[engl] Filed neatly and undisturbed within the micro-genre of 1970?s Italian artsploitation, amongst films soundtracks such as Girl With The Crystal Plumage, A Quiet Place In The Country and House With The Laughing Windows, this obscure library LP is one of the few fully formed concept albums from the recently reappraised discography of Rome’s most versatile and adventurous female production-music composer Daniela Casa. Once destined for a shelf life within the storage rooms of defunct TV studios and educational facilities Daniela’s previously strictly commercially unavailable music has in recent years been given new focus at the hands of open-minded disc detectives and sonic salvage hunters earning Casa’s distinctive feminine take on experimental instrumental mood and movie compositions a place next to her widely respected masculine counterparts such as Alessandro Alessandroni, AR Luciani, Pierro Umiliani, Morricone and Nicolai. Sharing tight studio space and strict syndication schedules with all of the aforementioned artists (under commission from Romano Di Bari’s fervently independent Flipper music factory) Daniela Casa embraced a liberating wind change in affordable music technology which opened doors for uninhabited solo compositions in home studios taking advantage of communal recording consoles and domestic synthesisers which nurtured a lesser-documented creative family tree (or rather secret society) and paved the way for individualistic projects from the likes of Magnetic System’s Fabio Frizzi and Goblin’s Claudio Simonetti.Here, on this repress of the impossibly rare, one-time subscription-only album, Arte Moderna, we find Daniela at her versatile best creating a wide thematic suite (based on paintings and sculptures in an abstract art gallery) for which she would deploy mostly organic and acoustic instruments to construct a set of unorthodox compositions straddling avant garde, free jazz and Giallo tension (with some brief moments of brooding electronics and italian pop). Veering from her stylistic pop interests (which clearly included a fondness for the music of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin) Daniela Casa’s Arte Moderna saw her adopt a less era specific approach combining neo-classical elements and piano improvisations akin to the likes of France’s Francois Tusques or Burton Greene, or America’s Mal Waldron without compromising her strong narrative personality for this unique abstracted picture music. Unintentionally but profoundly political in her prolific existence Daniela Casa’s contribution to a predominantly male industry earned her a small clutch of inspired idiosyncratic Italian female bedfellows such as Nora Orlandi, Giullia De Muittis (aka Kema), Fiorella Fratini, Emma De Angelis and Maria Teresa Luciani, who, with faceless anti-celebrity as its essence, never benefitted the wider critical focus that much of this music now duly commands on the collectors circuit. Finders Keepers Records in continued collaboration with the Di Barri company, with the Casa/Ducros family blessing, are now proud to shine new light on this sonic sculptures and provide a fresh context where educated music listeners are ready to fill the gaps between Delia Derbyshire, Ennio Morricone, Suzanne Ciani and Harry Partch and patronise a very welcome considered alternative to the recent rise in popularity of Italian Giallo soundtracks from a seldom savoured feminine creative vantage point. Daniela’s musical paintings can now be unveiled to the public for the first time, with Modern Art sounding as contemporary as it did when it was recorded forty years ago. The gallery is now open for limited sittings, discerning ears and open minds.

[engl] In an alternate universe the Rome born female synthesist Daniela Casa would be a household name. A genuine pioneer of experimental pop music, abstract electronics, Giallo jazz and even heavy drone rock jams, her elusive and infectious music joins the dots and loops between other Italian female electronic composers such as Giulia De Mutiis (later Giulia Alessandroni), Doris Norton and Suzanne Ciani while retaining one of the most individualistic and diverse composing styles of an advanced mechanical musician regardless of their nationality or gender. This LP compiles, for the first time, a multifarious selection of previously commercially unavailable instrumental music composed at her home studio in the late 70s before her untimely death at the age of 42. Originally designed for use in radio, film, TV and other industry specific applications, these seldom heard selections combine ingenious homemade and hi-tech disciplines, providing scores for Italian thrillers, nature documentaries, educational projects and commercial sound installations. Mastered from the vaults of the sought-after Deneb/Flirt/ Canopo library labels (home to some of the rarest records by Fabio Frizzi, Giuliano ‘Raskovich’ Sorgini, Gerardo Iacoucci, Alessandro ‘Braen’ Alessandroni amongst others) these rare tracks reveal Daniela Casa in her most fertile environment (composing as a young mother) in both a solo capacity and alongside incredible Italian session musicians, often sharing release schedules and track lists with her maverick maestro husband Remigio Ducross. These multi-layered musical images remain as vibrant and authentic today as they did thirty-five years ago. Close your eyes and unravel the Sovrapposizione Di Immagini...

[engl] Loup Gangloff is Danse Musique Rhône-Alpes, half of Deux Boules Vanille, who hits, among other things, on wooden brackets. DIY clubbing. A techno, so square in the soul, made with a wobbly appartus, just so we are always anticipating him to take a tumble. We're at the funfair, around the ghost train: "Do you want some more ?"

[engl] Their self titled debut, which consists of four caustic dekompositions, is a bleak and industrial thing filled of layered percussion, wild power electronics, masked vocals and hostile guitars. It starts with sharp stabbing loops and almost jump scares in the first track, moves to a throbbing dystopian rhythm, anxiety builds to climax and teases release by the end of the side. The flip slowly creeps back down to the uncertain hell that we started in. A constant nightmare. A continual circuit exposing issues of imperfection, overstimulation and misrepresentation. This is unpleasant musick. 300 copies of 150gr translucent red vinyl housed in a 24pt reverse board jacket with an 8 page booklet and download card included. All art, recording and mixing by DEFECT PLAY. Mastering by Will Killingsworth.

[engl] The debut EP from Delish

[engl] Tension. Performance. Resistance - our Zonic Spezial documenting underground cassette culture in the latter years of the GDR caused quite a stir when it first appeared in 2006. A collaborative effort with the legendary ZickZack label and Verbrecher publishing house, “Spannung. Leistung. Widerstand. Magnetbanduntergrund DDR 1979-1990” (to give the work its full title) caused many lis- teners, especially those in the West, to prick up their ears in astonishment when they played the book’s accompanying CDs. This odd potpourri of swirling post-punk manifestations was compiled with solid interpretive authority by Bert Papenfuß, Bo Kondren, Bernd Jestram, and Ronald Lippok. They did, however, erroneously attribute one piece to Jörg Thomasius and Dieter Zobel’s Os- tkraut band Das Freie Orchester instead of the “Musik aus dem Regen” tape on their own Kröten Kassetten imprint. Whilst the Zonic Spezial itself has become an eminently collectible rarity, Bureau B succeeded in making at least parts of the musi- cal spectrum available to a wider international audience with their 2014 release “Magnetband”. Serendipitously coinciding with the publication of a second book, “Magnetizdat DDR” (no listening material this time around), Bureau B now revisit the experimental electronic underground of the German Democratic Republic with two releases: “Acht Gesänge der schwarzen Hunde”, a collection of Jörg Thomasius productions spanning the years 1980 to 1990, and “MEZ 31,00” by Dieter Zobel aka Didier Leboz, recorded in 1988 and released as a solo Kröten cassette in the watershed year of 1989. Das Freie Orchester emerged from the off-centre environs of Prenzlauer Berg in 1985 as a wild and outstanding descendent of the so-called Komplexbrigade. Ever open to progressive tendencies, with a strong predilection for all things Kraut (including Can, of course) and emboldened by the GDR free jazz which was sweeping the international scene as well as the Treptow Cultural Centre, upstairs and downstairs, the orchestra wholly identified with the concept of free expression: everything was improvised. As seriously as they took their sonic explorations, their love of unserious paronomasia was just as pronounced. Dieter Zobel, first and foremost DFO guitarist, dreamed up the Leboz brand name for the instruments he had built himself, then took DFO-speak a step further by christening his devices sadophone and masophone or Metallic Noise Masturbator, names which only served as rough approxima- tions of the bizarre sounds they generated. “MEZ 31,00” was actually a rather more conventional production, based on a Yamaha CX5M purchased with Western currency left to him by his grandmother. The Yamaha would also spawn a further and possibly superior Zobel Kröten tape by the name of “Moschus”. Zobel, it should be said, was not so thrilled with the instrument, bemoaning the fact that “it was pretty hopeless, you couldn’t use it with a mouse and the MS DOS operating system was a nightmare. Today it would just get laughed at.” The only plus point he could find was its sound: “actually quite decent, eight voices with eight different sounds and multi timbral at that. An abso - lute first back then!” The sequencer in particular was “hellish, you could only enter musical notation, there was no undo function and you couldn’t even record keyboards manually! There was no way you could listen to individual parts, you had to play back the whole thing to listen out for wrong notes and then write everything down on paper.. ouch! When you played faster sequences with lots of notes, it starting stuttering. But what the heck ...” Clearly not everything was perfect in the (Far-Eastern) electric West! Zobel, fascinated then and now by minimal music in the style of Steve Reich and Terry Riley, nevertheless got to grips with the “in- fernal machine” and emulated the compositional techniques of the aforementioned masters he so revered. He layered numerous loops of the same sequence but of different length to create concentrated polyrhythmic forms. Those in the know were reminded of contemporary Japanese ambient works, including Hiroshi Yoshimura’s early albums or Yasuaki Shimizu’s "Music For Commercials". In spite of his toils with tricky equipment, Zobel took his initial steps in algorhythmic composition, largely using his own devices. For around 20 years he has been crafting sequencers, samplers, synths or effects with Native Instruments Reaktor. From hardware to software: it’s a tough habit to break. Freestyle remains the modus operandi for Das Freie Orchester, who recently came together for a final album, but Zobel has also discovered his love for dub.

[engl] Sharing social circles and spiritual ideologies with artists such as Iasos, Connie Demby and Deuter, whilst splitting label release schedules with Laraaji, Laurie Spiegel and Wendy Carlos, the unique Florida raised soul mate duo known as Emerald Web released their privately pressed debut LP at an axis where post-prog rock met proto-new age and ambient electronic music. At the turn of the 1980s Bob Stohl and Kat Epple embarked on a ten-year spir- itual journey playing at planetariums and laser shows above the same Californian silicon city that devised the early computer music software, unify- ing their state of the art modular synth soundscapes and organic compositions of flutes, bells and field recordings and furnishing a self-pressed cassette tapeography of inimitable Emerald Web music for their self-funded Stargate label. Having first communicated via the medium of music as flute players at a South Florida jam session the future space music luminaries would be instru- mental in assisting synthesiser companies via feedback and consultancy in developing instruments such as the Lyricon wind synth (favoured by Suzanne Ciani and Bruno Spoerri) and various sponsored machines for Arp, Buchla, EML, Computone and Orchestron. Named after a laser show formation and combining influences from science fiction films, fantasy novels and a broad musical spectrum including Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, It's A Beautiful Day and Goro Yamaguchi, Bob and Kat would balance day jobs as synth program- mers as well as TV and film soundtrackers under the moniker BobKat Productions (counting microscope nature documentarian Carl Sagan amongst their clients) with evening synthesiser shows at galleries, spiritual centres and even punk clubs. This compilation album comprises early tracks from Emerald Web’s debut vinyl release and the following four rare cassette only albums on Stargate Records from 1979-1982 before the band recorded their bestselling (and Grammy nominated) albums for labels affiliated with Germany’s Kuckuck and Larry Fast before Bob Stohl’s sad and untimely death in 1989. Taken from original master tapes and recorded using revolutionary and proto- typal music technology many of these tracks have never been on vinyl or CD until now. Finders Keepers are proud to have worked closely alongside Kat Epple as part of an ongoing Emerald Web/BobKat archival project making these important early electronic/organic musical hybrids available for fans of ambient krautrock, electronic soundtracks, musique concrete, electro and PINA enthusiasts alike. Welcome To The Valley Of The Birds.

[engl] Sharing social circles and spiritual ideologies with artists such as Iasos, Connie Demby and Deuter, whilst splitting label release schedules with Laraaji, Laurie Spiegel and Wendy Carlos, the unique Florida raised soul mate duo known as Emerald Web released their privately pressed debut LP at an axis where post- prog rock met proto-new age and ambient electronic music.Sharing social circles and spiritual ideologies with artists such as Iasos, Connie Demby and Deuter, whilst splitting label release schedules with Laraaji, Laurie Spiegel and Wendy Carlos, the unique Florida raised soul mate duo known as Emerald Web released their privately pressed debut LP at an axis where post-prog rock met proto-new age and ambient electronic music. Notes by Kat Epple When originally released, one music reviewer described Whispered Visions as: “A cosmic tapestry of sound, woven with threads of shimmering synthesizer timbres and luminous flute melodies” This album was made using early synthesizers, sequencers, Lyricon and flutes. When it was recorded in 1980 our synths were regarded as “state of the art” technology. Originally released exclusively on compact cassette it was our second of a total of fourteen independent releases. The band Emerald Web consisted of Bob Stohl and myself and our goal was to create innovative synthesizer orchestration and blend electronic music and acoustic instruments. From 1978 to 1990 we recorded, toured and performed in planetariums whilst composing soundtracks for Carl Sagan, amongst others. Bob and I were consultants for (and were lucky enough to be sponsored by) companies and individuals that were creating the latest music technology. At the time Emerald Web was one of the few “Space Music” bands which performed live in concert using synthesizers and sequencers, most of which had volatile memory and no pre-set sound banks. Unfortunately, Bob passed away in 1990. Since then I have continued to compose music for film and perform in concert as a solo artist, as Emerald Web and with various other ensembles.

[engl] “In 2010, I was searching for old records in the city of Quetzaltenango in Guatemala. I found myself in a dusty basement which had been in another time the warehouse of Iximché, a rock-o-la machines distributor. It was an exciting discovery, two big rooms full of old 45s but also dust and rat’s dung. Among some incredible finds, I found two strange private 45s which had been released by local drink company. The song titles, “Brujería” (“Witchcraft”) and “Transmutación del iniciado” (“Transmutation of the initiated”) matched perfectly with the abstract psychedelic/electronic instrumental Moog sounds emanating from the grooves. I was fascinated and I knew I had a mission: to discover and tell the world the story behind Emilio Aparicio Moog. After seven years, I finally managed to locate all of his recordings, eight in total.” – Ruffy Tnt (Discodelic) Emilio Aparicio was an electronic experimental musician from Guatemala, a pioneer in using the MOOG synth in Latin America. He released a series of private 45s, recorded at his home studio in collaboration with his patron and producer, the painter Roberto Abularach. In 1969, Roberto travels to New York, where he purchases one of the very early models of the Moog synthesizers directly from Robert Moog. He brought it back to Guatemala and he gave it as a present to his friend Aparicio. It is during those years, 1969-1971, when the recordings included here, featuring primitive drum machines and the Moog synth, are registered. Most of the tracks were written at the country house of Abularach, where Emilio built his own home recording studio and where he spent long periods of seclusion. It is in this house where they also spent weeks experimenting with hallucinogens (LSD and Datura) in the company of other artists, painters, poets and musicians from the underground arts scene of Guatemala. The fruit of those two years of experimentation were released in less than one month as five volumes of a 45 housed in a generic picture sleeve and titled “Música Electrónica” (“Electronic Music”). These strange records were never sold at shops: they were given away in exchange of four corks of a local drink called Salvavidas Roja, related to Abularach’s family. As you can guess, the response was not that great, as the experimental music of Aparicio was too advanced for its time. Most of the 45s were destroyed and recycled and soon after Emilio created another experimental project, La Banda Plástica, releasing a couple of 45s for the biggest record label from Guatemala which also went nowhere. Aparicio’s music is a fascinating blend of primitive homemade electronics with Latin influences. Imagine “Psyche Rock” era Pierre Henry, Gershon Kingsley and Bruce Haack meeting Joe Meek at the Guatemalan jungle and you’re there. Emilio Aparicio passed away on 2012 . As his wife says, when he died and went to another dimension, it was as if he took with him all the energy from the electronic devices from their house: “it was a very strange thing, just everything died with him.” Here’s for the first time ever the collected works of this unsung DIY hero which will blow the mind of any vintage electronica fan.

[engl] On their self-titled debut album Etienne Jaumet and Fabrizio Rat, both trained pianists, re-invent their favourite instrument to make us hear it in a totally new way. While the former creates unusual sounds thanks to the rhythmic machines that accompany his piano, the latter uses this classical and romantic instrument par excellence to explore the techno sphere. "The basic idea of our duo is to confront the harmonic richness of the piano and the synthesizer through rhythm. To explore our interactions through live music. To develop new atmospheres thanks to the evocative power of unusual sounds. Somewhere between ambient and sound experimentation...'

[engl]  A masterful amalgamation of sinister tape loops and unsettling industrial clangs makes 'Denigration Rapture' a hypnotic conflagration replete with pulsing Kraut drones, sampled vocal/musical textures and crunchy power electronics. You can feel the unnatural barbs of the dark forces sinking in while they slowly lull you down to depths and hold you there forever. Drown in this glory. Like the other singles in series 3, there are 300 copies on black vinyl with hand stamped labels housed in a hand stamped j-card sleeve. A one-time pressing.

[engl] From humble beginnings as a do-everything-yourself-because-people-aren't-ready-for-your-vision-yet basement rapper in "The Biggest Little City" (the underground of the underground) comes the rarified and clarified aural juggernaut known as FRKSE. Using a combination of tape loops, power electronics, sampled sounds, synths and some other stress inducing mysteries, FRKSE has found a unique place in the universe. A turbulent plane nestled somewhere between chattering industrial clamor and automatous world meditation. "Desecration Anxiety II" further projects visions of a tormented nirvana beyond the light of consciousness, an uncertain stillness. 300 copies of 150gr black vinyl housed in a 24pt reverse board jacket with insert and download card (though there are vinyl only tracks that are not included in the download). Artwork based on "Desecration Anxiety I" created by DAS/Auris Apothecary. Photography by Reid Haithcock. Mastered by April Golden.

[engl] Another shrouded in mystery album from the Pyramid label, produced by Toby Robinson in Cologne circa 1974. Kosmische and Head sounds with plenty of Minimoog, analogue synths / keyboards, effects, loops, tape manipulation, treated percussions, etc., courtesy of Galactic Explorers, an electronic, minimal, ambient krautrock trio featuring Reinhard Karwatky (Dzyan). Take a trip to the inner regions of your mind, see ancient solar systems forming and listen to cosmic winds and vibrations while sine waves of pure bliss will give you total peace of mind...

[engl] One of our favorite Mississippi releases yet -- the transcendent piano of the classically trained Ethiopian nun Emahoy Mariam-Tsegue Guebrou (Gebru). This is the second LP in our ongoing series of releases of Emahoy Guebrou's back catalog -- all tracks that are nearly impossible to find on vinyl. More 1960s recordings of her unique solo piano performances -- somewhere between Erik Satie, Debussy, liturgical music of the Coptic Ethiopian Church, Ethiopian traditional music, and a touch of the divine. A spiritual salve for troubled times. Old-school tip on jacket with gold foil.

[engl] A most unusual & stunning album. Tsege Mariam Gebru is an Ethiopian nun who has dedicated her life to helping others. She has been composing & playing music on the piano since the 1960’s. Her music is a unique mix of Western classical music in the vein of Erik Satie, Ethiopian music & Religious Christian meditation music. On this reissue of her first LP, originally released in Germany in a very small pressing, we find Tsege Mariam Gebru playing her own compositions solo on piano. She plays with restrained grace & purity. The record invites repeated listening well and is filled with spiritual warmth. We are very proud to present this LP – the first in a series of records we will be releasing with music culled from the monumental Ethiopiques CD series. We firmly believe that she is among the very greatest piano players and composers of all time.

[engl] Combining all the traits of an international superhero or intrepid comic book adventurer, the true identity, whereabouts and history of the spectacular Italian composer known as Gerardo Iacoucci has been a mystery to record collectors for many years. As a result of the best efforts of secretive archivists and DJs as well as and the overprotective force field that surrounds the clandestine world of Italian library music, the commanding experimental psychedelic pop music made singlehandedly by this early pioneer of the anti-genre time after time rises to the top of collectors’ want lists, commands huge ransom notes, ignites dancefloors and decimates genre tags before returning to its mythical status as one of the kings of the underworld without removing his mask. Despite the fact that original Italian copies of records by Gerardo Iacoucci are amongst the rarest, enigmatic fixtures of European psychedelia, his music simply refuses to be ghettoised and as the name of this album suggests the history of this artist reads like the memoirs of a genuine musical adventurer as well as a well-travelled prophet of experimental music and unsung pillar of Italian jazz and sound design. Recorded in early 1970, Iacoucci’s wide-eyed L’Avventura suite spanned 6 sides of loud, heavyweight monophonic vinyl for Romano Di Bari’s Deneb label and created an epically detailed blueprint for independent mood music companies whilst sharing release schedules with likeminded workaholics Alessandro Alessandroni and A. R. Luciani. However, Gerardo’s adventure didn’t begin here…

[engl] Following up their initial cassette release ‘Tropical Income Tax’, Providence/NYC based holiday hypnotherapists Hand Of Food have returned and invite you to luxuriate in a perverted idea of paradise with their debut LP, ‘Swimming Mindlessly’. Despite coming from noise rock and damaged electronic backgrounds, the band sits in an odd nether region somewhere between a brutalized ambience or conceptual exotica, while at times dipping a toe into the self-help section. The record plays like the warped audio brochure for a struggling resort town, luring you in with motivational rhetoric and a transparent facade of tranquility. Although your instincts tell you something is off and the regional jokes are all lost on you, an all-inclusive vacation deal this good hasn’t landed in your inbox in a while so you go ahead and book the trip anyways. The opening track Sign Of The Lemon would have you believe everything is fine — lush pads, chimes, and 100% real flutes commingle harmoniously — you made the right choice. As your stay progresses similar instrumentation takes a more anxious turn. A professional voice-over artist or possibly the cruise captain interjects to insist that everything is ok, but hazy ambient atmospheres lead to reflection on the flight over, to all the decisions that led you here, and ultimately, regret. Doing your best to keep those spirits high, Chelo’s By The Sea whisks you away to the on-site cocktail lounge for some of the resort's complimentary entertainment, an evening with ‘legendary’ resident crooner Publicity Dave. But by the time the album's title track new-age dirge rolls around it’s clear things have taken a turn for the worse. A catastrophe of some sort has occurred and a strained voice pleads for mercy through a cacophony of eyewitness accounts. Against all odds relaxation is finally achieved when renowned audio book narrator Rebecca Mitchell’s soothing meditation picks you up, dusts you off, and guides you to a seemingly permanent place of peace. Swimming Mindlessly dislocates the typical island narrative cliches to articulately illustrate tropical disarray and tell the story of a retreat gone awry. A transportive listening experience taking you directly to the heart of beach-bum dystopia. Judging by this record the Google reviews comment section for the Hand Of Food travel agency would be a treasure chest of pure gold.

[engl] A pivotal figure in Düsseldorf’s Salon Des Amateurs, Stefan Schwander has already amassed a remarkably rich musical reper- toire. Through his Harmonious Thelonious project, he has spent the past dozen years exploring the worlds of Pan-African, South Ameri- can and Middle Eastern rhythms in combination with a minimalistic electronic sound, distilling his very own groove from the point at which they converge. His new album - challengingly entitled “Cheapo Sounds” - sees Schwander move away from tried and trusted recipes.

[engl] This is the reissue of a 1958 album by Henk Badings and Dick Raajmakers (aka Kid Baltan) composers, arrangers, conductors and pioneers in the field of electronic music. The 1968 release „Evolution & contrasts“ contains the same recordings as the 1958 „Electronic music“ album. But what exactly do these nowadays scarce as gold dust albums. Bading and Raajmakers create electronic soundscapes with a rather creepy atmosphere. This stuff is different to the 50s avant garde classic as well as to the more pop oriented electronic albums of the same time. Badings „Capriccio for violin and two sound tracks“ can be seen as strange dialogue with sloping melodies between the violin and unidentifiable electronic devices that gives you goosebumps. It has a rather picturesque approach and might be used for early horror flicks as accompanying music for the horrifying scenes. The amazing fact is that this music still sounds fresh and exciting even nearly six decades after its initial release. The lengthy „Genese“ on the other hand is a lengthy composition of chirping, bubbling and droning sounds swelling and ebbing away in regular intervals. Cosmic music of the highest order. Some sections also feel like an intergalactic information transfer signal of unknown origin. All in all a very spooky and haunting affair. Interesting how electronic music already went back in the late 50s while most people consider the late 60s and early 70s as heydays for electronic experiments and cosmic sounds. Well, here we get to listen to the pioneers of this genre and they really do it well. Raajmakers even had a hand in writing groovy dance compositions when collaborating with Tom Dissevelt. He used the pseudonym Kid Baltan at these occasions. Anyway, this is quite a different thing. This is dark and utterly strange. „Contrasts“ by Raajmakers is a mixture between funny swirling sounds that make you think of a quick tempered discussion between little androids and menacing drones in the back that soon gets interrupted by single blows and hisses with frightening howls far in the back. This is definitely an album for true enthusiasts of strange electronic sounds who even consider early TANGERINE DREAM as fluffy pop music. Far out, folks, far out and therefore just great.

[engl] For the uninitiated the composer of the music on this record is also a master craftsman who throughout the 1980s combined his off-the-wall ideas and sky high expectations using craft, experi- mental technology and a trusted team of participants to help con- coct some truly bizarre local produce in mass quantity without compromise. Ilaiyaraaja, known to his family as Gnanadesikan, and to many of his zillion strong fan base as Isaignani (meaning musical genius in Tamil) represents the epitome of a nostalgic national treasure especially for a single solo composer in the Tamil micro music industry. His euphoric electrified music of the 70s and 80s (and beyond) captures every essence of joy and jubi- lation and is still used in celebration as much as it is celebrated in its own right. Ilaiyaraaja, a man of humble physical stature, sparsely equipped with a self-sufficient studio of compact elec- tronic devices literally COMMANDS celebration with his single handed symphonies. Defying any fair comparisons in the Western world (besides inad- equate parallels to Joe Meek and Jean-Pierre Massiera) it is also virtually impossible to find similar electronic mavericks in the East. Imagine a mixture between Turkey’s Ilhan Mimaroglu and the acidic synthesiser ragas of Charanjit Singh and you're still left short of the songs. Essentially, Ilaiyaraaja is to the local Kollywood film industry what RD Burman/Bappi Lahiri or M.Ashraf/Tafo are to Bollywood and Lollywood but then remember that Ilaiyaraaja is a one-man band, with a single vision and zero competition. This compilation reveals more tasty treats from Finders Keepers ongoing obsession with The Crown Prince Of Tamil Pop - focus- ing on his growth in the mid-1980s as a confident young compos- er adding freak pop fuel to the flickering flame of Kodambakkam's Kollywood film industry, while embracing domestic synthesiser technology and fusing the power of electro and synth pop to his Carnatic canon.

[engl] From the cosmic creative musical mind of Swiss/Catalan studio whizz, Zeleste Nightclub engineer, Video Nasty film composer, occasional Jaume Sisa (Mu?sica Dispersa) collaborator and future electronic music therapy pioneer comes the synth- ridden vocoder-loaded 1984 sci-funk soundtrack to Barcelona’s daytime TV response to the universal E.T. phenomena. Get ready to meet your new alieni?gena amic and the unidentified flying object of thousands of Catalonian kids affections through the 1980s as Finders Keepers present J. M. Pagan’s lost lunar modular synth score to Kiu I Els Seus Amics (Kiu And Friends aka Kiu Is Your Friend). From the same intergalactic phenomenon that brought such delights as Turkey’s exploito cash-in “Badi” or South Africa’s lo-rent homage “Nukie” to our unregulated small screens, and the same craze which filled international airwaves with the likes of Extra T’S electro smash single “E.T. Boogie” or the million selling Columbian “Cumbia De E.T. El Extraterrestre” smash hit… not to mention a wide range of unofficial theme- tune cover versions from Holland, Austria, France and Germany (lest we forget an inspired late period Lee Scratch Perry Album) the creators of the movie which inspire the music on the album you are about to hear made no bones about their intergalactic muse. In 1982 the diaspora from Steven Spielberg’s small fictional mid-American neighbourhood that played host to everyone’s favourite torch fingered, three toed, Skittle scoffing space goblin touched virtually every family home in every major city resulting in one of the biggest cinematic merchandise phenomenas of the 21st century, resulting in an unexpected high-demand/short-supply play-off in which bootleggers, copyists and counterfeiters rose to the challenge like never before. At the precise moment that international audiences saw that cute little baldy poke his retractable neck around the corner and started stealing beer from the fridge, demanding long distance phone calls while circuit bending kids toys and frankly not looking after the plants… the human race was hooked! and we wanted more! more! more! When Spielberg regrettably told interviewers that he had no intention of making a sequel to E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, it instantly became open-season for the imitators… but way before somebody squeezed- out, Mac & Me, ALF and The Purple People Eater a team of kid’s TV executives in Catalunya were ready to fill the widening gap in the market without haste. Created in 1983 by Luna Films and Televisio? de Catalunya (TV3) and screened exclusively in Catalunya, Kiu I Els Seus Amics was one of the first E.T. “tributes” to make it out of the gate, and with a crew of five individual directors and writers to ensure that the five episode, one-off series hit the wave of phone-home-fever, “Kiu” has since remained a short but sweet micro-memory in the hearts of an entire generation of Catalonian cosmonauts.