Cafe Exil (New Adventures In European Music 1972-1980)

This particular compilation was put together by Bob Stanley and Jason Wood but, in a gentle surprise for any Stanley-led effort, it’s Wood who writes the lead essay here, talking about how their joint goal, growing out of a record listening session, was “a mood and tone rather than something entirely concrete.” Riffing on the circumstances of David Bowie’s mid-70s relocation to Europe and the resultant albums growing out the impact of any number of bands and acts of the time and place on him, Cafe Exil is an enjoyable melange of exploratory efforts by such musicians leaning into realm of electronic experimentation in particular. That it leads with an ad hoc library group, Rubba, and concludes with the visionary electronic duo Cluster gives a sense of what’s at play. Unsurprisingly there’s a swathe of German acts featured such as Popul Vuh, Faust and Michael Rother, but the sense is truly pan-European and beyond in many ways, including the Jan Hammer Group’s spacey groove “Don’t You Know,” English guitarist Steve Hillage’s “Octave Doctors” and the peripatetic Annette Peacock with the funk poetry of “Pony.”