Writing about music is like dancing about architecture

Friday 23 September 2011

JOHN SANGSTER - THE TRIP

It's exploito jazz - from Australia! What's not to like?

"One can write a 1,000 page book about an LP of this kind. The only other alternative is to write hardly anything at all. For obvious reasons we have chose the latter approach."
So begins the anonymous writer of the sleeve notes for this 1967. I shall attempt to emulate him.

Let's start with the cover. John, for it is he, shrouded by smoke, perhaps from a jazz woodbine that someone is smoking out of shot, bearded as he was from about 1958 onwards and wearing a 'cool' pair of shades which make him look slightly like a cuddly Hell's Angel, and a black polo neck jumper which can't quite hide his paunch, is playing the drums. He's sporting a handmade badge that says 'GAS' - he's so far out daddio!
Despite every effort Sangster does not look like a cool, hipster. But I don't think he ever did.
What is this cover trying to say? Is it trying to appeal to youngsters who are into the new type of music? Or is it an obvious joke on fashion and style? You choose!

John Sangster has been described as "possibly the most talented of all the musicians who inhabit the jazz world of Australia".
Starting out as a trad-jazz trumpeter with the Graeme Bell band, Sangster first moved over to vibraphone, then percussion and finally into composition.
He wrote one of my all time favourite jazz records, Australia and All That Jazz.

I was going to write about it but I can't do better than never enough rhodes so you'll have to click on the link and go there to find about this magical record.

The Trip was Sangster's first record under his own name, although he had recorded frequently by this stage with most of the best know Australian jazz musicians, most notably as part of the Don Burrows Sextet on their Jazz Sounds record - another must.
In his autobiography (Seeing the Rafters - a great read if you come across a copy, in which he describes his life as a kind of marathon drinking session) he describes it thus:
"The first album I made under my own steam is (like they say) one I'd prefer to forget. Entitled The Trip  it was a multi-percussion thing with me playing everything except the proverbial kitchen sink. It is now, I believe, safely out of print. There was one nice track, a marimba version of 'Spanish Eyes', but then you can't really go far wrong just noodling away at such a pretty little tune."

One can see what he means. In true record company cash-in style the record includes a wide variety of 'hits of the day'. The Beatles get a look in with Michelle, the Rolling Stones with Satisfaction, the Byrds or Bob Dylan with Mr Tambourine Man. That other sixties obsession, James Bond, another much exploited fad in the world of records, is represented by Thunderball and Tom Jones surprisingly gets in again with What's New Pussycat?. However, again in a way that is true of many exploitation  records, there are some 'easy' selections thrown in, Comin' Home Baby, Cast Your Fate to the Wind, I'll Wait for You. Finally a few Latin or bossa tracks round everything off, One Note Samba Spanish Eyes and Black Orpheus Medley.


For anyone who might have bought the record in the mistaken belief that they were getting something to listen to while they took drugs (heaven knows why they might have though that!) there is the inclusion of something called 'abstract music' on What's New Pussycat? which opens the second side. In effect what you get is some tape manipulation that sounds like a moog falling down a flight of stairs. So at odds is it with the Latin-style of the song that I struggle not to laugh whenever I play it.

Sangster plays a wide variety of instruments such as vibes, marimba, castanets, trumpet and guiro and is multi-tracked on most songs. He is assisted by famous Oz jazzers George Golla, whose playing on One Note Samba is lovely, and Sven Libaek whose harpsichord on Michelle is more Windmills of Your Mind than fab-four and is, as a result, absolutely fantastic.

Overall, as Sangster clearly felt, it doesn't quite work. There is inventiveness and musicianship in abundance and every song has something to interest and intrigue. However, Sangster's musical ability strains against the choice of material. Its as though, being supremely talented he can't just give a good version of a song, he has to reinvent it from the inside out and in doing so loses something in the process.

 Download the album here

BATSUMI - BATSUMI




Sometimes you manage to track down a rare record - capture one of your white whales as it were - only to be grossly disappointed.
The music just isn't as good as you had told yourself it was. That 'killer' track is an anomaly. Or worse after playing it a few times you get board of it and it goes on the shelves to be pulled out now and again to remind  yourself you still have it.

Usually there's a reason that some albums are little known except by collectors - they are just not as good as the well known ubiquitous ones!
But sometime a rare record is so good that you wonder why it isn't a well known classic. Batsumi's first album is one of those.
I wish I could say I found this record in some death-defying record dig but in reality I tracked it down on-line. My copy is slightly crackly in places but the music is so amazingly good that I just don't care!
There doesn't seem to be a lot of information about Batsumi. The ever reliable flatinternational has little to say. Read it here.
Released in 1974 the band comprised Thabang Masemola - Flute, Themba Koyana - Tenor Sax, Buta-Buta Zwane - Vocal and Bongos, Maswaswe Mothopeng - Vocal and Guitar, Sello Mothopeng - Organ, Lekgabe Maleka - Drums, Zulu Bidi - Double Bass.
Their music is a unique blend of African rhythms, European and African jazz and vocals. They don't really sound like anyone else. The closest sound is perhaps another South African jazz band, the Heshoo Beshoo Band, although they are much more jazzy that Batsumi or Malombo, although they are less jazzy!
What always strikes me about this record is how uplifting it is. There is something positive and spiritual about each of the five tracks, something that focusing on the good side of human nature rather than on the terrible things that we can all do.
Each track is described as a different kind of jazz - Zulu African Jazz, Xhosa African Jazz, Sotho African Jazz, Shangaan African Jazz. In South Afica under apharteid your 'tribe' was an important matter and appeared on your identity papers. I was an axiom of apharteid that black South Africans were tribal and that they should be grouped together by tribe and returnto their rural tribal existence when they had stopped working in the cities. Of course the reality of urban life was that it was a mix of all 'tribes'. Indeed most people in the cities had never lived in a rual tribal environment. To mix these supposedly tribal kinds of jazz together could be seen as a refusal to be categoried by the white government and to acknowledge that the mix of people in urban areas such as Soweto was breaking down 'traditional' definitions and creating something new. Batsumi - hunters of "ideas, music, sounds, art, creativity" as the sleeve notes say.

The record opens with Lishonile, which is a statement of intent. The track starts with a small duet between the guitar and the bass, the guitar sounding almost bossa like in places, the bass going down and deep. Then, with some maracas, the bass starts the line which will underpin the rest of this beautiful song and a keening, wailing, sometime over blown flute comes in over the top. At times this is replaced by the cries of a voice, the band using every sources of music at their disposal. The rhythm is unrelenting, but gentle and when the flute, this time with some form of echo on it, comes back you can't help feel that you are taking off into a journey of discovery, flying high over Soweto. Now the sax starts and you continue your journey,flying like a bird over the homes of the musicians, perhaps even flying out of Soweto and away over the mine dumps and factories of Johannesburg, away out towards the fields and forests and mountains. Finally the music fades leaving you slightly stunned to be back in reality.



But just then the 'jewharp' as the sleeves notes describe it, fades in and introduces a drum solo prefiguring a more up-beat driving section of the song with fantastic vocals that seem to be crying out into the night. The flute is again prominent but it is the interplay between the guitar and the drums that gives this section its force.

I wish I knew what they were singing about, seemingly so joyously in Emampondweni. However, it is when the singing stops and the music seems to take a dramatic turn that the true beauty comes out. Again bass and guitar underpin a wonderful sax solo that is uplifting and spiritual. The echo laden flute adds the dream-like quality.

Mamshanyana is, perhaps my favourite song on the album - which is saying something! Opening with the Maswaswe Mothopeng's guitar and Zulu Bidi's bass once more they are joined by Lekgabe Maleka's drums and then a great vocal from Buta-Buta Zwane. His voice is supported by Thabang Masemola's flute and then Themba Koyane's sax. Together they create a wonderfully laid back and relaxed vibe. I cannot fail to feel happy, my head nods, my feet taps and a smile comes over my face. Mamshanyana (or Moshanyana) is a mythical hero who killed a monster thereby releasing the people it had eaten.




Flip the record over and Side 2 opens with the jaw dropping Itumeleng. This sixteen minute track is a thing of rare beauty. It starts with a protracted piano solo from, I assume, Sello Mothopeng who is credited with playing Organ on the sleeve. It is a virtuoso performance in which he switches from jazz to classical and back again. I cannot help but feel he is trying to say "I can play as well as any concert hall pianist". Of course in South Africa in the early seventies black musicians were not accorded the same status as white musicians and jazz was not considered to be a 'reputable' music. In this amazing solo Mothopeng undermines this bias and at the same time shows that something new and fresh is being created.
At the end of the solo Zulu Bidi plays the bass line which will underpin the rest of the track, giving it a lithe, supple feel. Thabang Masemola's flute once again soars high adding a spiritual dimension. Is it intended to have an echo? The piano comes in once more in a piece of restrained, lovely playing and is then replaced by the sax which is, as ever, uplifting.
By the time that they start to sing Itumeleng I'm starting to feel high from the music. They chant Itumeleng as the song starts to shift up a gear, the flute is more instant, the piano a little harsh, but still Zulu Bidi's bass keeps the rhythm and the swing. Itumeleng means joy, which is how I feel when I hear this song.
Finally the song ends as it began, with a lone piano.
Its all just too beautiful!
This YouTube clip is from the Next Stop Soweto Volume 3 compilation which you should go out and buy. It full of amazing music that I doubt any of us will ever see in their original vinyl versions.


The record closes with Anishilabi. Buta-Buta dominates with his vocals and is ably supported by another rock solid bass line from Zulu Bidi. I particularly like the drum break about half way through.

Luckily for lovers of beautiful music Batsumi is going to be reissued by Matsuli Music who did such a great job with the Chapita LP. You can find out about it here. I cannot recommend strongly enough that people should buy this when it becomes available.

Finally, here is a short film about Zulu Bidi. I can't decide whether to feel heart warmed by his ability to overcome adversity, or heartbroken that such great musicians should have been forced to give up music. Watch it and decide for yourselves.


Wednesday 14 September 2011

THE ELITE SWINGSTERS - THE BEAT OF AFRICA

I love the sleeve for this record. It is so simple and yet so evocative.
The instruments tells you that the music is jazz - three saxophones no less!
The little cut-outs tell you that the music comes from the continent of Africa.
And of course the small writing on the bottom tells you who is making it.

What is missing? A picture of the band perhaps? But as this record was released in 1958 in South Africa it would have been difficult, to say the least, to have had record with black faces on it. Far easier to have a cartoon of the instruments. After all the record buying public would know that band was black.

The sleeve notes are worth quoting in full:
"The Elite Swingsters represent something of a phenomena in the field of African music. Following on their first release — Inch Mama/Amadoda Etshwaleni RCA 148 which record was in the best-seller class — came their sensational RCA 160 Phalafala/Phulaphula which surpasses all existing sales figures for a record of this type.
Apart from being the top-selling group amongst their own folk, the Elites' version of Phalafala has been in demand as a dance number at leading record dealers throughout the country, and this number has recently been taken up by a firm of publishers who have great hopes for it in the international market.
The infectious beat imparted by the Elite Swingsters to all their numbers ensures for this record, a permanent place, not only in the popular field of dance music, but also for the serious collector of Africana."

 "Apart from being the top-selling group amongst their own folk" tells you who this record was aimed at - people who were 'different folk' to the musicians.

Having said that I am glad that this record was put together - or else I would have to try and track down some very hard to find 78s.

The Elite Swingsters are perhaps best know for the work they did in the early 60s with the 'African songbird' Dolly Rathebe. However, they had existed since the mid 50s and were already well known and successful in their own right as a jazz instrumental band.
In some ways this record is at a cross roads for jazz in South Africa. Still firmly in the tradition of big bands playing for dancers The Beat of Africa looks back to the interwar tradition of bands such as the Jazz Maniacs and the Merry Blackbirds. Nowhere can you hear the influence of the jazz that was being played in America in the late 1950s. Indeed its is almost as if bop had never happened.
However, this kind of African jazz would continue to have an influence in South Africa as can be heard on some of Dollar Brands recordings for As-Shams,The Sun, most notably Mannenberg and by other As-Shams records such as Lionel Pillay's Plum (you can read about it here).

I have been trying to think of the best way to disrcibe the amazing music on this record. Perhaps the best way is to let people who are better equipped for the task do it.

"African jazz, when we started, we emulated the Americans, the big bands, but we played African jazz because we took the chord progressions from marabi ... We categorise it as African jazz because when you say jazz, you tend to think of American jazz - and we were using that style as a big band ... Where the saxophone section plays a phrase and the brass section answers, that type of arrangement the Count Basies and so forth were using. But the melody - you can see, feel, it's African .. You can do whatever you like, put in American phrases, but you'll come back to that marabi trend. Its a cultural thing; it won;t die." Ntemi Piliso

"Very broadly speaking, African rhythmic patterns are organised in cycles the succession of which combines repetition and variations in melody and accents. In Xhosa choral music, as in many other South Africa musics, these repetitions and variations are accommodated within a structure of calls and responses which overlap and include pauses that do not coincide, creating an extremely dynamic effect some musicologists have termed 'staggering cycles'... In South African urban popular music, cycles and overlappings have been retained, western chords have replaced traditional scales, and one or several instruments (drums, guitar, keyboards etc.) strongly emphasis the beat." Denis-Constant Martin

"South African music ... tends towards rhythmic complexity of singing voices over a regular beat; its polyrhythms come from the voices, which vary their accentuation relative to the basis rhythm. This is remarkably like jazz, especially in the 1930s and 1940s music of Count Basie and others, who riffed and soloed against a rock-solid four-four beat" John Storm Roberts

Listen to these great tracks here

Apart from Phalafala and Phulaphula I would like to draw your attention to Touch-Touch (surely patta-patta?), the very fine trumpet playing on Dis Swaar Cherry, the great tenor sax on Isikahlo Sika Chooks and I love the sung refrain on Amadoda Etscwaleni.

More about the Elite Swingers at  flatinternational

Friday 9 September 2011

BOOTLEG JAZZ COMPS - a personal journey

I remember going to Dingwalls and wondering where they found such amazing tracks.
At the time I knew absolutely nothing about jazz (some might say that hasn't changed!) but I knew I liked what I heard.
However, looking though the jazz sections in record stores made me feel very inadequate.
Who were all these people with cool names like McCoy, Hank, Fats, Yusef, Chick or Herbie, and how could I possible know which of them produced stuff I would like?
I suppose I could have taken some up to the counter and asked the staff to play them. If you've ever been in a London record store you might realise how silly that last sentence is. And anyway, I would have been picking stuff up at random. I was then, a long way from being able to stomach anything that couldn't be danced to. No amount of good reviews were going to get me to listen to A Love Supreme - how stupid and young I was!
But in the early nineties, when records were still the common tool of the DJ, almost every market had a record stall. Some were good and I had some amazing luck in finding great stuff. However, most were pretty average. The great thing about them though was that they would happily play the records if you asked nicely and while the stall-holder might not know anything about the record he wouldn't judge you because you wanted to hear it.
And that's how I got to buy Uptight and Outasight, from a record stall in Cambridge. It blew my mind!
I had heard of James Brown and Kool and the Gang but O'Donnell Levi, Barbara Randolph, Chocolate Milk???????? (Click on the picture to enlarge and get the full track list)

I could have bought random jazz records for years and never found these gems.
Of course, if I had been a London jazznick I would have been familiar with the dance classics. But I wasn't.
At my young age it didn't cross my mind to think about the legality of this record. Looking back I must have been very naive. No cover illustration, no credits, sleeve notes, in fact nothing at all except the names of the tracks. To me it was just pure goodness.
So a while later when the bloke on the market stall had Volume 2 I snapped that up as well.
If I'm honest its not as good as Volume 1 but it was still pretty good stuff.
By now I had discovered jazz and funk compilations - most of them legit.
But there was still something I liked about the plain white anonymity of the Uptight comps.

Volume 3 though is a corker. Tuane by Hammer  (which I still want to get to the original of), Chukka by Norman Connors, Andre Previn's Executive Party from the Rollerball Soundtrack (which of course, I didn't know at the time), Bernie Maupin's It Remains To be Seen - amazing tracks one and all.
I still do not know who was behind these illegit comps. I would like to find out and personally thank him, though. Whoever it was put my one a jazz path that I've never truly strayed from.

I was still rather naive and hadn't thought that the performers and composers of these brilliant tracks were being deprived of their rightful payment. All I could think about was how great the music was and how lucky I was that someone had taken some of the best tracks in their record collection and put them on some handy vinyl for me!

My next bootleg comp was this one - Seven Sought After Grooves. Again, I had little idea at that stage who most of the artists were. Gil Scott Heron I knew but I hadn't even heard of Freddie Hubbard - as amazing as that seems to me now.
This record was even more cut rate than the Uptight ones. The compilers hadn't or couldn't even afford sticky labels so the track listing came on a piece of paper. But if I had know how difficult to find the Carvo e Carvela track was I would have been even more delighted with it.
I can't exactly remember where this came from but I have a vague feeling it was somewhere on Portobello Road.
There used to be a guy who had a stall selling cassettes (shows how long ago it was) with some Hammond organ groovers on, as well as stuff from blaxploitation movies and probably a whole lot more. He used to have a sound system cranked up to the max and a tambourine which he's shake and rattle and generally dance around to his own music.
This is an odd one. Again no cover but someone went to a lot of trouble with the label. Blue Funk  - Blue Note - geddit!
Even I had heard of Blue Note by this stage.
But, perhaps typically, not all of the tracks on this are from Blue Note records.
Again some great tracks - God Made Me Funky by the Headhunters (although severely shortened from the original), Hip Drop by the Explosions, 24 Carat Black Theme by 24 Carat Black, Move Your Hand by Lonnie Smith (again cut short from the full length version).
This one looks as though someone tried to make it look legit. Composer credits and song publishers give it the look of a proper compilation. Except it isn't.
But in the nineties equivalent of downloading I just didn't care. In a pre-Internet age, the chances of me finding Lonnie Smith's Move Your Hand LP in a record shop and being able to afford it were slight.

Nuggets! of Funk came from a dire techno record store in Wimbledon where I went after a job interview (unfortunately I got the job - but that's another story).
By this stage I was finding that the quality of these kinds of bootleg comps was deteriorating.
I guess that there was an increasing number of legit comps with great stuff on and some very high quality bootlegs which left less 'uncomped' stuff for the 'white label' bootleggers.
Having said that Cal Tajder's Solar Heat, Lee Morgan's Untitled Boogaloo and Windy C's 100% Pure Poison are amazing.
On a trip to New York I picked up Dealer's Choice - as usual not because I knew any of the tracks but because it looked like Uptight and Outasight and I though it might be cool.
To be honest by this stage I think that compilers were finding it difficult to keep up the quality. Its a similar problem in most other genres. The best 'obscure' stuff makes it on to the earliest compliations, the following ones find some true undiscovered gems, further ones start to look to different countries or different sources but ultimately you can't keep it up forever.
Personally, for me the moment had also passed. I had loved the jazz dance scene and become fascinated but the music and inevitably the musicians. You can't dance all the time so I had started to appreciate music that didn't have a pulsating beat. Eventually I grew slightly tired of the need to find 'dancers' and started to get into some more challenging stuff.
But old habits die hard and a stall on Spitalfields Market divulged this two, final, bootleg jazz comps.
Inevitably by now the jazz elements were somewhat diluted by the funk - and the fact that they were billed as 'breaks, beats and grooves' showed that the focus had shifted.
I can remember being slightly tacken-aback by the presence of Frank Zappa!!!!

Should I have been saving my money and putting in the time to fins the original recordings? Of course I should!

But I'm, glad that I bought these records.
They opened up a whole new world of music to me
that I might never have otherwise discovered and if I had to go back and fill in the gaps in my musical knowledge, well that was all part of the fun.
There were plenty of bootlegs coming out with fancy covers and concepts, Planet of the Breaks, Beyond the Valley of the Super Beats (now THAT's a cover!), The Mood Mosiac and of course Dusty Fingers (although I still not really sure how legit they were).
But I will always have a soft spot for the plain white sleeves and stuck on labels of these bootleg jazz comps.
Anyone else find them as important as me?
And if by any chance you are a complier of one of these and you happen to be reading - let me know so I can say a big thanks~!~

 I must have forgotten about this one - been lurking in the back of the racks - Vintage on Vinyl Part 5.
Can't remember where I bought it from but the Michael Longo - Like a Thief in the Night is great and Wayne Davies - I Like the Things in righeous funk. Of course Cannonball Adderley's Space Spritual is pretty amazing too!

GUY WARREN - NATIVE AFRICA - KPM 1053 and 1054

Did I ever mention that I am obsessed with Guy Warren of Ghana?
Maybe at least once!
Anyway, here are a couple of records he did for KPM in 1968.
In 1968 he was in London (of course) and had just recorded Afro Jazz with Don Rendell, Ian Carr and Amancio D'Silva.
He would team up with D'Silva again for The African Soundz which you can read about here.
The money from KPM must have been good to persuade Guy to make these two records. Why else take time from your career to record two albums worth of material? The suspicion, before you've even put the needle on the record, is that he was going through the motions. A chance to earn some money and just exploit the situation.
But of course when you listen to the music and hear the quality of the songs, it is clear that this was not the case.
I must admit that when I first heard these records I was reminded of lots of very worthy 'in the field' recordings of African musicians. You know the stuff - field recordings of so-called 'ethnic' musicians, which come in worthy sleeves with lots of footnotes about the collator of the music, but little about the people who made it or how it fits into local culture.
By 1968 Guy Warren had moved beyond all of that easily categorizeable stuff.
Having played in London with Kenny Graham (another obsession of mine) and in the US with some of the legends of bebop, Warren was international. He had even been a DJ for the BBC World Service for God's sake!
Nevertheless these are his least jazz-influenced recordings. The usual KPM descriptions (click on the pictures to get a larger image) reference, Watusi (or as we say now Tutsi), Uganda, Asafo and Muslim music. They also talk about natives, lions, insects, tribes and witch doctors. I guess the best you can say is that it was 1968!

You can imagine the kind of programme that these tracks were intended to soundtrack. A white man, perhaps in khaki shorts and with a neat beard, drives a beaten up Land Rover across the veld. Perhaps he is accompanied by a faithful retainer, dressed in a mix of Western and local clothes. As they drive along, the camera pans back to show giraffe or elephants. You can hear drum-based music in the background to show that we really are in the deep heart of Africa!

Listening to these records make me wonder about Warren's relationship to Europe and America. Like many African artists he had left Africa to pursue his musical aspirations. How, did he have to compromise to achieve his aims? Did he relish the opportunity of recording these tracks for KPM or was is a distraction from his more jazz-related work? Did he find it easy to be a Ghanaian in London?

As with all things related to Guy Warren of Ghana it is best to let the music do the talking. I have taken my favourite tracks from each record. Apologies if you favourite isn't here.

01. Talking Drums - Dramatic dancing drums. 3 Odono talking drums of various pitches, 1 Master drum
02. Dancing Drums - Small drum, 2 medium Atumpan drums, Master drum, uptempo dance sequence
03. Uganda Drums and Flute - 1 Heavy drum, 1 medium drum and sixteen inch bamboo flute. General atmosphere
04. Witch Doctor - Gong, medium drums and chanting voices, Voodoo (Juju) dance rhythm
05. Asafo Dance (Semi Military) - 2 medium drums, master drum, Ododonpo chanting voices. Builds to climaz. For warlike events
06. African Suspense III - 2 drums and flute. Mysterioso
07. Children At Play - Drums, small bamboo flute, harmonica, children's voices
08. Gyil Dance (African marimba) - Gyil, 2 drums, ground shaker
09. Gyil Solo (African marimba) - Peaceful scene
10. African Pastoral - The open plain, animals at rest. Hells (sic), bamboo flute, cymbals
11. Vehicle Movement - Snare roll joined by precussice "High Life" rhythm
12. African Kwela I - 2 Bamboo flutes, and snare drum
13. Tribal Calling - Native duologue. Native calling in the stillness of the forest
14. Sanza - Light plucked instrument generally called the "thumb piano". Gentle light sounds
15. Hullcinations and Mirages - Dream sequence - droughts - fishing
16. African Flute Solo - Lonely flute solo. Nature at rest

Native Africa - click here

Wednesday 7 September 2011

PAT PRILLY - MOOG SUONO DEL DOMANI - CANOPO 12

During a recent trip to Paris I found this in a dodgy shop on Montmatre. Amidst scratched Blue Notes and overpriceds 80s 'wave', nestled this record.
It had to be mine!
As we all know Pat Prilly was a pseudonym for Jean Jacques Perry.
This music is the sound of the future - or at least the future from the perspective of 1972.
For some reason it reminds me of Zardoz, the film with Sean Connery wearing strange pants. I don't know why, as none of the music was used in the film, but that's just the weird way my mind works.


Here is the track list - and mouthwatering it it too:

Side A
1. Treno Sperimentale
2. Canali Di Marte
3. Misteri Del Cosmo
4. Irrealta
5. Musica Dell'Infinito
6. Vibrazioni Magnetiche
7. Viaggio Nell'Incoscio
8. Cardifonia

Side B
1. Uomo 2000
2. Il Nulla
3. Altitudine
4. Frontiere Dello Sconosciuto
5. Elettrosintesi
6. Mondo Del Futuro
7. Psycho

As the notes on "Questo disco che vi proponiamo non contiene alcuna musica tradizionale ed e stato interamente realizzato con sonorita di orgine elettronica utilzzando uno strumento rivoluzionario: il sintetizzatore Moog."

Listen for yourselves here

Apologies for the odd pops  - but that's what you get with vinyl!