Category GENRE SPECIFIC
MARS ATTACKS!
There is a wind-up alien on the cover. The title is Attack Of The Martians. No record label; it was self-produced in 2004. Eccentric Orbit is the name of the band. They come from planet Synth. This intriguing CD was part of a recent haul, a whim-purchase based on half the quartet playing electric […]
YES, MR WILSON
After my first listens to Steven Wilson’s remixes of five core seventies albums from the Yes catalogue, I confess I was ambivalent. It was not easy to pin down what was preventing a full-hearted embracing of Mr Wilson’s work. Perhaps it was simply different, and I was uncomfortable with the changes to sounds I’ve enjoyed […]
VERTICAL RETURN
We’re back with the vertical gatefold sleeves for a couple more instalments. This should not be construed as an attempt to show every specimen, but simply present further examples that have caught this record collector’s eye. First off we have a very recent addition to the genus. Bob Masse is a legendary Canadian-born artist and […]
TALK, IT’S ONLY TALK
I In 1974, Robert Fripp broke up the band he co-founded in late 1968, one of the most innovative and restless to achieve widespread success. King Crimson’s final release in this period was Red, arguably one of the band’s finest and most consistent and certainly one of my favourites. II In April 1981, Sounds magazine […]
AN EDGY GENTLEMAN (2)
The delay and decay guitar experiments Robert Fripp used as the foundation for God Save The Queen / Under Heavy Manners were recorded in 1979, with the album being released in January 1980. A couple of months later, Fripp started rehearsing a new band in—according to the back cover of the subsequent album—“a 14th century […]
THE KING HAS ABDICATED (1)
It was always worth checking out Allans sales. Although determinedly mainstream and totally in thrall to the hits of the day, the music shop occasionally ordered—and got stuck with—oddities, outliers and obscurities. These ended up in the SALE bins, usually at excellent prices. I loved those sales; you could take a punt of three or […]
DOUBLE LIVES
SIDE I I’ve just walked out of a record shop in Mont Albert clutching the 2018 re-issue of Pink Floyd’s Pulse. Four vinyl records and a 12” x 12” hardcover book in a handsome slipcase. No flashing light on the spine but it still cost a bomb. I’m thinking, Why? Sitting on the shelves at […]
VERTICAL PURPLE
The quest to unearth further 60s vertical gatefold album covers produced many nominations of 70s covers that do indeed open up in ‘portrait’ format, but only one addition from Sixties-land. The LP was the third Deep Purple release, their self-titled record from 1969. Many thanks to Arterrorist for the reminder. I say that because the CD […]
VERTICAL HOLD
There are plenty of books on album cover art on the Vinyl Connection bookshelves, but none of them could tell me which record had the glory of being the first gatefold pop/rock album. Everyone knows Sgt Pepper was the first LP to have the song lyrics on the cover—the back, incidentally, not inside in the […]
KLAUS ENCOUNTERS
Berlin native Klaus Schulze formed his first band—Psy Free—in 1967. He was part of the birth of Tangerine Dream, playing on their debut Electronic Meditation, joined Manuel Göttsching in Ash Ra Temple for a while, and was an important part of the Cosmic Couriers team. Although revered for his role as a major innovator and […]
V (2) ASTRONOMER
SIDE ONE Most of the discography of Johannes Kepler was produced in the early sixteen hundreds. His first producer, Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg, helped him move beyond teaching to become a major player in the scientific revolution of the 17th-century. Kepler’s early genre was mathcore, though he dabbled in spiritual jazz (astrology) and progressive […]
V
The thing with progressive music is, it’s a bit more complex and structured. Which means, depending on what prejudices you bring to the argument, that it is either (a) music for wanky poseurs, or (b) something to spend a bit of time with before passing judgement. No surprises that, as a card-carrying wanky poseur, I […]
vinylconnection.com.au 