"Good Time Songs" is taken from the album 'So What If Im Standing In Apricot Jam' by Howard Eynon. Released by Earth Recordings November 2014. 

Howard Eynon - Good Time Songs

Taken from the album 'So What If Im Standing In Apricot Jam' deluxe reissue out on 4th Dec 2015 with brand new tracks.

Howard Eynon - Shadows & Riff

by Howard Eynon. Out on 17th November on Earth Recordings. 

LP and CD available here: http://bit.ly/1w2SUer 

http://www.earthvinyl.com 

https://www.facebook.com/earthrecordings

The 'lost' Tasmanian acid folk masterpiece, re-issued in its 40th anniversary year by Earth Recordings, So What If Im Standing In Apricot Jam (note no apostrophe) by Howard Eynon is a bizarre and wonderful record in the vein of wild-eyed geniuses such as Syd Barret, Kevin Ayers, Neil Innes or Nick Drake, although perhaps even more beautiful and mysterious. It's certainly more unusual, with its colloquial lyrics, acerbic wit and Howard's Anglo-Australian accented singing voice.

Howard Eynon was born in the small market town of St Ives, Cambridgeshire and then moved to Chichester. When he was eleven, his family moved to rural Tasmania. Settling on a dairy farm in the small town of Deloraine, Howard grew up milking cows, driving tractors, riding horses and blowing up tree stumps with gelignite and would often spend days on end in the bush without seeing another living soul.

At 17 he left the farm on his motorcycle and made his way to Melbourne to pursue a career in acting. He worked mostly in theatre and joined various theatrical repertory companies. He found himself in all kinds of small parts for local Aussie dramas such as The Sullivans. Later, he made notable small appearances in both the original Mad Max (1979) and as one of the horse riders in The Man from Snowy River (1982).

Throughout this time he continued to play music. In 1971 he had won the Grand Final of Australian New Faces and became a much-loved solo artist in Tasmania, playing many shows and toured with great artists such as Hunter S. Thompson. Whilst a member of the Tasmania Theatre Company, he was asked to write and record a guitar piece for a play, which lead him to Spectangle in Hobart, Tasmania where he met Nick Armstrong, who invited him to record a full-length album. 

Recording took three months and Howard was joined by a host of amazing local players and utilising violin, mellotron, flute, synths, french horns, double bass, piano and more to capture a dozen quirky and addictive tracks that would become one of Australia's most interesting albums of the 1970's. It was originally released in 1974 by Basket/Candle Records but has been out of print ever since. The record ranks amongst the rarest and most sought after acid folk private pressings.

Not much was known of his whereabouts or activities beyond the early 1980s.

So What If Im Standing In Apricot Jam is a bold and madcap record on a par with Paul McCartney's Ram. The evocative lyrics take in everything from political commentary, to anti-authoritarian jabs, to bright homely humour and deep descriptive stories.

This daffy folksy psychedelic ramble full of tall tales, delightfully quirky melodies, hilarious lyrics and marvellous wordplay, risqué irreverence and beguiling lapses into musical frippery, has not only stood the test of time, but completely and utterly blown it away.

Howard Eynon - Happy Song

Graham Coxon - Cruel Mother

Stewart Lee And Stuart Estell - Polly On The Shore

Johnny Flynn - Rambleaway

Bert Jansch - Blues Run The Game (Live at the 12 Bar)

Shirley Inspired - Rob St John & Modern Studies - Bold Fisherman

Two decades after its first release, ‘Live At The 12 Bar’ is issued for the first time on vinyl. This exceptional record is the first release in Earth Recordings’ new extensive reissue series of Bert Jansch catalogue.

Bert Jansch - Blackwaterside

Remastered limited edition picture disc in a deluxe die cut sleeve 16 October 2015; CD 4 December 2015. 

'Moonshine' is released 4 December following an early limited edition picture disc release in October. 

Bert Jansch - Moonshine

Earth Recordings and Antique Beat bring you the essential collection of works from Mikael Tariverdiev. 'Film Music' is a 51 track, 3 disc collection containing Tarivderdiev's most popular works and many unheard treasures. Remastered and transferred from original master tapes at the Tariverdiev home, Film Music is sequenced by Vera Tariverdieva and Stephen Coates. Delivered in three segments 'Goodbye Boys!', 'Snow Over Leningrad' and 'I am a Tree'. Film Music is due for release in November in a deluxe hard case outer and includes a 20 page book with extensive contributions and unseen photographs.

Mikael Tariverdiev - Prelude For Cello And Piano

Mikael Tariverdiev - Aria For A Moscow Guest

Mikael Tariverdiev - Snow Over Leningrad

Mikael Tariverdiev - Expectation Of The New Year

Mikael Tariverdiev - All This Jazz

Tariverdiev - Boys And Sea - Part Two

Tariverdiev - Boys And The Sea - Part One

Taken from the new reissue of 'Avocet' out on Earth Recordings 5th February 2016. 

The vinyl edition comes with six high-quality lithograph  art  prints representing  each  of  the  birds  on  the  album by UK  illustrator Hannah Alice. Fully interactive: the cover image is interchangeable with any of the prints, while the deluxe ‘bookback’ CD comes with 20 page book. 

Bert Jansch - Kittiwake

First  issued  over  25  years  ago,  and  now  remastered  from  original tapes. The vinyl edition comes with six high-quality lithograph  art  prints representing  each  of  the  birds  on  the  album by UK  illustrator Hannah Alice. Fully interactive: the cover image is interchangeable with any of the prints, while the deluxe ‘bookback’ CD comes with 20 page book. Out 5th February 2016.

Bert Jansch - Kingfisher

One of Bert's rarest releases, this 1985 LP was originally issued as an edition of just 500 copies on the small Belgian label, Konexion. This issue unites the varied track listing of previous versions – both LP and CD, with many cuts appearing here on vinyl for the first time. Remastered from original tapes by Brian Pyle. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide.

Bert Jansch - River Running

Mikael Tariverdiev - Waltz From The Last Thief

When he died in November 2015, Eldar Ryazanov left behind an astonishing fifty year, thirty movie legacy which included some of the most popular Russian films of the modern age. And of all of them, the one that remains the most popular is 'The Irony of Fate’, a comedy made for MOS film in 1975. 

But The Irony of Fate owes part of its immense popularity not just to its genius director, its clever comedy, its satirical subplot or its starring actors. It is a film with songs. And those songs and the underscore that accompanied them have become as memorable as the film itself, they have become part of the Russian musical DNA, recognised even when the name of their composer, Mikael Tariverdiev, is not.

'The Irony Of Fate - The Orginial Score' is released on vinyl November 25th on Earth Recordings.


Ironiya Sudby / Irony of Fate

Mikael Tariverdiev - Melody (from The Irony Of Fate - Original Score)

Pre-order 'Living In The Shadows' here: https://bertjansch.bandcamp.com/

Bert Jansch - Untitled Instrumental II (with John Renbourn)

Earth Recordings reissue Bert Jansch's 'Downunder: Live in Australia' which is released on February 24th 2017.

There is a warmth about this recording which echoes that of Live at The 12 Bar, recorded three years before. It’s mostly just Bert and his guitar, with the welcome addition of intuitively placed flourishes of bass and percussion. Available on vinyl for the first time, this ambience is heightened by Brian Pyle’s sensitive remastering, bringing a real intimacy to this enduring collection of songs.

Recorded live at Continental Cafe, Melbourne, Australia in March 1998. Pete Howell (bass); Ian Clarke (percussion). Liner notes by Colin Harper. Remastered from original tapes by Brian Pyle.

Bert Jansch - Carnival

Bert Jansch 
‘Living In The Shadows Part 2: On The Edge Of A Dream’ 
Limited Edition ‘Book-back’ box set 4LP/4CD
Released April 28th 2017

Following on from Earth’s definitive collection of Jansch’s 1990s works ‘Living In The Shadows Part 2: On The Edge Of A Dream' picks up from where it left off, bringing together Bert Jansch’s final recordings, made between 2000 and 2006. This remarkable anthology documents some of Jansch’s finest work, and a man at the top of his game, some forty years(!) after his first release. From the brooding resonance of Crimson Moon (where Jansch is joined by Johnny Marr, Bernard Butler and Johnny “Guitar” Hodge, as well as son Adam Jansch and Bert’s wife Loren Jansch) to the intimacy of Edge Of A Dream (Bernard Butler, Hope Sandoval, Dave Swarbrick, Ralph McTell, Johnny “Guitar” Hodge, Paul Wassif, Adam Jansch and Loren Jansch) to the wondrous new folk / trad folk harmony of Black Swan (Beth Orton, Devendra Banhart, Kevin Barker, Helena Espvall, Paul Wassif), these seemingly very different albums all speak of one thing: Bert’s natural talent for turning out extraordinary music, regardless of genre. 

Disc four, The Setting Of The Sun, takes in more demos and unreleased material, with guest appearances from Gordon Giltrap and Johnny Marr adding additional delight for fans old and new. These peeks into Jansch’s recording process are nothing if not fascinating, with his home studio lending itself perfectly to any recording fancy he might arrive at. 

Like Part 1, this deluxe case-bound set exhibits the sublime attention to detail that has become Earth Recordings’ calling card. Liner notes come courtesy of colleague Bernard Butler and Bert’s son Adam, while a comprehensive listening guide (by esteemed journalist, Dave Henderson) is also included.

Limited edition 4LP/4CD casebound book-back box set, comprising Jansch’s three studio albums from the 2000s (Crimson Moon; Edge Of A Dream; The Black Swan), alongside an additional disc of demos and unreleased material. Both studio albums and original tapes remastered by Brian Pyle. Comes with high-quality download code.

Bert Jansch - It Don't Bother Me (unreleased with Johnny Marr)

Mikael Tariverdiev
‘Olga Sergeevna’ Original Television Score
Out October 20th 2017   
On Deluxe Double LP 

“So evocative, so immediate, so transporting even without its visual anchor” Pitchfork

Following the release of the critically acclaimed ‘Film Music’ box set and the ‘Irony Of Fate’ OST, Earth Recordings release Mikael Tariverdiev’s score and astonishing improvisations for ‘Olga Sergeevna’. Produced by the composer’s widow Vera Tariverdieva and musician Stephen Coates from original tapes, this release on deluxe double vinyl is the first outside Russia.

Bringing the composer’s extraordinary canon closer to recognition in the west, the score is taken from a 1975 Soviet TV Film series directed by Aleksandr Proshkin. Based on a story by Edvard Radzinsky, the show featured several film stars with the lead role of Olga played by screen star Tatiana Doronina.

Olga is a marine biologist brought from a small town to Moscow by her mentor. The story unfolds into a tangled web of professional, romantic and emotional relationships with the main theme that a woman can dedicate her life to her career and feel satisfied, even when she is not particularly happy in her personal life. 

In the USSR, and globally, that was as revolutionary a concept in the 1970s as setting a TV drama around the life of a female scientist. As many critics have noted, Tariverdiev’s music, like the theme of the TV series, contradicts the lazy prejudice that any popular culture to escape the Soviet censor could not be groundbreaking or the equal of anything being made in the West.

The score’s extraordinary baroque jazz inflections were created from improvised pieces with Tariverdiev on celeste, cimbalon, harpsichord and piano accompanied by double bassist Z. Shakhaliev and S. Livshin on drums. The songs feature vocals by Josef Kobzon or the composer himself and the orchestrated themes are conducted by Emin Khachaturian and Yurriy Reetovitch.

At the time of the film’s release, Tariverdiev had recently scored the hugely popular ‘Seventeen Moments Of Spring and was about to work on Soviet blockbuster ‘The Irony Of Fate’. The main theme from Olga Sergeevna was submitted for an American music Academy competition which it duly won, Tariverdiev traveled to LA but was not granted permission by the Soviet authorities to accept the offers of work that followed  - probably because of an earlier act of solidarity with his friend the dissident director Mikhail Khalik that saw him banned from the leaving USSR for over ten years.

Mikael Tariverdiev - Out Of Shot

‘The Ballad Of Shirley Collins’ Original Soundtrack
Out now!
Limited edition pink vinyl &
Deluxe ‘bookback’ inc DVD & CD (UK only) 
Pre-order: earthrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/the-…ey-collins

Widely regarded as the 20th century’s most important singer of English traditional song, Shirley Collins is someone who was born to invoke the old songs. Alongside her sister Dolly, she stood at the epicentre of the folkmusic revival during the 1960s and ‘70s. But in 1980 she developed a disorder of the vocal chords known as dysphonia, which robbed her of her unique singing voice and forced her into early retirement.

The Ballad Of Shirley Collins - which premiered at this year’s London Film Festival - tells this story, though to reduce it to that single aspect does everyone (not least of all Shirley!) something of a disservice. The film proves itself to be a time-travelling Transatlantic road-movie of sorts, utilising an incredibly rich audio archive to recount the tale of her seminal 1959 song-collecting trip around America’s Deep South alongside her then-lover (and legendary ethnomusicologist) Alan Lomax. The soundtrack album reflects this, combining never-before-released recordings from that trip (notably Alabama Sacred Harp Convention, Texas Gladden and Sidney Hemphill-Carter) with more recent offerings, a home recording of Shirley's sister Dolly Collins, excerpts from the original soundtrack music and two BBC session tracks from 1958, which get their first release, some 60 years after they were recorded.

Shirley Collins spent her life in song. Even during her time without her performing voice she was telling the stories of others’ music. Not once has she dropped the baton in keeping these songs, these stories, these people alive. The soundtrack to ‘The Ballad Of Shirley Collins’ - through its diversity - showcases a cross section of the facets that make up an extraordinary career by anyone’s standards.

Released for the first time on limited edition pink vinyl (worldwide) and deluxe DVD bookback (UK only) that will feature a range of extras including deleted scenes, audio commentary, behind the scenes footage and an unreleased short film by the filmmakers along with CD of the soundtrack.

“Brilliant story of lost folk singer” Guardian

“Something to be cherished” Little White Lies

★★★★ Mojo

Alongside the release, there will be a Shirley Collins book preview event featuring a live performance and first readings from her new autobiography ‘All in the Downs: Reflections on Life, Landscape and Song’ (out March 2018) at the British Library on 20th January 2018.

‘The Ballad Of Shirley Collins’ film continues to screen across cinemas in the UK and will be free-to stream on the Lush Player in the UK for 20 days only from January 20th 2018.

For full film screening schedule and tickets please visit: www.shirleycollinsmovie.com/

To view on the Lush Player please visit: player.lush.com/

LP Track list 
Side A
1.	“All I Ever Wanted”
2.	Shirley Collins – Calvary Hill
3.	Ishman Williams & The Williams Singers – Got On My Travelling Shoes
4.	“Do You Want Me To Start Again, Alan”
5.	Texas Gladden – I Never Will Marry
6.	Sid Hemphill and Lucius Smith – Come On Boys, Let’s Go To The Ball
7.	Horton Barker – A Rich Irish Lady
8.	Ian Kearey – The Poor Drowned Sailor
9.	Sidney Hemphill Carter – Pharaoh
10.	“I Used To Could Sing”
11. Outtake (London, 1959)

Side B
1.	“There’s Never Been A Merry England”
2.	Andy Hemsley and Hastings Jack In The Green – Seeds Of Love
3.	N.J Brothers & The United Sacred Harp Musical Association – Calvary
4.	Lucius Smith – Make Lulu Behave Herself
5.	Ruby Vass – Single Girl, Married Girl
6.	“I Can’t Really Forget Them”
7.	George Stoneman – Sally Anne
8.	Michael J York & Ossian Brown – The Cloud House / Cyclobe – Sons Of Sons Of Light / George Collins - Dolly
9.	Dolly Collins – Missa Humana (excerpt)
10.	Shirley Collins – Wondrous Love

Shirley Collins - Calvary Hill

Earth Recordings Announces Mikael Tariverdiev’s
‘Seventeen Moments Of Spring’ Original Soundtrack 
out 23rd November

FOR RUSSIA - WITH LOVE

A man enters a café, takes a drink and sits smoking. He watches as a woman enters with another man. They order coffee and converse at a table. Her companion says something quietly to her and gets up to leave. Alone, she looks around the café and suddenly sees the first man. For the next six minutes, they look at each other, around each other, through each other. Not a word is exchanged. The woman’s companion returns and leads her away.

This silent sequence, accompanied only by music, is from ‘Seventeen Moments of Spring’, a 1972 Soviet twelve part television series. The scene was resisted by the producers and included only on the insistence of the director Tatyana Lioznova, but it became one of the best-known in Russian film history, and its piano score one of the best-known pieces of Russian cinematic music.

The series tells the story of a Soviet spy (portrayed by the actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov) operating undercover in Nazi Germany as military officer Max Otto von Stierlitz. Stierlitz is on a covert mission to disrupt secret negotiations aimed at forging a pact between Germany and the Western Allies. He is sometimes referred to as ‘the Soviet James Bond’ and there are some correspondences, despite the World War II setting: both Bond and Stierlitz work for their respective countries’ secret service agencies and both, in various ways, reflect their cultures’ idealised alpha males.

But whilst Bond, is a hard-drinking, hard-loving, wisecracking free agent, Stierlitz is restrained, faithful to his wife, intellectual and modest. He spends much time looking out of windows rather than crashing through them.

There is a further link in that Seventeen Moments was made partly in response to the way the KGB was typically portrayed abroad in works such as the Bond series (where it appears as SMERSH). 

On broadcast, Seventeen Moments was immediately immensely popular with an estimated audience of between 50 and 80 million viewers for each episode.

Crime rates dropped significantly during the broadcasts, city streets were empty and power stations had to increase production to cope with a surge in the demand for electricity for TV sets. It is said that Brezhnev moved meetings of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in order not to miss an episode and that Vladimir Putin’s decision to join the KGB was influenced by watching the series when young. It became the most successful Soviet espionage thriller ever made. It was rebroadcast annually in the Soviet Union and throughout the Warsaw Pact nations and is still regularly shown in Russia where it remains one of the most popular television series of all time.

Without any doubt, the score by Mikael Tariverdiev contributed to this huge success. He wrote it after some initial reluctance to be involved but its popularity catapulted him to national fame. ‘Somewhere Far Away’ and “Moments’, remain some of the best-known and well-loved cinematic songs of the era. The main theme and his piano underscore to that famous café scene where Stierlitz and his wife meet-but-don’t-meet must have surely captured the haunted longings and romantic poignancy of a generation of Soviet citizens who had suffered their own forced separations, displacements, silences and losses.

The score presented here follows the narrative arc of the series’ story. It has been re-mastered from transfers made from original tapes in the Tariverdiev apartment in Moscow. The download and CD versions contain three additional tracks never before released – even in Russia - including the much-loved Waltz for Gaby.  

Stephen Coates

Performed by Mikael Tariverdiev (piano, cimbalon) with the Pop Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jury Silantiev and recorded in 1972 at Gorky Film Studio. ‘Seventeen Moments of Spring’ is released on 23rd November on LP (with download of all tracks) and CD.

Mikael Tariverdiev - Prelude for Ket

Mikael Tariverdiev - Somewhere far away

Mikael Tariverdiev - On Tsvetochnaya Street

From Mikael Tariverdiev's 'Visions in Black and White' out 6th November
Pre-order: https://earthrecordings.lnk.to/TariverdievVisions
 
“A master conjuror of smoke-filled moves” The Guardian
“A rich treasure trove that fascinated and entices in equal measure” MOJO

‘Visions in Black and White’ is a collection of rare jazz and improvised themes by one of the greatest Russian film composers Mikael Tariverdiev (1931-1996).

Originally composed for cinema and TV movies of the 1960s and 1970s, it centres on Mikael playing at the piano and keyboard. Many of the compositions can be described as jazz, a genre whose troubled story in the Soviet Union meant they probably would not have existed outside the context of a film score. But, as Vera Tariverdieva, Mikael’s wife, tells, it is probably more in accordance with his vision to hear them in the context of his life-long love of improvisation.

"Astoundingly, he said more than once that he wasn’t fond of jazz. This perplexed me, as he’d always been great at improvisation. Imagine my amazement then when I rummaged through one of our old closets and found a crumbling old tape. It was the score for the 1964 film ‘Until Tomorrow’. I played it. And the realisation came: not only had Mikael had been fond of jazz — no, he’d been an amazing jazz musician. He’d simply forgotten about it, the way one forgets getting an inoculation as a child! Inoculated, he seemed to have developed the necessary response and moved on. Jazz was no more than one stopover on his journey.” Vera Tariverdieva

The pieces here are an introduction to Mikael’s musical world. The tonality of individual tracks varies - they were transferred from original tapes of different eras and conditions that are kept in the Tariverdiev apartment in Moscow where Vera still lives and works. They have been carefully mastered to retain as much of the original ambience as possible and to capture the spirit of a master at work.

‘Visions in Black and White’ is released on white vinyl and CD on 6th November via Earth Recordings.

Earth Recordings

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks