We can not tell you how psyched we are to have this back in stock. We've been listening to this like crazy. We had almost forgotten how totally far out and mind blowing this collection was. Since we first carried this years ago, there have been tons of diverse and eclectic collections of musics from all over the world, psych rock compilations (Love, Peace & Poetry, Thai Beat A Go Go, etc.), the Sublime Frequencies series, and loads more, but as good as those are, they can't hold a candle to Ho!: Roady Music From Vietnam! So completely fascinating and fun, wild and so so weird! Everytime this gets played in the store, customers and employees alike have to check to see what the heck it is we're listening to!
Ho! is an amazing collection of pieces from Vietnamese street musicians. The folks that travelled to Vietnam and recorded these pieces gave themselves the tongue-in-cheek name Nuoc Mam Dirndl'n, evidence of their humor in the light of collecting the sort of music they suspect the Vietnamese government would perhaps NOT appreciate as a representation of Vietnam. Ho! ranges from raucous, percussion-heavy funeral songs played at midnight by 'young people provided with drugs' to traditional material played on the one-stringed dan bau to melodramatic love songs favored by the son of the owner of the hotel the folks stayed at. There's even a 'tasteful schmaltzy song' which is what the Vietnamese record-store saleswoman played for them when they asked for some traditional Vietnamese music! Check out the following excerpt from the fascinating liner notes, and, like us, marvel at the freshness inherent in the refusal to adopt the omniscient voice-of-authority tone taken by so many ethno-compilers: "We are stunned by the Vietnamese 'Lebensgefuhl' actually corresponding to our western idea of 'subculture': lively, anarchic, loud, dense, hearty; the people are living working, eating, sleeping, and holding their funeral ceremonies between house and street. We don't know yet if there is any subculture in Vietnam; if there is e.g. (organized) political counterforces to the one-party regime -- nobody talks about politics (with us) -- maybe there is no need for it, because everybody can do whatever he/she wants: though street trading is prohibited everybody does it -- under the hardly vigilant eyes of the law -- raids are very rare, then the stands are carried away quickly and when the mischief is gone it goes on... What matters is that people LOVE TO SING which, like in our part of the world, hide in gloomy basements and play till the ears/souls are ringing: every band in Vietnam needs a license for its existence, for every gig, every song. And because there is no basements in Vietnam, people like to use the karaoke machines in their homes, bars and special karaoke houses. Saigon's street musicians are rather despised by the yuppies of Vietnam: 'shit music.' The yuppies prefer Sting and western style in general." Highly highly highly recommended!
Another amazing document in the Sun City Girls' Sublime Frequencies int'l field recordings series of cds and DVDs. This is the third DVD in the series, this time focusing on Northeast Thailand, known to the Thai as Isan. Beautifully filmed and dizzingly colorful, we are first treated to a festival celebrating the birth of civilization in Isan, featuring lots of pomp and even a little magic, including an intense segment where live rabbits and chickens are hurled into the air and then caught and chased once again. Also there is an amazing segment that looks like it takes place in a school gym, featuring colorful traditional dancers backed up by guitar and xylophone, and later a very sultry performance in a gentleman's club (sonically quite remiscent of the Cambodian Rocks Southeast Asian take on Western pop music). Probably the most amazing segments are the solo performances on the Khaen, which is a set of pipes, two rows set together, with the performer covering and uncovering sound holes and producing some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear.
The Western obsession with India's prolific film industry, and even more so the musical numbers that drive the narratives forward, has nearly reached its saturation point. The amount of "best of Bollywood" anthologies released to date seems to almost equal India's annual theatrical output. Which all just makes it that much harder for us when we want to tell you that Indiavision is quite assuredly the best collection of Bollywood music we've come accross. See, so much has come before that such a claim will be immediately written off as so much of the usual record reviewer hyperbole. So just hear us out. First of all, what is it that makes Indian film music so great? Well, one of the things most often cited by fans is the over-the-top arrangements on some of the better numbers. The really great film music composers like Kalyanji & Anandji and Laxmikant & Pyarelal are some of the most worldly specialists in all genres of music, integrating the talents of Ennio Morricone's Western period, entire western orchestras, regional Indian classical music, the newest in electronic developments and whatever fad happened to be big in the year which they were composing (Hawaiian slide guitar, psychedelic music, soul, funk, you name it). The greatest film scores manage to somehow meld all that together in a way that just begs for some kind of clever culinary analogy (which we will spare you from in this review).
What else makes a great Bollywood song? The vocalist(s). A good song can survive without a male vocalist; they're only needed in duets with the female lead. The female vocalists in Indian film music are the equivalent of lead guitarists in the golden age of American rock and roll, and their vocal chords have the same dynamics, presence and range as most amplified guitars. Singers like Asha Bhosle (India's shining star of singers), featured heavily on this collection (and all collections) have a way of disembodying their voices from their bodies. When Bhosle sings her voice cuts through the speakers like a scalpel. Half of this phenomenon is due to her amazing lungs, the other to the insane engineering skills of the producers who record these scores who choose to overload the microphone preamps and super-saturate the magnetic tape during the loudest passages resulting in an unholy natural compression of the signal. Second only to the likes of Lee Perry in his Black Ark period of the early seventies or dub master King Tubby, the production values of Indian film music is singularly twisted in their techniques. Like the aforementioned Jamaican demigods of the multi-track, the recordists here have an arsenal of reverb, echo and compression tools that -- while not as new as the gear used in Hollywood's recording studios -- are used to their absolute functional limit. All of those essential elements of Indian film music are represented on each and every song here. But unlike many earlier collections, which focus their range on a particular era, composer, or vocalist, Indiavision draws from a wide range of sources. The tracks included here date from as far back as 1966 on up to 1984, it includes such film score heavyweights as father S.D. and son R.D. Burman, Laxmikant & Pyarelal, Kalyanji & Anandji and Bappi Lahiri. The broad time spanned by the tracks makes this collection as a whole more varied and easy on the ears. There's also quite a good variety of both slow, sultry numbers and completely batty comical ones. Some, like the title music for "The Burning Train" (listed as an instrumental), which features gruff female vocals like those of Yma Sumac, or the "Cabaret Dance Music" from the film "Dharmatma" with its maniacal laughter are completely off the wall. Others, like "Yashomati Maiya Se Bole Nandala" -- a deadly serious romantic number with crooned vocals by Lata Mangeshkar -- and "Come Closer" -- a mellow and sincere funk/soul song sung by Salma Agha -- are beautiful respites from the cornball antics which are more often the songs of choice for Bollywood anthologies. Comes with a 30 page, full color booklet with plentiful liner notes in both French and English. Highly recommended!
Yay, here's the 3rd vinyl release from Sham Palace, the internationally-minded reissues label run by our pal Mark Gergis (Neung Phak, Porest, Mono Pause) as sort of an adjunct to the other "world music" label he's involved with, the celebrated Sublime Frequencies. We're all for it, Sham Palace just makes it like Sublime Frequencies releases are more, uh, frequent. The previous two offerings from Sham Palace were devoted to Middle Eastern "Dabke" music, one a record from aQ fave Omar Souleyman and the other a comp. But for this lp, something different, from a different (but still Islamic) part of the world. Mark has compiled just what the subtitle says: Pan-Indonesian Pop, Folk, Instrumentals & Children's Songs, 1970s-1980s. It's a diverse selection, the dozen tracks here variously representing different genres as well as coming from different islands - Java and Sumatra - in the Indonesian archipelago. But all, to some degree or other, hybridize both traditional Indonesian musics and Western rock/pop styles. There's folk-rock, and funk, and Bollywood inspired pop, and child singers, and plenty of synth. And all the tracks are pretty darn great - which of course is precisely what we'd expect from this label & compiler. So, highly recommended.
Vinyl-only, limited to 1000 copies!
Sometimes, in the midst of all the excitement we feel at the release of a new blippy cutting-edge electronica disc, or the next undiscovered indie-rock pop gem, we lose sight of the fact that much of the best music made has nothing to do with computers or hip scenes. Instead, it's made by musicians you've never heard of who are unlikely to ever grace the cover of The Wire or Magnet. Especially, musicians in the Third World, who have a contemporary, living, often innovative relationship with the musical traditions of their communities. People who do what they do with a great deal of feeli guitar music that we've ever celebrated on this AQ-list. We're all quite taken with it, and thus chose to make it Record of the Month. Indeed, the disc's final track, a song called "Fajar Di Atas Awan" written by Irwansyah Harahap, is assuredly the most gorgeous seven minutes of gentle guitar folk-drone and female vocals that we've been blessed to hear, ever.
The guitar, though rarely mentioned by ethnomusicologists, has been a part of Indonesian music ever since the Portuguese introduced it to the region back in the 16th century. Over the years it has made its way into various musical idioms and been paramount in the formation of others. At times used to imitate traditional instruments such as the Kecapi (a Sundanese zither), or, conversely, to play the bizarre, Indian film music styled electric pop of modern Dangdut (see Volume 2 in this series, "Indonesian Popular Music"), guitars (or "home-made instruments resembling guitars") have had a rich history in Indonesia. Featuring primarily solo guitar and vocal accompaniment from Sumatra, Java, Sumba, Timor and Sulawesi, this cd, with its very informative 32 page (!) booklet, is yet another testament to Yampolsky's dedication to documenting the multi-faceted musical world of Indonesia, in all its riches and wonder.
With twenty volumes in the series, we can't be too sad that this is the last, as it's certain that even picking up only this (a good start) and a few of the others would keep the adventurous music fan thrilled for a long while, and perhaps hook them on a whole new realm of sounds. The other two most recent installments are Volume 18, "Sulawesi: Festivals, Funerals, And Work", ranging from sorrowful flute pieces to drum and vocal based harvest celebrations, and Volume 19, "Music of Maluku: Halmahera, Buru, Kei", a variety of musics from the Molucca Islands, including music from a Sufi-derived ritual that involved men stabbing themselves with iron awls! Like the rest of the series, both too are recommended and are also 15.98 a piece.
Having travelled to Indonesia in 2008, the sound artist Jesse Paul Miller (who also does time as a member of the Factums and has dabbled on the recordings of A Frames, Climax Golden Twins, and the Sun City Girls) collected a wealth of amazing recordings of the various street musicians throughout Java. Given his proximity to Sublime Frequencies, we can't help wonder why this didn't get released through that increasingly venerable label. No matter, Miller offers a great mix of folk musics that express the vast cultural patchwork of Javanese music beyond the principle exports of gamelan and dangdut. That said, one of the first tracks that Miller presents is from a trio of street musicians on a homemade gamelan offering a spirited rhythmic backdrop for a trained monkey who was delighting a group of squealing children. Another track features a krontjong troupe serenading passengers at the train station with a double timed acoustic guitar strum set to a rather maudlin croon. One of the highlights of the album comes from another island Lompok, which is home to an ensemble called Sakhabad, who present an urgent folk number that could easily be one of those acoustic guitar tracks that the Sun City Girls would have appropriated on 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda. The vocalist even sounds a lot like Alan Bishop crossed with Jello Biafra (this is meant in the best possible way, mind you!). Miller concludes the album with a lengthy series of Islamic calls to worship, one from the break of dawn and another from the end of the day. There's only 50 of these in circulation, and they certainly won't last long.
Another winner for the Nonesuch Explorer Series. Originally released in 1976, this entry focuses on the restrained yet dulcet tones of the shakuhachi, a five holed bamboo flute that has been used as an accompaniment for study and meditation in Japanese culture for well over a millennium. These five live performances by master flautist Kohachiro Miyata of the Ensemble Nipponia display a graceful yet glacial spareness that focus on subtle but revelatory moments of drama and tension rather than lyrical or melodic songforms. Akin to a philosophical reading of time moving through nature, like the sound of wind through reeds, or a ripple across a surface of water, this is music to slow our lives down and be ever blissfully aware of the eternal present moment in front of us.
Sublime Frequencies and Mississippi Records may get all the world music hipster love, and it's not like they don't deserve it, but anyone into either label, or especially both, would do well to pay attention to a little label called World Arbiter who consistently release some of the most mysterious and amazing music we have ever heard. From gamelan, to sitar, to historic Chinese folk music, to minimal Moog music, to Buddhist chants, to Moroccan trance to this, the third volume in WA's series of 1941 recordings of legendary masters of the koto, a long 13 stringed zither, and the shamisen, a three stringed lute, performing various traditional vocal and theatrical pieces.
The sounds here are mystical and magical, the recordings warm and fantastically scratchy, the koto tracks are spare and haunting, both the voices and the instruments producing such distinctive tones, the interplay subtle but so beautiful, like some lost Japanese blues, haunting, and achingly lovely, hushed and intimate, the vocals both male and female deeply moving, and perfectly matched to the spare instrumentation. The shamisen pieces are more percussive, the vocals too more urgent, these tracks sounding even more like old timey blues Japanese style, which is essentially what Japanese traditional folk music is, these tracks often accompanying dances and kabuki performances, with various types of percussion, not to mention fluttering flutes, and some very distinctive vocalizing. And like the koto tracks, wreathed in a warm old time crackle that only add to the wonderful mystery of these magical sounds. Recommended for fans of all the recent world music reissues, regardless of label, as well as are all of the other World Arbiter releases...
Includes extensive liner notes in both English and Japanese.
Fourth volume in World Arbiter's Traditional Japanese Music Series, this one focusing on the music of the shamisen, a three stringed Japanese style lute, an instrument that was integral to the development of Japanese music in the 17th century. There's much to be learned about the history of the instrument, and the various genres it helped bring about, and about this era in Japan, a particularly turbulent time, as well as the Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, an organization formed to encourage cultural exchange between Japan and other countries, as well as helping preserve Japanese culture.
The sound though is what's really fantastic here, the sound of the shamisen no doubt familiar to anyone acquainted with traditional Japanese music, the notes plucked dreamily, the sound very much like a banjo, the melodies relaxed and slowly unfurling, moody and melancholic, here accompanied by fantastic and emotional vocal performances, these old recordings wreathed in a lush layer of crackle and hum, the overall effect not that far removed from listening to old timey American music, or early rural blues, even the mood of the music tends toward the lament, mournful and dreamy, some also accompanied by percussion, or fluttering flute, a few even sung by children.
Fantastic stuff, emotional, and intense, a sound both personal and intimate, but also inherently imbued with the tensions of the time, of life in the village and beyond, fans of Sublime Frequencies and other 'hip' world music labels, would do well to explore the World Arbiter label, whose releases are rife with musical riches.
That's right, another Indonesian garage rock comp, but c'mon, how can you resist a record subtitled Indonesia Screaming Fuzz? One that promises "garage stomp, Indo-rock and beat surf"? You can't. Or at least we can't. Some of the names here will be familiar to long time readers of the aQ list. Groups whose albums have gotten the full on reissue treatment, like girl group Dara Puspita, and legendary Indo-garage rockers Koes Bersaudara (who show up again as Koes Plus), which should give you an idea of the sounds here, and while you might already own those tracks, odds are you probably don't have many jams from The Swallows, Females, Steps, Panber's, Mona Rita & The Kingstons, the Peels, Rolling Beats, Black Magic, Los Indonesios or Banjamin S. But we can promise, after listening to this you will wish you did.
The Swallows transform the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" into their own chunk of surfy garage-y hypno rock, Rolling Beats take sweet bubblegum pop and wreath it in a haze of serious guitar fuzz, the Peels do their best Stones (which means they basically just swipe a song and sort of cover it), with some twangy distorted guitars and some sweet vocal harmonies, Los Indonesios sound a bit like an Indonesian Monks, big twangy guitars, and booming echo drenched vox, Females mix classic Indonesian sounds with fuzzy garagey grooves, and introduce some dreamy vox and handclap, and Steps do some Ventures style surf rock, but with buzzy synths and some distinctly Eastern sounding melodies, and so it goes. It's a sound we just can't get enough of, groovy, fuzzy, surfy, jangly, the sound so distinctive, and even the 'covers' reimagine the originals in new and spectacularly groovy ways.
Needless to say (but we will anyway), fans of recent Record Of The Week Those Shocking, Shaking Days, will dig this big time, and if you liked other comps like Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! Psychedelic Funk Music In India 1976-1983 and Thai? Dai! - The Heavier Side Of The Luk Thung Underground, or if you loved those Dara Puspita and Koes Bersaudara reissues and wanted more, well, here you go...
The tracks on this disc were all recorded at the Paku Alaman palace in Yogyakarta under the direction of K.R.T. Wasitodipuro, who is the single most important musician/composer in Java and a veritable cultural treasure. The first thing those already familiar with Balinese gamelan will notice different in Javanese court gamelan is that it is much, for lack of a better word, mellower. Unlike the kinetic, explosive Gong Kebyar of Bali, Javanese court gamelan tends to move along at a much slower, even stately, pace. It is, in fact, at its slowest that a pieces opens up to its most complex and beautiful. The stratified layers of melodies can be absolutely stunning; each instrument, while performing its own unique part, is also completely subservient to the whole.
The album, originally released as "Javanese Court Gamelan", was recorded in 1971 by Robert Brown. An added aesthetic importance to central Javanese gamelan is the need for the sound from the various instruments to blend together in the performance space. The gamelan is located in a building called a Pendopo. The structure is basically a pyramid shaped vaulted ceiling with no walls, the architecture of which causes the sounds to be reflected back upon the gamelan like a parabolic dish. On this recording, which was recorded in the Pendopo at Paku Alaman, you can not only hear the blending of the instruments as they're meant to be heard, but also the sounds of birds chirping in the courtyard just outside. Nice.
Originally released in 1977, the second volume of the (hopefully eventual) tetrad of Javanese Court Gamelan features music from the lesser of the two courts at Surakarta: the Mangkunegaran. Which is not to say that the court, or its musicians and dancers, lacked prestige. Of the two gamelan heard on this recording, one is not only considered to be the most beautiful in all of Java, but resides in the largest pendopo (pavilion in which gamelan is performed) on the island. While all gamelan are treated with the respect given a prince, the older of the two gamelan here Kyai Kanyut Mesem ("Sir Swept Away by a Smile") is exceptionally sacred (so sacred is one instrument that it is never even played). The music here is the height of refined Javanese court gamelan and the two long pieces which make up the meat of this disc are each stunning in their own ways. The 21 minute Gending Bonang Babar Layar is a piece often played to welcome important guests and on that is intended to set a "mood of distinguished silence" as much as "power and authority". Played entirely with what are generally the louder instruments and completely devoid of vocals, Babar Layar exudes an eerie austerity that is breath taking. The almost evil sounding main melody is slowly condensed and increases steadily in volume until the final section of the piece in which the pounding, heavy bronze melody instruments are brought into an elliptical, concentrated -- for lack of a better word -- summarization of what had been so delicately building up. For me (Byram), it's one of those songs that never fails to give me goose bumps. Unfortunately, space limitations prevent us from sampling enough to really do justice to the intensity of the suite as it progressively builds over its twenty minute duration. The other showcase on this disc is "Gending Ela-Ela Kalibeber" which takes the opposite approach sonically, with the softer instruments and vocals taking center stage and rendering the main melody almost inaudible. Also included are two shorter pieces, "Ketawang Puspawarna" and "Ayak-ayakan Kaloran". Highly recommended!
Like the first "Court Gamelan" disc, his collection of recordings comes from Yogyakarta, this time from the Kraton Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat, the major court in Yogya. Originally the editor of the Court Gamelan series, Robert E. Brown, intended for their to be four albums altogether, with each disc representing one of the two courts of Yogya and and of Solo, but the fourth disc has yet to be released. This recording represents the Yogya style in its most "conservative" form as the greater court experienced much less influence from the Solonese style that the court at Paku Alaman (volume 1) did. The most striking difference between this and the previous is the very loud style of playing that is typical of classic Yogya gamelan. The tracks featured hear are divided into the pieces which feature the robust playing of the louder instruments -- large metallophones (bonang, demung and saron) -- and those that showcase the softer instruments -- rebab (two stringed fiddle), suling (flute), male and female singers, gender (metallophone with small, flat keys suspended with strings over resonators and played with padded mallets) and celampung (plucked zither). Basically the two forms are mutually exclusive given that the sheer volume of the combined loud instruments effectively drowns out any quieter instruments from being heard. The contrasting transitions between loud and soft sections can be stunning, as in "Gendhing Lung Gadhung". The piece begins with a raucous procession of loud instruments played so hard you can hear the keys buzzing as they vibrate against the pins that bind them to their wooden casings. Then, suddenly the loud instruments part like storm clouds to reveal the softer instruments and vocalists. The haunting melody sung by the vocal chorus of men and women is made eerier by the varying interpretations of their parts -- so that vocal entries and cadences are staggered. This disc presents a variety of traditional and ceremonial pieces associated specifically to this court and is appropriately book ended by a piece (Gendhing Prabu Mataram) which would accompany the sultan's entrance and one (Gendhing Tedhak Saking) for his departure. Also included a wonderful 26 minute suite (itself a reduction of a two hour event) for dance, Golek Lambangsari and two shorter pieces: "Gendhing Sumyar" and "Gendhing Rangu-rangu".
Originally released in 1969, "The Jasmine Isle" is a collection of several short pieces for gamelan interspersed with one likewise brief piece of solo gender and two of solo gambang. Not the best in the series, this one is still interesting for its inclusion of the solo recordings from both the gender and gambang, which -- despite their being two of the more subtle and refined components within the gamelan are pretty much masked by the din of the other instruments on the other recordings of Javanese gamelan in this series. The Javanese gender, with its thin bronze keys suspended by strings over metal resonators and played with padded mallets, has a strikingly different sound than the Balinese variant. The attack of the sounding notes is so soft and the sustain so long that the instrument sounds almost like an early Italian pipe organ. Like the Balinese gender, the technique is very difficult and requires simultaneous playing and damping of the keys with the pads of both hands to reduce the overlapping of tones. The gambang is a wooden instrument much like a xylophone or marimba which is also played with a pair of padded mallets. On this recording, the two gambang pieces are solo variants of two pieces also played by the entire gamelan of this disc. The pieces for gamelan here are a mix of Sundanese (West Java), Solonese (Surakarta) and Yogyanese styles.
It's been a while since we've heard from the Trikont label, and we've missed them. In the past, they've brought us some all time aQ faves, the Flashbacks series, Africa Raps, so many amazing compilations: Beyond Istanbul, Doom & Gloom, Creative Outlaws, In Prison, Dope & Glory and of course Ho! Roady Music From Vietnam. Always impeccably curated, with extensive liner notes, tons of photos, and an in-depth history of the music and the performers.
Konkani Songs is a fantastic addition, Music from India, a sort of Indian light and folk music, ballads, big band jazz, torch songs, festive folky dance numbers, all with a hint of Bollywood, as well as plenty of other influences, Western soundtrack music, Morricone, fifties and sixties European pop, but all so distinctly and uniquely Indian.
Anyone into the Sublime Frequencies series will definitely want to grab one of these, sounds both familiar and foreign, far out and classic, groovy Eastern melodies intertwine with Klezmer like accordions, soaring dramatic strings, chiming bells, wild percussion, the sounds slipping from calypso to mariachi, Bollywood to cheesy pop, groovy funk to organ driven sort-of-country, rad groovy surfy garage to dark tango-y waltzes, the sound is uniformly warm and fuzzy, that gorgeous washed out old recording sound. But it's the vocalists that seal the deal, from deep baritones, to sweet songbird croons, some hushed and intimate, some intense and expressive, sometimes a perfect match for the music backing it up, sometimes brilliantly at odds, we've only just begun to dig into the liner notes, there's much to learn about Onkani songs, but based on the songs alone, this could be one of our favorite comps of the year so far.
EMI set up recording studios on the Pakastani border, the result is this Sufi hoe down.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Yet another fantastic collection of Southeast Asian pop, funky and fuzzy, jangly and garagey, poppy and psychedelic. Let's A Go-Go definitely sounds like it could have ended up on Sublime Frequencies, but in spirit seems to fall closer to one of our favorite comps ever, Teen Dance Music From China And Malaysia, the focus here less cultural and anthropological, and more fun fun fun. There are several tracks from Dara Puspita, whose entire collected work was recently reissued on Sublime Frequencies, and which should give you a good idea of the sort of fuzzy garage pop you can expect here, but besides DP, there's not a single band here we've heard of, but they're all fantastic, Rita Chao, The Bes, Patrina, Hai Fei, The Dee-Tee's, The Crescendos, The Blue Beats, Rocky Teoh, Charlie And His Go-Go Boys, Lotus Liew, Orkes Tropicano... And of course there are a handful of covers, in keeping with Southeast Asia's obsession with Western pop music, the perfect examples being both Patrina's "One To Nine Walkin", and Charlie And His Go-Go Boys' "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'", the first a cool reinterpretation of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'", almost identical to the original, in arrangement at least, even with the change in title, the vocals a bit more playful and girlish, and there's the addition of a cool almost Christmasy sounding chiming guitar breakdown between every verse! And the second a wild sexy sixties instrumental version, with the vocals replaced by horns, a go-go jam true to the band's name for sure.
The whole record is like some super exotic sixties dance party, flutes flutter, drums shuffle, organs hum and wheeze, melodies twist and tangle, the sound definitely Asian, but also Western, from fuzzed out garage rockers, to cool garage-ified Asian folk, most of the vocalists are female, but the handful of males representing are pretty spectacular, the Dee-Tee's "Just Because" is a haunting minor key ballad, the Quests' "The Dancer" is total Beatles-esque jangle (definitely cobbled together from a handful of parts from various Beatles songs), there's a groovy version of "Wooly Bully", there's some sixties space aged garage a la the Telstars and so much more.
Totally wild and fun, and fuzzy and funky and so varied, a fantastic comp that will definitely appeal to Sublime Frequencies obsessives, Southeast Asian pop nerds, and anyone who bought Teen Dance Music From China And Malaysia, loved it to death but wanted more more more!
Short form review: Ridiculously awesome.
We mean, kind of a no-brainer here, you know you want this - the sequel to B-Music's indeed wonderful The Sound Of Wonder comp has arrived, and of course it's awesome. As the subtitle Plugged-In Sounds of Wonder at the Pakistani Picture House suggests, it's another 16 tracks of vintage "Lollywood" soundtrack gems, exotic pop produced by the Lahore film industry circa the '60s and '70s, taken from the vaults of EMI Pakistan; a spicy blend of impassioned vocals, fuzz guitars, analog synths, spacey effects, lush orchestration, and ethnic hand percussion, music that's just a bit rawer and if possible zanier than its Bollywood counterpart, though not too dissimilar...
Life Is Dance sure starts off with a bang, a Great Googly Moogly of a track called "Zambo Zambo" boasting crazy gruff vocals that will have you staring at your stereo. That one goes on for nearly nine minutes, really a wild ride full of curious, catchy sonic juxtapositions. And somehow this album's compilers keep up the "Urdu-groove" awesomeness from there on in. Many of the big names Lollywood history appear here, among 'em Sohail Rana and Nahid Akhtar.
As always with B-Music/Finders Keepers stuff, impeccably researched, lovingly presented, with informative liner notes and evocative graphics...
Dust-To-Digital does it again! With what might be one of their most impressive releases to date. Which is saying a lot, considering how much we love pretty much everything they release. A quick list of some of our favorite D-T-D releases should give you an idea of what we're talking about: those recent Lonnie Holley albums, Kassidat: Raw 45's from Morocco, Luk Thung: Classic & Obscure 78's From The Thai Countryside, Opika Pende: Africa At 78rpm, Pictures Of Sound, Excavated Shellac, Victrola Favorites, we could go on and on and on and on. Look up any of those on the aQ site and read our extensive and effusive ravings about all of them.
And this new one, a sprawling four cd collection of 78s from Southeast Asia, is yet another stunning release, in every way, the mysterious and lovely music collected here, the design, the research, it's a gorgeous object on top of being one of the best reissue compliations of the year. Curated by David Murray, who also assembled the Luk Thung and Kassidat collections, and who curates the Haji Maji blog, which explores 78rpm Asian music, Longing For The Past is like a class in early 20th century Southeast Asian music in a box, 90 tracks, four and a half hours, the music culled from the years 1905-1966, and offering up an expansive and varied sonic snapshot of music from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The temptation is to simply paraphrase the extensive liner notes, but there's just too much here to fit into a review. We're also tempted to describe this compilation song by song, but again, we could do a whole list just on this one release. All you really need to know, is that this is fantastic. The music is incredible, an breathtaking sampling of Southeast Asian music, fans of the genre, even those who consider themselves amateur experts, will be blown away, many of these tracks reissued for the first time, and the sonic breadth is stunning too, folk music, pop music, gamelans, percussion, strings, gorgeous vocals, so varied that it almost seems too reductive to even describe a handful of them, odds are lots of aQ-ers are gonna want this already, but check out the sound samples below too. Odds are you'll be smitten. And in terms of cultural import, that can't be underestimated, as much about the music of this era, from this region, has remained mostly unexplored before now.
And as with all Dust-To-Digital releases, the packaging is crazy. There's a huge nearly 300 page hardcover book, with tons of liner notes, about the record industry in Southeast Asia, music from each country, and a complete breakdown of each track here, with a description of the artist and the song, not to mention an extensive bibliography, as well as hundreds of vintage photographs, reproductions of record labels and sleeves, and so much more. The cds themselves are packaged in a massive 8 panel digisleeve, printed and embossed, and everything is then housed in a deluxe printed/embossed box. So gorgeous. And for world music obsessives, absolutely essential!!
MPEG Stream: VA N H I B A N W I T H T H E VA N H I B A N T R O U P E "Xu Toi Bang Qui Phi, Thu Nhi" [/audio/valngngftpst4cddtd1.m3u]
The Love, Peace & Poetry series compiles the obscurest of the obscure lost psychedelic music of the sixties, records that collectors spend vast sums of money on. Following the American and Latin American volumes, this long-awaited third volume brings together gems from Japan, Korea, India, Cambodia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Turkey, spanning the years 1967 to 1977. Authoritative liner notes from OR Records' Stan Denski round out the package. Get this and soon you too will be a fan of such artists as The Mops, Erkin Koray, Jung Hyun & the Men, Mogollar, and the unknown Cambodian combo that provides this disc's very rockin' track five. Recommended!
We recently went a little crazy for a compilation on Finders Keepers called Thai Dai, which was was more specifically, a collection of tracks from "The Heavier Side Of The Luk Thung Underground", Luk Thung being the 'country music' of Thailand, a form of pop song that is the voice of the rural community, of the disenfranchised, and thus is a powerful and important part of Thai culture, past and present. Unlike the Thai Dai collection, which explored the sound of Luk Thung tethered to heavier fuzzier rock, and a more Western sound, even going so far as to reinterpret songs by Chicago and Black Sabbath, the songs here are gathered up from obscure 78s, all from the sixties, none of them EVER available outside of Thailand before, offering a fantastic overview of the sound and the songs of the time. Sublime Frequencies and Mississippi records obsessives, anyone who loved the Molam: Thai Country Groove From Isan compilation (sadly now out of print), folks who dug the Excavated Shellac comp (also on Parlortone) odds are this is gonna hit the spot too, the sounds are lush and lovely, the vocals so emotional and distinctive, warm wheezing accordions, traditional hand drums, Latin style horns, the melodies so intoxicating, so distinctly Thai, Gamelan like rhythms, the sound percussive, and propulsive, groovy and funky, the arrangements intricate and complex complex, but still immediate, and intimate and heartfelt and joyous, even when singing about loss and struggle, the sounds seem infused with hope, joyful and exuberant.
Packaged in a gorgeous eye popping full color cover, with an extensive full color six page insert, with photos, reproductions of 78 labels, a history of Thailand, and the music and musicians featured on the compilation.
Originally released on vinyl, now available on cd, here's our review from when we reviewed the lp version back in 2011:
We recently went a little crazy for a compilation on Finders Keepers called Thai Dai, which was, more specifically, a collection of tracks from "The Heavier Side Of The Luk Thung Underground", Luk Thung being the 'country music' of Thailand, a form of pop song that is the voice of the rural community, of the disenfranchised, and thus is a powerful and important part of Thai culture, past and present. Unlike the Thai Dai collection, which explored the sound of Luk Thung tethered to heavier fuzzier rock, and a more Western sound, even going so far as to reinterpret songs by Chicago and Black Sabbath, the songs here are gathered up from obscure 78s, all from the sixties, none of them EVER available outside of Thailand before, offering a fantastic overview of the sound and the songs of the time. Sublime Frequencies and Mississippi records obsessives, anyone who loved the Molam: Thai Country Groove From Isan compilation (sadly now out of print), folks who dug the Excavated Shellac comp (also on Parlortone) odds are this is gonna hit the spot too, the sounds are lush and lovely, the vocals so emotional and distinctive, warm wheezing accordions, traditional hand drums, Latin style horns, the melodies so intoxicating, so distinctly Thai, Gamelan like rhythms, the sound percussive, and propulsive, groovy and funky, the arrangements intricate and complex complex, but still immediate, and intimate and heartfelt and joyous, even when singing about loss and struggle, the sounds seem infused with hope, joyful and exuberant.
Packaged in a gorgeous eye popping full color digipak, with an thick booklet, with photos, reproductions of 78 labels, a history of Thailand, and the music and musicians featured on the compilation. So great!!
Another classical tradition on the verge of extinction, thankfully immortalized to some degree on this disc from Smithsonian Folkways. The repertoire of the Burmese harp long considered the zenith of Burmese cultural expression has, like most art forms in this world which require vast study and patience, been on the losing side of a battle with popular music for many years now. It's maybe somewhat ironic that the current repressive government of Burma (since renamed Myanmar) is responsible for the attempted resurgence in the instrument's place in society. The efforts have apparently been too little, too late as the master harpist featured on this recording, Inle Myint Maung, passed away shortly after these recordings were made. Whether he was able to impart enough of his knowledge onto his students and whether they take it to heart to continue the tradition remains to be seen. On these recordings Inle Myint Maung is accompanied by vocalist Daw Yi Yi Thant. The pair mix and mingle their melodic lines in a melodic counterpoint with the vocalist's sustained notes punctuated by percussive embellishments from the harp. As you've come to expect from all Smithsonian Folkways releases, this comes with extensive and well written liner notes.
MPEG Download: INLE MYINT MAUNG & YI YI THANT "The Glory of the King" [/audio/mahagitagloryofking.mp3]
There is no more powerful form of vocalizing than Tuvan throat singing. Tibetan chants, opera, death metal grunts, they all pale in comparison to the gorgeous multi-toned 'whistle singing' that throat singers use to create two distinct tones at once, throat singing is one of the few truly mysterious singing styles, and one that still remains difficult to understand, with no real scientific explanation as to how it is actually done, merely educated guesses. The style has been popularized worldwide by the group Huun-Huur-Tu, who have been performing and recording for almost 20 years, in fact recently they performed here in SF. And speaking to the above mentioned power and mystery, we happen to know that in attendance were several local extreme metal musicians, who for years had been trying to learn to throat sing! We've even mentioned in a review or two how amazing a metal band with a throat singing vocalist would be. Maybe some day...
These recordings from 1969, originally only released in the Soviet Union, are only now being released worldwide for the first time. And like most of the Tuvan music we've heard, it's totally mesmerizing, utterly unique, and so beautiful. There are several distinct styles, but most involve the vocalist producing two tones at once, a low raspy buzz, and a high pitched whistle, the buzz acting as a background for the whistle like melodies. The sound is so completely unique, unlike anything you've ever heard, unless you've heard Tuvan throat singing before. Typically, the singes voices tend to sound a bit like Popeye, a raspy croak, that slips seamlessly into that haunting multi-toned whistle/buzz. Sometimes the sound is warm and shimmery, the two notes, the tones perfectly meshed, other times, the vocals are a long drawn out froglike croak, the whistle not in counterpoint as much as the two tone s being produced simultaneously, often as a harmony to an instrumental melody. And the instruments are quite unique too, lots of buzzing strings, Tuvan instruments, of one, two, three or more strings, much like a fiddle, or cello, various woodwinds and of course the Jew's Harp, which is the perfect accompaniment to throat singing.
The instrumental passages here convey the same sort of spirit even sans vocals, moody and melancholic, longing and wistful, the strings buzz and shimmer, long drawn out tones making up slowly unfolding melodies.
The final two tracks are perhaps the most unique. One features solo Jew's Harp, but with the player incorporating a throat singing style, turning the harp's unique sound into an even more unique, twisted melodic vocalized buzz. And the final track, is one of the few examples we've heard of female singing from the region, and while the woman here does not throat sing per se, her voice is lovely, and the melody haunting, the plucked strings perfectly intertwined with the emotive vocalizing. So lovely.
In fact this whole record is fantastic. Anyone who already loves the music of Tuva will want to add this to their collection, and anyone who is hearing this stuff for the first time, will, like most of us, probably become obsessed and need to track down everything they can. It's that powerful.
Includes a massive booklet with new liner notes, photos and an essay on throat singing.
One of the latest (and the second to be reviewed by us) in the budget line of CD-Rs from the always wonderful Khmer Rocks label, all of them go-go tunes -- which means that all, but a few have the unifying element of the chorus "ah go go". One would think that would get a little monotonous, but the tracks are sufficiently different from one another that one hardly notices the redundancy of lyrics. The sprightly tempoed numbers on this collection begin with Sinn Sisamouth's "Navy". Over a backdrop of surfy, reverb-laden guitar, the Elvis of Cambodian rock -- Sinn Sisamouth -- croons a with a healthy dose of slapback echo that seems requisite in all the tracks of this era. There is at least one overlapping song here, "Monkey", which was also on the second volume of Cambodian Rocks. Lots of 60's garagey psych tracks make this collection resemble the Parallel World comp. more on the whole than the three Khmer Rocks versions. It's pretty much a stripped down rock setup on all the songs here, which means not so much keyboard on this one. The guitar's the thing here and each track seems graced with at least one guitar solo. As you might have guessed from the "name dropping" above, this collection does include the English translations of the artists' names and song titles (no lyrics though). About 75 percent of the 13 tracks are Sisamouth's, four are from Pan Ron and one is by Ros Sereysothea.
I remember when the Butthole Surfers' Locust Abortion Technician came out, how blown away I was by the album. On top of all their own material, here was this totally weird song which they irreverantly looped over one word that happened to sound like an English vernacular term for female genitalia. Funny the first time through, I always wanted a copy of the original recording which the Surfers lifted that track from because I thought it just kicked ass in its own right. I know you think I'm gonna say that that song is on this collection. Sorry, it's not. But if you loved that song "Kuntz" for what it was (despite Gibby's juvenile chicanery), you'll definitely be excited by the Molam tracks on this disc. Compiled by Mark Gergis (I Remember Syria, Cambodian Cassette Archives, Neung Phak) from a multitude of sources -- LPs, 45s and cassettes -- this collection of Molam comes from a distinct window in Isan, Thailand history. Molam, which comes from the rural areas of Northeastern Thailand and neighboring Laos, was for many years generally charactarized by male and female vocals backed by the khaen (a free-reed mouth organ). Migrating rural Thai and Laotian people to the cities modernized their Molam with electric guitars, bass, drums and keyboards and the music spread like a fad to the urban population. Inevitably, through the ever changing nature of music, and the economically driven producers, the electronic keyboard surpassed the need for a band and the music was more often than not reduced to the standard pop that is ubiquitous throughout Thailand. This then is a time capsule of the glory days of molam gone electric. Fans of Neung Phak will be familiar with the track which begins this collection, as it's also the opening track of Neung Phak's debut. So those of you who thought Mark couldn't tune his bass can hear his alibi playing the original tune off key as is the style. Certainly fans of the Cambodian Rocks albums should take heed here, but will find a collection of tracks that are much more removed from Western rock. Firstly, there are no covers of rock songs, nor are the melodies here even related -- except by chance -- to Western pop. These are all traditional tunes that have merely been arranged with modern electric instrumentation (which isn't to say that you won't here any khaen on these tunes). It is the vocals though that are what really drive these songs, modernized or no. With melodies that seem utterly independent of what the band is playing, the lilting, almost yodelled, singing is unlike that of any other region in the world. Dare I say it's sultry. Oh so very highly recommended!!
I know we went on about the Butthole Surfers when we reviewed the first volume in Sublime Frequencies' Thai Country Groove From Isan series. Hard not to, considering that most of us were first exposed to Thai music via the Buttholes, and their only slightly altered version of a classic Thai track. Minus some audio fuckery, the track was presented in its almost unaltered original form. And everyone we know loved that track, as much or more than the rest of the disc. At the time, none of the folks we knew really had any idea where to find more music like that.�
Years later, the Sun City Girls' Sublime Frequency label, launched a totally kick ass series of compilations, gathering amazing and mysterious music from all over Asia, one of which focused on Molam Thai music, and while it didn't include THAT track, most of the tracks did sound quite similar, some even weirder and wilder... It ended up being one of our favorite discs in the ever expanding Sublime Frequencies sonic universe... until now!
Volume two is simply more of the same, but more is what we wanted, every track a gem, some weird and wacked, some achingly beautiful, all awesome.�
Quick background, Molam is the music that came from rural areas of Thailand and Laos, dueling female and male vocals, mouth organ, but as folks moved to the city, the music was modernized, incorporating the Western style rock band lineup, adding psychedelic fuzz guitar, electronic organ, and all manner of effects. The results are of course strange and wondrous, quirky, funky and super rocking, the guitars twang and buzz, strange little curlicues of melody, over relentless, propulsive grooves, the drums, simple and motorik, over the top, keyboards drift, and guitars occasionally explode into wild overdriven leads, before settling back into their strange convoluted melodic framework, horns moan and bleat, disco wah guitars drift over reggae like rhythms, but the vocals, wow! Much like in the first volume, it's the vocals that make it, they all seem to be singing variations of the vocal line in the Butthole Surfers' "Kuntz", that particularly sing songy lilt, sometimes spoken, other times wailed, always introducing their own melodies to the already melodically complex musical backdrop... so so so so good! Can't wait for volume three! (and while you're at it, check out the amazing�Ghost Of Isan: Thailand's Psychedelic Ghost Festival dvd, rife with breathtaking imagery, and more remarkable Molam sounds...)
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Another volume in Sublime Frequencies series of compilations documenting the amazing and mysterious music of Myanmar (aka Burma). The first volume was an intense barrage of manic Burmese pop, the second focused on guitar music of Myanmar, and this new volume is all about the Nat Pwe. You may remember the DVD on Sublime Frequencies from a while back, which visually documented various Nat Pwe's in Burma, and if you were like us, you were completely blown away, by not just the spectacle, but the amazing music as well. For those new to the Nat Pwe, Nats are ghost spirits, most often historical figures who met tragic ends, and who are believed to have the power to change lives, for better or for worse. So Pwe's are ceremonies designed to appease the Nats and occur on a daily basis, for almost any reason, health, good luck, weddings and new businesses, but like any powerful ceremony, they cam also be used for evil.�
The festivals are amazing. Celebratory, wild and raucous, huge floats, giant phalluses, people throwing money and cigarettes, costumes and headdresses, lots of crossdressing, lots of drinking, folks going into trances... all to the strange and amazing strains of this fantastical music.
And it is fantastic, some of the wildest and most jubilant music we've heard. The root sounds are definitely Burmese, the percussion and the vocals will definitely sound familiar to fans of Burmese music, this is somehow even more manic and spirited. A dense assemblage of bells, cymbals, gongs, xylophones and drums drums drums. A gorgeously clattery percussive wonderland, dense and complex, with vocals that soar over the top, drenched in reverb. It's all acoustic, but it sounds so loud and incredibly intense. And beautiful. Hard to describe, as all great music is, it makes you want to dance, and trance out simultaneously, powerful, emotional and so wild and wonderful.�
Compiled from numerous live recordings, and featuring many popular Burmese songs and many famous Burmese performers. As always, tons of liner notes, and amazing photos. And if this has at all piqued your interest, see if you can find a friend who's got that now out-of-print (bummer!) DVD, as the Nat Pwe's have to be seen to be believed!
Early on in the 20th century a new genre of gamelan emerged in Bali and became known as Gong Kebyar (meaning "to burst" or "bloom"). Kebyar is a populist form born, ironically enough, out of the Dutch supplanting of the Balinese court. Accounts as to
Volume one features a wide selection of pieces including the now famous dance Teruna Jaya, composed in 1914, which is the cornerstone of the kebyar style, three pieces written between 1925 and 1984 and three traditional pieces arranged for gamelan gong kebyar. The tracks were all recorded live, many of them at Bali's prestigious National Institute of the Arts (S.T.S.I.) in Denpasar, between 1982 and 1994 by Bali's top musicians. Culled from over 300 hours of recordings, they represent some of the best and liveliest performances of kebyar caught on tape.
Early on in the 20th century a new genre of gamelan emerged in Bali and became known as Gong Kebyar (meaning "to burst" or "bloom"). Kebyar is a populist form born, ironically enough, out of the Dutch supplanting of the Balinese court. Accounts as to
Whereas volume one featured a variety of works written throughout the genre's existence by various composers past and present, volume two focuses on one of Bali's up and coming stars, an inspired and prolific composer and performer named I Nyoman Windha. So popular are his works that it's not unheard of at kebyar competitions that two competing groups will both be performing compositions by Windha. The tracks on this disc were recorded in 1991 and 1994. All the tracks, like on volume one, were recorded live and most of the performances were connected in some way with a kebyar festival competition, either during a rehearsal or the competition itself (you can hear the audience's response to the gamelan's performance clearly on the first track.)
Founded in 1900 by Carl Stumpf, The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv is a repository devoted to archiving the musics of the world before their eventual destruction by encroaching modernization brought about by global capitalism. Case in point is presented on page two
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Let's just start by reiterating what we said in the last list: 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!
By now we've listed numerous recordings from Bali already, and with good reason: the people of Bali live and breathe music and art. It's no wonder that they've been the source of fascination from artists dating back to Walter Spies and are currently inundated with the clumsey feet of foreign tourists who flock to the island every year. Much like the beloved Indonesian Soundscapes, Night Recordings From Bali is a collection of field recordings -- made by Alan Bishop and Manford Cain in 1989 -- of the sort not likely to be captured by traditional "ethnomusicologists" or found on the likes of an Explorer or even Smithsonian Folkways disc. For instance: "Rubber Television", a recording of a television drama or soap opera accompanied by gamelan, dripping water sound effects that warbles pathetically like they were being recorded with a dying cassette deck (courtesy of Bali's notorious humidity maybe?) While many of the other recordings are of Bali's numerous, well exposed gamelan and sundry other music ensembles like anklung, kebyar and kecak, the man-on-the-spot style recording fuses the sounds of the frogs and insects to the performances where another recordist might have isolated the ensemble. Additionally, there are recordings here of wild life segueing between musical performances and even a recording of a cremation ceremony where the surviving loved ones battle in a traditional tug of war between those wishing to bring the body to the pyre and those resisting the inevitable final journey.
Along with Funky Frauleins and the French Sixties Girls compilations, how could we resist the allure of Nippon Girls, a swinging mod-tastic compilation of hip-swaying and frug-dancing femme-fronted big beat gems from sixties Japan? We couldn't, and you probably can't either. The cd came out a few years ago, but the vinyl version only just got released so we thought we should finally review this especially after the success of another Big Beat disc, Nippon Guitars, we reviewed a few lists ago. Feeling the influence of Western pop music in the sixties (including Bossa Nova from Brazil and Ye Ye from France), Japanese musicians capitalized on the new sound often by lifting popular songs wholesale and rewriting the lyrics. But the enthusiasm with which these sexy and soulful songs are performed and arranged make them pretty outstanding in their own right. Acid-y guitars, cinematic orchestral flourishes, and sharp and dynamic arrangements are just too infectious to be ignored, especially by beautiful women who look and sound this fantastically fierce. It's party time!
Note: the cd version contains the full 25 tracks while the lp version only covers the first 12 tracks from 1967-1969. We assume there will be a follow-up volume 2 vinyl comp with the other tracks.
Along with Funky Frauleins and the French Sixties Girls compilations, how could we resist the allure of Nippon Girls, a swinging mod-tastic compilation of hip-swaying and frug-dancing femme-fronted big beat gems from sixties Japan? We couldn't, and you probably can't either. The cd came out a few years ago, but the vinyl version only just got released so we thought we should finally review this especially after the success of another Big Beat disc, Nippon Guitars, we reviewed a few lists ago. Feeling the influence of Western pop music in the sixties (including Bossa Nova from Brazil and Ye Ye from France), Japanese musicians capitalized on the new sound often by lifting popular songs wholesale and rewriting the lyrics. But the enthusiasm with which these sexy and soulful songs are performed and arranged make them pretty outstanding in their own right. Acid-y guitars, cinematic orchestral flourishes, and sharp and dynamic arrangements are just too infectious to be ignored, especially by beautiful women who look and sound this fantastically fierce. It's party time!
Note: the cd version contains the full 25 tracks while the lp version only covers the first 12 tracks from 1967-1969. We assume there will be a follow-up volume 2 vinyl comp with the other tracks.
The latest from Sublime Frequencies comes in the form of this killer collection of Pakistani instrumentals, recorded between 1966 and 1976, the decade of music reflected by the decade spent putting this collection together, not just gathering the songs, but actually contacting all the various musicians, but the results speak for themselves, a wild assemblage of groovy, fuzzy garage and beat and surf music, all instrumental of course, with buzzing sitars, wheezing organs, distorted electric guitars, tangled melodies, all buzzy and psychedelic and so very good!
The history of the music, as always, is as interesting as the music itself. Pop music was banned for the most part, but in 1966 a nationwide movement was begun to overthrow the dictatorship, which did eventually happen, resulting in a surge in popularity of bands playing American style music, and of course along with the music came drugs and long hair and parties, and a huge flow of hippies from all over the world. Sadly most of those bands never recorded, as the industry was geared more toward film music, and the bands that did record, typically did traditionals or version of popular songs from films.
This mini musical revolution ended in 1977 when the Socialist party was overthrown, and the military chief took over, establishing a pure Islamic state governed by Sharia law, which meant alcohol and nightclubs were banned, films and TV were heavily censored, which resulted in most of the artists leaving Pakistan for Europe or the US.
But while it was going on, some amazing music was being made, as evidenced by these tracks, wild and funky and fuzzy and sweaty and groovy, playful percussion wrapped around garagey fuzz guitar, surfy riffs, spidery melodies, Ventures-y reverb, a definite Joe Meek vibe to lots of these songs, dreamily lo-fi, lots of organs and old synths, unfurling frantic flurries of notes, plenty of sitar buzz shimmering throughout, and the fact that these tracks are instrumental, definitely makes them way more accessible to the less adventurous listeners out there. We used to marvel at the fact that we sold so many copies of Ethiopiques volume 4, but realized that perhaps it was because it was instrumental too. Needless to say, the music here, even sans vocals, is plenty wild and wonderful enough to have even the most seasoned of world music explorers in utter bliss.
SUPER LIMITED as always, gorgeously packaged in a super heavy full color gatefold sleeve, with extensive liner notes, and lots of photos.
From Mindanao in the South Philippines comes this great collection of recordings of instrumental lute recordings. Two women, Fingguy Flang and Luming Tuan, nationally recognized for their talents on the hegelung perform six tracks each. The hegelung is a long and slender two string lute. The performer using one string to produce a drone while working out a melody on the other. Alternately simple and virtuosic, the melodies of the hegelung are peppered with ornamental hammer-ons and pull-offs like the best heavy metal lead guitarists or 5-string banjo players out there. Awesome.
Those folks at Finders Keepers / B-Music never stop wowing us with the killer stuff they dig up. This list, we've made their reissue of the Aussie psychedelic biker flick soundtrack Stone one of our Records Of The Week, and we're constantly having to order more copies of recent discs like The BYG Deal (documenting rarities released by the radical French underground label BYG) and The Sound Of Wonder (an indeed wondrous collection of music from Pakistan's "Lollywood" cinema).
Now, here's Pomegranates, an amazing compilation of "Persian pop, funk, and psych of the 60s and 70s" compiled by a pair of Iranian-American music lovers delving into the pop culture past of their parents' generation, prior to the fall of the Shah, an era of rapid Westernization, economic stratification, and eventual sociopolitical upheaval. Looking back with bittersweet nostalgia, enthusiasm, and curiosity, they've put together a dazzling array of music that's usually quite groovy, also often melancholic, and sometimes subversive. Several tracks are considered classics, some are total obscurities (same to us!), all are irresistible. It's a colorful hybrid of East and West, of Persian musical traditions (already a melting pot of international influences) and electric youth energy. You'll hear strains of Western psych-pop, James Brown funk, Indian raga, Gypsy flamenco, Turkish folk, another other 'exotic' Middle Eastern motifs...
So many great tracks on here, the compilers almost making it impossible to select faves 'cause it's all so good, but if we had to pick just one highlight maybe it would be popular singer Googoosh's "Talagh", which sets her sweet voice soaring over one of the most insidiously slinky grooves EVER, pulsating with sinister fuzz-funk energy under flourishes of cinematic strings. She's got a couple more tracks on here, as befits her status as one of Iran's top pop stars of the day, a true sensation. If you like Turkey's Selda, you'll like what you'll hear here from Googoosh and this disc's other female vocalists. We also should note the zinging sitar funk of Abbass Mehrpouya's "Soul Raga", definitely another standout (it also appears on the full-length Mehrpouya reissue we raved about recently). But we haven't scratched the surface, the tracks by the other artists here, including Parva, Zia, Soli, Sima Bina, Ramesh, Noosh Afarin, Kourosh Yaghmaie, and others, are all awesome too, varying from groovy dancefloor workouts to aching love songs, sometimes both in one. Lots to enjoy, dive in!!
Oh, and of course like all Finders Keepers releases, this is nicely appointed, in a slipcover, with a thick, illustrated cd booklet featuring extensive, informative liner notes from co-compiler Mahssa Taghinia.
FYI we'll be getting a few copies of the import vinyl edition soon, they're not here yet though...
By now, we're used to the idea of rock n' roll in its sixties heyday as a GLOBAL phenomenon, kids everywhere, East and West, North and South, rockin' to that crazy beat. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of quite a few internationally-digging DJs and collectors, the past few years have been especially fruitful ones for reissues of far-flung rock artifacts on labels like Sublime Frequencies, Now-Again, and Soundway.
We've heard groovy groups from Turkey, Cambodia, Ghana, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and seemingly every place else. Certainly there's been a few releases that have delved into the scene in Malaysia and Singapore, but this fabulous new collection on Sublime Frequencies is THEE one to get if you want to learn about the great electric beat music being made by and for teenagers in that part of the world, circa 1964-1970.
Despite the conservative nature of Malaysian society, the rock n' roll revolution took root among its youth too. This Pop Yeh Yeh comp proves it! (The term "Pop Yeh Yeh", by the way, referring to rock music sung in Malay, was apparently derived from the "yeah yeah yeah" chorus of The Beatles' song "She Loves You", though it may have been another British band, Cliff Richard and The Shadows, that was the bigger influence on the nascent Malay rock scene.) While the kids there didn't get as wild in the streets as they may have elsewhere, with drugs and sex and all of that, they were still happy to let their hair down (if only just a bit) to make some sweet rock n' roll records. There's 26 such tracks are collected here, full of catchy melodies, fuzzy guitars, warbling organs... There's energetic dance numbers, and lovely ballads both. Some have the twang of surf music, others the sultry singers and lush arrangements of Hindi movie soundtracks, which were another big influence on Pop Yeh Yeh, besides Western pop rock and traditional Malay folk music forms.
This compilation is an obvious labor of love, years in the making, and can't be faulted for any lack of thoroughness. The physical product and depth of research set the bar pretty high for future collections of this type! It's a big package all right, colorful and informative. The tri-fold digipack contains not one but TWO thick booklets, they're both needed to contain all the extensive liner notes (book 1, a general essay on the history of rock n' roll in Malaysia and Singapore, plus lyrics to the songs on the cd; book 2, detailed write-ups on each and every track on the disc) plus tons of vintage photos of the sharp-dressed young men and women who made this delightful music, which despite all the interestin' reading, is still the main draw here after all! Another winner from Sublime Frequencies, guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
One of two Sublime Frequencies vinyl reissues for Record Store Day (the other being by Omar Souleyman). This fave is out of print on cd, and also already out of print in the this new vinyl version, too. We didn't even think we'd be able to list it, but one our our suppliers got their copies late so we snagged a few post-RSD. But this is probably it. Here's what we said about this great comp before...
By now, we're used to the idea of rock n' roll in its sixties heyday as a GLOBAL phenomenon, kids everywhere, East and West, North and South, rockin' to that crazy beat. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of quite a few internationally-digging DJs and collectors, the past few years have been especially fruitful ones for reissues of far-flung rock artifacts on labels like Sublime Frequencies, Now-Again, and Soundway.
We've heard groovy groups from Turkey, Cambodia, Ghana, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and seemingly every place else. Certainly there's been a few releases that have delved into the scene in Malaysia and Singapore, but this fabulous new collection on Sublime Frequencies is THEE one to get if you want to learn about the great electric beat music being made by and for teenagers in that part of the world, circa 1964-1970.
Despite the conservative nature of Malaysian society, the rock n' roll revolution took root among its youth too. This Pop Yeh Yeh comp proves it! (The term "Pop Yeh Yeh", by the way, referring to rock music sung in Malay, was apparently derived from the "yeah yeah yeah" chorus of The Beatles' song "She Loves You", though it may have been another British band, Cliff Richard and The Shadows, that was the bigger influence on the nascent Malay rock scene.) While the kids there didn't get as wild in the streets as they may have elsewhere, with drugs and sex and all of that, they were still happy to let their hair down (if only just a bit) to make some sweet rock n' roll records. 26 such tracks are collected here, full of catchy melodies, fuzzy guitars, warbling organs... There's energetic dance numbers, and lovely ballads both. Some have the twang of surf music, others the sultry singers and lush arrangements of Hindi movie soundtracks, which were another big influence on Pop Yeh Yeh, besides Western pop rock and traditional Malay folk music forms.
This compilation is an obvious labor of love, years in the making, and can't be faulted for any lack of thoroughness. The physical product and depth of research set the bar pretty high for future collections of this type! It's a big package all right, colorful and informative, with extensive liner notes (first, a general essay on the history of rock n' roll in Malaysia and Singapore, plus lyrics to the songs on the cd; second, detailed write-ups on each and every track) plus tons of vintage photos of the sharp-dressed young men and women who made this delightful music, which despite all the interestin' reading, is still the main draw here after all! Another winner from Sublime Frequencies, guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
The Sublime Frequencies vinyl reissue campaign continues. A few weeks ago, the long out of print Folk and Pop Sounds of Sumatra Vol. 1 cd was repressed on lp, and now another old fave, Princess Nicotine: Folk & Pop Music Of Myanmar gets the same treatment, pressed on vinyl, in a super deluxe full color gatefold sleeve. And while the cd remains out of print, this amazing sonic document is available again, at least for a limited time...
If you have seen the Sublime Frequencies Nat Pwe dvd, then you at least have a rough idea of what you're getting yourself into here. But even if you're not all that familiar with Burmese music, you'll find this compilation truly weird and wonderful. Unlike the handful of Burmese releases on other world music labels, this is something else entirely, a completely raw and unfettered, whole grain Burmese sonic assault. In other words: it's absolutely manic! At its most insane, it's akin to taking your standard, off-the-wall Bollywood arrangement and running it through a prog rock or free jazz filter. Nasal double reed instruments parallel vocal lines, clashing cymbals emphasize every beat, while the pat wain (a set of rice paste tuned drums which encircle the performer) smacks out its own melody like a set of out of tune roto-toms. On the mellower side of things there's strange hallucinogenic Appalachia featuring sudden bursts of piano, interjecting banjo, violin, flute, horn and most oddly: sultry female vocals offset by distorted male vocals. There's also hazy semi-Hawaiian psychedelia, with piano and keyboards pounding out the occasional random chord progression. So intense, and unique and utterly amazing. If you have to chose just one record to blow your mind, this could very well be THE ONE!
If you have the Sublime Frequencies Nat Pwe DVD reviewed a few months back, then you at least have a rough idea of what you're getting yourself into here. But even if you're familiar with Burmese music, you'll find this compilation truly weird and wonderful. Unlike the handful of Burmese releases on Shanachie, this is a completely raw and unfettered, whole grain Burmese sonic assault. In other words: it's absolutely manic! At its most insane, it's akin to taking your standard off the wall Bollywood arrangement and running it through a prog rock or free jazz filter. Nasal double reed instruments parallel vocal lines, clashing cymbals emphasize every beat, while the pat wain (a set of rice paste tuned drums which encircle the performer) smacks out its own melody like a set of out of tune roto-toms. On the mellower side of things there's strange hallucinogenic Appalachia featuring sudden bursts of piano, interjecting banjo, violin, flute, horn and most oddly: sultry female vocals offset by distorted male vocals. There's also hazy semi-Hawaiian psychedelia, with piano and keyboards pounding out the occasional random chord progression. If you have to chose just one record to blow your mind this year, definitely make it this one!
Looking at the cover of this comp, what catches our eye? Well, of course the words PSYCH and FUNK in big electric pink letters. Pretty much had us right there, we're easy like that. But then the fine print on the sticker on the front adds an extra tingle of excitement: "None of these tracks have ever been reissued"! So what we have here is a survey course on some obscure shit, an international collection of freaky, fuzzy, funky jams from the golden years, circa 1968-1975 or so, mostly from groups we'd never heard of before. The ones did know were a good sign, being super groovy and decidedly eccentric. (Though we do have to point out that at least a few of the cuts here actually have been reissued before, that's how we knew 'em!). Here's the lineup: Hunsu Ozkartal Orkestrasi (Turkey), Kukumbas (Nigeria), Mulatu Astatke feat. Belaynesh Wubante and Assegedetch Asfaw (Ethiopia), Kim Sun (South Korea), Petalouda (Greece), Mehr Pooya (Iran), Staff Carpenborg and The Electric Corona (West Germany), The Group (Italy), Armando Sciascia (Italy), Wadih Essafi (Lebanon), Omar Khorshid (Egypt), Metin H. Alatli (Turkey), George Garanian with The Melodiya Jazz Ensemble (Russia), and Eskaton (France). 14 tracks in all, all of 'em b to the a to the d to the ass. Get ready for plenty of percolating percussion, infectious bass lines, analog synth buzz, chicken scratch guitar, greasy organ, drugged out FX, and in many cases Middle Eastern or African or other 'exotic' ethnic elements as appropriate to their nation of origin. Highlights are almost impossible to pick. All the African stuff is killer (Ethiopiques fans take note), so are the Turkish tracks (you want weird? check out how the Metin H. Alatli cut somehow segues from Richard Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith music to stoned cocktail bellydance improv!!), so is everything else. We dig how eerieness and jazziness are combined on "The Feed-back" by The Group (aka Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, featuring Ennio Morricone), and also Armando Sciascia's suspenseful "Circuito Chiuso" is pretty eerie too. Both are from Italy, where it seems that it's hard NOT to sound like you're scoring a phantasmagoric horror flick a la Goblin. Also, we love love love the grandiose extended electro-funk from Magmoid progsters Eskaton that closes out the disc. But why keep writing about this, you know you need it - unless your record collection already includes all these rarities, and there's no way it does.
Lovingly compiled with the help of DJs like Cut Chemist and Stone's Throw's Egon, Psych Funk 101 is truly a lesson in, well, a variety of awesome vintage funkiness, in the tradition of other cool comps like Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word, Obsession, Trap Door, and the Afro-centric Love's A Real Thing. Housed in a handsome digipack, it boasts a thick, 36 page booklet featuring a two-page spread on each track, with full color repro of the original LP or 45 sleeve from whence the cut originated, along with a page of text giving more info than you'd expect.
FYI this also came out on vinyl, but was gone so fast, we don't have any to list. However, we are told it is being repressed, soon we hope...
Psych. Funk. India. The '70s. Yes it's gonna be awesome. Sitars and Bollywood stars, badass grooves and acid rock guitars. This excellent new collection comes from the same folks (deeeeeeep diggers they are) who brought us that incredible international Psych Funk 101 comp a while back. They are EXPERTS. It's not entirely a joke that they present these comps in the guise of academic coursework, their research is extensive and if you pay attention you're gonna learn somethin'. According to the liner notes, Psych Funk 101 is considered a pre-requisite to this new "seminar", which is subtitled "Aesthetic Expressions Of Psychedelic Funk Music In India". Fortunately they don't carry the academic gag too far, and keep grad school jargon to an amusing minimum. (By the way, if you don't have Psych Funk 101, well, we figure you can still audit this course... though we DO recommend picking that one up too).
So, what's this Sa-Re-Ga! all about? 20 tracks, all killer no filler, circa 1970-1983, that showcase several "key figures / movements in Indian Psych Funk", from the garagey late '60s Sgt. Peppery stuff you'd expect from a former British colony (and from anywhere else in the world the Beatles had made their way), to the work of genius Bollywood composer R.D. Burman (and his eventual wife, the famous singer Asha Bhosle), to the Go-Go stylings of brothers Kalyanji Aalyanji Anandji, to hard rock bassist Keith Kanga's "wild beat group" Atomic Forest and related acts. Much information is provided about all of those artists and more in what must be the BIGGEST damn cd booklet we've ever seen. 52 pages!! The digipack sleeve can barely contain it. Packed with tons of dazzling full color graphics and learned text. Totally gettin' your money's worth with this one. (It's packaged like the Forge Your Own Chains comp, equally fat and deluxe.)
But even without the frills, just the music alone would make this a must. You can't listen to this without getting a gleeful smile on your face, from the get-go it's great and then somehow each song manages to top the one before it, with insistent propulsive percussion, bombastic orchestration, impassioned vocals, musique concrete techniques, and indeed some heavy, Hindi, FUNK. We're having trouble picking individual tracks to single out, only because they're ALL so good. But we gotta mention just a few of the super standouts, one of 'em being a live version of the classic "Dum Maro Dum" performed Bhosle and Burman and band at the Royal Albert Hall in 1978. That's a song you've heard before, most likely (the Kronos Quartet even recorded it, on their 2005 album with Bhosle), and it helps to realize that not only does a lot of the music on this disc seem like it oughtta be the most popular stuff in the world, in many cases, it really was quite popular, and not just in India. This rendition of "Dum Maro Dum", which means "Take Another Toke" by the way, was their concert's deliriously ecstatic, well-received finale. Then there's "Freak Out Music", another R.D. Burman number, that couldn't have been a hit, but is certainly Freaked Out. (And it's not even the one here by him that combines the sounds of strings with that of smashing glass.)
We also were excited to hear more from Atomic Forest, a band that provided the title track to the great international fuzz compilation Obsession a few years back (now out of print). They do a cover of a Deep Purple tune, "Mary Long", and of course laden it with extra fuzz. Another one for classic rock fans would be Bappi Lahari's "Everybody Dance With Me", which sounds suspiciously like Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" given an exotic Indian disco makeover, with bongos and wild wails... And, conversely, as an early example of Indian groove filtering into the West, the compilers have included a track by krautrocker/fusioneer Klaus Doldinger, "Sitar Beat", which is indeed just that, and must have been a highlight of the 1969 spy movie soundtrack on which it originally appeared. Which is interesting, 'cause the entry by Indian garage band X'Lents, "Psychedelia", originally from the Simla Beat 70 compilation, sounds like it would be perfect for a James Bond style spy movie too.
So, in sum, quite a lesson, and definitely a fun one. We'd go so far as to say this should be a required course/comp. We've been lucky lately with the quality of comps and other archival releases coming out, documenting vintage music from (for us) far off lands. We recently made the Soundway's The Sounds Of Siam a Record Of The Week, now this Sa-Re-Ga! is making us so happy... and we've got our eye on an upcoming Now-Again comp devoted to '70s Indonesian rock and funk, called Those Shocking Shaking Days, we've got high hopes for that one, it promises to be rad too. The vaguely connected network of collectors and DJs who are responsible for these comps, true labors of love, deserve all our thanks!!
As we said, the compact disc version boasts a massively thick booklet, and the swank double vinyl comes with a large 20 page one too.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Since the beginning of the Century, there has been a growing community of Puerto Ricans in Hawaii. These recordings made in 1990, reflect their unique niche. At times, the music is archaic in comparison to mainland Puerto Rican music, yet is spiced with influences from both Hawaiian and Japanese neighbors.
