Despite the title of the album, the group's a sharp-edged fusion combo – one that hails from late 70s Japan, and who works here in the best mainstream fusion mode of the time! The tunes are mostly jazz funk with a bit of polish – heavy on guitars from Kazuo Takeda, who also takes off on some pretty nice solos – and also featuring keyboards from Hisao Sakurai and tenor from Mitsuru Kanekuni. The record is never too jamming, nor too smooth – but one number does feature some unfortunate blues vocals from Takeda. Titles include "Spinning Toe Hold No 2", "No Problem", "Wild Cat", "Swamp Boy", and "Fou Fou Gun Gun". LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

Jefferson Airplane flying high in the late 60s – both a creative and commercial triumph for the band – balancing the tripped out adventurousness of their earlier work, with a more focused approach that brought them to bigger and bigger audiences! Front loaded with moodier, acoustic-based songs that build into heavier rock as the record plays on – with some really great use of sound effects for added drama on here and there! Titles include "Lather", "In Time", "Star Track", "Chushingura", "If You Feel", "Ice Cream Phoenix", "The House At Pooniel Corners" and more. LP, Vinyl record album

A set of really wonderful tracks from the best years of Creation Records – including "Murders The Hope Of Women" by Momus, "Shine On" by House Of Love, "In A Mourning Town" by Biff Bang Pow, "Cut Me Deep" by The Jasmine Minks, and "Kiss At Dawn" by Nikki Sudden & The Jacobites. LP, Vinyl record album

The first album that Momus recorded for Creation Records – a label that provided him with a much stronger springboard than before – which was perfect for the way the singer blended very offbeat lyrics with compelling mainstream songcraft! Momus was always very different than most of the Brit 80s scene in which he worked – influenced strongly by the French work of singer/songwriters like George Brassens, Jacques Brel, and Serge Gainsbourg – but graced with a very British wit, which made for an especially biting style that worked well with the themes of his songs. Momus has a vocal style that's maybe somewhere in Donovan territory, but sharper – and he draws from a variety of European song modes, fitted to the situation of each individual songs – as you'll hear on classics like "Situation Comedy Blues", "Three Wars", "The Gatecrasher", "Flame Into Being", and the Serge Gainsbourg-like "Closer To You". LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

A landmark album from The Allman Brothers – and a set that forever set the standard for double live albums in the 70s! The expanded format really let the group open up and show the strengths they had already developed as a live act, long before they walked into the studio for their initial album – as the tracks are often quite long, and let you hear the way they approached the process of creation – using lots of jamming energy that's really let loose here on the longer tunes, which are awash in amazing guitar and organ solos! Dickey Betts and Duane Allman are fantastic together – and titles include the side-long "Whipping Post" and "You Don't Love Me" – plus "Hotlanta", "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed", "Statesboro Blues", "Stormy Monday", and "Done Somebody Wrong". LP, Vinyl record album

A wild, far reaching psychedelic rock kaleidoscope from Arthur Brown and his Crazy World! The sounds range from wailing organs and heavy drum backed bigness, to more of a tightly grooving r&b garage influenced trip as the core backdrop – with vocals ranging from falsetto freakouts to rambling speak singing craziness and bursts of brass. Nothing's predictable from one passage to the next, but the group sets a heady groove before it all gets freaky, and they find it again before insanity sets in. Titles include "Prelude-Nightmare", "Fire", "Come & Buy", "Spontaneous Apple Creation", "Child Of My Kingdom", "I Put A Spell On You" and more. LP, Vinyl record album

The second album from Biggie, and a set that was instantly poised to catapult him to superstardom – even before his tragic death ended up doing that before the release of the record! And yes, the title's a bit cryptic – and given the fact that the material came out after BIG was shot, it might seem like a cash-in collection of left-behind tracks – yet it's not that at all. The long path to the album's creation represents a step forward to almost build a bridge between underground hip hop and mainstream soul – maybe in a way that would have calmed some of the coastal beefs that were taking place at the time – as the late, great one works here with an array of guests from both the worlds of hip hop and R&B – 112, Jay-Z, R Kelly, Puff Daddy, Lil Kim, Too Short, and others – in a classic set of tracks that includes "Hypnotize", "Kick In the Door", "Mo Money Mo Problems", "Notorious Thugs", "Going Back To Cali", "Sky's The Limit", "Miss U", "Ten Crack Commandments", 'What's Beef", and "Nasty Boy". LP, Vinyl record album

A big crossover moment for Peter Tosh – a set that was issued on the Rolling Stones own label, with a bit of help from Keith and Mick themselves! But if that makes you worry about some clunky effort that tries to blend rock and reggae, you can put all your fears aside – as the set's got all the soulful charm that made Tosh one of the true giants of the 70s – potentially as influential as Bob Marley, especially at the time – and working with rock-solid help from Sly and Robbie on rhythms, and Mao Chung on lead guitar, Fender Rhodes, and even a bit of moog! Tracks include "You Gotta Walk Don't Look Back", "Pick Myself Up", "Soon Come", "Moses The Prophet", "Stand Firm", "Dem Ha Fe Get A Beatin", and "Creation". LP, Vinyl record album

The late live album from Jefferson Airplane – who were at the end of their journey, but whatever their personal differences may have been at the time, they still put on a helluva great rock and roll show! Thirty Seconds Over Winterland was recorded at that legendary San Francisco venue, and at Chicago's Auditorium Theatre, with the post-Marty Balin line-up of Grace Slick, Paul Kanter, Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukomen – plus violinist Papa John Creach, drummer John Barbata and vocalist David Freiberg from Quicksilver Messenger Service. Titles include "Have You Seen The Saucers", "Feel So Good", "Crown Of Creation", "When The Earth Moves Again", "Milk Train", "Trial By Fire" and "Twilight Double Leader". LP, Vinyl record album

Some choice Bunny Lee produced Aggrovators tracks, mixed mostly by King Tubby. 16 tracks in all, including "A Version Of Class", "Jah Jah Dub", "Creation Dub", "Forward Version", "Don't Try To Dub I", "A Thankful Version", "A Traditional Dub", "A Stalawatt Dub" and "Full A Manners". LP, Vinyl record album

The start of a fantastic chapter for the legendary Arthur Brown – the first album issued with his Kingdom Come group, a combo who were even more insane than his Crazy World project of the late 60s! Brown is the quintessential front man here – singing in this really dynamic, dramatic way that's years ahead of its time – much more upfront than so many of the singers of the psych generation, and even the new hard rock vocalists too – at a level that makes music like this a great inspiration for so man styles to come! The instrumentation is as dynamic as the vocals, too – not prog jamming, but instead this really focused, fused blend of heavy drums, searing guitar, and organ – all sending things way way over the top. Titles include "Internal Messenger", "Night Of The Pigs", "Trouble", "Sunrise", "Brains", the "Galactic Zoo/Space Plucks" medley, "Creep", and "Creation". LP, Vinyl record album

Some of the greatest work you could ever find by Lenny Bruce! This set is a brilliant re-creation of a live show that Lenny cut at midnight at Carnegie Hall on February 4, 1961. Unlike some of his LPs from the time - which often featured a lot of set routines – this one just has Lenny improvising freely, telling jokes, doing schtick, and bad-rapping on a variety of topics from pills, to homosexuality, to airlines, to the KKK, to VD, to other contemporary comedians. The album's one of the few to really capture Bruce's brilliance as a performer and a thinker – and the spontaneity of the very long recording is astounding. LP, Vinyl record album

A rare non-Strata East 70s session from pianist Stanley Cowell – but one that still carries much of the same soul and spirit overall! The group here is a trio – with Stanley Clarke on bass and the wonderful Jimmy Hopps on drums – and the tunes themselves are perhaps a bit slower to get going than some of Cowell's creations on Strata, but they still often explode with freely lyrical energy and a great sense of creation. A few compositions are familiar from other records, but redone here with slightly different flavors – and Clarke plays a bit of electric bass on the set, which changes some of the pulse up a bit. Titles include "Emil Danenberg", "Miss Viki", "Cal Massey", "Astral Spiritual", and "Maimoun". LP, Vinyl record album

A fantastic blend of spiritual jazz styles and electronic elements – served up here by the trio of drummer Betamax, keyboardist Danalogue, and saxophonist King Shabaka – the last of whom you might recognize as Shabaka Hutchings from a host of other hip projects on the contemporary London scene! Shabaka's work on tenor and bass clarinet really gives the record an earthy, organic core – which seems to let the keyboards really soar off into space, often with the sort of vibe that you'd guess from the group's name and the cover image on the record – in a wide flurry of live and amplified performance elements! At some level, the trio is almost London's answer to some of the jazz-meets-studio work from Chicago's International Anthem label – and like some of the groups who record for that imprint, these guys are all strong jazz musicians at the core – but performing at a level that's very beyond the ordinary. Titles include "Birth Of Creation", "Summon The Fire", "Blood Of The Past", "Astral Flying", "Super Zodiac", "The Universe Wakes Up", and "Timewave Zero". LP, Vinyl record album

A record that forever changed the role of the DJ and turntable when it was dropped on the world – certainly not the first record to feature an artist building sound out of a mixture of old records and his own creation, but definitely one of the most hyped and most exposed over the years! For some reason, Shadow was able to find a way to take all the skills that hip hop DJs had been developing for 20 years, mixing them with some of the darkness of the European production scene – and then getting a wider audience to really appreciate both his own talents, and all the other inspirations that drove him – something that still seems to resonate all these many years later, as Shadow opened the door for many others to appreciate all the sounds that we'd been loving in the underground! And despite all his later work, this classic full length set might still be his best – a well-deserved classic, with titles that include "Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt", "The Number Song", "Changeling", "What Does Your Soul Look Like (pts 1 & 4)", "Mutual Slump", "Organ Donor", and "Midnight In A Perfect World". LP, Vinyl record album

Great early work from Lake – playing here in a number of different settings, but always with well-matched collaborators! 3 tracks on the set – "Owshet", "Heavy Spirits", and "While Pushing Down Turn" – featuring Lake with Olu Dara on trumpet, Donald Smith on piano, Victor Lewis on drums, and Stafford James on bass, playing in sort of a freebop mode. Three more tracks – "Movement Equals Creation", "Intensity", and "Altoviolin" – feature Lake on alto, playing with a violin trio that sounds very dark and moody. "Rocket" is a trio piece, with Joseph Bowie and Charles Bobo Shaw – and "Lonely Blacks" is a somber solo sax piece. LP, Vinyl record album

A pretty compelling album for Sidney – a selection of poems written by African Americans – stretching back across a variety of styles, and read to musical accompaniment and strange production effects! Sidney's joined by Doris Belack, who provides a female voice on a few numbers – and the overall style of the album is quite dark, almost somber – with lots of echo on the vocals, and added percussion, harp, piano, and other incidental sound bits. Titles include "When Malinda Sings", "Mother To Son", "The Debt", "At Candle Lightin Time", "The Creation", "Yet I Do Marvel", "Debate Of Dark Brothers", "Epigram", "We Wear The Mask", and "When You Have Forgotten Sunday". LP, Vinyl record album

Wonderful work from Horace Silver – part of a great run of late 70s sides for Blue Note that unlock a whole new side of his soulful talents! The vibe here is different than the previous United States trilogy – still very righteous, with an overt message too – but served up in these wonderfully warm tones – with loads of great woodwind passages over these wickedly angular rhythms – grooves that are somewhat like those Silver first started forging on his 27th Man album! The arrangements are sublime – and on some cuts handled by Silver, but orchestrated by Wade Marcus – with players who include Tom Harrell on trumpet, Bob Berg on tenor, Buddy Collette and Fred Jackson on flutes, and Jerome Richardson on soprano sax. The rhythm section is key, too – and features Ron Carter on bass and Al Foster on drums! Side one features "The Tranquilizer Suite" – with passages that icnlude "Keep On Getting Up", "Time & Effort", and "Perseverance & Endurance" – and side two includes the excellent "The Process Of Creation Suite" – with "Motivation", "Activation", and "Assimilation". LP, Vinyl record album

One of THE electronic records of the 60s – an album so important, the Silver Apples took their name from the title – and a whole other generation of artists took strong inspiration from the electronic creations of Morton Subotnick! Before the set, much electronic music of this nature was a bit more academic, and often slightly cold – but Subotnick was able to bring things into a more organic, maybe more freewheeling style – using all sorts of cool analogue elements in ways that would run through Perry & Kingsley, Beaver & Krause, and even Stereolab! The work is billed as the "first original full-scale composition created expressly for the record medium" – a great testament to Subotnick's intentions for his creation, and a desire to get it more widely circulated than previous electronic recordings. LP, Vinyl record album

A great soundtrack moment for Tangerine Dream – and one of their darkest, too! Bill Friedkin's films are always pretty darn spooky – but the music of the group definitely adds a lot here – bringing in these coldly hypnotic passages that really work wonders with the images on the screen – and, in a way, also help Tangerine Dream compress their often longform electronic musings into more of an "essence" by focusing on scene-based compositions! And even without the film, the album still really stands strongly on its own – a great maturation moment for Tangerine Dream, but one that still has all the edge and darkness of their best early recordings too. Titles include "Rain Forest", "The Call", "Creation", "Vengeance", "Search", and "Grind". LP, Vinyl record album

A second mighty batch of rare work from points south – the kind of tunes we'd never have tracked down on our own, making us even more grateful for a set like this! As before, the music's a blend of obscure African tunes and other bits picked from the Caribbean – the latter of which represents a strongly untapped source of funk from the 70s, finally getting its due in recent years! There's a strong influence on most numbers from American funky 45s – heavy drums, riffing guitars, and blasting horns – but all put together with a slightly different approach, especially on the bottom – which makes for more than enough interesting grooves throughout the set. Titles include "Dig It Babe" by Jojo L'Explosif, "Rising" by WJC & Roots Trunks & Branches, "Dou Dagbe We" by Black Santiago, "Almamy" by Super Tentemba Jazz, "Rhythm On Rhythm" by Sookie, "Joe" by Marius, "Play Up Play Up" by Roland Louis Orchestra, "Let's Stay Up Vickings" by Les Vickings, and "Wish Upon Love" by Cool Creation. LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

Rare private garage rock out of Virginia – includes "Respectable", "Harlem Shuffle", "Ninety Nine And A Half", "Double Shot", "Turn On Your Love Light", "Gimme Some Lovin", and more. LP, Vinyl record album

A long-overdue recognition of the blues contributions of Willie Dixon – a set that pulls him out of the indie ghetto and pushes him firmly into the mainstream with this key release on Columbia Records! Yet despite that placement, the style is nicely down home – a strong recreation of older Chicago blues modes by producer Abner Spector – one that has Willie singing versions of his classic tunes like "Back Door Man", "The Seventh Son", "Little Red Rooster", "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man", and "The Same Thing". LP, Vinyl record album

The most ambitious album ever recorded by this legendary group – a combination of all the artistic forces that were then in play on their scene in Ljubljana – brought together in a mix of music, stage design, and larger performance! The set has all the deeper sounds of Laibach's previous material – taken into sophisticated territory that rivals the scope and ambition of early Soviet modernist creations! LP, Vinyl record album

A fantastic pairing of players – two Chicago legends, both in the sort of setting that really suits them best! Roscoe Mitchell works here on two long improvisations with drummer Mike Reed – blowing a variety of reed instruments, and really taking us back to the groundbreaking work he did in such formats in the late 60s and 70s – very much in the spirit of his work for both Delmark and Sackville. Reed's a drummer who can present himself in larger arrangements and some very important groups – but a date like this reminds us how great he can be on the kit when improvising freely, with a very sympathetic ear to the still-amazing constant creations of Mitchell on reeds. Mike also brings in a bit of electronics – and titles include "The Ritual" and "The Dance". LP, Vinyl record album