Anthony Davis with his missing piece, Return from Space, 1985

Some very very beautiful artwork, and amazingly varied to boot, in his oeuvre.   You have two mosaic-like images, an abstract expressionist monochrome, the gorgeous sky-perspective photo of lying humans (Buddhist monks?) from his masterpiece Episteme 2, a surreal or fantasy cliff painting, a watercolour abstract, and then the second from bottom, a mix of cubism and more modern realist expressionism.  Really lovely stuff.  Note that after the mid-80s (link for discography below), in keeping with the zeitgeist, the gorgeous cover art disappears, and pretty quickly too.  Maybe coincidentally with the start of the CD era.

These are all the albums he made from the first Past Lives in 1978 to this rip, 1985's Return From Space, missing sadly so far from the digitalese cybersphere.  Until today that is.

From discogs:

Anthony Davis (born February 20, 1951 in Paterson, New Jersey) is an American composer, jazz pianist, and student of gamelan music.  Davis composed an opera entitled X (about Malcolm X), taught at Yale University, and has played with Anthony Braxton and Leo Smith. In 1981, he formed an octet called Episteme. He also wrote the incidental music for the Broadway version of Tony Kushner's Angels in America. He incorporates several styles including jazz, rhythm 'n' blues, gospel, non-Western, African, European classical, Indonesian, and experimental music.  Davis is with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and has received acclaim as a free-jazz pianist, a co-leader or sideman with various ensembles. Such ensembles include those which featured Smith as bandleader from 1974 to 1977.  Davis is professor of music at the University of California San Diego. His opera, Wakonda's Dream, is a tale of a contemporary Native American family and the history that affects them.  His latest opera, "Lilith" (libretto by Allan Havis) will have its world premiere at the Conrad Prebys Music Center in UCSD on December 4, 2009. The story is about Adam's first wife and will be set in a modern era.

From the blurb:

From The Original Soundtrack Recordings and The Original Compositions for Return From Space (Wonder Nonfiction)
Towa Production and Fuji Television Network Inc. Presents A Filmlink International Picture in association with Theodore Thomas Productions
Special Thanks To: NASA
℗ & © Gramavision Records

I don't see a lot of google for the show, whatever it was, possibly because it was Japanese, and made for TV (?).  Doesn't matter.  The lovely third track, Into The Outer Space [sic], sounds a lot like the best of ECM's Art Lande (E.g. Rubisa Patrol).  Flautist is Marty Ehrlich.





The often-mentioned Sea of Tranquillity is oddly hyperactive on this record, usually being represented by a droney one-chord synth a la early TD, and the composition with the sea of jostling horns reminds me a lot of my old favourite Berklee alumnus Paul Nash:





Everything was written by Anthony Davis, of course.  Some lovely arrangements here and there recalling his masterpiece Episteme.

I should of course dispense with the usual political comments about how the last landing on the moon was just under 50 years ago, how no one could ever have imagined that it would already be the end of non-earth exploration for humans, how this provides a very simple example to resolve (in an Occam's razor sense) 'Fermi's Paradox,' and how I don't expect any travel beyond the earth in the near or distant future with conditions as they are especially after the big Nov. election in the US and the looming world-changing tragedy of climate change that will soon irrevocably change all our lives for the remainder of humanity's time on the planet, may it at least be long. 
Really have to leave all that stuff out...
As James Vincent said, We're Space Travellers, on our way home...
Let us at least make our home last.

Level F - A Stitch in Time (recorded 1975-1980) [no download]

Without a doubt the best classic progressive rock I've heard in some years, surpassing even the Zopp from last post, this is easily available here on bandcamp and I urge everyone to download it.  It was never released back in the day (composed in the late 70s).  Sounds like anything from the past among the best we've ever heard, such as instrumental ELP, late-stage King Crimson, the exceptional Romanian band Ex Q, on these pages, I brought to light the very similar Radio Piece III, or, moving to the French zeuhl dept., the amazing Xalph record.

We're talking the real deal here, including bizarre chord changes, dissonances galore, tritones and minor seconds, strange instrumentation, strange melodies, etc., all the hallmarks of this utterly unique genre.  From their page:

A Stitch in Time is a set of recordings by Level F, a Prog Rock band that was active between 1975 and 1980 in Oxford. The line up was

Malcolm Levitt - guitar
Phil Bastow - keyboards
Simon Thorpe - bass
Mark Pilkington - drums

The recordings were made by Simon's cousin, Chris Thorpe, in a home studio at the top of his parents house - Whitegates, Sparken Hill, Worksop, UK. We think it was in the spring of 1979.

The album also includes three other bonus tracks that were recorded earlier at the Oxford University Recording Society's premises in North Oxford - probably in 1976. At that point, the band's keyboard player was Marc Sheffner who was replaced by Phil Bastow in 1977.
credits
released April 1, 1989

Malcolm Levitt - guitar
Phil Bastow - keyboards (tracks 1-13)
Simon Thorpe - bass
Mark Pilkington - drums
Marc Sheffner - keyboards (tracks 14-16)

Samples
Codifier, a near-perfect musical track for me, starts with a beautiful dissonant electric piano arpeggio atop of which a reverb-laden fuzzy electric guitar plays an angry melody, a third through, the tempo changes, the music accelerates, then, typical of our favourite prog, two-thirds through another complete change in direction with a very Canterbury-like, Mike Ratledge-like, more jazzy organ / synth soloing passage:





The following track called Caroline shows a phenomenal skill at original songwriting, and melodically is not only one of the best songs I've heard in a more library genre, but stands as a simply beautiful track on its own odd-chord-change terms:






What's more amazing still is that almost every one of the 16 tracks is very strong and original.
Not only a remarkable set of classic prog, but a wonderful discovery seemingly unadvertised and unknown even among those who collect this style.  Deserves to be well-known without a doubt.  Thank you to everyone who helps bring this music to the attention of humanity.

Zopp, limited time only

From the opening bell it's clear we have a pretty near-perfect replica of classic Hatfield, complete with the luscious female vocals:



Hard to believe this could have been released so recently, but at the same time it's clearly 'just' an imitation of the classic Canterbury style.  Of course I wouldn't complain if there was an infinity of music in that style to explore, but unfortunately, only a few dozen albums exist. 
From discogs:

Canterbury Scene, United Kingdom.
Zopp is the brainchild of composer and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Stevenson, with collaborations from Andy Tillison of prog legends The Tangent and drummer Andrea Moneta (Leviathan).

I can't tell if there's anything else from this amazing composer.
Note that because this is so easily available I can't really post for long, I encourage everyone to purchase the CD.

Dave Grusin (the famous guy) in a rare jazz album Don't Touch (1977)

A really really odd drawing for the cover, quite bizarre and perhaps attempting to be erotic, but to me it doesn't work.
Information here.  The contents are bizarre too, since I assumed they would be fusion given all the other material he was putting out in the mid to late seventies. But I was wrong, it's just trio format acoustic piano jazz covers of standards--the bane of my early jazz days.

There's a lot of really good music though in his fusioneer explorations, particularly in the 1976 Discovered Again album, which has plenty of wonderful compositions, the Sun Song with its nice Keith Jarrett-like piano chords plus vibes covers a lot of new and interesting compositional territory, I think:




Like with Jun Fukamachi, I put all the stuff together into one large file for limited time only use.
The albums are as follows: 1969 Winning (OST), 1975 Eric (OST), 1976 Discovered Again, 1977 One of a kind, 1977 Don't Touch, 1980 Live in Japan, 1980 Mountain Dance, 1982 LA dream band, 1982 Out of the shadows, 1984 Night Lines, 1989 Fabulous Baker Boys (OST) both album and movie which I really loved back in the day, 11 in total. 1.1 GB coincidentally.
Obviously I left out the execrable Tootsie.  The early soundtracks are really good though, with some well-composed music, sometimes very generic.  The Live in Japan and LA dream band are definitely worth hearing too.  Not the Theme from St. Elsewhere-- boy does that one make me want to puke. Takes you right back, doesn't it?  Chariots of Fire, Theme from St. Elsewhere, Theme from On Golden Pond...

Back to Hawkshaw in Themes, Rock Machine

While we're on the subject of library records, here's another little gem that took me completely by surprise.  In the database there are artists with releases all over the place and hard to search out due to the fact they are combined in VA albums.  I should've found this one before, but thanks to my friends who bring these out to the light, again.  Hawkshaw has been mentioned here many times before most recently in connection with occasional coconspirators Mansfield and Bennett.  As well the early year 1973 surprises in that highly progressive, funky or fusion elements usually appeared in these after the midpoint of the decade in general. The portion written by Alan Parker (all of the second side plus one track on the first) is also markedly inferior, kind of what you might, a priori, expect, consisting of pretty generic electric guitar riffs.  However the 5 Hawkshaw tracks are phenomenal through and through, just listen to that opening: