A beautiful reissue of spacey melancholic chanson from this Belgian chanteuse who notably won the Eurovision song contest in 1968 a year before this debut release. But what sets this apart from standard '60s Euro-pop are the electronic, almost avant-garde arrangements made mostly with an Ondes Martenot, a theremin-like electronic keyboard famously used in the Star Trek theme and championed at the time by French avant-classical composer Olivier Messaien. Fans of Stereolab and Broadcast as well as Linda Perhacs and Brigitte Fontaine will surely find lots to love here, and we would love this even more if the reissue retained the original cover which is more haunting and ethereal than the nineties /sixties space-age bachelor pad design featured here, but that's a very small complaint. Limited stock!
Despite this band's name, Los Amigos Invisibles most definitely make their presence felt with their latest album. Chock full of tireless Latin jazz beats, electronic frolics, swoon-croon male vocals and ample nods to '80s funk and disco, Superpop Venezuela has 'party' all over it! Pretty much every one of these seventeen songs is infused with an irresistable force that pulls you onto the dancefloor. After about a half dozen playful, sexy, rump-bumpers they insert a gentler, breezy cocktail-sippin' number "A Una Mujer" to cool down your fevered brow... but it'll still keep your top a-tapping. Then it's right back into the peppery festivities which include an unabashedly kooky tune called "Caramelo Y Chocolate"... those are some super silly vocals! Really, this band very well might be able to singlehandedly stretch the balmy summer nights long into the autumn months! Not at all surprisingly this was produced by Dimitri From Paris who himself possesses the know-how to not only get a party started but keep it rollin' into the wee hours.
Now known as *Los* Natas rather than just plain Natas (to avoid confusion with the hiphop group of the same name?), this excellent Argentinian stoner rock outfit are back at last with a follow-up to their highly regarded (around AQ anyway) 1999 album Ciudad de Brahman (which is sadly out of print now, as it was released by the now defunct Man's Ruin label -- at the time we proclaimed it one of said label's best releases ever). An atmospheric Kyuss flavor is still present, but they've really developed from their humble beginnings into a powerful and original band. Harking back to lost wonders of obscure 1970s Latin American heavy psych, the Los Natas trio's music is heavy, rumbling stuff with stretches of spacey, almost jazz improv, acoustic breaks, and of course Spanish language vocals... They rock out on tracks like "Lei Motive" (with some unexpected almost boogie-woogie piano dropping into the middle of the song) and get all abstract and avantgarde on gently droning, drugged out trips like "Planeta Solitario". Recorded in Argentina by SF's own master of heaviness Billy Anderson (producer for Neurosis, High On Fire, Cathedral, Melvins, etc.), this is definitely one of the best heavy, psychedelic rock releases of the year thus far! (PS look out for another upcoming Los Natas disc to be released on Jussi of Circle's Ektro label someday.)
Attentive Aquarius customers probably already know Argentina's Los Natas as a band that, over their career to date, have recorded riffy Kyuss-inspired albums for seminal stoner rock label Man's Ruin (RIP) -and- also released proggy, droned-out space rock experiments for Circle's Ektro imprint, in all cases solidifying our Los Natas fandom here at AQ. Not that the stylistic distance 'tween the Man's Ruin and Ektro albums is that much of a stretch -- certainly not for these guys, who have become masters at making modern psychedelic hard rock that harks back to the druggy daze of '70s krautrock and their own South American hippie heroes, as much as it does the "desert rock" of Kyuss.
Well, we're glad to report that Los Natas are back and bringin' it with this, their latest album, the long-awaited, full-on follow-up to their previous Small Stone release Corsario Negro from back in 2002. They've definitely got the stoner rock rolling here, El Hombre Montana being on the more metallic side of the Los Natas equation, super heavy and percussively driving and seemingly haunted by the spirit of Black Sabbath in the guitar crunch department. Full of fuzz and distortion, these songs spiral in intensity -- lots of wild acid rawk GUITAR bursting out all over the place -- but also find room for some gruff vocal melodies (all songs sung in Spanish only). There's even a track of lovely, acoustic campfire folk. So we'd say that this is a stoner-rock-en-Espanol album with broad appeal to people into the likes of, say, Six Organs of Admittance, Comets On Fire, The Heads, and Boris.
Indeed, while Stateside these guys have their fans (we know quite a few AQ regulars are into 'em), they still don't have quite the profile of another AQ fave, Japan's Boris. And while Los Natas don't -quite- ever go to the extremes of heaviness and weirdness as Boris sometimes do, both bands occupy a lot of the same middle ground in the '70s inspired psychedelic hard rock realm, so we'd like to point out that there's not reason why anyone who loved Boris' Akuma No Uta, or Pink, or (especially) Heavy Rocks shouldn't also thrill to the music of Los Natas!
For fans of Argentina's heavy psych stoner rock overlords Los Natas, we've FINALLY managed to snag enuff copies of this sprawling live-in-the-studio double cd to list... These Munchen Sessions were, as you might expect from the title, recorded in Munich, Germany, in 2003. With the tape rolling courtesy of Electrohasch head honcho (and Colour Haze guitarist) Stefan Koglek, who also makes a guest appearance on one track, the Los Natas guys took this opportunity to jam out on material both new and old; hints of their heroes Black Sabbath (or is that a Bang riff we're hearing??) seem to surface amongst themes fans will recognize from past Los Natas efforts like Corsario Negro. The two discs bear two long tracks apiece, song suites really, each the appoximate length of a vinyl album side, wandering through all kinds of moods both heavy and mellow...basically progged-out in the same laidback way as the amazing Toba-Trance volumes Los Natas released a while back on Circle's Ektro label. Though Los Natas started their career off as (pretty killer) Kyuss klones, their interest in/influence from '70s psych and krautrock like Agitation Free has become more evident over the years, and we'd say that folks into the likes of Pharaoh Overlord and the heavier Acid Mother Temple material who haven't yet heard Los Natas need to check 'em out, and there's plenty to check out here!
Flailing long hair, jamming guitar solos, and gruff vocals (in Spanish). Weirdly looming desert cacti with electric instruments. Astral drug trips to the tops of holy mountains. Thick clouds of marijuana smoke forming into the shapes of totemic birds and animals. Campfire acoustic ceremony. And utter, utter HEAVINESS. Oh yeah, these guys from way down south in Argentina are one of our favorite "stoner rock" bands ever. We sound stoned just talking about 'em.
We've been fans of Los Natas for around ten years now, ever since we heard their 2nd album, Ciudad De Brahman, released in 1999 by thee primo purveyors of stoner rock, Man's Ruin, now defunct. In a world of approximately 1,257,523 Kyuss clones (about half of 'em from Sweden, according to the most recent data we have available), Los Natas stood out as particularly excellent example of the Kyuss style desert rock thing, fat guitar tone and all. And then, they took that sound and went all wonderfully weird with it, releasing a couple "Toba-Trance" discs of folk-flecked, pot-headed, spaced-out '70s sounding progginess on the Finnish label Ektro, run by another AQ fave band, Circle. And yet they also managed to get even heavier and more aggressively metallic elsewhere on other albums, like Corsario Negro and Le Hombre Montana. It's been three long years since we last heard from 'em, and wow, this new one could be their best yet!
As displayed by the fierce urgency of the storming, spiraling, and very metal instrumental "David Y Goliath" to then the hushed and lovely contemplative string-pluck of "Bienvenidos" that immediately follows it, El Nuevo Orden De La Libertad provides everything we want from these South American fuzzfreaks. It's loud, pounding and grinding, sooo heavy and rockin', yet with many memorable, melodic moments. And their interest in sprawling spaced out krautrocky improvs hasn't exactly abated, with detours into a nod-zone of blissful piano/acoustic guitar interplay (on final track "Dos Horses" ferinstance, that reminds us of Circle's Miljard) and stuff like that, as Los Natas wander about a mystic desertscape, dreaming and destroying with drug-fueled fervor.
We've said it before, and we'll say it again. As much as we love Japan's Boris, there's no reason that this equally heavy and psychedelic band shouldn't be as adulated.
Oh, Senor Coconut we can never get enough of you and all your sneaky alter egos. He just unleashed his homage to Yellow Magic Orchestra a couple lists back and when summertime rolls around his effervescent fun party sounds always hit the spot. Los Negritos is supposedly the work of Los Sampler's, a Chilean percussion group that Atom Heart aka Senor Coconut claims to have discovered. But we are still betting that at the end of the day this is all the work of the imaginative, playful mind of Senor Coconut himself. His frantic choppity-chop arrangements of electronics and abundant samples are pretty unmistakable... and pretty darn irresistible. Tweaked horns and synth sounds jump about the itchy-glitchy and yes verrry speedy merengue beats as highly processed vocals make often indecipherable exclamations. Never fails to delight in the most heart-racing and spastic way!
Along with the Tarkus album highlighted on this week's list, we've got more vintage Peruvian psych rock for you here -- a disc featuring rare and unreleased singles tracks circa 1969-1970 from Los Nuevos Shain's, the band formed by Enrique "Pico" Ego Aguirre, who had been the guitarist from garage rock legends Los Shain's (natch). Getting into the heavier sounds comin' out contemporaneously from England and California, Los Nuevos Shain's put their own stamp on covers of songs by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Cream, the Jefferson Airplane, Spirit, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and even Black Sabbath -- for us, it's their version of Sabbath's "Wicked World" that makes this a must have! Had to buy it just for that, to add to our collection of early daze Sabbath covers. (This puts 'em in the company of South Africa's Suck and Japan's Flower Travellin' Band to achieve the distinction of having recorded a Sabbath song way back when.)
Not to give you the idea that this is all that hard rockin' or heavy (for that, look to Pico's subsequent band Pax, reviewed elsewhere on our site). Sure, he does give the ol' fuzz and wah-wah pedals a bit of a stomp, though. Heck they do "Purple Haze". But this also has lots of dreamy poppiness on it too, and we're also quite taken by the boppy loopiness of the track "Guau Guau A Go Go", which features barking dogs in the mix! Basically, a trip to a paisley-painted Peruvian garage, some 37 years ago, to hear an enthusiastic band do a fun run-through of some familiar and not-so-familiar sixties tunes plus a few originals. And by the way, the music on this cd was taken from the master tapes (you know it, 'cause the booklet in this digipack features color photos of the original reels and tape boxes with handwritten labels!). Cool.
One of the Zombi guys gets kinda cheesy and soulful here, the "disco" side of Zombi to the fore, with saxophone!! Caveat Emptor... though we did enjoy it.
This new record from ex-Captain Beefheart's Magic Band guitarist Gary Lucas is a gorgeous and heartfelt musical love letter to the Chinese pop that changed his life. The liner notes detail his years spent in Taipei, in the midst of a torrid love affair where he first discovered this languid, lush pop, that would influence his playing and songwriting for years and plant the seed that would become a full blown obsession with Chinese vocalist Chow Hsuan (who you may have heard on the soundtrack to Wong Kar Wai's In The Mood For Love). This record is totally gorgeous. No Beefheart skronk or Magic Band mayhem here, just dreamy and ethereal, wistful and delicate, perfect pop. So lovely. Gently fingerpicked guitars, and soaring, songbird vocals, with lilting melancholy melodies and spare, spacious arrangements. Also, amidst these gorgeous pop songs are scattered solo guitar pieces, also traditional Chinese although they don't always sound it, that are really beautiful and sound quite a bit like John Fahey or Jim O'Rourke, ranging from faux Appalachian abstract blues folk to shimmery, heavily reverbed minor key soundscapes, albeit with slightly Eastern tinged melodies. But it's the gorgeous vocals that are the centerpiece here, from two amazing vocalists, effortlessly channelling the spirit and sound of Chow Hsuan and the Chinese pop of the mid twentieth century. So nice.
Though nothing is going to compare with his co-release with Mansour Seck, Djam Leelii (1984), this is certainly a much better album than his last release, Nomad Soul. Baaba Maal has turned away from the synth heavy world beat that he helped introduce and returned to an almost stripped down production which features his lilting voice, guitar, kora, bass, percussion and backing
Senegalese vocalist's new album is very 'world beat', not as traditional as our longtime favorite record by him and Mansour Seck, titled Djam Leelii.
We'll pretty much get anything on the Roundtable label right now, as they in collaboration with The Omni Recording Corporation, have been on a winning streak of reissuing on vinyl the most farflung and obscure library records, documentary soundtracks and other psycho-cinematic sonic ephemera from far off corners of the globe. Trouble is, they have been especially hard to get, and even more difficult to get enough of for us to list. We've literally been waiting for these latest two releases for nearly a year and our hopes of ever getting them were diminishing by the week. And all of the sudden, we got the news they were on the way and we were so seriously psyched! Two Italian library gems, one of haunted choir compositions from Egisto Macchi, founding member of the mighty Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova con Sonanza and the other from the wonderfully named Alessandro Alessandroni who is perhaps more well known as Ennio Morricone's guitarist and whistler! (Yes, whistler, of course he had to have one!) Both are pretty essential for lovers of seventies dreamy, otherworldly, acousmatic psychedelia!
Roundtable/Omni previously reissued Macchi's I Futuribili last year, and that missive of exotic outer space soundscapes was deeply mysterious and alluring, but not nearly as this one. As the title suggests, the compositions here all centered on voice, but not as you may think. This is the voice detached from the body expressed in haunting electronic choral effects and spectral concrete ambience that ranges from the percussive and urgent to the pastoral and ritualistic, always with a keen ear towards a brilliantly dynamic sound design. Pretty much the defining blueprint for Demdike Stare's entire sound, this has been considered a holy grail among collectors and comes with the highest recommendation. Limited to 500 copies. Don't Miss Out!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Machito, along with trumpet player Mario Bauza, formed this group after Bauza had cut his teeth playing with Cab Calloway's orchestra in 1940. The concept was to present an Afro-Cuban orchestra that incorporated Jazz musicians, a concept that had a tremendous influence on both American and Cuban orchestras alike. The tracks here, recorded in New York between 1947 and 1949 features: Machito (maracas, claves & vocals), Mario Bauza, Frank Davila & Bobby Woodlen (trumpets), Gene Johnson & Fred Skerritt (alto saxes), Jose "Pin" Madera (tenor sax), Leslie Johnakins (baritone sax), Rene Hernandez (piano), Roberto Rodriguez (bass), Luis Miranda (conga), Jose Mangual (bongos), Ubaldo Nieto (timbales) and Graciela (vocals.)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We're often a little wary when hip-hop producers and DJs make mixes that seem all about showing off what an awesome record collection they have.
But on the other hand, we've always been fans of Madlib's many productions and we are of course rabid fans of Brasilian music in all forms, so there's plenty to love about this latest mix. Collected during the same trip to Recife documented on the dvd Brasilintime: Batucada Com Discos we reviewed a while back, this is the first in a series of six mixes of the most obscure corners of Musica Popular Brasileira: Folkloric Chants, Samba, Bossa, and Tropicalia. There are only a couple of songs we recognize, but we've been playing this non-stop since we got it as it's a mind-melting hour long trip that unveils one solid gem after another.
Ecological and feminist-minded avant-hippie Polish ethno-drone-folk-rock outfit the Magic Carpathians are back with, I think, their fifth album. We've been fans of these Terrastock-style sonic explorers since their days as Atman, and even had 'em play in in-store here at Aquarius a year or two ago, which was very cool. This new disc is more of their experimental Eastern European psychedelic "rock" music: dark and primal, with lots of repetition and drone. The Carpathians really mix things up as usual bringing in jazz bass, cello, gongs, squeaking baby toys, acoustic guitar, signalling trumpet, and more. And it's quite an international production, with portions recorded live in Varanasi India, others in galleries in Poland, with some remixes done here in California by the rhBand.
All songs of course feature the voice of Anna Nacher, who really gets wild on some of this, giving this a bit of a Bjork-gone-bonkers-gone-Balkan flavor...indeed her dramatic 20th century classical style shrieking sometimes sounds like someone from a Luigi Nono composition -- or even Keiji Haino!! Haunting stuff, even when she sounds like the Knights Who Say Ni on the track "/dark/". But she can be mellow and melodic as well. Still, this disc might be the creepiest and most 'difficult' of the Carpathian's albums yet.
Send out the Ork alarm! Here's a major event for those initiated into the cult of this French prog colossus, the Wagner-meets-Coltrane-meets-'70s prog rock outfit MAGMA. A rare, brand new release, with the current lineup of the band filling
FINNISH INSTRUMENTAL CINEMATIC EPIC PROGROCK ALERT!!!
Okay, now that we've got your attention. When Andee was in Finland a few years back, Jussi from Circle took him to a tiny club to see a friend's band play, and the band totally destroyed, they were so epic, so massive, it was like seeing Godspeed! You Black Emperor play in a broom closet. Huge glowing swells of sound, totally memorable melodies, gorgeous arrangements, all swirled into majestic sweeping soaring emotional epics. Even back then, before the band even had a record out. Not soon after, they did in fact release a record, and we were immediately in love. The band was Magyar Posse, and that first record totally captured the majestic might of the band, while at the same time adding all sorts of sonic subtleties and even more dense layers of sound. A second record followed and somehow the band managed to sound even bigger and better. We had been hearing about a brand new record for a while, and were thrilled when a big box showed up a few days ago from Finland and inside was Random Avenger, the newest release from Magyar Posse. We were almost ready to be disappointed considering how much we dug those other records, or at least preparing ourselves to just be happy for more of the same, but if anything, the band have expanded their sound even further, coming up with epic soundscapes even more intense and epic and emotional than before.
This record, even more than the others, sounds like it just has to be a real soundtrack. Pop music is not meant to be so dense and rife with emotion, painting pictures with wordless music as vibrant as if there were in fact lyrics telling a story. The sound is very prog, intensely cinematic and while it is dark and dreamy it can also be strangely playful. Some moments, we're transported to some lost Bond film, others we find ourselves in some dusty Leone Western, while still others we're lost on some moonlit street running for our lives in a mysterious Italian giallo. The first track, "Whirlpool Of Terror And Tension" is a lush and dense, multilayered world of sound, with a strange sort of Bolero staccato rhythm, with strange scrabbly guitars, abstract sixties style female vocals, minor key guitar twangs, chimes and bells, keening guitars feedback, and simple propulsive drumming. The main riff is very Morricone, but is backed up by a thick wash of soaring strings and gorgeous glockenspiel, it's almost impossible not to close your eyes and see a cool sixties Mondrian style credit sequence for some Danger Diabolik style caper movie. That vibe definitely permeates the whole record, but each track definitely has it's own feel and distinct emotion. A handful of the tracks take Magyar's progressive post-rock into definite Goblin / Zombi territory with minor key strings, relentless rhythms, pulsing drums and new wave synths locked into angular krautrock grooves, while spacey sound effects swoop and swirl, strings soar and sing, and again we're just transported to whole new worlds, but worlds with totally kick ass soundtracks!
This is definitely still post-rock, and thus will appeal to fans of Tortoise and Godspeed and Cerberus Shoal and Cyann & Ben and Explosions In The Sky and the like but Magyar Posse have something totally their own going on. A unique sonic vision, an alternate musical universe, where a pair of headphones and a walkman transform you into a super spy or a wily seductress or a hired killer, and turns your boring neighborhood into 1960's Paris, or a dusty ghost town or a secret base in the Arctic. This is music as dense and as rich and as much of an escape as any book or any film could ever be, and music that can have such an incredible effect on the listener, is way too rare. And so very precious.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
First of all, love that cover! Rainbow-hued multiples of bespectacled Indian flute player T.R. "Mali" Mahalingham, two of whom's crucial albums, from 1969 and 1970, respectively, are collected here on this double cd (or double vinyl) release, brought to us by, it's no surprise, the always interesting and unusual Japanese reissue label EM, who were most recently responsible for Bharat Karki & Party's International Music, another amazing, obscure '70s Indian artifact. While that record was a wild explosion of exotic, psychedelic funk, this one is on a whole different level - spiritual, calm, acoustic, lovely, but yes also exotic, from an innovative virtuoso of the humble bamboo flute. Across these two discs, "Mali", steeped in Carnatic music tradition, utilizing his own special "parrot clutch" fingering, weaves mesmerizing, fluttering ragas and folk melodies, accompanied by gentle hand percussion and happily droning strings. It's very "Indian-sounding", perhaps not like most flute you've heard, and also as we said, very spiritual. He would sometimes (he claimed) see GOD when he played... and if that happened, he'd stop, concert over, 'cause why go on at that point? We're also told that he could communicate with birds via his flute playing. Seems possible. Although we'll confess we'd never heard of Mahalingham before (have you?), and that's why we love labels like EM, apparently he was legendary in India, and influenced important Western fans like composers Terry Riley, La Monte Young, and Oliver Messiaen.
We're becoming addicted to this, it gets played in the store several times a day by different staffers, and makes us all feel good.
As with all EM releases, the packaging is lovely, though the deluxe crazy limited vinyl version IS quite expensive.
Every installment in Luaka Bop's World Psychedelia series has been an across the board aQ favorite. From Os Mutantes, Shuggie Otis, the great African psych compilation, Love's A Real Thing, and now we have this great introduction to the post-Tropicalia funk of the great Tim Maia.
But the music is just one part of the story, the man's life is filled with interesting twists and turns including multiple marriages, prison sentences and an avid role in a UFO-obsessed religious cult, all of which have been the subject of a best-selling biography, tv show and hit musical in Brazil. How could we not love this?!
Combining a unique twist on Brazilian popular music along with copious American soul influences have made Maia's seventies recordings long sought after and excepting a couple of pricey imports, we have never been able to find any substantial release of his early musical output. After a decade of legal wrangling and coinciding with what would have been Maia's seventieth birthday (he died in 1998 of a heart attack while performing onstage), it's great to see this 15 track compilation realized and we're loving it more with each listen.
Mixing the Latino funk of Mexican-American groups like Malo and El Chicano, the cool urban sophistication of Steely Dan (yes, we went there, and we're not apologizing!) and the soulful vocals of Jorge Ben and Gilberto Gil. Maia's music has a fervent infectious energy that is totally engaging and sexy. He's often been compared to Barry White in the fact his music celebrates love over politics, but really Maia's music made the joyous acceptance of love and life a political statement and has long endeared him to legions of fans worldwide.
The cd is housed in a mini-hardbound cd-sized book, the lp in a deluxe full color gatefold, both with extensive notes and details of his extraordinary life. And this compilation comes of course, highly recommended!
Early seventies singer from Brazil.
Wow. I had no idea the Makers sounded like this now. They got some really schnazzy production which only serves to make them sound all generic 80's college rock, sort of like the Replacements on a very, very bad day. And then there's even a ballad or two? Whatthufuck? This just sounds... sad and pathetic, like Bon Jovi or something. What happened tough guy? Gone all soft? Yuck.
Oud Vibrations is a killer compilation collecting two rare records from the late fifties, which found two different groups incorporating the oud into their more standard instrumentation, in a quest for new, strange and exotic sounds. Most folks have seen an oud, even if they weren't sure what it was called - the body is pear shaped, with a short neck, and a strange bent head stock, the liner notes describe it as looking like a 'sawn off psychedelic guitar', which is pretty spot on. The instrument was prominent in lots of Middle Eastern music, as well as some Greek, Armenian and African music, it has a very distinctive sound, one that like the sitar, many Western musicians found super appealing, as much for its sound, as its exotic and spiritual connotations.
Both the records included here are pretty great, but Ahmed Abdul Malik's East Meets West is the main reason to pick this up, the sound a fantastic spiritual/modal jazz, hypnotic and pulsing, the playing incredible, the arrangements lush, and the sound truly exotic and original, with a serious band backing him up, including Lee Morgan on trumpet, among others. There are a few more standard jazz numbers, but the majority of the record is heavily Eastern influenced, driven by dense percussion, and another equally exotic instrument, the Darabeka. Fans of the Spiritual Jazz series, as well as reissues from Lloyd McNeill, Lloyd Miller, P.E. Hewitt and the rest will find Malik's record absolutely essential.
Charles 'Chick' Ganimian's Come With Me To The Casbah, has a bit more of a novelty vibe to it, but still has much to offer, the opener "Oriental Jam" lives up to its title, groovy, and soulful, exotic and spiritual, but then the cover of "Over The Rainbow", played on the oud of course, is a little bit kitschy. As is much of the record, but delightfully so. "Daddy Lolo" was the big hit, and is a vocal driven groover, with the cringeworthy line "This is Oriental rock and roll" delivered in a weird, heavily accented croon. Novelty hit for sure. But then there's the title track, which is a killer East/West hybrid, groovy and soulful, and very exotic sounding, so much so that it was apparently used as background music for an episode of the sixties TV show The Man From UNCLE. There's also the closer "Nine Eight" which is another fantastic blast of Eastern jazz that is as wild and wonderful on Malik's East Meets West.
Both albums are pretty fantastic, each in its own way, there's extensive liner notes included as well, that give a brief overview of the history of the oud in jazz, as well as some info on both of the records.
Wow! We were blown away when we first heard Nigerian organist Mammane Sani Abdullaye's La Musique Electronique Du Niger record reissued last year on Sahel Sounds (and now sadly out of print, it seems). Reissued from a rare cassette that originally came out in 1978, we thought that was Sani's only recording, but now Sahel Sounds has unearthed this doozy of a release, which takes Sani's minimal organ pop to a whole new Afro-futuristic level. Taken from unreleased studio sessions made in the mid-to-late eighties, when Sani began programming his own rhythms, the music here, derived from Saharan folk-ballads re-imagined for a cosmic future, is more spacious and exploratory, laid back and atmospheric, yet still loping, circular and groovy, perfect for astral-cruising across planetary deserts. For fans of the Ethiopiques series or that Personal Space electronic outsider RnB compilation we always raved about, and library music heads and minimal synth-lovers will find lots to love here too.
The Sahel Sounds label (responsible for Music From Saharan Cel Phones, Harafin So, and many more great lps of music from the Sahel region of Africa) strikes again with this amazing reissue of an uber-rare vintage cassette, the lone album circa 1978 by Nigerian "electronic music pioneer" Mammane Sani Abdullaye. We're told that if you live in West Africa, you'd likely be familiar with Mammane's instrumental music to some extent, as his tunes have apparently been used frequently in the background on radio and TV broadcasts over the past three decades. For us though, his sounds are an exciting discovery! Mammane plays the electric organ, in a fairly minimalistic and repetitive style, his music full of charming, simple melodies; it sounds very live and intimate, recorded with hardly any overdubs (it was done on a 2 track machine) and pleasingly lo-fi, with a little bit of tape hiss (just like we like it).
Some of the songs are woozy, sweetly dreamy sound paintings, others are more uptempo and percussive, with tick-tocking rhythm backing tracks, and Mammane joyously tickling the keys over top. Chiptune/skweee fans might enjoy the more video-game-y blip blip bleep of the calm yet jaunty "Bodo", while the laidback grooviness of the likes of "Tunan" should appeal to fans of the Ethiopiques series, even though this is from a completely different region of Africa.
Many of the melodies are based on traditional Nigerian folk music - as the label's notes say, "Mammane electrifies the nomadic drum of the tende, the polyphonic ballads of the Woddaabe, and the pastoral hymns of the Sahelian herders". Others are entirely original. And all are quite lovely indeed. Such a find.
Highly recommended in particular to fans of Francis Bebey and his African Electronic Music 1975-1982 collection that we also made a Record Of The Week a while back. An absolutely delightful record!
It's a limited vinyl-only edition of 500 (for now, but we can hope that they'll do a cd too).
You know that we at aQ are big fans of Turkish psych legend Erkin Koray. We were even incredibly lucky enough to have him spend an afternoon here recently, signing autographs!! We've also recommended stuff by various of Koray's contemporaries, like Cem Karaca and Edip Akbayram. But, we haven't gotten much of a chance to talk about another Turkish psych/pop legend, Baris Manco, a man immediately recognizable by his luxuriant long hair and impressive mustache.
Now, Spain's Guerssen label has, for the first time, properly reissued on cd several classics from Manco's discography. We'll start with this one. It's Manco's first full-length album, we think, from 1975, and is considered by some to be his masterpiece. Certainly it's got its special charms - most notably, as you might guess from the title 2023, there's a futuristic vibe to it. Which means, lots of far out synthesizer sounds accompany the traditional Anadolu Pop folk elements. So it sounds just a bit like Bruce Haack goes belly dancing! Weird that may be, but Manco's smooth singing tends to accentuate the mostly laid back, mellow mood here. Though this Middle Eastern soft rock prog does of course get kinda funky/groovy too. And we definitely can call it "prog", when one track is a 12 minute plus multi-part suite that incorporates both flute and field recordings of bird twitter, right? Oh, and there's one song, we swear if Ozzy were singing instead of Baris, that would sound a lot like Sabbath's "Planet Caravan".
To sum up: pretty cool. We wish our country's "most influential pop artists" made weird sci-fi sounding concept albums like this. And if you were wondering, our guess, without looking at the copious liner notes that this comes with, is that the significance of the "2023" date has to do with how that year will be the centennial anniversary of the founding of the modern Turkish Republic.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Turkish psych singer. [/cat/international18.html]
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
If you like the wonderful Sublime Frequencies series that we've been in love with here at AQ, here is a new cd-r compiled by an AQ customer that is not a part of that series but for sure captures the same sprit and raw aesthetic as those releases. These are sounds rarely heard outside of Burma. A drum and gong ensemble that accompanies marionette performances which is part of a tradition found both in India and China. During these performances the gong ensemble of 21 or 22 drums are tuned by adding or removing a paste (yes, paste) located at the center of each drum head. The paste itself is a mixture of ash and rice powder. The sounds that are created are so amazingly raw and pleasing. Often instrumental but at times off kilter female vocals lay on top of the percussion. You get the feeling everything could all fall apart at any moment and that sense of chaos mixed with sounds steeped in a rich tradition all make for a totally one-of-a-kind listening experience. We love how it's playful, rhythmic and at times catches a blissed out blown out vibe that you could imagine hearing as part of a warped Boredoms side-project. This recording was taken straight from a cassette that made its way to the states. With no information inside and several unsuccessful attempts to get a hold of anyone involved in the project in Burma, Blueberry Buddha decided to release on c-r a very limited run with all profits going to Burma Forum a nonprofit group which serves as a watchdog and advocate of humanitarian issues in Burma. Highly recommended!
A while ago we reviewed an incredible, and incredibly far out collection of strange electronic music from South Africa, the comp was called Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music from South Africa, and boy did the music live up to the promise of that title. We described the sound as being part Congotronics, part Nintendo, part Omar Souleyman, part karaoke, sounds pretty weird and amazing, and it was, a huge favorite around here. Some of the coolest, weirdest most damaged and deliriously fucked up 'dance' music we had maybe ever heard.
So now comes another missive from that same scene, this one a gospel record, Shangaan electro-gospel to be precise, which already sounds amazing. Plaintive, moody emotional heartfelt vocals draped over simple skeletal Casio keyboard rhythms, looped whirring accordion like textures, goofy lo-fi 8 bit video game music and a weird wheezy whistle (which is a hallmark of Shangaan, and tweets throughout all the tracks here), and a much more traditional sounding chorus of female vocalists, providing gorgeous harmonies to accompany the main vocal, and the strange tweeting, wheezing, skittering music underneath.
It sounds really strange, and definitely a little goofy, but the music is hauntingly beautiful and quite mesmerizing, and the more you listen, the more you become utterly mesmerized, the sounds lulling and soothing and transporting, transcending the limitations of the instrumentation (if those are truly limitations, we're not so sure!), and creating something moving, emotional and truly spiritual.
In the Rough Guide To Bollywood Legends series. She is a Legend indeed.
Yikes! No quiet forest folky revels here. Sure, last time we reviewed something by Finland's Maniacs Dream, an lp they did for HP Cycle a few years back, they were a sort of skronky psychedelic heavy freakout band, whose jams we likened to an unholy union of Faust and the Butthole Surfers. Well, on this disc they've gone a bit further down the freakout path. In fact, it seems like they set out to prove that Finnish peeps can make "Finnish noise" that's just as noisy as any Japanese noise. Turku Hold 'Em is just an all out assault on the ol' earholes, 68 and a half minutes of sheer feedbacking, crinking-cranking, screaming n' screeching N-O-I-S-E. Spread out over two long tracks with nary a respite, though sometimes the rumbling distortion will hold "steady" long enough to take the hardy listener into something of a drone trance zone. This happens more during track two (or maybe its that by track two, the listener is in a state of stunned submission anyway).
If this calorie-burning cavalade of chaos was by Japanese spasming noise outfit Incapacitants (subject of a recent 10cd box set), Allan here would buy this in a second. In fact, he's gonna buy it anyway. It's that good. And if good=noisy in your book, you might agree!
Gerard Manset is an underground French treasure, recording records since the late '60s but always avoiding the public spotlight, refusing to do interviews, appear on TV or play any of the other silly games often required to attain mainstream success. With a totally seductive voice, and lush arrangements that are as powerful as they are beautiful, this album recorded during the student riots in Paris in 1968 has become one of those discs we can't stop listening to! There is an urgency and passion in these songs rarely heard in modern music. Manset has the same kind of presence and elegance as folks like Serge Gainsbourg, Caetano Veloso, Michel Polnareff and Scott Walker. This is not ye-ye fluffy French pop. Don't get us wrong we love that stuff, but what makes Manset so damn great is how his songs are so melodic and catchy while also being so sensual and impassioned. Totally smart arrangements that will appeal to both psych and pop lovers. We recently learned that Manset has an extensive back-catalog and we can't wait to start getting our hands on as much of it as possible, but until then let's all get swept up in 1968!
Last year one of our favorite reissues came in the form of the strong and passionate voice of Gerard Manset. A French mastermind musician who has been crafting iconoclastic and lush sounds since the late '60s. The release we first heard last year titled 1968 quickly became an AQ favorite and made us think of Manset as a French incarnation of Caetano Veloso. We went from barely knowing anything about Manset to wanting to try to find out as much as we could about him, as that release reeled us in so strongly with its elegant and charged melodies.
La Mort D'Orion was recorded a couple years after that release in 1970 and finds Manset in a much more avant setting, but with equally stunning results. Created as one multi-part suite, the record is filled with strings, the music moving from small scale moments to sweeping epics, beautiful melodies everywhere, all colored with rich instrumentation and of course there's Manset's elegant voice.
This is the perfect antidote to fluffy ye-ye pop. With La Mort D'Orion, Manset created a piece of challenging and brooding symphonic pop akin to the best work created by the likes of Robert Wyatt, Scott Walker and Franco Battiato. Accented with shots of prog, psychedelia and modern classical, Manset displays his amazing ability to pull together a wide range of elements in creating such a monumental and rewarding piece of music. Highly recommended!
Our hands down favorite reissue label for far-flung exotica, Japan's EM Records, not only has a new amazing release, but has also finally made the big leap to vinyl!! (Actually, they'd done a few lps before, but this release is vinyl ONLY). And what better choice for a vinyl reissue than this rare mid-'70s slab of Afro-Cuban percussive funk madness by Cuban master "bongosero", Lazaro Pla, or as he was better known to the world, Manteca! Eight relentlessly heavy bass-driven grooves featuring Manteca's organic percussive excursions that range from almost modernist compositions of repetitively shifting layers of driving rhythms to deep salsa jams and afro-cuban FUNK. Imagine Tussle with a Cuban rhythm section or Konono No. 1 with a limber funky bass player, or even one of the best Beastie Boys instrumentals from back in the day. Having performed with many legendary Cuban combos including Ernesto Lecuona's Cuban Boys, Manteca's recorded output as leader and featured soloist have been quite rare. Beautiful and dazzling with a no-frills production that acknowledges the traditional roots of Cuban music but with a forward thinking progressive edge. So Awesome! And DJs, get on it, you've got your new secret weapon right here.
From Zimbabwe.
Known as the Lion of Zimbabwe, Thomas Mapfuno is one of the most popular African musicians and next to Fela Kuti, one of the most politically outspoken. Leading a string of bands from the sixties to the eighties, Mapfumo is probably best known for creating and popularizing a form of African music called "Chimurenga" (meaning "struggle") that took its roots from the traditional rural Shona music of his upbringing but fusing it to Western rock instrumentation and styles. This mainly involved transcribing the sounds of the mbira to the electric guitar and singing in the Shona language instead of English. This also helped to disguise the inflammatory anti-government sentiments of his songs, but not for long. Wrongly imprisoned and his music banned from state controlled radio, the government couldn't stop his music being played in the discos and there was enough protest to warrant his eventual release. Having helped oust the government with the installation of free elections, Mapfumo helped Mugabe come to power only to later sing out against him and be forced to flee to America where he currently lives.
Hokoyo! (Watch Out!) from 1979, recorded with the Acid Band for this one time release, was Mapfumo's first outing musically and introduced the Chimurenga style after recording music for years influenced by Western pop music. It's also what made the government censor his music and throw him into the prison camps without charge. The Chimurenga vibe is definitely laid back, having more in common with Jamaican reggae than Kuti's Afro-funk extrapolations. Not as forceful as much political music can be, but like Brazil's Tropicalia movement, the power is in its popularity and giving the people their own voice!
