With the possible exception of Richard Pinhas' Heldon, Gilbert Artman's Lard Free was probably the premier French progressive group of the '70s. The prolific Heldon might win in terms of amount of material, but the three near-perfect albums by Lard Free (despite the truly wretched band name) probably have them beat in terms of overall quality. Although Artman, a drummer who also dabbles in synthesizers and piano, called Lard Free a group, he was the only constant member; all three albums have different lineups. 1973's Lard Free consists of relatively short pieces with prominent piano and saxophone parts, and as such is the most jazz-oriented of the three. The following year's I'm Around About Midnight consists of three long pieces with much more synthesizer; at times, it sounds almost like early (pre-ambient) Tangerine Dream, or perhaps Clear Light, the French collective Artman and the then-current lineup of Lard Free occasionally worked with around this time. 1977's Lard Free III, also known as Spirale Malax, is Artman's best work, a pair of side-long experiments that combine space music, jazz, and King Crimson-style heavy progressive rock better than many groups (including King Crimson) could ever hope to manage.

The album "Liaisons Dangereuses: Cult Radio Classics - The Early Years" is a 2-CD compilation that commemorates the influential Liaisons Dangereuses radio show, which aired on the Antwerp radio station SIS in the 1980s. This show was a pioneer in promoting the New Beat movement, a genre that became highly popular in Europe, especially in Belgium. The compilation features tracks that capture the innovative and avant-garde music style that defined the show.

2010 release, the 12th album in an infamous career, Not Music is part of Tim Gane's 2007 science experiment involving improvised chord sequences played on piano or vibraphone, over top of which were placed little drum loops. This was a new way of writing and it yielded a bumper crop of compositions, nearly 70 of which were boiled down into 32 new songs, 14 of which were cherry-picked to form Chemical Chords.

The “Nuggets”of Krautrock?
“Cologne Curiosities” collects, for the first time on vinyl, all the otherwise unpublished/un-reissued material that firstly appeared on the three "Unknown Deutschland - The Krautrock Archive" CDs released on Virgin during 1996. These CD only releases were originally compiled by Trevor Manwaring (Paratactile, Impetus, Virgin, Harmonia Mundi) from tapes supplied to him by Toby Robinson. Toby - aka The Mad Twiddler, aka Genius P. Orridge - is well-known to Krautrock collectors as one of a number of engineers working at Stockhausen’s WDR and Dierks Studio in Cologne in the mid-1970's, where he assisted on recordings by many famous Kraut bands such as Can, Birth Control, Mythos or Dzyan. The recordings included here were made between 1972 and 1976 using studios in and around Cologne, produced by Toby Robinson for his own amusement, just having fun on the studio. Inevitably, bands would come in for practice sessions, to record demo's, and during slack periods impromptu jams would happen. Most of these sessions were recorded by Toby, and they feature Toby himself plus a revolving cast of friends and musicians (some of them apparently big Kraut names under pseudonym).

A1 for electronic sounds and voices, 1969. A2 music for multi-piano, orchestra and electronic sounds, 1968. B1 for electronic sounds and Japanese traditional instruments, 1968. B2 for electronic sounds, 1968.

The audio companion to David Toop's excellent book advances the case he made, that Les Baxter, Aphex Twin, The Beach Boys, Herbie Hancock, King Tubby and My Bloody Valentine are all related by their effect on sound pioneering. A double-disc set, Ocean of Sound impresses not only with its incredible diversity of musical styles, but with how easily these artists work next to each other. The second disc includes consecutive contributions by Paul Schütze, the Velvet Undergound, Holger Czukay of Can, The Beach Boys, African Headcharge and Sun Ra. Besides illustrating Toop's point beautifully, the album is an excellent addition to the collection of any wide-ranging ambient fan.

MG is the second solo studio album by Martin Gore, the primary songwriter for the band Depeche Mode. It was released on 24 April 2015 by Mute Records and consists of sixteen electronic instrumentals. Martin Lee Gore is an English singer songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, producer, remixer, and DJ. He is a founding member of Depeche Mode and has written the majority of their songs. His work now spans over three decades. Gore's best-known compositions include hits such as "Personal Jesus", "Enjoy the Silence", "I Feel You", "People Are People", "Everything Counts", "Shake the Disease" and "Never Let Me Down Again".

Black Rainbows is a musical project inspired by the objects and artworks collected by Theaster Gates at the Stoney Island Arts Bank in Chicago. Situated at the Great Grand Crossing neighborhoods of Chicago's South Side, Stoney Island Arts Bank is a cathedral to Black Art, a curated collection of Black archives comprising books, sculpture, records, furniture and problematic objects from America's past.

2010 two CD collection from the British Space Rock legends. Whilst the bulk of this release is made up of a live set recorded for the BBC in Concert program, it opens with a previously unreleased session recorded for Johnnie Walker featuring a shortened version of the Doremi Fasol Latido album classic 'Brainstorm' and a version of the hit single 'Silver Machine', featuring Lemmy on vocals as per the single. The in Concert itself, a hypnotic continuous performance, is presented in both mono and stereo versions. The mono version was previously released by Windsong on CD in 1991 and has been remastered and re-indexed to include all of the pieces originally performed, and the concert itself in it's entirety. The stereo version has long been in the domain of the bootleggers as an off air recording known the as "Broadcast" version. This mix was in fact distributed by the BBC for broadcast internationally. Apart from being in stereo, the sound quality is superior to the mono version and the mix is generally more exciting.

Porter Robinson had already moved beyond festival-ready EDM by the time Worlds, a full-length debut filled with widescreen electro-pop tunes inspired by anime and video games, arrived in 2014. After the album became a massive success, topping Billboard's Dance/Electronic Albums chart and influencing numerous producers, Robinson felt pressured to deliver another major statement that would live up to his reputation. He scored a gold-certified hit with "Shelter," his 2016 collaboration with Madeon, and following the duo's extensive international tour, he branched off with Virtual Self, a hyper-fun side project influenced by trance and Dance Dance Revolution, which surprisingly earned the producer his first Grammy nomination.

"Bricolage," a French word meaning to assemble something from available materials, is such a perfect term for the art of the remix that it's surprising no one has ever used it before. It's less surprising that Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose work has always had a cool Continental flair despite the artist's Japanese roots, would choose such an elegant term for his swish remix collection. Focusing on reworks of material from 2005's back-to-the-roots electro-pop experiment Chasm, Bricolages features a cross-cultural and cross-generational batch of remixers including Cornelius, whose playful sense of pastiche is to current hipster Japanese pop what Sakamoto's Yellow Magic Orchestra was a quarter-century before; his take on the spoken word cut-up "War & Peace" is considerably lighter and groovier than Aoki Takamasa's tense, austere version. Former Japan drummer Steve Jansen, whose collaboration with Sakamoto goes back to the early '80s, contributes the skittering "Break With," bridging the gap between new wave disco and contemporary IDM.

Anne Dudley, composer, artist and founding member of the hugely influential Art of Noise, and the only artist in history to have won an Oscar, a Grammy and had a No. 1 on the Billboard Dance Chart, releases her brand new work Anne Dudley plays the Art of Noise. This delicate, haunting piano album which sees the award winning composer reinterpreting the music of one of her most influential projects, the Art of Noise. This instrumental record finds Dudley performing piano covers of classic Eighties hits and new interpretations of pioneering electronic music.

In October 1962, John Cage and David Tudor went to Japan to present a series of historic concerts. Sensation. These are invaluable recordings, since they aren’t of a selected repertoire reconsidered in tranquility but capture the atmosphere of a time when all this was new and highly radical. And it’s a fine programme, played by the best exponents.

Alga Marghen returns with what might just be their most historically significant release to date, “Boston Tenor Index”, comprising three, never before released compositions - “Index”, from 1969; and “Tenor” and “Boston III”, both from 1972 - by Phill Niblock, that represent some the earliest works in his catalogue to have ever appeared. Truly stunning in audio terms, and an absolute revelation toward understanding how Niblock arrived where he did a few short years down the road, it’s easily one of the best things we’ve heard all year.

In a conscious shift of aesthetics, the very European Gods turned their eyes on America with the band's fourth album, producing its most 'rock' record to date, a consistently strong smash. Opening with "Our House," it all seems (powerful) business as usual - odd sonic loops, rhythm patterns suddenly exploding into mass drum/riff combinations. But the difference here lies with the lyrics - discounting earlier covers, Treichler for the first time sings in English here and throughout, a conscious audience targeting which he addressed in contemporaneous interviews. "Gasoline Man" turns out to be the big shift, revamping what sounds like an old ZZ Top riff into as classic an American rock song as any - blues lyrical structure, loving the road and the motor - yet with the Gods' unique sonic signature present, revamping and restitching the past into a cleaner, newer form that avoids sounding just like another bar band.