Cool 60s work from guitarist Snuff Garrett! Maria Elena takes a host of older Latin themes and tunes them towards a hip 60s style – using the overdubbed guitar approach of the 50 guitars group, and really stretching the sound out wide towards the farthest reaches of both speakers! Snuff Garrett's guitar is in the lead, but it's also cast here in a pretty full sound – one that makes for a spacious quality that still sounds pretty darn great all these many years later. Titles include "Jungle Drums", "Anna", "Without You", "The Breeze & I", "Brazil", and "Poinciana". LP, Vinyl record album

An album with as much power as you'd expect from the title – and a set that's billed as featuring "Music To The Limits Of Audibility"! The limits explored are the farther ones in sound – not the lower tones at the end of hearing – and Marty Gold does a very good job of hitting the heights with his bold orchestrations, captured here in dramatic RCA sound of the time! Orchestrations are often a bit more complicated than the usual bachelor pad record – with lots of complex horn patterns especially, instead of driving rhythms – and titles include "Stella By Starlight", "The Moon Was Yellow", "I'll Remember April", "A String Of Pearls", "Without A Song", and "Misty". Very dramatic – and bound to make your speakers pop! LP, Vinyl record album

A pretty swinging batch of tracks that are very much in the same vein as Buddy Morrow's crime jazz LPs cut for RCA at the end of the 50s! The album features all TV themes from the time, most of them detective ones – like "Richard Diamond", "Perry Mason", "Naked City", "Sea Hunt", "Peter Gunn", and "Riff Blues" – plus a few others from westerns or other action shows. In all, the set's a very strong one in the style – with a blaring hard sound that must have been great to hear coming out of a tinny little speaker on an old black & white TV! LP, Vinyl record album

If you've ever doubted that Vincent Price was a creepy guy, you've got to hear this album! The 2LP set is a mad exploration into the world of the supernatural – with Vincent speaking on topics that include "Witch Tortures", "How To Communicate With The Spirits", "The Magic Bloodstone", "Instruments Of Magic", "Witch Burning", and "How To Make A Pact With The Devil". The script was written by Terry D'Oberoff, with electronics by Douglas Leedy – but it's Price who makes the whole thing really work, reading in a dark, spooky tone, set in a really echoey space – really making us believe that he knows all about this weird stuff! (Spoken Word, Now Sound) LP, Vinyl record album

70s geekazoid hi-fi culture at it's finest! The folks at JBL put together this 2LP set as sort of a "bible" of a 70's understanding of hi-fi – and it's a weird mix of documentary discussion, speaker demonstration, and rock tracks by the likes of Alex Harvey and Hoyt Axton. Nutty, and chock full of open drum breaks! LP, Vinyl record album

The closest thing Sammy D ever came to cutting a bossa album – and a lovely batch of fragile tunes that feature no other instrumentation save for the guitar of Laurindo Almeida. Almeida plays acoustic guitar on the album, in a gentle style that supports Sam's rich voice as it works through a set of ballads and sad songs that includes "Here's That Rainy Day", "Two Different Worlds", "The Shadow Of Your Smile", "Joey Joey Joey", "Speak Low", and "We'll Be Together Again". (Vocalists, Now Sound) LP, Vinyl record album

The title gets this one right – as the album's a dreamy batch of instrumental tunes, the kind we'd love to hear coming out of the speakers in our supermarket! As with the group's other work, this album by the Lindberg Hemmer Foundation takes a retro twist – dipping back into a 60s easy bossa mode, blending organ and electric bass, plus a bit of moog – into simple, yet compelling tunes that recall the glory days of French soundtracks, Brazilian summers, and Italian coffee. A real gem all the way through – and one you'll be storming the Safeway just to get to the masses! Titles include "Frank Of Denmark", "Uhm Snacks", "The Buy Buy Song", "Full Auto", and "Party At Tony's Beach". (New Grooves, Now Sound) CD

One of the most memorable Esquivel albums, and perhaps the first record that really let him hit his fantastic mix of off-beat orchestrations and spacey electronicized production! The arrangements are splendid, with echoey piano lines in the front that seem to trail off into the stratosphere. Behind them, the orchestra swings in a tight rocket-fueled way, soaring and dipping to match the oddly arranged piano lines. Titles include "Playfully", "That Old Black Magic", "Speak Low", "It Had To Be You", and "Night & Day". Plus, the cover's got a groovily attired model, hanging out in a very green lunar scene! CD

One of the most memorable Esquivel albums, and perhaps the first record that really let him hit his fantastic mix of off-beat orchestrations and spacey electronicized production! The arrangements are splendid, with echoey piano lines in the front that seem to trail off into the stratosphere. Behind them, the orchestra swings in a tight rocket-fueled way, soaring and dipping to match the oddly arranged piano lines. Titles include "Playfully", "That Old Black Magic", "Speak Low", "It Had To Be You", and "Night & Day". Plus, the cover's got a groovily attired model, hanging out in a very green lunar scene! LP, Vinyl record album

A fantastic album – if only for the cover! The record features a rare cover image that's an obscure painting by Salvador Dali – and the back cover features a photo of Jackie and Dali shaking hands! The music's not as surreal as the image, but it's still got this amazingly baroque mixture of woodwinds and strings, floating in a pillowy sort of dream-like state. Titles include "There Must Be A Way", "Deep Purple", "I Wished On The Moon", and "Speak Low". LP, Vinyl record album

The Aldrich feeling is certainly in place here – that beautiful twin-piano approach that almost has Ronnie's keys "answering" themselves as they move from speaker to speaker on the record! The orchestrations here are light and often a bit groovy – not the hippest of 60s easy, but certainly hipper than Aldrich sometimes got – and the recording quality of the session is really wonderful, with fluid notes on the Steinway floating out and drifting in the air, really making the best use of stereo in the way things are juxtaposed from track to track! Titles include "Moonglow", "My Favorite Things", "Magic Moments", "The Sweetest Sounds", "If Ever I Should Leave You", "If The Rain's Got To Fall",a nd "Spanish Harlem". (Jazz, Now Sound) LP, Vinyl record album

The birth of genius – 2 key mid 60s albums from swinging Brit jazzer Johnny Keating – both of which showcase his tightly rhythmic "Keating Sound" approach! Keating had originally worked as an arranger in the 50s group of Ted Heath, but after stepping out on his own in the 60s, he came up with a really fresh approach to big band grooving – one that was highly syncopated, in a choppier style of rhythm than many other groups were using at the time, and which was very much in the snapping mode of the best 60s pop work of the time. This new sound meant that Keating could take just about any tune and swing it on its ear – cutting up the basic structure of the song, and rebuilding it in sharper, tighter blocks of sound. The result is a style that's quite different from the usual big band groove – one that makes for some extremely playful instrumentation, but which manages to still keep moving strongly ahead without resorting to too many tricks or gimmicks. For both albums, Keating's working with some great British talents that include Shake Keane on trumpet, Tubby Hayes on saxes, David Snell on harp, and Jim Sullivan on guitar. The CD features a total of 24 tracks that are a wonderful introduction to the Keating Sound of the 60s – with titles that inlcude "Paris", "Brave New World", "Serenata", "Speak Low", "Listen", "The Preacher", "Hey Girl", "Bee Bom", "My Kind Of Girl", and "The Chihuahua". (Jazz, Now Sound) CD