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Urban75 Album of the Year 1974

Alessandro Alessandroni - Prisma sonoro
Alessandroni worked with Ennio Morricone and did the twangy guitar bits in The Good, The Bad & The Ugly soundtrack, he also did the whistling parts in The Dollars Trilogy & Once Upon A Time In The West. He knocked out a fair few film soundtracks himself [40+], this one isn't a soundtrack but it is a masterpiece of lounge / library music.

 
Two looped echo guitar albums.

We have the final one of these from Achim Reichel, Autovision. It's got more standard rock groove than the previous and it wasn't well received and he gave up on the progressive/avant garde and went back to his pop career, he would be back two years later with an album of sea shanties. Still, Autovision is probably a bit underrated IMO.

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More interesting is Günter Schickert's debut Samtvogel. Wobbly guitar notes, whispered vocals and deeply psychedaelic.

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What an album cover, too!
 
Another odd little one off krautrock album from Kaputter Hamster. Not on Spotify so I'm just going to post the youtube link here.



It's a little on the amateurish side. It could be tighter - put it that way. But that just doesn't bother me, it's got strong ideas, good songs and it's light and quick and pootles on like it's gently burning.
 
OK I've got a euro-avant-jazz-rock-space-rock/electronica Spotify list going. What I've talked about already mostly and a bit more. I'll add to it as I go. A more straight prog rock one to follow.



What? Well I think it's good.
 
Another one not on Spotify and not on that list. Between - Dharana. This represents the side of "krautrock" (not even rock here really) that's less talked about ie. the world music or south asian or middle eastern plunderings. This one is really chill and trance. Very clean production and sounds very modern.

 
Final(?) krautrock roundup.

Another one off from Sand. Golem is a completely unique minimalist and very downbeat combination of rock electronica. Not a happy record at all but has a really strong atmosphere to it.

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If you cast your mind back four years we (Killer B iirc) briefly mentioned Missus Beastly's debut which was fairly typical for 1970 - grungy organ driven rock. They broke up and reformed a few years later with a very different line up. This is much more in the jazz rock vein and with a clean sound, more complexity and some experimentation. The first track is great.

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Exmagma's second album Goldball. Nothing to do with Magma. Wild weird jazz-rock. I don't think there can every be too much wild and weird jazz rock in the world.

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Dzyan - Electric Silence. The third, last and most experimental album from Dzyan. Jazz and sitars and improvisation and noise but somehow in a coherent way.

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I do strongly recommend the Sand and the Dzyan, though neither will be for everyone.
 
Oh and of course the two Can entries this year!

I think Soon over Babluma is great. The first without Damo and last really good one. There's no drama on this, just long meditative but oddball songs. Dizzy, Dizzy is fantastic and catch Quantum Physics at the very end.

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And whereas the above is underrated a bit. Limited Edition (later rereleased with more material as Unlimited Edition) is incredibly underrated. It may even be my favourite Can album. Archival. Lots of odds and ends they recorded in their studio. A lot of it is strange "ethnological forgeries", odd bits of acoustic meanderings. But the thing is, there is very little else out there like it, including on other Can albums. And the whole thing just vibes.

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Oh and of course the two Can entries this year!

I think Soon over Babluma is great. The first without Damo and last really good one. There's no drama on this, just long meditative but oddball songs. Dizzy, Dizzy is fantastic and catch Quantum Physics at the very end.

View attachment 432854


And whereas the above is underrated a bit. Limited Edition (later rereleased with more material as Unlimited Edition) is incredibly underrated. It may even be my favourite Can album. Archival. Lots of odds and ends they recorded in their studio. A lot of it is strange "ethnological forgeries", odd bits of acoustic meanderings. But the thing is, there is very little else out there like it, including on other Can albums. And the whole thing just vibes.

View attachment 432855

Not family with the second, but do believe that post-Damo Can is often underrated. Good call!
 
Sooo unfashionable but Crime of the Century is a brilliant album.



Second gig I ever went to (and I know the date without looking it up) was Supertramp at Southampton Gaumont (now Maylflower) on 19th December 1975. They started with the excellent "School" from this album, though a lot of their set was from their subsequent, then new, release "Crisis, what crisis?" which was nowhere near as good.
 
Cockney Rebel´s "The Psychomodo," another great album from this marvellous year, which I played to death on cassette at the time.....



I feel there are two tendencies on this thread: 1) me and the editor, who (being old bastards) are going back to things we actually loved at the time; 2) everyone else, who are retrospectively picking out something which would seem "cool" from a current perspective. :thumbs:
 
Cockney Rebel´s "The Psychomodo," another great album from this marvellous year, which I played to death on cassette at the time.....



I feel there are two tendencies on this thread: 1) me and the editor, who (being old bastards) are going back to things we actually loved at the time; 2) everyone else, who are retrospectively picking out something which would seem "cool" from a current perspective. :thumbs:

And 3) me, who is defiantly uncool (there's nothing I would have loved at the time, as I was 3 years old and living in Kingston, Ontario).
 
Cult/obscure classic warning. Knotted

Oliver- Standing Stone .
...recorded in early 1974 at a remote farm in Wales, using a portable 4-track Teac reel-to-reel machine. Oliver sang and played acoustic and electric guitars filtered though tape echo, distortion and multi-tracking, creating a very unique sound, a kind of DIY mutant-psychedelic-blues (think Captain Beefheart) which sounded years ahead of its time. Despite the lo-fi nature of the recording, the sound quality is amazing and timeless.

Only 250 copies of the album were pressed and it even caught the attention of the Virgin label, who were interested in distribution but Oliver finally refused their offer. Musicians like JJ Cale expressed interest in Oliver’s music, inviting him to a jam session but in the end, Oliver decided he was not interested in the music business and left Wales to travel around Europe.

Anyway its fun listening

 
Plundering old music is something that happens as a natural matter of course now that it is so easily available. And I think it's the case that what people think of as representing a period is often quite distinct from what people were actually listening to at the time. I doubt most people were listening to Duke Ellington and Count Basie in the 1930's. So there is going to be a mismatch between those who were there and younger generations looking back. And actually I think there's a difference between how gen x look back how gen z look back. Old things go in and out of fashion.

But what I'm doing is mostly look at things that were never really known by most people at the time or for that matter today from years of digging around in this period. I think at this point in time there was a big separation from the "underground" and the mainstream in a way that didn't happen in say the 1960's. With a few exceptions - Kraftwerk and David Bowie and maybe even King Crimson for example might straddle the divide. But there's a lot of music from this time that was resolutely challenging, or peculiarly unique and largely ignored and still largely ignored. Some of it super cool, some of it actually quite cringey. But looking back it was a period where lots of things were bubbling below the surface and I love it.
 
Anyway on the super cool side of things here's the first Heldon album Electronique Guerrilla

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At this point really just a Rinchard Pinhas solo project. Big slow buzzing drone electronics and repetitious guitar arpeggios. Similar territory to those Eno+Fripp albums, but somehow warmer.
 
Cult/obscure classic warning. Knotted

Oliver- Standing Stone .


Anyway its fun listening


this is really great! i love this kind of heavy acid user back to the land energy
all out on bandcamp now and theres more!!
"Fans of “Standing Stone” will be blown away when they hear “Stone Unturned”, a previously unreleased second Oliver album, recorded also in 1974 at the farm and assisted by brother Chris. Performed by Oliver using a single mic, guitars and various effects devices, this is in the same vein as “Standing Stone” but even more loose and raw. Highly recommended to any acid folk / psych blues fan.

*Previously unreleased album from 1974 released for the first time"


--- at a quick dip i like most of all this though its best when he doesnt sing too much IMO. If I can be bothered Id compile my favourite tracks into one album i could listen to without having to skip
 
I feel there are two tendencies on this thread: 1) me and the editor, who (being old bastards) are going back to things we actually loved at the time; 2) everyone else, who are retrospectively picking out something which would seem "cool" from a current perspective. :thumbs:
i wasnt born in 74 but anyhow with all these threads i always find new-old music that i actually like and want to listen to - im sure thats the case for most everyone -= not sure where cool comes into any of this = people like the music that they like - your coolometer is like all in your mind man!!

sometimes when its threads from years i was alive in the albums i rinsed at the time sound dated, or not. most often not though, as they were cool then :D

as someone who struggles to find any new music that i like i really enjoy the forced process of going back and digging
+ all my old favourite albums from growing up are played to death so little joy to be found there
 
Two Italian fusion albums

Area - Caution Radiation Area
This is their second and most difficult to listen to album. This really goes hard and the last track is proper headfuck. Probably not the best Area album to listen to first but give it props for being properly wild. Also singer Demetrio Stratos was the best singer in known galaxy.

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Arti & Mestieri - Tilt

Not as adventurous as the above then what is. However this is incredibly tight and Furio Chirico was the best drummer in the known galaxy.

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Cult/obscure classic warning. Knotted

Oliver- Standing Stone .


Anyway its fun listening



Well there's a lot more acoustic folk in that than the description implies, but the contrast does seem to work well. I'm also trying to select the best track for my list and it's really difficult, it really is banger after banger.
 
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