[ aquarius records — International ]

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Showing results 751 through 800 of 1785.

Born in 1900, Rita Montaner was enrolled in a conservatory of music in Cuba and studied voice and piano at the age of ten and received her diploma at sixteen. By the age of 19 she was giving recitals throughout Cuba, at 22 she was one of the first voices to be heard over Cuban national radio and at 27 flew to New York -- beginning her career as an international artist. But despite

RealAudio clip: El Manisero
RealAudio clip: Alla En El Batey

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. It has been said that Beny More is one of the greatest Cuban singers, and one of its greatest patriots - one of the few stars of his generation who chose to stay in Cuba rather than emigrate to the U.S. or Mexico - a singer "gifted with an incomparable voice. He was the most all-around of Cuban singers, for he was capable of embroidering, stretching, and repeating the phrases of a song without ever altering his rhythm. He knew, with an instinctive judgement, how to assimilate new harmonic concepts while at the same time remaining true to his roots." This recording is unique in that Beny More is backed up by Perez Prado and his orchestra, a group more commonly associated with instrumental music. Recorded in Mexico City between 1948 and 1950.

If you're gonna own any Morricone soundtracks, or Spaghetti Western ones, or heck soundtracks in general, you gotta have this one - With its famous whistling theme, a motif which recurs throughout, Morricone's bombastic, evocative music for Sergio Leone's 1966 epic Western is what helped make it a classic - along with the performances of Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach as the titular characters, of course. Morricone's soundtrack too is a classic, and a good example of many aspects of the maestro's music that have had a big influence in various ways on such disparate artists as Sun City Girls, Grails, Barn Owl, John Zorn, and Bjorn Olsson.

One of a whole handful of Chinese indie rock and noise pop releases on this week's list, this is the first we've heard from Mr. Graceless, who like a lot of the other Chinese bands we've been digging lately, seem especially beholden to a certain era of American music, that we too are quite partial to, that would be the nineties, and the sort of college/indie rock we still love to this day. And sure, it could be cuz we sort of musically came of age in that era, but we don't seem to ever get tired of My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Sebadoh, the Pixies, and the multitude of bands who carried that sonic torch ever since. So yeah, if you like that sort of stuff, or have been digging the recent Chinese releases we've been featuring on past lists (White+, Boyz & Girl, Car-Sick Cars, Dear Eloise, Duck Fight Goose, etc.), then Mr. Graceless will be right up your alley. And while they do obviously count all that nineties American stuff as a huge influence, they also seem to push that sound into more overtly poppy indie jangle realms, with lots of soaring chiming clean guitar and some seriously sweet vocals, positioning the sound of Mr. Graceless a bit closer to pop outfits like the Shins, Avi Buffalo, Spoon, Death Cab, Papercuts, etc. But imagine that sound with just a bit more crunch and fuzz. Super melodic, ultra poppy, crazy catchy, and way recommended for all you (indie/nineties) pop nerds...

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An amazing release in this new series from the always kick ass Honest Jon's label. An offshoot of the equally amazing London Is The Place For Me series (which we've yet to review, but we're working on it!), Gwigwi Mrwebi is a sax player from Johannesburg, who moved to London in 1960 to appear in the musical King Kong (!) and who back in South Africa had recorded with Hugh Masekela among other jazz luminaries. We've been listening to this for months and months and are only now finally getting it reviewed and listed! Mbaqabga Songs is a reissue of an impossible to find lp, and is totally delightful, groovy, jazzy, danceable, playful, rambunctious, a bit boppy, super happy and most certainly sets the toes a tapping. While this definitely has some African elements and will appeal to fans of all things Ethiopiques and Zanzibara, it's much more of a straight jazz record, performed in the Kwela style popular in Africa at the time, a happy, lilting, jazzy bounce with a definite fifties big band vibe (we even hear some rocksteady in there too), the melodies exuberant, the playing smooth and crisp, just so fun with a totally carefree vibe. It's easy to imagine a warm summer evening, the sun setting on an outdoor dancefloor, strung with multi colored lights, Mrwebi and his band playing on late into the night, everyone dancing and drinking and celebrating life. So great! Beautifully packaged in a 8 panel digipak, packed super extensive liner notes from Steve Beresford.

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Although young enough to be their son, Nico Muhly seems to have a great grasp of the kind of elegance in chamber music that folks like Steve Reich and Philip Glass have developed over the last several decades. The first release on a new label from Iceland, Muhly's name is no upstart in Icelandic music circles as he helped Bjork on Medulla as well as for her score to Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. The company Muhly keeps gives pretty good insight into the majestic and moving music that he creates. As well as Bjork, Muhly has also collaborated with Philip Glass on lots of stage and film works, and Antony of Antony & The Johnsons, who appears on the last track here. Muhly has a sensitive songwriting hand which keeps the songs on Speaks Volumes subtle enough to remain riveting but with enough emotional weight to keep us coming back for more. So very nice!

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More music coming to us from China, a bunch of new records and bands on this week's list. One of our favorites being the oddly monikered Muscle Snog, who masterfully mix avant experimentalism with classic jangle pop, shoegaze noisiness with angular post punk crunch. After a trippy ambient opener, the band launch into what at first sounds like some straight up noise pop, all thick fuzzy bass, chiming guitars, laid back vox, but then BAM, the song explodes into some fierce noise rock crunch, a la Sonic Youth, grinding freaked out psychedelic heaviness, swirling guitar weirdness over wild pounding drumming, and then they slip right back into it. And this is where we usually say something like "and the rest of the record plays out similarly", but this time it really doesn't, the band flitting from tripped out sound to tripped out sound. "Fuzz Rabbit" sounds like OOIOO via AmRep, with a bit of Lightning Bolt in the mix, melding playful twee pop, with buzzing, grinding heaviness, while "Happy Dreamer On A Sad Bad" sounds like a trippier Blonde Redhead, all spacey and prettily post rocky, and "Call It A Pop Song" is actually a killer pop song, sounding like the Swirlies mixed with Smashing Pumpkins, albeit a bit noisier. A few tracks get a little Melt-Banana-y, others get sort of Boredoms-ish, shades of another Chinese favorite White+ arise here and there, but really, Muscle Snog are fucking nuts, and not in sonically scatterbrained way, there's definitely a method to their madness, and it IS mad. The record is peppered with short experimental interludes, that somehow work perfectly with the proper songs, and that's probably cuz the songs are full of weird experimental bits. And as much as Beatles covers are played out, MS's version of "A Day In The Life" transforms the original into a noise drenched buzz-sludge creep, and it totally works. Fans of all the other Chinese stuff we've listed (White+, Carsick Cars, Dear Eloise, Boyz & Girl, etc.), this is fast becoming our new fave, and it's probably the weirdest of the bunch!

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Live document of recent reunion tour. It may not have Rita Lee, but it's awesome nonetheless.

This band is much better than their horrible name would imply. My Cat Is An Alien is the delicate avant-rock project of the Italian brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who have garnered a considerable amount of respect from Sonic Youth. So much so that MCIAA has opened for SY on a number of recent Italian gigs, jammed with Kim Gordon during one of those tours, and got this album released through Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label. The brothers open their album very quietly with quiet Slint / Tarentel guitar chords and lots of silence between the repeated stanzas. Equally spartan blurts of synthetic 8-bit noise emerge in congress with the guitars, eventually doubling up with a time-stretched / down-pitched reflection of itself. All of this very slowly gets smeared into a spiralling pattern of cosmic delay and tape-loop mechanisms. This track (or movement as MCIAA calls it) takes up all of side one, and is worth the prices of admission alone. The rest of the album is a bit of a turn downhill. Side two tumbles through a passage of lo-fi noise, sounding like a hand-cranked cheese grater being amplified with an occasional John Fahey-esque splutter behind it all. This lp had originally been released as a CD-R / demo before it was sent to Thurston Moore. The other LP is a one-sided affair with the band spitting out spastic sort-of-no-wave.

RealAudio clip: Movement 1

Released on the same label that put out the Starfuckers compilation Ordine '91-'96, one of our Records Of The Week this week, this collection of eps from Italian/British shoegaze dreampop duo My Violent Ego couldn't be more far removed from the gnarled experimental noise rock of the Starfuckers. MVE instead traffic in heavily processed, washed out effects drenched shimmer, dreamy abstract pop drift, and hushed ethereal pop ambience. 4AD loosed from its more traditional song like structures, the sounds allowed to float freely, blurred clouds of tangled melody, hushed angelic voices, looped melodic mesmer stretched into dreamy droned out drifts of ephemeral dreampop, many of the tracks here mere fragments, but even in fragmented form, so breathlessly lovely. We knew the name My Violent Ego was familiar, but we couldn't quite remember why, but then it came to us, they were one of the bands who accused black metallers Velvet Cacoon of plagiarism! Remember those rumors of an unreleased VC demo that supposedly consisted of mostly borrowed/stolen music made by other people? The Velvet Cacoon folks copped to it too, admitting to being a total fraud, but knowing VC, it's hard to tell whether they're ever being genuine or always taking the piss, but finally hearing MVE it's easy to hear why Velvet Cacoon might be tempted, slather on a little black buzz, and this stuff would make the most divine and dreamily druggy black metal bliss, the sounds already warm and fuzzy, woozy and washed out, even a bit witch housey, the arrangements looped and circular, slipping from fully realized jangle pop drift, to blurred and smeared impressionistic shoegaze ambience, often melding the two, into some of the dreamiest dreampop we've heard. There's definitely an old school Eighties vibe, but the band infuse their jangly drift with enough experimentalism that many of these tracks sound more like something you might hear on Touch or Kompakt than 4AD, taking single riffs, or simple loops, and treating them, dousing them in effects, and stretching them out into hushed expanses of mesmeric shimmer. So so nice. And so so totally recommended.

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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. A while back we reviewed a cd called Siamese Temple Ball. A truly mysterious disc, with very little in the way of liner notes or any information really, but a record that we all became a little obsessed with and thus listened to it NONstop. We sold tons of copies too. Then recently, we get a new batch of records from the always amazing Mississippi Records, and one of the records is entitled simply Mysterious Thai LP. So of course we're intrigued. We throw it on, and lo and behold, it's the very same record. Siamese Temple Ball, now on vinyl. Not sure how this happened, if it was random, or if as we posited back in the day, that maybe Siamese Temple Ball was not actually music from Thailand, but an incredibly well played homage by some Sun City Girls-like worshippers of Eastern musical tradition. Hardly matters, the music is fantastic, wild, emotional, dense, joyous and yes, very very mysterious. The cd version featured a sticker that proclaimed in faux pidgen English: "Flight comes to Thailand in the Year of the Rat. Siamese Temple Ball provide the lilting soundtrack for a chemical journey. Schoolgirls dance bashfully for the expectant throng. Life continues at a comparatively slow pace away from the rigours of fierce sun-light." Which was then followed by the (label's) description: "In the tradition of Sun City Girls, Ya Ho Wha 13, The Spacious Mind, Taj Mahal Travellers, Mu, Word of Life, Group 1850, and Ghost, Siamese Temple Ball give maximum pleasure for thirsty brains." Quite a roster of comparisons, the most fitting of which is definitely the Sun City Girls. So while we assume that this record was recorded by a group of precocious, dilettante, ethnomusicologist hipsters, we like to suspend our disbelief and imagine this to be a genuine Folkways-style field recording, as the recording certainly has a genuine field recording presence - a single stereo microphone in a good location. The music itself is a catchy and mesmerizing steady pulse of various and sundry percussion instruments (metal, wood, skin), hollers, yelps, and rococo melodic lines spun out by tinny electric guitars, xylophones, flutes and Khan (mouth organ.) And besides all that, it's really pretty great! The Mississippi lp version has all new artwork, even more mysterious than the cd, housed in a thick matte finish sleeve, with NO information at all, not even on the lp labels. We're not sure in what capacity, but it was apparently put out in conjunction with Exiled - also from Portland - another great record store. So recommended. And of course, probably WAY too limited...

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One evening earlier this week, for a couple hours, we hosted an instore DJ performance by this nice fellow Brian Shimkovitz who runs the celebrated Awesome Tape From Africa blog. He brought in several cases full of rare cassettes from his collection, and they were indeed awesome! Groovy stuff from all over the continent. His blogging and DJing activities have also now spawned a reissue label, and when he was here we grabbed a few copies of his debut release, on cassette of course - though it's also out on cd and vinyl, and we should get some of those eventually too. But the limited edition cassettes are what he had with him. It is Awesome TAPES From Africa after all!! For this first Awesome Tape From Africa, he's selected an obscure recording from the Ivory Coast, circa 1982, by female Malinese singer Na Hawa Doumbia. It says Vol. 3 in the title, presumably it was Brian's favorite of Na Hawa Doumbia's La Grande Cantatrice Malienne tapes. If you were here for his DJing, or have ever checked out the stuff on his blog, you know it's gonna be good! Full of tumbling drum-heavy rhythms, pierced by Doumbia's higher register vocals, sometimes impressively soaring, singing these "diadai" dances. Joyful in sound, but also full of cautionary warnings about betrayal and other misfortune. Comes with download code!

Soundtrack to Cornel Wilde's 1966 film. Shot on location in Africa (Rhodesia, South Africa, Bechuanaland & Mozambique) -- often hundreds of miles from the nearest village -- with a cast composed almost entirely of non-professional actors (most had never acted before in their lives), a minimal budget and a whole lot of blood, sweat & tears (literally), The Naked Prey brought method acting to new levels. The music chosen to be the score for the film is every bit as authentic as the shooting locations, for it is all composed and played by the N'guni clans amongst whom the crew worked and filmed. While Wilde of course selected the tracks from what the N'guni played for him during the filming, the music is just as they performed it. The entire score is merely recordings of drums, chants, strange animal imitations, and the natural ambience of the bush, ie: field recordings. Thank god this preceeded the medling interference of the world beat puveyors Peter Gabriel et. al. And actually, the score in and of itself was a bit of cutting edge concept. As is pointed out in the liner notes, this was released the same year as Nonesuch began their Explorer series and long before any kind of major world music industry. Another fine release from Latitude.

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This is the one! If you've ever heard someone playing Milton Nascimento, some sweet soothing sounds dazzling your ears, chances are it was this record. As many of us can attest to, just picking out any Milton Nascimento record can be a bit risky as his entire back catalog is quite varied and there are some not so hot moments, but all sins are forgiven with this record, an album that we dare say ranks as one of our favorite albums of all time! Clube Da Esquina is a stunning disc of psychedelic pop that manage to be as dreamy and pastoral as it is tropical and full of life. Bursting with warmth and rich color this is a record we will never get sick of. It's not psychedelic in an obvious look-how-weird-I-can-be way, but instead it's about a slow melting lull, soft swirls and subtle shifts in sounds. One moment it's the dreamiest most lovely song you've ever heard and the next the warm sun is shining and all you want to be doing is running and twirling in the sand. As lush, gorgeous and dynamic as anything Caetano Veloso has created. We can't praise this record enough! Lo Borges is the big unsung hero of this album, not even 20 years old when it was made he helped with many of the arrangements, sang and wrote many of the songs... Truly a perfect album from start to finish, an hour long trip filled with sunshine and surprise, melody and sophisticated glory. It's no surprise that songs on this record have been covered by the likes of Savath & Savalas and Tortoise and Bonnie Prince Billy. As these are songs that will always sound so alive and of the moment. Undoubtedly it's a record that's had a huge impact on everyone from Devendra Banhart, The Shins, Eden Express, Beck, Brightblack, Vetiver, Jose Gonzales, etc. And a must have for anyone who loves folks like Veloso, Gerard Manset, Eduardo Mateo, Congregacion, Alceu Valenca, Serge Gainsbourg, The Beatles, Melting Glass Box, Magical Power Mako, etc. No matter how obscure or mainstream your tastes tend to be, this is one of those records whose beauty and genius just can't be denied. We know we're always telling you about so many amazing records that you really just can't live without, but this time (again!) we really mean it!

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Milton Nascimento's North American debut record from 1969 came at the end of the huge wave of the bossa nova movement that had infiltrated the American imagination since Astrud Gilberto's "Girl From Ipanema" with Stan Getz in 1963. A&M records and producer Creed Taylor were behind some of the best records of this period including albums by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sergio Mendes and Joao Gilberto, and Nascimento's Courage is no exception. Beautifully arranged and sung, this is where many of his most popular Brazilian songs were heard for the first time including "Vera Cruz", "Morro Velho" and "Bridges (Travessia)". Singing in Portuguese, English and sometimes wordlessly, this is a breathtaking record. While it doesn't have the psych flourishes and Tropicalia bent of Cluba Da Esquina, from a few years later (a unanimous store favorite!) it's still an essential record and perfect for lazy and wistful summer evenings.

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Like the Jemaa El Fna DVD on Sublime Frequencies, the Nat Pwe DVD also contains no voice over, authoritative or not, to mis-guide you through the festivities. Instead, using the camera in the same way someone might make a field recording in the traditional auditory realm, you are led merely by the camera angles and edits chosen. As a way of background, here's what Sublime Frequencies writes about the event contained here: "In Burma, many people believe in ghost spirits called NATs. These spirits are historical figures who met tragic or violent deaths. They are said to possess the power to assist or devastate the lives of those who recognize them. A PWE is a ceremony held to appease a Nat. Pwes are arranged daily throughout Burma for many purposes including the achievement of success in business, a happy marriage, or improving one's health. A Nat is summoned through a Kadaw; the flamboyent and charismatic master of the Pwe dressed in elegant costume. The Kadaw is a spirit medium, dancer, storyteller, and magician who exposes the crowd to a living incarnation of the Nat brought forth through opening ritual and careful observance of tradition. Many of the Kadaws are male crossdressers performing the role of female Nats and the Nat culture attracts the homosexual, occult, artistically expressive and more outgoing elements of the Burmese population. Cash money is thrown and cigarettes and whiskey are hand delivered by the Kadaw to the willing faithful. Audience participants are often ecstatic, spontaneously launching into trance as the Nat spirit possesses their bodies while the melodically ornamental and thundering sound of the Nat Pwe orchestra plays on as perhaps the last, great unknown musical juggernaut existing anywhere. Each Pwe has its own mood and Nats can dictate a variety of happenings and unpredictable phenomenon. Since the 11th century, there have been 37 officially recognized Nats and every August, in the village of Taungbyon, there is a festival dedicated to two of them. This festival is one of the greatest spectacles on earth. At the peak of the Taungbyon celebration, there are dozens of very intimate venues holding continuous Pwe's for 48 hours without interruption bubbling with excitement and intensity all within the narrow alleys of bamboo shelters amidst a vibe of mysterious, electric charm. What results is the magnetic, unexplainable concoction of conservative tradition, free expression, music, dance, spirit possession, and anomolous synchronicities of Burma's Carnival Of Spirit Soul." Insane stuff. The film begins in the daytime following hundreds of pilgrims as they make their way to the event and ends late into the night after the festivities have reached a zenith of frenzied performance and audience participation. The camera wanders from tent to tent, each one containing a Kadaw, a Nat Pwe Orchestra (a completely crazed percussion ensemble about as removed from Burmese Harp music as you can get) and crammed with people making offerings (mostly pinning money to the Kadaw's head dress and blouse). There's really no way to do it justice in describing this event. If there were ever a comparison in the U.S. it would have to be like a transvestite tent revival held in a New Orleans graveyard with musical accompaniment by the Ruins. Running 85 minutes, I've found this disc also works nicely just as an audio recording. For those of you with a multi-format disc player, it makes a truly cool CD as well. While we forwarn those living overseas that this disc is NTSC, it is also region-free, so if you can handle the format you're in like Flint. Comes with an 8 page booklet of notes and photos.

Way back in 2005, we reviewed the first volume of the Nath Family's Sounds Of The Indian Snake Charmer, a collection of recordings made by Wolf Eyes' Aaron Dilloway, when he was living in Nepal with his wife. While she was in school, Dilloway befriended the Nath family, a group of hustlers / street performers / snake charmers, and spent virtually all his time, in a tiny alley, recording the family's performances. The first volume was a collection of proper recording, captured on a digital recorder, and mixed in stereo, with various instruments panned to create a super stereo (and super psychedelic) sound field. For volume two, Dilloway selected recordings culled from video tapes and cassette tapes, so the recordings this time around are more raw and lo-fi, but no less psychedelic and mesmerizing. And like the first volume, these three tracks are dizzyingly melodic and exotic, multiple horns unfurling buzzing, bleating melodies, all tangled up into strange harmonies, draped over super tranced out percussion, propulsive and hypnotic, woozy and wildly psychedelic, it's not hard to imagine cobras being mesmerized by these amazing sounds, cuz even we humans find it pretty difficult to resist. These recordings also offer up a little slice of life in Nepal, as street sounds are everywhere, voices, honking horns, shouting, footsteps, and those sounds seem to be as much a part of the Nath Family's music, as that music is a part of the fabric of daily life. Gorgeous, mysterious, magical stuff, that's so highly recommended! Originally released on cassette in 2005, now available on vinyl, LIMITED TO 600 COPIES, and housed in a super swank silkscreened sleeve.

On a brief break from bursting ear drums and shredding synthesizers and destroying clubs in Wolf Eyes, Aaron Dilloway spent a brief period living in Nepal with his wife. While she studied, Dilloway wandered the streets, where he encountered the Nath family, Titu, Kala, Sukha and Ram Chendra, three generations, all street performers, hustlers, and SNAKE CHARMERS. Well, Dilloway quickly befriended the family, hung out, drank, smoked and most importantly recorded their amazing talents. Haunting and dizzying Eastern melodies, performed on traditional bamboo reed instruments called pungis and accompanied by a stringed percussion instrument called a premtal. So lovely, swaying and swooning, droney and buzzy, all hovering above a fluctuating framework of tribal pecussion and shuffling, rattling rhythms. At times playful and bouncy (supposedly that's some Bollywood music) but more often mesmerizing and hypnotic, a wavering warbling drone. You can't really hear the swaying cobras, but if you listen really close you can hear folks walking past, talking, cars, all adding to the feeling that you are right there, in an alley in Nepal, seated before huge hooded snakes, being lulled into a trance by the endlessly droning Eastern buzz. Comes in a super snazzy three color silkscreened sleeve. Vinyl only, and limited!!

***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!*** Like a Pavlovian bell, just the mere utterance of this vinyl-only Portland label gets everyone aflutter, ready to eagerly acquire, no matter what the sounds contained inside. We suppose if they put out a record solely of sounds made by cement mixers, back-hoes or traffic noises and packaged it in a sweet homemade album cover with nostalgic photos of antique construction equipment, and called it something like "My Heart Belongs To The Public Works", we'd sell out of them just as fast as their awesome compilations of pre-war blues or their reissues of obscure post-punk groups. As cool as that actually sounds, the not one, but TWO Mississippi releases we have this week are both super stellar and we know everyone is going to want at least one if not both of them. Earth Groove is a reissue of the debut 1968 recording by Master Hindustani classical singer Pandit Pran Nath. Considering his major influence on the giants of twentieth-century minimalist composition and drone music of all forms, as well as the amazing dearth of available recordings on cd let alone on vinyl, this is a MUST HAVE!! Featuring two fantastic side long ragas, Raaga Bhoopali designed for meditation after sunset and Raaga Asavari designed for meditation after sunrise, this is spiritual music of the highest order made for the purpose of destroying negative energy. But it is its amazing sounds of buzzing tamboura drones and tabla rhythms with Pran Nath's perfectly intonated and slowly unfolding vocal style that should please all fans of otherworldly cosmic sounds. Master of the Kirana Ghirana school, it is believed that Pran Nath spent five years of his life in a cave perfecting his austere intonated singing style. Heavily emphasizing the alap, the opening section of the raga that is unmetered, improvised and unaccompanied (except for the tamboura drone), that sets up a slow tempo and can often last more than an hour. Pran Nath's unwavering adherence to the principles of his vocal style was not that popular to the ears of modern Indians, but it is this recording that reached the open minds of minimalist composer La Monte Young and visual artist Marion Zazeela who persuaded Pran Nath to move to America and start his own school of music in New York. Just rattling off the names of his top students shows what an indelible influence Pran Nath was to late twentieth century music: Terry Riley, Charlemagne Palestine, Henry Flynt, Jon Hassell, Douglas Leedy, Don Cherry, Lee Konitz, Jon Gibson, Yoshi Wada, Rhys Chatham, Michael Harrison, W. A. Mathieu, Sufi Pir Shabda Kahn, Catherine Christer Hennix, and Simone Forti. Enough said. After being completely enraptured with the extensive and expensive double disc Midnight we reviewed a while back, some folks may not have had the time or means to see what we were raving about, so it's really nice to have this perfect and affordable introduction to Pran Nath's intense and penetratingly beautiful sound world, while they last!

This recording, the musical life of Pandit Pran Nath, his influence on Western minimalism, his importance to music, both modern and traditional, is steeped in history, but just as important, if not harder to describe, is the sound. A warm drifting dreamscape, layers of buzz and hum and drone, Nath's perfectly intonated vocals, hovering weightless above a thick swirl of Sitar string buzz and slowly shifting drones. This is true drone music. Warm and rich, thick and effervescent. Densely layered but light and airy. Truly difficult to describe, but a record that has immmediately become one of the most played / listened to records around these parts. Nath spent most of his life studying and performing in India, and became well known for his strict adherence to the authentic rendering of traditional ragas and an unwillingness to change his style or sound to be more 'modern'. His focus on the slower 'alap' sections of ragas was an obvious influence on seventies minimalists like La Monte Young and Terry Riley (both students of his), and other students / followers included Don Cherry, Rhys Chatham, Henry Flynt and many others. He eventually became a US citizen and continued performing, composing and teaching right up until his death. There is a definite dearth of recordings, considering how long Nath had been performing, this 2 disc set was originally released in 2002, and has luckily been reissued. The price tag is steep, but once these sounds hit your ears, any thoughts of price or money as well as all of your other earthly worries will just drift away. Both of these performances, one from 1971 recorded in San Francisco, the other in NYC in 1976, feautre Nath accompanied by Western musicians, Terry Riley, Ann Riley, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, who seem perfectly in tune with Nath's sound and vision. Anyone who loves the music of Chalk, Coleclough, Mirror, Ora, Organum, any of that minimal drone music, would do well to dig deep and discover the roots of that music. This is most definitely some of the most beautiful, transcendental drone music we have ever heard.

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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

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Yes, it's that time of year again, where all we hear outside the store is the worst Christmas music imaginable playing incessantly everywhere. Luckily over the years, we've been able to find a few select holiday gems to play in the store that don't make our skin crawl. Like John Fahey's The New Possibility, A John Waters' Christmas, Basinski's Silent Night (now sadly out of print) and Low's beautifully solemn Christmas album. This year we got a new treat in the form of this strangely monikered National Jazz Trio Of Scotland. We say strangely monikered because this is neither a trio nor is it jazz, but really what it is is Scottish musician Bill Wells and a handful of like-minded musical compatriots taking apart and rebuilding (respectfully) the traditional Christmas carol canon. Musically, Wells brings an eerie hushed chill and a charming vibrant peacefulness to the proceedings that sound like carols heard shortly after a quiet early morning snowfall. With just keyboards, piano, viola and voices, this is definitely great for keeping the ire of holiday tension down to a sedate manageable minimum. Lovely!

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MPEG stream: Winter Wonderland
MPEG stream: We Three Kings

Though he was dubbed the "King of the Ukulele" and capitalized on that title throughout his career (touring extensively on the vaudeville circuit as a ukulele soloist), Bennie Nawahi was equally adept at guitar, steel guitar, mandolin and harmonica. In fact, it is his steel guitar playing that is a paramount focus on the 23 tracks found here. This cd is essentially a compilation of groups that featured Bennie as a musician or leader throughout the 20's and early 30's. Given the variety of ensembles presented here as well as Bennie's versatility with jazz, Hawaiian, ragtime, blues and country idioms the over-all tenor of this cd is of variegated unity. Recommended.

Been a while (8 years?) since we've heard from Nettle, or DJ /Rupture for that matter. Nettle is the live band project of DJ /Rupture, the amazing mix master (and self-described "border-crossing bass visionary") responsible for, as we put it, "plunderphonic dancehall turntable mashups" on his various rad mixes (2001's Gold Teeth Thief being THE classic). We know he's got a show on WFMU, still does music and mixes, but we didn't know that his band Nettle was still active, or rather that it had been reactivated. So this new Nettle album is unexpected, but nevertheless awesome. El Resplandor is a concept album, the quite cool concept pretty much revealed in its subtitle: The Shining In Dubai. Yes, we're in imaginary soundtrack territory here - what if, Stephen King's The Shining were set in an abandoned luxury hotel in the Arabian emirate of Dubai, on the Persian Gulf? Musically, this turns out to be an excellent idea... you keep the spooky psychological horror stuff (family moves into isolated empty hotel, things get weird, dad loses his shit, etc.) and add an ethnic Middle Eastern music element as well. DJ /Rupture, credited with "electricity, mudd", works with an ensemble of musicians, including guitarist Andy from The Ex. So there's guitar, cello (x2), violin, and guembri (an African 3-stringed skin-covered lute) - along with lovely, wordless female vocals, something that's always perfectly suspense soundtrack worthy! While in the past, this outfit sounded something like a beat-heavy, uber-distorted Muslimgauze, with hiphop elements even, El Resplandor is more restrained, atmospheric, and eerily evocative, in keeping with the concept. There's much somber shimmer and string pluck, and of course tape manipulation and electronic glitchery, with DJ /Rupture applying his mixing/editing skills to what may have been improvised solos from the various instrumentalists - we're not sure of the compositional method, but it certainly involves some measure of computer processing. The eleven varied tracks all individually contribute to the haunted, alienated, edge-of-the-desert vibe of The Shining in Dubai idea... From the stately exotic dance of "Espina" to the buzz, crackle and chaos of "Simoom (Wasp Wind)", this is a beautiful and dramatic disc. One that makes for a good late night listen, excepting the presence of that "Simoom" track, where thing get a bit... disturbed... that might wake you up from your reveries! The digipack packaging features scene-setting liner notes by none other than imaginative architectural essayist Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG fame (great blog, check it out if you haven't before) and equally appropriate photographs by Lamya Gargash. Quite recommended!

MPEG stream: Radio Flower
MPEG stream: Empty Quarters
MPEG stream: El Resplandor: In The Marsh

PHAK YEAH!! It's been, like, ten years since this local groop, the 'South East Asian' alter ego of sonic subversives Mono Pause, put out their debut album, which became quite a bit of a hit here at aQ. Now at long last they've recorded a follow-up full-length, featuring the anthemic track "Fucking USA" which appeared on a 7" single some years back, along with ten more brand new cuts of their exuberant ethno-rock exotica. Among several AQ pals, Neung Phak's ranks include Mark Gergis (of Porest), who is the man responsible for a lot of our favorite Sublime Frequencies releases (and who now runs the likeminded Sham Palace label too). So you know that this band's take on various forms of traditional pop musics from Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, and elsewhere is well researched, steeped in firsthand knowledge probably gleaned on a backpacking / cassette-tape-digging trip overseas... Neung Phak should definitely appeal to fans of Dengue Fever, trafficking in the same sort of groovy vintage Cambodian Rocks style psych pop, but with more of a twisted, fucked up edge to it, in the tradition of the late great Sun City Girls - whose Abduction label put this out, and whose Alan Bishop makes a cameo appearance. "Fucking USA", which they would have us believe was recorded in Pyongyang, is probably the most punk rockish thing on here, but the whole album is exceedingly energetic and effervescent. And full of surprises - like the distorted electronic noise and free jazz freakouts that erupt in the middle of foreign-language funk vamp "Sa-Ha". Make no mistake, though, even with the sometimes crazed vocals and distorted acid rock guitars, many of these tracks are dancefloor fillers, for sure! Their wild East-West hybrid may have its faux-ethnic elements, but they don't fake the funk. It's like the music Funkadelic would have made if drafted and sent to Vietnam in the '70s, then gone AWOL and playing in some dive bar with local musicians. Meanwhile, the disc's closer, "Sad Chatri", is a seven-minute psychedelic slow burner, its grooves more for nodding out than getting down. Damn good, as is this whole album, highly recommended! By the way, this was also released on limited vinyl as well, a couple months ago, but that lp version went out of print too darn fast for us to list - though we may just have 1 copy left if you act quick...

MPEG stream: Bang Toyib
MPEG stream: Poot
MPEG stream: Sad Chatri

Third album (their first since '95, about time!) of jazz/klezmer/improv by these popular stalwarts of the "New Jewish Music" scene, featuring Ben Goldberg on clarinet, Kenny Wollesen on drums and Dan Seamans on bass.

Yet another blast of fantastically noisy indie rock from China, this time from a group called Next Years Love, who sound gloriously distorted and super blown out, the guitars crumbling and noisy, the drums a simple tribal pound, everything wreathed in psychedelic noisiness, but then the vocals, a wild Kim Gordon like caterwaul, which gives the sound a definite Sonic Youth style noise rock vibe. The flipside, dials it back a bit, getting a bit more broody and introspective, a little bit shoegaze-y, sounding almost something that could be on Sacred Bones or Captured tracks, but still rife with plenty of seriously crunchy noise guitar. Pressed on bright blue vinyl!!

MPEG stream: Smash The Pink Bug
MPEG stream: True Love Song

Man, have we been waiting for this! Why? Well, does Chrissy Zebby Tembo mean anything to you? The group that backed him up on his wonderful My Ancestors album from 1974 have a rare record of their own that's just been reissued, the electrifying indeed 45,000 Volts, and it's another killer document of Zambian heavy fuzz rock ("Zamrock"!) from the '70s! Founded by Paul Dobson Nyirongo, otherwise known as Paul Ngozi, a Hendrix-styled guitarist (he even did the trick of playing with his teeth), the Ngozi Family band released this winning album in 1977, and now that we've heard it, it goes right to the top of the selection of awesome garage fuzz rock from Africa in our collections, a small but ever growing category thanks to ruling reissues like this (we're also looking forward to Shadoks' impending cd edition of The Witch album, also from Zambia, next month, you should be too). And it's not so lo-fi as that Tembo disc, much better sound, though the production still sounds very "live", we think it's perfect, capturing both the thud and grace of the Ngozi Family's music. There's ten tracks (including one bonus from a 7"), containing so much raw FUZZ! Burbling, sizzling, wah wah action. Along with wicked beats, soulful sincere vocals (some songs in English, others in a Zambian language, Nyanja perhaps), and groove that just won't quit. Most of the tracks are in a Western psych-rock style with distinct African influences, though a couple tracks near the end of the disc are much more like traditional Afrobeat, with hand percussion and mass chanting vocals. As far as the rock stuff goes, even when they kick back on the mellower, more sunshiney numbers there's still lotsa fuzz and snappy beats. And Ngozi actually translates to Danger in English, so you know that they don't neglect the harder and heavier fare on this album. Particularly proto-metal-ish is "Night Of Fear", with immensely fat riffing and echoed lyrics about graveyards and nightmares! Here and elsewhere we're reminded of Los Dug Dugs. Heck even a little Blue Cheer. And of course Ofege and Chrissy Zebby Tembo and others from Africa. Timeless stuff, highly recommended. Tembo's My Ancestors, reissued on the same label, is already out of print on cd, and this reish is equally limited too, 500 copies only, so get it while you can. FYI there's also a vinyl version but our supplier is already out of those, at the moment anyway, if we're able to get more we'll list it then.

MPEG stream: Everything Is Over
MPEG stream: Nizaka Panga Ngozi
MPEG stream: Night Of Fear

African garage fuzz fans listen up, we've got another nice "Zam-Rock" reissue here! Guitarist/vocalist Paul Ngozi (1949-1989), according to the adulatory liner notes in the cd booklet, was one of the Zambian music industry's biggest stars, at the forefront of the "Zam-Rock" phenomenon in the '70s. Those same notes explain he took the name 'Ngozi', which means danger, "because each time he took to the stage, people went crazy and it was all disaster"! Apparently he did the whole Hendrix routine of playing the guitar with his teeth, etc. We had heard of Ngozi before 'cause of previous reissues of his band the Ngozi Family's albums 45,000 Volts (1977) and My Ancestors (1974, with Chrissy Zebby Tembo). Both were KILLER, and so is this, a record originally released by a Kenyan label in 1976. The Ghetto's nine tracks feature both hard-hitting riff rockers and more gently loping, lazy grooves. The singing is lovely & lilting some of the time, urgent & impassioned at others. The relatively lo-fi recording renders Ngozi's amped-up guitar fuzz kind of pleasantly 'soft' but still hella distorted. Lyrically, he tackles some heavy subjects here, like "Suicide", and starving children "In The Ghetto". It's spiritual too, with the song "Jesus Christ" being a most fuzzed out headbanger about Our Savior. Most of the songs are in English, but a few are in Ngozi's native tongue. If you've heard 45,000 Volts, or other Zam-Rock like The Witch and Rikki Ililonga, you pretty much know how rad this is already; it's got the fuzz, the funk, the African vibe� great stuff! Those liner notes also mention the titles of several other albums that Ngozi recorded, among them one called Heavy Metal (!) that we really hope gets reissued sometime too!

MPEG stream: Help Me
MPEG stream: Who Will Know
MPEG stream: Jesus Christ

A highly obscure Afro-beat document from the seventies, this is a little heard recording by Fela Kuti sideman, Nicholas Addo Nettey. Recorded in Lagos at the same Ginger Baker-run studio that Kuti cut many of his famous albums, this feels like a rawer more stripped down Fela Kuti album just without Fela Kuti, with more chicken scratch organ than funk horns. Four songs, 2 long-form politically charged call and response hypnotic jams with 2 shorter soul grooving instrumentals. Daptone does quite a service uncovering this beast! No Afro-beat collection should be without it!

MPEG stream: Na Teef Know De Road Of Teef
MPEG stream: Na Six Feet

A book that happens to be all about many of the Chinese indie rock bands we carry!!

Sublime Frequencies videographer Hisham Mayet strikes again! This time Hisham takes to the Sahel region of Niger to witness for ourselves a culture in resistance to environmental hazards (severe droughts) and extreme poverty, and a country that's at the cultural crossroads of Subsaharan Africa and the Middle East. Like all of Mayet's films there is no authoritative narrator to disrupt the flow, or otherwise direct our interests. Which isn't to say Mayet leaves us completely in the dark as concerns his motivations and whereabouts in shooting this footage. For that we are given ample liner notes detailing the film's unfolding in chronological order of events. The video begins in rural Dogondoutchi where Hisham documents the music of the Mawri people. Several performances are caught here of musicians playing a banjo like instrument which is simultaneously struck across the drum as it is strummed and plucked, turning the performer into a veritable one-man-band. Also taped are some amazing fiddle players using an array of instruments, each seemingly unique to its possessor. Across the river Niger, Mayet takes us to the village of Boubon to a cowry shell divination, a spirit posession ceremony, and a truly strange performance of sexual coming of age by the young girls of the village in which they taunt the boys with... Ahem! Rather "randy" dance moves. As the film progresses it moves further from acoustic / rural / animist Niger to urban / Christian / electric Niger. We're witnesses to a gospel revival meeting at a Pentacostal church combining both traditional instruments and percussion with electric bass and keyboards. Almost directly from there Mayet takes us to a dive bar to hear a beautiful pick-up band of electric guitar, bass, drums and percussion. The sound is almost like that of a punk rock Ali Farka Toure, if you can imagine that. And in the end we are taken to the compound of Bibi Ahmed to hear some very Nubian sounding trance rock, like a dronier version of Ali Hassan Kuban. Excellent!

Here's some more of that funky stuff, that funky African stuff to be precise. Secret Stash, who previously unearthed such gems as, well, the band Afro Funk among others, bring us a reissue of the first album from this Nigerian outfit, originally released in 1973. Kind of hard to argue with a record like this: super groovy, JB's meet Afrobeat / high life stylings, and it's called Destruction, yeah! With lots of jubilant singing, hand percussion, rhythmic wah-wah guitar, joyful jazzy horns, and awesome breaks, it's guaranteed to make you dance or at least -consider- dancing, if you're not the type to actually dance. Many of the songs are in a Nigerian dialect, but there's some English lyrics too, not always easy to make out - on the song "Jungle Beat" we could swear he's singing "Ride that rhino", perhaps he is. Secret Stash has produced this first-time-ever reissue in cooperation with bandleader Chief Vincent Okorego and original London-based record label Orbitone. Vinyl version comes with download, both formats include plenty of liner notes and vintage photos. It's a good one.

MPEG stream: Jungle Beat
MPEG stream: Ube Frank Special
MPEG stream: Ndu Bu Isi

Okay, c'mon, the band is called No Balls, it's one of the guys from the mother fucking Brainbombs, and he's doing some sort of damaged lo-fi super distorted, doomy, looped, hypnotic, lo-fi metallic krautpunk. What more do you need to know?! All of the basic BB elements are present, except maybe the trumpet, or the vocals. Which means two blasts of all instrumental hypnofuzz dirgery. The A side is all downtuned and fuzzed out and Sabbathy and way doomy, with a killer main riff, the whole thing simple and stripped down and plodding, but with some awesome (and awesomely freaked out) strangled stumbling angular guitar counterpoint, some serious Black Flagged, Greg Ginn-ed six string super distorto gnarl. Noisy and chaotic and fragmented, while that main riff just goes gloriously on and on and on and on... The B side offers up another locked and looped riff, this time lumbering along beneath a super distorted wall of crumbling sound, the rhythm motorik and sort of abstract, while over the top ANOTHER guitar, dense and downtuned unfurls a buzz drenched slow motion minor key melody, while very much like the A side, that original riff pounds away unwaveringly. So awesome. Bummer that it's so limited, only 187 copies, we got almost a quarter of those, but they're already flying. Simple orange and blue hand numbered silkscreened covers, on thick orange vinyl with hand stamped labels.

Imagine the Charlie Daniels Band jammin' with Emperor. Or rather, playing at the same time in adjoining practice rooms -- out in the forest. The ancient forests of the Ukraine, to be precise. That's where Nokturnal Mortum hail from. This is their third album. You may remember the big fuss we made over the amazing Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra disc last year? Well, Mr. Varggoth is the main guy in this band Nokturnal Mortum. With "NeChrist", he and his comrades have created a unique sound, one that combines a raw, roaring black metal attack with the pipes and fiddles and "yee-haws" of folk/country music, Ukrainian style. And, to make us AQ-ers enjoy this EVEN MORE, all of a sudden all the music will stop and the middle part of a track will be occupied by the croaking of frogs! And you know we like frogs and the noises they make. Similarily, the final song on the disc is preceded by 78 short (3 sec.) tracks of twittering birdsounds and forest ambience. Therefore, if you play the disc in "shuffle" mode, you get lots of cut-up bird calls mixed with the occasional actual fantastic Nokturnal Mortum song! The unanimous AQ black metal pick of this lunar month!! Brilliant. Yee-haw! (Recommended.)

RealAudio clip: The Funeral Wind Born In Oriana

We are big fans of the Brazilian pastoral psych of Lula Cortes, whether it be the phenomenal Satwa record or his later legendary mid-'70s masterpiece with Ze Ramalho, Paebiru, So you can imagine how our hearts went all aflutter when we got this latest Time-Lag reissue of the sole release by Marconi Notaro, a revolutionary Brazilian poet who recorded this album with both Cortes and Ramalho in 1973, the same year the Satwa record was released. Almost reading like a second Satwa album while at the same time predicting the later ecstatic fuzz experimental rock of Paebiru, the sunbaked exuberance and joy of these recordings belie their political spirit. Miraculously recorded and independently released amongst the harsh authority of the 1970's Brazilian government, Notaro, Cortes and Ramalho and others in the small and previously little-known Recife music scene were somehow able to bypass restrictions on music that was viewed as vehemently anti-state. Using acidy tape loop effects, electric and acoustic guitars, trancy folk percussion and the tricordio, a sitar/dulcimer hybrid that Cortes built himself, the songs here are mind-meltingly beautiful. Sadly Notaro passed away in 2000 of Hepatitis C leaving behind this record and seven published books of poetry. But with the authorization of Notaro's daughter and Lula Cortes himself, this classic masterpiece of protest is finally unearthed for us all. Totally Recommended!!

MPEG stream: Ah Vida Avida
MPEG stream: Made in PB
MPEG stream: Simphonia em Re

The late great singer Nusrat (and collaborator Brook) get their work remixed by the leaders of the new "Asian-electronica" scene: Talvin Singh, Asian Dub Foundation, Fun^Da^Mental, and others. Warning: the remixers appearing here have all put out much better material.

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. In the late 19th century the Burmese (now Myanmarese) were introduced to the piano and were immediately impressed with the exotic instrument. They set about learning to play the entire repertoire of Burmese harp (the most refined music of Burma) and other court musics on it. In the process they developed a new genre of Burmese music (disregrading European methods completely) known today as "Sandaya." Master pianist U Yee Nwe plays traditional and contemporary pieces both solo and accomanied by traditional instruments. A beautiful combination of the strangely familiar and plainly foreign.