Here are the few facts we've gathered about this band Truck and their (apparently only) album entitled Surprise, Surprise: they were from faraway Malaysia, released this rare record back in 1974, and were obviously pretty big Beatles fans by the sound of it! And (less of a fact, more of an opinion) they're pretty rad. Sung in English, the ten tracks here are wonderful pop psych that could have come out of London in '68, by a band like Kaleidoscope... well, except for one element: the unexpected strains of spacey analog Moog synth heard in many of these songs. That helps make this Truck album extra-special. But it would be pretty special anyway, with its blend of dreamy, sunny melodies, lush studio orchestration, and a bit of fuzz guitar riffing. And while seemingly inspired by the Fab Four, Truck aren't just about them. We hear hints of The Who, The Creation, and even Joe Walsh in there just as much as ELO or Badfinger. But of course we'd recommend it to people who like obscure, Beatlesy bands like The Aerovons or Peru's We All Together. Released on cd (supposedly limited edition) by the Spanish label Guerssen, this is one of those cool out-of-the-blue reissues we're always stoked to hear! Nice!!
***MISSISSIPPI ALERT***MISSISSIPPI ALERT*****
Mississippi brings us another incredible collection, this time of Hindustani classical vocal music from 1930-1955 compiled from rare 78's. During the time this music was recorded, the British rule of India was losing its hold, and by 1947 India had become independent. So this is music made during much strife, from different regions. peoples and cultures that make up the population of India, a place Westerners tend to think of as a singular monoculture. Vocal music to most Indians is considered the higher musical art form over instrumentalists, because the range, complexity and connection to breath and life of the voice is the idealized standard to which all other instruments are based. In the voice, all the variants of cultures, regions and religions are represented and can be distinctly understood from each other and how they relate to the concept of a unified India. This beautiful collection of vocal music features both female and male singers both well-known and obscure (though they are mostly all obscure to us!) including Faiyaz Khan Hirabai Barodekar, Dattreya Vishnu Paluskar, and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, with instrumental accompaniment of tambouras and sarods, that is dreamy, meditative and powerful. Comes with a booklet with photos and liner notes biographical and historical background of all of the singers, written by Ian Nagoski. Amazing!
One of FOUR recent new vinyl releases on the mighty Sublime Frequencies label (we have the others too, if you want any/all just ask), this one harkening back to the label's mind blowing 'Radio' series (Radio India, Radio Java, Radio Morocco, etc.), which were essentially just recordings done by someone in a hotel room, flipping through the radio dial, capturing songs, and advertisements, radio plays, whatever. Those comps were amazing glimpses into another culture. A Distant Invitation is a similar sonic survey, capturing all manner of sounds from the streets of Southeast Asia (Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand), whether it be musicians jamming on corners, snippets of music drifting from back alleys, bits of conversations, radios blasting, impromptu street parties, dogs barking, children laughing, cars zooming by, the music itself a wild concoction of traditional folk music and mutated modern pop, played through all manner of homebuilt speakers and junkyard instruments, creating a gloriously vibrant din. From chiming, lilting gamelan, to snake charmer horns and wild percussion atop a bed of revving engines, wild pounding percussion freakouts, with vocals bellowed through loud speakers, laid back folk, warm winsome crooning and simple sweet strumming, dizzyingly dense and distorted drum jams, the splattery report of firecrackers, soaring, sweet vocals wreathed in birdsong, and drifting through echoey streets, the chatter of insects, the static of radios, what sounds like the buzzing of kazoos, totally fantastic, and utterly fantastical.
Like all Sublime Frequencies releases, gorgeously packaged in a full color sleeve, includes a printed insert with liner notes as well. But sorry, no download.
Since 1991, Japanese label PSF has brought us six volumes in their essential underground psych-rock-noise-improv sampler series Tokyo Flashback. Now they've released a new compilation that's similarly cool, but broadens its geographic scope to include artists from Korea and China as well as Japan, most of whom we'd never been exposed to before. Some of the only familiar folks appear on the very first track, a live-in-Tokyo "improvised trio showdown" featuring Chinese guitarist Li Jianhong (of the noise band D!O!D!O!D! who have a disc out on PSF, and who also had his own awesome solo cd on aRCHIVE recently) teamed up with free jazz drummer Shoji Hano and High Rise guitarist Narita Munehiro, both from Japan. That's an amped-up freakout as you might expect. There's also a noisy D!O!D!O!D! track on here too, but beyond those, it's all new names to us. From Korea: Mustangs, Kim Young Jin, Amature Amplifier, and Soonie. From China: Mafeisan, Xiao He, Li Daiguo. From Japan: Kiyasu Orchestra, Sato Yukie, Yoshiteru Koga Jizo. Also there's a boy-girl Japanese-Korean project called 10, whose track "U-A-U" is a hissing, droning, throbbing backdrop to bizarre vocal expression.
All the tracks are interesting, it's an eclectic mix of experimental/underground styles, from full-on noise chaos to mellow, minimal acoustic guitar balladry, all sorts of stuff... ferinstance the energetic squawk of Kiyasu Orchestra's psychedelic free jazz exotica sits side-by-side here with the Mustangs' sixties style garage psych rock. And perhaps most surprisingly, there's even a dreamy, indie-folk cover of John Lennon's "Imagine" by Korean chanteuse Soonie at the very end of the disc.
The booklet boasts brief liner notes about each contributor, in four languages (English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese). Let's hope that this Asian Flashback is just the start of another series! PSF's antidote to all the mass market J-pop, K-pop, and HK-pop karaoke blandness out there.
Despite the excruciatingly stupid title (why oh why must the food metaphors constantly arise, as if white people are so ignorant of Asian culture that the only thing they know about it is egg foo young and sweet and sour sauce -- aaaaaaauuuugh), this is an enjoyable compilation of kitschy east-meets-west Asian pop tunes from the '60s and '70s. Most of the tracks feature female
"Asian Travels" documents current strains of optimistic globalism as musical hybrids of the West's downtempo electronica and the East's rich traditions of vocal melodies. Ambient trance, drum & bass, and trip hop all appear in their most basic club-friendly forms alongside Pakistani & Indian vocals, melodic lines, and sitar drones. Featuring Fila Brazillia, Nursrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook, Banco De Gaia, Shankar, Euphoria, Cheb i Sabbah, Fun Da Mental, and more. Ethno-music for the honky.
Compilation of modern compositions by Sundanese (Western Java) composers, and utilizing a wide variety of instrumentation: from gamelan, traditional Indonesian instruments, western instruments, electronics and tape. A South Eat Asian version of Ussachevsky. Excellent!
Gamelan Semar Pegulingan is one of the many now rare gamelan of the island of Bali; displaced by the fall of the Balinese court and the subsequent explosion of gong kebyar. The repertoire of this gamelan, which is named after the god of love (Semar Pegulingan), was specific to two distinct occasions. The most common time in which Semar Pegulingan was used was outside the King's bed chamber in the evenings, but it also played the musical accompaniment for the Legong dance which was performed exclusively by pre-pubescent girls. The set on which the material on this CD was performed was one which had been spared the crucible through the efforts of the Canadian composer/ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee in the 1930's who commissioned a group of musicians to continue the gamelan's repertoire. These recordings were made in 1972 by Robert Brown after the gamelan had been carefully restored to its original condition (it had come into disarray after McPhee's departure from the island and had been decomposing for some 30 years.) It is a particularly beautiful gamelan and hearing it can give on a bit more perspective on the popular gong kebyar. Because of its relatively slower pace, it's much easier to grasp how the instruments interlock within the gamelan.
We just got the first batch of the Indonesia / South Pacific installment of Nonesuch's Explorer reissues, which total 12 in number. Ten of the discs are from either Java or Bali and just about each one features an entirely different form of gamelan. A Gamelan, as a cursory way of introduction, is an orchestra of primarily bronze (though bamboo gamelan are also common) percussion instruments -- metallophones, gongs, gong-chimes -- and drums. Quite often a gamelan will have a specific repertoire that it is exclusively built for the performance of, and certain ceremonial gamelan are limited to the performance of a single piece. On top of this, throughout Java and Bali there is an ever changing world of both village and court traditions which continue to defy definitions. These discs just in from Bali and Central & Western Java just scratch the surface of gamelan throughout Indonesia, but they're a fine introduction anyway.
Back in 1967 when this record hit the shelves it blew people's minds, and even today it remains one of the most unique and amazing things you're likely to hear. "Golden Rain" is the historic recording that started it all. Recorded by David Lewiston in 1966, Golden Rain was not only the first recording to be released in the Explorer series, but is touted as the first commercial release of "International" music (a claim that some might argue with.)
The first two tracks are recordings of Gamelan Gong Kebyar. The 20-minute third track is Lewiston's recording of kecak, the almost universally loved monkey chant. Kecak has an interesting history in that its creation in the 1930s is due at least in part to German artist Walter Spies, a cultural outsider. The performance is entirely a cappella, with a male chorus of 60+ men chanting in an interlocking fashion derived from gamelan composition. The origins of the chant come from a ritual exorcism dance that's centuries old. The thing about Balinese performance, at least up until later this century, is that it was all inseparably tied to ritual, be it a wedding ceremony, funerals, and other various life cycle ceremonies. Bali's increasing popularity as a tourist destination for middle class and wealthy Europeans in this century was coupled with these same tourists wanting to be entertained by their exotic hosts. Unfortunately for them, there was not only no concept of performance merely for entertainment's sake and not being Balinese, their presence at any such ritual event was violation of its sacrosanctity. Spies' work in encouraging his Balinese friends to create a completely new performance from older traditions, whatever his intentions may have been, allowed for the Balinese to keep the purity of their rituals intact and for the occidentals to get their kicks.
This recording, made by Robert E. Brown in 1970, is a condensed version of the music (gender wayang) that usually accompanies Balinese shadow play (wayang kulit) performances. Normally lasting four hours (instead of the Javanese marathon of nine) the music here is some of that which one would most commonly hear during the unfolding of a play. Aside from the time differences between Javanese and Balinese shadow play, the next most striking difference is that the Balinese variant uses only four instruments (a few gongs and drums, which accentuate fight scenes, etc. are not included on this recording) instead of the complement of a full gamelan. The instruments are two pairs of gender (pronounced with a hard, not a soft "g"), one pair tuned an octave higher than the other. The gender has ten thin bronze keys suspended by strings over bamboo resonating tubes. Additionally, each pair of gender is tuned a small interval apart such that the same note played on both instruments simultaneously will produce a shimmering tone much like in Balinese gamelan. Each musician uses two wooded mallets in playing the gender, the part played in the right hand usually being the kotekan (intricate interlocking melodic part) and the left hand generally playing a slower, supportive role. Gender wayang is generally recognized as Balinese music at its most advanced and refined. Pioneering ethnomusicologist and Balinese music enthusiast Colin McPhee referred to gender wayang as the "perfect expression" of Balinese music. Along with the difficult kotekan parts, the players must also manage to dampen the keys of the instrument with the pads of their hands as they play the following note so the notes don't blend into one another. The timbre of the instruments is a bit like an unholy tack piano. The polyphony is quite remarkable to behold, and on this recording is quite distinctly captured, with one pair of gender to your left and one pair to your right.
Like the "Gamelan & Kecak" and "Golden Rain" recordings in this series, the tracks on "Music From the Morning of the World" were recorded by David Lewiston. As with "Golden Rain" they were made during his first trip to Bali in 1966. And like the later recording, the tracks here are a broad collection of genres from the island which serve to demonstrate the variety of musical forms that exist there. Along with the requisite kebyar tracks (two here: one from the baris dance and the other from the Barong dance) is a medley of recordings of a genggong ensemble (small ensemble of jew's harp, flute, drums and cymbals) a recording of gambuh, an a cappella lullaby, gamelan anklung, another excerpt of both kecak and a gender wayang ensemble.
MPEG Download: SEKEHE GAMBUH "Sekar Leret" [/audio/sekehegambuhleret.mp3]
MPEG Stream: SEKEHE GAMBUH "Sekar Leret" [/audio/sekehegambuhleret.m3u]
MPEG Download: RANI "Lullaby" [/audio/ranilullaby.mp3]
Excellent collection of recordings documenting the varied musics of the Kmhmu people, and recorded from 1982 to 1996 in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Suburban California. As the title implies, much of the instruments found herein are assembled primarily from bamboo, a versatile grass: jew's harps, blow tubes, mouth organs, etc. But also included are plenty of vocals and even the occasional gong ensemble. Lots of beautiful, nasal tones that make one's sinuses tickle, and leaping melodic lines (Andee irreverently refers to the music on this CD as emulating "armpit farts" - to each his own opinion) make for some stunning songs. Especially interesting to note are the serenades in which young lovers sing to one another through a blow tube or jew's harp in order to disguise their vows from their parents.
Specially priced cd sampler of three different Balinese music genres - Gamelan Jegog, Gamelan Semar Pegulingan, and Gender Wayang. Jegog is the relatively recently developed bamboo gamelan found mostly in West Bali. Absolutely stunning and LOUD, the aesthetic of Jegog is an attempt to recreate the tone and volume of gongs and metallophones with bamboo. Semar Pegulingan (so named after Semar, the god of love) is the gamelan that traditionally played outside the king's chamber in the afternoons and evenings while the king slept with the queen (think of it as make out music) back before the Dutch got their dirty paws all over Bali. Gender Wayang is the music which accompanies Balinese shadow puppet plays (Wayang Kulit.) Consisting of four gender - metallophones, each with ten flat bronze keys suspended over bamboo resonators - Gender Wayang is considered the most complex and technically difficult music in Bali.
We were already sold on this before we even heard it, just based on the title alone, and likely you are too! And having heard it, we're all the more into it. This latest Finders Keepers/B-Music release is not just another Bollywood - or even Lollywood, or Kollywood - compilation, not that there would be anything wrong with that. Their recent Pakistani picture house collection Life Is Dance is still in heavy rotation 'round these parts, as are others of its ilk. But Bollywood Bloodbath is even better, thanks to its specific, scary theme. Cooler 'cause these songs, as you may have guessed, are all taken from the soundtracks to Hindi horror movies! Ghost stories, killer thrillers, zombiethons, that sort of thing... but unlike American slasher flicks and Italian giallo from the same period (the '70s mostly, though this disc ranges as far back as 1949, and up to the '80s), these Indian fright films are, of course, like other Bollywood productions, elaborate musicals. So the bloodbath sounds like it's taking place at the discotheque!! It's a perfect mix of the over-the-top pop groove-a-delica of the best vintage Bollywood stuff, infused with the even weirder, wilder, and wiggier sounds demanded by the horror movie genre, like shocking screams, stabbing cacophonous chords, and impassioned female vocals pleading for mercy.
Yep, it's pretty brilliant the way this collection combines two of our favorite soundtrack genres into one. Gotta give it up to compiler Andy Votel and his diligent research (involving hours and hours of viewing cheap old VHS tapes found at the Indian grocery store, no doubt), as he's dug up a delightful 'best of' from a hybrid cinematic genre we've yet to explore ourselves. And even if these songs were sourced from Z-grade movies, there's for sure some top talent involved on soundtrack side of things, including even the legendary RD Burman.
Although there's a modicum of ominous, atmospheric creepiness to be found in most of these cuts, moments that are mystical and mysterious, truth be told it's not all that frightening, as the spookiest stuff always gives way to urgent uptempo beats and zipp-zapping "seance fiction" synths, lively rock/disco orchestration and spirited singing, i.e. typical Bollywood bombast! If anything, rather than, say, John Carpenter or Goblin (our usual go-to's for suspense/horror soundtracks), some of what's here reminds us more of stuff from far out Spaghetti Westerns.
Since we're making this Record Of The Week, we should pause to state that if you're not already into Bollywood soundtracks, you need to check 'em out! And this, despite its specific slant, would certainly give you a good idea of what you've been missing - total WTF kitchen sink psychedelic percussive song-and-dance Eastern-inflected rock opera funked up madness.
22 tracks, 78+ minutes. Complete with cd booklet of copious, obsessive, expert liner notes from Votel. And lots of cool creepy colorful graphics of course. (In addition to this domestic cd release, there's also import vinyl available, but we're pretty much out, hoping to have some more from overseas next month, FYI.)
Another label recognizes the brilliance of the wildly prolific Indian film industry's musical scores, puts its money where its mouth is, and releases a compilation. Good on you, Outcaste. This comp is heavily influenced by soul, funk, jazz, and latin music -- and since the record was made specifically for djs, it's purposefully heavy on the groove and not so much into quick changes and challenging juxtapositions, like the more pop-oriented Bollywood Funk records (which we highly recommend). That's not to say the non-DJ can't get into this -- it'd be excellent for your next party. Fans of Bombay the Hard Way will like this.
Just from the title alone, we knew that this latest installment in the always-amazing Sublime Frequencies series of unusual and under-documented "world music" recordings was gonna be the bomb! Indeed it is. The 'exotic' and infectious verve of vintage Bollywood film soundtrack music, performed with electric steel guitar as lead instrument for extra awesomeness, is hard to beat! The steel guitar, bringing with it the groovy twang of Western Swing and Hawaiian fret-sliding flavor, as well as a measure of classical Indian music, easily effects an emotive echo of the human voice that ordinarily fronts Bollywood themes. Compiler Stuart Ellis' informative liner notes describe these instrumental pop versions of Hindi film hits as the "elevator music of India" and if that's the case, we'd definitely rather be stuck in an elevator in Mumbai than anywhere else. There's 21 rare tracks by a half dozen masterful Bollywood steel string slingers: Van Shipley, Kazi Aniruddha, S. Hazarasingh, Sunil Ganguly, Charanjit Singh, and Guatam Dasgupta, recorded between 1962 and 1986.
A completely captivating collection, already one of our favorites among the many great Sublime Frequencies releases. And probably it should be no surprise that, for example, Van Shipley's "Jan Pahechan Ho" from the 1966 film Gunaam immediately gives us Sun City Girls flashbacks...
In terms of hip International music trends here in the States, the Bollywood music craze seems to have recently died down in favor of the sounds of Ethiopia (thanks in part to its inclusion on major motion picture soundtracks such as Broken Flowers). Our love for both certainly hasn't waned nor wavered. So we're more than happy to welcome this new compilation of Indian film music. If you're seeking a thorough overview of the genre, this is a great place to start. The first disc dishes out a dozen delirious classics from the '50s, '60s and '70s, while the second disc offers eleven more 'modern' tunes, from the '90s. Of course, tracks by Bollywood deities Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi (check out the intense vocal performance on "Madhuban Mein Radhika"!) are in abundance on both discs. Oh such vibrant, manic, aural opulence! Recommended!
While the first Bombay the Hard Way disc featured funky themes from '70s Bollywood films doctored and augmented by the talents of the Dan "The Automator" Nakamura, this here volume 2 takes on the next generation of films -- stuff from the '80s. A lot of it is
We can never get enough of the colorful, zesty, infectious sounds of golden era Bollywood. Luckily we have two more outlets for our fix, as Bombay Connection has released two volumes of Bollywood hits that we've been groovin' to in the store for a few months now and finally have gotten enough to review and list. This is Volume 1 (2 to follow next list) and features tons of kick ass classic Bollywood funk from action thrillers spanning 1977-1984. You know what that means: incredible backbeats, suspense building bridges, and ultra saucy vocals. All the greats are here: R.D. Burman, Asha Bhosle, Kalyanji-Anandji, Sapam-Jagmohan, etc. So fun and so great!
We can never get enough of the colorful, zesty, infectious sounds of golden era Bollywood. Luckily we have two more outlets for our fix as Bombay Connection has released two volumes of Bollywood hits that we've been groovin' to in the store for a few months now and finally have gotten enough to list. Vol 2 features all the golden greats spanning 1959-1972. Songs from all of those amazing nightclub scenes. You know what that means: intoxicating instrumentation, impassioned vocals, and splashes of color that you can practically hear captured in these wild and fantastic songs. All the great Bollywood luminaries are included: R.D. Burman, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Kalyanji-Anandji, Sapam-Jagmohan, etc. So fun and so great!!
The UK's Outcaste label strikes again with this fab compilation of "Indo-Jazz", 14 tracks of Indian-music infused jazz, uh, fusion from the '70s. We're told most tracks are taken from super rare and collectable records and we don't doubt it. Funky, fun stuff with tabla, sitar, and so forth mixing it up with various Western electric instruments. Way more than those lame DJ-mixed "Bombay
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Wild Indian Soundtrack music from the 1960's, made by the Shah brothers Anandji and Kalyanji, that has gotten the 90's production by The Automator, who enlisted DJ Shadow to add a couple of beats here and there throughout the record. It's pretty good, though somewhat same-y after the first half hour. And I have to say that both myself and the Automator are so damn tired of lazy, ignorant food-based one-liners used to describe music made by Asians and Asian Americans. Naming a song on this cd "The Good, The Bad, and The Chutney" just shows that the only familiarity too many Westerners have with Asians and Asian Americans is through food. How pathetic.
One of our favorite Sublime Frequencies releases EVER, long out of print on cd, is finally available again, and on vinyl!!!! Here's what we wrote about this amazing record way back in 2004 when we first reviewed it on New Arrivals List #192:
The first recording in the Sublime Frequencies catalog to not focus on the noise people make, Broken Hearted Dragonflies gives a voice to our insect brethren in Southeast Asia, as recorded by Tucker Martine in Laos, Burma and Thailand in 2000. The disc starts off like any other "traditional" insect recording: lots of cicada-like whining and chirping, but gradually turns to sound unlike all the rest. As one particular insect in the field begins to slowly sweep up in pitch like an oscillator on a synthesizer. A short time later, the clashing buzz of insect varieties begins to grate against their own harmonies and sounds much like either a clever DSP patch or the aliasing sound of a poorly sampled instrument. In other words, it all sounds hardly organic. In fact, in the field recording genre, we'd have to place this one in the same bizarre category as Douglas Quin's Antarctica recordings. The Raster-Noton sounds of nature. We're periodically reminded of our bucolic setting only by the steady hoots and coos of the native birds. You will undoubtedly share our initial skepticism regarding the purity of these field recordings, but it is emphatically stated by the recordist that "these recordings were not processed, the insects actually sound like this!" Absolutely amazing stuff! Features liner notes by none other than Hakim Bey.
What? Another collection of Cambodian pop? But you just listed two volumes of Cambodian Rocks? (And, get ready for two more in that series!) It's true, Cambodian music seems to be the flavor of the moment on the obscure world music scene. But bear with us, as this one deserves all the attention afforded the Cambodian Rocks series... and then some. The history of Cambodia's flourishing and rich music scene was -- like the greater culture and society of the country in general -- cruelly severed in the early seventies by the Khmer Rouge during their "cleansing" program. All our favorite performers, anonymous until Khmer Rocks' own collections were recently released, were undoubtedly victims of the Khmer Rouge during this period. In the following years Cambodians who fled the country set up communities around the globe and among the other parts of their culture they treasured, the music of these lost performers was not forgotten. Throughout the seventies, eighties and nineties the scattered communities set up recording studios and continued to produce music just as amazing as those lost golden years. Enter Mark Gergis (of Neung Phak / Mono Pause and the man who brought us I Remember Syria). From 1999 to 2004 Mark diligently scoured the Asian branch of the Oakland Public Library, checking out each and every Cassette of Cambodian music produced in the period from the early seventies to the present. Many of the cassettes were unfortunately unlistenable; not merely because they'd been played thousands of times, or left on hot car dashboards, but because they were being slowly bulk erased by the library employees themselves as they would unwittingly pass them over the magnetic security system used to prevent book theft. Even with the best intentions of the public library as a repository for culture, Cambodian music was slowly being erased one cassette at a time. Of course there was no public outcry, at this point people had moved on to the newest thing (no doubt something recorded by one person with an electronic keyboard and other MIDI gear). It seems to happen everywhere: recent history is wiped clean for whatever happens to be hot at the moment. So it was that Mark culled together a collection of songs that are as amazing as they are rare. One thing particularly striking about many of the tracks is that, unlike what you'll hear on the Cambodian Rocks collections (all of which were actually recorded in Cambodia), they include both traditional Cambodian instruments alongside western instruments. There are tracks with Khan (the inimitable mouth organ of Southeast Asia) playing alongside electric guitar (which is often times being played in the style of a traditional Cambodian stringed instrument), saxophone, drums, electric bass and organ. Some of the combinations and bizarre genre bends are truly off the wall -- such as the track, unfortunately to remain untitled for now, a proto-metal Cambodian pop ditty featuring echoey and brash female vocals and a Queen-era guitar solo. While there are a few of the more modern pop tunes -- of the primarily keyboards and drum machine variety -- here, none are of the overly westernized Asian pop that is so ubiquitous these days. There are also 6 tracks of older tunes that were recorded in Phnom Penh between the mid-1960's and the early 70's (one of which was overdubbed by an American operated studio with a drum machine beat!) This is a truly amazing collection, certainly the best disc to be released by Sublime Frequencies to date, and Byram's top pick for 2004 thus far. Highly recommended!
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Previously issued a while back only on vinyl, "Cambodian Rocks" - now on CD - presents a handful of unknown (to the point that no artist names or track titles are given) Cambodian garage bands from the late 60s and early 70s. The liner notes explain that the compiler (s/he is also anonymous) picked up a bunch of random tapes while in Cambodia and put this together of the best tracks from those tapes. For those who are entranced by the psychedelic exotica found in the "Love, Peace, and Poetry" series, "Cambodian Rocks" makes an exceptional companion. For the most part this compilation is dominated by really good fuzzed out organ / guitar garage rich with understandably crappy production. But along with the garage cuts, there's a track of incredibly unfunky James Brown mimicry that make the Make Up's theatrical irony seem even more insincere than they really are. Appropriated dancehall groove/stomps with Cambodian instead of Jamaican overtones. But the highlight is the appearance of the female led garage band who were featured on the Asian Psychedelic chapter of the "Love, Peace, and Poetry" series. Greasy garage rock not far from the Count Five or the Seeds but with reverb drenched female vocals that hits high notes rarely found even on Bollywood sountracks. Totally essential.
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SORRY.
While most record stores might include Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" as a mainstay album, consistently moving units from its initial release on up to the present, the original Cambodian Rocks collection has been for us a mainstay in its own right. We may not be able to boast the quantities that a larger store might for a staple, but Cambodian Rocks has got to be one of the most universally loved albums here at aQ. So you can imagine we were pretty damn excited when we found out that the collection was being released with full disclosure of musicians, vocalists, recording dates, song titles and lyrics (translated into English!) And if that isn't enough, Khmer Rocks has expanded their version of the collection to two discs! Even better, for all of you owners of the original collection, between these two discs and the original release on Parallel World there are only 5 songs total that overlap! So now you're wondering what the connection is between Khmer Rocks and Parallel World. Well, as far as we can tell, there is absolutely no connection. Seems like Khmer Rocks titled their two discs to capitalize off the original's popularity. And to their credit, they seem a bit more legit, having gone through the trouble of tracking down artists' names and song titles to give credit where credit is due. Not to be too harsh on Parallel World -- their collection is a fucking great compilation, always will be -- but the Khmer Rocks folk seem to be more genuinely indebted to these artists and it shows in their aformentioned efforts. And like Parallel World's collection, all the tracks on these two discs are absolutely great. It would be hard to leave a track out of your iPod if you were short on space. You might just have to get rid of something else. The artists here are all absolute geniuses in their abilities to absorb American rock and roll and tweak it to local tastes. In a lot of ways these bands are like South East Asian versions of the Sun City Girls -- picking up foreign radio transmissions (shortwave radio broadcasts to American military personnel) and subverting them to their own likeness. Some of our favorites are tracks like Meas Samoun's "The Engagement", a completely dirty take on the Santana sound (a lot of these Cambodian rockers seemed to really dig Santana) with an organ (or is it some ridiculously fucked up early seventies guitar processing?) solo that will kill you. Others, like Ros Sereyosthea take an American song part and parcel -- in this case CCR's "Rolling On A River" -- merely inserting their own lyrics and twisting the arrangement. Other twisted renditions sound an awful lot like "Hey Jude", "If You're Going To San Francisco", and "Whiter Shade Of Pale". But more often than not the tracks tend to be originals with a deeply modified American twang and sound less like the cover versions mentioned above. In all cases, the rock on these recordings has an energy of absolute immediacy and urgency that's unlike any of their psychedelic counterparts the globe round.
While most record stores might include Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" as a mainstay album, consistently moving units from its initial release on up to the present, the original Cambodian Rocks collection has been for us a mainstay in its own right. We may not be able to boast the quantities that a larger store might for a staple, but Cambodian Rocks has got to be one of the most universally loved albums here at aQ. So you can imagine we were pretty damn excited when we found out that the collection was being released with full disclosure of musicians, vocalists, recording dates, song titles and lyrics (translated into English!) And if that isn't enough, Khmer Rocks has expanded their version of the collection to two discs! Even better, for all of you owners of the original collection, between these two discs and the original release on Parallel World there are only 5 songs total that overlap! So now you're wondering what the connection is between Khmer Rocks and Parallel World. Well, as far as we can tell, there is absolutely no connection. Seems like Khmer Rocks titled their two discs to capitalize off the original's popularity. And to their credit, they seem a bit more legit, having gone through the trouble of tracking down artists' names and song titles to give credit where credit is due. Not to be too harsh on Parallel World -- their collection is a fucking great compilation, always will be -- but the Khmer Rocks folk seem to be more genuinely indebted to these artists and it shows in their aformentioned efforts. And like Parallel World's collection, all the tracks on these two discs are absolutely great. It would be hard to leave a track out of your iPod if you were short on space. You might just have to get rid of something else. The artists here are all absolute geniuses in their abilities to absorb American rock and roll and tweak it to local tastes. In a lot of ways these bands are like South East Asian versions of the Sun City Girls -- picking up foreign radio transmissions (shortwave radio broadcasts to American military personnel) and subverting them to their own likeness. Some of our favorites are tracks like Meas Samoun's "The Engagement", a completely dirty take on the Santana sound (a lot of these Cambodian rockers seemed to really dig Santana) with an organ (or is it some ridiculously fucked up early seventies guitar processing?) solo that will kill you. Others, like Ros Sereyosthea take an American song part and parcel -- in this case CCR's "Rolling On A River" -- merely inserting their own lyrics and twisting the arrangement. Other twisted renditions sound an awful lot like "Hey Jude", "If You're Going To San Francisco", and "Whiter Shade Of Pale". But more often than not the tracks tend to be originals with a deeply modified American twang and sound less like the cover versions mentioned above. In all cases, the rock on these recordings has an energy of absolute immediacy and urgency that's unlike any of their psychedelic counterparts the globe round.
It would appear that the Khmer Rocks label is slowly rendering the original Cambodian Rocks compilation on Parallel World obsolete. With each volume of their version of the beloved series there are a smattering of those tracks included -- now better served with full disclosure of the artists' names, song titles and even lyrics! With volume 3 there are three more, leaving you with 16 completely new tracks. We figure that by volume 7 or 8 of the Khmer Rocks series we'll all be able to trade in the original. As a bonus, Khmer Rocks has included two tracks at the end of volume 3 of "Romvong Songs", or Cambodian circle dance songs. It's the label's way of turning on all the garage psychsters to some traditional Cambodian music. The first track is actually a lot like the tracks on the Cambodian rocks discs, but with a bit more swing. The second, by Cambodian superstar Sinn Sisamouth, replaces guitar and bass with flute and clarinet along with traditional Cambodian instruments, but it still has the same intensity of those rock tracks. What can we say? Highly recommended!
All right! The fourth volume in the totally rad Cambodian Rocks series is here at last (perhaps the compilers at the Khmer Rocks label were sensing competition from the now three-volume Thai Beat A Go Go series?). Volume four puts Cambodian Rocks into the lead with some truly over the top late '60s/early '70s rock n' roll, exotic psych-beat that's just so wild, weird, n' wonderful. WOW is all you can say. The 19 tracks include such brilliantly-titled songs as "Oops...He's Mute", "No Shorts Lesson Learned", "Leftover Smile" and "I'm All Skinny" performed by an all-star cast of Cambodian Rockers: Ros Sereysothea, Sinn Sisamouth, Pan Ron, Yol Aularong, and Meas Samoun. Until the tragic, catastrophic Khmer Rouge takeover of the mid '70s brought the genocidal despot Pol Pot and his gang into power, Cambodia (or its urban center Phnom Penh anyway) apparently was a hip, swinging place where teenagers could groove to plenty of homegrown rock n' roll music, inspired by Western R&B, surf, and psych but with a distinctive Cambodian flavor. You can sure hear that in so many of the tracks here, in the sweet female voices backed by distorted guitar and wigged-out organ. There's some serious psych-fuzz being laid down, sometimes murky and lo-fi duo to its temporally/geographically distant origins but full of spirit and energy. So very recommended, as every entry in this series has been! By the way, the compliers have thoughtfully included English translations of the lyrics in the cd booklet.
This longtime AQ favorite is finally available again!
Recorded in 1970 and '71 at his countryside home outside of Hong Kong, the elderly (but spry) Lo Ka Ping will captivate you here with his performances on the qin, a type of ancient Chinese seven-stringed zither with a soft, subdued sound. Confucius' favorite instrument, the sound and style of the qin in the hands of Lo Ka Ping really evokes both Buddhist music and the blues. In his sparse, soulful performance on these ten tracks (four of Ping's own composition and six traditional numbers) you'll hear echoes of the the likes of Son House and Blind Willie Johnson - you could almost imagine this is a lost backporch recording by an unknown gospelish slide guitarist, playing a mysterious, alien blues. Parallels to Indian classical music can be heard as well, to which there is a link to the qin tradition in fact as well as in spirit.
This cd is rounded out with a couple of older, crustier recordings circa 1946-48 by two other "Chinese Masters of the Guqin", Zheng Yingsun and Xu Yuan Bay, who alongside Lo Ka Ping make this a lovely, raw, spiritually resonant document indeed.
For those of you who may find the full 20-volume Smithsonian Folkways "Music Of Indonesia" series a little daunting, and don't know just where to begin, the kind folks at SFW decided to release this budget-priced series sampler cd. Featuring 15 tracks selected from the many amazing entries in the series. Everything from xylophone duets to brass bands, from church songs to gamelan, from bamboo tubes to funeral gongs. Totally great. Get this and then begin collecting the volumes from whence comes the music that intrigues you the most on here. We also recommend Vol. 20 ("Indonesian Guitars") and Vol. 2 ("Popular Music of Indonesia") as being good starting points and definite essentials in this series.
A collection of Indian film music classics, kind of a bizarre and infectious lo-fi hybridization of genres. If you liked the "Bombay The Hardway" disc, or our favorite, the great "Dance Raja Dance" collection of Vijaya Anand's film music, you'll surely dig this. Features the illustrious Asha Bhosle! Recommended.
Along with putting out the three Cambodian Rocks compilations that have rendered the original Parallel World label comp of the same name virtually obsolete, Khmer Rocks also has a plethora of other khmer music compilations that we're only just beginning to scratch the surface of. While every bit as great as the three Rocks comps we reviewed previously, they're also not marketed as much for the greater population... ie: these are more for the Khmer community. To this end, there's no translation of the song titles or artists. Additionally this collection is on CD-R, but we can't complain because it's also only 9.98. You're probably wondering what a Spanish title is doing on a collection of Cambodian rock music and, well, so were we. The first track, with the word "espanola" featured prominently in the lyrics, clears all that up: yes, it's Cambodian Cha-Cha and Latin tinged Cambodian rock. There are even trumpet flourishes and string sections lifted straight out of a bolero. Not to give you the wrong idea however, only a handful of the tracks on Espanola are actually Latin influenced. Like the Cambodian Rocks series, there's plenty of good old fashioned go-go and garage rock make up the bulk of the collection. Plus the closer, a fuzzed out "hard rock" encore of a track is about as unlike anything in the previous comps. For those of you who already own the other anthologies, as far as we've been able to tell from listening -- another downside to not having English liner notes -- there's no overlap with any of the previous Cambodian collections we've been selling. Muy bien Khmer Rocks!
If the usual, corporate "world music" recording is intended for the pleasure and edification of "armchair travellers" who appreciate the comforts of said armchair and, if actually travelling, would prefer the expensive luxuries of Westernized hotels and guided tours in air conditioned buses, then "world music" as documented by the Sun City Girls affiliated Sublime Frequencies field recordings label is for armchair travellers who want to know what it would sound like if they and their armchair were to be picked up, packed into a crate, shipped on the slow boat TO China or wherever, and dumped into the back alleys of a far off land to fend for themselves. No guided tour, more like bumming around amid the teeming human cultures of the third world, ears open to new experiences, to both musical and environmental sounds.
For release number thirty-something in their series, Sublime Frequencies visits North Vietnam, bringing back 15 tracks of wailing horns, keening vocals, twanging Jews harps, wheezing bamboo mouth-organs, and and more, including the sounds of a reed instrument, the piem zat, a sort of oboe played with a circular breathing technique. Singing styles are unique too, as with the layered female chorus on track 10 for instance, where the singers achieve a kind a delay effect, in a style called bao zoo.
The liner notes by recordist/compiler Lauren Jenneau help to explain the musical traditions of the various ethnic minority groups he's encountered here, and how they figure into both their everyday and spiritual lives. As usual with Sublime Frequencies stuff, pretty much a must-have if you want to make your armchair a much more "exotic" place in which to recline... or to inspire you to get off your ass, quit your job and take off on that backpacking trip to South East Asia you've always wanted to take...
The Cambodians have a long and troubled history, rife with oppression and persecution. Whether it's the Khmer Rouge, the French, the Siamese, the Vietnamese, and even the Americans, as a people, their survival was always in doubt. This strife resulted in a rich musical landscape, music being an escape, but also a means of storytelling and passing on history. A rich oral tradition imbues almost all Cambodian music. While past forays into Cambodian music have focused on Cambodian ROCK, the sort of reimagining of Western pop, resulting in off kilter, buzzing psychedelic Eastern pop versions of popular Western songs, this comp focuses more on the music of the ethnic minorities, simple instrumentation, mostly vocal, with gongs, simple stringed instruments and primitive bamboo flutes, but if anything the music is so much more passionate and unique. Tales of love and loss, war and death, bombings and of course the terrible aftermath of the Khmer Rouge.
The opening track is an old man, laying in a hammock, singing tales of local legends and his voices is totally amazing, a growling creaking, rumbling, super resonant hum, equal parts chanting and throat singing, while in the back ground, you can hear conversations, creaking porches, children laughing, birds chirping, in fact almost every track here is performed right on the spot, whether it's outside the house, in the front room, in a hammock, on the side of the road, always surrounded by the sound of life and other lives. The second track is performed by 5 old men, playing 5 large gongs, set up outside their house, a low keening vibration, soft muted melodies, dreamy and shimmering, a swirling soft soundpool while in the background children again laugh and play, adding a strange joyous effortlessness to the glistening drone, later a female vocalist sings over the top, a lilting, mournful lament. Elsewhere, a female midwife sings an acapella song, a delicate wavering croon, warbling and wavering, but so rich and beautiful, while voices swirl around her. Like she just decided to start singing, right there amidst a crowd of random passersby, which she probably did. Later, a love song, simple fingerpicked guitar and sweetly sad improvised female vocals, while on another track, a 10 stringed instrument made from bamboo and a hollowed out gourd is strummed and picked, creating a sparkling web of buzzing high end melodies and delicate high end tangles, while later five gong players unfurl a warm wash of simple steel drum like melody, accompanied by a male vocalist, a flute player and 8 female virgins who clap along and offer up a chant responding to the male vocals.
This is literally a stroll through another culture, observing and learning via music, and it feels like music is everywhere, in houses, on the street, in shops and on the shores of the river, people talk and laugh, play and work, always surrounded by music, clapping and singing, melody and harmony, completely mesmerizing. And obviously very very recommended.
Includes a big booklet with lots of photos and extensive liner notes.
Yet another fantastic new entry in the ever expanding (at an alarming pace) catalogue of mysterious world music treasures from Sublime Frequencies. This one born of an aborted wedding plan, the couple Laurent Jeanneau and Shi Tanding had hoped to get married in China, while at the same time collecting field recordings from the various stops in their travels. But alas, the wedding was not to be, as the local authorities grew quite suspicious, following the two and interrogating them relentlessly. And while the wedding was nixed, the Laurent and Shi can definitely take consolation in the fact that they returned with this incredible collection of various folk musics from all over the Northwest Xinjiang region of China.
A fantastic array of Chines traditional folk music, various indigenous stringed instruments, different vocal styles, as always the booklet is bursting with information, about the trip, the couple's hardships, but more pertinent to the compilation, extensive notes on the various performers and the instruments, and the different styles of music.
But even without that sort of technical guide, the music here quickly reveals itself as mysterious and magical, intimate and emotional, haunting and otherworldly. A quick overview of some of our favorite tracks: wild frenzied string buzz, incredibly dense and tangled melodies, some seriously masterful playing that would give most Western shredders a run for their money, some gorgeous languid steel string buzz, over moody low end melodies, bird calls in the distance, super dramatic and so beautiful, in fact birds feature prominently in these recordings, which of course only makes them that much cooler. Like on the track with a swoonsome soaring violin like melody, sounding like it was performed in the middle of a lush forest, which it most likely was. There's lots of bluesy folkiness, with incredibly emotive vocals, so moving and intense. And then there's the 15 minute closer, very Indian sounding, a sprawling raga, layered buzz, tangled melodies, haunting vocals, totally mesmerizing and utterly transcendent.
It's difficult for us to not just make EVERY Sublime Frequencies release a Record Of The Week, and compilation is another reason why, which simply means that this is about as recommended as we can imagine, on constant play here in the store, where it will most likely remain, at least until the next mysterious Sublime Frequencies gem, which we're guessing is probably not that far off...
Yet another fantastic document from Sublime Frequencies, the avant world music label run by the Sun City Girls, and home to now dozens of releases, all of them fascinating and fantastic. Proving once again that we ain't got nothing on the rest of the world in terms of unique sounds and amazing musics. Ethnic Minority Music Of Southern Laos, is one of two new discs in Sublime Frequencies' series of documents exploring the rich musical histories of displaced minorities in various regions of Southeast Asia. This volume follows the Northeast Cambodia installment in exploring the music of Cambodia, this disc focusing on two distinct musical styles, one incorporating various gongs, the other involving different sorts of mouth harps. As always, the liner notes are dense and informative, but here they are a little bit more difficult to summarize than on past discs, so we'll focus more on the sounds than the story.
All of these tracks were culled from a super limited 4cd set released a few years back, and offer a varied and completely mindblowing sampling of the sounds of musicians in and around Laos, groups of people forced to move from their mountainous villages into temporary and makeshift villages, where all of the things that nature supplied in the mountains (food, water, protection) have now become scarce. And obviously, as with all cultures, the music and art represents the huge shifts and dramatic changes of a people, political, personal, love, worry, sadness, sorrow, death, passion, birth... The music here is just so intense and emotional and definitely reflects the transition and the day to day struggle to just live life.
As mentioned above, there are two distinct musics, the first is based mostly on gongs, with various bits of percussion, and the sound is amazing. Rich and resonant, totally hypnotic and rhythmic, often times just a single gong, but the magic of the music is in the patterns and the subtle overtones, so simple yet so subtly complex, the various subtleties unfold as the tracks progress, not hard to imagine (or hope) that these tracks could go on for hours...
Other tracks are more complex, with deep gongs creating a shimmering backdrop, for clattery cymbals and simple propulsive drumming, a sound that isn't all that different in places than some of the freaky forest folk from Finland we dig so much, or the stoned rhythmic jams of groups like the No Neck Blues Band or Sunburned Hand Of The Man. The sounds of the various gongs are so different, some are low and rumbling, others are high pitched and sharp, and lots of shades in between, muted and muffled or allowed to ring out, struck with something soft or with wood or other metal, the various shades are deftly woven into gorgeous stretches of rhythm and melody.
The other music is based on various mouth harps, and the sound of those harps is remarkable, strange complex chords, complicated alien timbres, wheezing and whirring, lots of overlapping melodies, and various tones all tangled up, a rich bed beneath deep rich crooning, while in the background can be heard chirping birds, crowing roosters, babies crying, many of the tracks pick up random conversations, from the players, or passersby. One of the most amazing organ track is "Jeu Phawn Peng Gawng Ploung Ken" featuring an organ made from 10 bamboo tubes and a single gong. The melody is haunting and minor key, looped and so hypnotic, while two vocalists take turns singing, their voices alternatingly raw and raspy, soaring and clear, one ragged and forlorn, the other wailing and sorrowful, and like the other tracks, you can hear coughing, breathing, feet shuffling in the background, but the music is so dark, and so intense, it's easy to get completely lost.
And while the record is mostly evenly split between the mouth harp tracks and the gong tracks, there are a handful of tracks that don't fit in either camp, some strummy and folky, others abstract and percussive. One of those tracks we love, one that should have been 10 minutes long instead of 24 seconds is "Reum Bang" a killer riff, played on a single string bowed instrument, the sound so primal and raw, the string all muted and stiff, like a distorted rubber band guitar or something, hard not to imagine the drums kicking in and it turning into some strange psychedelic jam.
The whole disc is fantastic, every time a new Sublime Frequencies disc arrives, we find ourselves wanting to proclaim it the best one yet, but all it takes is for us to go back and listen to any of the old ones, for us to realize that, no, THAT one is the best one yet. Can't think of a better recommendation for this disc, and for every disc in the series...
First proper lp release from aQ pal, 78 collector, and curator of the awesome Excavated Shellac blog, Jonathan Ward, appropriately enough on Parlortone, "The Phonographic Arm And Limited Edition Leg" of longtime favorite reissue label Dust-To-Digital. And it's a doozy, before we get into it, anyone who buys everything on Mississippi is gonna want one of these, if you loved the Black Mirror collection, or the Victrola Favorites, for anyone into world music, into lost gems, old sonic obscurities, this is about as good as it gets, the song selection, the curation, the sound, the detailed liner notes, utterly fantastic, and sonically breathtaking. But of course we would have expected nothing less.
For those not familiar with it, Excavated Shellac is a blog dedicated to "78rpm recordings of folkloric and vernacular music from around the world", and besides having an incredible collection, Ward also is a fantastic write, who writes extensively about each record he posts (almost all unavailable anywhere else in any format), detailing the recording, the style of music, the history, a musical lesson in every post, and the music, well needless to say, it's easy to get lost and subsequently obsessed.
So Excavated Shellac: Strings, is an analog extension of the ES blog, with all the things we love about the blog intact. Of course there's the music, impeccably chosen, deftly cleaned up, and perfectly sequenced, the writing, informative and funny, educated and informed, about the record, the project, and each track and artist, and of course the object itself, beautifully laid out, pressed on thick vinyl, lots of amazing archival photos, so great.
This first volume focuses on string instruments from around the world, Armenia, India, Bolivia, Congo, Vietnam, Georgia, Iran, Turkey, Uganda, Lebanon, Japan, Norway, Croatia and Paraguay. Every song a gem, haunting solos on Middle Eastern lutes, tangled frantic, droney sitar like buzz from India, playful festive dance music from Bolivia played on small guitars fashioned from gourds, gorgeous acoustic guitar music, lush and melodic, with soulful call and response vocals, from Congo, home recorded duets on 2 string fiddle and 'moon guitar' from Vietnam, solo violin from Iran, traditional folk music from Georgia, we could go on and on and on and on. But you know already if you need this, and it seems likely you probably do. We had been hearing rumblings about a Jon Ward / Dust-To-Digital project in the works, and had been anxiously awaiting it ever since. Now that we're playing this to death, we find ourselves already looking forward to future volumes. So incredible, and so totally recommended.
Beautifully printed matte finish sleeve, heavy vinyl, with a printed cardstock 4 page insert, with liner notes and photos and more!
MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!
It's really getting to where we barely have to describe these at all. And not just because of the Mississippi obsessives. The collections are so lovingly curated, every step of the process, from the actual recording of the music, to the booklets and the jackets, and most importantly the amazing sounds inside, any one with even the slightest bit of interest in world musics, would be foolish to pass any of these up. Including this, volume two in this series of field recordings from Madagascar, the first volume so limited we were never able to get any copies at all. The sounds here were gathered by Canadian field recordist Charlie Brooks, and most were recorded on a trip there in 2002, focusing mostly on violin players and throat singers, although the sounds here are quite varied. There is so much info in the liner notes about the region, and the history, and that alone makes this a worthwhile purchase, but the music, it's fantastic, haunting, and lovely and beautiful, incredible vocal harmonies, the violins emit sweet melodies one second, intense buzzing the next, there are wheezing accordions, some of the tracks sound almost Hawaiian, the strings reminding us of ukeleles, throughout the songs are laced with street sounds, birds chirping, cars driving by, children laughing, conversations, all just adding to the vibe, and the energy, with a few of the tracks droned our and mesmerizing, sounding a bit like some mysterious variation of American Appalachia. Incredible!
Housed in a super heavy old school tip-on style jacket, and includes a massive booklet filled with liner notes on the music, the region, the performers, as well as lots of photos.
We're pretty damn excited by Sun City Girls 33.3 percenter Alan Bishop's new Sublime Frequencies label. "Dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers" Sublime Frequencies is slipping on the shoes apparently discarded by such pioneering labels as Smithsonian Folkways, Nonesuch Explorer, et al. Unlike previous explorers in such unheard music, Sublime Frequencies is not restricted by academic or commercial purposes. The latter probably deserves a bit more explanation; for where much of the post-Explorer purveyors of "world music" shamelessly produce an endless slough of slick garbage that sounds like the crap you can hear on any U.S. top 40 radio station merely sung in another language (Christ, if I had a wooden nickel for every fuckin' starry eyed NPR music review extoling the uniqueness of some generic world music outfit that combines electronic music with traditional folk, yadda, yadda, yadda the world's forests would be clear cut by now) the recordings you'll hear presented by Sublime Frequencies come from the cracks in the pavement of the culture makers. Through field recordings (many made by Bishop himself in his travels), radio and shortwave broadcasts some of the most fucking great music and audio you've never heard has been culled together. Balls to fidelity, none of the artists here would be allowed within 10 miles of a Putamayo AR executive, this is the punk rock of field recordings!
Assembled from cassettes acquired by Alan Bishop through trade or purchase in 1989 while traveling through Sumatra, "Folk And Pop Sounds" contains some of the most obscure recordings of the three initial CD releases from Subliminal Frequencies. Located on the furthest Western edge of the Indonesian archipelago, Sumatra is big (as big as California) and widely unexplored in the audio realm in comparison with its neighboring islands to the East, Java and Bali. The disc begins with the Haba Haba Group in which a male singer is accompanied by flute, two alternating gongs and percussion and secondly by an unknown Sumatran Dangdut (crazy overdriven pop with a heavy Indian film music influence). The most immediately noticeable difference in these recordings from Sumatra to Bali & Java is the overt Arabic influence on the music. The Dangdut track even sounds similar to the music on a Somalian CD, "Jamiila" which we used to sell here years ago before it went out of print. As if to admonish us against generalizations, another later Dangdut track, with runaway farfisa organ, pleasant arppegiating electric guitar and female vocals sounds not dis-similar to the "keroncong" music of The Steps CD from Java released on Warn Defever's Time Stereo label. While the disc may begin innocently enough, the sequencing of the tracks seduces the listener into the strange world of Sumatran music. The very Arabic sounding Indang Pariaman which features a female singer who's melody line interweaves beautifully with end blown wooden flute and some more incredibly nutty buzzing electric keyboard (one can only imagine that the sound is intended to imitate a double reed instrument of old) is moved along by jovial electric bass and casio-rhythm. The combination of acoustic and archaic electric instruments is shamelessly wonderful. Later an orchestra of sorts, complete with violin, electric organ, bass, drums, female voice leads us down a fragrant path that's oddly reminiscent of a Sun City Girls track. Speaking of which, though this one technically isn't, there are a couple of tracks on here which indeed are songs covered by the Girls, can you figure out which ones? Along with the songs proper included here, there are some great excerpts from dramas. The first instance begins with sweet flute and what's supposed to be a rooster crowing, but emulated by what sounds like an old air raid siren played through a broken megaphone. A melodramatic dialogue ensues between a terribly afflicted female and a stoic male voice. needless to say, this one comes highly recommended!
This second volume of Sumatran music does not disapoint. Not at all. Different than the music of Java and Bali, the Arabic influence on Sumatran music is unmistakable. More than that though, Sumatran music seems to not only include a wide variety of influences from near and far, but seems to wear it on its sleeve. And yet, despite the insane amount of musical diversity, the Arabic thread runs strongly through every single track here. The 17 tracks on this disc feature some eight different genres of music from Sumatra. The Rabab Dangdut cuts tend to be like the country music of Sumatra. At least that's what the scratchy fiddle parts immediately sound like to a western ear. But melodies and the interaction between the vocals and fiddle are slightly reminiscent of Thai Mo Lam. Add on top of this some ska rhythm guitar, electric bass and drums and things start to get a little thick. The other styles are no less odd. The Orkes Gambus are all orchestral numbers with oud, huge sounding violin sections, electric organs and female vocals. In a blind listening test one might guess the origins as Syria or Egypt. The Tari Minang tracks are about as close to Java as you'll get here. Along with a small gamelan ensemble are Arabic double reeds, flutes and female vocals. Like the first volume, there's nary a dud on this one. Highly recommended!
Can there ever really be enough Cambodian Rock?
Don't answer that yet. Because while this double lp compilation does feature the stars of the genre featured on other Cambodian rock comps: Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea, and Pan Ron, it also has plenty of others including the heavy psych groove of the Thra Kha Band who have two amazing tracks that are totally worth the price of admission. Plus it's a double vinyl gatefold with copious liner notes about the amazing music and tragic legacy of many of the music's star figures. Rarely does music seem so truly hauntological. Sunny, fun, and grooving on the surface, but layered over tragic notions of the political brutality that would come later. We've covered that history in plenty of previous reviews, so we won't go down that rabbit hole here, but this is a worthy selection of psych rock and garage gems, that didn't immediately sound like the others. So if you're new to Cambodian rock from the sixties and seventies, or would like a really well put together compilation on vinyl, now's your chance!
A complete about face for volume 2 in the Folk And Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma) series of discs. Remember that first one? The manic weirdness was unlike anything we'd heard, nor anything we've heard since. So it's striking that volume 2 is a disc we can at least put in terms we know. What's perhaps most ironic is that the recordings on Guitars Of The Golden Triangle come from a territory of Burma that, while roughly the size of New York State, has been almost completely un-explored by outsiders (Burmese or otherwise). The Golden Triangle (its proper name is the Shan State of Burma) is little known outside its own country, but it is the territory of smugglers, seperatist rebels and some extraordinary opium production. Since it is forbidden for foreigners to visit the Shan State, it's no surprise that its flourishing cottage industry of a music scene would be completely unknown to outsiders. How Mr. Bishop got these tracks is anyone's guess, but as we've seen before the Sublime Frequencies folks have their ways with picking up ripe fruit that others walk straight past. The 21 tracks here, recorded during the early seventies, range between heavy fuzzed out psych -- like something much more likely to have come out in the late sixties -- to sugary crooning pop -- much more akin to its decade. Little is known of most of the artists: for instance the most well represented here -- Saing Saing Maw -- is only known to have been a truck driver originally (shades of Elvis anyone?) and after striking his music career apparently returned to truck driving.
By now maybe you have (or like some of us, maybe you haven't) had enough of the South East Asian pop, folk, field recordings from Sublime Frequencies. Courtesy of Robert Millis (Climax Golden Twins cohort and curator of the Leaf Music Drunks Distant Drums cd) Harmika Yab-Yum takes us on an audio journey through underserved territory. Nestled, nay sandwiched between the geographical and cultural giants of China and India, Nepal's greatest fame lies in its hosting the tallest mountain on our fair planet. It's also the only "official Hindu state in the world" according to the CIA Factbook. On Harmika Yab-Yum Millis elegantly weaves together recordings he made (apparently in 1996) of radio broadcasts, street musicians, religious cermonies, and sermons. About half of the tracks in fact are from radio, though no disc jockey banter is included, which -- whether intentional or not -- gives the recordings an even more of a feel of being totally detached from the influence of the occidental world. By and large the greatest influence on the music here is from India. Tabla percussion, flutes, pump organs, sitars, violins and drones, drones, drones make up the bulk of the instrumentation and to the untrained ear, certainly sound like the dulcet tones of Indian music. The disc starts off with a bang with a track taken from the radio which sounds like feral chanting by some crazed lunatic accompanied by drumming. This is followed by an abrupt segue into a street sermon broadcast over a distant sounding bullhorn, flutes and people talking can be heard over the sermon. For the larger part, such abrupt transitions are not the norm on Harmika Yab-Yum and the grainy, modulating songs recorded off of the airwaves blend nicely with the gritty sounds of daily life on the streets from the clanging bells of a pony train passing by to, chanting monks on Krishna day, to a snake charmer with double reed to the crashing of bands, miscellaneous percussion and other noises for a wedding procession. Very nice.
