5 Hidden Treasures in Psych, Funk-Rock, Exotica, Proto-Metal & Soul

“We’re always championing the outsider here at Subliminal Sounds, and Tom Zacharias was one of the ultimate outsiders. Tom was a cultural phenomenon in Sweden quite unlike anything else. From being the #1 Swedish junior tennis champion and the first male pin-up in one of the country’s most-read dailies during the 1960s, to recording and releasing some of the most explicit over the top XXX-lyric nasty funk-rock ever put on wax during the 1970s. All backed by some of the most component musicians of the day. To competing in the first-ever enema championship(!) that was broadcasted on national TV. Yikes!

His dirty grooves have appeared in Grand Theft Auto, among other places. This album features some of the best Swedish musicians of the 1970s. Including one of the top jazz drummers who delivers some sweet open breakbeats. On top of that, the lyrics are over the top XXX-rated.”

“K.S. Ratliff and his Black Magic band, who got their name from Kim’s Cadillac Eldorado which is also pictured on the back cover of their privately pressed 1982 album out of Kentucky. This album is now one of the rarest US psych albums! You can count the number of original copies on one hand… It took me ages to track Kim down. When I did, he was delighted to hear about the interest in his music. There really is something very unique and peculiar about this über-rare album.

Record collector extraordinaire Paul Major describes his music perfectly: ‘The first time I heard this record I had to vigorously punch myself in the face to make sure I wasn’t dreaming it up. You can dig it straight up but if you turn your mind a little to the left or right you can climb right into another dimension. It’s like your seemingly ordinary next-door neighbor has been hiding a flying saucer in his basement and you just found out about it. The person and the music are inseparable, fortifying each other into a zone where ordinary musical standards become irrelevant as an indicator of quality. File in the ‘I can’t believe a record like this actually exists’ section.’”

“Collecting records for a long time in any given genre is a bit like peeling an onion. After rummaging the outer layers and getting customed to them with some persistence, you finally start reaching the inner layers where the juiciest parts are. For vinyl records, that translates to the rare and hard-to-come-by stuff; small pressings, private presses... For the amazing musical genre Exotica that flourished in the late 1950s—long thought to be simple easy-listening. But in reality, a musical genre where many great musicians got free reign to really get “out there” with diversity in challenging and experimental music. Paul Page’s records are some of the hardest to come by. With some albums even being “count on one hand known copies.” So, after spending many years looking for these types of records, I finally came upon these pristine records by Paul Page: ‘poet, pagan, and playboy of Polynesian pop and Hapa Haole exotica’.

Paul and his Paradise Music group entertained in Polynesian-themed restaurants all over Southern California from the late 30s to the mid-60s. Then all the way out to the Kona Coast during the late 60s and early 70s. Paul Page was a singer, piano player, band leader, writer/composer, radio and TV host, artist of oils, professional basketball player, and much more. He is really the only one to mix actual, authentic Hawaiian music and other Polynesian and Pacific Ocean influences, with the nomadic feel of the seafaring Anglo working sailor men with a sense of American pop sophistication, based in an age of jazz. Just the one-of-a-kind artist that Subliminal Sounds want to champion.”

“The only album from Jade Stone & Luv is a lost gem from the heart of the psychedelic 1970s. Mosaics: Pieces of Stone composed and self-produced in Nashville, went unnoticed by the music industry upon release. Fortunately for us, the album didn’t disappear forever. It simply went into retreat, biding its time... While almost unknown outside specialist circles, ‘Mosaics’ has been an underground cult favorite for many years. The combination of top-level songwriting, skillful guitar/keyboard arrangements and soaring vocals is just too impressive to ignore. The album has something subtle and unique; a magnetic power that keeps drawing the listener back. It took me many years to track down Jade to reissue his music.

My good friend and expert digger, Paul Major from New York, has a great poetic description of this album and that pretty much sums up how this artist and album fit in so well with the sound and direction of Subliminal Sounds. ‘Groovy love vibes through a prism of jade statues in swinging singles apartment complex action… Cadillac with fuzzy dice, feather boa, lotsa cigarette burns, stale perfumed ashen air. This album in the 8-track player at 5 AM with someone you don’t even know passed out in the backseat, as you head to the diner to meet up with an early-bird Lava Lite salesman who deals pills on the side. Bubbly champagne molecules become the plastic vinyl booths in dim-lit dive bars; it’s crackerbox post-war suburban low-rent psychedelic...’”

“On top of the expected heavy-duty guitar riffing, Ball also serves up some insane beats. One can describe it like this: ‘What if a mad witchdoctor was able to raise Clyde Stubblefield from the grave to meet up with some bath salt gobbling messed-up pimpled teenage Swedish thrash rockers to create a monstrous and deranged and funky-proto-metal band? Well, it just happened…the result: BALL.’ Like all our artists, this band has that extra X-factor that sets them apart from all other bands in their genre. Which is pretty obvious from the previous quote."