been the dominant musical force in 1967, the scene fragmented the following year. Although many acts remained immersed in garage-punk and psychedelic pop, a growing number of heavily-amplified, blues-based hard rock bands like Blue Cheer, Steppenwolf and Iron Butterfly - all of whom enjoyed sizeable hit singles in 1968 - emerged to pave the way for what would develop into heavy metal. Manufactured pop in the form of bubblegum dominated the singles chart, The Byrds and other easy riders developed a country/rock hybrid, a phalanx of folk-based singer/songwriters came to the fore, while Bob Dylan and his occasional playmates The Band pioneered a more organic, rustic sound that would come to be known as Americana.

With its endless, droning minor-key riff and mumbled vocals, "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is arguably the most notorious song of the acid rock era. According to legend, the group was so stoned when they recorded the track that they could neither pronounce the title "In the Garden of Eden" or end the track, so it rambles on for a full 17 minutes, which to some listeners sounds like eternity. But that's the essence of its appeal – it's the epitome of heavy psychedelic excess, encapsulating the most indulgent tendencies of the era.

Very rare and extremely limited 2019 EU 4CD Box Set collection of Pink Floyd containing the "A Saucerful Of Secrets" album high resolution remaster plus outtakes, rarities and live material… This Deluxe Edition contains a 12 page booklet with the complete tracklistings and detailed recording information. Limited and numbered edition of 300. A Saucerful of Secrets is the second studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 29 June 1968 by EMI Columbia in the United Kingdom and released on 27 July 1968 in the United States by Tower Records. The album was recorded before and after Syd Barrett's departure from the group. With Barrett's behaviour becoming increasingly unpredictable, David Gilmour was recruited to complement Barrett, and eventually to replace him.

Swirling guitars and proto-ambient electronica sounds from many light years away! The Astro-Sound of Magnificence, From Beyond the Year 2000…a unique capsule of a funky, psychedelic rhythm section jamming, with snarling, stabbing and swooshing cranked-up-to-infinity electric guitar voyages piloted by Wrecking Crew veteran Jerry Cole, polished and primed for takeoff with a string section playing eerie, beckoning melodies in unison. These are the sounds of epiphanies concerning the future, space and sounds on the horizon, circa 1969. The tracks for this album were recorded by Cole and other players during sessions for a separate longplayer and were deemed to be outtakes; the details as to how they became Astro Sounds From Beyond the Year 2000 are dark and distant, but the 10 tracks here were first issued sans strings in 1967 as The Animated Egg, with alternate song titles. Two years later the recordings were overdubbed with the swirling, piercing phase-shifted strings mix you hear here, creating a spectacular fusion of psych-rock, R&B, easy listening and fuzz guitar, with hints of the coming worlds of ambient and electronica. These truly are the far out sounds of tomorrow’s unchartered trip, as the original album jacket proclaims "come aboard, launch and listen."

Numered edition Hybrid SACD. Strictly limited to 3,000 copies. The 1968 album that made Johnny Cash a music legend! Johnny Cash already knew his way around Folsom Prison when he and his band stepped inside the institution's forbidding walls on the morning of January 13, 1968 to record At Folsom Prison. He'd played there two years prior. But this time was different.

Claudine Longet's third album continues the middle-of-the-road tendencies of her first two, leading off with an oddly jaunty reinterpretation of "Falling in Love Again," Marlene Dietrich's theme song, whose jaded world-weariness Longet replaces with her own pleasantly insubstantial persona. With its cinematic background noise staging and odd ragtime piano accents, it recalls Harpers Bizarre's playful deconstruction of pre-rock standards. More successful are the straightforward bilingual version of the title track, one of the evergreen tunes of '60s easy listening; the oft-recorded Alan Gordon and Gary Bonner sunshine pop tune "Small Talk"; and a mournful, skeletal version of Randy Newman's little-known early tune "Snow" that's among Longet's finest interpretations of her career. Even better is Longet's take on the Bee Gees standard "Holiday"; Longet's endearingly pitch-poor, lispy vocals are tailor-made for this spooky, unconventional song, which arranger Nick DeCaro gives a suitably off-kilter arrangement featuring a chorus of wordless Longets between the strings and the increasingly florid piano accompaniment. Longet's next album, the masterful Colours, would benefit from even more of this gently psychedelic experimentation.

Sundazed have done a fantastic job in reissuing the lost 1960s folk rock gem that is The Gentle Soul. Thriving in the vibrant mid to late 1960s folk rock movement, Pamela Polland and Rick Stanley of The Gentle Soul hung out with the likes of Neil Young, Jackson Browne (there's an early tune written by him as one of the bonus tracks here), The Byrds, and Tim Buckley, and worked with the likes of Terry Melcher, Jack Nitzsche, Ry Cooder (whose incredible guitar playing is throughout this cd), Van Dyke Parks, Larry Knechtel, Jerry Cole and Hal Blaine. Amongst this incredible scene of creativity, The Gentle Soul released one album and a handful of singles, but never had the push they needed or any luck with sales. Their recordings became more and more scarce through the years, the album even becoming a collector's item with a 3 figure price tag.