Streetmark - Dreams 1977

STREETMARK was founded 1968 in Düsseldorf, when Dorothea Raukes, who had studied Classical Music and played keyboards, met the Brothers Thomas and Bernd Schreiber, both guitarists. Dorothea and Thomas formed the nucleus of the band. In the beginning STREETMARK played mainly covers of the BEATLES, Jon Mayall and DEEP PURPLE. In 1969 they refused a proposal for a record deal. In the following five years STREETMARK developed their own style mainly based on the compositions of Dorothea and Thomas, influenced by PROCOL HARUM, FOCUS and ELP. Finally in 1975 STREETMARK recorded their debut record "Nordland" for Sky. The record was produced and recorded by Connie Plank with the following line up : Dorothea Raukes (keyboards), Thomas Schreiber (guitar), Hans Schweiss (drums), Georg Buschmann (vocals), Wolfgang Westphal (bass). Bernd Schreiber did the mixing and Soundboard duties.

"Nordland" was a brillant debut record, the band had taken the time to play the compositions live and to work them out. The general musicianship is quite high; the only weak point, as often in German bands are the English vocals. In 1977 STREETMARK released their second record "Eileen" with Wolfgang Riechmann, a solo recording artist, who had joined the band on vocals and keyboards. Tragically he was murdered in 1978, before the release of his solo record "Wunderbar". Sky re-released "Eileen" in 1979 with the new title "Wolfgang Riechmann and Streetmark" with one bonus track. Later on the record was renamed "Dreams". The third (fourth) record "Dry", entirely instrumental, was released in 1979. In 1981 STREETMARK released their last record "Sky Racer", with Dorothea Raukes as the only founding member left. It is still an interesting record but much more Pop influenced. progarchives.com

Tracklist:
01.Crazy Norton 7:52
02.Passage 4:25
03.Sea of melted lead 5:45
04.Tomorrow 1:11
05.Eileen 5:33
06.Dreams 12:17
07.Choral 3:08
08.Streaming  4:16 (Bonus track)

Streetmark:
Dorothea Raukes - keyboards, vocals
Wolfgang Riechmann - vocals, synthesizers, guitar
Thomas Schreiber - guitar
Hans Schweiss - drums
Manfred Knauf - bass 

Here & Now - Give & Take 1978

Give & Take was recorded without Daevid Allen, who had fallen ill after the release of Planet Gong's LP Live Floating Anarchy in 1978. The remaining members released it under their former name, Give & Take. Honestly, it makes no difference. If you don't look at the name on the CD and put it on, you could be tricked to believe it is a genuine early Gong album. Every element that constitutes the seminal space rock outfit's sound is reproduced to perfection: soaring guitar (courtesy of Steffy Sharpstrings, who would be drafted for the 1990s Gong reunion), sweeping synthesizers, psychedelic melodies, accelerating beats, and hypnotic pulses they're all there. The main difference resides in the quality of the compositions. They don't reach the same level of musical excitement; they lack Allen's cast of characters. The opener "What You See Is What You Get" is the strongest number, a tight song in two parts, first distilled from the best material on Angel's Egg and later hooking up on a riff that emulates the ground-laying space rock of You. This twin brother of a band gets suspiciously close to plagiarism in "Grate Fire of London," in which a female vocalist (either Suze Da Blooz or Annie Wombat) sings suggestive lines heavy on echo exactly like Gillie Smyth in "Prostitute Poem" (among other songs). The surprise comes with "Improvisation," an inspired, hard-driving space rock jam the likes of which Gong itself rarely recorded. Give and Take is much stronger than the group's later exercises, but it remains only an enjoyable curiosity for Gong aficionados. A long-out-of-print collector's item, this album has been reissued on CD by Tin Toy in late 2001. allmusic.com

Tracklist:
01.What You See Is What You Get 5:23
02.Nearer Now 5:42
03.Grate Fire of London 7:33
04.This Time 4:46
05.Seventies Youth 5:00
06.Improvisation 11:04

Here & Now:
Steffy Sharpstrings - guitar, vocals
Keith tha Missile - bass, vocals
Gavin da Blitz - keyboards, synthesizers
Kif Kif Le Batter - drums, guitar, vocals
Suze da Blooze & Annie Mandrake - Choir of Angels

Here & Now Official Web Site

Wooden Shjips - Wooden Shjips 2007

Wooden Shjips, a four-piece pysch combo from San Francisco, feature a bassist named Dusty, a guitarist named Ripley, and an organist named Nash. On their debut release for Holy Mountain, the Shjips, like the Jefferson Airplane and the Doors, tap into the California frontier sex-and-death cult mentality: drugs and murder and depravity out in the desert where nobody can see whatever it is you do when there's nobody watching. Forty years removed from their closest cousins, the Shjips have little to show for the interim-- a dash of 1970s Kraut two-note rhythm, a gauzy Spacemen 3 filter, a garage-rocked low-fi fetish.
Less blustery than the screaming California psych of Santa Cruz bros Comets on Fire, not to mention the god the two bands share, Hawkwind, Wooden Shjips still clearly care way more about rock music than some of their primitive peers. But the leather-pants-and-no-underwear mysticism that made Morrison seem like a prophet even as he uttered such wisdom as "Mother I want to yeearrrgh" has been sapped of its power to make weak the knees of men and women alike.
So the Wooden Shjips have a problem, sort of, since neither the mystique implied by their warbled and echo-y vocals nor the fourth-dimension logic required by their single-stab rhythm tracks is the siren song it used to be. They can substitute nostalgia for sex appeal, as they do on "We Ask You to Ride", an organ-squawky Doors homage, and on "Blue Sky Bends", which cops Lennon's opening gambit from "I Found Out". Or they can wind things up real tight and lean on repetition as the closest thing there is to guaranteed hypnosis, as they do on the shufflin' "Losin' Time" and "Lucy's Ride".
What the Shjips occasionally know as well is that you can do all this stuff at the same time, too, and that's when you get album closer "Shine Like Suns". Like the Pixies, "Sweet Emotion", Spacemen 3, the Velvets, Joy Division, and F/i zipped up into one shimmering undulating passage, "Shine Like Suns" is everything the rest of the record is not: dynamic, rhythmic, bright, and, at ten minutes long, not at all dull. It's the Doors' "The End" but about living instead of dying. Call it the beginning. pitchfork.com

Tracklist:
01.We Ask You To Ride 4:53
02.Losin' Time 4:18
03.Lucy's Ride 6:10
04.Ble Sky Bends 7:42
05.Shine Like Suns 10:18

Wooden Shjips:
Erik Johnson - guitar, vocals
Dusty Jermier - bass, trumpet
Nash Whalen - organ
Omar Ahsanuddin - drums

Ufo - Flying 1971

01. Silver Bird 6:54
02. Star Storm 18:54
03. Prince Kajuku 3:56
04. The Coming of Prince Kajuku 3:43
05. Flying 26:30

Ufo are :
Mick Bolton - guitar
Phil Mogg - vocals
Andy Parker - drums
Pete Way - bass

Flac 250 Mb + 138 Mb