Finders Keepers Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 11 Items

Record Store Day 2021 release. Greg Kmiec’s Xenon pinball machine was released in 1980 and marked a significant milestone in pinball technology and design. The expansion of microchip technology would provide new opportunities for sound designer and synth pioneer Suzanne Ciani, allowing for basic oscillator control and a wider scope for sampling capacity which could facilitate the higher frequencies of a female human voice and entirely reshape the concept of the machine in the process. By using state of the art Synclavier synthesiser technology and an invaluable experience in film scoring and record production Suzanne would devise a complete minimal music score for the machine, then dissect the piece into separate fragments that would be triggered throughout the game play adding an extra creative dimension in player inter-activity (potentially turning the participant into their own musical arranger). By incorporating her own infamous voice box (which had been the focus of a seminal David Letterman Show feature) Suzanne’s combination of a harmoniser and a vocoder also provided the first-ever female identity to a pinball machine which in conjunction with the games ergonomic design and Paul Faris’ figurative graphics (echoing the aesthetic of Rene Laloux and Roland Topor’s La Planète Sauvage) Xenon was able to add a degree of subconscious sensuality to its performance, a feature previously unchartered in arcade development. This disc presents the full extent of Suzanne Ciani’s groundbreaking musical effects for Xenon, in their isolated form, for the first time ever heard outside of the confines of the machine which recently earned the composer her own induction to the Pinball Expo Hall Of Fame

Welcome to the parallel musical universe of Miss Maria Teresa Luciani, a landscape of sonic architecture and theoretical composition constructed by a family of engineers that reinvented the wheel before the vehicle even began the journey. Imagine, if you will, the musical equivalent of Peter Cook’s Archigram group or the soundtrack to Charles and Ray Eames’ private sketchbooks, hinting at a new municipal, utopian metropolis just hours before the blueprints are suspiciously misplaced by the courier and mainstream pop building regulations piss on our asbestos bonfire. These 1972 constructions of progressive, cyclic, proto-industrial colour music were never intended for public habitation. These are the Sounds Of The City in a galaxy far, far beneath our radar and above your expectations that was never built. Pseudo-futurist pop music? Cubic folk? Tape-op-art? Sì, grazie!

Before the needle hits the first groove, the story of Maria Teresa Luciani reads like an Alphaville caper full of foreign intrigue, low intensity identification fraud, secret codes, family bonds, mistrust and wanderlust... Naturally, you are holding a genuine
Finders Keepers article. To say this rare Italian concept album is “unbelievable” is justified on multiple levels. This multi-storey storage facility of found sounds, radiophonic samples, tape loops, early electronic music experiments, mechanical
folk, cinematic vision, sound design, educated music theory, political pop and high concept art-as-noise successfully layers more musical ideas within its unique structure than one would think possible for a solo artist within any musical genre.
This is why Sounds Of The City presents us with a brand new genre defying compositional framework, pre-dating sampling culture, cut ‘n’ paste plunderism and industrial music in the process. Pre-digital, indefinable and genuinely
unbelievable. But who is Maria Teresa Luciani? On hearing this record respected collectors and enthusiasts have suggested “the female answer to Basil Kirchin,” or “the Italian Daphne Oram”. Both with justified cause. Mystery, myth, legend,
teacher, artist, inventor, author, musician, psychologist, daughter, and (possibly most importantly) sister.

From the same continental cosmic egg that hatched Marc Moulin, Marc Hollander and Belgian synth fusion combo Placebo comes your favourite new Franco-Flemmish pop discovery. COS, where have you been all my life? Compact in name but wide-eyed in nature, it’s understandable how the 70’s band known simply as COS has remained trapped in the tight cracks between pop stardom and prog indulgence where other like minded names like CAN, Zao, Neu! And Egg have managed to squeeze into gaps of your record collection. In presenting one of the band’s most infectious and potentially crossover legible tracks on this exclusive user-friendly 45, COS mastermind Daniel Schell not only breaks an unlikely new format for this lesser-known femme-fronted, electro/jazz fusion/prog pop opera/would-be disco cinematic six-piece but also sends a sonic telegram to a new generation of futurist pop aficionados ready to explore the deep realms of his band’s dense, expansive and consistently rewarding catalogue. Placing the microscope over the central motif of the band’s onomatopoeic 1978 triptych known as Mein Maschine Ist Schön (My Machine Is Beautiful) this very rare proposed single edit from the group’s third album combines the type of warm, brooding, discoid funk and nymphish Morse code vocals that unite fans of Stereolab, Curved Air, Jan Hammer, Emerald Web and Ursula Dudziak not to mention Schell’s own close friends, the aforementioned, Hollander, Moulin and Placebo. A prog rock 45 might sound like a contradiction in terms but with a band like COS you can only expect them to defy convention. Backed here with another deeply conceptual sliced of deep orchestral symphonic psych from Schell’s short-lived FF Boom project from the previous year this suitably compact introduction to your new favourite COSmonauts provide digestible versions of some of Schell’s finest moments and clears the decks for future explorations of a wider musical universe waiting to be explored. Turn on this beautiful machine and let yourself melt into the COSmix.

Expanded reissue of mega rare 1979 unknown vanity pressing LP that blends ethnological field recordings, musique concrète principles, and introspective synthesizer music from this cult European studio maverick and historic collaborator of COS, Philippe Druilet, Marc Moulin, and John Surman. Alain Pierre's Mondo movie soundtrack to the controversial Des Morts shares very few stylistic rivals, but fans of Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain soundtrack and some of the more eldritch early sampling experiments of Jean-Pierre Massiera will certainly draw fragmented comparisons herein. Other listeners might file this album at the weirder end of your Smithsonian Folkways shelf, just before the Video Nasty soundtracks. Presented in remastered form comprising extra vintage studio outtakes (in accordance with the films morbid narrative), Des Morts serves as a would-be sequel to Finders Keepers' previous Ô Sidarta release witnessing Pierre balance his allegiance to the Belgian bandes dessinée scene and Thierry Zéno's shock cinema oeuvre from the heart of his uber-legendary Brussels based experimental recording studio through the 1970s. Presented in remastered form comprising extra previously unreleased vintage studio outtakes. Edition of 750.

As a genuine vanguard of electronic music composition at the forefront of the modular synthesiser revolution in the late 1960s, Suzanne Ciani’s forward-thinking approach to new music would rarely look to the past for inspiration, which makes this unheard composition from 1969 a rare exception to the collective futurist vision of Ciani and synthesiser designer Don Buchla. In choosing to adapt the controversial prose of French poet Charles Baudelaire, Suzanne would join the ranks of ongoing generations of pioneering musicians like Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Serge Gainsbourg, Etron Fou Leloublan, Celtic Frost and Marc Almond (not forgetting Star Trek’s William Shatner!), all equally inspired by the 19th century writer’s works of “modernité” (modernity), a self-coined term dedicated to capturing the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, best exemplified in his symbolic, erotic and macabre ode to Parisian industrialisation, Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers Of Evil).
In her varied career that would combine art gallery installations, major film soundtrackings and commissions for Atari, Suzanne Ciani’s earliest experiments remain some of her most challenging, beguiling and timeless... Flowers Of Evil ticks all the above boxes and flicks switches that would power-up a new uncharted universe of her own musical modernité. For the many enthusiasts that have already drawn the parallels between Baudelaire’s writings and experimental/electronic music (a relationship rivalled only by the likes of J. G. Ballard and Aldous
Huxley) some might instantly recognise an unconscious sistership between this recording and another 1969 electronic adaptation of Flowers Of Evil by celebrated female electronic composer Ruth White. An interesting distinction of White’s excellent version of Flowers Of Evil (released via Limelight records, home to the likes of Fifty Foot Hose and Paul Bley) is that its dark tone generation and vocal manipulation was created with a Moog synthesiser, the commercially triumphant
rival to Suzanne and Don’s Buchla Systems (Buchla and Moog’s historic, simultaneous, neck-and-neck synth developments are well documented.) The fact that Ciani’s version was never intended for commercial release (not unlike her 1975 Buchla concerts, which could easily have taken Morton Subotnick’s Bull by the horns!) is also poetically reflective of the nature of Ciani and Buchla’s alternative perspective. The choice to present this extract from Flowers Of Evil in its intended French language further distances Ciani’s faithful reaction from some of its better-known variations. Having attempted to voice the poem herself, the multilingual Italian-American composer’s French accent did not meet her own standards, resulting in the request for a fellow unnamed French student who lived on campus at Mills College in Oakland to accurately verbalise the section of Baudelaire’s collection entitled Élévation.

From Guy Skornik, the composer and arranger behind Popera Cosmic and Pour
Pauwels, comes the enigmatic instrumental cues for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s
rarest and most overlooked feature film, Tusk.
Cherry-picked from pre-recorded synthesiser fuelled cosmic pop sessions by
Skornik, these compositions provided Tusk with arabesque new age synthesis
alongside full-blown ambitious electro rock
As part as Finders Keepers ongoing dedicated Jodorowsky soundtrack series
we present the first ever release of the original film edits from the 1979 studio TRACKLIST sessions featuring Steve Hillage (Gong) and members of Cossi Anatz.

Perhaps one of the most unique and unlikely exponents of the highly collectible genres of ambient electronics, experimental tape-music and PINA (Private Issue New Age) this English born Jamaican raised sound designer, artist and existentialist furrowed his own ublinkered path through lesser chartered electronic fields for many moons before eventually teaming up with Bill Laswell (with Material) and Daevid Allen in New York to bring self-taught synthesis to Gong during their most oblique periods. Creating two impossibly rare self pressed vinyl LPs of conceptual inner-visionary outer-galactic angular tonal-dronal alien-art soundscapes in the process, the man known under figure shifting guises such as Dennis Wise/Denis Weise/Dr. Wise etc, combined a culture of sound system circuitry and radiophonic trickery adding Tea-pot poetry and sci-fidelity future-folk to his magnetic mesh! Presented here as the first ever dedicated ize Music collection this record combines compositions spanning 1979-1984 in both a solo capacity as well as small-group projects featuring members of the Emerald Web band.

Imagine a comic book where a Funkenstein monster called “Laraaji-Scratch Perry” invaded your record shelf while Komendarek and Holger Czukay kept lookout… Dr. Dennis might be the only one Wise enough to outsmart all of them with his powerful amorphous anaesthetic.

Karel Goeyvaerts was born in Antwerp in 1923.
After having received a humanistic education in Antwerp, he took courses at
the Lemmens Institute in Malines. From 1943 until 1947 he studied at the Royal
Flemish Conservatoire of Antwerp. From 1947 until 1950 he studied composition
with Darius Milhaud, music analysis with Olivier Messiaen and was in addition the
pupil of Maurice Martenot at the “Conservatoire
National” in Paris. In 1949 he was awarded the 2nd Prize for Composition and the
Lili Boulanger Prize at the same Conservatoire. He obtained the Halphen Prize in
1950.
During the winter of 1950-51, he wrote the “Sonata for two pianos”. Because of
its decisive and total stylistic novelty he designated this work as “Composition
No 1”, thus rejecting all his former work. With this sonata he created a structural
synthesis of the dodecaphonic system of Anton Webern and the teachings of
Olivier Messiaen and laid the foundations for generalized “punctual” serialism. He
demonstrated the application of this technique on the electronic medium in his
compositions Nrs. 4, 5 and 7. During the period 1951-1956, he influenced directly
through personal contact and intensive correspondence the musical creativity of
Karlheinz Stockhausen, whom he met during the summer-courses of 1951 in
Darmstadt. In 1953, Goeyvaerts and Stockhausen produced the first electronic
music in the studio of the NWDR in Cologne.
In 1 970 th e BRT app oin ted h im as pr oducer at th e “Institute of Psychoacoustics
and Electronic Music” (IPEM) in Ghent. Since 1974 he is in charge of the New Music
productions for BRT-3 in Brussels. Karel Goeyvaerts received several awards,
such as the Koopal Prize in 1967 and the Visser-Neerlandia Prize in 1969. He
also was given commissions by the BRT, the Festiv al o f Fland ers and the NOS
(Nede r- lan ds e Omroepstichting). His works have been performed in several
European countries, in Canada, the United States, Japan and at the festivals of the
“International Society for Contemporary Music” (ISCM) Brussels 1950, Oslo 1953,
Graz 1972 and Bonn 1977.

Combining all the traits of an international superhero or intrepid comic book adventurer, the true identity, whereabouts and history of the spectacular Italian composer known as Gerardo Iacoucci has been a mystery to record collectors for many years. As a result of the best efforts of secretive archivists and DJs as well as and the overprotective force field that surrounds the clandestine world of Italian library music, the commanding experimental psychedelic pop music made singlehandedly by this early pioneer of the anti-genre time after time rises to the top of collectors’ want lists, commands huge ransom notes, ignites dancefloors and decimates genre tags before returning to its mythical status as one of the kings of the underworld without removing his mask. Despite the fact that original Italian copies of records by Gerardo Iacoucci are amongst the rarest, enigmatic fixtures of European psychedelia, his music simply refuses to be ghettoised and as the name of this album suggests the history of this artist reads like the memoirs of a genuine musical adventurer as well as a well-travelled prophet of experimental music and unsung pillar of Italian jazz and sound design. Recorded in early 1970, Iacoucci's wide-eyed L'Avventura suite spanned 6 sides of loud, heavyweight monophonic vinyl for Romano Di Bari's Deneb label and created an epically detailed blueprint for independent mood music companies whilst sharing release schedules with likeminded workaholics Alessandro Alessandroni and A. R. Luciani. However, Gerardo's adventure didn't begin here…

The mythical, mysterious and misfiled transcription disc of a lost Italian demonic religious rock opera recorded at Pierre Umiliani’s Sound Workshop by Stefano Marcucci - beat group veteran, Fernando Arrabal collaborator and Libra affiliate.

Featuring members of the wider Casa/Ducros family and future Federico Fellini collaborators, this previously commercially unavailable mini-LP features embryonic Minimoog, ecclesiastical organs and chorus alongside a tight psych funk rhythm section from Italian library music’s golden era.

Imagine Jean Pierre Massiera’s Visitors restoring a scene from Juliette Of The Spirits, backed by a skeleton staff from Jean-Claude Vannier’s Chorale des Jeunesses Musicales de France on a foreign exchange program; on Halloween, in the Vatican…

Continuing our mission to shine light on the genuine anomalies of 70’s Italian production music, Finders Keepers Records resurrects another unlikely transcription disc from the vaults of one of Rome’s most esoteric library music archives. This bizarre one-off theatrical project, composed and recorded at Umiliani’s studio, was commissioned for a short-run demonic religious performance entitled Tempo Di Demoni, Papi, Angioli, Incensi E Cilici under the musical direction of former Italian psychedelic beat-group member Stefano Marcucci.

Instantly recognised by Flower Records founder Romano Di Bari as having commercial potential beyond its handful of church and small theatre performances in the early months of 1975, Marcucci agreed that they should commit these bizarre recordings to vinyl as a form of preservation with hope of attracting a wider commercial audience through Di Bari’s Television and Films synchronisation contacts. Sitting slightly ajar to the custom-made projects of its label bedfellows (swapping schedules with experimental theme-music by Alessandro Alessandroni, Gerardo Iacoucci and Anthonio Ricardo Luciani) and confusingly sharing an identical catalog number to another collectable Flower release called Ritimico by (close friend) Paolo Ferrara (LEW 0551) this album has slipped under the radar of many Library label completists over the years attracting confusion, scepticism, polarised opinion but nothing short of astonishment at the bizarre hidden synth-ridden psychedelic concept pop found behind some of the most striking duo-tone artwork to come out of Italy’s most experimental era.