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One of Joe Bushkin's more jazz-oriented sessions – thanks to trumpet from Buck Clayton!

A pair of surprisingly sweet albums from the Elgart brothers – back to back on a single CD! Girl Watchers is maybe the grooviest album ever from the team of Les & Larry Elgart – as you can probably guess from the title! The set's awash in groovy tunes from the late 60s – not just the fab title cut, but a host of other sweet numbers that are given an inventive new take on the Elgart horn style! The style is pretty great – kind of a 60s update of older big band modes – lean at points, full at others – and given some sweet Bobby Scott arrangements on some of the album's best tracks. Titles include "Music To Watch Girls By", "That's Life", "The Spy With A Cold Nose", "Girl Watchers", and "Girl Talk". Wonderful World Of Today's Hits is way more than you'd guess from the title – as the arrangements are by Bobby Scott, and have this sweet mix of jazz and 60s mod – often worked in ways that really reboot familiar numbers of the time – with that soulful undercurrent that makes Bobby's own music so great. Teo Macero produced, and really knows how to bring out the best shimmering sounds in the horns – and titles include "The Bobo", "Torino", "When I Look In Your Eyes", "Spanish Eyes", "To Sir With Love", and a wild take on "Ode To Billie Joe", with some surprisingly fuzzy guitar!

A very groovy vocal set – produced by Teo Macero with a nicely modern edge!

One of the greatest moog albums ever – all original sounds and tunes from the legendary Bruce Haack! Haack had spent most of the 60s doing small label kiddie records on his own, but this late 60s gem on Columbia is probably his best known work – a masterpiece of short and groovy little songs that are heavy on analogue electronics and special effects! There's a really fuzzy feel to most of the work here – heavy echo and reverb that give the album a very dark feel, even when the songs are a bit light and playful. Haack's lyrics are great too – quite conceptual, with a spiritual undercurrent that's surprisingly great – and which adds a further layer of meaning to the set! The whole thing's a bit like the Silver Apples, but more experimental – and there's a love of sound, shape, and texture that Haack never matched again on later albums. A key predecessor to Suicide, Stereolab, and countless others – with titles that include "Electric To Me Turn", "Cherubic Hymn", "Program Me", "War", "Incantation", "Angel Child", "Super Nova", "Requiem", "Song Of The Death Machine", and "National Anthem To The Moon". CD features the previously unreleased "Electric To Me Turn (alternate version)", and a Canadian radio interview interspersed with songs!

An older bandleader takes on sounds from two different groovy sources of the 70s – both of them great! Plays Michel Legrand has Andre Kostelanetz serving up some sweet versions of tunes from some of Legrand's famous soundtracks of the 60s and early 70s – most of them done with fairly broad string arrangements, but underscored with some of the groovier tones and timings that make Michel's music so great. Andre never gets too overemotional, even when things are lush – and titles include "What Are You Doing For The Rest Of Your Life", "Summer Of 42", "Lady Sings The Blues", "Orson's Theme", "Once Upon A Summertime", and "Pieces Of Dreams". Plays Chicago is even weirder, but maybe even cooler too – as Andre Kostelanetz handles the music of Chicago – stripping the tunes of the heavy brass styles you might expect, and instead washing them heavily in strings, which then often get a similar dynamic range to the horns! Arrangements are from Don Sebesky, Torri Zito, Luther Henderson, Marty Manning, and Al Capps – and titles include "Fancy Colours", "Make Me Smile", "Questions 67 & 68", "Beginnings", "25 Or 6 To 4", "Flight 602", and "Wake Up Sunshine".

An older bandleader takes on sounds from two different groovy sources of the 70s – both of them great! Plays Michel Legrand has Andre Kostelanetz serving up some sweet versions of tunes from some of Legrand's famous soundtracks of the 60s and early 70s – most of them done with fairly broad string arrangements, but underscored with some of the groovier tones and timings that make Michel's music so great. Andre never gets too overemotional, even when things are lush – and titles include "What Are You Doing For The Rest Of Your Life", "Summer Of 42", "Lady Sings The Blues", "Orson's Theme", "Once Upon A Summertime", and "Pieces Of Dreams". Plays Chicago is even weirder, but maybe even cooler too – as Andre Kostelanetz handles the music of Chicago – stripping the tunes of the heavy brass styles you might expect, and instead washing them heavily in strings, which then often get a similar dynamic range to the horns! Arrangements are from Don Sebesky, Torri Zito, Luther Henderson, Marty Manning, and Al Capps – and titles include "Fancy Colours", "Make Me Smile", "Questions 67 & 68", "Beginnings", "25 Or 6 To 4", "Flight 602", and "Wake Up Sunshine".

A beautiful lost bit of Exotica from the early 60's! Michel Magne recorded this "adventure in exotic sounds and percussion" in the Barclay Studios in Paris – as one of the excellent albums he cut in France before moving onto more famous soundtracks – and the set's got a wonderful mix of percussion, woodwinds, vibes, and piano – but also features tiny bit of tape manipulation, which gives the whole thing an even groovier sound! The feel is way cooler than the usual exotica groove – key proof of Magne's early musical vision – and titles include "Congo", "Tabu", "Sahara", "Two Silhouettes", and "Tropical".

A real mind-trip – and an incredible document of the times – not just ideas floating around in the late 60s, but also new ways of making records too! The album is loosely based around ideas and writings from The Medium Is The Massage – McLuhan's important 1967 book, co-written with Quentin Fiore – and represented here as a wild sound collage that blends together music, sounds, media snippets, and readings by McLuhan, Fiore, and a host of other voices! The album's actually much more of a "happening" than a spoken word album – a real studio party that's cut up and messed up by all the added effects, sounds, and music – genius that comes from Jerome Agel, who put the whole project together – and delivered it to the loving hands of John Simon, who produced some other wonderful records of this nature for late 60s Columbia. A real delight throughout – and the kind of an album we wish people still kept making! Great reissue package – in a gatefold LP-styled sleeve, with additional artwork, rare photos, full notes on the sessions, and more!

A real mind-trip – and an incredible document of the times – not just ideas floating around in the late 60s, but also new ways of making records too! The album is loosely based around ideas and writings from The Medium Is The Massage – McLuhan's important 1967 book, co-written with Quentin Fiore – and represented here as a wild sound collage that blends together music, sounds, media snippets, and readings by McLuhan, Fiore, and a host of other voices! The album's actually much more of a "happening" than a spoken word album – a real studio party that's cut up and messed up by all the added effects, sounds, and music – genius that comes from Jerome Agel, who put the whole project together – and delivered it to the loving hands of John Simon, who produced some other wonderful records of this nature for late 60s Columbia. A real delight throughout – and the kind of an album we wish people still kept making! Great reissue package – in a gatefold LP-styled sleeve, with additional artwork, rare photos, full notes on the sessions, and more!

A totally excellent album! Sure, Peter Nero could be one of the sleepier piano players of the 60s – but on this little gem, he's playing moog, and it sounds great! Nero's taking moog to the sweet soundtrack groovers "Midnight Cowboy" and The Windmills Of Your Mind" – which both come out in a dark spooky style, and "Windmills" sounds especially great, as it begins with a moogy breakbeat that would make Perry-Kingsley weep! Moog's also heard on "Be In" and "Let the Sunshine In" from Hair – and the album also includes 4 other numbers from Galt MacDermot's funky musical, like "Aquarius", "Hair", and "Good Morning Starshine". Frank Hunter did the arrangments – and there's a lot of nice funk running through the LP!

Wild! The Nutty Squirrels were an obvious attempt to cash in on the success of Alvin & The Chipmunks during the late 50s – a studio-trickery session handled with the voices of Don Elliott and Sascha Burland – but to our ears, honestly, the album's a lot better! You see, both Elliott and Burland had their jazz chops down pretty tight – and the record is less an album of novelty pop numbers, than it is a set of jazz vocal tunes, scatted along over small combo backing, with the voices sped up on tape so that they sound like a pair of jazzy squirrels! The album's got none of the cloying aspects of The Chimpunks' work – and if you can get past the squeakiness of the vocals, you'll actually find the record pretty appealing from a jazz perspective. Titles include "Bob White", "That's Owl, Brother", "Yardbird Suite", "Flamingo", "Bird Watching", "Sparrow In The Treetop", and "Didee Bird". Imagine Jon Hendricks and Dave Lambert locked in a studio with a tank of helium – and you'll get the idea!

An obscure US album that presents some late 50s work recorded by Parisian easy maestro Andre Popp! Popp's had a strong reputation for years as being the Esquivel of the other side of the Atlantic, and this album's a perfect illustration of that point – very much like the earliest Esquivel work at RCA, a mixture of older romantic easy listening styles with some stranger twists and odd instrumentation – a bit less electric and spatial than Esquivel's own albums, but definitely with that "pushing the envelope" sound that was shifting the mood music era at the time. Tracks include "La Bardinette", "Sexy Sax", "La Pendule", "Musique Mechanique", "Du Vent Dans Les Voiles", "Melodie Du Sud", and "Tunisia Waltz".

A lost Hi Fi gem! Released in America under the name of "Elsa Popping & Her Pixieland Band" – the record is actually a stunning collaboration between French orchestra leader Andre Popp and sound effects wizard Pierre Fatosme. The sound is wild and swinging, with a feel that's similar to Esquivel, but with a lot weirder effects, and a little bit less music-based sound overall. Popp cares less about swinging than Esquivel, and he's much freer with his music – as there's moments on here that sound like avant garde chamber pieces, which then swing into tight little bits with cool sounds made by editing and playing with tape. The album's wonderful all the way through – with very high quality material that makes a lot of the other cheaper lounge releases sound hollow! Titles include "Java", "La Paloma", "La Java Du Diable", "Java Des Bombes Atomiques", and "Adios Muchachos".

Nice stuff by Ravi Shankar – although we should hate the album for its patronizing liner notes, which refer to Shankar's work as "psychedelicacies", and which wonder aloud why people need to use hallucinogenic drugs if they've got Ravi! Titles include "Sitar Todi", "Raga Des", "Tabla Solo – Jhaptal", and "Thumri".