The Sanity Muffin cassette label just keeps bringing out the gems. This one is a fantastic mix of obscure psych guitar gems from Asia from the '60s and '70s. From cinematic Spaghetti Western-ish sojourns to go-go pop, electric guitar weirdness, pastoral exoticism and funky eastern soul. Like the Teenage Dance Music from China, Indonesian guitar, Shadow Music of Thailand and Cambodian Rock comps, this is an incredible mix of little heard guitar driven music coming out of various Asian countries. Here are the groups included: The Red Stars, Cousen Brothers, M. Shariff and The Zurah, Salim I., The Caterpillars, Adnan Othman & The Wanderers, The Tones, The Steps, Jong-Yee Sho, The Hawks, M. Johari & Quandos, TLA Production Group, Mei Fong W/ Tony & The Polar Bear Five, Charlie and The White Cloud Orchestra, Group 123, and Apollo Band.
Super limited to 100 copies! Get it while you can!
Of all the Sublime Frequencies collections, the various 'Radio' compilations are definitely our favorites. But at the same time they are also maybe the most problematic, It seems somehow disingenuous to travel to another country, turn on the radio, record several hours worth of music and sound, come home, put those recordings on a cd and then sell them. Not just disingenuous but quite possibly dishonest. It also seems a little weird to be thrilled by all the 'crazy' sounds we hear on the radio in these various countries. A guilty pleasure, very much that aspect of cultural tourism. "The music there is SO WILD!! And SO WEIRD!!" And it seems inconceivable that someone from some other country would come to the US, and do the same thing, returning to their countries to release discs packed with shock jocks, and crappy pop music, and morning zoo's and dry NPR discussions and modern rock and Loveline. But you never know. Although part of the reason that something like that would probably NOT happen, is that American culture, from the music to the clothes to the television shows, is already so invasive, there's probably not a corner of the world where people aren't discussing Lost or Paris Hilton or Brad and Angelina's baby or rocking out to the new Red Hot Chili Peppers. But the music and culture of these other countries does not have the same sort of universal reach. So it is actually quite a thrill to hear all of this amazing music, all of these voices, ads and commercials and songs. It's absolutely fantastic. It's just worth thinking about all that other stuff once in a while and realizing that in a sense, even just listening to these discs, we are guests, and we are digging the work and art, the livelihood and passion of hundreds of musicians and vocalists and deejays and artists. And we are digging it. A whole lot.
The first few 'Radio' compilations were a little too schizophrenic, only allowing us to hear a few seconds of a song before the dial was spun and we were bombarded by some new burst of musical randomness. It was pretty amazing in a totally overwhelming ADD short attention span sort of way, but they rectified that, realizing it was just as dizzying but way more satisfying if we got to hear whole songs. So here we are.
Radio Algeria. A sampling of wonderful sounds from the Mediterranean coast, all the way to the Saharan desert. According to the liner notes, the music represented here includes sacred Islamic traditional music, Berber folk, Andalusian Orchestral music, Tuareg, modern Arabic pop as well as Guesba, classic early Rai, Khabyle and Saharaui, ummm, sorry to say none of us actually know what any of those in the last batch sound like, but needless to say, like the rest of the 'Radio' series, this is a wild, eye opening ride through the airwaves of Algeria. Compiled from recordings made in 2005 of AM, FM and shortwave broadcasts, this is a heady mix of musics new and old, the sound is definitely Middle Eastern, with plenty of tracks sounding almost Bollywood, and a definite French music influence all over the place, the sounds range from modern sounding hip hop double dutch but with the melody played by a snake charmers flute, cheesy eighties schmaltz, groovy twangy buzzing dreamy psych pop, old timey fuzzed out Eastern jazz (like a Middle Eastern Django Reinhardt), killer sixties sounding fuzz rock, that almost sounds like the Butthole Surfers at points, groovy sing songy folk, MTV style romantic ballads, flamenco guitars, and crooned vocals, keening fiddles, tribal drums, some Middle Eastern sounding blues, with sweeping strings and weeping melodies, wild solo female vocals drenched in reverb and soaring, warm operatic male vocals, glossy melancholic pop, shuffling rhythms, strummed acoustic guitars, murky modern pop rock and militaristic big band marches, all interspersed with different variants of local and regional musics. All totally fascinating and completely overwhelming and one of the most amazing sonic travelogues ever! If only the stereos in our cars could pick up Algerian radio, we'd most likely never listen to anything else ever again!
SO RECOMMENDED!
The fourth installment of Sublime Frequencies' Radio series of recordings lands us safely in India. We are led, blind folded through a thousand bazaars and fed a steady diet of Indian film. Indian culture has the most advanced knack for absorbing all other musical art forms and completely subverting them to their own purpose. You've undoubtedly heard a myriad of Bollywood soundtracks by now, so you can consider yourself somewhat prepared for this journey. What you will be overwhelmed by is the sheer immensity of the trip's itinerary. Radio India is like a thousand bollywood cassettes crammed together into one. Yes, like Radios Java, Palestine & Morocco, this one's a channel surfer. Fortunately the Bishops have now mastered the attention spans of the average listener and have thus included somewhat longer snippets -- generally -- softly crossfading to the next selection. And to be fair, you get a lot more than the standard fare that you know from all those Bollywood comps. Along with those -- the most frenetic and maniacal samples to be found -- there's a myriad of other bizarre amalgams of traditional Indian music, traditional Indian music fused with electric organ, veena drones harmonizing with the humming and buzzing of short wave radio anomalies along with soothing voice-overs set to gregorian chants and primitive drum machines. Wow.
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 amazing music and audio you've never heard has been assembled. Balls to fidelity, none of the artists here would be allowed within 10 miles of a Putamayo A+R executive, this is the punk rock of field recordings!
Radio Java is volume 2 in Sublime Frequencies' catalog, and is an absolutely amazing collection of tracks recorded off of stations in Jakarta, Surabaya, Yokyakarta and Bandung in 1989 by Alan Bishop and Manford Cain. Along with some familiar tunes, including a wealth of amazing Jaipongan tracks from West Java (See "West Java: Sundanese Jaipong and Other Popular Music" we listed from the Nonesuch Explorer series). But along with the snippets of Kerongcong (a bizarre amalgam that sounds like lopsided Hawaiian music) and Dangdut (an electrified pop music with ties to Indian film music) there are some insane cuts from radio commercials, enthusiastic DJ's,theater excerpts that are just plain remarkable. The disc is cobbled together in a channel surfing collage that continues to catch you off guard. Just when you've been lulled into teary-eyed submission by some sultry Sundanese singing, you're treated to a noise blast that would make Masami Akita blush. Radio announcers growl with their microphone inputs overloading, and crazy slapback echo that's just uncomprehensible, a cookoo clock rings and is followed by a strange ringing tone that sounds like early FM Synthesis experiments, and all this from one visit. You know there's more good to come soon, and that's a heartening thought in a world that's ever succombing to the blanding effects of U.S. commercial culture. Wonderful!!
It's a strange time to be reviewing a disc collecting various Burmese radio broadcasts, considering the recent natural disaster and the extreme and heartbreaking loss of life. But in some ways it's quite timely, as even in the face of nationwide disaster, the Myanmar government continues to be suspicious of outsiders, refusing international aid, and making recovery and rescue even more difficult that it would already be.
This collection addresses a similar situation, the Burmese government's obsession with controlling everything people outside of Myanmar read or hear about the country, to the point of draconian rules and regulations, and near total control of TV and radio. So, like the liner notes say, here is a rare glimpse of real Burmese life, music, news, commercials, all of the sounds one might experience in an urban center in Myanmar, car stereos, shops, street corners, a gloriously varied collection of sounds and music, voices and broadcasts.
It's tough to make peace with these collections. We've written extensively about it in other reviews. On the one hand they are totally fascinating, the sounds are weird and wild and wonderful, but one must be wary to not objectify and exoticize the people and cultures represented. It's definitely a fine line, and this series and others like it constantly toe that line, but it does seem like these are respectfully assembled and they do seem to help bring people together, to help us familiarize ourselves with worlds we would otherwise never experience in our day to day lives.
And from a purely sonic standpoint, these recording are dizzying, fantastic, so varied and wondrous. It sometimes seems depressing to think about US radio, if we're getting a glimpse of real life in Myanmar, what would people think about us? Car commercials, Madonna, sales, shock jocks, hmmm, then again maybe it is an accurate way to get a feel for a place...
Anyway, all of the politics aside, world music obsessives and field recording geeks will have a field day. These Radio comps are definitely an acquired taste as they have a serious short attention span vibe to them, like driving in a car while some little kid in the front seat randomly switched stations. But unlike here, pretty much every stopon the dial reveals something amazing, or at the very least interesting. All kinds of music, classical Burmese, Western style pop songs, schmaltzy ballads, country, surf, fuzzy psychedelia, commercial jingles and every possible stop in between. But it's definitely not just music. Lots of news broadcasts, some in Burmese, lots in English, commercials, what sound like radio dramas or soap operas, and then a whole bunch of sounds and voices where it's difficult to tell what they are. All in all, an absolutely fascinating sonic document, and another excellent Sublime Frequencies release. But if you're still feeling a little bit weird, maybe if you buy one of these, you can also send a little scratch to the Burmese cyclone relief effort. In fact even if you don't buy one of these you still should...
We know you love that Cambodian rock. And you know what? We love it too. Of late there seems to be an obsession with it; between the 4 Cambodian Rocks collections, the Cambodian Cassette Archives and Dengue Fever, we've had a pretty good run of it thus far. But now Sublime Frequencies is upping the ante with a collection unlike all those that preceded it. While the Khmer Rouge did a pretty good job of wiping out all the original performers, along with thousands of other innocent people and displacing the population of Cambodia, it couldn't completely wipe out the music. The original cassettes, still floating around are still being played on the radio to this day. Except that they aren't always played in strictly original form. Most stations, with the exception of the state run AM one, have taken to playing re-mixed versions of the songs with overdubbed instrumentation ranging from guitars and drums to synth keyboards in an attempt to keep the music fresh with the younger generations of listeners. This collection includes both the un-mixed originals taped off of the state run AM station and the re-mixed versions from the FM stations. Those of you already well suited with the previously released Cambodian rock collections will certainly get a kick out of several cuts here (some of which are most certainly completely different recordings from the ground up). Much more even than the Khmer Rocks releases, this collection has a great deal more variety of tunes (not just the garagey numbers), including some that feature traditional instruments, or at least traditional sounding. One tune in particular features just vocals and solo electric guitar which could easily be the Cambodian Lightnin' Hopkins. Additionally, Radio Phnom Penh differs greatly from the other discs in the Radio series on Sublime Frequencies in that not only are the songs allowed to play all the way through, in their entirety for the most part, but there's only very brief station ID's and disk jockey talking included.
Now all Sublime Frequencies needs to release is an Iranian disc and we'll have big W's "axis of evil" covered. But seriously, of all the countries on the globe -- axis or no -- the biggest cultural blackout has to be North Korea. Assembled by Christiaan Virant from a variety of source material: shortwave radio intercepts, field recordings (recorded in stealth mode in North Korea) and CDs produced by the North Korean government. Virant recorded and or collected most of the tracks between 1995 and 1998, though some of the shortwave tracks were recorded in 2005. Listening to Radio Pyongyang it's hard not to imagine North Korea as being a big version of the Small World exibit at Disneyland. The my-way-or-the-highway solipsist cultural imagineering is something uncle Walt could certainly appreciate. As such, this album is stuffed with Soviet style choruses singing victorious sounding patriotic hymns supported by pounding polka-meets-house beats, and cheery children's choruses doing much the same. That shouldn't be much of a surprise, but there will be sudden breaks in the songs with eighties pop-rock power chords, think the Miami Vice theme, and then suddenly take a wide left into pastoral schmalzy pseudo-classical refrains (often with voice-overs extolling the greatness of the North Korean government and Kim Jong Il). We actually really really enjoyed this, but at the same time are glad we don't have to listen to this sort of stuff 24-7 like those poor folks in North Korea!
Fuck! What a mess of a weird fucking album! This is the sixth "Radio" release from Sublime Frequencies and quite possibly the best (for those who can appreciate the most damaged aspects of bizzare station ID's and channel surferyness). People in the United States sometimes don't realize just how loud our country is. We inundate the world with our radio, television and movies, but rarely have a clue as to what's happening elsewhere in the world. The rest of the world does have to listen to us, like it or not. We hold the cultural bully pulpit. So it's always nice to hear our own cultural exports turned inwards upon themselves, and the "Radio" series from Sublime Frequencies allows us to hear from around the world. Radio Sumatra begins with a seriously demented melange of eighties guitar rock pre-empted by evil gremlin voiced disc jockeys, like the voices you hear in your head after you eat an entire box of Captain Crunch in one sitting. Later, chipper voice talents intone over the what sounds like Sumatran black metal and phone callers to another station perform live karaoke on the radio. And this is only 15 minutes in. Towards the end the sounds of Islamic hip hop and primitive techno hold sway. We won't kid you though: there's a lot of super saccharine pop sandwiched in here. We're talking top forty radio... even if it is Sumatran. But this collection will slay you despite that. Or maybe because of that!
Of all the Sublime Frequencies collections, the various 'Radio' compilations are definitely our favorites. But at the same time they are also maybe the most problematic, It seems somehow disingenuous to travel to another country, turn on the radio, record several hours worth of music and sound, come home, put those recordings on a cd and then sell them. Not just disingenuous but quite possibly dishonest. It also seems a little weird to be thrilled by all the 'crazy' sounds we hear on the radio in these various countries. A guilty pleasure, very much that aspect of cultural tourism. "The music there is SO WILD!! And SO WEIRD!!" And it seems inconceivable that someone from some other country would come to the US, and do the same thing, returning to their countries to release discs packed with shock jocks, and crappy pop music, and morning zoo's and dry NPR discussions and modern rock and Loveline. But you never know. Although part of the reason that something like that would probably NOT happen, is that American culture, from the music to the clothes to the television shows, is already so invasive, there's probably not a corner of the world where people aren't discussing Lost or Paris Hilton or Brad and Angelina's baby or rocking out to the new Red Hot Chili Peppers. But the music and culture of these other countries does not have the same sort of universal reach. So it is actually quite a thrill to hear all of this amazing music, all of these voices, ads and commercials and songs. It's absolutely fantastic. It's just worth thinking about all that other stuff once in a while and realizing that in a sense, even just listening to these discs, we are guests, and we are digging the work and art, the livelihood and passion of hundreds of musicians and vocalists and deejays and artists. And we are digging it. A whole lot.
The first few 'Radio' compilations were a little too schizophrenic, only allowing us to hear a few seconds of a song before the dial was spun and we were bombarded by some new burst of musical randomness. It was pretty amazing in a totally overwhelming ADD short attention span sort of way, but they rectified that, realizing it was just as dizzying but way more satisfying if we got to hear whole songs. So here we are.
Radio Thailand, two whole discs culled from 15 years of recordings, captured between 1989 and 2004. A wonderfully confusional blur of Thai radio craziness, and crazy it is. A glorious hodge podge of everything under the sun, including cheesy eighties Indian disco, bizarre Thai arena rock, with wailing guitar leads, and murky Casio style rhythms, English language radio announcements, funky hip hop rock with guttural Muppets like vocals and a braying donkey chorus, complete with Knight Rider synths, Thai style Miami bass, with bumping beats and rapid fire rapping, goofy funky ska, groovy late night lounge funk, old soundtrack music, fuzzy, old school soul with big boomy drums and sweet horns, weird American style rapid fire commercials, distorted shortwave transmissions, haunting otherworldly piano, what sounds like Thailand's answer to Humpty Hump, but with wild swaths of LOUD synthesizer, full on sitar jams, Japanese style pop, sixties girl group harmonies, groovy exotica, radio dramas, solo blues vocals, and all sorts of traditional Thai musics mixed in with this dizzying barrage of music and voice and sound.
So totally amazing!
Sublime Frequencies' fantastic 'Radio' series continues. We've loved em all: Radio Palestine, Radio Thailand, Radio India, Radio Pyongyang (!), and all the rest... The series took a hiatus for a few years, but then came back with Radio Niger last year. And now, thanks to the travels of SF stalwart Mark Gergis, we've got Radio Vietnam! For those unfamiliar with the 'Radio' series, it's basically like (in fact, IS) someone in a hotel room someplace in a foreign country, spinning through the radio dial, recording whatever weirdness catches their ear, and putting it together on disc as a sort of sound-collage sampler of the sublime (and otherwise interesting) AM and FM radio frequencies found in whatever locale is the subject. There's a variety of music, of course, and also DJs and ads and talk shows and whatever else is on the radio. Even some static. Always a crazy 'sonic window' into a non-Western culture.
Radio Vietnam finds Gergis recording radio signals in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City over an 11-month period between December 2013 and November 2014. You get the his most interesting and out-there finds, ranging from traditional ethnic music, modern pop, advertising jingles, news broadcasts, exercise programming, and much more. A treat for the armchair traveller in all of us, as always.
Digipack with detailed liner notes by recordist/compiler Mark Gergis.
Holy cow! Yet another fantastic Sublime Frequencies release, this one a double lp of Rajasthan street music from Western India, a region plagued by power failures, droughts, dried up rivers, and the ever encroaching deserts, with a history of continuous invasions, epic battles, and brutal slaughters. (Sorta sounds like this is gonna be a metal comp, but no it's not.) The people of the region are resilient, and this history and the surrounding folklore are forever immortalized in music, a sound at once devotional, traditional and celebratory, the songs on this compilation collected over a two year period between 2007 and 2008, recorded live on street corners, and in people's homes, capturing the raw emotion and deep beauty of the music, and all it embodies and represents. The sounds are super varied, from droned out ragas, trancey and hypnotic, with gorgeous lilting vocals and long layered tones, some peppered with wild percussion, and on some tracks, the singer will just break from the song, and talk to someone else in the room before slipping right back into it. Other tracks sound a bit like stripped down Bollywood musicals, soaring female vocals, buzz wreathed rhythms, and still others are groovy, hazy, psychedelic Indian folk music, shimmering strings, stunning vocal melodies. And while there are moments of meditative melancholia, much of the record seems to celebrate life, the music and voices, infused with a vitality and positive energy, that belies the trials and tribulations of the region and its people. Truly gorgeous stuff.
Packaged in a super heavy, full color gatefold jacket, with tons of cool photos, and extensive liner notes, as well as a two sided printed insert, with still more liner notes, on these recordings, the region and its history, as well as notes on each song and performer.
Field recordings by ethnomusicologist Deben Bhattacharya, freshly recorded in February 2001. Traditional Bangladeshi music can be divided into two forms, the more traditional Indian-influenced Raga-Tala system, and the more simple form known as Deshi ('of the
Possibly a bit of a misnomer in the title, as the "roots" of gamelan predate any recording equipment by nearly a thousand years. 1928 however, when these earliest recordings of Balinese gamelan were recorded, could well be considered the roots of Balinese gamelan as it exists today, as the now ubiquitous Gong Kebyar of Bali was born, by most accounts, a mere fourteen years prior to these recordings (see "Music of the Gamelan Gong Kebyar Volume 1" from list 128.) In a sense, these seminal recordings exist thanks to all the wrong reasons. Apparently two record labels, Odeon and Beka, had the idea that they could record and market Balinese music to Bali on records. They put together 98 sides on 78 rpm discs, but the Balinese were completely uninterested in shelling out the dough for those recordings for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which was that by the time the recordings hit the shelves they were pretty much old news. The discs sold in small amounts on the international market, but for the most part the concept was a flop. Today, however, we are left with a wonderful time capsule of Balinese gamelan as it stood at the beginning of the century. Along with the early kebyar examples here, there are also several tracks of gamelan pelegongan, gender wayang (the quartet that accompanies puppet theater in Bali), jangger (a comical form featuring a chorus of young boys and girls, with the boys singing in a vocal style which we today are more familiar with as kecak) and anklung. Due to the limitations the 78 rpm disc and its 3 minute capacity, much of the works contained here are broken up semi-artificially into movements. Also included at the end of this disc are six tracks of gamelan transcriptions performed by Canadian composer and Balinese music scholar Colin McPhee (of whom the records which make up this collection belonged) and Benjamin Britten on piano and Georges Barrere on flute. These performances are quite interesting in and of themselves, especially for anyone who's familiar with McPhee's later classical compositions (or even fans of Lou Harrison) which were based entirely around Balinese music. Includes a healthy 27 pages of well scribed liner notes on the recordings and Balinese music in general.
The Rough Guide's primer here on the music of Indonesia should not be mistaken as a definitive sampler of the music from this archipelago -- even Philip Yampolsky's thorough 20 disc "Music Of Indonesia" series on Smithsonian Folkways could hardly claim that distinction -- but focuses more on those genres arising out of Indonesia's urban centers, music that has a distinct western influence. Which isn't to say that the music is limited to a western bias when it comes to the elements which inform it. There's CBMW, from Western Java which blends together local degung style gamelan with a bamboo idiom from Jakarta along with Balinese elements and even Brazilian samba rhythms. The example presented here is, while bordering on the NPR-segue-music side of things, is unlike anything else you're likely to hear. There's the wacky, Indian film music influenced Dangdut with its genre bending, frenetic energy. Then there's the beautiful kacapi and suling (plucked zither and bamboo flute) duets in which the zither accompanies while the flute, in place of singing, plays improvised melodies. Can't leave out the mudic of Ibu Maimunah Mochtar & Group which combines Malay, Portuguese and Middle Eastern musical elements on accordian, frame drum and vocals. 15 tracks, representing as many styles are included here, though a few out and out pop tracks made the cut as well and I can't say they were crucial additions. 12 pages of liner notes on the artists, source listings for the tracks and a brief introduction to the islands round out the package.
It seems like of all the Sublime Frequencies releases, all of which are incredible, many so incredible we felt compelled to make them aQ Records Of The Week, none has been as hotly anticipated as this one, ever since word of this release first surfaced, we would constantly get requests and inquiries, folks DYING to get their hands on a copy, and we'd be lying if we said we weren't pretty excited ourselves. So finally, here it is, Saigon Rock & Soul, a collection of fuzzy psychedelic Western influenced Vietnamese garage rock and pop, from the late sixties to the early seventies, heavily influenced by Western music of the time of course, but still somehow so totally and uniquely Southeast Asian.
And like most of these collections, the sounds vary greatly, from super distorted acid drenched psychedelia, to fuzz guitar funk, to wild ramshackle garage rock, to dark smoky soul ballads and pretty much every stop in between.
The history of this music, and the story of its creation, is as amazing as the music itself, as all of these tracks were recorded while the Vietnam war raged, recorded in makeshift studios, sometimes in US Army, camps, released as super limited 45's and tapes, the sounds constantly evolving as local musicians were exposed to the music American G.I.'s would bring over with them, from the surf rock of the Ventures and the Shadows, to stuff like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, James Brown, Santana, Deep Purple, Blue Cheer, Jimi Hendrix, hence the heaviness of some of these tracks, with bands emulating that super distorted guitar tone and that druggy sixties psychedelic vibe.
And some of this stuff really is heavy, the record opens with CBC Band's "Tinh Tuyet Voi", which explodes out of the gate with some seriously fuzzed out caustic guitar riffing, and then there's the "yeah yeah yeah" chorus, that almost sounds like the record is skipping, totally psychedelic and mesmerizing, wild drumming, lysergic leads - here's hoping Sublime Frequencies has a CBC Band reissue in the works!
The rest of the tracks, while maybe not quite as heavy, are still super fuzzy and rocking and groovy, from wild horn drenched exotica, to organ driven garage rock grooves, to funky psychedelic soul, horns all over the place, wild psych guitar leads, super distorted fuzz basslines, pounded piano, loose chaotic drumming, lots of distortion and reverb, even some sampled birdsong (!), the vocals wailed and howled and growled, some of the tracks getting all dark and soulful and smoky, no doubt a nod to the Motown sound, also a huge influence on Vietnamese music of the time, but for the most part, the sound of Saigon at the time was fuzzy and buzzy, wild and rambunctious, rocking and totally psychedelic. Fantastic stuff, and while many of the groups featured here are some of the most popular artists in Vietnam at the time, most of them have remained pretty much entirely unheard by Western ears, until now.
SUPER LIMITED of course, vinyl-only, and it's pressed on nice heavy vinyl, and housed in a thick full color gatefold sleeve, with extensive liner notes on the music, the musicians, and the era, as well as some amazing photos.
Scattered Melodies is the first 78rpm compilation from aQ beloved world music label Sublime Frequencies (there's a second one, released simultaneously, focusing on Burmese music, which we'll review on the next list). It was curated by long time SF contributor Robert Millis, a member of aQ faves the Climax Golden Twins, and curator of many of our favorite world music compilations.
Scattered Melodies is a rough translation of the Korean word 'Sanjo', which was in fact a form of improvisation in the late 1800s, as performed on the Kayagum, a cousin to the Japanese koto, with a similar sound and range, the notes plucked one at a time, decaying quite quickly, giving the melodies here a very pizzicato feel, but with overtones that ring out, making the sound buzz hypnotically, a little bit like a sitar. The notes are often scraped and thumped and snapped, the melodies angular, the playing percussive and physical. There's a definite connection to early American rural music, at least sonically, the same sort of aching, mournful quality, and of course it's all wreathed in that warm 78rpm record crackle. Some of the faster passages sound sort of slippery, like they could have been played with a slide. The tempo constantly shifts, the Kayagum accompanied by a simple hand drum called a changgo, not so much supplying rhythms, but instead accents, often mirroring the Kayagum, occasionally locking in with the Kayagum's melody, the building rhythm adding tension and pathos, but just as often, spread way out, a simple thump or pound every few measures, giving the sound a loose, skeletal framework. There's also the occasional vocal, just a shout or yelp in the background. Raw and visceral, emotional and mysterious, Millis explains in the liner notes, that it's Korean Kayagum Sanjo was the music that made him obsessed with 78rpm records, and listening to these tracks, it's easy to see why.
Packaged in a nice old school tip-on style sleeve, with a printed, full color insert, featuring liner notes from Millis.
Here's the 4th volume of the wonderful Secret Museum series to make the transition to vinyl, 'twas originally released on cd by Yazoo years ago. A compilation of rare ethnographic recordings, taken from old 78s, from the region of Central Asia: Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadjikistan, Azerbaijan, and elsewhere. Like the rest of the series, quite recommended. In fact, this is one of our favorites. These new vinyl versions are limited editions of 1000, and packaged in gatefold Stoughton tip-on sleeves. Outernational should do as well with these as Mississippi has with similar archival vinyl releases, we think.
Another super limited lp installment in Sublime Frequencies' ever expanding collection of fantastic and mysterious world musics. It's unclear, why a few releases have been vinyl only, and if the shelf-life of the last Sublime Frequencies lp was any indication, these won't last long at all.
So what is Shadow Music Of Thailand? Well, it's Thai pop heavily influenced by UK instrumental rockers The Shadows of course. More specifically it's a strain of sixties Thai guitar pop heavily influenced by Western music, rock, garage and especially surf. The guitar being the most obvious influence.
So here we have a collection of some of the most notable purveyors of "Shadow Music": The Son Of P.M., P.M. Pocket Music, P.M 7 / Jupiter and Johnny Guitar. You may have noticed the recurring P.M., well that stands for Payong Mukda, one of the most prolific composers and performers of the time and the music genius behind all of those P.M. groups.
On first listen, the Shadow Music here doesn't sound all that different than much of the Thai Pop we've heard before on other collections, and no doubt there is some overlap. But keep listening, and all sorts of strange and unique little sonic flourishes reveal themselves. Really, where else can you hear gamelan percussion with super fuzzed out ? And The Mysterions style organ and wailing surf guitar? From groovy garage rock to shimmery surf, lots of organ, and plenty of gamelan, vibraphone, xylophone, gorgeous vocals, strange harmonies, mysterious melodies, but it's those guitars, it buzzes and howls, chugs and twangs, woven into all of the songs here, creating this strange hybrid, Thai Pop, Bollywood, surf rock, blues rock, latin, soul, all woven into a wild groovy psychedelic fuzzy funky garage folkpop that will totally hit the spot for fans of exotic grooves and wild and wonderful sounds.
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF ONLY 1500 COPIES. 180 gram vinyl, super thick, gatefold sleeve, full color with tons of original Thai artwork and extensive liner notes.
Fascinating collection of Hebrew paraliturgical songs by Eastern Jewish singers from the Bene Israel and Baghdadian Jewish communities residing in Bombay, India during the thirties. Originally released on 78's from the King, Hebrew, and Jay Bharat Record labels, these recordings from various Hazzanim (cantors and prayer leaders), music school directors, an entrepreneurial meat-shop owner, Shofar (ram's horn) blowers, and instrumental stars of the Indian cinema are the long lost sonic artifacts from a nearly forgotten world of Indian Jewish musical traditions. We never realized before how intertwined these two musical traditions were, but of course it makes sense with the cross-pollination of Eastern European, North African and Middle Eastern populations through the bustling trade city of Bombay, that the cultural traditions would intermingle and possibly influence each other. Thus this is also recommended for fans of early Indian music, as well as for those intrigued by rare Jewish music recordings. The cd comes with a richly illustrated 24-page booklet with memories and photos of the descendants, relatives and friends of the singers and instrumentalists, gathered from across the globe.
Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find a review of another Sublime Frequencies release, the Shadow Music Of Thailand, where we discuss how hard it is to pick a favorite release, cuz they're all so goddamn good.
And such is the case with this one too, a sequel of sorts to 2007's Thai Pop Spectacular 1960s-1980s, this one titled Siamese Soul, but the first one was pretty soulful as well, so we'll presume that it was just chosen as a catchy title, because this does play out like a continuation of the first part which is in no way a bad thing, in fact, we'd been hankering for more ever since that first volume.
As the loner notes discuss, Cambodian pop has gotten so much attention lately, that it seems almost criminal that Thai pop wasn't getting the same attention, which becomes even more apparent listening to Siamese Soul (as well as the first volume). In the review of the first volume we described Thai Pop as "an awesomely confusional mix of Molam, Bollywood, Ethiopian groove, funk, soul, American pop and surf rock, all tangled up into amazing shapes, and peppered with killer hooks, amazing vocalists, bizarre production techniques, but most of all amazing amazing songs." Which of course still absolutely applies. Heavy Western funk to Ethiopian sounding grooves, tripped out organ drenched fuzz rock, with creepy sexy female vox to Shadows / Ventures style surf rock, a bunch of the songs like many of the tracks on the two Molam: Thai Country Groove Sublime Frequencies comps, totally remind us of whatever Thai song the Butthole Surfers appropriated for their song "Kuntz", that distinctly Thai vocal melody is so unmistakable and unforgettable. The whole record is just so wild and fun and varied and out there, slipping easily from classic sounding pop, to mysterious folk music, to stomping funk, to twangy soundtrack sounds to smokey bar ballads, to slithery soul, to far out almost Bollywood sounding exotica, all with a distinctly Thai flavor. Funky, groovy, soulful, so so good. Check out the sound samples. Sometimes we feel words can't quite do sounds like these justice. And the more we listen to this, the more THIS one is becoming one of our favorites, and heck, we could very well have made this another Record Of The Week too!
Originally reissued some years ago as a double cd, this killer collection of Indian psychedelic garage rock, has now been split into two different compilations, delineated by date, one disc for 1970, the other for 1971, but odds are you're probably gonna want both of them anyway. If not, either one is a great place to start. Some of you may remember the Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! Psychedelic Funk Music In India 1976-1983 compilation we made our Record of The Week a while back, a few of those tracks were taken from these comps, but for the most part, most of this stuff is exclusive.
While Simla Beat may sound like some cool record nerd classification for Indian psych from that era, Simla was in fact a cigarette company, who recognized that besides smoking, the kids also really dug rock and roll, specifically the sort of Western influenced sounds that were bringing surf and garage rock to India, so they founded a battle of the bands, complete with an awards show with the prizes presented by Bollywood stars, and the winning songs would get released, and hence we had these Simla Beat compilations. There were rumors, that since none of these tracks feature sitar or tabla or any distinct Indian instrumentation, that they were in fact hoaxes, and that none of these bands were in fact Indian, which was obviously proven to be false, and while there may not be sitar or tabla, there is a distinctly Eastern vibe to these tracks, and the sound, as well as the various productions, definitely takes the more Western version of surf rock and garage rock and makes it into something new and exciting.
Both discs contain some killer jams, and we could easily go through both track by track, but we'll just pick out a few highlights, and there are samples below too, which you should check out, pretty hard to resist we think. Simla Beat 70 starts off with "Voice From the Inner Soul" by the Confusions, which is so good, and catchy, it sounds like it must be a cover, but as far as we can tell it's an original, crunchy guitars, fuzzy organs, a groovy stomp with a KILLER chorus. Then there's the Dinosaurs, who offer up another original that sounds super familiar but is not a cover, the vocals raspy and scratchy, wound around some skittery drumming, and some fuzzy guitars, and another wicked hook. You probably remember X'lents' "Psychedelia" with its "Secret Agent Man" opening riff and some seriously kick ass psychedelic garage rock. The Dinosaurs also cover Creedence Clearwater Revivals's "Sinister Purpose" and make it their own, even more raw and fuzzed out than the original.
The 1971 installment is just as great, starting off with The Fentones' "Simla Beat Theme" which is total surf rock bliss, a littler off kilter, with some killer guitar playing, which gives way to the Nomads' "Nothing Is The Same" which begins with a dark swirling cloud of heavily effected guitar buzz, before slipping into a woozy surfy groove, then there's Hipnotic Eye's "Killing Floor, which is a dead ringer for the imaginary band the Sacred Cows from Get Smart (YouTube it!), and then there's Velvette Fogg's droned out organ heavy nearly 8 minute groover "I'm So Glad", and so it goes, like the 1970 volume, killer jam after killer jam!
Again, not sure why they split em up, cuz it's tough not to want both, but even if you choose just one, each has much to offer, although if you're music nerd obsessives like we are (and we're figuring you are), you might as well just grab 'em both...
Originally reissued some years ago as a double cd, this killer collection of Indian psychedelic garage rock, has now been split into two different compilations, delineated by date, one disc for 1970, the other for 1971, but odds are you're probably gonna want both of them anyway. If not, either one is a great place to start. Some of you may remember the Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! Psychedelic Funk Music In India 1976-1983 compilation we made our Record of The Week a while back, a few of those tracks were taken from these comps, but for the most part, most of this stuff is exclusive.
While Simla Beat may sound like some cool record nerd classification for Indian psych from that era, Simla was in fact a cigarette company, who recognized that besides smoking, the kids also really dug rock and roll, specifically the sort of Western influenced sounds that were bringing surf and garage rock to India, so they founded a battle of the bands, complete with an awards show with the prizes presented by Bollywood stars, and the winning songs would get released, and hence we had these Simla Beat compilations. There were rumors, that since none of these tracks feature sitar or tabla or any distinct Indian instrumentation, that they were in fact hoaxes, and that none of these bands were in fact Indian, which was obviously proven to be false, and while there may not be sitar or tabla, there is a distinctly Eastern vibe to these tracks, and the sound, as well as the various productions, definitely takes the more Western version of surf rock and garage rock and makes it into something new and exciting.
Both discs contain some killer jams, and we could easily go through both track by track, but we'll just pick out a few highlights, and there are samples below too, which you should check out, pretty hard to resist we think. Simla Beat 70 starts off with "Voice From the Inner Soul" by the Confusions, which is so good, and catchy, it sounds like it must be a cover, but as far as we can tell it's an original, crunchy guitars, fuzzy organs, a groovy stomp with a KILLER chorus. Then there's the Dinosaurs, who offer up another original that sounds super familiar but is not a cover, the vocals raspy and scratchy, wound around some skittery drumming, and some fuzzy guitars, and another wicked hook. You probably remember X'lents' "Psychedelia" with its "Secret Agent Man" opening riff and some seriously kick ass psychedelic garage rock. The Dinosaurs also cover Creedence Clearwater Revivals's "Sinister Purpose" and make it their own, even more raw and fuzzed out than the original.
The 1971 installment is just as great, starting off with The Fentones' "Simla Beat Theme" which is total surf rock bliss, a littler off kilter, with some killer guitar playing, which gives way to the Nomads' "Nothing Is The Same" which begins with a dark swirling cloud of heavily effected guitar buzz, before slipping into a woozy surfy groove, then there's Hipnotic Eye's "Killing Floor, which is a dead ringer for the imaginary band the Sacred Cows from Get Smart (YouTube it!), and then there's Velvette Fogg's droned out organ heavy nearly 8 minute groover "I'm So Glad", and so it goes, like the 1970 volume, killer jam after killer jam!
Again, not sure why they split em up, cuz it's tough not to want both, but even if you choose just one, each has much to offer, although if you're music nerd obsessives like we are (and we're figuring you are), you might as well just grab 'em both...
Sublime Frequencies seemingly can do no wrong. A keen ear and a deft curatorial skill means that every release is not just interesting sociologically, but is musically kick ass as well. Singapore A-Go-Go is a collection of singles recorded and released during a brief period in the sixties and seventies, when various Southeast Asian countries were bucking the stringent requirements of the Chinese state, embracing both Western pop and traditional Chinese music, which were essentially banned. Thanks to American G.I.s and Radio Free Asia, young people grew up listening to both Chinese music, and all manner of Western pop, the fact that the economy was booming, also meant that kids could afford records and record players, and musicians could afford instruments and studio time, which of course meant tons of records reflecting this classical Chinese / Western pop hybrid. The liner notes this time around are dense and fascinating, all about the time and the culture and the climate, the musicians and the proliferation of small labels, which is all just icing, on this amazing compilation of gorgeous garage-y girl group pop, the mix of cultures and sounds is definitely heady. Morricone-ish twang, soulful grooves, and sing songy traditional Chinese music will coexist peacefully and perfectly within the same song, pounding drums, whirring organs, Joe Meek style instrumental surf rock will wrap around jazzy vibraphones, and funky basslines, some songs sound like American TV show themes, others sound almost Bollywood, while still others sound like Perrey & Kingsley. Soft easy listening Lawrence Welkisms flow right into more rocking psychedelic rock, the Mission Impossible theme is reappropriated, with vocals added for a cool brooding surfy rock jam, Eastern style melodies are infused into classic sixties girl group sounds, and the vocals mostly female, are exuberant and girlish and wide eyed and playful, and make this whole collection so much fun. Like everything on Sublime Frequencies, way way way recommended!
We all know that very often sequels pale in comparison to the originals. But leave it to the irresistible Sitar Beat series to throw that convention out the window. The first volume of Sitar Beat brought together their previously vinyl only releases on one cd and it became one of our most played and favorite cds of last year! Volume two keeps the fire going with 16 more totally perfect, sitar fueled, groovy 'n heavy Indian funk delights. Pulled mostly from obscure soundtracks, most of these tracks we had never heard before but we've already lost count of how many times we've listened to this since it arrived in the store a week ago and now most of them have become all time AQ faves just like that! All the obvious names are represented: R.D. Burman, Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar, Kalyanji Anandji, etc. While the tracks with vocals are all great (how could they not be with folks like Bhosle and Mangeshkar singing) but Sitar Beat is truly about the smokin' funk jam instrumentals. It just doesn't get more funky and fun than this! But it's not just kitschy fun, these are some seriously rocking jams, totally mind blowing music that reminds us once again that music can be strange and inventive yet immediate and exciting at the same time. AQ pal John Dwyer said it best when he came in while this was playing "Damn, this is hot!"
We were in absolute buzzing raga drone, funk soul heaven when we learned that those amazing and totally fun vinyl-only releases in the Sitar Beat series had now been compiled onto a cd. Most of us were never lucky enough to get the lps but now we can get our sitar funk on all the same! Chances are if you've been in the store in the last couple weeks you've heard us playing this, as this is one of those rare records that every single one of us can't help but be in love with. '60s, '70s and early '80s Bollywood jams and Indian-influenced psych-grooves HEAVY on the sitar. R.D. Burman, Ananada Shankar, Asha Bhosle, Serge Gainsbourg, Klaus Doldinger just to name a few of the responsible parties East and West who will henceforth be making your parties way more fun!!! But be prepared for tons of questions when all your friends start asking you what it is you're playing. We've been fielding those questions for weeks, but we're more then happy to answer with a simple reply: "It's Sitar Beat!..." and before we can even finish our sentence said questioner is on his or her way out the door with a copy. We rest much easier at night knowing that we're doing out small part to spread these amazing soul stirring buzzy freak funk grooves far and wide, filling ears and shaking souls!
NOW AVAILABLE ON GATEFOLD VINYL, WITH A BONUS TRACK!!
So we've actually already had quite a few amazing compilations of '60s and '70s popular music from Thailand, including a whole bunch of discs from the infallible Sublime Frequencies label (Thai Pop Spectacular, Siamese Soul, Molam: Thai Country Groove, Shadow Music Of Thailand, etc., etc.), and also the Subliminal Sounds label's Thai Beat A-Go-Go series, but we were still super excited when we heard about the upcoming release of this new comp of vintage Thai tunes, 'cause it's been put together by Soundway, the UK-based label that also seemingly can do no wrong when it comes to international crate diggin'. Soundway is responsible for all those Nigeria Special comps, and the Ghana Soundz ones too, among other fine collections and reissues, most focused on music from Africa or Latin America. This is their first venture into Southeast Asia, as far as we know, and boy did they do the job well! A more lively, colorful comp could hardly be imagined. The compilers, who have spent hours and days on the ground in Thailand searching out vintage vinyl, know their stuff (their DJ night, "Bangkok Paradise", must be a blast).
Nineteen tracks, 66 minutes of music, ranging from yearning love songs to super groovy funk, all of it quite undeniably 'exotic' to our ears, so that even with Western psych and pop influences, incorporating surprise rock riffs, synths, and brass sections, it's most definitely music from Thailand, utilizing Thai folk traditions, sung in the Thai language, though some of it also reminds us of Bollywood stuff (which makes sense), or possibly the Ethiopiques series as well (a less likely connection there). We recognize a few of the artists' names from those other abovementioned comps, though they seem aware of what's been comped already and we're assured that most of the tracks here have never been released outside of Thailand before.
The subtitle doesn't say "leftfield" for nothing, this probably isn't the most typical mainstream Thai pop from the period, more like the hippest and freakiest, though often from quite popular artists, many revered to this day. Soundway treat us to some wonderfully eccentric picks, gems like Waipod Phetsuphan's "Ding Ding Dong", a song inspired by a dumb 1971 Italian sex comedy about prehistoric cavemen (and cavewomen) that was inexplicably a hit film in Thailand. And the spaced out lounge-jazz of The Viking Combo band's "Pleng Yuk Owakard" must be mentioned. Mindblowing. Walking bass, spooked out electric organ, maniacal vocals, loud shuddery chords, sudden percussion, woah it's a weird one, almost disturbing. Whichever DJ/collector first dug that one up must have been stoked. So much good stuff here, our point is, the treasures of vintage Thai pop are plentiful enough to require this comp, those that came before, and hopefully many more to come. You gotta be thankful when you think about it, without the efforts of labels like Sublime Frequencies, and Soundway, etc., we'd be missing out on so much incredible music that we now listen to on a daily basis, whether it be from Thailand or Nigeria or wherever.
An explicit warning on the back cover admonishes us not to expect to hear any "Hawaiian guitars, ukuleles and the Hula" on this disc. Which is all fine and dandy, because in its stead we're treated to some exceptionally rare recordings that span the wide pacific ocean. In 1978 David Fanshawe flew from island to island, seeking out the music of the people who lived there and -- if the local governments allowed it -- recorded them. Fanshawe travelled to the Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, the Gilbert Islands, Western Samoa and Tahiti. From his travels he culled together twenty eight varied tracks, from the frenetic high speed drumming of the Cook Islands to the soft melodies of the Fangufangu Nose Flute. But most cherished on this collection are the beautiful choruses, both religious and secular, which sound like eerie inverted versions of an American Baptist gospel choir. In one love song, sung by a group of men gathered at a drinking club, the chorus is accompanied by the sounds of a woman pouring kava. Originally released in 1987 as "Island Music of the South Pacific".
From the liner notes: "South Sulawesi is remarkably rich in string music. Among the instruments are the kacapi (a two stringed, plucked lute), gambus (a plucked lute probably originating in Arabia), mandaliong (a keyed zither), and the violin. This album presents professional narravtive and lyric singing with kacapi from the Bugis, Makasar, and Mandar peoples, along with informal, private singing with kacapi from the Toraja and driving Bugis and Kajang instrumental tunes. Also from the Kajang comes the quite different music of the gambus. And as contrast to the plucked lutes, the album offers, from the Bugis, mysterious violin duets, a violin trio with singers, and a lively ensemble of violins, mandaliong, flute, kacapi, and singers."
French import double cd of Indian music new and old. Disc one ("Traditional") features fifteen tracks from a bunch of doubtless well-known trad Indian artists. Of course Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan -- hey he's not Indian -- and Ravi Shankar are the only ones WE recognize. The selections are pretty cool with lots of wild vocal, tabla and sitar action. There's even some street sounds
As you've already figured out, this is the sequel to the Spirit of India 2cd comp reviewed above. Again we're presented with a disc of traditional material, and a second disc of "New Vibes" -- electronica takes on the sounds of India. Disc one's got Shankar and Khan again, and Trilok Gurtu and Shelia Chandra as well, plus also a bunch of other unknown-to-us artists, and is again pretty
Subtitled "17 A-Go-Go Ultrarities From the 60's Singapore and South-East Asia Underground", this comp fairly smokes in a psychedelic pop haze. Covering standards like "Buttons and Bows", but mostly playing by-the-numbers originals, bands like October Cherries, Rosnah and the Siglap Five, Ronnie Ong, and Naomi & the Boys (playing a great Peter Thomas number) played a mixture of surf, soul, r&b, and plain ole psych pop. A couple of the groups here even went to #1 in their home countries. Fuzz guitar! The tracks featuring girl singers sound just like the Ultra Chicks French girl group comps, thus testifying to the universal appeal the rock music of the day held for young people the world over.
On transparent blue vinyl. Dutch import. ----* ----* Also New In Stock, Reviews Coming Soon : ----* 400 BLOWS "Black Rainbow" (Tone Capsule) cd 11.98 ANZELLOTTI, TEODORO "Leos Janacek" (Winter & Winter) cd 16.98 AROVANE "Icol Diston" cd 16.98 ATMOSPHERE "God Loves Ugly" (Fat Beats) cd 16.98 BRAXTON, ANTHONY "Actuel Sessions" (Fuel 2000) cd 12.98 BREAD LOVE AND DREAMS "s/t" (Hugo-Montes) cd 17.98 CANDIRIA "The Coma Imprint" (Lakeshore Records) 2cd 17.98 CAPTAIN BEEFHEART AND HIS MAGIC BAND "Magnetic Hands" (Viper) cd 19.98 CARDIACS "A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window" (Alphabet) cd 14.98 CARDIACS "Sing To God - Part Two" (Alphabet) cd 14.98 CARDIACS "Sing To God - Part One" (Alphabet) cd 14.98 CASSERLEY, LAWRENCE "The Edge Of Chaos" (Sargasso) cd 14.98 CERBERUS SHOAL / HERMAN DUNE "The Whys And Hows Of Herman Dune and Cerberus Shoal" (North East Indie) cd 9.98 CHERRY, DON "Blue Lake" (BYG / Toho / Get Back) 2lp 19.98 CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY "s/t" (Rhino) cd 16.98 COMETBUS "Despite Everything: A Cometbus Omnibus" (Last Gasp) book 14.95 FELDMAN, MORTON "Complete Works For Two Pianists" (Alice Musik Produktion) cd 14.98 FORBIDDEN PLANET "(OST)" (Moving Image Entertainment) lp 21.00 FUNGAL HEX "s/t" (Ministerstva Kultury Cr) cd 11.98 FURSAXA "s/t" (Ecstatic Peace) lp 13.98 GORILLAZ "Spacemonkeyz versus Gorillaz - Laika Come Home" (Astralwerks) cd 16.98 HEADLANDS BAND "California" (Headlands Band Music) cd 11.98 HERMANO "...Only A Suggestion" (Tee Pee) 2cd 14.98 HIDDEN "Spectral Magnitude" (Red Stream) cd 11.98 HURLEY, MICHAEL "Blueberry Wine" (Locust) cd 14.98 INVISIBL SKRATCH PIKLZ VS. DA KLAMZ UV DETH "Furious Ostrich Tracks" (Asphodel) lp 7.98 MISERY INDEX / COMMIT SUICIDE "Split CD" (Willowtip) cd 12.98 NARGAROTH "Black Metal Ist Krieg" (No Colours) cd 14.98 NARGAROTH "Hervstleyd" (No Colours) cd 14.98 OMIT "Rejector" (SySecular) cd-r 9.98 ON FILLMORE "On Fillmore" (Locust) cd 14.98 ORTHRELM / TOUCHDOWN "Split" (Troubleman) cd 12.98 PARTON, DOLLY "Halos & Horns" (Sugar Hill) cd 17.98 REINHARDT, DJANGO "Djangology" (RCA Victor) cd 16.98 RITUAL CARNAGE "The Birth Of Tragedy" (Osmose) cd 14.98 RJD2 "Deadringer" (Definitive Jux) cd/2lp 17.98/17.98 ROWE, KEITH & OREN AMBARCHI "Flypaper" (Staubgold) cd 14.98 SHIOMI, MIEKO "A Musical Dictionary of 80 People Around Fluxus" (? Records) cd 22.00 SPUNK "Den Overste Toppen Pa En Blamalt Flaggstang" (Rune Grammofon) cd 15.98 STARS AS EYES "Important Youth Movement / People Kill People" (Tigerbeat6) 7" 4.98 TABLA BEAT SCIENCE "Live In San Francisco At Stern Grove" (Axiom) 2cd 17.98 TATSUYA, YOSHIDA "Magaibutsu" reissue w/ bonus tracks (Review Records) cd 13.98 THORNSPAWN "Wrath Of War" (Osmose) cd 14.98 TROLLHEIM'S GROTT "Bizarre Troll Technology" (Woodcut) cd 14.98 V/A "Chocolate Soup For Diabetics 4" (PCP) cd 14.98 V/A "Chocolate Soup For Diabetics 5" (PCP) cd 14.98 VINTERSORG "Visions From The Spiral Generator" (Napalm) cd 14.98 WALDAMSEL / FOREST BLACKBIRD "s/t" (Natural Sound / Wergo) cd 18.98 WARLORD "Rising Out Of The Ashes" (Atrheia) cd 14.98 WOLF EYES "Fuck Pete Larsen" (Wolf Eyes) lp 14.98 ZORN, JOHN "Filmworks XI" (Tzadik) cd 15.98
MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!
One of two new Mississippi releases we're listing this week, both incredible additions to the already impossibly impressive Mississippi catalog, and as we often mention, there are plenty of people who buy every single Mississippi release, regardless, and most aQ-ers definitely fall into that category, but really, any one at all interested in world music, and we're not talking the Starbucks / Paul Simon variety, we're talking real world music, the sounds you here on the streets and in the homes played by real people in real places all over the world, if that stuff holds any interest for you, then pretty much every single Mississippi release is essential, and without fail, each one will open up a whole new world of sound, and reveal all manner of musical magic to jaded Western ears.
The tracks here were recorded in Indonesia in the late seventies by a field recordist named Jack Brody, and this sampling offers up lots of the different flavors of street musicians at the time, displaying the various influences from Indian Bollywood music, American rock and roll as well as traditional Javanese folk musics, all wound into these unique and personal sonic expressions. The sound seems to be mostly vocal driven, with the majority of the vocalists female, the voices high and clear and soaring, lots of call and response and unique harmonies, strings buzz over simple hand drums and minimal percussion, many of the tracks here are simple and spare, but others are impossibly lush. And as these are all recorded on the streets, the music is peppered with the sounds of life, cars and buses, kids playing, adults talking, babies crying, horns honking. There are a couple of tracks featuring male vocalists, one in particular stands out, the vocalist singing in a super raspy Popeye/Tom Waits voice, over just intricate drumming, his vocal delivery rapid fire and super dexterous, the result dizzying and exhilarating. We could go track by track, but every song here is a gem, and like most Mississippi releases, we find ourselves spinning this over and over and over and getting totally lost in these incredible sounds.
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, including lyrics and actual musical notation, as well as lots of photos and a bonus 7"!
The 19 tracks on Streets Of Lhasa were recorded by Zhang Jian, a member of Beijing, China's fm3 arts collective during a visit to Tibet in August 2003. Jian would hire the musicians for an entire day, paying them in cash and food, and record their performances in the relatively quiet surroundings of a city park. Most of the recordings are of either solo performers (singing a cappella, or accompanying themselves with a lute or fiddle) or in small ensembles. Many of the performers are children, often singing with their parents. Particularly cute is the father / son duet (with fiddle accompaniment). In addition to these private performances, Jian also made several recordings of ambient sounds and music on the streets of Lhasa: market sounds, prayer bells, children playing, trains, and a 12 minute track of monks heatedly discussing scripture and apparently clapping to puncuate their arguments, though the clapping sounds almost like a crackling fire. The result is a picture perfect audio post card to a place most of us will likely never visit.
The first in a new series of vinyl only releases from Touch, this is an amazing document of Javanese and Balinese sounds, originally released as a cassette in 1983. A seamless collage of sounds edited into a dizzying sonic travelogue by Touch head honcho Jon Wozencroft, along with BJ Nilsen of Hazard, this collection is essential for fans of Sublime Frequencies and Mississippi Records. Heavy on the gamelan, obviously, the record flits from clanging metallic percussion, to buzzing burbling jaw harp, from super intense vocals, featuring some deeply moving, almost liturgical sounding call and response, in the background of many of these recordings, you can hear children laughing and playing, bustling markets, cars driving by, shouting and various voices, the music in the foreground is wild and chaotic one second, dark and contemplative the next, slowly bleating horns, unfurl a playful melody, before the sound eventually slips into something more modern, still gamelan driven, but in the form of some wistful Indonesian balladry, before finally finishing off in a blaze of super distorted almost free jazz sounding near psychedelic gamelan freakout, the sounds super saturated, and buzzing and crumbling around the lilting melodies, and hypnotic rhythms. Fantastic!
Housed in an orange-stickered plain white sleeve, and most likely fairly limited.
Fans of The Steps, Ho: Roady Music From Vietnam and fans of instrumental exotica weirdness take note. We are happy to have chanced upon this brand new collection of gems from the cracks of music history. According to the notes on the back of the case, the
Now on vinyl!! Here's some of what we said when we reviewed the compact disc version, though as before the programming of the cd and vinyl versions differ somewhat, but even if the track list isn't quite the same (the cd had 5 more songs), the general thrust of the following review still stands:
It's beginning to appear as though Subliminal Sounds' well of amazing undiscovered Thai Beat music might be bottomless! We were a bit surprised when they managed to pull off a second excellent collection of Thai bubblegum psych tunes from yesteryear, but now a *third*?? "Is it just as good", you ask? Well, heck yeah, it is! It doesn't seem as though they culled the best for the first, or even the second, collection. This third volume may in fact be the best - though it's hard to choose. This one has about the same ratio of purely weird and inimitably Thai "pop" to off-kilter covers of your favorites from the golden era of rock, but add into that mix a great deal of seventies funk & disco and even some Santana-esque rock, all with a Thai twist and lots of fun. In addition to all the cool music on this collection is album's cover, which looks as though it were taken from a '70s Thai B-grade horror film. A "scary" looking dude in blue slacks, red sweater, and dracula fangs is lightly held back (or is he dancing with?) two sexy Thai girls wearing matching green skirts and white knee high boots. WOW! is our reaction to that, and the whole disc as well! ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! 2+2=5, THE "Into The Future..." (Spittle) cd 21.00 ARCHITEUTHIS REX "Dark As The Sea" (Utech) cd 14.98 AUBRY, GILLES "s6tr8" (Winds Measure Recordings) cd 12.98 BASSHATERS "Harsh Lovers Sick Zoo" (Yik Yak) cassette 5.00 BOSSE-DE-NAGE "s/t" (Flenser) cd 9.98 DADAWAH "Peace And Love" (Wild Flower) cd/lp 16.98/24.00 DIVORCE "s/t" (Optimo) 10" 13.98 DURUTTI COLUMN "LC" (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98 DURUTTI COLUMN "The Return Of The Durutti Column" (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98 ECHOSPACE "Liumin" (Modern Love) 2cd 15.98 ENDTABLES, THE "s/t" (Drag City) cd 14.98 FEROCIOUS FEW "Juices" (Birdman) cd 12.98 FNS "S/t" (Miasmah) cd/lp 15.98/19.98 FOOT VILLAGE "Anti-Magic" (Upset The Rhythm) lp 17.98 HEALTH "Disco 2" (Lovepump United) cd 14.98 JJ "N� 3" (Secretly Canadian) cd 14.98 KEEPAWAY "Baby Style" (Lefse) lp 14.98 KNIGHT SCHOOL "Revenger" (Make A Mess) lp 14.98 MAGIC BULLETS "s/t" (Mon Amie) lp 14.98 MAX PLANCK "Kill The Pain" (Buried By Time And Dust) lp 32.00 NEON "Oscillator" (Spittle) cd 21.00 NORTH SEA, THE "Bloodlines" (Type) lp 19.98 PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART, THE "Say No To Love" (Slumberland) 7" 5.98 PERNICE BROTHERS "Goodbye Killer" (Ashmont) cd 10.98 ROEDELIUS "The Diary Of The Unforgotten" (Bureau) cd 17.98 ROSE, JACK & GLENN JONES "The Things That We used To Do" (Strange Attractions) dvd 20.00 ROSE, JACK WITH D. CHARLES SPEER & THE HELIX "Ragged And Right" (Thrill Jockey) cd ep/12" 11.98/14.98 SWORDS & SANDLES / VHOLTZ / WOMAN'S WORTH / ETTRICK "s/t" (self released) cassette 5.00 TRANS AM "Thing" (Thrill Jockey) cd 15.98 URAL UMBO "s/t" (Utech) cd 14.98 V/A "Clicks And Cuts 5.0" (Mille Plateax) cd 17.98 V/A "Head Over High Heels: Strong & Female 1927-1959" (Trikont) cd 17.98 V/A "Karl Rove: Courage And Concequence" (Seismic.Wave) lp 14.98 V/A "Milano New Wave 1980-83" (Spittle) cd 21.00 V/A "The Secret Museum Of Mankind Vol.II Ethnic Music Classics; 1925-48" (Outernational) 2lp 31.00 V/A "To Scratch Your Heart: Early Recordings From Istanbul" (Honest Jons) 2cd 26.00 V/A "Zulu Stomp!! South African Garage Beats!!" (Nosmoke) cd 25.00 VANGELIS "Who Killed The Dragon? (The BYG Sessions)" (Finders Keepers) 12" 14.98 WE LIKE CATS "Proper Eats" (Marriage) lp 13.98 WINDSOR FOR THE DERBY "Against Love" (Secretly Canadian) cd 14.98 ZUMPANO, JASON "Room And Mansion" (Inflight) cd-r 14.98 _______________________________________________________________________ Please place your order via our website. [1] We will contact you to verify your order and let you know when it will be shipped. Please note that occasionally it may take a day or two for us to reply. We are not a faceless bunch of computers replying to your order -- we are human beings! [2] If we are out of some of your items and we think we will get them within the same week, we can wait to ship. Or... If it's going to be more than a few days to complete your order, we will ship what we have and then will contact you as the remainders arrive. [ note ] Due to the everchanging nature of the independent record business, we are not responsible for listed price changes (due to supplier price changes) and often cannot update our site fast enough to reflect these changes, but we will always try to let you know of any differences.
This all-time AQ favorite is finally available on vinyl!
From the label that brought us Dungen, Parson Sound and Abner Jay comes a crazy collection of Thai Go-Go. We're still reeling from the double whammy of the two volume Cambodian Rocks releases and the excellent Cambodian Cassette Archives and now this. Though to be fair to the latter, this release might not necessarily cater to all the same fans. The music here is more likely to appeal to fans of obscure 60's pop and garage than say, fans of off kilter pop influenced Thai music. In fact, much of what's on this disc would be difficult to place within any particular country, let alone region of the world through listening alone. Apparently the musicians here were first and foremost concerned with reproducing an accurate replica (there are many overt copies included here) of popular American music of the day. This was, after all, during the Vietnam war and plenty of American servicemen were stationed in Thailand and American music was being broadcast far and wide for their benefit. That said, there are still plenty of great rocking vocal and instrumental tracks here and a few nutty renditions of classics. Of note is The Son Of P.M.'s version of the "James Bond Theme", which gets a little spicing up with Thai drums and The Cat's "Meow" or Louise Kennedy's "Poo Yai Lee", either of which would have been an excellent addition to the Ultra Chicks compilations. There's also a version of Hank Williams' "Kaw Liga" with augmented Native American drumming and a super upbeat bridge, and Johnny Guitar's "Klongyao", probably the best representation of Thai-Western pop hybrid on the collection. Definitely stick this one out to the end when you pick it up though, as it seems heavily weighted with the best tracks in the second half.
Hot on the heels of the first volume, Subliminal Sounds has released this second collection of Thai garage beat pop go-go madness. And we have to say it's better than the first. Much better (and cheaper too). Like the first volume the tracks here are all distinct replicas of popular music from the Occident of the late sixties. Some notable covers include the King's "All Shook Up", Serge Gainsbourg's "Je T'aime Moi Non Plus" and The Beatles' "Lady Madonna". What makes this collection stand out for us though is both the inclusion of a wider range of severely demented production aesthetics and a great deal more songs that, vocally, sound more Thai. The album starts off with a bang to Viparat Piengsuwan's "YoK YoK" with chipper plosive vocals that could only come from Thailand. So cute it'll make you barf. Not skipping a beat we're led into Surapon's "Ding Dong", which sounds like a seriously fucked up deconstruction of the "Surfing Bird". A little later Waipot Petsuwan's "Mia Chaa" throws a monkey wrench into our expectations with a dreamy ellyptical vocal line -- that sounds reminiscent of Mo Lam -- over an otherwise standard garage beat tune, instantly transforming it into a classic. Then, of course, there's some demented production like excessive reverb in the oddest places and a strange Thai version of the Chipmonks that'll have you spitting your lunch out your nose. Highly recommended!
It's beginning to appear as though Subliminal Sounds' well of amazing undiscovered Thai Beat music might be bottomless! We were a bit surprised when they managed to pull off a second excellent collection of Thai bubblegum psych tunes from yesteryear, but now a *third*?? "Is it just as good", you ask? Well, heck yeah, it is! It doesn't seem as though they culled the best for the first, or even the second, collection. This third volume may in fact be the best -- though it's hard to choose. This one has about the same ratio of purely weird and inimitably Thai "pop" to off-kilter covers of your favorites from the golden era of rock (including "Hang On Sloopy" and another Elvis number "Heartbreak Hotel"), but add into that mix a great deal of seventies funk & disco and even some Santana-esque rock, all with a Thai twist and lots of fun. But the real gems on this collection are two tracks -- "Thai Boxing" and "Siamese Boxing" -- by Jiraphand Ong-Ard which nearly bookend the anthology and completely fill their own void of strange rock. Both tracks pay homage to Muay Thai boxing and raam muay -- the traditional music that accompanies boxing events. The music of raam muay features a Thai reed instrument that sounds like a kazoo run through a Marshall amp. Both the tracks use this music as an odd bridge mixed in to them -- almost arbitrarily -- in such a way that they sound bi-polar. In addition to all the cool music on this collection is album's cover, which looks as though it were taken from a 70's Thai B-grade horror film. A "scary" looking dude in blue slacks, red sweater, and dracula fangs is lightly held back (or is he dancing with?) two sexy Thai girls wearing matching green skirts and white knee high boots. WOW! is our reaction to that, and the whole disc as well!
Another killer installment in the Sublime Frequencies series of wondrous and fantastical musics from around the world, and although we've probably proclaimed this about past volumes, this just may be the best one yet. The hardest thing about enjoying strange musics from other lands, though, is realizing that the music only seems strange to us. And with that realization comes a responsibility, c'mon, the pop music popular in the US must seem just as strange to folks in other countries, Avril Lavigne, Britney, every singer from American Idol, or how about Weird Al? So you sort of have to take into account that knowing the language, and growing up listening to the various popular musics of a region, would probably help to contextualize the strange hybridized pop music that we love to listen to and that is such a cornerstone of this series. Imagine how different it would be listening to a band like Circle if you understood Finnish. Might not seem so crazy. But that's part of the joy, it does sound crazy, and wild and weird, and wonderful, and there's certainly nothing wrong with being fascinated by seeming strangeness of the music, or enjoying the lyrics as just another instrument since we don't speak the language, and digging the seemingly bizarre juxtapositions, as long as we respect the heritage and the makers of this music that gives us such pleasure. And we do.
And holy crap does this latest installment give us all kinds of pleasure. It -is- wild, an awesomely confusional mix of Molam, Bollywood, Ethiopian groove, funk, soul, American pop and surf rock, all tangled up into amazing shapes, and peppered with killer hooks, amazing vocalists, bizarre production techniques, but most of all amazing amazing songs. The sort of songs that get stuck in your head and you find yourself humming to yourself, wondering if it was something you heard on the radio or something that was playing in some store you were just in, then realizing it was actually some seventies Thai pop song!
We knew this collection was going to be amazing before we even got to the music. Past installments in this series focusing on Thai music were already among our favorites, the photos are awesome, and check out some of these song titles: "There Are Many Handsome Men Out There", "You Should Die By Bullets", "Drinking Whiskey Until I'm Blurred", "Look Whose Underwear Is Showing", "Monthly Wife", "Uncle Dee Is A Drunk"...
And the music is just as fun and funky, crazy and catchy. A killer collection of Thai disco classics, music from Thai films, a bunch of stone cold pop gems, some unknown, some by Thai superstars, and a totally tweaked version of "The Night Chicago Died".
Some of our favorites are "Dance Of The Ngeo" by Johnny Guitar, a bad ass surf guitar jam, that begins with some strange trash can percussion, that surfaces again and again throughout, as well as some awesome fuzz organ, all making it sound like the coolest weirdest track Joe Meek never recorded, "You Should Die By Bullets" by Chailai Chaiyata & Sawanee Patana, a super funky slab of tripped out Bollywood style disco, with some truly damaged alien synths, and some amazing vocals, "We Both Think We're The Best" by Sangthong Seesai, a seasick, slithery groove, all blown out percussion, fuzzy organ, really grimey and groovy and sultry sounding, "Long Time No See" by Generation, a badass Barney Miller wah guitar groove, strutting and sexy, with a super strange totally blown out cymbal that gives the track a really strange shimmer, "Wise Old Man" by Gawao Siangthong, a funky horn flecked funk workout, that almost sounds like the Thai version of an Ethiopian Grooves track,
there's even a weird breakdown in the middle of the song, where the two vocalists joke and banter, before launching right back into the song, "Title Theme from Live From The Rocket Festival" by Chalermpon Malakum, a space age seventies sitcom soundtrack groove, with weird warbly synths, funky horns, and a killer psychedelic guitar solo, and maybe our favorite (although it's practically impossible to choose), "Papaya Salad Merchant, by Onuma Singsiri, a slow burning shuffle, moody and brooding, with super sultry vocals, a wicked Morricone-ish Spaghetti Western twang guitar, some subtle waka waka rhythms, and a main melody to die for.
It's hard to describe any of these tracks without the word 'groove', as the above would seem to demonstrate, and that's because almost all of these tracks are indeed groovy, full of funky horns, wah wah guitars, bouncy bass lines, wild percussion, wicked drumming, and an incredible array of vocals and vocalists... but even the tracks that aren't inherently groovy, still seem to groove somehow... and even though we picked our favorites above, the more we listen, the more -every- song here is becoming one of our favorites... so so great!
Unlike a lot of other titles in this series where the sources were dubbed tapes or unlabeled recordings or radio broadcasts, each track here is credited to the performer (and hopefully, we assume, the performers will see some of the profits this time around?), each with it's original Thai title and translated English title, as well as what album the song is taken from, and there are liner notes from Sublime Frequencies head honcho (and Sun City Girl) Alan Bishop and frequent SF contributor Mark Gergis.
Another fantastic collection of far out seventies South East Asian grooves, from rock to garage to surf music, once again HEAVILY influenced by American and European music of the time, although this time we do in fact mean HEAVILY, as this collection features various hard rocking jams from Asia, recorded in the seventies, all songs and sounds that lean toward the heavy, the psychedelic, the metallic even, with lots of fuzzy guitars, pounding drums, distorted horns, throbbing basslines, not to mention some wholesale borrowing from popular rock songs of the time, all given a distinctly Asian sonic makeover, mixing traditional folk vocals with thick super distorted guitar crunch, or wrapping wild psychedelic guitar freakouts around funky grooves and more traditional sounding vox.
This strange hybrid is probably best exemplified by the killer opener, Sroeng Santi's "Kuen Kuen Lueng Lueng", which essentially swipes that oh so iconic riff from Black Sabbath's "Iron Man", without doing much to it at all, but then mixes it with a dark slithery low slung verse, all broody and fuzzy and a little bit sinister, with those totally irresistible Thai vocals, which as we've mentioned before, most of us heard for the first time via the Butthole Surfers' track "Kuntz", in fact, "Kuen Kuen Lueng Lueng" sorta sounds like an "Iron Man" / "Kuntz" mash up, and it RULES.
Then there's Jalwal, Annie & Geerasak's "Klug Tum La", which is essentially a Thai version of Chicago's "25 or 6 To 4", that immediately recognizable riff, SERIOUSLY fuzzy and crunchy, and then the horns, fantastically atonal and harsh, adding a strange vibe, as do the sweet crooned female vox, which occasionally slip into a powerful witchy howl, there's also a seriously fierce, super distorted psychedelic guitar solo.
Another one of our favorites is Teungjai Bunpraruksa's "Kanong Krung" which is just crazy and over the top and so good, pounding and fuzzy and groovy, with wild horns, twangy guitars, frantic drumming, a fat fuzzy main riff, super strange girl gang vocals, all distorted and often erupting into wails and screams, a total free for all party anthem for sure.
A lot of the tracks here are not necessarily super heavy, but they all share a certain something, whether it's a bit of fuzzy guitar, or some wild chaotic drumming, or some psychedelic guitar leads, and the sounds do vary dramatically, with many on first listen sounding like they could have come from any of the other recent Thai and Asian comps from Sublime Frequencies or Subliminal Sounds, whether it's twang flecked Morricone-esque moodiness, or Ventures like surfiness, or groovy fuzzy exotica, but spend a little time with each song, and no matter how traditional they sound at first, before you know it, some fuzzy riff or tangle of psychedelic guitar, or burst of skronking horns, or flurry of tribal drums will surface, and the song is transformed into something else. And we do mean SOMETHING ELSE!
Includes a booklet with photos, and liner notes, with more details about the history of the music, as well as the artists and the songs.
Second collection of vintage 78 rpm records from the Sublime Frequencies label, following the fantastic Scattered Melodies compilation we reviewed recently, which focused exclusively on music played on the kayagum, a Korean instrument similar to the Japanese koto. This new one is all music from Burma, now Myanmar, all ultra rare recordings from 1909 to 1960, and again assembled by Robert Millis, a member of aQ faves Climax Golden Twins, and more recently, the curator of many of our favorite world music compilations.
The provenance of these recordings is almost as fascinating as the music itself. The liner notes explain that these records were collected by Millis and former Sun City Girl Alan Bishop over the course of several trips to Burma, some given to them by a dealer with boxes of records tied to the back of his scooter, others from small shops in tiny villages, one in particular where the proprietors would wash its records under the town's single faucet, and still others from their driver, who handed over a bag of records belonging to his dead father. The music itself is as varied as the sources, the A side made up of various 'zat pwe's, a term avid Sublime Frequencies fans might remember from several other SF comps we've carried in the past, and which refers to troupes that would travel throughout Burma performing their musical dramas, soaring emotional vocals, wild squiggly melodies, tinkling chimes, and darkly shimmering gamelan like percussion, some of the tracks are sung by children, the vocals almost always the focal point, the wild melodies in the background tightly wound up in those vocal melodies, making for lush tapestries of exotic inspirational sound, hypnotic and mesmerizing.
The flipside offers up several tracks featuring the Burmese harp, one of the most important instruments in Burmese music, with some tracks sounding like American blues, rich throaty vocals over laid back twang, and what sounds like wildly sawed fiddles, and the thick layer of crackle definitely furthers that whole early shellac / old timey sound. A few of the tracks are more modern, with piano, and male/female vocals, some of the tracks even sound almost like big band jazz, a definite Western influence for sure, but deftly woven into a distinctly Burmese sound. And then it's right back to another stretch of quavery almost traditional sounding Burmese folk music, buzzing strings, intricate vocal melodies, dreamy and dramatic and so divine.
When we first got this in, we sold two copies within minutes of putting the needle in the groove. Fantastic, gorgeous, utterly unique, emotional and haunting, all in equal measure. Obviously recommended for international / world music enthusiasts, but the sounds here totally transcend any sort of classification, anyone into adventurous listening and discovering new (old) sounds should most definitely take a flyer on this, you won't be sorry. Pure sonic bliss that will hopefully open up your mind, and ears, to a whole other world of music out there, past and present.
Comes housed in a heavy, old school Stoughton style tip-on full color jacket, and includes a printed insert with extensive liner notes, and rare photos.
Rarely has something showed up in the store that so many of us have wanted so badly, so instantly. An incredible TEN DISC boxset, accompanied by a huge book, tracing the history of Bollywood music, from its beginnings in the 1930s, to the present. All its influences represented, from classical to rock and jazz, new age, disco, hip hop, featuring so many legendary Bollywood vocalists including Asha Bhosle, Kishore Kumar, Hemant Kumar, Geeta Dutt, Sonu Niigaam, Lata Mangeshkar, Mohd. Rafi and tons more. 168 tracks total! We haven't actually opened one up yet, but odds are we're all gonna end up buying one, $99 for ten discs and a book, hard to beat, and judging from the tracklisting and the artists included, it's bound to be incredible, just figured we would get it up on the list/site sooner rather than later, and give aQ listers first crack at scoring one of these amazing collections!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
So we've actually already had quite a few amazing compilations of '60s and '70s popular music from Thailand, including a whole bunch of discs from the infallible Sublime Frequencies label (Thai Pop Spectacular, Siamese Soul, Molam: Thai Country Groove, Shadow Music Of Thailand, etc., etc.), and also the Subliminal Sounds label's Thai Beat A-Go-Go series, but we were still super excited when we heard about the upcoming release of this new comp of vintage Thai tunes, 'cause it's been put together by Soundway, the UK-based label that also seemingly can do no wrong when it comes to international crate diggin'. Soundway is responsible for all those Nigeria Special comps, and the Ghana Soundz ones too, among other fine collections and reissues, most focused on music from Africa or Latin America. This is their first venture into Southeast Asia, as far as we know, and boy did they do the job well! A more lively, colorful comp could hardly be imagined. The compilers, who have spent hours and days on the ground in Thailand searching out vintage vinyl, know their stuff (their DJ night, "Bangkok Paradise", must be a blast).
Nineteen tracks, 66 minutes of music, ranging from yearning love songs to super groovy funk, all of it quite undeniably 'exotic' to our ears, so that even with Western psych and pop influences, incorporating surprise rock riffs, synths, and brass sections, it's most definitely music from Thailand, utilizing Thai folk traditions, sung in the Thai language, though some of it also reminds us of Bollywood stuff (which makes sense), or possibly the Ethiopiques series as well (a less likely connection there). We recognize a few of the artists' names from those other abovementioned comps, though they seem aware of what's been comped already and we're assured that most of the tracks here have never been released outside of Thailand before.
The subtitle doesn't say "leftfield" for nothing, this probably isn't the most typical mainstream Thai pop from the period, more like the hippest and freakiest, though often from quite popular artists, many revered to this day. Soundway treat us to some wonderfully eccentric picks, gems like Waipod Phetsuphan's "Ding Ding Dong", a song inspired by a dumb 1971 Italian sex comedy about prehistoric cavemen (and cavewomen) that was inexplicably a hit film in Thailand. And the spaced out lounge-jazz of The Viking Combo band's "Pleng Yuk Owakard" must be mentioned. Mindblowing. Walking bass, spooked out electric organ, maniacal vocals, loud shuddery chords, sudden percussion, woah it's a weird one, almost disturbing. Whichever DJ/collector first dug that one up must have been stoked. So much good stuff here, our point is, the treasures of vintage Thai pop are plentiful enough to require this comp, those that came before, and hopefully many more to come. You gotta be thankful when you think about it, without the efforts of labels like Sublime Frequencies, and Soundway, etc., we'd be missing out on so much incredible music that we now listen to on a daily basis, whether it be from Thailand or Nigeria or wherever.
This comes in a digipack with a thick 24 page booklet that boasts plenty of full-color graphics (lots of vintage record sleeves and labels, plus pics of some of the artists, and a couple shots of the interior of a vinyl shop in Bangkok) and extensive liner notes. There's a lengthy essay discussing the development of, and distinctions between, such popular musical forms as luk thung, luk krung, and molam, with the impact of Western sounds such as surf rock and Santana also being discussed. Then each track gets its own detailed explanatory note as well, often giving some insight into the sometimes peculiar lyrical content the songs. (Also one mentions that Ethiopian groove-master Mulatu Astatke once spent time in Thailand, and has been quoted as having found some of the sounds of Thai music quite similar to those of his own country, so it's not just us.) Super thorough and informative, much as we expect from Soundway. Yay!
Yay! It's been awhile since we've had a new Finder's Keepers release, and this one is amazing!
By now we're all too familiar with the Eastern cinematic pop splendor and sitar funk of Bollywood. But what about Lollywood? Yes, just to the north in Pakistan, the city of Lahore had their own cottage film industry. Perhaps not as well known outside Pakistan, Lollywood was highly profitable in the seventies and eighties, housing a unique music division with its own equivalent of Bollywood's R.D. Burman and Asha Bhole in M. Ashraf and his female collaborator, Nahid Akhtar. With the help of EMI, Pakistani musicians were able to create ambitious music in a world class studio, using far-out instrumentation like Moogs and other synthesizers, accordions, surf-guitars, and tons of traditional hand percussion instruments instead of a proper drum set. It's definitely a far more electric and electronic pop sound , than what we're used to hearing in classic Bollywood music. Having an almost retro-futurist bent in its explosive collision of Eastern and Western musical touchstones: Freak-Beat and Surf Rock meets Space-Age Moog Pop and Urdu Groove! Originally released on 7" mini-lps (a curious marketing scheme was to release one soundtrack on 3 separate 7"s!), this is the first time these wild and delightful cinematic obscurities have been collected. Let's hope more get discovered. This IS the Sound of Wonder!
