Friday, March 30, 2012


Freakbeat and Beyond- Rubble, Volume 1: The Psychedelic Snarl & Related Albums


Rubble is a 20-volume collection of compilation albums originally compiled by Phil Smee for Bam Caruso Records throughout the eighties and early nineties. As its name suggests, it is best thought of as the British version of Nuggets, and similar to that legendary U.S. garage-rock comp, Rubble does an unparallelled job of digging beneath the surface of its subject, in this case, mid-to-late sixties British psychedelia, and uncovering a plethora of forgotten gems in the process. While often associated with "freakbeat," in actuality, Rubble also covers a good amount of beat, mod-pop, garage-rock, psych-rock and early prog-rock. It is an absolutely essential resource for discovering amazing late-sixties Brit-pop obscurities, that, for various reasons, never attained canonization but deserve, nonetheless, to be heard. I will be posting all 20 volumes as separate installments, coupled with a few full albums from artists featured on each compilation or artists that were overlooked by the Rubble compilers, so if you already have the volume featured in a given post, read on because there is much more to be found after the jump!

Monday, March 19, 2012


Crispy Ambulance- "The Presence" (1980) Official Video

Let's start with a clip from a brilliant post-punk band from Manchester that was a more experimental contemporary of the Joy Division, and who were fated, quite undeservedly, to toil in the considerable shadow of Ian Curtis & co. This version of the single, "The Presence," is a little more straightforward than the Martin Hannett-produced studio version found on Live on a Hot August Night, and finds the Crispies thoroughly mining the Joy Division sound, but putting their own languid stamp on it.

Sunday, March 18, 2012


The Moon Reborn!

Welcome to the new incarnation of Luna. This new version of the blog will return to the review and links to download format of the previous blog, but with some changes. I am planning on multi-installment reviews / histories focusing on specific artists or record labels. These will feature FLAC-only downloads. I will also post relevant (and not so relevant) photos and GIF files that I come across during my cyber travels. Most importantly, I want to thank all of you for your kind words and support during the past year, a difficult time for me to say the least. Coming into contact with so many good-hearted people out there in the music-sharing community has truly helped me not to give up. This is why I feel compelled to start the new blog. My work load has doubled since my Luna days, so posting will be less frequent; however, I'm hoping that aiming for quality will help overcome the lack of quantity. I'm planning to have my first review installment posted by this weekend.

Stay tuned and PLEASE JOIN THE BLOG!     ~V