News: Aztec reissues Company Caine's debut on CD

Nice to see Aztec still plugging along downunda. This is one of the titles they had on their Coming Soon list for about a year or so. I haven't heard it personally. Looks to be a bit of a fringe piece for the CDRWL, but certainly fits the overall genre.

Label says: "It’s rare to find an album from the early 1970s that has never been officially reissued on CD (ED: Not as rare as we would wish...). A case in point is the legendary 1971 underground milestone from COMPANY CAINE – A Product Of A Broken Reality. This highly regarded artefact is one of the last albums from the glory days of the Australian progressive-psych scene to attain a new lease of life in the modern digital age.

On Digitally Remastered CD for the first time, Aztec presents a Classic Aussie Rock album brimming with the superior and adventurous sounds of Psych-rock, Blues and Avant-jazz. The band recorded A Product Of A Broken Reality at TCS Studios, Melbourne in July 1971 and it was originally issued on the Generation label in November 1971. Only a rock scene as rich and diverse as that which proliferated in Australia at the time could have produced an album of such varied moods and exploratory styles.

Alongside the likes of celebrated entities such as Spectrum, Kahvas Jute and Blackfeather, the name Company Caine continues to fire the imagination of progressive-psych aficionados around the world. Original and rare vinyl copies of A Product Of A Broken Reality are highly sought after and can fetch high prices on the international collector market.

The story of Company Caine is based around delightfully eccentric singer / song writer Gulliver Smith and nimble fingered guitarist Russell Smith who formed the band in March 1970. Gulliver had started his career in the 1960s as Little Gulliver, recording R&B singles for the In label. Russell came out of the Melbourne blues scene and alongside Gulliver and the other important early member, multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Noone, set out to create a band that played purely original material. Several line-ups came and went before the band broke up at the end of 1972.

A Product Of A Broken Reality included the sprightly single ‘Trixie Stonewallʼs Wayward Home For Young Women’, with the rest of the album ranging from pastoral moments such as ‘It’s Up To You’ and ‘Woman With Reason’ to the spacey sounds of the 10-minute ‘Symptoms’ and on to the head-spinning, Avant-jazz leanings of the unhinged ‘The Day Superman Got Busted’. Included on the CD are six bonus tracks: the 1972 single ‘Dear Carolyn’ / ‘Now I’m Together’ and live sessions from 1971.

Package Contents

Packaged in a deluxe 6 panel Digi-Pak. Digitally remastered by Gil Matthews, with a 20 page colour booklet and liner notes by Ian McFarlane, it's a must-have for fans of Classic Aussie Rock."