Spend some time with The Brain Box, a stupendous compilation of Brain Records releases. The label, founded by Bruno Wendel and Günter Körber, in 1971, was a kraut and kosmische hub, home to groups like Scorpions (well, their first album, which Conny Plank produced and which featured Michael Schenker on lead guitar before he joined UFO), Neu!, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Edgar Froese, Popol Vuh, Cluster, Jane. You name it and they were there.

After the first few years—and Körber's departure; he left to create Sky Records—I think they went a little soft in the head (pun intended?) and swerved into heavier, schlockier waters, putting out stuff by the likes of Accept, which I mostly dig for their rad album covers, the Steve Withney Band, and B- or C-list kraut descendants like late Eroc. (No disrespect to the Eroc fanatics out there! Dude's earlier stuff wasn't bad.) But that's not what they're known for, certainly, and this collection only turns its eye towards the grade A.