Alien 1979

Friedrich Cerha (b. 1926) is revealed by this great 2-disc Kairos set to be one of the great composers of the late 20th Century, who deserves to be recognized alongside Xenakis, Ligeti, Nono, Stockhausen, and Boulez. Cerha was the 2012 recipient of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, the "Nobel Prize of music," and so his reputation and stature outside of Austria are belatedly coming to more closely match the esteem he enjoys in his own country. Cerha's own music has only been extensively documented recently, with a series of discs on Austrian neuemusik label Kairos, as well as recordings on the ECM, Col Legno, and Neos labels.

It's quite difficult to find a young person who knows about the Scorpions. Even when their careers were peaking in the '80s, they were never widely recognized, existing always as more of an underground band. The lack of hit singles produced by the group is by no means a judgment of its talent, however, as Deadly Sting: The Mercury Years proves. Some may find the fact that Mercury made the compilation a double-disc set surprising – again due to the band's small following – but the album is far better than the single-disc collection Best of Rockers 'n' Ballads. Following chronologically from 1979 to 1993 (thus covering the years in which the band enjoyed its most success)…

OST-KRAUT!: the two-part double CD series - a long overdue addition to our KRAUT! edition - comprehensively documents the history of progressive music in the GDR for the first time with studio and live recordings!