RECORD STORE DAY JUNE 12TH 2021 EXCLUSIVE

Masahiko Sato
Belladonna EP
FKSP021

Not content with liberating what many consider the rarest soundtrack on BOTH the cut-throat Italian and Japanese collectors markets (with the repress of the music to Eiichi Yamamoto’s erotic-historic Pinky anime psych cinematic feature Belladonna Of Sadness), Finders Keepers Records return to the composer Masahiko Sato’s bottomless well in an attempt to retrieve the elixir which enticed us in the first place. From a clutch of thirteen lost cues which never appeared on the mythical Italian-only soundtrack album, this limited 45rpm single finally combines the two elusive freak fuzz tracks that aficionados unanimously agree to be the finest themes to feature on the film.

Encompassing virtually all of the free jazz and screaming psych signatures found on Masahiko’s own albums and collaborations, such as Amalgamation, Yamataifu and Rumour (all recorded around the same era), these two tracks also hear Sato experimenting with hard rock rhythms and afro rock aesthetics devised to enhance the flamboyant and erratic folkloric storyboard of the film. Not scared to deploy radical 1970’s studio devices like guitar fuzz pedals and keyboard ring modulators Masahiko literally pulls out all the stops with his organs, synths and pianos to deeply coat artist Kuni Fukai’s most eye-popping scenes with his own sonic equivalent of hallucinogenic face melting mayhem. Complete with rhythm players and soloists from his associated bands The New Herd and The Soundbreakers these two tracks alone draw comparisons with the likes of Wolfgang Dauner (with whom Sato was a firm friend during the recording of albums like Output and Fur) and will certainly strike similarities to Miles Davis’ Filmore/ Bitches Brew period, but never without his own distinct Japanese jazz flavour, thus placing these tracks alongside other rare and unreleased psychedelic recordings such as J. A. Caesars music for the films of Shuji Terayama and Toshi Ichiyanagi and April Fools music for Yoshishige Yoshida’s Eros Plus Massacre.

Continued comparisons to Alain Goraguer’s animation soundtrack for La Planete Sauvage can be attributed to Sato’s use of Rhodes electric pianos, but as one of the first three people to import a Moog synthesiser to Japan (a key player on the collectable Electro Keyboard Orchestra), Sato’s tracks on this 45 successfully convey his wash of electro enhanced layered noise that illustrates the films pivotal plague scene in which Fukai paints an unforgiving black sea over the world to avenge the honour of the films traumatised leading protagonist. Complete with the obligatory chase scene which provides a backdrop for the films frenzied witch hunt segment Sato successfully turns his hand to a unique blend of Japanese afro rock (which in its deft execution shares unlikely similarities with Finders Keepers’ Iranian anthem Helelyos by Zia) proving the composer to be a versatile and forward-thinking musician who in the case of this genuinely mythical (in all senses of the work) soundtrack has arguably created his unrivalled cinematic masterpiece.

Belladonna EP

The Plague Reins

Masahiko Sato - The Plague Reins

Zdeněk Liška - The Cremator (Spalovač Mrtvol)
FKR060-B
10" vinyl/Digital
Released 30th September 2013

Galvanising our ongoing commitment to the lost music of the Czech New Wave cinema movement from the late 1960s and 1970s, Finders Keepers Records follow up our series of previously unreleased music to Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders, Daisies, Saxana and The Little Mermaid with a short series of soundtracks for films by the country’s master of the macabre and the nation’s first point of call for freakish fairytales and hallucinogenic horror, Mr. Juraj Herz.

As another late entry to the unparalleled creative cinematic unison known in Europe as “the Czech film miracle”, Juraj Herz's 1969 feature film The Cremator was one of a clutch of certified cinematic literary adaptations that used the apolitical subjects of fantasy and surrealist horror to evade the com- munist censors’ abortive measures; dodging the overzealous cutting and burning process which poetically echoed the films own macabre and fantastical screenplay. Unifying a cast and crew of some of the Czech New Wave's leading lights, Herz’s macabre depiction of Ladislav Fuks' fictional account of a local crematorium boss whose hallucinogenic burning obsession with the afterlife is ignited by the Tibetan Book Of The Dead and intensifying manipu- lative Nazi propaganda is undeniably one of the greatest underexposed European horror films of all time.
Drawing similarities with other stark monochrome thrillers such as Roman Polanski's Repulsion, Herz’s comparatively untravelled classic also boasts a beguiling score and theme tune that remains one of the most memorable and spine-chilling melodic soundtracks by the country’s finest experimental soundtrack composer Zdeněk Liška (Malá Mořská Víla) providing the movement with one of its best loved signature scores. Featuring an ongoing partnership with studio conductor František Belfín (Daisies) and soprano singer Vlasta Soumarová Mlejnková (Marketa Lazarová), Liška puts his radical concrète and resampling techniques (see Ikarie XB1) to one side in favour of celestial choral and orchestral arrangements; menacing giallo-esque tension and recurring rhythmical motifs of Eastern bells and chimes illustrating Rudolf Hrušínský's Kopfrkingl character’s demise into murderous infatuation and the momentary cameo shots of the hallucinogenic death figure played by Helena Anýzová (Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders/Daisies).

From a country and era when isolated soundtrack music remained commercially unreleased Finders Keepers Records are proud to rescue, remaster and reincarnate this intense and timeless score by one of Europe's finest composers taking a rare excursion into horror territory as part of a filmography of more than 200 formerly unpressed film scores.

Zdeněk Liška - Spalovač Mrtvol

George Auric
O Willow Waly (The Innocents)
KREEP01


Not content with already liberating over twenty dedicated global horror and thriller soundtracks as part of the labels expansive discography, Finders Keepers Records resurrect their ghostly Finders Kreepers imprint, an apparition last spotted back in 2009 with the archival Willow's Songs which exposed the original twisted folk music that inspired the seminal 1972 Wicker Man score.  With an unwaning appetite for the rare and obscure side of the genre the labels next short series combines ten vintage recordings from the formative years or International horror introducing a host of bygone soundtrack musicians that combined folklore, musique concrète, early electronics, childlike vocals and flamboyant orchestras to accompany the surreal and hallucinogenic films that inaugurated and inspired the golden age of macabre fantastique cinema.

Sourcing a cross section of obscure global domestic pressings and under the radar vintage vinyl runs this Finders Kreepers reissue series combines a cross section of the rare/unknown and the seminal, bringing unobtainable sonic gems of both classic and uber-classic shock cinema to a discerning new generation of collectors.

Starting the series off on a good foot Finders Kreepers bring you a mysterious and beguiling piece of music that has enchanted and eluded fans of vintage horror for decades.  A game changer for the new wave of British horror when it was originally released the most unnerving attribute of The Innocents was the recurring childlike song that haunted the corridors and gardens of a haunted house in between bursts of concrète effects and drones (made by an uncreditted Daphne Oram).  A forerunner to a generation of lullaby lead horror scenes (such as Rosemary’s Baby and Profondo Rosso) whilst drawing comparison with other macabre music featuring minor maestros such as The Night Of The Hunter and The Wickerman, this song is an oft requested gem of a micro-genre which seldom passes through second hand record stores and bookshops undetected in its original vinyl form. Produced as an ambitious commercial tie-in for the release of the film in 1961 this elongated studio version sung by the lead Scottish born actress Isla Cameron (who many will also recognise as a prolific traditional folk singer on the early 60s) was casually marketed to a small audience of movie fans who perhaps liked the idea of bringing the ghost into their own house.  This rare original studio version is one of the only ways to capture the short leading motif that has echoed, in limbo, through the consciousness of film enthusiasts for over five decades.

The alternate side to this debut Finders Kreepers 45 is the theme to another milestone of monochromatic European horror which despite its lifespan of re-distribution and edit room butchery has still failed to penetrate the mainstream DVD/Blu-ray market and stand up to be counted as the glaring influential landmark of the modern female vampire cinema genre that would spiral out of control throughout the following decade.  Based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 vampyristic same-sex love story, Carmilla, the film Et mourir de plaisir (aka Blood And Roses) became director Roger Vadim's fifth feature (directly following another French literary adaptation with Les liaisons dangereuses) and visually draws a line between Powell/Pressburger's The Red Shoes and Jean Rollin's Viol Du Vampire while sonically begging comparison to Francois de Roubaixs inspired Daughters Of Darkness soundtrack.  Composed by Jean Prodromidès and abetted by sound designer Robert Biard the score reaches its memorable peak during a dream sequence montage combining graveyards, claustrophobic corridors and a bizarre clinical blood transfusion scene, all of which are enhanced by submerged sound effects and a restrained blood red colour tint (predating the likes of Shock Corridor, Rumble Fish or Schindler’s List) it is clear that fans of Rollin/Franco et al will be able retrace their bloodline with this lesser-spotted picture. Originally squeezed onto an obscure six track 7" at low volume for French only distribution this dream sequence theme has been remastered and presented in good company for a fresh Finders Kreepers audience.

George Auric - O Willow Waly (The Innocents)

Walter Schuman
Pretty Fly/Lullaby (Night Of The Hunter)
KREEP02

Not content with already liberating over twenty dedicated global horror and thriller soundtracks as part of the labels expansive discography, Finders Keepers Records resurrect their ghostly Finders Kreepers imprint, an apparition last spotted back in 2009 with the archival Willow's Songs which exposed the original twisted folk music that inspired the seminal 1972 Wicker Man score. With an unwaning appetite for the rare and obscure side of the genre the labels next short series combines ten vintage recordings from the formative years or International horror introducing a host of bygone soundtrack musicians that combined folklore, musique concrète, early electronics, childlike vocals and flamboyant orchestras to accompany the surreal and hallucinogenic films that inaugurated and inspired the golden age of macabre fantastique cinema.

Sourcing a cross section of obscure global domestic pressings and under the radar vintage vinyl runs this Finders Kreepers reissue series combines a cross section of the rare/unknown and the seminal, bringing unobtainable sonic gems of both classic and uber-classic shock cinema to a discerning new generation of collectors.  A haunting lullaby that needs little introduction. Previously obscured beneath gruff narration within the grooves on a collectible patchwork vinyl audiobook of the film, this musical highpoint of Walter Schuman’s The Night Of The Hunter score finds a dedicated and undisturbed home as part of the Finders Kreepers catalog (amongst its distant doppelganger O Willow Waly lullaby found on our previous theme to The Innocents). Originally sung by the five-year-old actress Sally Jane Bruce but stylistically overdubbed by teenage actress Betty Benson (reverse echoing similar vocal dubbing tales from The Wicker Man’s production log) the high pitched fragility of this immaculate piece of haunting cinematic song has left an indelible sonic memory in the minds of discerning thriller fans which remain synonymous with recycled Sunday afternoon television schedules and the spooked-out aerial shots of composite rabbits, toad and Lotte Reinigner like scenery. This lament of the two riverboat runaways fleeing from the house where the submerged dead body of their murdered mother sways in the reeds still stands up as one of the most haunting and painstakingly pensive pieces of lyrical film music and has since provided direct influence on adaptations and interpolation by Stella Vander (Magma) members of Stereolab, Goldfrapp and Jane Weaver while the film itself (with its roots in purported factual events) continues to inspire the likes of David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch and Rob Zombie.

Before disappearing into relative obscurity this pastoral Swedish/French witch flick benefitted some active global distribution in the 60s due to the stunning lead actress Marina Vlady. A tale of unrequited love, sorcery and persecution this cinematic poem relies on hallucinogenic dream scenes and a paranoia plot to convey a similar tale to that of Eiichi Yamamoto's Belladonna of Sadness. With a shimmering organ and acoustic guitar Norbert Glanzberg score which follows the blonde witch as she rows her boat through twilight lakes and echoing caves while living off the land this unknown soundtrack would not be out of place in a haunted Kubrick ballroom or a Lynchian cabaret club. Scaling the outskirts of the classical horror genre La Sorcierre is more of a supernatural story with a horrific conclusion complete with a shimmering haunting score previously only available on a bizarre Israeli exclusive vinyl EP which has always been hard to track down for those who have literally fallen under the spell of the film.

Walter Schuman - Pretty Fly/Lullaby (Night Of The Hunter)

Graeme Miller
Comet In Moominland
(FKR111) Finders Keepers Records

Release date: 3rd June 2022

From deep in the heart of Moomin Valley, frozen in time for many midwinters passed, comes a genuine treasure chest of never heard Moomin melodies and instrumental comet songs composed for the continued animated adventures of our Fuzzy-Felt freak folk friends who disappeared from UK TV pastures in the mid-1980s. From the top of the Hobgoblin's Hat and the bottom of Snufkin's satchel, original Moomin's composer Graeme Miller (The Carrier Frequency) kindly shares this patchwork selection of spellbinding sound poems and percussive peons made using the very same selection of ocarinas, kalimbas, miniature squeak boxes, Waspy synths, cornflake box shakers and a seemingly endless array of talent and lo-fi home studio trickery.

Regarded as one of the most enigmatic, beguiling and haunting imported children’s programmes to ever grace UK TV screens, The Moomins was one of the first-ever commissions by Anne Wood (The Teletubbies) who ingeniously replaced the original Polish/Austrian/Finnish soundtrack with homemade music experiments by unknown post-punk theatre students Graeme Miller and Steve Shill (aka The Commies From Mars) who after the screening of two unforgettable series in 1983 and 1985 were left in eager anticipation of rescoring further Moomin adventures with new melodies, arrangements and sound designs which then lingered in the ether waiting until the Groke awoke and Snorkmaiden sang once more. With future felt adventures screened exclusively in Poland and Germany for many years (often as feature films) these unheard recordings are the only genuine musical sequel to the bizarre UK version of The Moomins and stand as important inclusions the Graeme Miller's own portfolio of theatrical theme music and sound installations as part of The Impact Theatre Cooperative including collaborations with artists and writers such as Russell Hoban. Witnessed in fragmented form during a short run of incredible rare live screenings at The Barbican Theatre and various film festival this record marks the first time this music has been heard in its original full-length form, free from sound effects, dialog and whimpers of euphoric joy and nostalgia from those who have continued to crave the company of our Moomintrolls and their mysterious music over the last five decades.  

www.finderskeepersrecords.com

Comet In Moominland

Raft Journey

Graeme Miller - Raft Journey

As one of the three inaugural 1976 releases to ignite the mythical Mustevic Music catalogue, David Wertman’s elusive Kara Suite LP was the first record to turn jazz drummer Steve Reid’s vanity imprint into an bona fide cooperative record label with a multi-artist repertoire. Entrusting his own bass player with the limelight, Reid’s unlikely A&R decision would typify his oblique strategies and challenge the common perception of a soloist within jazz’s shifting landscape.

Drawing few comparisons amongst independent label releases of the time, save for rare standalone LP by Ronnie Boykins (ESP 1975) and cellist Abdul Wadoud (Bisharra 1978), Wertman’s only solo album (preceding his work with Sun Ensemble and The New Life Trio) combined frenetic bow work, intricate spiritual exchanges and raucous rock solid cyclic riffage to underpin his own compositional complexities. Providing a platform for first-time players like Richard Schatzberg (French horn) and future avant jazz punk participant Ken Simon (tenor/soprano sax) Kara Suite provides an early indication of Wertman’s multilayered and non-conformist blueprint from which the hallowed New Life Trio would eventually illuminate. The album’s off-kilter commitment is further cemented by the inclusion of worldly free jazz luminary Charles Tyler (alto sax) and the naturalistic back-beat of Steve Reid himself to complete the dream team – albeit a sleepless one, on account of this one-off quintet’s wide-eyed innovation.

Presented in four parts, Kara Suite documents Wertman’s very first musical directorial commitment to vinyl, preceded only by guest appearances, months earlier, on Steve Reid’s classic Rhythmatism and the ultra-rare The Universal Jazz Symphonette LP which chronicles Wertman’s deep-end New York baptism alongside Billy Bang and Earl Freeman before his relocation to Northampton forged this unique and oblique chapter in America’s independent jazz narrative. As one of the final pages to be turned in the Mustevic reappraisal legacy this album perhaps remains the best kept secret for aficionados who actively choose to blur the lines between spiritual jazz and free jazz with no discrimination against art rock and the genre that might soon be christened punk (but not as we know it).

Finally resurrected via the Finders Keepers/Early Future unison, complete with full cooperation and sleeve note narration by David’s partner Lynne Meryl, it might come as little surprise that amongst these pillars of alternative, privately pressed jazz is a story that also intertwines names such as Alice Cooper, Archie Shepp, KISS and DJ Shadow and many mutating musical genres that have made this music so hard to pin down over the subsequent five decades.

Kara Suite

David Wertman - Kara Suite

The Fates - Sheila-She Beats In My Heart

FKR055X
Andrzej Korzyński 
Secret Enigma

Released 29th September 2023

Back due to unprecedented demand and available for the first time since the original 2012 pressing, Finders Keepers Records is proud to once again present these twenty-two rare and unreleased vintage tracks from the secret vaults of one of the most enigmatic composers in 60s/70s/80s European cinema, Andrzej Korzyński. Originally recorded in the best studios in Poland, Italy and France for experimental film, political allegories, lost television shows, sound libraries and radio – these tracks have been hidden behind the Iron Curtain on lost master tapes and film reels until now! Secret Enigma represents the first ever dedicated anthology of this great composer’s work.

Originally released exactly thirty years ago In artistic cinema Andrzej Korzyński's unique experiments with jazz, pop, rock, orchestral and electronic music make his name synonymous with the most praised (Andrzej Wajda) and the most provocative (Andrzej Zuławski) Polish filmmakers (counting many more in between). As an early patron of the Polish New Wave and a key exponent of the development of conceptual Polish pop music his expansive portfolio has remained commercially unreleased and untravelled (like many of the original socialist era Polish made films) and has yet to find its deserved place next to the work of Ennio Morricone, François de Roubaix and John Barry. Now enhanced by a renewed interest in vintage art house film and a subculture of open minded music collectors many Easter European artists, such as Krzysztof Komeda (Poland), Zdenek Liška (Czechoslovakia) and now Andrzej Korzynski, have finally begun to earn their place alongside their Central European peers.

For lovers of film music and experimental pop, this debut anthology and appraisal of Korzyński's work is long overdue, and stylistically, probably never more relevant.

Secret Enigma

Saved From Oblivion

Andrzej Korzyński - Saved From Oblivion

FKR063X
Andrzej Korzyński 
Third Part Of The Night

Released 29th September 2023

As one of the most triumphant and beguiling directorial debut features to emerge from the fruitful Polish New Wave, Andrzej Żuławski's 1971 film Third Part Of The Night not only earned the 30 year old filmmaker a place next to other radical Polish directors such as Polanski, Skolimowski and Has, but also galvanised a creative bond with long running collaborator and composer Andrzej Korzyński, providing fans of foreign abstract/suspense cinema with a potent creative fusion to match those of Polanki/Komeda, Fellini/Rota and Argento/Goblin, amongst others.

Quite simply one of the heaviest psych rock film soundtracks of all time Andrzej Korzyński's short and unreleased score matched the blueprint that adorned the drawing boards of conceptual French jazz orch rock composers like Jean-Claude Vannier, Francois De Roubaix and Alain Gourageur, creating a soundtrack that unknowingly begs comparison to Masahiko Sato’s Belladonna Of Sadness and Billy Green’s Stone. As one of the first progressive pop writers to come out of the vibrant (but carefully scrutinised) Polish beat scene with his bands Ricecar 64 and later Arp Life (and composing for national heroes such as Czeslaw Niemen, Niebiesko-Czarni and Test) Korzynski’s growing passion for conceptual rock and jazz music soon lead to instrumental composition and soundtrack scores.

His cinematic debuts scoring two consecutive transitional new wave films for Andrzej Wajda (in collaboration with the radical Polski pop groups Trubadurzy and Grupa ABC) also provided Korzynski with another significant cinematic muse in that of the stunning actress Malgorzata Braunek with whom they would both eventually achieve their finest performances under the direction of the ravenous first timer Żuławski. Third Part Of The Night (1971) perhaps epitomises that triangular on-screen unison in its vibrant youth and feeds it through a hallucinogenic mangle finding astonishing beauty (within a repulsive synopsis) against a bleak and shattered backdrop and accompanied by progressive, psychedelic orchestral rock music - elements which would intensify for all three creatives with the next film, Diabel, which was banned by the Polish government the following year until 1988.

Third Part Of The Night also marks the public unison of Żuławski and Braunek whose later private romantic relationship is said to form the basis for another defining Żuławski/Korzyński defining endeavour with the 1981 film Possession exactly a decade later, encapsulating a period that bequeaths a previously unopened vault of some of the composers finest and most inspired sonic adventures.

Third Part Of The Night

W instytucie

Andrzej Korzyński - W instytucie

ANDY VOTEL - MONDO CARNE VAL MIXTAPE 2016

Andy Votel - Mondo Carne Val Mixtape

Andy Votel & Jane Weaver - Europium Alluminate Mixtape

Andy Votel - Music To Watch Girls Cry Mixtape

As our maiden voyage into an expansive vat of unreleased music by Polish composer Andrzej Korzynski, Finders Keepers Records originally presented his previously unreleased electro/orchestral/experimental score for Andrzej Zulawski’s surrealist 80s horror classic, Possession in 2012. These 25 cues were written and recorded exclusively for the 1981 award-winning film starring Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neil, but due to the progressive, stark and modernist nature of the finished film less than half of them made it on to the actual director’s cut – leaving many of the tracks on this spackage totally unheard outside of Korzynski’s studio.

The intended Possession score in its entirety marks an important axis in Korzynski’s career where his various musical disciplines overlap. In one respect it marks his first forays into to synth driven electronics and disco drum machines, while other tracks epitomise the well honed techniques used in previous Zulawski scores, such as Third Part Of The Night and The Devil, which rely on his inimitable orchestral arrangements and combination of clavinet, Rhodes, piano and electric guitar.

Available once again on black 12” vinyl for the fist time since its original release some 11 years ago, our ongoing commitment to the important restoration of Korzynski’s music aims to shed new light on the seldom manufactured productions of the composer whose vast cinematic catalogue warrants overdue global status alongside other golden era Eastern European composers such as Kryzstof Komeda, Jan Hammer and Zdenek Liska – not to mention the best of the French and Italian soundtrackers, such as Roubaix, Vannier and Nicolai.

Duplicated and carefully remastered directly from Korzynski’s original master tapes this album boasts the uninhibited studio experiments and retains the pre-cut ambience.

Possession

The Night The Screaming Stops (Opening Titles)

Andrzej Korzyński - Possession - 01 The Night The Screaming Stops (Opening Titles)

Finders Keepers invite you to witness these incredible early Buchla synthesiser concerts/demonstrations providing a distinctive feminine alternative to The Silver Apples Of The Moon if they had ever been presented in phonographic form. This is history in the remaking.
This spring Finders Keepers Records are proud to release an archival project that not only redefines musical history but boasts genuine claim to the overused buzzwords such as pioneering, maverick, experimental, groundbreaking and esoteric, while questioning social politics and the evolution of music technology as we’ve come to understand it. To describe this records as a game-changer is an understatement.
This record represents a musical revolution, a scientific benchmark and a trophy in the cabinet of counter culture creativity. This record is a triumphant yardstick in the synthesiser space race and the untold story of the first woman on the proverbial moon. While pondering the early accolades of this record it’s daunting to learn that this record was in fact not a record at all… It was a manifesto and a gateway to a new world, that somehow never quite opened. If the unfamiliar, modernistic, melodic, pulses, tones and harmonics found on this 1975 live presentation/grant application/educational demonstration had been placed in a phonographic context alongside the promoted work of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos or Tomita then the name Suzanne Ciani and her influence would have already radically changed the shape, sound and gender of our record collections. Hopefully there is still chance.
In short, Suzanne was a self-imposed twenty-year-old employee of the Buchla modular synthesiser company, San Francisco’s neck and neck contender to New York’s Moog. Buchla was run by a community of festival freaks and academic acid eaters whose roots in new age lifestyles and the reinvention of art and music replaced the business acumen enjoyed by its likeminded East Coasters. In the eyes of the consumer the creative refusal to adopt rudimentary facets like a piano keyboard controller rendered the Buchla synthesiser the more obscure stubborn sister of the synth marathon, steering these incredible units away from the mainstream into the homes and studios of free music aficionados, art house composers and die-hard revolutionaries. Championed and semi-showcased by composer Morton Subotnick on his albums The Bull and Silver Apples Of The Moon, Buchla’s versatility began to open the minds of a new generation, but the high-end design features and no-compromise modus operandi was often confused with incompatibility and, in the pulsating shadow of Moog’s marketing, the revolution would not be televised nor patronised. Suzanne Ciani, as one of the very few female composers on the frontline (and also providing the back line) did not lose faith.
These “concerts” are the epitome of rare music technology historic documents, performed by a real musician whose skills and academic education in classical composition already outweighed her male synthesiser contemporaries of twice her age. At the very start of her fragile career these recordings are nothing short of sacrificial ode to her mentor and machine, sonic pickets of the revolution and love letters to an absolutely genuine vision of and ‘alternative’ musical future. In denouncing her own precocious polymathmatic past in a bid to persuade the world to sing from a new hymn sheet, Suzanne Ciani created a bi-product of never before heard music that would render the pigeon holes “ambient” and “futuristic” utterly inadequate. Providing nothing short of an entirely different feminine take on the experimental “records” of Morton Subotnick and proving to a small, judgmental audience and jury the true versatility of one of the most radical and idiosyncratic musical instruments of the 20th century. These recordings have not been heard since then.

Buchla Concerts 1975

Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concerts 1975 (Excerpt)

The very first Buchla synthesiser performance by revolutionary composer Suzanne Ciani finally makes its fifty year journey from its switch-on New York art gallery to its long deserved and discerning global phonographic audience.

With this previously unheard vinyl pressing, Finders Keepers Records are proud to present an archival project of ‘art music’ that not only redefines musical history but lays genuine claim to the overused buzzwords such as pioneering, maverick, experimental, groundbreaking and esoteric, while questioning social politics and the evolution of music technology as we have come to understand it. To describe Italian-American composer Suzanne Ciani’s resurrected Buchla concert records as genuine gamechangers would be a gross understatement. These records represent a musical revolution, an artistic revelation, a scientific benchmark and a trophy in the cabinet of counterculture creativity. This sonic installation album, alongside her recently liberated WBAI / Phill Niblock 1975 sessions (FKR082), are triumphant yardsticks in the synthesiser space race and the untold story of the first woman on the proverbial musical moon. While pondering the early accolades attached to these golden era New York recordings it’s daunting to learn that these records were in fact not even records at all.

What exists on this disc now was a manifesto and a one-time gateway to a new world, which somehow was only partially pushed ajar. Captured here is a genuine live act exploring new territories with a fully performable music instrument. If the unfamiliar, modernistic, melodic pulses, tones and harmonics found on these 1970’s artistic gallery collaborations / live presentations (then soon to be followed by academic grant applications and educational demonstrations) had been placed in a phonographic context alongside the widely marketed work of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos or Tomita, then the name Suzanne Ciani and her infectious influence would have already radically changed the shape, sound and gender of our record.

With the light of Buchla and Ciani’s initial flame Finders Keepers continues the journey through the vaults of this increasingly celebrated music legacy, illuminating these ‘non-records’ that evaded the limelight for almost half a century. You can’t write history when you are too busy making it. With fresh ink in the bottomless well, let’s start at the beginning. Again.

Buchla Concert At Galeria Bonino New York April 1974

Buchla Concert At Galeria Bonino New York April 1974 Part One (Excerpt)

Suzanne Ciani Buchla Concert At Galeria Bonino New York April 1974 (Excerpt)

Private press sound poet brings drum my tantrums raps, yoga punk and high octane inventions to late 70s New York. Finally captured on Vinyl for this unique sound collection by Beth Anderson.

Carving an unlikely and elaborate niche in the stoney academic landscape which she once shared with the likes of Phill Niblock, John Cage and Sorel Hayes, the excitable proto-punk poèmes sonores of the linguistic loose cannon known as Beth Anderson first rolled through New York in the mid-1970s (from Kentucky via San Francisco) like a jumbled tumbleweed of lost Letterism, face paint and threadbare drummy funk to astonish gallery floors, lecture theatres and loft apartment stages. One thousand leagues under the radar of the commercial music industry, with a sense of humour that elevated way above her highbrow peer group, the music of Beth Anderson has successfully evaded the pressing plant for most of her creative career, and not unlike fellow New York gallery actionist Suzanne Ciani, it has taken decades to successfully collect and contextualise these early recordings – expanding her elusive discography beyond the rare and mysterious solo single entry in the process.

When uttered amongst the type of vinyl vampires that haplessly gravitate between both art school vintage vanity pressings and family funded plunder funk, there’s an outside chance that the name Beth Anderson might muster some vague recognition on account of her one and only solo wax sojourn into the expansive DIY market. In 1980 the 45rpm single I Can’t Stand It combusted into the consciousness of adventurous participants with its deep rhythmic backbeat (courtesy of future Sonic Youth/Dinosaur Jr producer Wharton Tiers, member of the new wave band Theoretical Girls), climaxing with two colourful and commanding linguistic tantrums before disappearing in a puff of smoke leaving would-be fans dumbstruck without so much as a label name or distribution contact to explain what they had just heard. For those who have spent the subsequent years on the edge of that same seat, it might come as some comfort knowing that somewhere out there (on the OTHER side) there is also a contrasting world of gallery patrons and experimental sound poetry enthusiasts that similarly didn’t know that their regular performance poet Beth Anderson even made the ambitious pop record. For the uninitiated, the enigmatic Beth Anderson has straddled both sides of the art/ rock fence placed between two equally niche pastures. Hopefully this first-ever vinyl compendium will succeed in joining the dots, loops, yelps, squeaks, beats and repeats! Let us follow Beth’s lineage, along her magnetic tape highways crossing multiple boundaries in a hope to bridge unlikely anti-genres like “yoga punk”, “ramble rap”, “combustion pop” and “form room funk”… all of which were officially neatly bracketed under the curious Text-Sound movement where Beth garnered utmost respect as a key practitioner…

I Can't Stand It

Beth Anderson - I Can't Stand It

From Don't Take My Soul/Undisputed Heavyweight Champion Of My Heart, Bird Records (020EGGS, 2015)
From the album The Silver Globe, Bird Records (019EGGS, 2014)
http://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/shop/jane-weaver-the-silver-globe-amber-light/ - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/the-silver-globe/id920010385 - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Silver-Globe-Jane-Weaver/dp/B00MAPMACE

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http://www.janeweavermusic.com/
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Released 30th March

From an unassuming, self-sufficient musical micro-industry in the north of England comes more finely tuned fastidious femme pop from Jane Weaver and her growing Bird Records imprint with a new split single available of vinyl and download this spring.

Having garnered unanimous acclaim amongst critics, bloggers, radio programmers, likeminded artists, gig promoters and record shops alike, Jane’s The Silver Globe LP has managed to top multiple end of year charts in 2014 and is still commanding the attention of new found fans on a daily basis – a feat deemed almost impossible for an artist with five previous albums to her name and a fervent loyalty to the independent anti corporation she has cohabited for the last twent years. With this mindset (plus good taste and talent) blooms independent pop music as it should be – adventurous, free, visionary and exciting – with Don’t Take My Soul the Liverpudlian born Manc dweller has achieved just that. Combining domestic synth pop with falsetto melodics and 10cc sounding prog pop arrangements Jane depicts a theatrical electronic pop character that fuses Kate Bush karaoke with a J-Pop Erykah Badu whilst retaining her own very distinctive songwriting, conjuring images of neon arcade machines and shabby 1980′s Euro roller rinks.

Singled out as a class favourite on an album that was awarded Piccadilly Records coveted Album Of The Year accolade (and has since commanded an entire year’s worth of live commitments) Don’t Take My Soul features extra production duties from Andy Votel and ends with a guitar solo from Badly Drawn Boy which sounds like a cryogenic experiment from his pre-Bewilderbeast days.  

True to her co-op mentality Jane’s first vinyl single from the LP (following a limited cassette single of the Dave Brock co-write Electric Mountain) shares vinyl sides with label mate Tender Prey (aka Laura Bryon) who brings her inimitable drummy saccharine tinged pow-wow punk to the fray with the effortless Undisputed Heavyweight Champion Of My Heart ripped from the forthcoming Organ Calzone cassette and download long player released later this year. Based in Cardiff with countless road miles shared on tour with H.Hawkline and Cate Le Bon (another Bird school alumni), Laura has stolen the hearts of unknowing live converts via support slots and Marc Riley endorsed radio sessions motivated by her own self-propelled god speed. Amongst a broad clutch of other artists, spanning 70 years of lost pop and new noise, Bird Records looks set for an airborne 2015. The Silver Globe is still turning and catching many a siege in its electric rays.

Jane Weaver - Don't Take My Soul (Radio Edit)

From The Silver Globe - The Amber Light bonus disc, Bird Records (019EGGSCDD, 2015)
http://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/shop/jane-weaver-the-silver-globe-amber-light/
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/the-silver-globe/id920010385 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Silver-Globe-Jane-Weaver/dp/B00MAPMACE

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Released 30th March

In March, barely six months since its initial release, following tours with friend and sonic sister figure Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab) and one time backing band Black Rivers (two thirds of Doves), Jane will release an expanded edition of The Silver Globe - including a second full-length disc called The Amber Light which follows the original LP with the same dedication and adventurous zeal as its much loved synth driven sister record. With a title that alludes to the toils of trepidation and a running theme of industrial procreativity and DIY handy craft, The Amber Light carves a niche between new age motivational music, radiophonic folk and snarling krautrock echoing the kosmische stylings of The Silver Globe with the punk urgency of 80s domestic-synth pop. Featuring four brand new songs, three exclusive instrumental themes (including a commissioned theme from an American vampire film) and three new collaborative re-workings/duets based on tracks from The Silver Globe, this extensive package harbours work from Tom Furse (The Horrors), Andy Votel, Suzanne Ciani, members of Demdike Stare and original Silver Globe inhabitant Pete J. Phillipson. Substantiated by other extra format editions, including a silver vinyl version of The Silver Globe, a series of compact cassettes and a single release of standout robotic roller rink track Don’t Take My Soul (presented digitally as well as a split single with Bird Records label mate Tender Prey) Jane’s expanded Silver Globe/Amber Light project reciprocates the positive energy shared by her loyal readership and a wide host of new converts who have allowed Jane’s self-sufficient songs and synthetic soundscapes to flourish on he cusp of 2014/2015. Showing little signs of slowing down, Jane Weaver alongside her Bird Records family looks set for an airborne year. The Silver Globe is still turning and catching many a siege in its electric rays.

Jane Weaver - I Need A Connection

Masahiko Sato
Belladonna
Finders Keepers Records

Released 4th December 2015

www.finderskeepersrecords.com

Masahiko Sato - Take It Easy

Suzanne Ciani
Buchla Concerts 1975
FKR082LP
Finders Keepers Records

Finders Keepers invite you to witness the incredible first ever Buchla synthesiser concerts/demonstrations providing a distinctive feminine alternative to The Silver Apples Of The Moon if they had ever been presented in phonographic form. This is history in the remaking.

This spring Finders Keepers Records are proud to release an archival project that not only redefines musical history but boasts genuine claim to the overused buzzwords such as pioneering, maverick, experimental, groundbreaking and esoteric, while questioning social politics and the evolution of music technology as we’ve come to understand it. To describe this records as a game-changer is an understatement. This record represents a musical revolution, a scientific benchmark and a trophy in the cabinet of counter culture creativity. This record is a triumphant yardstick in the synthesiser space race and the untold story of the first woman on the proverbial moon. While pondering the early accolades of this record it’s daunting to learn that this record was in fact not a record at all… It was a manifesto and a gateway to a new world, that somehow never quite opened. If the unfamiliar, modernistic, melodic, pulses, tones and harmonics found on this 1975 live presentation/grant application/educational demonstration had been placed in a phonographic context alongside the promoted work of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos or Tomita then the name Suzanne Ciani and her influence would have already radically changed the shape, sound and gender of our record collections. Hopefully there is still chance.

In short, Suzanne was a self-imposed twenty-year-old employee of the Buchla modular synthesiser company, San Francisco’s neck and neck contender to New York’s Moog. Buchla was run by a community of festival freaks and academic acid eaters whose roots in new age lifestyles and the reinvention of art and music replaced the business acumen enjoyed by its likeminded East Coasters. In the eyes of the consumer the creative refusal to adopt rudimentary facets like a piano keyboard controller rendered the Buchla synthesiser the more obscure stubborn sister of the synth marathon, steering these incredible units away from the mainstream into the homes and studios of free music aficionados, art house composers and die-hard revolutionaries. Championed and semi-showcased by composer Morton Subotnick on his albums The Bull and Silver Apples Of The Moon, Buchla’s versatility began to open the minds of a new generation, but the high-end design features and no-compromise modus operandi was often confused with incompatibility and, in the pulsating shadow of Moog’s marketing, the revolution would not be televised nor patronised. Suzanne Ciani, as one of the very few female composers on the frontline (and also providing the back line) did not lose faith.

These “concerts” are the epitome of rare music technology historic documents, performed by a real musician whose skills and academic education in classical composition already outweighed her male synthesiser contemporaries of twice her age. At the very start of her fragile career these recordings are nothing short of sacrificial ode to her mentor and machine, sonic pickets of the revolution and love letters to an absolutely genuine vision of and ‘alternative’ musical future. In denouncing her own precocious polymathmatic past in a bid to persuade the world to sing from a new hymn sheet, Suzanne Ciani created a bi-product of never before heard music that would render the pigeon holes “ambient” and “futuristic” utterly inadequate. Providing nothing short of an entirely different feminine take on the experimental “records” of Morton Subotnick and proving to a small, judgmental audience and jury the true versatility of one of the most radical and idiosyncratic musical instruments of the 20th century. These recordings have not been heard since then.

Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concerts 1975 (Excerpts)

So the temperature has dropped and the maledictus month is upon us…  The goblins at Finders Keepers Records couldn't possibly let October pass without our unfaithful hosts Andy "The Vampire" Votel, Pete "The Mutilator" Mitchell and Doug "The Grave Digger" Shipton bringing you our first Finders Kreepers Hallowe'en Radio Spezial.  Cramming the best part of two blood curdling hours with a small selection of their combined, colossal collection of spook music, the inhabitants of the Kreepers Cottage don their best costumes and invite a crooked cast of trick or treat cheats into the warmth to share their scary wares and impose their schizophrenic opinions, horrific half embalmed facts and rotten mispronunciations with a mutating readership of zombified victims.

Featuring apparitions of guests such as the terrible tape worm, Jane "The Cleaver' Weaver and, for this very special one-off occasion, The Prince Of Darkness himself, Mr. Chris Lee!  Defying mortality, betraying reality and pushing the blood-stained boundaries of mindless banality. Catch the Finders Kreepers freak show now or risk feeling pop culturally decapitated for the next 364 painful days.  Audiophiles enter at your own risk.

Finders Keepers Radio Show - Halloween Special

With a loud creak it rises from the old black casket and sits upright, wide eyed and thirsty for its next terrified victim... The Finders Kreepers Hallowe'en special is back! It's that time of year again where the B-Music crew's combined record collection of global ghoulisms sounds more relevant that ever. Complete with decapitated disharmony, maledictus melody, frankensteiner filled fuzz and our unique brand of humour which is literally dead in the water. Your faithful fantoms Vampire Votel, The Petergeist Mitchell and Grave Dug Shipton are joined, live in the tomb, by post punk 3D effigy Gerry H. Hologram, devil music expert Victor Brox and the mysterious Were-Worm. As if that wasn't enough to make your ears bleed, Finders keepers are also proud to present an exclusive meeting between Christopher Lee and Vincent Price. There'll also be a lot of medium rare vinyl and records that had previously vanished into thin air. I could sit here typing this sh*t all day to be honest, so in danger of not missing added trivia about Manc horror film director Cliff Twemlow and the Hells Angel of Sweden (courtesy of Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias' CP Lee) we'd advise you to unleash your talismans and tune in your ouija boards. Tis the season to be screamin'.

Les Demons

The Second Inquisition

Finders Keepers Radio - Halloween Special

Graeme Miller & Steve Shill
The Moomins
FKR090
LP/CD/MP3

Pre-order the album here:

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Imagine, if you will, a foreboding homemade electro-acoustic, new age, synth driven, proto-techno, imaginary world music Portastudio soundtrack for a Polish-made animated fantasy based on a Finnish modern folk tale and created for German and Austrian TV, composed in 1982 by two politically driven post-punk theatre performers from a shared house in Leeds!

To even the most perspicacious and adventurous of alternative music fans the genuine bloodline of this previously unreleased record already begins to sound like an entire record collection in one sitting. It would be surprising if this project's ambitious and exotic credentials didn't tick at least one box on your musical matrix and without one drop of unnecessary nostalgic hyperbole this project already sounds like the perfect fantasy record that you've never heard. Alternatively we could just say The Moomins and, for many, things would instantly begin to make perfect sense.

From the same social landscape as Gang Of Four, The Mekons and Impact Theatre Co-operative - armed with a Wasp synthesiser, an ocarina and a cassette of the Robinson Crusoe music taped off the TV, Graeme Miller and Steve Shill used minimum means for maximum mayhem, instilling over 35 years of dreamlike illusory fuzziness and freakiness into the memories of a generation of school age TV addicts waiting for the next 5 minute fix of outernational fuzzy felt folklore. Collected here, all in one place for the first time, Finders Keepers in close collaboration with the original composers finally bring the original homemade micro-melodies and reintroduce them to a musical landscape where fans of vintage electronics, concrète tape effects, pocket percussion and domestic synths are finally ready to be reunited with the magnetic music of Moominvalley.

www.finderskeepersrecords.com

The Moomins Theme

Suzanne Ciani
Fish Music
FKSP011 (Finders Keepers Records)
7" | MP3

As the first and only dedicated label to liberate the private, non-commercial artefacts from Suzanne Ciani’s groundbreaking Ciani Musica studio vault, Finders Keepers Records presents an incredible cryogenically suspended slice of precious precocious immersive fledgling synthesis for this ultra limited RSD 2107 title.Ironically well removed from the intension of phonographic application in its original inception, this anti-pop wash of marine biology modular synth sound design was originally proposed by a very young Ciani for exclusive infinite loop airings in a giant mid-American shopping mall aquarium in 1977.
Potentially conjuring ambient scenes from the consumerist satirical Dawn Of The Dead while sonically ushering a genuine desire for total musical science reevaluation/revolution via a decidedly mainstream portal, the Fish Music project is a striking eerie example of how Ciani’s “Subversion With A Smile” approach led to a long career breaking boundaries in formal music technology, film scoring, the advertising industry and gender equality – all of which has continued to fuel her passion and channel her life lust and artistic appetite much to the benefit of future ambitious trajectories of music.
Owing much to the memory of genuine synthesiser maverick Don Buchla this conceptual release is very much the product of artistic America at its progressive halcyon but, with its illustrious and idiosyncratic composition, communicates subtle undertones of Suzanne’s feminine Italian origins which seldom reside outside of the efforts of Roman library composers like Casa, Tomassi, Raskovich and siblings Antonioni and Maria Teresa Luciani. Presented here as an isolated one-sided pressing on aquatic clear vinyl and including the original press release and a press cutting this limited release proceeds a wider series of unreleased Ciani work for 2017. File under… water.

A RECORD STORE DAY 2017 EXCLUSIVE

www.finderskeepersrecords.com
https://finderskeepersrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fish-music

Fish Music

Suzanne Ciani - Fish Music

Luboš Fišer 
Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders
FKSP012 (Finders Keepers Records)
7" | MP3

Finders Keepers - https://goo.gl/HquWqN
Bandcamp - https://goo.gl/7m819f
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As part of one of our most fruitful and gregarious adventures Finders Keepers Records now celebrate 10 years since the first-ever releases of the Czechoslovakian soundtrack to the surrealist new wave masterpieces Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders (Valerie a týden divu) with a very special additional 7” EP of further unreleased variations, vocal tracks and newly resurrected themes from the original master tapes of composer Luboš Fišer.

Possibly the most treasured modern surrealist artefacts from the vibrant and indelible Czech New Wave “film miracle” (alongside Vera Chytilová’’s Daisies and Fruits Of Paradise) Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders was directed by the controversial Jaromil Jireš (a member of the original 60’s FAMU film school community) and featured young freak fairytale regular Jaroslava Schallerová (Malá morská víla) and Helena Anýzová (Daisies/The Cremator) but aside from it’s stunning cast and breathtaking design and costumes (by Esther Krumbachova) it was in fact the delicate European cinematic small orchestra music score that went to future-proof this film for decades after it was first released in the eye of a 1970 communist censorship cull (thus earning ing Valerie the much touted/debated final film of the CNW anti-accolade).

Rewound, repackaged, mislead, misinterpreted, overanalysed and undersold, Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders would be scantily syndicated and and repackaged in various decontextualised arenas throughout the 80s and 90s via b-movie and eurosleaze channels to be eventually adopted by the VHS generation with the reignition of films by Jess Franco and Jean Rollin before finally regaining its rightful status as a genuine European new wave masterstroke emerging from the rubble of the final fall of communism in the early 90s. As a direct inspiration for bands like Broadcast and Espers, this 7 track single also macabre sound design, effects and dark atmospherics which are not available on the Finders Keepers LP version and is housed in unique packaging based on a rare variation of the original Czech film poster.

A RECORD STORE DAY 2017 EXCLUSIVE

www.finderskeepersrecords.com
https://finderskeepersrecords.bandcamp.com/album/valerie-and-her-week-of-wonders-valerie-a-t-den-div

Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders

Luboš Fišer - Disquiet

Originally assembled for BBC 6 Music and aired on Stuart Maconie's FREAK ZONE tribute to the passing of CAN drummer Jaki Liebezeit this EASY CAN LAZY mixtape sequences both CAN rarities and klassik cuts as an EASY introduction to the bands expansive discography. Mixed and compiled by CAN FAN, completist and friend and collaborator to various CAN members, Andy Votel, using all original German Vinyl Pressings. Uploaded here via Finders Keepers in tribute to the tragic loss of another legendary CAN pioneer HOLGER CZUKAY who passed away in early September 2017. R.I.P.

Andy Votel - Easy Can Lazy(BBC6 CAN Tribute Mixtape)

As a spezial Finders Keepers / Dead-Cert / Pre-Cert Hallowe'en treat here's an upload of the medium-rare Applehead mix-tape made from ten-tons of psuedo giallo witchy wax and global glum-rock. Originally released as 69 red cassettes in clamshell cases at a time when people who spent all their money on (physical)music still drove cars with built-in cassette players. Enjoy / Endure at will!

Applehead (Andy Votel) - Crepaxian Interligne Mixtape

Gökçen Kaynatan
Gökçen Kaynatan
Finders Keepers Records (FKR091)

Finders Keepers - https://goo.gl/JK8Dxi
Bandcamp - https://goo.gl/FoLwev
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The missing component in the history of Turkish pop and one of the earliest exponents of Turkish electronic music alongside İlhan Mimaroǧlu and Bülent Arel, Gökçen Kaynatan electrified the rock and roll scene of the late 50s/early 60s – sending teenagers wild with his custom built guitars and back lines – helping charge the climate for the birth of Anatolian rock. Then, from the sanctuary of his private studio, he revolutionised the industry with his pioneering use of electronics whilst hanging the sonic wallpaper in the living rooms of an entire generation of telly addicts as in house composer of choice for Turkey’s first national television channel TRT 1. Despite having a modest discography of only four 7” singles to his name his influence is a major current that flows through over 50 years of Turkish pop culture.

Compiled with unparalleled access to his private studio vault, Finders Keepers proudly presents the first-ever collection of Gökçen Kaynatan’s pioneering early electronic works. Featuring a selection of his experimental pop and rock recordings dating from as early as the 1968 it features both of the highly sought after 1 Numara singles – including a never before heard extended version of Evren – as well as previously unheard archive material and songs recorded for and broadcast exclusively on TRT 1 – most of them never to be repeated. In helping Gökçen end his self-imposed 44-year exile from the record industry we can now share with you the first of these important recordings from a genuine maverick who helped shape the face of modern Turkish music, as well as shedding some light on the rise of one of Anatolian rock and pops must fruitful and experimental periods that began with the arrival (and subsequent explosion) of domestic synthesisers on the Turkish scene.

Gökçen Kaynatan - Madımak

FKRMC003 - Andrzej Korzynski - Possession 
200 only Cinefamily (LA) exclusive

Andrzej Korzynski - The Man With The Pink Socks

Lubos Fišer
Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders
FKR009LPX

It has been exactly ten years since Finders Keepers Records rst liberated Luboš Fišer’s immaculate soundtrack music for Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders (Valerie A Týden Divu) from the vaults of the Barrandov Studio in Prague. As the inaugural release of an ongoing discography of previously unreleased scores from the hugely creative “Film Miracle” that occurred during and after the Czech New Wave (CNW), this score will always retain a special place in the heart of the label as well as our listeners who consistently request an updated repress of this signi cant vinyl milestone. Having grown in status from an obscure and misunderstood socialist-era art house oddity, via the hands of risqué foreign uff merchants, to nally nd its rightful audience as a bona de surrealist cinematic masterpiece of world class standards, this 1970 lm adaptation of Vítezslav Nezval’s 1935 avant-garde novella (a lm that literally cross-pollinated Max Ernst’s A Week Of Kindness and Lewis Carols Alice In Wonderland) has garnered widespread critical acclaim. Inspiring ongoing generations of visual artists, musicians, writers and lmmakers - all of whom regard this truly individualistic and inimitable surrealist lm poem to be an indelible in uence - Valerie continues to impregnate their daily artistic referential fabric. 
Commonly considered to be the swansong of the CNW, following a huge paranoia fuelled government lm cull in 1969, owing to the fact it is last government approved feature lm of the post-Prague Spring era to combine the efforts of controversial lmmakers from the FAMU (Filmová A Televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzických Umení) lm school, Valerie would also be the rst of an exciting and essential new fertile strain of Czech made cinema fantastique. Successfully condensing the nal drops of CNW lifeblood through a series of presumed apolitical scary/fairy tales, directors like Jaromil Jireš and Juraj Herz used surrealism, traditionalism and fantasy to rejuvenate the creative energy of apathetic lmmakers evading government scrutiny via creatively coded artistic allegories. By strategically choosing to adapt a pre-war surrealist melodrama written by a communist convert author called Vítezslav Nezval and based in a non-speci c traditional era, the previously censored lmmaker Jaromil Jireš was able to craft what many consider his nest lmic hour and what would later become his most universally received achievement. Enlisting the individual talent of some of the CNW’s most formidable stalwarts, in what might have been their most creatively challenging roles, Jireš managed to unintentionally establish a new genre format that was both stylistically and sonically tuned to the trends of the impending decade thus future-proo ng his career and providing a woozy gateway drug to an otherwise time-locked lost movement. 

www.finderskeepersrecords.com

Lubos Fišer - The Letter

Susan Christie
Paint A Lady
Finders Keepers Records (FKR007)

Release date - 15th February 2019

A mythical and misplaced masterpiece of lost soft rock and acidic folk funk by a one-hit wonderer lost in the wilderness for four decades. From the producer of Margo Guryan, writer behind Wool, Gerry Mulligan collaborator, Tarantino soundtracker and Wendy & Bonnie confidant, Paint A Lady now emerges from folkloric obscurity, to bring a wash of soft psychedelic colour to your vinyl collection and quench the repeat requests of a thirsty new found audience waiting for the rain.

Within certain record collecting circles, especially those who gather under the umbrella that covers fragile niches like “acid folk” and “soft rock”, it’s difficult to imagine a time when the legendary Susan Christie album didn’t exist. When Finders Keepers Records first shared the unheard 60’s songs like Paint A Lady, For The Love Of A Soldier and Echoes In Your Mind with a wide-eyed audience thirsty for organic soul and festival friendly acoustic funk, Susan’s new found fan base instantly felt like they had known these songs all of their lives, and with a single needle drop we saw the birth of what could rightfully be described as an “instant classic”. Which is why it’s hard to believe that the music on this lost 60s acetate was only pressed 12 years ago. As our lucky seventh release in an international discography that now surpasses the 100 mark (and one of a small clutch of English language recordings on the label) Paint A Lady has slowly become one of our most requested re-releases, and with this 2018 edition it is technically accurate to say that this pressing is the first-ever reissue of this elusive and essential LP.

The oft over used term mythical applies to this album on many levels. Perhaps it’s the woozy nostalgia found within the pop craft of Paint A Lady that has led to false rumours that original 1960’s copies used to exist on the collectors market, or the bizarre claim that songs like the head-nodding title track, and the acid-drenched sound effects on Yesterday Where’s My Mind were just a product of a contemporary studio band trying to create a fake folk funk red herring. As a result Susan Christie and her producer and husband of 40 years, John Hill have happily taken the repeat phrase “unbelievable” as a compliment to their songwriting skills and foresight. In all fairness, with a decade to ponder, the original 1969 song titles alone do seem custom-built for the nostalgia market… No One Can Hear You Cry might lament the unrequited yearning for a record deal which never quite followed Susan’s won one-hit wonder novelty hit I Love Onions; similarly When Love Comes might allude to the subsequent 35 year wait for the right label to eventually come along. Echoes In Your Mind and the aforementioned Yesterday… could easily allude to the haunting melodies that sat in the can on John Hill’s studio shelf while his projects for Margo Guryan, Wool and Pacific Gas & Electric sat proudly in record racks before benefitting successful French cover versions or making their way on to Quentin Tarantino soundtracks. The track Paint A lady itself, complete with it’s future-proofed sample-worthy rhythm section, seems like the perfect title for a mock rock pseudo psych contender – at which point you eventually step back and see the bigger picture. These guys were simply one drop too far ahead of their time; a family force of experimental pop perfection that late 60’s America simply wasn’t ready for. It is just over 12 years since champion record rustler Keith D’Arcy (who you’ll meet on the inside sleeve) stumbled upon one of the original acetates that led to the final release of Paint A Lady, and it’s almost a longer 50 years since Susan and John added their final touches to these recordings which tragically went into hibernation for over four decades.

https://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/shop/susan-christie-paint-a-lady-3/

Paint A Lady

Susan Christie - Paint A Lady

Merry Christmas from everybody at Finders Keepers Records!

Andy Votel - Santa's Sangria (Christmas Mixtape)

Suzanne Ciani
Flowers Of Evil
(Finders Keepers Records, FKR099)

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 eeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, best exempli ed 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 lm 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 icks 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 re ective 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.

www.finderskeepersrecords.com

Flowers Of Evil

Suzanne Ciani - Flowers Of Evil (Excerpt)

COS - Mein Maschine Ist Schön (Single Edit) from the single Mein Maschine Ist Schön/The ff BOOM out 5th March 2021.
Finders Keepers Records (FKR107, 2020)
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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.

COS - Mein Maschine Ist Schön

Behold Finders Keepers, a British record label, 40 years in the making, introducing fans of psychedelic, jazz, folk, funk, avant-garde and whacked-out movie musak to a lost world of undiscovered vinyl artifacts from the annals of alternative pop history.

Catering to record collectors and DJ-producers alike with a huge emphasis on sample friendly soundscapes, rocksteady back-beats and primitive electronic experimentalism. Discerning purveyors of the bizarre and abnormal should expect the Japanese choreography records, space-age Turkish protest songs, Czechoslovakian vampire soundtracks, Welsh rare-beats, bubblegum folk, drugsploitation operatics, banned British crime thrillers and celebrity Gallic Martini adverts... presented on CD, 7" and traditional black plastic discs in authentic packaging.

Following in the very same footsteps as the mind boggling "Music To Watch	Girls Cry" and "Songs In The Key Of Death" mix CDs for Fat City Records and the original 5-star rated Finders Keepers compilation LP in 2001, Manc-based vinyl-vulture, recording artist and record producer Andy Votel enlists the skills of fellow B-Music DJ and Rare Disc Detective Doug Shipton to form a team of psychedelic librarians and cosmic-pop-quiz-elitists to run their new Twisted Nerve distant sister-label, leaving no progressive pebble unturned or record collection un-rifled.

Future compilations and re-issues will feature collaborative curators such as David Holmes, Cherrystones and Bob Stanley and further contributions from mystery A- / B+ pop-celebrity fanatics of outsider music and ultra-rare bakelite discs. Finders Keepers is an 'accidental world music label' with a punk aesthetic and DJ friendly ethos which allows the desperate listener to sit back while we deliver schizoid cultural channel-hopping compilations and rocking-horse-shit & hen's-teeth re-releases to the comfort of your psych-starved living room...

Finders Keepers Records

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