Not once, but twice has the Summersteps label commissioned an entire album of Jandek covers. Given the unmistakable idiosyncratic signature of Jandek's vocal warble and shrill guitar picking, it's not an easy task to reinterpret Jandek without watering down the original, even when you're a songwriter as strong as Jeff Tweedy or John Darnielle (aka The Mountain Goats). These are two of 21 artists who took on the challenge, alongside Eric Gaffney, Okkervil River (boldly covering what may be Jandek's best individual song "Your Other Man"), Six Organs of Admittance, Kawabata Makoto, Home For The Def (doing an is-it-brilliant-or-is-it-stupid hip-hop take on Jandek's "European Jewel"), Rivulets, and whole bunch of other people we've never heard of.
Pretty amazing collection of old timey rarities from the collection of Joe Bussard, known as the "King Of Record Collectors" with a collection of 25,000 or so rare 78's, lps and reel to reel tapes, covering pretty much everything from jazz to blue grass to jug bands to wild hillbilly hoedowns. Definitely for fans of the Secret Museum Of Mankind series and all those Yazoo and Folkways collections. The sound is amazing, super clear and crisp, which for some of you loyal AQ-ers may be the only disappointment, 'cause we know how you love your record hiss and grit and crackle and pop. But c'mon, this is no post modern skipping glitchscape, this is just some sweet and timeless, classic music. Comes with a MASSIVE booklet of liner notes and song details, as well as lots of goofy pictures of Bussar himself.
We know people who work at other record stores give each other gifts of music for birthdays and Christmas. Makes sense, that's what they love, right? But from another perspective, there's something just a little too easy about that... "here, I bought you this from the store where we all work". So, 'cause of that, here at AQ we don't have much of a tradition of giving cds and lps as presents.
But, Allan was thankful that Andee broke with tradition last year and mailordered him a copy of this hard to find cd for Xmas. (Andee got himself one too, of course). And now we've finally managed to contact the label directly, over in England, and order a few to sell here at AQ as well.
Definitely any lover of early '70s proto-metal heaviness needs to put this on their wish list. Downer Rock Genocide is a collection of super rare tracks by some really obscure heavy psych/prog acts who kicked around the same scene as early Black Sabbath. And it's pretty darn killer. There's 16 tracks by 14 bands, here they are: Flying Hat Band, Clear Blue Sky, Necromandus, Egor, Monument, Iron Maiden, Gnidrolog, Iron Claw, Red Dirt, Slowbone, Bram Stoker, Hackensack, Bum, and Writing On The Wall. We'd heard of some but others were new to us, unearthed from way down deep in the murky underground of decades past.
Too many gems here to talk about 'em all, but we'll mention a few... Flying Hat Band (2 tracks from them, from a never released 1973 album) was where Glenn Tipton slung his axe before joining up with Judas Priest. No wonder they hired him! We'd never heard FHB's stuff before, and already this comp is worth it just for the badass rockin' doom of their first cut, "Seventh Plain". It's like Comus meets Judas Priest! Clear Blue Sky, who also contribute two demo tracks, is one of the bands we -had- heard before (their album is a Sabbathy treat). And Sabbath lovers will really want this for "Nightjar" by the Tony Iommi produced Necromandus, easily that band's heaviest and best track. So good.
What else? The Iron Maiden on here is NOT the Iron Maiden you're familiar with, it's another, earlier band with the same name but a much doomier disposition. Actually who they really sound like is Wishbone Ash, Argus-era, all folky and epic. Gnidrolog is another one we knew, a great, super dramatic prog act in the vein of Van Der Graaf Generator, who offer up their doomiest "Long Live Man Dead". Red Dirt are a gruff slice of raw, primitive bluesy heaviness, that just got Cup to remark "that music has hairy balls!". Iron Claw kick out the jams big time on "Lightning" from a 1971 cassette only release, Egor tear it up on the blown-out live track "Street" also from '71, Hackensack deliver some wild fuzzed out soloing and wailing vocals on their kick ass cut "River Boat" circa '72, and Bum bring us the pagan "God Of Darkness" from way back in '68. Did Sabbath hear these guys? All of it good stuff for fans of bands like Sabbath, Budgie, Leaf Hound, High Tide... and Witchcraft today. Give yourself the gift of downer rock.
Some of these tracks are from albums, many are demos or archival live recordings. So sound quality varies, but not the occult-inspired, heavy-riffing, proto-metal awesomeness.
Long overdue reissue of this wonderful soundtrack to the film Downtown 81, which starred the now-deceased artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and was written by Glenn O'Brien. Here we've got 20 tracks representing the breadth and range of the hip downtown NY
This is not only a cool document of a scene that was breathtaking in its diversity, but this is also a very handy sampler to the music of this time, much of which is now recognized as seminal. It's rare that a soundtrack documents a scene well (as opposed to just featuring throwaway tracks by bands who saved their best stuff for their own albums), but this album does it! The booklet's got a bunch of film stills and lots of information on the bands.
Listen to *all* the soundclips to get an idea of the range of styles represented on this great record.
Fuck Off. Fuck Off. Fuck Off... Sorry, we're just singing along with of the songs here. that's the title of one of the songs here. Kind of a novelty number by Slim Gaillard, recorded back in the forties, believe it or not. They never -quite- say "fuck off" in the song, well they do but it sounds like a clucking chicken or something each time. So they could get away with it. Heh heh heh. It's also known as "The Dirty Rooster".
So that's one good reason to buy this comp of old time boogie woogie rarities. There's 29 more cuts here, all of 'em lotsa fun and/or bluesy drinkin' music. If you liked the previous Dr. Boogie compilation on Sub Rosa, you'll dig this too. Listening to this, it's not too hard imagining yourself wandering into some roadhouse honky tonk down South, circa '46 or '52, grooving to the rough and ready sound of what wound up as rock n' roll not too long later.
The many artists found here include some well known names like electric blues guitarist Albert Collins, blues/jazz guitar great Lonnie Johnson, and pianist Champion Jack Dupree, along with plenty of amazing obscurities (the liner notes give what little information is available about some of these). From Bobo Jenkins to Guitar Slim Green, Ramblin Hi Harris to Papa George Lightfoot... they're all screaming 'n' crying about how life gets hard, it's a low down dirty shame, just can't understand it, she's taking all my money and I'm gonna kill that hen... and suchlike subjects.
Search on the keyword "boogie" on our website and you'll get, uh, let's see... 133 hits. This item being the latest, one that would go right to the top if we had the appropriate relevance algorithm at work. And there's actually 19 boogie hits here (well, obscurities actually), rare tracks circa 1941 to 1958. What's this compilation of American oldies music doing on the Belgian avantgarde label Sub Rosa?? And not, say, on Arhoolie or Bear Family? Well we're not sure exactly, but it has something to do with this Dr. Boogie character, he's a DJ from Belgium who has compiled this collection of boogie tracks, all of 'em from awesomely crackly old 78 rpm records that had been amassed over the years by boogie fanatic Bob "The Bear" Hite, better known as the lead singer of Woodstock-era hippie blues rock band Canned Heat (y'know, "Going Up The Country"), who passed away in 1981. Dunno if any of you folks are fans of Canned Heat, but regardless, it makes sense (and is pretty cool) that their vocalist had such a deep record collection devoted to old time rock n' blues boogie woogie. Apparently back in the sixties, he used to host all-night listening parties in his Topanga Canyon pad, and the cuts collected here ought to give you an idea of what those sessions must have sounded like. Wild boogie fun!
How couldn't it be, when it starts off with the excellently titled "Death Ray Boogie" by piano player Pete Johnson? And there's no slack on the next track, Googie Rene's "Wiggle Tail". There's a bunch more uptempo, jumpin' numbers like that one (such as rock n' roll pioneer Bill Haley's "Birth Of The Boogie"), while other tracks here are more languidly bluesy (like guitarist Clarence's Brown's smokey "Taking My Chance"). It's all pretty great old time good times. Other names here, some famous, some now more or less forgotten except by hardcore collectors: Earl King, Etta James, Elmore James, Clarence Brown, Johnny Otis, Otis Rush, Chuck Higgins, Eddie Hope, The Hot Shots, and some crazy cat called Mad Mel Sebastian!
Recommended... and we're happy to hear that more volumes drawn from Hite's historic collection are forthcoming.
Live at WMBR, Cambridge MA, 7/13/92. Features Smog, Palace Bros, and the Sea Note Players, all tracks previously unreleased.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
So lovely, a disc apiece from international drone-meisters Paul Schutze, Pauline Oliveros & Randy Raine-Reusch, Thomas Koner, and Nijiumu (Keiji Haino).
Subtitled: "The First Recordings in the Georgian Republic." The Traditional Crossroads label is at its best when digging up and restoring historical recordings from the Middle East and elsewhere, such as those found here, 25 tracks recovered (and digitially
Drone Records is dead! Long live Drone Records! After the release of their 100th single (by the impeccable Japanese minimalist Spiracle), Drone Records will no longer be releasing 7" singles; instead, they have decided on a new format of presenting extracts from the wide range of drone-based compositions, by way of an LP with four artists each presenting about the same amount of material as could be held on a 7". As was the case for the singles, this platform makes for a great introduction to artists who we had otherwise been unaware of. Volume 1 features the Spanish sound artist Ubeboet, the Finnish occult practitioners Halo Manash, Erik Jarl in a more contemplative mood than his power electronics in IRM, and the Swiss mesmerist B-Tong.
Ubeboet's two tracks focus on orchestral source material, elongated and extended into an impressionist ambience dappled with violin trills, dilated drones of monastic chanting, and plenty of reverberant haze to go around, very much sounding like those beautiful Mirror records from about 10 years ago (e.g. Front Row Centre, Nights, etc.). Halo Manash takes up various gongs, temple bells, and Tibetan horns to the ritualist end of dark ambient incantation, recalling Coil's early masterpiece How To Destroy Angels and Lustmord's Heresy. Jarl's scabrous drones and ominous screeches were all sourced from a zither, although much of what he conjures is of noxious tonal harmonics and dissonant textures. In B-Tong's timestretched vocal drones and heavily processed echoings of water texture, we are reminded of the Hafler Trio's swarmed accumulation of voice gliding into the surrealist aqueousness of irr. app. (ext.).
Limited to 500 copies!
You pretty much know what you're gonna get with a compilation called Drone-Mind on a label called Drone Records. The vinyl series is the continuation of what the label started back in the early '90s, when Drone Records released some of the choicest slabs of obscurant dronemuzik, post-industrial occultations, and deep-down dark ambient tracks. Maeror Tri (whose Stefan Knappe is the man in charge of Drone Records), Aidan Baker, Francisco Lopez, Small Cruel Party, Murmer, and Spiracle rank as some of the more well-known projects to have graced the Drone Records imprint, with lots more enigmatic projects to emerge from the sewers of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the former Soviet republics. Although the first artist to grace this compilation comes all the way from that foreign land known as Los Angeles, with this track being from Yann Novak, whose hauntological track is a deft recapitulation of the psychological ambient pieces by Clock DVA, crafted entirely from run-out grooves on pieces of vinyl. The drone diptych from the Slovakian outfit Strom Noir belies their name with a radiant, shimmering, graceful piece of golden ambience that aligns itself more with those cinematic, open-space constructs by Stars Of The Lid. Very lovely. Emme Ya -- a South American project with some connections to Cold Spring -- turns the album's mood definitely toward the darkside with a gloomy set of rumblings, disembodied voices, and catacomb echo. Playing the part of the contrarian is Karl Bosmann, a German sound-sculptor who has wowed us in the past with inventive electronics and uncompromising experiments. His atonal, radiophonic swells build up to a dramatic crescendo that snaps to some strange vocal incantation only to break into a gnarled, overblown rhythmic churn for the final four minutes of his 13 minute excursion that wouldn't be out of place next to Le Syndicat or Esplendor Geometrico. Pretty fucking rad stuff from all four artists!
The Drone-Mind series continues into its third iteration, following the 100 seven-inch singles that the suitably named Drone Records began releasing some twenty years ago. Instead of the seven-inch format, it's now a full length lp on which Drone Records brings together four different artists who dedicate their craft to "drones of the world and drones of the mind." Given that Drone Records is embarking on these compilations annually, the Drone-Mind series could very turn into the underground equivalent to Kompakt's Pop Ambient series, albeit with teeth ripping through the drones, as a small showcase for this particular aesthetic of dour dronescaping and industrial meditation. The third volume is perhaps the most consistent and cohesive in the series so far, recalling actually much of the classic Drone Records singles from way back when, especially those brilliantly dark ambient, sound-sculpted vignettes produced by Maeror Tri, Kallabris, Yen Pox, Joe Colley, Inade, and Small Cruel Party. The first track comes courtesy of aQ's own Jim Haynes, who laces power-drones from a small arsenal of miniature turbines and tone generators that grind to a crumbling halt in the shadows of his menacing field recordings of those WWII era bunkers that dot the Northern California landscape before exploding with a very tactile, gravel tumbling bout of rough noise. The Muscovite sonic seance artist Exit In Grey continues to impress us with his looming atmospheric drones that channel the thrumming of all of the mosquitos from the Russian tundra in summertime into a darkly rich chorale fraught with a moody torpor and languid, subtle melodic phrases. Expansive cosmological metaphors pour from the churning cauldron of bleak, tempestuous ambience by Kshatriy, another great example of postindustrial sound art coming out of Russia these days. It's been quite a while since we've heard from Maninkari, a project of French twins who recorded a couple of great albums on Conspiracy around 2007/2008. Their two tracks venture down a twilight ritualized path of tribal rhythms and hurdy-gurdy harmonics on one hand and a spellbinding, post-classical miasma of stringed instruments on the other. Totally fantastic work all around!
Groundbreaking ten-year old underground hip hop label releases a new 2-disc compilation for the nice price of one. Bomb Hip Hop was responsible for the Return of the DJ compilations which brought the label into worldwide spotlight, and they've been going strong ever since. The tracks on this comp are not throwaways, each one is a strong showpiece. The second disc is a cool contrast
The humble drum machine. It's had a tumultuous existence, equally loathed and loved, no more so than in metal (where for the most part it tends to be loathed). Without it, there's be no techno, or hip hop, or grime or industrial music. Or maybe there would be, but it would sound drastically different. It opened up a whole new world of sound, allowing musicians to program beats and sounds that they couldn't necessarily play or make themselves. So it was only a matter of time before extreme musicians discovered the sort of speed and brutality one could wring from that little box. It's nothing new, metal bands, grind bands and the like have been using drum machines for ages, but as extreme music gets more aggressive, more fucked up, more complex and more extreme, folks making this sort of music are pushing the limits of what a drum machine can do. Before, a band couldn't be any faster than their drummer could play. Now there is no limit, 100 bpm, 200 bpm, 300 bpm or more, speed is now no longer an issue. Nor is arrangement. Now a deft drum machine programmer can fit millions of beats and an insane number of different rhythms into a one minute song. Faster, more furious, more freaked out, we love it. From the murky blackened dizzyingly complex mechanical drums of black metal outfits like Draugar, to the pounding industrial grooves of Godflesh, to the lightning fast blasts of Agoraphobic Nosebleed, we can't get enough, we love the sputtering stuttering pounding skittering drum machine. Not as a replacement for real drums, and a real drummer (lord knows that usually the best part of seeing a band live is seeing a kick ass drummer totally destroy) but as another tool in the already formidable arsenal.
So here we have Drum>MachineGun, an audio report on the current state of grind. And metal. And more specifically, just what these grindmetal freaks are doing with their drum machines. And what they're doing is totally fucking mind blowing and face melting and completely confounding. Forget about music you think is fast, or heavy, or complicated, or freaked out, or fucked up. Because whatever you think, these songs, and these bands are more. Much more. 20 bands playing 67 songs in 73 minutes. Average song length about a minute. Average number of parts per song? More than our puny minds can handle. If you could imagine the most insane, most complicated, heaviest weirdest grindmetal band in the world, this comp is the record they would make. Each band linked in some ways, sometimes obviously, sometimes not so. But it makes for an incredibly cohesive listen. Which is rare for comps in general, especially one with 20 bands and almost 70 songs.
Probably our favorite discovery amongst the bunch is Noism, who might possible be our new favorite band. Imagine a group that sounded like a skipping Pig Destroyer cd. Or like multiple Agoraphobic Nosebleed cds playing at the same time. A totally mind blowing freaked out shredfest, impossibly convoluted rhythms, bizarre and brutal riffage, splattered all over the place, but sometimes lopping and skipping into bizarre industrial metal breakdowns, like a death metal Oval or something. Drum patters that are mind blowingly complex, and chugging squiggly guitars that somehow sync up perfectly. It's like a super scratched up, skipping grindcore 45, played at 90 rpm. We are dying for more than these 5 minutes. Then there's Jet Jaguar Kr3 Kill Spree, maybe the weirdest of the bunch. Imagine any of the other bands on this comp, having their blasting grind picked apart, chopped into tiny pieces and then flung haphazardly into a swirling black froth by V/VM or someone equally demented. An industrialized black metal music concrete. There are riffs and harsh vocals and all that but they are scattered amidst all sorts of bizarre sounds, damaged FX, and random looped samples. Some familiar AQ faves are present as well as a whole bunch of bands we'd never even heard of but were immediately blown away by. On the familiar side, BIG faves Black Mayonnaise, who we hadn't really expected to find on this comp, but they do indeed employ the machine made drums, although BM use them much differently. A sludgy ambient freaked out drug dirge world of fucked up home recorded doom. Noxious ambience, dense clouds of grinding guitar grrr and swooping FX drenched synths, all over a relentlessly pounding simple machine made beat. Like Hawkwind with a drum machine, or a super blissed out on-the-nod Butthole Surfers, a deliriously dark lugubrious creepy crawl. And no drum machine grind comp would be complete without Agoraphobic Nosebleed, the patron saints of mechanical grind, the lords of drum machine destruction. A technical grind metal juggernaut, who choose to instead indulge their industrial techno jones here, spewing forth a thick wash of pounding doom drenched gabber, with creepy vocal snippets, whirling clouds of synth fuzz and lo-fi hiss, all over a relentless 4/4 pound. Then there's Nemo, who we last heard from years ago on a split cd released by the now defunct Rage Of Achilles label. And we went absolutely apeshit for their new wave video game death metal grind. Wishing for a full length that never came. Thankfully not much has changed. If anything, they've gotten weirder and faster and more fucked up. It's like classic eighties metal chopped up and sped up, splattered with drum machines, run through some 16 bit video game system, and then performed by some grind metal super group. Yowza!
On the new to us side of things, there's Mecha Bongzilla, who we're tempted to believe is Bongzilla's faster, less stoned alterego, but it's a bit hard to tell. One track is downtuned buzzing blurry techgrind, but with INSANE vocals, like some alien gargling with a mouthful of kazoos and croaking frogs. Although their other track is downright sludgy and doomy so who knows? Also, Mad Cow who spit out weird echoey blast beats and spastic rhythmic splatter underneath thick sheets of low end guitar grind and super fucked black vomit vocals. Oh and a bunch of bird calls, monkey sounds, and a totally bizarre sped up super affected Elizabeth Clare Prophet sample right in the middle!!!! Woah!
Ok, it'll probably be easier to go through the rest of the bands in list form:
Artificial Intelligence Agency: more of a strange series of interludes, mostly weird sound effects, movie snippets, found sounds, bizarre FX, and only the occasional bit of music, and it's NOT metal, more some sort of weird ambient porno funk.
Voltron: chugging super fast gurgling vocalled death metal grind, with guitars and vocals so indistinct they are just blurs of low end sound and of course lightning fast drum machine blasts.
Submachine Drum: murky lo-fi industrial grind, so fast it's all a dizzying blur of hyperspeed drums and looped processed guitar riffs.
Slough: Not related to the similarly named Slough Feg... and take away the Feg and you've got a guttural grindmetal shred fest. Impossibly downtuned guitars, all a growing gurgling blur.
Scumfusion: some seriously shredding grind, but with plenty of wheedily lead guitars, grinding sludge metal riffs over ridiculously fast rhythms and super weird processed vocals, that sound like some underwater alien. Surprisingly melodic, but still furious and fierce, pounding and pummeling.
Prosthetic Cunt: We reviewed these guys' full length ages ago, a gleefully perverse and sick sick sick take on ultragrossoutgrind. Super blown out guitars and a drummachine cranked to 11 and programmed at about 300 BPM. And of course lots of goofy movie samples.
Ocrilim: No comp of insanely technical grind would be complete without some Mick Barr madness. Ocrilim is Barr (Orthrelm, Octis, Crom Tech) shredding wildly to sputtering spastic machine drums. SO insanely inspired but incredibly hard on the ears. In a good way.
Nerve Not Found: Prog gone grind. Keyboards swoop in and out of super complicated arrangements. Like the Locust covering Magma.
Hellz Army: Pounding DHR style industrial gabber. Big static repeating guitar riffs and pounding four on the floor drum machine pummel with bizarre samples of fifties rock, Space Ghost and tons of other random weirdness.
Genghis Tron: We sure do love these guys. Imagine Slayer sped up to impossible speeds, a grinding super technical satanic death metal, then mix in a bunch of fuzzed out new wave synths, hip hop breakbeats, samples and prepare to have your mind melt.
Decomposing Serenity: These guys represent the old school. Super blow out death metal gore grind. Downtuned riffing, chugging guitars, machine made blast beats, and a vast array of gurgling, strangled, alien, monster growls. Bits of this are almost even funky, making them sound at times like a gore grind Chili Peppers.
Data Clast: Another grind new wave hybrid, but with a bit of a prog bent. Heavy and super pummeling but with plenty of thick fuzzy synths, and convoluted song structures, complex arrangements, and processed guitars that skip and stutter as much as they riff. And of course some huge slow and low grumbling monster gurgle vocals.
Cocoon: Stretched out industrial black ambience, one of the few tracks whose drum machines are more a part of their whole vibe than the driving focal point. Crackling, rumbling drones, clouds of drifting glitch, and shuffling stuttering rhythms, an ominous dreamlike subtly drum machined drift.
This is the kind of record that leaves you bruised and bloody, beaten and exhausted. Like having the musical shit kicked out of you. This is a seriously intense bout of heavy listening. Hard listening. Nothing easy about this at all. Super furious, totally relentless, loud as fuck, faster than a speeding bullet, grinding and gurgling and bellowing and blasting and skipping and looping and crushing and pulverizing and pummeling and shrieking and shredding and so goddamn amazing.
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In all of its shapes, forms and incarnations we do love dub! Whether it's vintage dub from Jamaica, or more contemporary sounds channeling dub through electronics like the Basic Channel camp and the new wave of dub-steppers. There is just something so intoxicating about the reverb, the echo, that seductive pulse that pulls you in and makes you never want to leave. Soul Jazz has struck gold once again with a two disc collection that brings together the best sounds of dub in many of its incarnations from the past and the present. In lesser hands this could come off as some haphazard hit and miss intersection of music spanning several decades, but what has made Soul Jazz a label to trust so much when it comes to reissues and compilations is what great taste and understanding they have of making records that flow and make sense as a whole.
A record like this is perfect, combining the world of dub's pioneers and those who are now carrying the torch into the future. Dub was always such a futuristic and forward thinking movement as artists like King Tubby, Bunny Lee, Prince Jammy and Lee Perry found ways to turn the studio into a full on sonic time machine, a musical instrument unto itself. So along with tracks from those pioneers there are also folks like Kode 9, Harmonic 313, Roots Manuva and Disrupt, who have taken from the blueprints of that holy grail of dub and found new ways to make those echoes reverberate with such sizzling delight. Highly Recommended!
PS there's a Soul Jazz Films dvd also entitled Dub Echoes that came out when this did, we have it in stock too but haven't had a chance to view it yet, should review it soon...
Spanning the very roots of dub, with tracks like U Roy's "Wake The Town" dating back to 1970 and spanning up to nearly the present with modern remixes by erstwhile electronica artists, this disk is as much a nice dub mix as it is a history lesson of dub. There is even a several page dub history essay by David Katz (author of "People Funny Boy", the Biography of Lee 'Scratch' Perry.) Featuring Augustus Pablo, King Tubby, Scientist, Thievery Corporation, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Prince Jammy, U Roy, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Lee Perry, Sly & Robbie and much more.
Three way split between Small Rocks (a.k.a. Matt Wand of Stock Hausen & Walkman), The Rip Off Artist (a.k.a. Matt Haines) and Atom (a.k.a. Senor Coconut a.k.a. Uwe Schmidt) with each contributing four original tracks. As the title would lead one to expect, the three irreverent plunder-tronicists take on Jamaican dub for this project. I guess it had to happen eventually. While the myriad cheese farmers of electronica out there "pay homage" to the genre (the final installment of Select Cuts From Blood & Fire that we listed on the last AQ newsletter to present an example), it seems only appropriate that the jesters of electronica should have their day in court as well. Oddly enough, the three seem to take a lasseiz-faire attitude (in comparison to their usual output) when applying humor to the pieces presented here. But, unlike the Select Cuts series, the fellers here are not directly referencing tracks -- these are not remixes in even the most remote sense, but original compositions that are about as "dub" as you would expect any of them to be. To this end the rhythms and bass lines are all appropriate to the genre, but the palette of sounds are not. Of the three, Atom Heart tends to approach the task at hand with possibly the greatest sense of familiarity with the genre being decomposed. Where Small Rocks and The Rip Off Artist seem content to merely applying their palette of sounds to a virtual MIDI dub template, Atom Heart has the knack of pulling out all the iconic elements of dub and smashing them back together. With Atom, the grainy edge of decaying tape delay is looped and treated like King Tubby might ride the fader on a vocal track with reverb or delay. In other words, treatments in which the effect is paramount and the source becomes inconsequential. I can only hope that these (Atom Heart tracks) are trial runs for a future Rather Interesting release. The relative success of the artists here might be attributed to how much time each spent on these tracks. Glancing at the inside of the booklet, The Rip Off Artist apparently got his tracks recorded just last month (September of 2002) and the other two in August. Seeing as how it's only mid-October now, and they obviously had to get this thing mastered, have artwork made, the whole thing produced, and sent to distributors before reaching our digs, that doesn't leave much time for schlepping tracks together in the studio.
Number eight in this ongoing series, where various dubstep DJs and producers, put together sets of their favorite 12"s, creating killer mixes featuring the cream of the dubstep crop. The last few volumes seemed to be moving in a weird direction, toward a more mainstream strain of 'bass' music, but this one is back to business, featuring Distance, who for his mix is focusing on the classics, the jams that are the cornerstone of his DJ sets, which of course means a whole bunch of his own tracks, all of which kill, but also classic jams from Skream, Cyrus, Benga, and loads more.
We're long past the point where we're trying to win over new converts to dubstep. If that This Is Dubstep 2011 didn't convince you, then hell, we're not sure what will. But if that comp was the best dubstep comp EVER, which we so boldly proclaimed in the review, then this one would have to be in the running to place. At least. It's definitely not as weird, or all over the map, but what it is, is dark, and hard and heavy, this is some seriously sinister dubstep, the tone ominous and sinister, the bass thick and fat and distorted, the beats heavy and hard, the soulful vox kept to a minimum, a continuous mix of low slung bass heavy dancefloor destroying dubstep with some of the HEAVIEST bass ever, that huge speaker rattling warble that threatens to blow your woofers, it's everywhere, pulsing and throbbing beneath all manner of skitter and shuffle, with some of the drops absolutely devastating, you can understand how mental crowds must go when some of these get spun in the club.
If you're a fan of this strain of dubstep, the hard and heavy and dark, then this is exactly what you're after...
The idea behind this series through Tranquility Tapes is simple enough: present collaborative works from the far reaches of the cassette underworld of synthwranglers. For the most part, the resulting sounds are grimy, crystal-powered oceanic washes of deep listening synth churnings cast through the necessary filter of stoned tape hiss, slumped meanderings, and low-wattage recording techniques; and for the most part, all of these projects seem wholly obscure. There's no information other than a name like Cream Juice, Dozens, or Roped Off to go on; and cursory searches don't provide any clues whatsoever, although many of the projects have some affiliation in some way shape or form with the cassette imprint Orange Milk, which as of the posting of this review is as enigmatic as most everything on this tape. The one thing we do know about is Coyote Image Revisited, which is the collaboration of Rachel and Grant Evans of Hooker Vision fame and their numerous solo projects (Rachel's Motion Sickness Of Time Travel being the most well known), and who deliver a piano and tape fragment collage akin to any number of William Basinski's loop mantras. Other highlights include the tape-loop hypnosis of gong vibrations and Zoviet-France like tricks from Perspectives, the wheezing minimalism of Urkas and the weirdo radiophonic blorping from Cream Juice. Pro-duplicated edition of 150 copies on a 60 minute tape.
The Dusty Fingers comps, brought to you by the Strictly Break folks, are very strong, utterly delightful compilations of tracks from such a wide variety of genres that it brings a smile to my face just to see them in one place! And yes, the tracks totally work together as great compilation cds, and the welcome effect of the different tracks side by side is a fresh perspective on the music. Very spacy stuff, some easy listening psych material, with each track featuring killer rhythms that'll appeal to the DJ in you.
Vol. 1 features everyone from Ferrante & Teicher to Amon Duul, David Axelrod, Donovan, Les Baxter, Annette Peacock, and the Small Faces. No liner notes to speak of, just a copyright and year of original release (almost all '70s), plus an assurance that all tracks are legally licensed. Mastered from original tapes with very clean results. Highly recommended!
The Dusty Fingers comps, brought to you by the Strictly Break folks, are very strong, very delightful compilations of tracks from such a wide variety of genres that it brings a smile to my face just to see them in one place! And yes, the tracks totally work together as great compilation cds. Each track features killer rhythms that'll appeal to the DJ in you. (Speaking of which, the Harvey Averne track on this volume appealed to Terry Riley so much that he remixed it for his amazing "You're No Good" all-night performance in 1967--see elsewhere on this list.)
Vol. 2 is jazzier than the easy-listening first volume, with Bola Sete, Les McCann, and funky bits from the soundtrack to Gator! No liner notes to speak of, just a copyright and year of original release (almost all '70s), plus an assurance that all tracks are legally licensed. Mastered from original tapes with very clean results.
Ok, so far this Relapse series has visited Brazil, Poland, Japan, the Czech Republic, and Sweden, and all of those comps were pretty great, solid purchases for any grind/death metal fan looking to do some armchair travel. So why make single out this Dutch entry as a highlight? Well we think that at least two of the four bands on here take extreme metal to extremes that maybe would appeal to not necessarily just metal fans. If you're the sort of AQ customer who revels in fucked up sonic fuckery, who digs silly weird noisy music of any variety, you should check this out.
A band called Suppository start things off in righteous grindcore mode, blasting through ten tracks at a zillion kilometers per hour, pausing only occasionally for a humorous audio sample as per grindcore standard operating procedure. Good stuff.
Then, Eindhoven's Last Days of Humanity take over with nine tracks of even faster and nastier grind, with titles like "Decrepitated Regurgitation In Foetal Leprosy". Wow, that's morbid and gross sounding, yes, but does it even make sense? Lyrics aside, what's really notable about this band are the amazing vocals. This singer may in fact have the most extreme, low-end, belching, vomitous voice we've ever heard. Incredible and inhuman, a rumbling drone instrument unto itself. And the band's music is as shreddingly-distorted to match.
But then, when you think *that* was some crazy grind, comes band number three, S.M.E.S., who are all about silly drum-machine dance beats, and super grunty vocals. Vocals that I'd say are even more bowel-scraping that those of Last Days of Humanity, but it turns out it's the same guy. Apparently S.M.E.S. is the solo project of Last Days singer Erwin. S.M.E.S. sorta sounds like an electronic polka mixed with a Chris Watson field recording (lion, rhinoceros, and birds perhaps). A grind rave safari? Erwin must be taking the piss, but regardless these five totally cracked tracks are pretty freaking great.
Batting clean-up, Inhume can't hope to compete with that sort of ridiculousness, so they just stick to providing four straight-forward tracks of killer grind. RRRRrrrrrrrragh!!
So, Holland makes a strong showing here. If you're only gonna get one foreign four-way split grind comp this year, Dutch Assault maybe oughta be it!
An album of Queen covers where each song is so unlike the original that it's only slightly recognizable. And the Queen connection turns out to be enough of a good thematic idea to hold this record together! The point isn't really the Queen songs, but the
On the other hand, Allan thinks this is a compilation of bands he mostly wouldn't normally want to listen to, ruining a bunch of songs he loves, but can't deny the humor value, and imagines that Freddie wouldn't be too upset. Queen were pretty campy after all.
The latest in Soul Jazz's Dynamite series focuses on Dancehall classics, rarities and brand new tracks from the last 25 years to the present. Featuring current dub steppers, Digital Mystikz, and Ladybug (aka The Bug and Warrior Queen) from the digital/dancehall/grime scene amongst classic Dancehall originators, Lady Saw, King Tubby and Beenie man, this compilation features 21 non-stop dancehall party classics in all styles from digital rhythms, Nyabinghi drumming, and dub step to the lyrical vocal styles of Tippa Irie, Shinehead and Cecile. Get your freak on!
The latest in Soul Jazz's Dynamite series focuses on Dancehall classics, rarities and brand new tracks from the last 25 years to the present. Featuring current dub steppers, Digital Mystikz, and Ladybug (aka The Bug and Warrior Queen) from the digital/dancehall/grime scene, along with classic Dancehall originators Lady Saw, King Tubby and Beenie man, this compilation features 21 non-stop dancehall party classics in all styles from digital rhythms, Nyabinghi drumming, and dub step to the lyrical vocal styles of Tippa Irie, Shinehead and Cecile. Get your freak on!
This double lp is part one of the two part vinyl Dynamite! Dancehall Style.
The latest in Soul Jazz's Dynamite series focuses on Dancehall classics, rarities and brand new tracks from the last 25 years to the present. Featuring current dub steppers, Digital Mystikz, and Ladybug (aka The Bug and Warrior Queen) from the digital/dancehall/grime scene, along with classic Dancehall originators Lady Saw, King Tubby and Beenie man, this compilation features 21 non-stop dancehall party classics in all styles from digital rhythms, Nyabinghi drumming, and dub step to the lyrical vocal styles of Tippa Irie, Shinehead and Cecile. Get your freak on!
This double lp is part two of the two part vinyl Dynamite! Dancehall Style.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Manuel Gottsching, founder of legendary Kraut pioneers Ash Ra Temple, recorded a few records in the eighties under his own name. "E2-E4", the first among them and recorded in 1981, is hailed as a classic and is a great influence for early Detroit techno artists like Derrick May and Carl Craig. The resonant timelessness of said record has extended beyond and has continuously popped up within more recent minimalist techno circles -- most noticeably within the Cologne scene. And this collection reveals that Japan has obviously been listening too. Disc one collects reinterpretations by the likes of Rovo, Sugar Plant, Buffalo Daughter, Dub Squad, Hi Speed & Star Light Express, and two other indecipherable acts (sorry, nobody here can read Japanese!) Disc two is an extended mix by the mighty EYE of the Boredoms! You probably already know if you need this based on the presence of the contributing artists, but let it be said that none of these tracks are representative of any of their 'normal' works. And there's always the theory that if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Check out "E2-E4" by Gottsching for the real deal!
From the wide-swath obscurity curators at the MPLS label - who recently brought us the fabulous Claude Lombard reissue - comes this first time on vinyl reissue of a great compilation of live British indie-pop that originally appeared on the wonderful Sarah Records label. Sarah Records was the warm, greatly missed heart of British indie jangle and C86 pop of the late eighties and nineties, and were the precursor advocates of the sort of blithe sophisticated pop to which bands like Saint Etienne, Belle & Sebastian, The Aislers Set, and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart would offer their gentle allegiance.
A dual purpose memorial of sorts, these are rare live tracks originally released on cassette by Sarah Records in 1992, to commemorate one of the stalwart British eighties clubs, EEC Punk Rock Mountain, which shuttered its doors to many forlorn tears in 1987. These live tracks were recorded across six concerts performed in 1991 at various clubs around the world, Hamburg, Paris, Leeds, Athens, Seattle, and Tokyo by bands who had played at EEC Punk Rock Mountain regularly: The Orchids, St. Christopher, Gentle Despite, The Wake, The Field Mice, and Heavenly. A sweet reminder of a bygone era of warm DIY scrappiness and generosity from one of the most consistent scene-building labels of its day.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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From indie/new-wave to math rock with Don Caballero, Hourly Radio, Ke Chandara, Glorium, Cordial, Stratego, Cerberus Shoal, and more! Comes with a free map!
Compiled in part by Rob Young, editor for the exemplary UK magazine The Wire, "Early Modulations" tracks the historical birthing of electronics within the academic framework of European and American institutions. The scope of the compilation is not so much an analysis of the importance of these pieces but a celebration of contemporary electronica by looking to its past. And if you can handle the K-Tel musk of the project, this makes a pretty cool primer.
Founders of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in the late 1940s, Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky found within the tape machine a means by which to scramble the structuralist codes of musical notation. Their 1953 piece "Incantation" processes multiple tape machines in which flutes, pianos, and gongs flicker in metaphorphic sonic swells. Similar experiments were made in France by Pierre Schaeffer, the inventor of musique concrete. His featured piece "�tude aux Chemins de Fer" (1948) stitches together tiny fragments of tape, collaging repeated signatures of chugging locomotives stopped in mid-stride by a variety of whistles, offering a new experiential sonic landscape of the familiar. The earliest and perhaps most breathtaking piece on the compilation is John Cage's "Imaginary Landscape No. 1" (1939). Pure tones bleep and modulate against an a prepared piano, whose internal organs are exposed and prodded to coax a secondary palette from the piano. While Iannis Xenakis, Morton Subotnik, and Luc Ferrari are also documented, the one glaring omission is Karlheinz Stockhausen (strange, 'cause he's so prominent in the historical parts of the "Modulations" film).
Second compilation of essential British Acid Folk (Gathering In The Mushrooms was the first.) compiled by Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne. Featuring well known figures such as John Renbourn, Steeleye Span, Shirley Collins, Anne Briggs, and Pentangle along more obscurer groups such as Midwinter, Stone Angel, Shide and Acorn, and Mellow Candle.
Originally released in 1975 as "Africa: Ceremonial & Folk Music", this collection of recordings comes to us from Northern Uganda, Kenya & Tanzania and is extremely varied in the tracks contained within. From the insane Aluar Horns which feature a group of horn players each with a horn capable of playing merely on pitch (reminiscent of the "Orgues A Bouche" in that sense) accompanied by a chorus of singers and a troupe of drummers, they mete out a teeth gnashing fanfare unlike about anything we've heard this side of Test Dept.'s "A Good Night Out." This track is immediately followed by the soft seven stringed enanga which accompanies a vocal duet as pretty as you can imagine. The rest of the disc is just as good, with both haunting and beautiful ceremonial music caught on tape.
Recorded in 1975 by David Fanshawe, Witchcraft & Ritual Music is a collection of recordings made throughout Tanzania and Kenya of medicinal music. Fanshawe explains that, in this recording he had "tried to capture the spirit of a musical heritage now nearly extinct. The music on this album comes from a part of East Africa whose musical traditions remain largely unknown to the rest of the world. Particularly fascinating is the manner in which music and medicine are combined in the indigenous practice of witchcraft; music becomes associated with the healing sound of drums, interwoven with beautiful threads of melody." Most of the music utilizes vocals, individual and chorus, in addition to percussion and several tracks include stringed instruments and some of the most odd and amazing horn playing you're likely to ever hear. Most notable is the buzzing melodies of the Kenyan bung'o horn weaving its melodies throughout a choral accompaniament.
Several ESP-Disc classics have been re-pressed onto 180-gram vinyl by some nice Italians, whoo-ooo! A great early 70's Sun Ra cosmic keyboard/spacefunk concert, *the* essential Patty Waters avant-jazz-vocal platter (with "Black Is the Color Of My True Loves Hair"), a freaky underground scene sound collage document (with the likes of the VU and Allen Ginsberg), and an all-star free jazz soundtrack from '65 with Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, John Tchicai, Gary Peacock, and Sunny Murray! And, as the now-deleted cd reissues of these are becoming harder and harder to come by, just in time.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Double cd compilation featuring stretched out tracks heavy on the sitar, tabla and ethno-ambient vibe, if you know what I mean, featuring Talvin Singh, Bedouin Ascent, T-Power, Rhys Chatham and more. This is a recent AQ-bestseller, due to repeated instore play by Marc who thinks it's brilliant, and not due to Windy and Andee who don't get it, and Allan's too busy listening to the most highly-anticipated black metal album of the summer. Choose your salesperson accordingly!
Were you one of the unlucky millions who got to witness the most recent American Idol where contestants brutally butchered classic Beatles songs? We had to wonder if any of them had actually heard the originals or were just played the songs by the studio band. Maybe that's why you don't see too many contemporary artists tackle Beatles covers today. The originals were either so much better due to their deceptive complexity or perhaps they were covered so much during their time that their familiarity has become more of a liability than an asset. Does anyone really need to hear an emo version of "Eleanor Rigby" or an R&B version of "Long and Winding Road" (or for that matter, The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton's version)?
You gotta figure most rock fans during the Beatles' heyday probably felt the same way about this particular set of Beatle covers from the sixties and seventies' softer side: Brothers Four. The Letterman. Nancy Wilson. Dick Hyman, Earl Grant, The Sandpipers. Shirley Scott. Nancy Ames. Just a few of the pop-jazz, pop-vocal, soft-samba, jet-lounge, bachelor pad, easy-listening artists that took a run with the fab fours' immense songbook. Probably aiming at a hipper, younger audience given many of the hyper-upbeat tempos and / or smooth vocal delivery here, most acts really just managed to broaden the musical awareness of their older listeners, like our parents. However, time's a good friend to kitsch, and as we become further distanced from the context of the original songs and era, these songs take on a different feel. They actually sound pretty good, dare we say, better than some of the overtly familiar originals. Some versions are crate digger gems like Ella Fitzgerald's backwardly funky "Savoy Truffle", Gary McFarland's scat samba version of "She Loves Him" and Clarence Wheeler & The Enforcer's organ groover "Hey Jude". Other songs are sheer novelty such as Gershon Kingsley's Moogy "Paperback Writer", The Assembled Multitude's muzak take on "I Want You (She's so Heavy)", and the overly-enunciated delivery of The Brother's Four, "We Can Work It Out". Yet, the best covers are of songs that fall the closest to the easy listening model, The Sandpiper's soft Latin-tinged "Things We Said Today", easily trumps the original, and The Lettermen's sublime string-driven "I'm Only Sleeping" comes really close. Most choices in this collection wisely steer clear from the more rocking or druggy side of the songbook. No "Helter Skelter", "Tomorrow Never Knows", "I Am The Walrus" or "Come Together", though Arif Mardin does us a service by doing an instrumental version of "Glass Onion", a late period rocker whose lyrics (mostly Beatles inside jokes) we never really liked. We think Lena Horne and Gabor Szabo's "Rocky Raccoon" and Bossa Rio's "Blackbird" deserved inclusion here, but we shouldn't really complain. There are probably enough interesting Beatles covers out there to make for a tight second volume. Just don't even think that we'll be having a similar change of heart towards the American Idol versions thirty years from now. Shiver.
New from Sublime Frequencies comes this lp reissue of an out of print cd called Eat The Dream: Moroccan Reveries, chronicling a trip to Morocco undertaken by Tucker Martine, who, as people tend to do, spent much of his time there recording local musicians, the trip culminating in a meeting with legendary Gnawa music master Maallem Boubker Ghania, who arranged for a series of recording sessions in his home! This compilation gathers up some of those recordings, as well as a handful of other recording including various street performers, a wedding reception, snake charmers and more!
Gnawa is a mystical brotherhood whose ancestors who migrated to North Africa centuries ago, and whose music is a blend of Islamic and African influences, that music tranced out and spiritual, traditionally played on a three string lute called a guimbri, and metal clappers called krakebs for percussion. It's a very distinctive sound, and can be both wild and celebratory, and haunting and stirring, it's a music that is in fact fairly varied, from dark, dolorous melodies played just on just the guimbri, a sort of melancholic African folk, to full on chaotic percussion heavy freakouts, augmented by a saz like horn, handclaps, call and response vocals, the recordings here especially pleasing to our ears as the surrounding sounds are often as present as the music itself, cars whizzing by, children playing, people shouting and talking, the music perfectly at home in the bustling sounds around it, mesmerizing and fantastic, as most Sublime Frequencies tend to be.
Packaged in an old school heavy tip-on style sleeve, with a printed insert featuring photos and liner notes by Martine.
We know that some of you like it dirty! And so do we when dirty is done with wit, style and old potty mouth class. This is an amazing compilation of old RnB with the kind of NAS-T lyrics that tickles us silly. What's so irresistible about this collection is how musically it still sounds so classic and clean in that sock-hop Mom and Dad on the dance floor kind of way. But when you hear the lyrics, OOF! Songs about poon-tang, sixty minute men, and big ten inch... um records (later covered by Aerosmith!). Greats like Dinah Washington, Lavern Baker, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins getting down and dirty as well as some lesser known but equally great performers. R-rated songs from the likes of The Blenders, The Treniers, Dorothy Ellis and more. Comes with amazing packaging including a thick booklet with tons of photos and all the lyrics so you can sing along to these dirty ditties. For some reason we always think that the 40's and 50's were so squeaky clean, prude and sedate. It's just that all the glorious filth was a big dirty secret. And this comp's got the sass to prove it!
P.S. Someone needs to get a copy of this to John Waters as this is bound to be his new favorite record! (although we imagine he might have some of the originals!)
The Numero Group's Eccentric Soul series has long unearthed some of the best obscure regional soul sides no one has ever heard before, many of them up there with being our most favorite soul compilations, so we were both excited and a bit dubious to discover that someone (the mysteriously monikered Shoes) had made a re-edit mix using nothing but samples from Numero's many soul reissues and released it on a label called "Numbero". Hmmm. Check out the cheesy late '80s/ early '90s throwback cover, a tongue and cheek tribute to those Ultimate Breaks and Beats compilations that always had skeletons blinged out in hip hop gear or a DJing octopus on the covers. This one features a skull-headed crate digger with a blinged out Numero label medallion swinging around his neck with various Eccentric Soul albums lined up on the back wall. While we had been questioning the possible legalities of such a release, we managed to get the story straight from Numero Group head honcho, Ken Shipley, who in a bizarre instance of synchronicity, happened to show up in the store one night just as we put this compilation on. Apparently, the record showed up at the Numero offices housed in an old saw blade sleeve. From the opening riff taken from The Home Schooled compilation, Shipley instantly recognized the sample, and the many hundreds following it (he says he has identified all the samples except for a few drum and percussion tracks that he couldn't be certain were from the original sources or added in). Using the manufacturing ID number on the vinyl (the same manufacturer Numero uses) he managed to locate the perpetrator and instead of trying to fight it legally, decided to release it himself. Smart move, because like Dilla, Oh No, Onra and Madlib, this is one of the best re-edit mixes we've heard, taking small snippets of various soul pieces (vocal snippets, horn riffs, rhythm guitars etc.) and weaving them seamlessly in something altogether new. And there is no DJ grandstanding, scratching or self-promotion you sometimes find in DJ mixes, just a killer fluid mix of sonic soul ear-candy from beginning to end. A glorious well thought through undertaking that you can instantly recognize as a labor of love! Note on the track listing: there are 13 titled songs but the cd only reads as two tracks and since the tracks are all woven together, it's hard to tell which part is called what, so we just made long excerpts for the sound samples. Awesome!!!!!
In the early 70s, the Capsoul label suffered a similar fate as Stax Records out of Memphis. Great small label, amazing artists, amazing songs -- but in the midst of a Motown big-hit explosion. Founded by Bill Moss in Columbus, Ohio, Capsoul produced some incredible soul and funk music. Musically, Moss had all the ingredients of a great label (he even wrote some of their hits) but his timing in the industry couldn't have been worse. As it was at this time, Motown had just moved to Los Angeles and was quickly growing to gigantic proportions. Sadly, Capsoul went out of business only five years after starting up. Even more sadly, when it did, all master tapes were destroyed. So the songs on this comp are actually taken from 45's gathered by the folks at Numero Group through various sources, including Ebay! Meticulously transferred, they sound totally awesome. The 19 funk and soul treasures are beautifully packaged and feature a couple cool studio photos. Extensive liner notes detail a bit of the label, its artists and historical context.
Without a doubt the Numero Group is becoming one of our favorite labels over the last few years. Releasing such tasty reissues with classy and informative packaging, a distinct aesthetic and most importantly amazing sounds that deserve to be heard! This time out they have excavated a lost treasure down in Florida. The short lived Deep City label put out a slew of totally rich 45's that unfortunately never made their way much past the confines of Florida. The core of the Deep City label were three high school teachers and former marching band members Willie Clarke, Johnny Pearsall, and Arnold Albury. They began recording in small studios with local artists like Clarence Reid (who some of you might know later would be known as Blowfly) and a then preteen Betty Wright. The sound that emerged was so gut hitting, soul wrenching, and totally right on. The warmth in these recordings makes you lament where soul music has gone in the last few decades, getting it so wrong with its slick glossy overproduction. Fans of the recent Searching For Soul comp on Luv N' Haight make sure you check this out as it's just as strong an offering as that amazing comp. If you are a big soul affieciando you might remember a few of the artists on this comp from the Soul Jazz comp Miami Sound a few years back but none of these tracks have been reissued until now and wow do these songs hit the spot. Highly Recommended!
By now there's almost no point in writing much about the incredible Eccentric Soul series on the Numero Group label every single record seems to speak for itself, LOUD AND PROUD!. One after another, lost pots of gold (should've-been-gold-records, that is) are constantly unearthed, dusted off and presented to us for maximum grooving. If there was any question as to how deep Numero have been digging, the answer becomes evident with this most recent outing, which compiles amazing soul recordings from the not so soulfully hip city of Phoenix, Arizona, recorded during the 60's and 70's. Being that I (Irwin) grew up in Phoenix, this release proved just how deep and far these guys will go for their lost soul.
As anyone who has lived in Phoenix over the last quarter century can tell you, any relics or history of a soul scene going on in the valley of the sun are pretty much non-existent. Luckily when Mike Lenaburg lived in Phoenix he had his finger on the pulse of the city's soul scene and managed to produce some totally scorching tracks from folks like Michael Liggins, We The People, and the Soul Blenders. Names that never got the same kind of glory that their rock 'n roll Phoenix counterparts like Alice Cooper did. But even so, these guys were responsible for some of the richest and liveliest sounding recordings to ever come out of Phoenix. As a high school kid I spent many of my waking hours in vinyl stores all over the city eavesdropping on the classic vinyl store employees and regulars talking for hours about the good old days, when there was a world of rich and vibrant soul music happening all over the place. I had no idea who those artists were and the one time I got the courage to interrupt and ask if I could see one of the records they all laughed and told me good luck since they were all pressed in such small runs that anyone who had one wasn't EVER going to give it up. So for years I could only imagine what these soul sounds from the desert sounded like but now I get to hear them for real, we all do, and they blow away anything I could have dreamed of. Phoenix, a goldmine for soul!!?? Who would have ever known. Thanks again Numero Group!
This time out the mighty Eccentric Soul series focuses on the dingy and delightful venue Smart's Palace, located in Witchita, Kansas which during the years of 1963-1975 was ground zero for all the best sweaty, sensual and romping soul being played around that town. While the club did get a few big names in their time, both James Brown and Aretha Franklin once played there, its bread and butter were the nationally unknown but completely talented soul artists located in the tragically underrated scene going on down in Kansas.
The man behind Smart's Palace was Dick Smart who not only ran the club but also played music himself, promoted most of the shows AND ran his own label. In true DIY fashion he helped cultivate one of the richest soul scenes around, totally overflowing with true but untapped talent. This has got to be the sexiest, sweatiest, most romantic, sultry and sexual set of songs that has come out of the Eccentric Soul series yet. So many amazing voices on here, some as smooth as butter, others as commanding as a drill sergeant of love. Fans of folks like Eddie Kendricks, Al Green, and Curtis Mayfield will find so much to dig as as the new to us artists here like Baby Neal, Fred Williams and Kenneth Car offer up songs that we could listen to over and over and still get down and dirty with their raw yet flawless true soul grooves.
