Browse by Artist: GEORGE-EDWARDS GROUP, THE

Artist:	GEORGE-EDWARDS GROUP, THE
Title:	38:38
Label:	GALACTIC ZOO DISK/DRAG CITY
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	DC 391LP

Repressed. "38:38 is the lone release of The George-Edwards Group, an autumnal alien soundtrack that, over thirty years after being recorded (but not really released) defies time and categorization. If you've never heard of it before, that just means it's rare, right? This makes The George-Edwards Group's 38:38 one of the rarest private press albums of all time. 38:38 departs from the norm of the genre: instead of a low-fi demo-quality outing elevated mainly by dealer hype, it's a haunting piece of music that offers an unusually highbrow take on the archetypal Midwestern rock n roll existentialism usually addressed with a solid beat and sneering vocal. Crafting their sound out of the many influences of the day, Edward Balian and Ray George (aka, The George-Edwards Group) created pop music with acoustic guitars and harmonies, heavily-reverberant piano riffs, cold sheets of synthesizer, bells and chimes. Operating amidst the factory-charred grime of late 1960s Detroit, Balian and George's first group was the garage-rock obscurity Andromeda, regularly sharing bills with local heroes like The Frost, Rationals, and Amboy Dukes. Unlike these groups, Balian and George spiked their guitar blowouts with incongruous sound-on-sound experiments whose strangeness recalled lounge/exotica records of the 1950s. Too heady for the Motor City hard rock scene, they gradually lost interest in the restriction of playing all-covers gigs and turned to the basement, powered with multi-track tape recorders, processors and Moog synthesizers, flanging and phasing heavily with space effects and backwards loops, leaving a fair share of destroyed microphones and tape machines in their experimental wake. They first called themselves The Sorrento Steel Band to emphasize their metalloid leanings, but in 1974, Balian and George renamed their duo The George-Edwards Group (a la Pink Floyd, but using their own names) and began working on 38:38. Like other fascinating basement loners (Bobb Trimble or brain-fried Youngstown, OH scuzzers Stone Harbour), they wrote songs inspired by top 40 staples like The Beach Boys, Mamas and the Papas and Lovin' Spoonful. Their use of synthesizers to fill out the sounds created a melodic yet freakish hybrid. Listening to 38:38 one would assume that the George-Edwards Group were copping moves from Krautrock records (with a disheveled Arthur Lee-inflected singer/songwriter tinge), but those records were not sold at local mall outlets -- the guys had never heard them. All original artwork is included plus one more equally rare 45 track!"

Artist:	GEORGE-EDWARDS GROUP, THE
Title:	Archives
Label:	GALACTIC ZOO DISK/DRAG CITY
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	DC 465LP

"Drag City and Galactic Zoo Disks first turned the world on to The George-Edwards Group in 2009, with their never-exactly-released late 70s alien autumnal song-scape 38.38. Their music is singular and great, and like you, we assumed that was their one, definitive statement. Un-till...this new 'Archives' release contains a treasure trove of bizarre riches spanning from the '38:38'-era to what appears to be the mid-80s (we'll never know for sure -- and we don't have to, the stuff is sublimely wack in a manner that requires no further explanation). The music that makes Archives is a more rocking version of The George-Edwards sound. The tremulous, strangely timbered vocals are still their signature, but this time they're atop a few highly compressed and fuzzed-out rock cuts, as well as several synthed-out dirges that would make Suicide, Bruce Haack or Cabaret Voltaire cock an ear (and make all these new 'coldwave' bands blush to their shallow roots!). Also within are the murky analog keyboard bloops which all but define the GE sound, as well as 'ballads' that make one wish there was an entirely different language to describe musical forms. Archives is the second miraculous LP from The George-Edwards Group archives that will keep your jaw agape for the rest of the year. What year? What year is it? Any year!"

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