The Artless Cuckoo

BACK IN STOCK !!!

The official 40-year anniversary issue of Imagination’s debut album Shake It.Remastered from original tapes, this deluxe edition is a double vinyl LP with gatefold sleeve, featuring a newly available lyric insert.Shake It covers a diverse spectrum of styles and sounds, all combining to a unique soulful amalgam that ranges from sunshine AOR funk (“Mornin’ Lights”) and leftfield disco (“Strawberry Wine”) to psychy, epic, downtempo, vocoder grooves (“Can’t Stand Without You”) and more.Originally released in 1980, it fast became one of Germany's most collectible privately-pressed LPs. Shake It was the creation of young thoroughbreds working hard on becoming professional musicians, trying to take their next big step in the music business. Starting out as a pure jazz-rock combo in the mid '70s (as we hear on the recently released lost studio tapes, I'm Always Right (The WDR Tapes 1977)) Imagination left behind their instrumental roots, incorporating new musical trends and styles.Uwe Ziss, their saxophonist and flutist, became one of two lead singers in Imagination. He would be joined by the younger Roger Mork, a student of original guitarist Willi Hövelmann, around 1979. Roger's voice would best be heard on the aforementioned "Mornin’ Lights", one of the various standout tracks on Shake It. However, there is much more that this album offers.There are soulful soft rock ballads like “Clouds Flee Before The Wind” and “Waitin for your Call” or the catchy “California” song that switches from a dreamy Westcoast sound (as the title implies) to danceable rhythm & blues with equal ease. Last but not least, there's three unissued bonus cuts. On one, the demo take of “Clouds Flee Before The Wind”, we hear, for the first time ever, the original refrain of this song, which, for some strange reason, was taken out from the final mix on Shake It.When all eight original songs were recorded and mastered in June, at the well-equipped West Aix-La-Chapelle studio, the stage was set for Imagination’s long-desired career push. They'd initially press about 2500 copies of Shake It selling it mainly, locally, directly to their hometown fanbase in Düsseldorf. Meanwhile, their manager would attempt to arrange a record deal with a music label. Unfortunately, this became more difficult than expected. Negotiations with a smaller publishing company were made by Imagination, and Shake It was repressed on Nash Records in 1981 without their consent, under the false promises of a nationwide promotional tour which would never come to fruition. At the same time, the group would face a UK band under the same name achieving mainstream success, making it difficult (not to say entirely impossible) to perform as "Imagination". Though the band would remain active after Shake It, they'd split shortly after Nash's duplicitous reissue hit store shelves.Luckily, through time, Shake It itself has remained worthwhile, creatively, for those who stumbled upon it and financially, too, becoming quite the sought after gem in record collecting circles. This deluxe anniversary double vinyl issue makes the LP available once again at a far more reasonable price, featuring the original, illustrious, eye-catching, Roy Lichtenstein-influenced banana art, as well as previously unavailable presspictures and more.

The official re-release of this mystic slow motion synth pop tune by Ghia – a little known small home recording/studio project from Bielefeld, Germany. Limited to only 300 copies.Ghia only released two singles while they existed and was originally founded in 1983 by old friends Lutz Boberg and Frank Simon. Around 1985 they started to work with singer Lisa Ohm, who they met through a former teacher that was working as an engineer at the local Cottage studio. Boberg and Simon were composing the songs together and also wrote the lyrics. Lutz Boberg, who was trained on classical piano, played the keyboards, including bass. Frank Simon was more about the technical aspects as well as being a proficient guitarist. Their home studio consisted of a Yamaha DX7, a Roland synthesizer, a sampler and a drum machine. Simon was also trying to create a new sound by building his own effect processors. “The analogue effects already had turned mainstream and sounded boring while the newer digital effects sounded aweful to me.”, he recalls. Hence, Simon invested about half a year to develop his own signal processing system to create the FX sounds he had in mind.The keyboards and guitars on “What’s Your Voodoo?” were passed through that unique processor of course. Combined with a deep synth bassline and the exceptional haunting vocals by Lisa Ohm it gives the track all the magic the title implies. The exclusive B-side track of the single is “Keep Your House In Disorder” which previously could only be found on a few handmade demo cassettes as as well as a scarce CD compilation. It effortlessly brings together pop and modern soul vibes.Almost completely overlooked at the time when it was released, we are happy to shed new light on the long forgotten Ghia project. Both tracks should appeal to cosmic and synth pop lovers as well as late soul collectors

Two Island Boogie tracks by Experience, an Afro Reggae group hailing from Germany.Experience’s “Share It With You” and “Happiness” can both be found on the private LP release “Oh! What A Feeling” from 1982. The group consisted of Anthony Flaverney from Trinidad, Curvin Murchant from Jamaica, Daniel Kofi Jefferson from Ghana and John Innies from Trinidad and was founded in Hamburg.Anthony Flaverney, the lead singer on both songs, was active as songwriter and musician in Germany since the mid-1970s, most notably appearing on the Peter Herbolzheimer arranged “Caribbean Rock“ album by Malcolm's Locks (be sure to check their funk version of Bob Marley’s “Get Up Stand Up”!). Curvin Merchant, a highly respected drummer from Jamaica, settled in Germany around the same time. Before forming Experience, he was a member in several groups, including highly successful pop acts like Boney M. Later he became known as "Germany’s Grandfather of Roots Rock Reggae", among other things buildung up the "Reggae Center" in Hamburg. Flaverney and Merchant are joined by Daniel Jefferson on bass and John Innies on steel pan. The band existed for about 2 years, touring in Germany and Europe, unfortunately recording only one album which features a unique mix of Reggae and Funk.The first track “Share It With You”, should give any serious music lover goose bumps. It was written by Flaverney and features a deep groove, steel drum solos and fantastic soulful vocals. It’s that type of tune you will play in a DJ set and people will come up to you and ask what it is. The single version is slightly edited.Side B continues with Happiness, an equally great track with positive vibe and attitude, written by Flaverney and Jefferson. Again, the steel pan sounds give it that special compelling “Island” vibe from Trinidad.The single is limited to 400 copies and comes in a beautiful picture sleeve showing part of the original artwork from the “Oh! What A Feeling” album.

Totally unique and basically undiscovered Ethophian synth groove single by blind keyboardist Haile Mariam G. Ghiorgis. 500 copy press - fully licenced release which comes with a thick high quality picture sleeve.As a first release on this newly founded label, here's two totally unique and undiscovered Ethophian synth groove recordings by blind keyboardist Haile Mariam G. Ghiorgis. Both tracks are taken from the highly collectable and extremely rare debut solo album 'Tigill Lemenor (Survival)'. An album that Ghiorgis released privately in 1985 on his own Pentaton label.Born in Ethiopia in 1952, Haile M. Ghiorgis originally worked as a music instructor after school and played music together with several prominent groups of his countrymen, he was the keyboardist of Mahmoud Ahmed & Ibex Band and played for national stars like Tilahun Gessesse, among others. Due to the communist revolution in Ethiopia in 1974, Haile decided to leave his motherland and he was allowed to leave the country due to his blindness in 1977. Finding a new home in Hamburg, he performed together with various bands, including the afro pop group Soulful Dynamics and Jah Love (an early band of funk drummer and reggae artists Curvin Merchant aka Jamaica Papa Curvin). When those groups disbanded, Ghiorgis was retrained as a piano-tuner but also focussed on his own music.Haile M. Ghiorgis was particularly fascinated by the digital-controlled synthesizer and rhythm-machines, whose operation he mastered without any difficulties in spite of his blindness. The drums came from a Yamaha drum computer and were recorded first. On top of that, bass and the melodies were added. Haile was using a Yamaha DX-7 keyboard, an old small Roland synth as well as an organ by Solton.On the album, which was recorded in his small home studio in Hamburg on a TEAC 8-track tape machine, Haile M. Ghiorgis harmoniously blends western pop and jazz music with his native country's folklore. On the A side, 'Man biye?' is a sort of melancholic love song, it means 'What shall I call you?'. A man searches for something though in vain to compare with the beauty of his beloved. The atmospheric instrumental features brilliant synth solos over deep downtempo beats, sort of like jazzy ethno synth funk in slow motion.Side B of the single is the uplifting disco track 'A Happy Disco Song'. As it says in the liner notes of the LP, the song esteems Ethiopian hospitality and relates how welcome every stranger is and how even the poorest is ready to share with him. The track got a charming 'private' vibe and surely should appeal to DJs and disco/boogie aficiandos.The original LP 'Survival' was primarily sold on live shows when he was on tour in the late 1980s throughout Europe, accompaning fellow Ethopian musicians including jazz legend Mulatu Astatke, among others, and almost never pops up.