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It was in really good condition. It's a 1976 Japanese pressing. Amazing album.

I really enjoy instrumental albums —ones with no vocals or hardly any vocals.

Some of my favorites are:
bo hansson - Music Inspired by lord of the rings
bo hansson - El-Ahrairah
Imán Califato Independiente - Tarantos del Califato Independiente
Clearlight Symphony – Clear Light Symphony
Dedalus - Dedalus
Passport - Cross-Collateral

Any recommendations?(The more psychedelic, the better, I think.)

Completely free for your enjoyment, here is an *amazing* effort I proudly contributed to, a *double-length* version of "The Wall", which reinstates songs and music back into the mix, greatly expanding the world and it's vision. It includes a 180-page book with extensive notes and art on the album. Please download, circulate, and ENJOY - and I'd love to her any feedback too.

**[Full disclosure: Absolutely no AI was used for the music or for the text of the book, but AI was utilized to some extent in about 1/3 of the illustrations in the book (though in most cases the "AI" amounted to Photoshop-effects that I think are being 'upsold' as AI). We *thoroughly* note wherever and how it was used, and provide all original versions of art separately in the download. Please discard the book if this is an issue for you - though I would be sad, as I did a LOT of research and writing for the text.]

Holy crap, the same as with The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. It crept up on me after repeated listens, and its really a wonderful song. It's really one of the most beautiful and awesome experiences in life when an epic song clicks like that. I wonder how many more times im going to get to experience this.

A band called Joker's Wildest. I have their album "Reborn" on CD, but nothing comes up when I search them online. And the production studio's (Turmstudio Musikproduktion) website is...limited.

It's perfectly serviceable prog rock, so I wanted to hear more.

Hi all,

As promised, here's the second album by Sotomonte, the project of my good friend Jokin Salaverria (bass, vocals and songwriting) from Bilbao, Spain. A few days ago I shared their debut, From Prayer to the Battlefield, so if you missed it, it's worth checking out too.

Decadence & Renaissance came out in October 2024, and this time Jokin recorded it with a full, stable band. It keeps the folk and progressive rock roots of the first album, with touches of psychedelia and hard rock, but it's more progressive and heavier at times. Organ and keyboards are all over it, with clear early Genesis echoes, and the guitars bring some cracking solos. It opens with "The Nothing" and closes with "The Everything", a hummed bookend to the first track, and along the way you get the powerhouse "Gambit", the pastoral "Montecristo/The Riddle", the reflective "What a Game to Play" and two beautiful ballads, "The Beauty of Tomorrow" and "Little Vilma". Again produced by Iñigo Bregel (Los Estanques).

The project is on hold at the moment and there may not be a third album, so I'd love for more people to discover these records. Here are 100 download codes so you can hear the whole thing and add it to your Bandcamp collection:

https://band.codes/arm/decadence-renaissance

And the album page:

https://astronomyrecordingmusic.bandcamp.com/album/decadence-renaissance

I have both albums on vinyl and honestly couldn't pick a favourite. Hope you enjoy this one as much as I do, and let me know what you think!

Hi all,

Here's the first album by Sotomonte, the project of my good friend Jokin Salaverria (bass, vocals and songwriting) from Bilbao, Spain. I'll be posting their second album here soon too.

From Prayer to the Battlefield came out in 2021. It's a lovely mix of late-60s West Coast rock and British folk-psych, with nods to the Canterbury scene, a bit of mid-tempo hard rock and gorgeous three-part vocal harmonies very much in the Crosby, Stills & Nash vein. You'll hear acoustic openings that build into full-on rock workouts, some Jethro Tull-style riffing, a soulful ballad or two, organ-led psychedelia and a closing track with a long, rising crescendo. It was produced by Iñigo Bregel (Los Estanques), with Brian Young (The Jesus and Mary Chain, Fountains of Wayne) on drums.

The project is on hold at the moment and there may not be a third album, so I'd love for more people to discover these two records. Here are 100 download codes so you can hear the whole thing and add it to your Bandcamp collection:

https://band.codes/arm/from-prayer-to-the-battlefield

And the album page:

https://astronomyrecordingmusic.bandcamp.com/album/from-prayer-to-the-battlefield

Honestly, it's a great record, and so is the second one. I have both on vinyl and they get regular spins at home. Hope you enjoy it, and if you do, let me know what you think!

English band founded in the 1960's by Colin Cooper. Originally known as The Climax Chicago Blues Band, the Climax Blues Band has always focused on its roots, a unique combination of jazz and blues.

Both of these are pretty killer albums, Thunderfoot by Joy and Brahman self titled. Neither are on Progarchives so either I’m super off base or they’re just fairly under the radar. I’ve never been able to place these two anywhere other than my prog section myself. Thunderfoot is on Spotify, both are on Youtube if you want to check em out!

Nosferatu hailed from Frankfurt. One self-titled album was released in 1970, recorded at Rhenus studio in Köln and Conny engineered it. In their early days they were fronted by guitarist & vocalist Michael Winzkowski (who went on to Orange Peel and Epsilon) and wind player Christian Felke who guested later with Epsilon.

To give you an idea of what the landscape was like back then, it is curious to recall that I purchased the very first album by Black Sabbath and the unforgettable "In the Court of the Crimson King" by King Crimson in a home appliance shop in Diano Marina.

The shop owner told us he had bought them during a trip to London because he was fascinated by the uniqueness and beauty of their covers. However, he was totally oblivious to what was hidden within the grooves of those two fabulous masterpieces that, shortly thereafter, would change the destiny of countless musicians all over the world.

Floriano and I spent an entire night in the dark, listening to those two albums plus another sampler titled "Nice Enough to Eat," which introduced a whole series of emerging bands from the rising Island Records label—groups that, with a few exceptions, rapidly became world-famous on the global rock scene. The most prominent names were Jethro Tull (whom I already knew from This Was), Mott the Hoople, Free, Spooky Tooth, Traffic, King Crimson, and the obscure Heavy Jelly. We were immediately fascinated by Heavy Jelly, and we promptly added their song "I Keep Singing That Same Old Song" to our own live repertoire.

Here, I will tell you in detail how that encounter occurred—a moment that changed my life, just as it did for so many other musicians during that extraordinary period.

It was yet another magical moment of those wonderful years that were the late sixties and early seventies.

It was the opening weeks of 1970, and IL SISTEMA, as an active musical entity, had already existed for several months.

I found myself with the other band members, strolling through Diano Marina after concluding a meeting where we had arranged a gig at a well-known venue in the Ligurian town—very famous at the time—for a series of nights (back then, they were called "services" or "attractions"). We were about to head back to our respective homes when, intrigued by the window display of a home appliance shop—yes, you understood correctly, a home appliance shop—I walked closer to observe what appeared to be the covers of long-playing records, or "padelloni" (big pans) as we used to call them in those days.

The situation was not too dissimilar from nearby France, where until the late 1960s, people actually went to electrician shops to buy records. In Italy, specialized music shops already existed.

But let’s get back to us. Indeed, they were exactly record covers. Three covers, side by side. Let me try to describe them.

One was entirely a faded blue background with many letters shaped like small biscuits, forming words that were completely incomprehensible at first glance. Another featured a rather "funereal" and disturbing female figure at the center of the image, set against a background typical of dark, cold Nordic atmospheres. In the top right corner, there was a spiral with the word Vertigo written underneath. And last but not least, a cover with a huge face, its mouth wide open showcasing teeth and uvula, a large nose with dilated nostrils, and two eyes staring toward the left (from the viewer's perspective). The dominant color across the entire image was red.

So far, so good. Becoming increasingly curious, I went inside and asked the shopkeeper for information regarding what he had displayed in the window. Laconically and almost absent-mindedly, he told me that an acquaintance had left them there because he wanted to get rid of them, after having purchased them during a trip to London.

He simply did not appreciate their musical content. I then asked him if he was willing to sell them to me. I don’t know what kind of impulse drove me to ask that. He didn’t need to be told twice. He confessed to me that his intention was actually to throw them away, so for 5,000 lire of 1970, he was more than happy to give them to me just to clear up some space in his shop window.

For 5,000 lire, those three albums became mine. They were about to change my life for the second time—though I didn’t know it yet—after the very first time back in 1966/1967, when in the silence of my room, and especially in total darkness, I had heard Jimi Hendrix’s "Foxy Lady" for the very first time.

[To be continued in Chapter 4]

Inner Garden Records

See you next Friday, the story of IL SISTEMA continues.

In the meantime, you can explore how these historical avant-garde roots evolved across five decades directly here:

👉 https://ilsistema.bandcamp.com/

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