Mutantes: Punk Porn Feminism (2009) [re Up]

The Musea label and the Finnish magazine Colossus endlessly continue their quest for the greatest universal themes, in order to complete their collection of concept-albums dedicated to Progressive rock. The hero of the day is Dante Alighieri, the famous medieval author from Firenze who wrote "The Divine Comedy". That's precisely this epic piece of work, without a doubt one of the greatest books of all times, that serves as the basis for this project. And of course, it has been divided in three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.
The second part, Purgatorio, deals with the poet’s journey through Purgatory, the abode of penitent souls waiting to ascend to heaven after having being purged of their earthly sins. The set comprises 36 tracks spread over 4 CDs, for a total of 35 bands and artists from a wide range of countries…

To avoid any and all confusion, this is not the British mod band from the late '60's. This 1972 self-titled CD is the sole effort from the obscure 'heavy rock' five piece that is from Zweibrucken, Germany. In the summer of 1972, Action recorded three tracks for demo purposes at the Kerston studio. Only in 1997, the recordings by chance caught the attention of the small Dortmund label Very Good Records. The label released them as LP together with a live track in an edition of 500 copies on black and 100 copies on green vinyl. At the end of 2008, Action joined together once more for two professionally recorded gigs. The one from 11/22/2008 was now added to the CD as bonus. The tracks from 1972 were drawn from the master tapes, as well as the new ones.

All three of Family's 1970 BBC sessions (all of them previously unreleased) are on this 77-minute CD, all of them dating from the time when Poli Palmer had joined the band to fill out its sound on flute, piano, vibes, and percussion. Only the first of the three sessions is taken from the master tapes, with the other two surviving only in the form of the off-air recordings that served as sources for this CD. Also, that first session (from January 1, 1970) wasn't a typical performance by the group, given that - because singer Roger Chapman was ill - the band performed two instrumentals (one of which, the jazzy "Here Comes the Grin," makes its first appearance here)…

Shadoks Music has rescued yet another obscure recording for our enjoyment - Souvenir Album by Strange. The disc features eight songs proper and four segments of other tunes recorded from 1974 to 1978, and more than anything highlights the songwriting abilities of David Chamberlain, the band’s multi-instrumentalist and singer.
Even in their hometown of Olympia, Washington, Strange was far from a household name, and never really broke beyond playing local venues. By 1978, as Chamberlain was putting the material together for an actual album, Strange had disbanded. Still, Chamberlain waded through tapes of old material, committing the best bits to a master reel, and then handed them over to a gentleman named George Yantiss…

Singer, songwriter, guitarist, and pianist Peter Hammill is a veteran of the rock genre, recording in excess of 40 albums both alone and as a band leader for more than 30 years. A frequent collaborator and friend of Peter Gabriel, Hammill achieved high regard in his native Great Britain and across Europe. Hammill and Gabriel played an important role in the development of progressive rock, leading the art-prog-rock bands Van der Graaf Generator and Genesis respectively and singing in a theatrical, wordy, typically English style…

Tips Zum Selbstmord (1972). With a title that means "How to Commit Suicide," Necronomicon's one album, from 1972, featured bleak progressive garage rock with long instrumental passages. With wailing acid guitar solos, dark organ swirls, and angst-ridden singing in German, Necronomicon has created a dark and powerful vision that blends psychedelic and progressive music with a proto-punk garage band sensibility. They throw in some operatic vocals on several of the tracks; these are most effective in a couple places on "Requiem der Natur" to make the music sound almost like the Slovenian band Laibach. The same piece also offers an industrial droning beginning, some great walking bass soloing, bass and keyboard dueling, and a couple of melancholic folksy interludes…

Despite almost universal critical hatred, Transvision Vamp briefly rose to the top of the U.K. charts in the late '80s, thanks largely to the media image of lead singer Wendy James, who fashioned herself as a sexually provocative, rebellious, fashion-conscious punk – sort of a mixture of Madonna, Blondie's Deborah Harry, T. Rex, and the Clash…