:: Available items from this Label ::
Blue Cheer / Outside Inside
(Vinyl LP – Akarma)
Outside inside is Blue Cheer’s second LP, released by Philips Records in August 1968. Its tracks were recorded both outdoors and indoors—hence the title of the album… The band would be forced to record some of the tracks at Pier 57 after getting kicked out of at least one studio for playing too loud.
Bruce Palmer / The Cycle Is Complete
(Vinyl LP – Akarma)
At the end of the 1960s, the rock landscape was changing so radically, in manners so counter to the way things had been done just a few years previously, that many albums found their way to major label release that could have never been given the green light in any other era. One of the strangest of those is Bruce Palmer’s The Cycle Is Complete, the sole solo album by Buffalo Springfield’s original bass player. The record was nothing if not uncompromising, consisting of four largely instrumental, improvised-sounding psychedelic-jazz-world fusion pieces that bore little relation to conventional rock music, or even to conventional structured songs.
Le Stelle di Mario Schifano / Dedicato A…
(Vinyl LP – Akarma)
An extraordinary & legendary record.
Little known in the world until a few years ago, Dedicato a… is among the most wanted and expensive Italian album nowadays. The Akarma reissue has finally given to many collectors the chance to hear an album that was only known by its fame.
Supported by the pop artist Mario Schifano (who was not a musician, by the way), in the same way that Andy Warhol acted with Velvet Underground, this band from Rome (though Crescentini and Marini were from Veneto and Cerra from Alessandria) was created in 1967 and released their first and only album the same year.
Bass player Crescentini, had briefly played before in the last incarnation of New Dada, a very popular garage-beat group.
Housed in an incredible gatefold cover, painted by Schifano himself, the album contains a side-long improvised track on side 1, with the long title of Le ultime parole di Brandimarte, dall’Orlando Furioso, ospite Peter Hartman e fine (da ascoltare con TV accesa senza volume), a surreal title just like the track itself and which gives a good idea of what the group’s music and live concerts were about.
May Blitz / May Blitz
(Vinyl LP – Akarma)
… If you can wrap your ears around a totally spaced out, lethargically aggressive attack of sheer acid-drenched blues, coated in the armor of that early anything-goes-and-everything’s-thrown-in experimentation of the proto-metal vibe, we’ve got another little, slightly bizarre treasure for you.
May Blitz / The 2nd Of May
(Vinyl LP – Akarma)
A gem of a find for Psychedelic/Progressive Rock fans. With only two albums to their name, May Blitz were very much like a ‘May Fly’ in the sense that they were here for a very short time, did some great things and then were gone!
LP 180 gram, thick paste on sleeve. This is the, harder to find, second album by British heavy prog rock icons May Blitz. Beginning with the agressive powerhouse “Mad Men Only”, the sound of the band is compact and immediate, bringing to mind the Groundhogs in certain moments. “Snakes And Ladders”, on the other hand, takes on certain gothic themes that are closer to Black Sabbath, while “Honey Coloured Time” has a jazz driven rhythm and “Just Thinking” is pure Pink Floyd psychedelia. This is a chance to rediscover this pillar of heavy rock with out having to pay the high price that original copies fetch.tudio for playing too loud.
Ultimate Spinach / Ultimate Spinach
(Vinyl LP – Akarma)
VERY LIMITED reissue in heavy weight carton cover. Contains 2 bonus tracks.
The unique blend of psych, jazz, rock, Gregorian vocals and Baroque instrumentation sets Ultimate Spinach apart from anything released at the time. It was legendary record producer Alan Lorber that came up with the concept of “The Bosstown Sound” — “The Sound Heard ‘Round The World” to market and promote the best and brightest of the Bean Town sixties psychedelic scene. (Boston’s key groups at the time included Orpheus, Beacon Street Union, Ultimate Spinach, Chamaeleon Church and others).
“The prototype of the Bosstown Sound!”
Ultimate Spinach / Behold & See
(2 x Vinyl LP – Akarma)
It was legendary record producer Alan Lorber that came up with the concept of “The Bosstown Sound” — “The Sound Heard ‘Round The World” to market and promote the best and brightest of the Bean Town sixties psychedelic scene. (Boston’s key groups at the time included Orpheus, Beacon Street Union, Ultimate Spinach, Chamaeleon Church and others). The Ultimate Spinach, arguably the finest of them all, produced magnificent examples of surreal psychedelic record-making, now prized by crate-diggers and outsider music fans alike.
The Spinach’s self-titled debut album is now considered a psychedelic classic, but it’s the group’s second record, Behold and See, that is perhaps their finest achievement. Ostensibly a concept album, it’s centered around lead singer/songwriter/keyboardist/guitarist Ian Bruce-Douglas’ cynical worldview. He skewers “normal” society with all the fervor of Zappa and all the surreality (and insanity) of Bob Markley on songs like “Visions of Your Reality” and the four-part “Suite: Genesis of Beauty.” Add in the lush, floating vocals of Barbara Jean Hudson, fuzz guitar and some great late-60s psych jangle and you’ve got the formula for an unhinged classic that stands up to the best of the non-coastal psych sounds of the late-60s.