Summer Soldiers Aka Samâ Sorujâ (1972) Hiroshi Teshigahara, Keith Sykes, Reisen Ri, Kazuo Kitamura

On the third album by AKA, the leading Indonesian rock band of the ’70s, there was a slight change concerning the overall direction. With three exceptions - the powerful funk-rock of the opening title-track, the dirty garage beat of the B-side opener “Skip Away,” and the energetic up-tempo soul-pop of “Raja Jalan” the band turns to soft rock and Indo-pop ballads on this LP. And guess what - these folks really knew how to pull it off, even with lush pop harmonies that often touch the borders of the tear-jerker field. Crazy Joe, originally released in 1972 and reissued here for the first time, is a rather courageous album, with those three rawer and more energetic tunes alongside the gentle plush of the pop tunes. All those who dare to listen between the notes will find a massive load of delicate arrangements and rather striking melodies…

Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945) is an American jazz and classical music pianist and composer. Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has also been a group leader and a solo performer in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, especially Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music. In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize, the first recipient of both the contemporary and classical musician prizes, and in 2004 he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize. His album, The Köln Concert, released in 1975, became the best-selling piano recording in history. In 2008, he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in the magazine's 73rd Annual Readers' Poll.

Originally, this collection was put together in 1972 by Tony Stratton-Smith from outtakes of the Nice's early stay at Immediate Records, and issued (at least, in the U.S.) with no explanation and little annotation, making it a bit confusing to longtime fans of Keith Emerson and the trio. Its timing was also unfortunate, in that a huge cache of record club copies of the Nice's first three albums on Immediate, pressed by Columbia Special Products, had shown up in cut-out bins at just about the same time. One had to listen closely to see that everything here was an alternate take of material from the band's first two albums. Essentially, Autumn 1967/ Spring 1968 (aka Autumn to Spring) was an outtake version of the group's debut long-player, The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack, shorn of the two longest tracks from that album, "Rondo" and "War and Peace"…