One of three new cd reissues commemorating Warp Records' 20th anniversary, all culled from the super swank, and prohibitively expensive boxset the label released a while back. We reviewed the 'Unheard' disc recently, which featured a handful of rare tracks from some of our all time Warp faves, Broadcast, Boards Of Canada, Autechre, Plaid, Clark, Flying Lotus, Seefeel, and we review the 'Chosen' disc elsewhere on this week's list, featuring a two disc greatest hits compiled by both fans and the label, but this one is definitely the weirdest of the bunch. And maybe the most fun because of it...
Two discs of Warp artists, covering songs by other Warp artists. Born Ruffians, with their Pixies post punk jangle, tackle Aphex Twin's "Milkman", Maximo Park cover, Vincent Gallo's "When" and make it their own, giving it a synth new wave makeover, Clark reimagines Milanese's "So Malleable", and it gets even more gnarled and spastic and HEAVY, Hudson Mohawke transforms Jimi Tenor's "Paint The Stars" into a glimmering drift of sparkly ephemeral shimmer, Mira Clalix covers Boards Of Canada and turns it into chamber music bliss, Jamie Lidell covers Grizzly Bear, Seefeel covers Maximo Park(!) and creates a glutchy chunk of blurred new wave, Gravenhurst covers Broadcast and more more more. Some of the tracks are just gussied up a little, some are recreated with alternate shadings, subtly shifted sound palletes, while others are totally and wholly transformed. Cool.
Sure some of you music freaks managed to snag one of those crazy Warp boxsets, celebrating the label's 20th anniversary, and what a twenty years it's been, kicking our asses with amazing records from Boards Of Canada, Squarepusher, Autechre, Aphex Twin, Chris Clark, Chris Morris, Disjecta, Broadcast, Grizzly Bear, Flying Lotus, Maximo Park, Born Ruffians, Prefuse 73, Battles, we could go on, needless to say, few labels boast that sort of track record. So this box set was pretty thrilling, albeit a bit unaffordable for most of us. Which is where the cd versions come in. Three releases, one featuring Warp bands covering tracks buy OTHER Warp bands, another release featuring one disc of songs chosen by fans, another by Warp themselves, a sort of greatest hits, both of those we'll review soon, and this one, probably the one most folks were most excited about, featuring rare and previously unreleased tracks by Boards Of Canada, Seefeel, Broadcast, Flying Lotus, Plaid, Autechre, Clark and more! And it's just as good as we had hoped.
Broadcast do a Nico cover, all buzzy and moody and spacey, the first new Boards Of Canada music in 3+ years (since Trans Canada), and of course it's washed out and dreamy and divine, a killer old old Autechre track, the Plaid song is amazing and had us pulling out our old Plaid records, The Clark song is short, but oh so sweet, weirdly skeletal and glitchy and otherworldly, Flying Lotus go all abstract and ambient, and the Seefeel is dark brooding, warm and whirring pop ambient bliss, so good. Totally reminds us of why Warp were so important, and continue to be, and this comp is incredible, a perfect mix of future funk and old school electronica, dubbed out glitchy skitter, and lush electro dream pop. You definitely need this, and probably those other Warp20 collections as well, more about those on the next list...
Warp sampler of recent releases and releases soon to come. Including: Plaid, Autechre, Two Lone Swordsmen, Squarepusher, Mira Calix, Polygon Window, Blue Jam (Chris Morris), Nightmares On Wax and more. Cheap too!
Massive and completely essential collection of all of the Warp artists' videos over the last 15 years. Some of these are stone cold classics, and helped redefine music videos as an artform. Aphex Twin's "Come To Daddy" and "Windowlicker", Squarepusher's "Come On My Selector", all directed by Chris Cunningham, as well as amazing videos for tracks from Nightmares On Wax, Autechre, Jimi Tenor, Seefeel, Antipop Consortium, Luke Vibert, Beans, Chris Clark, Mira Calix, and tons more. Directors include Cunningham, Jarvis Cocker, David Slade and loads more. Really really amazing! Comes with a cd mix of the tracks from the DVD too!
Another fantastic collection from Honest John's, this one documenting Unity Hi-Power a London Sound System in the eighties, Jamaican dancehall, reggae and raga, influenced by US hip hop, but more importantly, a unique sound, the result of inner city life in the UK in the eighties, and while the lyrics occasionally discuss inner city problems, life on the streets, poverty, immigration and other similarly pressing issues of the time, the vibe was never that far removed from more earthly pleasures, smoking and partying, dancing in the streets and of course the sheer joy of music making.
And the music is what it's all about here, and the sound is super unique, not that different really from On-U Sound, Bush Chemists, and other purveyors of modern electronic dub, but the instrumentation sounds almost like old Casio keyboards, raw, and primitive and super lo-fi, which definitely gives it a special vibe, the dubs especially, most of the tracks here are paired with a dub version, and with the vocals removed, the keyboards and programmed rhythms really shine, bleeps and bloops, and super lo-fi synthy basslines, plenty of reverbed guitar, echo and delay, of course, but the core sounds are stripped down and skeletal, lo-fi and in some cases almost 8-bit sounding. The tracks with vocals are soulful and jubilant, expressive and emotional, and really fantastic, but we're sort of partial to the dubs, and their weirdly warbly, DIY lo-fi take on classic reggae and dub. So cool.
Kris Needs strikes again! If you've been keeping up for the past few months, you may have noticed the amazing Needs-curated Dirty Water compilations highlighting the (sometimes unlikely) inspirations for punk rock, including skronky free jazz, mid-'60s RnB mayhem, and glam, just to name a few. Needs steps up again with this impressive comp focusing on the evolution of the incredibly fertile, multicultural New York music world during the middle of the 20th century, which without question plays a major role in the city's undying allure. The years of focus here span from roughly 1945-59, and Needs, an Englishman who fell in love with NYC in the 1960s before finally landing there in 1983, is probably one of the most detail oriented compilers around. He knows how to tell a story with his compilations, rather than just putting together a bunch of songs. Like many, Needs associates NYC with its famous subway system and chose Duke Ellington's jaunty "Take The A Train" to get things started on disc 1. Other artists include legends like Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers, Louis Armstrong, Pete Seeger's Almanac Singers, Harry Belafonte, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis with Gil Evans, Charles Mingus, and John Cage, demonstrating the diverse array of styles and personalities that, not surprisingly, found themselves in the world's ultimate cultural hub.
Disc 2 (at least on the 2cd; the vinyl has a different track order, and fewer tracks, 25 vs. the 32 on the compact disc format) hints at things to come in the 1960s, with folk and blues giants like Josh White, Dave Van Ronk, and Sonny Terry sitting alongside Thelonious Monk, Big Maybelle, Raymond Scott, and Allen Ginsberg (reading Howl).
This compilation is clearly a labor of obsessive love and incredibly hard work. In the cd's uber-detailed, book-like liners (72 pages!), Needs notes how this represents one of the most difficult projects he has ever undertaken, and guess what? IT'S ONLY VOLUME 1!
'60 British beat singles compiled by Bevis Frond's Nick Saloman. 20 Tracks by the likes of, uh, The Little Darlings, Freddie Ryder, The Toggery Five, The Boston Crabs, The Huskies, Danny King, and more.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Including only new and unreleased material" by Atom Heart, Seefeel, Japan's Bisk, and Directions (band of Bundy K. Brown, ex-Tortoise).
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Okay Mississippi Records obsessives, get ready to blow your tops. Besides the amazing Been Here All My Days comp reviewed on the last list (grab one if you haven't yet, it's fantastic!), there are five, count 'em FIVE other new Mississippi titles this time around: I'll Meet You On That Other Shore, I'm Gonna Live Anyhow Until I Die, I'll Be So Glad When The Sun Goes Down, Worried Now, Won't Be Worried Long and Wave The Ocean, Wave The Sea, all culled from a legendary set of Alan Lomax field recordings, collected during his "Southern Journey, a trip he took through the American South, between the years 1959 and 1960, accompanied by British folk singer Shirley Collins, during which he made the first ever stereo recordings of American Traditional music in the field, capturing in stereo for the first time, music from Southern prison farms, the traditional gospel choral folksong of the Sacred Harp, the Southern Fife And Drum Corps, the debut recordings of blues legend Fred McDowell, not to mention an incredibly varied selection of musics from blues to bluegrass to country to gospel, captured on porches, at dairy farms, in churches, at picnics, state fairs, in prisons, in living rooms and in bars, many of the musicians, many of the folks Lomax had recorded before, and was visiting again, years later, while many were new discoveries.
According to the extensive liner notes, Lomax upon returning to the US, after a decade long recording trip in Europe and the UK, was hailed as a hero, responsible for the revival of interest in American folk music, but was quite disappointed by all the young people playing the folk music and traditional American music he helped discover, record and expose to this new audience, an audience that seemed to believe not only were they preserving the music, but also in some strange way "improving" on the originals, which horrified Lomax and spurred him to make the trip that would be later known as his "Southern Journey", not only to capture stereo recordings of all this amazing, still thriving American music, but to also prove those young folks wrong.
The results speak for themselves, 5 lps of gorgeous, unique, heartfelt American music, instrumental and vocal, celebratory and sorrowful, ballads and bluegrass hoedowns, gospel spirituals and military marches, call and response prison songs and back porch blues, and so much more. This is classic, timeless music, sounds imbued with the sweat and blood, the lives and deaths, the loves and losses of the American people, past and present, moving and emotional, and totally fantastic...
As for which one of the five to buy, it's a tough call, they're all fantastic, and the music is varied on each, they're not divided by theme or style, instead, it's more like a sprawling 5 part compilation, each as good as the next, so yeah, obviously if you can, you should buy all 5, but if that's too much, heck, just pick one, maybe with a title that appeals to you, and dig in. Odds are you'll be back for more.
Packed in super heavy jackets, with printed liner notes on the back, each volume containing a big booklet, with photos and more notes on each of the different tracks and all of the various performers.
Let's see if I can do this set the justice it deserves and be as brief as possible. Wayang, or puppet theater, is the premier form of dramatic expression in much of Indonesia and exists in a myriad of forms, often unique to particular regions. It is performed for weddings, graduations, circumcisions and numerous other auspicious occasions and social events. Combining music, song, and story telling it can relate moral, historical, political, and puerile functions using stories taken from familiar classic tales (most often used are the Indian epics Mahabarata and Ramayana.) What's more, puppet theater is an event that combines high and low culture that could, in western terms, only be expressed analogously as a melange (which it is not) say, of Shakespeare meets Bach's "Matthew's Passion" meets Star Wars meets Wagner's "Ring Cycle" meets Bevis & Butthead and then some. As such, it is a dramatic form that can truly be grasped and appreciated by all members of society regardless of age or education.
Though puppet theater, like much performance in Java and Bali, is a synergetic event, it is the dalang, or puppeteer, that is the real star of the show. He must not only have an excellent story telling, comedic and musical ability (with loads of great improvisational skills), but must be able to bring the puppets to life as well -- often manipulating several at once -- and be able to do all this for very long stretches without a single break. A truly great dalang is also an excellent builder of puppets, the more ornate the better. The enclosed booklet details some of the recent developments in puppet technology, including puppets that actually squirt blood, puke noodles and that can be decapitated. The dalang is not only charged with controlling the puppets and the unfurling of the story, but by extension the gamelan and singers as well by giving them cues (often quite brief) to begin and end the musical pieces which frame events in the story or to accompany battle scenes and the like. Though the general framework of a story is fixed, the dalang's art is in his ability to embellish his narration of the tale, contextualizing it to the event at hand, often delivering witty barbs at the wayang's sponsors or members of the gamelan. The political possibilities of such an event are pretty much limitless and dalang often use the performance as a means of criticizing government corruption and oppression, which has even resulted in the persecution and imprisonment of dalang.
What makes this recording uniquely special is that it is the first time an entire live performance of wayang golek has been recorded and released. There have been plenty of cassette and cd issues of abbreviated wayang performances, many being done in a recording studio. But, clocking in at just under 7 hours (squeezed onto 6 cds), it's no wonder performances of wayang golek are not released in their entirety. This recording was made in 1994 and was sponsored by the national telecommunications company PTT Telkom. The dalang for the performance, Asep Sunandar Sunarya Giri Harja III, is considered one of the best living dalang in West Java and is heavily sought after for performances. Born into a family of dalang (not only was his father a famous dalang, but three brothers are also professional dalang) he received first prize in the annual wayang golek competition in 1985.
The performance begins with a 41 minute instrumental suite that serves to both warm up the musicians and draw guests to the performance area and is ended with a brief introductory speech over the P.A. system by the event's sponsors. Once the performance gets under way, the shrewd and minimal recording method reveals itself: with one microphone over the dalang and another 12 feet away, over the singers and musicians, the super-wide spaced stereo pair is able to pick up as much of the performance as directly as possible. This was important because apparently, just beyond the group was an archaic P.A. system through which the dalang (as well as the female singers) was being reinforced to the crowd of several thousand that were seated beyond the invited guests of a hundred or so. The resulting recording has a bizarre quality; combining the acoustic and unamplified instruments of the gamelan with voice of the dalang picked up by the microphone above him along with the delayed echo of the dalang's voice as it bounces back from distant walls like a bullhorn. The performance moves dreamlike between songs, dialog (with the dalang taking on various voices of the characters in the story), and combinations of both where the dalang will interrupt the singers in the middle of a song with humorous quips, generating mirth from the audience. Although a significant portion of the performance is merely dialog (in fact, during the requisite midnight "clown scene" the dalang sounds almost like a stand up comedian doing a routine at a West Java night club) it is in this writer's opinion that the recording still holds a certain fascination in texture alone. But you needn't worry about missing out on the fun here because the producer has painstakingly gone through the trouble of translating the *entire* performance into English and including it as a .pdf document on the sixth disc (it is also available in Sundanese and bahasa Indonesia if those suit better) which you can print out so you can follow along while listening. Along with the 7 hours of the wayang golek performance and the complete text translation, this set also comes with a detailed 44 page booklet. The very detailed and superbly researched notes cover the history of wayang golek, the puppets, music, plus information specific to this performance such as a story synopsis as well as its origin, and information on the performers involved. Andrew Weintraub, a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in the performing arts of West Java, put together the set (recording the performance, translating the dialog and writing the liner notes) and has done a remarkable job. Though some may find this a bit steep of an investment for an introduction to wayang or Sundanese music in general, it is a remarkable and unique production and one that's worth the bite into the old leather bi-fold. And given how cheap this set is, you're hardly paying much per disc. Highly recommended!
We haven't had a new solo guitar compilation in awhile. Last couple of years it seems we were inundated with them, marking the new and old waves of what is often called "American Primitive", a dubious term like "Freak folk" that no one likes to use anymore, but a more accurate or useful term to describe this genre has failed to materialize. While past comps focused on the founding touchstones of John Fahey, Robbie Basho, and Leo Kottke, and their modern offspring, Jack Rose, Sir Richard Bishop, and James Blackshaw, there have been plenty of overlooked stop-gaps in between these generations that have failed to garner the same kind of adoration or reverence. Often unfairly relegated to the "New Age" trashbin of recording culture, solo guitarists such as Alex Degrassi, William Ackerman and Michael Hedges focused on a more melodic (and often more technically showy) pastoralism, which represented to some the death-knell of innovation for the genre from its raw and altruistic beginnings. The latest compilation in the Numero Group's Wayfaring Strangers series sets to alter that perception by focusing on 14 private press recordings of solo guitar between 1968 and 1980 that chronicle the fertile and adventurous spectrum between Fahey and Ackerman. While a couple of the names are familiar (Richard Crandell, William Eaton) most of the players we haven't heard of including: Dana Westover, Ted Lucas, Scott White, George Cromarty, Daniel Hecht, Jim Ohlschmidt, Stephen Cohen, Mark Lang, Tom Smith, Dan Lambert, Brad Chequer and Dwayne Cannon. A 40 page booklet chronicles each of the artists with reproductions of all the album covers and biographical information in a beautifully illustrated package. Another milestone in a great series from this always-awesome label!
Could it really be time to take a look at the influence of Joni Mitchell? We never would of thought it before, but then again reissue label Numero Group oftens make strange and surprising choices in their releases. After releasing 3 compilations in a series of eccentric soul from the DeepCity, Capsoul and Bandit labels they do a complete 180 and begin a new series called Wayfaring Strangers. This first one is dedicated to the immediate influence of Joni Mitchell's Ladies of the Canyon and the wave of femme folk it inspired throughout the early seventies. Here, they focus on 12 gems from obscure or little known female recording artists. A lot of customers who gave no second thought to immediately buying up all of the Eccentric Soul series, seem to be in a quagmire about this one, and not many people are taking the bait”yet.
While Joni haters will probably steer clear of this comp, for those of you on the fence let us assure you that the twelve rare cuts on this disc, culled from mostly private press releases, are not all Joni imitations. While Mitchell's influence is obvious, each artist brings their own unique and varied take to their songs (all originals with the exception of Ellen Shaw's cover of Marianne Faithful's "Sister Morphine"). The Numero Group does an outstanding job with the packaging as always, devoting a full 2 page spread to each artist with full color original album artwork and profiles on each artist. These records are crate digger's dreams, and the visuals and bios only serve to enhance the fragile homemade sincerity and beauty of some of these songs. Highlights include Shira Smalls "Eternal Life", a rumination on math and spirituality recorded at a Quaker boarding school, and Collie Ryan's "Cricket". Like the mighty Ladies of the Canyon itself, this CD may take repeated listening to work its charms. But there is no doubt in our minds that if you saw any one of these original records in a thrift store, bargain bin, or garage sale, you would whisk them away immediately, heart pounding as you brought them home and put them on, thanking your lucky stars that there is still magic in such simple things. Nice!
Another incredible installment in Numero Group's Wayfaring Strangers series, Lonesome Heroes is the male singer-songwriter counterpart to the series' first installment, Ladies of The Canyon. But instead of one artist serving as the thematic touchstone (Joni Mitchell and John Fahey were the key influences of the first two installments), there are several influences present, but the artists are unified by a moody tone of loneliness and introspection. You can hear traces of Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Tim Hardin and Tom Rapp in this collection of private press wonder (one artist, Kieran White, the only singer from the UK and a member of Steamhammer, actually sounds a lot like Sam Beam from Iron and Wine!), but the songs that span the late sixties to the early eighties are neither love songs or protest songs. Nor do they connect in any real way to a folk music scene or its traditions. These 17 artists, mostly from America, were rambling individuals who more often than not wrote music for recording more than for performing, penning quiet songs about time spent and lost, regrets and joys, and nature as the mystical reminder of this ever present balance of life. The home studio has a big presence in the recordings casting a warm tape aura around the songs and making subtle studio effects (reverb, multi-tracking, panning) add interesting details to the compositions. It's not all just an acoustic guitar and a voice (though some of it is), but aural flourishes of flutes, pianos, and female backing vocals can also be heard throughout. Perfect for Sunday Morning listening! As usual, Numero Group do a great job with the packaging with an added booklet featuring photos of the original private press lps and mini-bios of all the artists here. Astonishing!
Here's a recording that ought to appeal to fans of the Orgues A Bouche, the Central African Banda Linda Horns, or the Aluar Horns ( featured on the Explorer East African Ceremonial & Folk Music disc we listed late last year). The music on this disc is that of the Waza trumpet ensembles of the Berta people. The Berta are a distinct ethnic group living in the borderlands between the Sudan and Ethiopia who've long struggled for years to remain culturally autonymous against the forces of the surrounding dominant ethnic groups. The Waza trumpet ensemble, the most important musical expression of the Berta, was originally performed as a sort of status symbol by local chiefs to demonstrate their power. The ensemble generally consists of 10 to 12 trumpets ranging in length between 50 and 180 centimeters and accompanied by percussion -- in the form of wood blocks -- and often a chorus of female singers. Like the Banda Linda Horns, each horn player in a Waza ensemble plays only one note and through rigorous group cooperation participates in producing a stunning polyphony. Along with the large Waza trumpet ensembles on this disc, there are several recordings of smaller ensembles of flute, percussion and choruses. This release from Wergo comes deluxely packaged in an oversized slip cover along with a seventy page booklet of detailed liner notes, photos and even musical transcriptions.
MPEG Download: "If You Say My Name, I'll Fuck You!" [/audio/wazaifyousay.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "If You Say My Name, I'll Fuck You!" [/audio/wazaifyousay.m3u]
So do we... but we're scared to listen to this tribute, it's got Celine Dion AND Metallica AND Bruce Springsteen on it! (amongst others.)
We've long been fans of '60s acoustic folk / raga / Appalachian / exotic / new age guitar hero Robbie Basho, a contemporary of Leo Kottke and John Fahey, a sonic compatriot of Peter Walker and Sandy Bull. His incredible playing, and his unique vocalizing, definitely made him stand out. This collection offers up some mostly reverent homages to the master, from his pupils, a handful of modern day freak folkers, who are obviously heavily influenced by Basho's legacy, none more than Steffen Basho-Junghans, as well as Glenn Jones, Meg Baird, Arborea, Helena Espvall, Fern Knight, and a few new to us names: Cian Nugent, Rahim Alhaj....
Basho-Jughans begins and ends the record with gorgeous steel string workouts, both originals inspired by specific Basho tracks, Espvall creates a gorgeous brooding murky dronescape, Meg Baird does a fairly straight cover of Basho's "Moving Up A Ways", her voice angelic, and guitar playing lush and intricate, Glenn Jones creates a shimmering waterfall of glistening melodies, Arborea also cover classic Basho, transforming it into some witchy dream folk, Fern Knight add some effects, their version of "Song For The Queen" being a string laced woozy washed out drift through a field of soft focus haze, and Nugent and Alhaj do their own variations of Basho's unique take on Appalachia.
It's a comp, but like the best comps it plays like a proper album, dark and mysterious and so so lovely, and a worthy offering to the spirit of Robbie Basho. Very cool.
Peru's biggest Paul McCartney worshippers, We All Together, came out of a community of bands in Lima that shared the same love for dreamy Beatlesque pop. Eight of the bands are collected here: Monik, Cerro Verde, Laghonia, Smog, Illicit, FE 59 and others. Chronicling singles from the Mag label recorded between 1968-1974, the songs range from original compositions to covers of songs popularized by The Doors, Malo, and Lesley Gore. All quite nice.
The 100th release for electronica giants Warp Records. Everyone here has pulled out all the stops as there are no weak tracks. With exclusive cuts from Squarepusher/AFX (yes they are collaborating!), Autechre, Red Snapper, Plaid... but Broadcast clearly steals the show with the best song we have ever heard from them.
Over the past decade countless bands and fans both privately and publicly have bestowed much love and respect on the deeply inspiring and influential band Low. Here's just a dozen who've put they admiration on record by recreating the band's 1994 debut full length, I Could Live In Hope. The less familiar faces definitely outnumber the familiar ones -- Daniel G. Harmann, Pale Horse And Rider, The Strugglers, A Northern Chorus, Kid Dakota, Misc/Ill Lit, The Winter Blanket, and Migala. The folks you might recognize here are Low's contemporaries Mark Kozelek, Jessica Bailiff, Idaho and His Name Is Alive (featuring Nanang Tatang aka former Low tourmates Elizabeth Mitchell and Dan Littleton of Ida). All of the renditions stick remarkably close to the hushed, slow and gentle originals with the contributions from Bailiff and His Name Is Alive standing out as a definite highlights. Not unlike a warm group hug.
All kinds of crazy versions of all kinds of crazy Melvins classics, by a line-up of mostly metalcore acts, presumably all artists who've been inspired by Buzz, Dale and Co. and for whom tangling with the heaviness of the Melvins is no huge stretch. Big names include Pig Destroyer (who've covered the Melvins before, here doing "Claude"), Isis and Agoraphobic Nosebleed (doing a brutal, nine minute version of "Boris" together! which reminds us, why isn't the band Boris on here?), High On Fire and Keelhaul (another team-up track, this one sounding like it was recorded live), Eyehategod, Mastodon, Strapping Young Lad, and others. But then there's also a handful we've never heard of before, and probably never will again. Everybody gets fully into the spirit of the thing, which is basically to attest that the Melvins, in a word, RULE. Of course, like most comps, it's a mixed bag. Not everything sounds great, but there are some gems. If you're a fan you'll want to check this out.
Bewarned, the first track, Mare's amazing improv-soul version of "Nightgoat" will have you wondering if you put the correct cd in your player. But if you skip ahead to hear the Dillinger Escape Plan doing "Honey Bucket" on track two you'll realize there's been no mistake. Of course, we like it best when tributes are done by bands who don't try to sound at all like the original -- though we can understand why so many of these metallic Melvins fan-bands on here are having a ball doing their best to sound just like 'em!
This comp gets bonus points for the Derek Hess artwork and the liner notes that basically say that tribute albums suck but the Melvins are the best band ever so what the heck, but it loses points for including no information about the partipating acts -- it'd be nice to have notes from each of them about their tracks. Well I guess we don't need Blessing The Hogs to tell us why they picked "Hog Leg".
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A myriad of intriguing San Francisco experimental sound artists are features on this expansive double lp. The cast of characters includes Subarachnoid Space, Not Breathing, Earwicker, Dead Air Supply, Mystery School, Content Provider, Property Of Thieves, and Kimosciotic. Runs the gamut of texture and atmosphere. Organic and synthetic. Skitterish rhythms and claustrophonic drones. Looming thuds and brittle shimmers. If you dig the artists on the Schematic label, you might wanna check this out too (especially the Dead Air Supply tracks on side A and the Not Breathing track on Side D). For a slower, gentler mood the space rock of SubArachnoid Space meld grooves with COntent Provider followed by Kimosciotic's vaporous, almost insectile layers (side B). The second disc begins with Earwicker's lightly abrasive repetitive beats, squeals and bleeps. Conversely Mystery School take us on a much more linear voyage, sticking with a rhythm and/or sample briefly before proceeding onwards. And the final side offers the aforementioned icy liquid electronics of Not Breathing followed by the dreamily drifting aquatic chimes and echoes from Property Of Thieves. Each side is beautifully self-contained, but all four together make for a very pleasing compilation. File under: tactile sound... very nice!
Though from the cover this looks like it's a Saddam Hussein album (he wrote novels, he probably recorded albums too), it's actually a Iraq/Al Qaeda themed compliation from of all-instrumental destruction and dubbed-out devastation from the WordSound crew: there's tracks from Sensational, Mentol Nomad, DJ Klos, and a whole entire SIDE from AQ-fave Spectre. Track titles include "Saddam's Stargate", "Dirty Bomb", "Shock & Awe" and "So Damn Insane". Vinyl-only. We won't have these for long, so please nobody tell the UN inspectors!
Pretty badass compilation, featuring the leading lights from the Woodsist label stable, who also seem to represent more broadly the current state of underground music, as it seems most of these folks have released lots stuff on loads of other labels, the new band m.o. seemingly being to release as much as humanly possible, but like we've said before, fuck it, if it works, and it sounds good, why the hell not? And it's still sounding pretty goddamn good to these ears. This lp / cassette sampler, manages to pretty much perfectly lay out the Woodsist formula (which is what a label sampler is supposed to do anyway right?), variations on Summery jangle, woozy lo-fi production, reverb and delay, pretty sunshine-y sixties style pop rendered all warped and dreamily off kilter. The names will no doubt be familiar to most folks by now: Woods, Skygreen Leopards, The Fresh And Onlys, Ducktails, Art Museums, Moon Duo, The Mantles, White Fence and more, as will the sounds, from sun dappled hippified Byrds style folk pop to reverb drenched doo wop-y dream pop to lysergic organ driven hypno garage groove, to Velvets-y repetitive rocking psychedelia, to ethereal ephemeral blissed out drift, to old school punkish power pop to hushed and lush Appalachian guitarscapery, the biggest surprise and quite possibly our favorite track being Moon Duo's contribution, a super stripped down, spare and spacious, minimal, almost dubby bit of space kraut mesmer, which makes sense as it's a cover of a reggae jam by Errol Dunkley. In fact, a couple other bands try their hands at covers, Skygreen Leopards do The Cure and City Center tackle the Grateful Dead!
Reissued international hardcore punk comp from the punk bible... features Terveet Kadet, Crucifucks, Rattus, Raw Power, The Stalin, and many many more. Classic stuff.
One of the most kick ass comps we've heard in a while! And there's been some good ones lately, of Nigerian '70s disco funk and French '80s electro punk, among others. But how can you beat funked up, progged out psych rock from Communist Hungary?? This comp resoundingly answers that question: you can't.
While this disc's title might be in poor taste this comp's curators exhibit EXCELLENT taste in groovy Hungarian psych/prog rarities from the sixties and seventies!!! Which is as you might expect, since these are the djs/diggers also responsible for such top notch sets as Welsh Rare Beat, Vertigo Mixed, and Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word. If you like those, you'll like this. (And, like us, will be eagerly anticipating volume 2, to be titled Hung Over, of course).
A couple of the bands here we know, only really 'cause of another B-Music related release, the disc by swingin' Hungarian sex symbol Sarolta Zalatnay, which featured her work with bands such as Locomotiv GT and Skorpios, both of which appear here along with a track by Zalatnay. In fact, the Hungarian scene was highly intertwined, as diagrammed by the handy "Well Hung Family Tree" that compiler Andy Votel has provided in the cd booklet... a cd booklet that by the way is super thick, packed with all the detailed liner notes from the knowledgeable Votel you could desire, color photos of the artists, album and singles covers, and a forward by none other than "Cini" herself, Sarolta Zalatnay! All the tracks are licensed from the source, Hungaroton Records, the whole thing sounds and looks great, it's an obvious labor of love. And what's not to love, 'cause all 20 tracks here are awesome. Tons of FUZZ guitar, swirling organ jamming, flutes going off, crazy instrumental breaks, wailing vocals, dancefloor filling beats galore. High energy stuff, man. Makes it seem like living under the heel of the Soviet boot of oppression wasn't all bad, at least these folks found the freedom of getting funky and freaky...
So, here's who's on here: Anna Adamis & Gabor Presser (the latter of whom has a big presence in many of these groups), Omega Redstar, Omega (2 cuts), Metro, Hungaria, Kati Kovacs (who sounds like Janis Joplin fronting Hard Stuff!), Katie Kovacs and Gemini, Corvina, Neoton, Tamas Somlo & Omega, Meteor & Demjen Ferenc, Illes (2 cuts from them too), Sarolta Zalatnay, Locomotiv GT, Nemenyi Bela and Atlantis, Piramis, Skorpio, and Bergendy.
From the fuzzy Bo Diddley shake of Omega Redstar, to the badass organ excess of Locomotiv GT, to the frantic funky synth sizzle of Illes (a band whom we recall from Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word as well)... well it's hard to pick highlights, they're all mega. Maybe Omega (sans Redstar) gets the nod for their epic 8 minute groover "Kergeskeziu Favagok", a full 3 minutes of which at least is occupied by a killer drum solo laced with field recordings of bird twitter! They also contribute a fuzzed out stomper a little later in the disc.
Ah, but it's all so good, Well Hung bringing together an amazing Eastern European melange of hard edged acid rock funk freakbeat that's part Chains And Black Exhaust, part wah wah '70s cop show kitsch, part Iron Curtain exotica... fun times in other words! Recommended.
Compilations of long-lost '60s and '70s psych/pop/rock gems dug up from the far corners of the world by dedicated crate-digging record collectors are always considered a good thing here at AQ. We can just point to the Hava Narghile, Cambodian Rocks, Love Peace & Poetry and Thai Beat comps for some easy examples. But while we've been stoked on all sorts of stuff from Turkey, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, South Africa, and elsewhere, there's always room for more, and for new unexplored territories to freak out about. For instance, what about Welsh psych/prog/folk??? Aha, that's what Welsh Rare Beat is devoted to, as you've already surmised. The 25 tracks here, all of 'em pretty fantastic, were selected from the vaults of the home-grown Welsh indie record label Sain, which could easily be (as this comp argues) the coolest record label you've never heard of before. As the liner notes put it: "You like prog-rock with blueprint trip-hop beats? So did Sain. You like ethereal girl groups with mystical acid folk overtones? So did Sain. You like psychedelic rock operas based on druidism and witchcraft? So did Sain..." And they're not kidding. Psyche-Celtic hoe-downs, dreamy folk singing, Cymru pride protest rock, and incredible grooves abound. These songs are all sung in Welsh (a pleasing tongue we trust you'll find), and due to the language barrier (and doubtless related cultural/political issues) these artists are pretty much unknown outside their own land, despite being just as good as a lot of better known folks from elsewhere in the UK. Really, looking at the names here, we'd only ever heard of Meic Stevens before. Never Bran, Heather Jones, Endaf Emlyn, Y Tebot Piws, or Yr Atgyfodiad, let alone Y Dyniadon Ynfyd Hirfelyn Tesog! But that's what's so great about discs like this, getting turned on to the denizens of a whole new realm of record-collector fantasy. The cd booklet helps mightily in that department, featuring a great deal of text -- there's very detailed track-by-track info plus a lengthy essay that treats this music scene in a political/historical context. VERY thorough indeed. And it even includes an annotated map of Wales. This really well put-together labor of love was compiled by Andy Votel (so recently responsible for the fab Vertigo Mixed comp), Dom Thomas, and Gruff Rhys of the Super Furry Animals who of course hail from Wales, and is released on the same label, Finders Keepers, that also brought us those equally obscure and awesome Jean Claude Vannier and Yamasuki discs.
That the Welsh well of groovy folk and psych rarities from the '60s and '70s hasn't run dry, is plentifully proven by this album. Finders Keepers presents a second volume of Welsh Rare Beat, again compiled by DJ Andy Votel and two of the guys from Super Furry Animals. Lots of w's and y's in the artist and track names here, there's tunes from the the likes of Galwad Y Mynydd (also the subject of a separate reissue on Finders Keepers), Y Gwenwyn, YNhw, Y Tebot Piws, Chwys, Meic Stevens, Bran, Sidan, Morus Elfryn, Heather Jones, Edward H. Dafis, AD 73, Bara Menyn, Hergest, and more. No, we haven't heard of most of 'em either -- and the ones we do know, we probably heard first on the original Welsh Rare Beat. And while we'd rate that volume a little higher, there's treats galore here, from rustic acid folk to glammy rock to disco prog! Even a kids TV show character takes a stab at rock n' roll. All with a unique Cymaru bent, often with glorious traditional melodies woven through, and gentle voices singing in the slightly phlegmy and certainly indecipherable (to us) Welsh tongue. Informative liner notes are provided, though, to clue us to who these artists were and what they were on about.
A gorgeous sounding and gorgeously packaged audio record of four separate exhibitions/installations in which the artists used diferent approaches to utilising the space and the manner in which sound affected or was affected by that space. The space in question was a cavernous art gallery in Chemnitz Germany and the event was curated by Raster-Noton head honcho Carsten Nicolai. William Basinski broadcast his gorgeous and gauzy short wave recordings into the space, letting the sounds resonate and reverberate and slowly mutate into new shapes entirely. One of the most gorgeous chunks of drone we've heard and alone, even at nine minutes, makes this well worth picking up. But the other tracks aren't so shabby either. Ronald And Robert Lippock offer up a wispy, ethereal, super minimal lull-scape of gentle tones and shifting textures. Lumen use film projectors to create clicking, beeping rhythms that warble and shift, delicate and unpredictable. And Errorsmith used the sounds of visitors to the installation to create stuttering computer generated sound images. The whole thing finishes off with a strange Kraftwerkian techno workout. Cool.
Originally released in 1976 as "Africa: Drum, Chant & Instrumental Music", this is a collection of recordings made in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali. Like the other CD in this series "East Africa: Ceremonial & Folk Music" there's a wide variety of instrumentation, given the wide geographical span from which the recordings were captured. Unlike that disc however, much of the tracks on here consist of solo improvisations on various instruments, drums and voice. Much of the tracks are subtly altered cyclical tunes which were recorded either during a musician's daily endless practicing or during an actual ceremony, such as the Tuareg Medicinal Chant which is intended to excite "the sick person to dance in an increasingly vigorous manner until either cured or exhausted." The warbling tones of the lead vocalist are accompanied by a droning chorus and percussion. The buzzing of the chorus and the warbling singer is made even more creepy by random screams which are said to represent the devil being chased away.
Jaipongan and the other styles included on this disc are quite possibly some of the most interesting forms of popular music to develop in Indonesia or the world in recent times. Sunda (not to be confused by the geographically dyslexic with the Sudan) lies in Western Java and, as it seems holds true throughout Indonesia, has its own unique music, dance and dramatic arts exclusive to the relatively small geographic region in which it's contained. The story of Jaipongan's creation is almost as interesting as the music itself. And while it is thoroughly written about in the accompanying liner notes by none other than Philip Yampolsky (the man what brought us the 20 volume "Music of Indonesia" series on Smithsonian Folkways), I'll try to paraphrase as briefly as possible to pique your interest here.
As a catalyst for the creation of Jaipongan, a great deal is owed to Indonesian President Sukarno who, in the early 1960's, impressed upon Indonesians to cherish their traditional arts. In 1974, an inspired rennaissance man of an artist/entrepreneur by the name of Gugum Gumbira Tirasondajaja took Sukarno up on his challenge and put together a new genre of popular music that drew from traditional Sundanese music for its ingredients. What Sukarno probably wasn't looking for was a new popular genre built out of a dance genre in which a professional dancer -- often a prostitute -- invites men to dance with her. Gugum replaced the dance's accompaniment (limited to 3 small gongs) with a stripped down Degung gamelan common to Sunda. But most impressive was his addition to all this an impressive battery of drums played in a suitably flamboyant fashion -- much of the patterns taken from Wayang Golek (shadowless puppet theater which uses 3 dimensional puppets.) When you consider that the drummer in this ensemble, despite the expanded drums at his disposal, is still limited to a handful of two-headed barrel drums, it's enough to make Neil Peart blush at the way he plays them. Using pressure applied by the heel of the foot, or the forearm, the drummer can eke out glissandi or melodic fragments -- and they do so constantly. The ensemble wouldn't be complete, of course, without a singer. And the singer for this ensemble -- Gugum's Jugala Group -- is Idjah Hadidjah, probably the most famous in Sunda. Married to a famous dalang (puppeteer), she became somewhat famous herself singing during his Wayang Golek performances. Her silky and sensuous singing makes the perfect counterpoint to the frenetic drumming and is probably the single biggest reason why this album sold so well. Which reminds me... A lot of you have already probably noticed the nice new cover art these Explorer reissues are getting. As nice as the cover art is, it has already caused a little confusion here at Aquarius with customers who already own the previous CD issues of the discs in the Indonesian part of the series. This album, originally released under Idjah Hadidjah's name as "Tonggeret", was only just fairly recently released for the first time in the west in 1987. So just a warning to check your collections and make sure you don't have "Tonggeret" in there already. Unless, of course, you want this nicely remastered version with the cool Magnum cover photo.
Killer intercontinental compilation from Israeli label Heart & Crossbone, who in the past have brought us equally killer releases from black thrash duo Barbara, weird noise metal combo Cadaver Eyes, ultra noisemakers Lietterschpich, blown out avant noise rockers Grave In The Sky, one-man experimental grind band Mildew, and most recently, the mysterious field recording-ed skitter and clang of Lagan Tapes. Not a bad track record at all! For this comp, curiously called What Pleasing The Lord Looks Like Marriage, they've gathered up 8 of their favorite extreme noise and metal bands, 4 from Israel, 4 from Japan, some mentioned above, all pretty kick ass.
First up is Ryokuchi, a bass and drums doom duo from Japan, who start out with some shakuhachi and tribal drumming, before launching into a crushing, lurching sludge, dense downtuned heaviness, tons of shrieking feedback, chugging crunch, and bellowed vox. Cadaver Eyes are up next, their track begins with a thick caustic slab of undulating drone, all buzzing overtones, and layered rumbles, eventually the drums kick in, and a Khanate-like pace, the vocals tortured and harsh, the backdrop a low end slow motion doom, definitely for the ultramegadoomlords out there. Back to Japan for Zenocide, who also offer up their own sludge-y slowness, with some incredible, monstrous vocals, WAY up in the mix, the music a stripped down sort of stonery doom, think Church Of Misery crossed with Corrupted, but those vocals, holy shit, SCARY.
Not sure why Lietterschpich appended 'diet' to their name, this doesn't sound any lighter or less heavy than past outings, instead, more super abstract percussive freakouts, shimmery soft noise and dubbed out doom, a swirling skree or chopped and processed sounds, all layered over a wall of buzzing crumbling sound, and those chaotic drums. MONEYISGOD from Japan are another band new to us, but again, we have to say HOLY SHIT, these guys are fucked up and heavy and awesome! Buzzing glitchy layers of noise, super blown out heavy percussion, and the occasional vocal blurt, like a way more ominous angry Boredoms, quickly giving way to a cloud of caustic white noise, all the while those drums keep pounding away. Poochlatz are another longtime aQ fave from Israel, and here they get their Whitehouse on big time, although it's like a muddy, murky, muted Whitehouse, another squall of swirling noisiness, of fuzz and buzz and hiss, peppered with strangled super processed vox, the whole thing stuttering and skittering and constantly pulsing and throbbing, almost like a Buttholes Surfer noise mix!
The comp finishes off with two more new-to-us combos, first up Remesh, from Israel, who are also plenty noise, there noise expelled in great big blown out gouts, industrial, heaving, hissing, effects drenched vocals bellowing beneath that undulating sea of harsh sound, but not so harsh that it isn't listenable, although certainly harsh enough to keep away all but the very iron eared.
And finally, Japan's Nerveless, mistakenly credited as Neverless, who close things out with a massive 20 minute noisedoom freakout. There is a riff, a massive crumbling super distorted bassy one, that lurches glacially, while all around it swirls dense sheets of low end throb, and a symphony of what sounds like that wind-on-microphone crackle and crunch. It's like Corrupted and Boris filtered through a blown Merzbow subwoofer. Noisy, but strangely hypnotic and heavy.
Like all good comps, this will definitely leave you wanting more from most, if not all of these outfits, another noisy heavy winner from Heart & Crossbone!
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
It's practically raining Mississippi Records around here these days, no complaints, though sometimes it can be difficult for us to focus on which ones we want to review first! Not too difficult in this case though, as What Remains Of Eden, released in conjunction with Mississippi's Canary imprint and the Change label, focuses on Middle Eastern recordings made in the late 1920s all the way up to the early 1950s, which we are always curious to hear more of, as these sounds are still so incomprehensibly beautiful and exotic to our ears. This album is a great companion piece to Tompkins Square's massive To What Strange Place: The Music Of The Ottoman-American Diaspora 3cd set, though unlike those recordings which were made by immigrants living in New York, the records represented here were imported to America by labels who in the midst of the Great Depression found this method more profitable than having to actually pay musicians working in America. The notes bring up this unique aspect of the compilation, as these songs weren't culled from records found in the Middle East but instead from records sold mainly to Christian and Jewish minorities in the U.S., thereby representing specific market tastes.
The music within came from the regions making up present-day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, and the Ottoman roots are unmistakable. The deep spiritual nature of this region, home of the historical Garden of Eden, is reflected in each song, and anyone who has enjoyed previous Mississippi / Canary outings like the String Of Pearls compilation, Marika Papagika's The Further The Flame, The Worse It Burns and recent ROTW honoree Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, will find much to love. As always, highly recommended.
Not sure about the whole story, something about ceramic pigs and blowdryers. But basically, a bunch of found sounds recorded on a minidisc were sent out to numerous underground electronic/experimental musicians (some well-known, some not-so), and traded and
Twenty previously-unreleased songs from ALL your favorite Matador artists such as Pavement (doing "Killing Moon"), Jon Spencer Blues Atrocity, Silkworm, Yo La Tengo, Barbara Manning, Cat Power, Pizzicato 5, Bardo Pond, and GBV. CD version (only) comes with bonus disc with twenty tracks comprising someone's (very tasteful) idea of Matador's greatest hits. Priced to move!
Even if this wasn't a Battiato tribute, it'd have a lot to recommend it in the line-up department, featuring as it does songs by Circle, Acid Mothers Temple, Hrvatski, Cul De Sac, Volcano the Bear, Kinski, Los Natas, Oneida and others! In fact, since most people probably haven't ever heard of the Italian songwriter Franco Battiato, the formidable array of modern-day psychedelic and avant-garde artists found here is the probably the main selling point. But if you don't know Battiato (but do know all those acts) presumably you're wondering about him. Basically, in the early '70s at the outset of his career, the Sicilian-born Battiato made experimental psych/prog records that some would consider as way-out and wonderful as anything achieved by a lot of the krautrock bands, like Faust, who are so much better known over here. From sound collage to repetitive minimalism, his albums were crammed with weirdness but also quite pleasant and melodic. Later on he apparently got a lot more commerical sounding and his popularity increased, so much so that many Italians might not really be aware of his early experiments. Our friend Loren Chasse, a Battiato fan, tells of how when he was in Italy this past summer playing some solo shows, he asked several Italians he met about Battiato and to his surprise was told that no-one much liked him, he wasn't considered cool at all, to them he was just a cheesy '80s pop star. However, as if to prove that there are Italians who appreciate Battiato (at least, his early works) comes this comp, put together by an Italian label and featuring both Jennifer Gentle and Zu from Italy alongside the aforementioned international cast of fans. And it of course features only songs from his prime, '70s period, with two or three tracks covered from each of his first four classic albums: Fetus, Pollution, Sulle Corde Di Aries and Clic. Weird, hard-to-grok stuff, but mellow and pretty nonetheless, plenty of good material for each of the bands here to take off from and make their own (some even pick the same songs, which is kind of interesting). So, no need to already be a Battiato fan to enjoy this, though you might become one as a result...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A tasty pop collection. The menu features 31 entrees, such as Land of the Loops, Wrong, the Coctails, Low, Wham-O and other fine flavors.
For a while, back in the nineties, AQ was THE place to get your underground New Zealand rock fix. Maybe one of the only stores in the US consistently singing the praises and slinging discs by the Tall Dwarves, the Cakekitchen, the Terminals, Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos, The Dead C, Bailter Space, Nigel Bunn, David Kilgour, The Clean, King Loser, The Great Unwashed, The Bats, Roy Montgomery, The Chills... and actually come to think of it, AQ is still that place, it's just that the landscape of the NZ underground has changed a bit, folks like Birchville Cat Motel, Omit, Pumice, The Dead C (still!), Peter Wright, Antony Milton, Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood, Armpit, Black Boned Angel, Dean Roberts, The Futurians and loads more are now the ones making waves all over the world. The names may be different, and the sounds too, but the current crop owe a huge debt to those that came before, and the sound and energy of those legendary NZ bands most definitely live on through this new blood.
Every time we'd get a new disc from one of those modern NZ outfits, some part of us would begin hankering to hear some of the old shit, but it's been practically impossible to track any of it down, Flying Nun, THE New Zealand label, was still around and releasing records, but seemed to only exist within the confines of NZ itself. But finally after months and months of emailing we managed to find someone who would and could sell us Flying Nun stuff. Our box of NZ goodies finally showed up and we were transported right back to that NZ indie rock heyday, we've been blasting the Chills and Bailter Space, Chris Knox and Toy Love, The Gordons and David Kilgour... but most exciting of all, we were able to get two compilations we'd been hearing about but had been unable to get until now. One is the 25th anniversary Flying Nun 4cd box set, super expensive, but well worth it, we'll try to list it some day, although we do have a few (at the time of writing this review) if you're interested, the other is Where In The World Is Wendy Broccoli, a completely kick ass and mind blowing collection of long out of print 7" singles, released between 1981 and 1996, when Flying Nun were releasing all sorts of crazy cool weirdness on vinyl...
Not sure who Wendy Broccoli is, judging from the liner notes, it seems like maybe she was a Flying Nun A+R person, but it hardly matters, the important thing is, this collection is a knockout. A great overview of the label and the scene, from indie pop jangle to murky grungy free rock and pretty much every stop in between. Like most scenes, there were a handful of key players, NZ was no different, lots of names you would probably recognize: Roy Montgomery, Peter Stapleton, Robert Scott, David Mitchell, Peter Jefferies, David Kilgour, Denise Roughan, Chris Knox, Shayne Carter, Chris Heazlewood and a handful of others, who beyond recording in their own bands and under their own names, would often pair up or group together for one off recordings, single albums or even just a 7" single, that sort of freedom, and the ability to record a track or two and see it actually released, resulted in one of the most vibrant and varied scenes EVER. And the proof is right here...
The mopey, slowcore jangle of Rik Starrr, the cinematic countrified twang of the Renderers, the bass heavy new wave-y gloom of Pin Group, the murky Spacemen 3 like jams of Sssf, the glimmering indie K Records style soft indie pop of The Magick Heads, the minor key melodic pop dirge of Queen Meanie Puss, the gothy dreamy downer murk of The Children's Hour (sounding quite a bit like Joy Division or Interpol), the tripped out space rock of Celia Mancini,� the fuzzed out female surf rock of 25 Cents (covering a Sonics classic), that unmistakable Chris Knox lo-fi perfect pop, and that's just a handful of the twenty tracks here.�
Definitely one of our favorite 'new' comps of the last little while (it actually came out in 2005), and it's done exactly what great compilations are meant to, acting not only as the perfect mix, but also getting us all riled up to hear some of our old NZ faves (most of which sound just as good today as they did back in the day!!). SO RECOMMENDED!
Back in stock, and just in time!
Seems like most Christmas records are, justifiably, albums you want to run screaming from. Very few have weighed anchor at our port, Low's Christmas album being a notable exception, and I think we're probably one of the only stores that doesn't drag out the hideous Christmas/Holiday section every year. So it was interesting to see this new collection come in from the same label that brought us the wonderful (and gorgeous) Goodbye, Babylon box set. You'd think they've got a theme going here -- though the collection's producer Dick Spottswood states in the accompanying booklet: "in the spirit of fairness, we've tried to designate equal time for sacred and secular, for Christ and Santa Claus, and for respectable and rowdy". It don't matter though really. We're convinced these Dust To Digital fellas could come up with any theme and put out a kick ass collection, as this is just that -- x-mas or no x-mas. Some of the greats we all know and love are here: banjo player / singer Buell Kazee, Lead Belly, Lightnin' Hopkins, Maddox Bros. & Rose, and Bessie Smith. Along with all the great blues, country, gospel, and early jazz tracks you can expect, DTD has expanded their library beyond American roots music and have included some great tracks from Puerto Rico (a great guitar trio), Trinidad (a couple calypsos from Lord Executor and Lord Beginner), Italy (a bizarre instrumental belted out on a pair of strange bagpipe like instruments, the zampogna and the ciaramella), and The Ukraine (a hauntingly sultry violin, cymbaly, bass and sleigh bell tune). One of the highlights though, is a tune by the ever wonderful Alabama Sacred Harp Singers that'll stand your hair on end. I don't think there's another religious choir that sounds more possessed. Singing, nay practically yelling, in a sort of round fashion, this tune will have you shouting "Fuck Yeah!" The disc comes packaged in a fold out wallet and comes with a "Christmas In Jail" postcard (that you can actually use) and a cute little booklet.
