Just landed from our beloved pressing plant the first three HIMALAYA titles and they look beautiful!
Licensed from the legendary Gear Fab label, this is a selection of three obscure 60's psych gems remastered for your listening pleasure: BOKAJ RETSIEM s/t LP, TONGUE 'Keep On Rockin' with...' LP, and the infamous BOA 'Wrong Road' LP.
Credited as one of the best late 60's German
psych-rock albums, Bokaj Retsiem's ("meister Jakob" with reversed letters!)
"Psychedelic Underground" is an eccentric, soulful, acid and fuzzy rockin' essay
that clearly prefigures a part of the Krautrock movement. Featuring Rainer
Deigner, former guitar for the sixties beat German group Former Bonds, as the
only credited musician and composer on this album (although other musicians
assisted him on bass, keyboards, and that B3 Hammond and Leslie sound), this is
basically Rainer's freaked-out tribute to his favorite children's song, "Meister
Jakob", consisting in trippy instrumental sections, furiously savage e-guitar
crescendos, amazing psych-rock improvisation, with just a hint of 60's US
psych-garage. A real enthusiastic Psych-Kraut trip for fans of Vanilla Fudge,
Hendrix, and Iron Butterfly.
Tongue were a blues-based,
organ-fueled, country and rural folk-influenced hard rock band that emerged from
the copious student population of countercultural Wisconsin. Though Tongue
remains a criminally underrated outfit, and never made it big on a national
level, their touring reached legendary status, particularly in the mid-west.
They were on the road for 10 years and played 250 gigs a year without flying to
a single one of them. Originally issued in 1969, their debut LP was recorded
near the beginning of their career, thereby capturing the band during the early
peak of their powers. Featuring a great version of Tim Hardin's "Morning Dew",
"Keep On Trucking" is a forgotten classic of late 60's American
Psychedelia.
Hailing from the Detroit suburb of Auburn Heights,
BOA recorded this little gem in 1971, completely live and on a Sony TC-200 in a
Tupperware warehouse, giving their psych/garage a little punk twist. They did
everything themselves: recording, pressing, packaging, and the marketing (which
at the time was simply not done). A mere 200 copies of the original edition were
pressed on their own label, Snakefield. This is the pure definition of the
'garage' sound: BOA seems to have a lot of fun jamming together in their
warehouse and the result is a collection of strongly psych/prog-flavored hard
rock songs, that sound like a cross between the Doors, the Who and The
Sonics.
Legendary Welsh anti-fascist oi! band formed in Cardiff in 1981, the Oppressed is the UK punk band who most openly expressed opposition to the racist and right-wing influenced ideals spreading in the skinhead scene in the early 80s. Personally promoting the SHARP ('Skinheads Against racial prejudices') ideals to British Skinheads through lyrics and interviews, both on-stage and in real life, their singer and leader Roddy Moreno lived his life as a mission, happening to write some of the finest working class punk rock anthems ever along the way. "Dead And Buried" collects the first two, self-financed singles by the Oppressed, "Victims" and "Never Say Die", both originally released in 1983, along with their 1983 "Oi! The Tape" complete session. This is OI! music at its best.
