On November 11, Rhino Records will celebrate the music of avant-garde iconoclast Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart, with a new four-CD box set. SUN ZOOM SPARK: 1970 to1972 focuses on the period following the release of his career-defining 1969 album Trout Mask Replica. During that creatively fertile patch, Beefheart released three albums that have long lingered in the shadow of Trout Mask and even of Beefheart’s Richard Perry-produced debut Safe as Milk. SUN ZOOM SPARK revisits these three albums – Lick My Decals Off, Baby, The Spotlight Kid, and Clear Spot- in freshly remastered editions, and adds a fourth disc containing fourteen previously unreleased outtakes and alternates from Beefheart and his Magic Band cohorts. Housed in a 7½ x 7½ picture box - still sealed in stickered shrinkwrap.
Late in his life, Frank Zappa hooked up with the small German avant-garde orchestra the Ensemble Modern for what are said to have been the most enjoyable encounters with an orchestra he had in his career. The combination resulted in the last album Zappa released during his life, The Yellow Shark. This album, issued seven years later by the Zappa Family Trust, chronicles some more of the sessions. "These are recordings from Frank Zappa's rehearsals with the Ensemble Modern in preparation for The Yellow Shark, writes Todd Yvega, who also served as a recordist on the project.