Exposé Online » Reviews of releases for 1969

Items found : 46

Bent Wind - Sussex

Here’s an obscure Canadian band of the garage/psych variety. It’s on the heavier side, along the lines of Vanilla Fudge or Blue Cheer, with messy distorted guitar and unpolished vocals....

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(Posted by Jon Davis 2007-03-01)

Ars Nova - Sunshine and Shadows

A few issues back I reviewed the reissue of Ars Nova’s 1968 first album. Here we have their second and last...

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(Posted by Jon Davis 2006-05-01)

Third Ear Band - Alchemy (Expanded and Remastered)

This is where it all began for a band so unusual and outside the ‘rock box’ that many at the time may have dismissed them as being too far out. When I first heard Alchemy, I...

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(Posted by Peter Thelen 2019-06-30)

Organisation & Kraftwerk - Tone Float, Kraftwerk 1 & 2, Ralf & Florian

Kraftwerk, like many of the long running German outfits, was a completely different creature at its inception then after they rose to popularity. These albums, including the pre-Kraftwerk...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 1995-11-01)

Hasting's Street Opera - Slippery When Wet

In the late 60s a group of young friends (Harry Wellott, Gordon Carlisle, Don Hathaway, and Chris Nelson) in Montclair, NJ formed the Hasting’s Street Opera, named after an old Detroit blues...

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(Posted by Henry Schneider 2019-06-23)

Van der Graaf Generator - Aerosol Grey Machine

That it took so long to have this, the 1969 debut from Van der Graaf Generator, released to CD is a wonder. But that we have it is better than not, I suppose. Plus there's the rare first single...

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(Posted by Paul Hightower 1997-10-01)

Alrune Rod - Alrune Rod

This is the first of about seven albums by this Danish five-piece. Their sound at this early juncture is a mix of nimble heavy organ progressive rock and trippy spacy, sometimes plodding,...

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(Posted by Peter Thelen 1999-11-01)

Wendy Carlos - Switched-On Bach & The Well-Tempered Synthesizer

Given the limitations of the synthesizers available in 1968, the choice of Bach as a focus for Wendy Carlos’s pioneering recordings makes perfect sense: the instruments could play only one...

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(Posted by Jon Davis 2002-09-01)

Claude Lombard - Claude Lombard Chant

Claude Lombard is a Belgian songstress active in the 60s and 70s who placed seventh in the Eurovision 1968 song contest and sang songs on many TV cartoon shows. In 1969 she recorded an experimental...

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(Posted by Henry Schneider 2017-09-24)

Colosseum - Those Who Are About to Die Salute You

John Mayall often gets lost in the list of influential musicians but it wasn't just the blues alone that he had a powerful influence on. Just off the top of my head, he was largely responsible...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 2017-06-08)

East of Eden - Mercator Projected

East of Eden's debut is one of the great late-60s albums, following on the way the Beatles started occasionally fusing their music with the sounds of other cultures. However, where the Beatles...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 2017-08-10)

The Soft Machine - Volume Two

McLatchey's Second Tier

One thing's for sure, no one ever sung the alphabet with the kind of humor and musical brilliance as Robert Wyatt did on the band's second...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 2015-10-15)

Chicago Transit Authority - Chicago Transit Authority

Progressive rock is often considered a European phenomenon, at least in its symphonic sense, but if you look at it from its birthplace in the 60s, where nearly every genre experienced a psychedelic...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 2017-05-25)

Jodi - Pops de Vanguardia

In the late 60s, two Paraguayan brothers of German descent, Joern and Dirk Wenger, began playing together in a beat / psychedelic band The Rabbits. The Rabbits released a very rare EP and then the...

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(Posted by Henry Schneider 2017-03-28)

The Beatles - Abbey Road

This is probably, marginally, my favorite Beatles album, not only in that I listened to it more than any of the others as a youth, but also feel that it's possibly the quartet's most...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 2017-03-23)

Amon Düül II - Phallus Dei

If I was to take a census of Amon Düül II fans, favorites are usually Yeti (mine), Dance of the Lemmings, or Wolf City, and then the others usually line up right after....

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 2017-02-02)

The Collectors - The Collectors & Grass and Wild Strawberries

The Collectors hailed from Vancouver, Canada, not exactly a hotbed of the worldwide psychedelic scene, which maybe helps explain why they didn’t make a bigger impact. Their two albums, though...

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(Posted by Jon Davis 2005-09-01)

Tyrannosaurus Rex - Early reissues

Here we have the long-awaited reissue of Marc Bolan’s earliest recordings, back when Tyrannosaurus was spelled out in full and electric guitars were unusual coloring rather than the...

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(Posted by Jon Davis 2001-12-01)

Apple - An Apple a Day

Here we have the long-awaited CD release of one of the most collectible LPs of British psychedelia. Those of us who can’t shell out hundreds of dollars (or pounds) to hear the original can...

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(Posted by Jon Davis 2006-05-01)

Jody Grind - One Step On

This obscurity from 1969 is definitely a “close-but-not-quite” attempt at something special. The something in this case is psychedelic rock with heavy guitar and organ combined with a...

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(Posted by Jon Davis 2016-07-20)

Tasavallan Presidentti - Tasavallan Presidentti, Lambertland & Milky Way Moses

The first eponymous album Finnish band Tasavallan Presidentti recorded was a cross between folk, blues, and jazz-rock with pop influences. A really diverse album with an immaculate rendition of the...

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(Posted by Roel Steverink 2005-03-01)

Ultimate Spinach - Ultimate Spinach, Behold & See & III

Long before the British domination of all things progressive, progress was being made in the post-San Francisco underground scene in many US cities, among them Boston. The fact that producer Alan...

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(Posted by Peter Thelen 1997-02-01)

Soft Machine - Spaced

The material on Spaced was originally recorded in 1969 (circa Third) for a special choreographed multi-media one-week event of the same name at the London Roundhouse. Although the...

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(Posted by Peter Thelen 1997-02-01)

Third Ear Band - Alchemy

McLatchey's Second Tier

There really was no other quartet like the Third Ear Band, they were even singular in 1969, showing up on the Harvest label next to Pink Floyd....

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 2015-11-19)

Grateful Dead - Fillmore West 1969

McLatchey's Second Tier

OK, here's one of the few items I'll be covering that I don't actually own a copy of. Some years back when the Grateful Dead vault keepers...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 2016-03-17)

Grateful Dead - Fillmore West 1969

McLatchey's Second Tier

OK, here's one of the few items I'll be covering that I don't actually own a copy of. Some years back when the Grateful Dead vault keepers...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 2016-03-17)

Fairport Convention - Liege and Lief

A couple of weeks ago I realized I needed to reevaluate the early Fairport Convention albums — every so often I try to do this with major groups and artists that I don't seem to rate so...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 2016-06-03)

Limbus 3 - Cosmic Music Experience (AKA New Atlantis)

Germany is a virtual goldmine of experimental music, and it still awes me how cutting edge some of the music was from the late 60s / early 70s. Limbus 3 were a very unusual outfit, bridging...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 1996-03-01)

Stormy Six - L'Idee di Oggi per la Musica Domani & L'Unità

Stormy Six are perhaps better known for their involvement with Rock In Opposition in the late 70s and early 80s. Their later output such as Al Volo were interesting pop rock albums with an...

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(Posted by Mike McLatchey 1995-07-01)

Plus - The Seven Deadly Sins

One look at the cover and it should be clear that producers Simon Napier Bell and Ray Singer (who also penned about six of the tracks here) were trying to capitalize on the look and feel of...

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(Posted by Jon Davis 2001-07-01)

Wilde Flowers - Tales of Canterbury: The Wilde Flowers Story - Brian's Tale

For those of you still uninitiated, Canterbury was a place in the UK where a music scene originated in the 60s (complementary to that of San Francisco Haight-Ashbury). Several known European groups...

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(Posted by Jeff Melton 1995-11-01)

Wilde Flowers - Tales of Canterbury: The Wilde Flowers Story - Brian's Tale

For those of you still uninitiated, Canterbury was a place in the UK where a music scene originated in the 60s (complementary to that of San Francisco Haight-Ashbury). Several known European groups...

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(Posted by Jeff Melton 1995-11-01)

East of Eden - Mercator Projected

An engaging and groundbreaking early British progressive band, East of Eden used electric violin, dual saxes, flute, recorder and bagpipe to add texture to their guitar based rock. The end product...

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(Posted by Mike Ohman 1995-11-01)

The Shiver - Walpurgis

It’s generally not a good sign when a band’s best material is written by other bands. The Shiver is a case in point. This Swiss band’s forte was covering British blues-rock, but...

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(Posted by Jon Davis 2005-03-01)

Xhol Caravan - Electrip

Amongst the annals of the most psychedelic German rock of the early 70s stand out the legendary Xhol, a band that remains one of the most challenging that that country had to offer. Initially a band...  » Read more
(Posted by Mike McLatchey 1996-03-01)

Soft Machine - Live at the Paradiso 1969

Oh yeah! More gold mined from the Soft Machine treasure troves! Softs re-releases are innumerable between the UK and USA in the past two years (and will continue to be through 1996), but somehow...  » Read more
(Posted by Jeff Melton 1996-03-01)

Kevin Ayers - Joy of a Toy, Whatevershebringswesing, Shooting at the Moon & Banamour

Ex-Soft Machine bassist Kevin Ayers left that group after their full-on live U.S. assault with the Jim Hendrix Experience in 1969. After that time, Ayers spent the following years putting together...

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(Posted by Jeff Melton 2003-12-01)

Silver Apples - Silver Apples / Contact

Frankly, this is one of those reissues I thought I would never see. The (now long defunct) Kapp label issued these two albums in the late 60s, after which they quickly faded into obscurity. At a time...  » Read more
(Posted by Peter Thelen 1994-10-01)

Silver Apples - Silver Apples / Contact

Frankly, this is one of those reissues I thought I would never see. The (now long defunct) Kapp label issued these two albums in the late 60s, after which they quickly faded into obscurity. At a time...  » Read more
(Posted by Peter Thelen 1994-10-01)

Tea & Symphony - An Asylum for the Musically Insane

There's not two albums like this in the world (with the possible exception of the band's second album, Jo Sago, not yet out on CD). Tea and Symphony were a trio of Jef Daw (guitars, flutes,...  » Read more
(Posted by Mike Ohman 1994-08-01)

Music Emporium - Music Emporium

Music Emporium’s self-titled 1969 album is one of the rarest gems of the late 60s LA psychedelic scene, with only 300 copies originally pressed and an elaborate die-cut sleeve. Unlike some...  » Read more
(Posted by Jon Davis 2005-03-01)

The Merchants of Dream - Strange Night Voyage

Blame it on The Beatles and Sgt. Pepper’s. In the wake of that landmark concept album, everybody and their brother was trying to get in on the concept album thing, from The Beach Boys to...  » Read more
(Posted by Peter Thelen 2013-11-17)

Saturnalia - Magical Love

This particular obscurity in Akarma’s campaign to rescue lost or legendary albums is an odd beast. The overall impression is much like the first incarnation of Renaissance with less appealing vocals...  » Read more
(Posted by Jon Davis 2006-05-01)

Coven - Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls

This is one of the freakiest things I've ever heard — a psychedelic rock recording from the late 60s entirely based on a kind of horror-movie Satanism, including more than thirteen minutes devoted...  » Read more
(Posted by Jon Davis 2006-05-01)

Blodwyn Pig - Ahead Rings Out

Perhaps one day this classic by the Jethro Tull offshoot led by original guitarist Mick Abrahams will get a proper reissue, but until then this latest remastered version from EMI will have to do (and...  » Read more
(Posted by Peter Thelen 2007-03-01)

John Surman - Way Back When

John Surman (saxes), John Marshall (drums), John Taylor (electric piano), Brian Odgers (bass guitar). For many readers, that list alone puts this on the must-have list. Throw in the recording date of...  » Read more
(Posted by Jon Davis 2006-05-01)