Georg Hahn and Wolfgang Nocke's sublime Delphine (Germany, 1984)

Well, what would you say to a cover like that?  That the music must be good, it has to be, it cannot be a disappointment with such effort put into its appearance?  Well, if records were like women, it might not be the case, given how uninteresting most beautiful women are in conversation...  but records are not women, thank god, they don't talk to you for hours at the end of the day describing in minute detail each boring thing that happened to them at work and assuming we know every one of their colleagues and how much they hate that one woman at work who is such a lazy bitch and everyone hates her...  no, this is even more interesting on the inside.

A really gorgeous jazzy new age album with keyboards, strings, flutes, and indescribable quantities of good ideas and beauty.  The long composed track on side b called "The Forest" is the stunning highlight, divided into three parts, "Lichtung," "Wind," and "Herbst:"  

This track to me, is heaven.  Dig the herbst these artists put into that composition.  The unabashedly beautiful classical European chamber music tradition shines through the forest like a morning sunrise.  It should have closed out the album, because, with a kind of abrupt static shock to the skin there follows a track called "Samba" which, as is customary in these cases, is utter garbage and irredeemably awful, at least for myself.

I note on reading the gatefold that Nocke is the artist for this (beautiful, inside and outside) work.  Each painting was 'put to music':  thus the cover is Delphine (track A1), the inner is Dschungel (A2), and the rear is called Venedig (A3).  The amazing flute playing is from Klaus Dapper, and Wolfgang Florey plays the cello with such emotion.  Hahn is responsible for all composition, arrangements, and naturally, keyboards (as well as accordion on the track called "Pierrot").

La Camargue from Germany 1982 (gorgeous acoustic guitar duelling)

A gorgeous cover painting as we can all agree.  The Camargue of course is that French marshy park that is as famous to them as it was boring to us upon visiting it some years back.  Of course to this we will hear the French say, "Je suis la Camargue!" to which I can only answer, "super, vachement chouette!" and "s'il vous plait garcon, ne pisse pas dans mon cafe!"  But truly, we love the French, especially their toast. How could we forget the time we brought our two kids there many years ago and were told strollers were not allowed on the grounds of the aeroport Charles de Gaulle and our six-month old boy was forced to walk even though he had not yet learned to crawl?  We all learned so much that day! Or the time the Starbucks in Paris near the city hall told us they didn't have milk for our coffees?  Or recall that beautiful cafe in front of la Cathedrale de Chartres where we couldn't sit because children were not allowed on pain of arrest?  Or when we went to Galeries Lafayette and fed our kids croissants to keep them occupied and were told to clean up their crumbs in the womens shoe department or we couldn't purchase anything?  How quickly we ran away from that floor-- a tragedy for my wife, less so for myself.  Or that time we went to Versailles and my wife suffered a nosebleed and rushed to the only washroom on the palace grounds (which cover 100s of  hectares) but had to stand in line for half an hour behind dozens of uncomfortable women who didn't permit her past?  And then some kilometers down the grounds I finally found another washroom to my relief-- but upon entering saw all the toilets had overflowed and poop was seeping down the floors?  Sure, I thought, this must be an authentic evocation of the revolution, when the peasants stormed the palace...  or what about that little chichi toy store behind the Palais Royal where the owner yelled at our children for touching the rubber giraffe toy?  No, they certainly were not welcome there, and yours wouldn't be either, unless you go to Fauchon at Place Madeleine and pay 8 euros for one little eclair au chocolat, 2 cm long.  Perhaps it seems a little impolite to make fun of the French at this time, but I am Charlie too, aren't I?  ...aren't I?  Non?  Well OK it's obvious I will never be accepted as Charlie, not even if I spoke the language perfectly, wore a beret, and bought a baguette every morning and carried it in the back of my bicyclette, no, they will still sneer at me behind my back and behave as if I am trampling all over their precious land, me and my kids who spilled crumbs all over Paris next to the never-picked up dog poop on sidewalks...  so I guess it's time to start a new movement here, "je ne suis pas Charlie, monsieur!  et ne pisse pas dans ma biere-- merci!!"

Oddly enough this record is from Germany.  The players are Rainer Pomplun and Uwe Schreckenberger (what a name!)

The beautiful title track:

Mean and Dirty - Patchwork Library - Music DeWolfe from 1978

Here's a fabulous library record that I hope wasn't available heretofore.  In any case, I will post a lossless by permission of the record's rightful owner and lay it open to the group to remove any scratches and clean it up just like what was done (several times in fact!) with the Don Juan record, and I thank you again for taking the time to clean up that scratchy record (not 'scratches' in Russia, of course, just beauty marks).

What we have here is a typical library group of different moods and atmospheres but with enough of that seventies funky vibe to make it really a joy to listen to.

I'll just use the first track as example:






And I note with some degree of amusement, as should you, the price of this item (which was not so high by luck on ebay naturally).

http://www.discogs.com/Patchwork-Mean-And-Dirty/release/2852731

Simeon Shterev Quartet (1978, Bulgaria ) [recommended]

More fantastic Bugarian fusion?  Yeah, you better believe it.  Similar to the Vesselin Nikolov but with more basics of the fusion style, including synthesizers and standard riffology.

Here's the superb Sunset-sunrise track;






Many thanks again to my friend for discovering this record!!

Mark Emney (composer) with 1983's Spectrum, New Southern LIbrary [with lossless]

Boy these library records are really hit and miss.  There are some incredibly brilliant ones, of which I'll post a masterpiece shortly which I bought to rerip, it was posted before in the blogosphere.  I don't know if this one was posted before or not but I bet it wasn't and if it was, I would surely have forgotten of its very existence.  It just seems as if it was 'phoned in' inside of actually composed in a meticulous manner as we are so accustomed to from such brilliant artists as Alessandroni or Giordano.  And it's pretty rare for me to not find anything worth listening to one whole library record.

Here's a track called "Daydreams and Beyond:"