WILLIAM SHELLER - Lux Aeterna

This newly-unearthed Omni Recording Corp. reissue has been getting major store play here, and with good reason—imagine a David Axelrod/Serge Gainsbourg/Jean-Claude Vannier dream-team collaboration (one which presciently narrowly predates the latter two Frenchmen's collaborations, even!), replete with lysergic Catholic mass choir.

Including 11 bonus tracks focusing on Sheller's poppier (but still fairly freaky) 45s, this is the very first time this rarity has ever been widely available.

"Originally composed as a wedding gift in 1970, it's an oddly beautiful recording which combines a weirdly sinister melange of ritualistic choral chants, melancholic psychedelic orchestration, whirling electronic oscillations, meditative kosmiche groove and devout spoken word recitations. I can only think of a handful of records to compare it to, the nearest touchstones being the dark instrumental passages of Jean Claude Vannier's L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches or the mystical psychedelic liturgical paens of Majoie Hajary's La Passion Selon Judas, or maybe a few of the immersive orchestral reverberations found on Jason Havelock's Pop Symphony. As I said, comparisons are not easy. Whatever dark chemicals they were dumping in the Seine in the late 60's and early 70's to create such weirdly uncharted musical waters we can only guess." - A Sound Awareness