Henry Now - Then Again, by request, limited time only

 

Henry Now:

The name was chosen by producer Max Marchini in occasion of the Henry Cow reunion in 2022. It consists of Fred Frith, John Greaves, Tim Hodgkinson and Chris Cutler.

This time discogs is right to describe it as improvised, avant-garde.  There is no composed music, so far as I can discern.  Recently released, therefore uploaded only limited time with no reups please.  First track sample:

Back to the HUJE band, part 2: the rare 1979, and 1982 LPs

 

From the 1979 album, databased here, a track called Myles Dream, written by Marsvyn David:

From HUJE 1982, the lovely and ingeniously winding melody of Outside my window:

Written by Grady Powell.  What happened to him, I wonder?

Back to the HUJE jazz band, Part 1: 1978 (Howard Univ. Jazz Ens.)

In the past were posted the 1981, 1983, and 1984.  Here are 3 more, starting with today's post of the 1978 installment, and many thanks to our friends who find these things and then are willing to pass them on to others to enjoy.  Information for this one on this page.  The summary on discogs:

Howard University Jazz Ensemble (HUJE), Washington DC, USA, was founded in 1975 by its director, Fred Irby, III. Outstanding performances in the United States, Europe, South America, Asia, and the Caribbean have caused it to be recognized as one of the foremost college jazz ensembles. HUJE has been heard on radio and television as well as in concert, often appearing with celebrated performers. Members of the HUJE have won awards as performers and composers/arrangers, and the ensemble includes among its alumni several practicing jazz artists. Additionally, the HUJE was featured during the 1992, 1996 and 2005 Kennedy Center Honors Gala (CBS-TV). The HUJE has released thirty-four recordings in a distinguished series that began in 1976.

34! wow.

A great sample track, St. Thomas by Night, by Marsvyn David:

Rubba with Ratledge, Jenkins, Giordano, et al., Library albums [Push Button 1979, In Motion 1980, Electra 1982, Movement 1982] -- ALL FLAC

 

I mentioned just recently how much I love Karl Jenkins.  Therefore it made sense to root around the landscape to see if he made more unknown or lost music somewhere, like that Linda Hoyle LP.

I guess him and famed Soft Machine Keyboardist Ratledge made some library stuff too. Some of it under this band's monikor, discogged here.  Note the impt. proviso there: 

Library act with different people involved depending on the record. Not a side project of Jenkins & Ratledge per se.

Looks like there are 5 LPs total, of which I post the first 4, leaving out the 1983 one.

From Push Button, Pop Stuff

From Giordano's In Motion, which rehashes earlier tracks from him that appeared elsewhere, the gorgeous So Softly:

From Electra, Lizard:

From Movement, Circles:

Alan Parker's Hot Ice, 1974 [FLAC limited time only]

 

One of the few Parker or Hawkshaw's I haven't yet posted, info here. Cover again by Nick Bantock.

Here are a few sample tracks, to give you an idea. His lovely Legend composition:

Hi-Jinks:

Best Friend:

Overall very pleasant music.

https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/9770e98d-45a8-4aa5-8d7f-202c354fbda2

new up of osamu shoji jataka

https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/7f1f5ccf-7703-4af2-a9a1-25dd3adb89e4

Robson Tapes - I Painted a Picture, 1986

I guess the cover doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in the contents here.  But I had to obtain this record, because we heard so much unbelievable stuff from him in the past.  Do you remember? The first ST one (1974) with the photo of the back of his head, then the equally amazing follow up Stay Awhile (1976).  These are legendarily beautiful lost albums of progressive vocal rock from Finland.

Frank Robson is discogged here thusly:

Profile: Born on April 27, 1946 in Bradford-on-Avon, England. Died on November 16th, 2024 in Lahti, Finland. A singer and pianist. He moved to Finland in 1967. His daughter Jenny Robson is also a singer.

I guess he was in Tasavallan P. too, the legendary Finnish prog rock outfit. 

Incidentally if you check out his discography, the 'Sings Nick Hanian' (1987) is quite ordinary and not worth hearing.

This LP is listed under Robson Tapes, the only release from this gathering, also interesting to me because it includes Nono Soderberg, recently posted here. I didn't listen to the CD 'Back in Business' the recent one (recent! from 1998 that is).

I think, but am not sure, the best track is Yesterday's News:

At any rate, gives you an idea of the contents. Along with that cover.

This is Boston Not LA, 1979 [protopunk] [FLACs]

 

Here's a total change in direction, I bought this out of curiosity in Boston. It's punk completely, but all unknown bands with some really crazy hard music from the heyday of that genre.  To give you an idea, from a band called fittingly enough The Proletariat, Allegiance:

Summers - Fripp 3 [I Advance Masked 1982, Bewitched 1984, Mother Hold the Candle Steady unreleased] FLAC limited time only

 

I was astonished to see that Andy Summers (The Police) had played together with the great Fripp, and for three releases no less.  These are unabashedly progressive instrumental music too, which is what you'd expect with the involvement of the latter, who was totally uncompromising in his career.  And this was in the early 1980s-- the era of Duran Duran, remember!  I am not sure MTV ever played prog rock in those days.  Maybe there was a program at 3 AM? I doubt it.  I am also unsure as to whether he made more progressive or fusion, because the connection with Police is a bit of a dissuader.  Having said that I think these 3 all are worth hearing, with the third one being unreleased material derived from the same time period. Everywhere there is the Frippian dissonant angular riffing.

Brainstorm, from Mother etc. gives you an idea:

Then I listened to this compilation of material just from Andy, which is new agey but pleasantly progressive, inventive, and interesting. For ex., A Piece of Time from the Windham Retrospective:

First from Last Exit... 1975 [FLAC limited time only]

With Gordon Sumner = Sting.  I think everyone can instantly recognize his unique voice in fact, anyone who might be older than about 35 maybe, that is, millenial or Gen X or god forbid baby boomer?  (I certainly would never ask a Gen Z to identify him.)

This band existed as of 1974 and I suppose was the first for bassist Sting (aged 23 at the time), with this cassette release from 1975 in the jazz-rock territory it's unusual to say the least.  It definitely surprised me, partly because it's quite approachable and listenable, with horn rock songs for the most part.  You'll note some of the later Police harmony vocal patterns on On This Train #2:

I would go so far as to say almost every song is not throwaway, showing the youthful creative energy you always encounter with music and musicians.

Album closes out with the lovely instrumental A Bit of Peace:

Huge surprise for me, who has never been a Sting fan and probably never will be without a head injury. Apologies to those who are.

Akropolis - Half a million hours symphony, 1979

 

Back to the classic prog sound with this lesser known one-off album from late in the era, this one is very similar to stuff like Thomas Flinter, my favourite Prisma, etc.  Discogged here, despite the artist name, it's a Danish band. Go Greenland!  Btw, half a million hours of course was the expected lifespan back then-- a surprising 57 years.  Probably that's related to too much sex and drugs.

Movement, Puberty:

Post-Osanna band Uno with their one-off from 1974

 

UNO:

Formed from the ashes of Osanna when the band split in 1974 by Elio D'Anna and Danilo Rustici along with drummer Enzo Vallicelli (from Hellza Poppin, who had played with Osage Tribe and Claudio Rocchi), Uno was a much-hyped band that went to England to record their first and only album with help from lyricist N.J.Sedwick and singer Liza Strike (of The dark side of the moon fame).

The album is not far from late Osanna style (Landscape of life-era), with four English-sung tracks and three in Italian, with songs like I cani e la volpe in evidence, but didn't reach the success the band hoped.

An English sung version of the album was released abroad, with a nice surreal cover designed by Hipgnosis (again a link with Pink Floyd), but didn't attract much interest.

The three-piece band worked well in studio but couldn't get satisfying results when playing live, so the help from Danilo Rustici's brother Corrado Rustici (from Cervello) on guitar and bass was requested for live appearances. From this expanded line-up came the inspiration for a new band, called Nova.

Enzo Vallicelli has kept playing (and still does it now, under his surname of Vince Vallicelli) as an appreciated blues drummer.

Hopefully everyone is familiar with ultrahigh-energy Italian Mahavishnu-like fusion band Nova too, which is just brilliant, especially 1975's Blink but also 1977's Wings of Love.

Interesting they mention Dark Side of the Moon, because I always though Goodbye Friend is a little bit too much of a homage or less gratuitously a copycat of The Great Gig in the Sky:

The most progressive track is 11 minutes long and called Uno Nel Tutti, it doesn't rise to the level of Il Baricentro or Banco or Gramigna, but it's still great, reminds me a lot of famed French proggers Pulsar, with the strong aforementioned Pink Floyd spacey influence:

Amazing cover graphics too!

Barry Coates and the Hats: Because I love you, 1983, and Move Like a Dancer, 1989

 

I noticed Barry played guitars on the previous masterpiece prog-fusion album.  (I'd known him from before, thanks to the great Move like a Dancer fusion album.)  His own databased page is here.

In the 80s he played with the smooth fusion band called Barry Coates and the Hats, and they put out 2 albums in that decade, the 2nd a bit better than the first, privately pressed.  From that first 1983 one, the closer called At Last:

While from the follow up LP/CD Dancer, 1989, there are quite a few beautiful compositions, augmented by a bit of a new age feel which is not altogether unpleasant in this circumstance or environment.  Consider the crystal-clear acoustic guitar on Hover Craft:

Probably we can agree the usual standard simplistic new age chord progressions are missing here.

Some nice thoughts and really fine ideas in there though, worth hearing a few times.

Tom Baker in Magic Language, from 1981, strongly recommended [limited time FLAC

 

Here's another stunning find, at least as good as the recent Petit - Best of all Possible Worlds, but in a different style, this is more along the lines of classic prog-fusion like (US) Mosaic.

Hard to believe, again, these brilliant progressive LPs still exist out there, unknown, unheard, neglected.

Information here.  Little to no info on the man:

Engineer, arranger and bassist. Worked with gospel artists in Cincinnati, Ohio area.

To my amazement I saw keyboard duties are by Peter Wolf, who we've seen before here. (His progressive masterpiece from 1980 was called Tutti.) 

Arrangements, compositions, and vocals are all from Tom Baker though.

The opener to the album says it all, Alpha-Theta-Omega:

And this is followed by the equally stunning Rainbow to Rainbow:

The album closes out with a really really shockingly beautiful tender song with harmony vocals and highly intriguing harmonies plus dissonances, it's called Love that has been Lost and it kind of reminds me of the intensely original songwriting of Brandes Ward MacLean:

Note the dissonant harmony vocal chord of the ending.  Like, wow.

It seems insane to me that someone could be so unknown yet write this most amazingly creative, original and progressive music, then disappear again.  There is not one bit of trite, simplistic 'by-the-numbers' type composition in here at all.  Every track is great in its own way, like a beautiful, talented family.

A note at the end:

“The greatest and unceasing thanks is reserved always for the Savior.”

Thanks indeed!
And in turn, many thanks to the readers / followers / commenters who contribute these suggestions / finds, from the bottom of my heart.

Little known lost Italian band Luna, with ex-Osanna, from 1978 to 1981

Very sweet music, similar to ssw materials presented here in the past from Ullu, Ping Pong (but less progressive), Gino D'Eliso, etc. I was very happy to find this album I'd never heard before, since I have such a weakness for that soft diatonic seventies sound (think legendary bands America, Bread).  

Starting with precursor Osanna which everyone here knows, you can see how complicated the story got after their 4th album Landscape of Life (1974):

Unfortunately things didn't go well between the group's members and the band came to a split during the Landscape of Life recording sessions, producing a sparse album...  

Danilo Rustici and Elio D'Anna, with drummer Enzo Vallicelli, went to England to form Uno, while remaining members Lino Vairetti and Massimo Guarino gave a new life to their old band Città Frontale, this time with new musicians and recorded an album in 1975 called El Tor.

Things were not so good for both the newly formed bands and Osanna reunited in 1977 with new members Enzo Petrone (that had played with Lino Vairetti in I Volti di Pietra and later with Moby Dick) and Fabrizio D'Angelo, but their album Suddance is very far from their best days. After the last split Danilo Rustici formed Luna.

I must admit I never listened to that Suddance one out of fear of disappointment.  So after that I gave up on the whole lot of them, which I shouldn't have.  Danilo Rustici was their guitarist, who died during covid sadly, and he founded Luna with 3 other guys not related to the others mentioned earlier.  The genre described is space rock, prog rock, but there is little of either, just a smidgen of progressiveness and mostly sweet late seventies uptempo pop sounds with the lush harmony vocals, deep arrangements, naive lyrics, etc.  Consider this one which is so hummable I just wanted to swirl around my dining room to my wife's shocked amusement, called Lou Jean:

The same band which was called Tunnel earlier in 1978 released a single, while Luna made 2 in the roughly the same time period.  All of these I included in the package for the band down below, they're worth hearing too though there is quite of disco that crept in for these.

Tunnel Lights has a lovely chorus:

Siliah Era Diversa from 1977:

David Spinozza: ST 1978 and Here's That Rainy Day, 1983

 

Discogged here.

American guitarist and producer, born August 8, 1949 in Port Chester, New York.

Basically this is late 70s American fusion just as you'd expect it to be. Smooth, light, and a little bit progressive.  The Prelude to Ballerina is a wonderfully composed orchestral suite:

The standout from a fusion standpoint is vibraphonist Mike Mainieri's Edge of the Sword, which I hadn't heard before despite exhaustively (I thought) going through all his stuff once, with Bernhardt, and also with Steps and Steps Ahead, the furious riff sounds like it should've appeared on Return to Forever's Romantic Warrior masterpiece:

Next LP Here's That Rainy Day moves further into the smooth fusion direction, along with surprisingly cover versions, as if he ran out of compositions to showcase, from that one, 

Robby Steinhardt from Kansas' Not in Kansas Anymore, A Prog Opera, 2022 [FLAC limited time only]

 

OK so I'm guessing most of us grew up with Kansas: all we are is dust in the wind, etc.

I certainly didn't know this gentleman was their violinist, from the earliest days (1974 or before).  I was even more ignorant, this time intentionally so, of the fact he released this album recently in the same style as the original band and believe it or not it's quite good and worth checking out.  It turns out, it's his only solo work. As you'd expect it's a mixed bag, with progressive alternating with ordinary music and songwriting, and some electronic noodling and so on.  

Nonetheless, I will go so far as to say the track called Rise of the Phoenix is about as perfect a prog epic one could hope for in this day and age, and I thank him for that:

And that's not the only one like that, there's more for you to explore.

His bio is as follows from discogs:

Robby Steinhardt (born May 25, 1950 – died July 17, 2021) was an American rock violinist and singer best known for his work with the group Kansas (2). He was co-lead singer along with keyboardist Steve Walsh, from 1973 to 1982 and from 1997 to 2006.

Therefore he passed away some years back and no longer plays with them (except in spirit I guess).

For those curious about these things, he died of pancreatitis.  One thing I was not too pleased about was that he rehashed Dust in the Wind on this record. Note as well:

Posthumously released.

With guests: Ian Anderson, Pat Travers, Steve Morse,

Bobby Kimball, just to name a few.

I'll throw in an online review that is a little too enthusiastic to my taste, but at least describes it half decently:

The songs on Not in Kansas Anymore rock out, but they also showcase the proggy twists and turns (and flights of virtuosity) that characterize the genre. And Steinhardt’s arrangements put the focus upon memorable melodic lines, too, adding up to a well balanced album that ticks most all of this reviewer’s boxes.  Befitting a work by a strings player, the album is filled with rich orchestration, featuring the real things as opposed to modern keyboard equivalents. The Bösendorfer piano is real, too, and sounds like it. Listeners who approach the album expecting it to sound like Kansas will find some stylistic cues in common, but Steinhardt’s solo muse led him in some directions that might not have fit neatly into the aesthetic/format of his old band. That said, the emphasis is squarely on accessibility throughout the album’s 11 tracks. And in a nod to his former group, Steinhardt inserts bits of his signature melodic lines from “Dust in the Wind” into “Prelude.”

Oddly, though that tune doesn’t open the album; it’s the sixth track, preceding a new recording of – you guessed it – “Dust in the Wind.” The new version is lovely, though it doesn’t really add much to the original, and its inclusion here elicits a shrug. Far more interesting are the album’s other tracks, like the classically-tinged (and aptly/playfully titled) “Pizzacato.” (That’s not a typo.)  The tiny (5-point or so) type in the CD’s liners make sorting out who-plays-what an exercise in futility, and the same is true for the lyric sheet. The lyrics to “Downtown Royalty” won’t be to some listeners’ tastes – they’re a bit histrionic and overwrought – but the tune itself is nice enough. In any event, most listeners will likely gloss over the lyrics – perhaps focusing instead upon the sonic quality of the massed vocals throughout – and luxuriate in the arrangements and instrumental breaks.

Plans were afoot for a tour in support of the album, but Steinhardt’s passing last July put an end to those. His collaborator on the project, producer/arranger Michael Franklin, shepherded the album to completion and release. And Not in Kansas Anymore stands not only as a fitting way to remember Steinhardt, but as a worthwhile listening experience.

Jean-Philippe Rykiel [Waterfalls in Space with Tim Blake 1979, Shambala with Verdeaux, and ST 1982]

 

Discogs: 

French composer, arranger and keyboard player. He has been blind since his birth in 1961. Son of French designer Sonia Rykiel.

Recall he was responsible for the lovely synth tracks from Malherbe's Fetish album, posted back here.

I thought those were beautifully composed.  So I went back to see if there was something I was missing in the rest of his output.

From 1979's Waterfalls in Space, with the famous Tim Blake (Gong, Hawkwind), the lovely swirling synth sound of Lighthouse 79:

The next album, Shambala from 1981, was even more basic drony electronic, which makes sense because it was a collaboration with Cyrille Verdeaux (Clearlight, etc.).

Then the ST from 1982, which is again basically cosmic electronic music, nicely written, similar to so much in this vein, played of course entirely by Jean-Philippe.  As an ex., Step by Step:

A really beautiful cover graphic again for the 1982 LP, typical of these French records.