Maybe this will make up for all the Satanic Norwegian church-burning music we sell! A compilation of, as the subtitle puts it, "A Selection Of Norwegian Christian Jazz, Psych, Funk & Folk 1970-1980". And it's quite fantastic. Quasi-kitschy Xtian funky and folky fun, with an acid-rock edge, really good stuff indeed, and 'cause the lyrics are all in Norwegian, those of us with an aversion to God-talk can comfortably listen to this without feeling like we're being preached to! Well you can tell when they sing "Hallelujah" and "Jesus" but the accent makes it cool. Apparently, there was quite a burgeoning youth-oriented Christian music scene and attendant recording industry in Norway in the '70s, kickstarted in the late '60s by something called the Ten-Sing or Teenage Singing movement, a kind of Norwegian version of Up With People!, further powered by the whole Jesus Freak thing that came along when hippies everywhere started to find God. So, this music, while Christian, isn't exactly square. It's full of fuzz guitars and fuzzy analog synth, gorgeous female vocals and bombastic brass, and is moving not just in spiritual way, but also movin' in more of a GROOVY kind of way. And is very delightfully very seventies sounding, from jazzy disco fusion to rock opera to delicate singer-songwriter stuff. There's 20 tracks in all on this import cd (13 on the vinyl version), sunshiney testifyin' from the following artists: Joyful Singers, Good News, That's Why, Arnold Borud, Keryx, The Crossing, Angelos, Sky Sing, The Heralds, Jan Simonsens, Kari Hansa & Gregers Hes, Grete Salomensen, Soli Deo, Reflex, and Presens. The digipak cd comes with a 36 page booklet, and the lp too has a printed insert, featuring extensive liner notes and vintage photos.
Hip '70s Norwegian groovy gospel music, who knew? Hallelujah! Highly recommended.
'60s beat music gettin' crazy and psychedelic, but not too flower-powery psych, more hard and frenzied, that's "freakbeat", music that took throbbing distortion and unhinged vocals to outta control heights never before heard on this planet, and rarely since with this much swinging sixties style. The early Who, maybe The Sonics in the USA, that's freakbeat: rockin' stuff to which terms like "deranged" and "psychotic" can be applied with abandon. Supposedly most authentic freakbeat dates from 1966, certainly many of the 21 tracks here do, on this killer comp of bands from the UK and elsewhere doing the freakbeat thing. You've heard of the Troggs, they're on there doing "Lost Girl", maybe also you know Syndicat ("Crawdaddy Simone") and Wimple Witch ("Save My Soul"), if you do you'll be curious to hear the other acts you maybe haven't heard of, and if you DON'T know those songs, you're in for a treat, they're classics indeed. Sinister grooves, sneering vox, this stuff was about as punk as it got back then, catchy and chaotic. The besides the three we mentioned, the lineup here includes Elois, Red Squares, Truth, Lee Kings, Crying Shames, Southern Sound, Missing Links, Mark Four, Wheels, Game, Mascots, Fairies, Motions, Thor's Hammer, Allen Pound's Get Rich, Primitives, and Ricketts. Originally released about 10 years ago, now back in print thanks to Past & Present, who appreciate a good compilation (see their own Maximum Prog highlighted this list for an example).
Smokin' collection of Spanish groovers and rockers from the '60s and '70s. The opener from Rudy Ventura could get any disco floor shaking, past or present, while the rest of the record goes more in a catchy pop/rock direction with healthy doses of soul, funk and garage, reminding us a lot of that great Sensacional Soul collection we went crazy for a few years back. Barely any of these artists were familiar to us before except for maybe Los Shakers and Los Rollers, which is fine with us, as it's always exciting to get turned on to all sorts of awesome Spanish sounds we weren't hip to. The price tag might be a bit hefty, but luckily the songs on this collection are well worth the price of admission!
From the wonderful folks who brought us Turkish Delights comes a crazy-psychedelic picture disc of "Psychedelic Sitar Trash Go-Go". Though the name implies there will be a good deal of sitar to be had here, in actuality this isn't entirely the case. There is a bit of it here, but the collection seems to take a broader definition of "Psychedelic Sitar Trash Go-Go". Perhaps title implies more a general exotic nature of psychedelic sounds. The groups on this album hailed from Spain, France, U.K., Belgium, Germany, U.S.A., and Canada. While some of the cuts here could have easily been culled from Vampyros Lesbos, others are just straight up fuzzed out and fucked up garage punk instrumentals. Then there's Les Paul-meets-moog synth musings coupled with bizarre string and percussion sound effects. There's Los Diablos, basically a heavier version of Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass plus guitars. There's even a fuzzed out psychedelic version of "Baia" which sounds like a pissed off Martin Denny. This is definitely a must have for anyone who's interested in the off kilter history of psychedelia. Features rare gems by Los Diablos, The Jokers, The Jim Sullivan Sound, The Dave Myers Effect, Guy Pederson & Son Grand Orchestre, Blue Phantom, La Voix Psychedelique, Crazy Elephant, The Sound Of Lane, The Morgans, Horror Charly, Les Apollo & La Danse Cosmique, The Rowdies, Sun Rock Rodeo Round Up, Lord Sitar and Clubman.
Second volume of psychedelic, exotica, go-go, groovy tunes from the people who brought us the beloved Turkish Delights compilation. Much like the first, there's lots of strings, fuzzed out guitars, sexy eastern-esque tabla-clarinet duets, sitar, hammond organs and echoey everything. Cover tune award on this one goes to The Soulful Strings for their sitarred and feathered version of the Beatles "Within You Without You". This album is a must for fans of Vampyros Lesbos and sundry other exotic porn soundtracks. And like the last volume of Mind Expanders, this one comes on a beautiful picture disc and -- maybe more importantly -- is also a very limited pressing... ie: so don't hesitate. This one features tracks by such obscurities as: The Stradivarius, The Flying Guitars, Mr. Acker Bilk, Emery Deutsch & the Astro Sounds, The Scottmen, The Dynatones, Bauer Productions, Shell Steel Orchestra, Didier Vincent, The Renegades, Robert Gretch, Jaime Perez, Timezone, The Soulful Strings and Thomas Natschinski und Scine Gruppe.
MPEG Download: PEREZ, JAIME "Tema Arabe" [/audio/jaimepereztema.mp3]
MPEG Stream: PEREZ, JAIME "Tema Arabe" [/audio/jaimepereztema.m3u]
One of the latest (and the second to be reviewed by us) in the budget line of CD-Rs from the always wonderful Khmer Rocks label, all of them go-go tunes -- which means that all, but a few have the unifying element of the chorus "ah go go". One would think that would get a little monotonous, but the tracks are sufficiently different from one another that one hardly notices the redundancy of lyrics. The sprightly tempoed numbers on this collection begin with Sinn Sisamouth's "Navy". Over a backdrop of surfy, reverb-laden guitar, the Elvis of Cambodian rock -- Sinn Sisamouth -- croons a with a healthy dose of slapback echo that seems requisite in all the tracks of this era. There is at least one overlapping song here, "Monkey", which was also on the second volume of Cambodian Rocks. Lots of 60's garagey psych tracks make this collection resemble the Parallel World comp. more on the whole than the three Khmer Rocks versions. It's pretty much a stripped down rock setup on all the songs here, which means not so much keyboard on this one. The guitar's the thing here and each track seems graced with at least one guitar solo. As you might have guessed from the "name dropping" above, this collection does include the English translations of the artists' names and song titles (no lyrics though). About 75 percent of the 13 tracks are Sisamouth's, four are from Pan Ron and one is by Ros Sereysothea.
A 2014 Record Store Day collaboration between two amazing obscurity-obsessive labels, Finders Keepers and Dual Planet, Monster Skies features a dizzy collection of damaged library sounds, far-flung private press pop and early electronic strangeness. We've carried some of the Dual Planet releases, but have yet to review them, like the Australian electric weirdo space-funk-rock of Steve Maxwell Von Braund, who provides the titular song to this collection as well as the reclusive Italian guitarist and electronic composer, Teisco, who may be the most marginally strange of the Italian Library composers leaning more toward Bruce Haack than say, Egisto Macchi. Suzanne Cianni, Lucien Goethals and Val Stephen provide some scintillating musique concrete and electronic composition, while Don Harper, Philippe D'Aram, and Andrzej Korzynski bring some wonderfully brooding cinematic horror vibes to the table.
Finally, Emerald Web, X-ray Pop, Clone and The Ultra Sonic Perception, give us some wonderfully sublime pop moments that buffer the oddities with wistful charm and eccentric groove. A fantastic collection and excellent introduction into a staggering undiscovered world of sound. Get one while they last!
On April 16, 1999, Skip Spence, eccentric genius and former member of Moby Grape, passed away. To honor the late songwriter, the Birdman mega-conglomerate has put together this all-star tribute album of covers from Spence's inspired and cultishly-revered 1969 solo album "Oar", with such notables as Tom Waits, Robert Plant (sounding as if he's fronting Tortoise with all thoses vibes behind him), Beck, Robyn Hitchcock, Flying Saucer Attack, Alastair Galbraith, Mudhoney, The Minus 5, Alejandro Escovedo, and many more!
We can always enjoy a good compilation of "Obscure Psychedelic, Popsyke & Progressive Pop 45s 1968-1974". And that's what this disc's cover proclaims it to contain. 23 obscure singles cuts by artists most of whom we've never heard of before -- except for Chubby Checker! Who blows our minds (and will blow yours too) with a Hendrix influenced psych-funk-wah gem recorded in The Netherlands in 1971, whose refrain goes: "My mind comes from a high place!" That sure ain't "The Twist". The last ish of Ugly Things had an article about Chubby's rare psych sides and here you can hear one of 'em. But there's lots more cool stuff on this disc besides, from the dramatic garage-prog of Ekseption to the "kinderpop" psych of Cyan to the bubblegum novelty of Jumbo. Whether you like your psych twee or fuzz-ee, this has plenty of both. Another fave of ours on here is the cut by Kid Rock (nothing to do with the current-day white rapper dude of course). It's got James Brown beats, cheap and cheesy keyboards, and a singer who you could mistake for Jack White of the White Stripes. Hot.
The comp is pretty nicely put together: each track gets a brief bit of description/info, and the original singles sleeves are reproduced in thumbnail size on the tray card, always a nice to see. Now we've got to go back and check out the first volume of this series...if it's as good we'll let you know.
Like a Molotov cocktail for the spy-chase set, this compilation of sixties and seventies instrumental funk and soul from the De Wolfe Library and selected by Baltimore DJ and Library music geek, Jason Willet has all the stuff you need to get your feet and ass moving. Tense chase themes are intermixed with sexy bachelor-pad space grooves from one of the best library music houses in Britain, much of it on cd for the first time. So whether you are living out your Blaxploitation Spy fantasies or facing a daunting labor-intensive task (like we are creating this list for you), this set makes it all OK! Recommended!
From the same with-it collector-folks who brought us those Gentle Sounds For Gentle People '60s soft-rock comps not so long ago, comes this new compilation unearthing the tunes of 23 "tripped-out troubadours from 1965-1970". These so-called "Mystic Males" are long-haired, bearded (or at least mustachioed) mellow crooners, hailing from places like LA's Sunset Strip and New York's Greenwich Village. Professional and otherwise singer/songwriters getting into (for real or for, they might be hoping, the bucks) the Hippy vibe. Mostly, they sing about Girls. And Nature. And Love. And Girls. (At least five of the song titles here are simply girls' names.) Suiting such subject matter, these tracks tend towards gentle vocals, gentle vocals, heartfelt lyrics, and drifting folky melodies -- often times backed by lush orchestration and groovy beats. Some are twee, some are swingin'. Hadn't heard of any of these dudes before, except Dino Valente, but maybe you have -- here's a few, with song titles too: Chip Taylor "You Should Be From Monterey", Tommy Roe "Paisley Dreams", Teddy Neeley "Autumn Afternoon", Kenny O'Dell "Flower Girl", Thomas Hill "Glider Pilot", Bill & Howdy "Misty Morning Confrontation"... no, don't know 'em? Well those song titles ought to give you some idea of what they sound like, and also the liner notes give plenty of obscure details about each obscure track. And some of 'em are gems. We like these Mystic Males.
As the title indicates, this is the 2nd installment in Pet's Mystic Males series of comps, itself a subset of their Soft Sounds For Gentle People series, devoted to mellow, mystical '60s men doing flower power pop psych and folk tunes.
Lovely stuff, all about girls and flowers and daydreaming and suchlike. Sample song titles: "Lady Of The Burning Green Jade", "I'm A Deeper Blue", and "Four Robins Singing". The songs live up to the titles!
13 tracks in all, circa 1966-69, featuring the following obscure "tripped-out troubadours" we hadn't heard of before: Tyree Forest, Darrius, John Dunn, Gerry Pond, Shalynn, Ed Power, Dick St. John, Paul Stoop, Richard Coronado, Stephen Hartley, Malcolm Mitchell, Art Gee, and Jeff Monn.
We're always amazed that there's so much great music made in the dim past (well, the '60s and '70s) that remains totally, utterly obscure, and ripe for reissue. The realm of rare pop-psych singles is certainly a good example, and here's yet another great compilation chock full of groovy gems from a international assortment of bands, twenty of 'em, that we've never ever ever ever heard of before (La Quinta Faccia? Carlos Bisso & Conexion 5? Les Problemes? Boneshaker? Procro Magnum? Hamilton Streetcar?). Thanks to the efforts and enthusiasms of today's crate-diggin' DJs (always on the lookout for some unknown tune to get the dancefloor movin') the flow of fab comps like this -- Cherrystone's Rocks, Nightmares at Toby's Shop, The Spanish Trip, Painting The Time, Psychedelic Minds -- is never ceasing, it seems. With bands from Argentina, USA, England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France, and Australia, Neurotic Reactions is a geographically and stylistically diverse collection. There's sunny pop, freakbeat, sitar psych, garage fuzz, hippy funk, all sorts of bright and colorful good time grooves here! Sure, it's true that a lot of crap gets reissued too (cf. ninety percent of the Radioactive roster), but this collection is quality psyke pstuff. The cd booklet includes brief notes on each track/artist and better yet, full-color thumbnail repros of the 45 sleeves, yay!
It's appropriate that Nigeria Rock Special kicks things off with a supremely heavy slab of organ/bass/drum groove by Ofege called "Adieu," as this is the third and allegedly final installment in Sound Way's incredible Nigeria Special series. We were skeptical that this volume would be able to live up to the high standards set by the first two, but honestly this is probably the best of the three. No joke, it's so effing good that when we put it on in the store all of us just look at each other and kind of do that squinty head bobbing groove thing where you're kind of like, "holy crap how good is this? SO GOOD!" In fact this is one of those rare compilations that manages to transcend its genre and appeal to people who may not normally be into African music -- it's not every day that you see some of the serious blackened noisemongering customers digging stuff from the "international" section!
First thing, the title might be a little misleading... if you're coming to this expecting to hear stoned out proto-metal clomp or extended blues riffage, you might be a bit disappointed. While there are fuzzed out guitar explorations aplenty on this disc, the overall feel definitely leans more towards the funky side of things. If you're a fan of the Boscoe lp we reviewed a few lists back, or the Skull Snaps record, or even Black Merda (or anything from the now sadly out of print Chains and Black Exhaust compilation) you are going to LOVE this record: imagine blown out, psychedelic instrumental passages layered over heavy, heavy, heavy bass and drums with no shortage of traditional highlife and afrobeat flourishes and you're in the ballpark. In fact, with the exception of a few tracks (most notably, Question Mark's "Freaking Out," which, believe it or not, sounds kind of like Can covering something from the Nuggets box), the western influence is actually less present in this collection than it was in the last volume.
There are too many standouts to list them all, but we would be remiss not to mention that Mono Mono's "Kenimania" comes on like Fela tackling a Booker T jam; or that Ofo The Black Company's "Enario" is a simmering pot of mid-tempo funk and call and response vocals that holds up as a worthy successor to their mighty "Allah Wakbarr" (a song you might remember from two other essential compilations: Nigeria 70, and World Psychedelic Classics Vol. 3); or that the treble-kicking guitars of Colomach's "Cotocun Gba Gounke" create a mind-blowing hybrid of Middle-Eastern-tinged desert blues and Hendrix-ian pyrotechnics; or that Joe King Kologbo & His Black Sounds' "Another Man's Thing" is a frenetic polemic that switches gears from hyperactive shuffle to deep funk throb-n-stab in the blink of an eye!
Look, we know we've been pushing these Nigeria Special comps hard for the last few months but it's for good reason: the three volumes together form a meticulously curated, beautifully packaged collection of songs that spans two decades and demonstrates the intense creativity and musical diversity in post-revolution Nigeria. Taken by itself, Nigeria Rock Special is a gripping, exuberant, and infectious listen from start to finish and definitely comes with as high a recommendation as we can dish out!
Along with Funky Frauleins and the French Sixties Girls compilations, how could we resist the allure of Nippon Girls, a swinging mod-tastic compilation of hip-swaying and frug-dancing femme-fronted big beat gems from sixties Japan? We couldn't, and you probably can't either. The cd came out a few years ago, but the vinyl version only just got released so we thought we should finally review this especially after the success of another Big Beat disc, Nippon Guitars, we reviewed a few lists ago. Feeling the influence of Western pop music in the sixties (including Bossa Nova from Brazil and Ye Ye from France), Japanese musicians capitalized on the new sound often by lifting popular songs wholesale and rewriting the lyrics. But the enthusiasm with which these sexy and soulful songs are performed and arranged make them pretty outstanding in their own right. Acid-y guitars, cinematic orchestral flourishes, and sharp and dynamic arrangements are just too infectious to be ignored, especially by beautiful women who look and sound this fantastically fierce. It's party time!
Note: the cd version contains the full 25 tracks while the lp version only covers the first 12 tracks from 1967-1969. We assume there will be a follow-up volume 2 vinyl comp with the other tracks.
Along with Funky Frauleins and the French Sixties Girls compilations, how could we resist the allure of Nippon Girls, a swinging mod-tastic compilation of hip-swaying and frug-dancing femme-fronted big beat gems from sixties Japan? We couldn't, and you probably can't either. The cd came out a few years ago, but the vinyl version only just got released so we thought we should finally review this especially after the success of another Big Beat disc, Nippon Guitars, we reviewed a few lists ago. Feeling the influence of Western pop music in the sixties (including Bossa Nova from Brazil and Ye Ye from France), Japanese musicians capitalized on the new sound often by lifting popular songs wholesale and rewriting the lyrics. But the enthusiasm with which these sexy and soulful songs are performed and arranged make them pretty outstanding in their own right. Acid-y guitars, cinematic orchestral flourishes, and sharp and dynamic arrangements are just too infectious to be ignored, especially by beautiful women who look and sound this fantastically fierce. It's party time!
Note: the cd version contains the full 25 tracks while the lp version only covers the first 12 tracks from 1967-1969. We assume there will be a follow-up volume 2 vinyl comp with the other tracks.
Marking their 10 year anniversary as THE purveyor of quaint, vintage, obscure and unflinchingly British ear candy, Trunk Records has released a splendid compilation of the cream from *most* of their best releases from the past decade. Most is the key word here as three of their best releases, the awesome soundtracks to "The Wicker Man", "Psychomania", and the unreleased film music of "Dawn of The Dead" are not represented. But Trunk has always been a mixed bag label, and odd horror scores were only one facet of their obsession, the others being pastoral jazz, long forgotten children's songs, off-kilter ad jingles, library music, documentary film scores, and cosmically avant-garde electronic compositions. If you were curious about any of their past releases such as the Fuzzy Felt Folk compilation of obscure children's folk, or the Sven Libaek anthology of underwater documentary soundtracks, or the Michael Garrick Trio's lost cosmic jazz, or any of Basil Kirchan's sublimely eccentric compositions (all of the above are awesome BTW!) but wary to commit to a full album then this compilation might be a smoother introduction to Trunk's unusual tastes. What's even better is that 7 of the 22 tracks are previously unreleased with inclusions from Delia Derbyshire, Herbie Hancock, Douglas Wood and Paul Lewis. Please note that the sound samples are from the unreleased selections because many of the Trunk releases we had already thoroughly reviewed, so if you are curious about what Michael Garrick, Sven Libaek or the Fuzzy Felt Folk comp sounds like, check out the reviews and samples elsewhere on our site. They are all worth your time. Congrats Trunk!
This brilliant cd box set lives up to Rhino's slogan "We collect records so you don't have to." Covering the nether regions of 1964-'69, Nuggets II is a virtually hitless, yet absolutely priceless, collection of mod, psychedelic, British R&B, freakbeat,
Seems like every few months we're blessed with the release of another cool psych rock reissue compilation full of obscure gems... Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word, Neurotic Reactions, Cherrystones Word, Cambodian Rocks, the entire Love, Peace & Poetry series, just to name a few... It's amazing what can be dug up by the dedicated collectors and DJs who put these mixes together, folks who trawl the dusty record shops and flea markets of the out of the way corners of the globe looking for the freakiest sounds. In that tradition, this week's excellent example is entitled Obsession, a compilation named for the reason it exists! And the groovy, swirling, often harder-edged fuzz attacks found here are certainly worth obsessing over. Just little bits of flat plastic to some, but the best things in life to others!
Obsession also sorta sounds like the name of a perfume, and if this was a perfume, it would be a very exotic scent indeed. We can kind of imagine that the Sun City Girls would have found a lot of this fairly inspirational to the "international rock" side of their output. Circa 1967-'73, the tracks here come from all over the world. A whole bunch from South America: Brazil's Quarteto Nova Era, Flavio Kurt, Novos Bahianos, Arnaud Rodriguez, Suely E Os Kantikus. Peru's Sonora Casino and Jean Paul. Uruguay's Ovni 87 and Los Chickichaka. And Argentina's La Barra De Chocolate. Then there's three from Turkey (Ersen, Arif Sag, and the beloved Erkin Koray, with a cut from his Bunalim-related band, Ter, meaning Sweat), and even outfit from India (Atomic Forest, whose track "Obsession '77" is actually what gave this comp its name).
Best of all, most of 'em we'd never ever heard of before -- and yet the killer to filler ratio is muy excellente. You get everything from jungle sounds and loungey vibes to Middle Eastern bellydance fuzz guitar to Mutantes-style tropi-delic pop to slamming go-go dancing beats to swinging horns... and let's not forget the plethora of wild wah-wah'd psych guitar soloing found here. And this comp gets further points for including in the cd booklet full-color sleeve art from the rare original singles, and some textual information too, pertaining to each track.
Oh yeah! I'm sure you all remember in your youth, just going nuts on the dance floor, shaking and frugging and getting down to the latest smash from the likes of The Shock Absorbers ("It's Your Thing"), The Keith Mansfield Orchestra ("Soul Thing"), or Ken Woodman's Picadilly Brass ("Mexican Flier"), right? Whew, those were the days! What, you weren't making the scene in swinging sixties London? Well this comp should give you some idea what it maybe might have coulda been like, it's called On The Brink. Subtitled: Return Of The Instro-Hipsters. And the cover blurb goes on to state: "A happening and eclectic mix of vintage instrumental grooviness from the UK, with sitars, flutes, organs, horns and fuzz guitars." And that's no lie. This cd, compiled by none other than noted psych record collector Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond, is a veritable cornucopia of late '60s/early '70s instrumental toe-tappers from studio-bound big bands and nightclub combos letting their hair down and getting their funk on, swank stuff that could be the soundtrack to the coolest cocktail party ever. Delightfully goofy, some of this, dated of course, and verging on the psychedelic for sure... especially Stanley Myers' "Organ Fantasia In D Major", now that's an awesomely groovy freakout. Myers is one of the few names we already know here, session sitar guy Big Jim Sullivan being another, but it's nice to also become acquainted with the often ephemeral likes of The Chris Barber Soul Band, Trax Four, The Mike Cotton Sound, The Les Reed Orchestra, The Fidd, The Vic Flick Sound, and all the rest. 20 bands, 20 tracks, jazzy and snazzy, lush and bombastic, racy and romantic... not a clunker in the bunch, though we might have to frown about how much The John Schroder Orchestra's "Nightrider" sounds sooo much like the famous theme to Batman. Definitely if you love library music, or those In-Kraut compilations, this is kinda like the UK version of the same sort of thing, almost... and being British and from the swinging sixties, it's also no wonder that a lot of this could fit nicely in a spy movie, some of it very James Bond/Austin Powers sounding. The cd booklet includes notes on each track, photos, and lots of bright color. Right on.
French import, a vinyl-only comp of some excellent Japanese psych stuff from the Seventies!! We weren't able to get very many, it's now out of print, and we've got like 3 copies left, first come first served!
13 tracks, circa 1969-1978, including cuts by Les Rallizes Denudes, JA Caesar, Kuni Kawachi & His Group, The Apryl Fool, Sadistic Mika Band, Stomu Yamash'ta's Red Buddha Theatre, Akiko Yano, Toshiaki Tsushima, Harry Hosono & The Yellow Magic Band, Osamu Kitajima, Karuna Khyal, and more... Some we'd heard before (the ones that have seen full album reissues in recent years) but others we'd never even heard OF, and are utterly new finds for us. There's a very "Japanese" vibe indeed to these particular psych acts, and an arty one too. Cool!
There's a sequel too, Ongaku 80: Alternative Waves From Japan, that we sold out of already, but that one we're told we might see more of again in a few weeks...
We've been trying to list this for ages now (we listed its predecessor, the Ongaku 70 comp, late last year), but our distributor kept running out, and then eventually it sold out totally and went out of print. Well, it's finally repressed and available again, but who knows for how long, so grab a copy before they're gone, cuz this stuff is so good, and so crazy, some of the coolest and weirdest minimal electronic and no wave music we've ever heard, and most of the groups were totally unknown to us. Sure there's Phew and Riuchi Sakamoto and Tako, but then there's also Daisuck & Prostitute, Gunjogacrayon, Lizard and so many more. For those of you who remember that awesome So Young So Cold compilation of seventies and eighties cold/new wave music from France, well, imagine an even more warped and whatthefuck Japanese version and you've got Ongaku 80.
The sounds here are so varied and so all over the map, there's no way to really describe it as a whole, so might as well go track by track. EP-4 starts things off with "Robothood Process", which is in fact quite robotic, sounding a little like Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" at 16rpm, a funky bassline, little flurries of percussion, a weird machinelike voice, streaks of feedback, tolling bells, all wrapped into ramshackle groove. Sakamoto's "Riot In Lagos" takes the new wavey prog of Yellow Magic Orchestra (Sakamoto's group), and pulls it apart into something more robotic, unwinding long streaks of dubby rhythms, and a stuttery almost hip-hop groove, wreathed in all manner of beeps and bloops and synth blurts. "Modern Beat" by Lizard might be one of our favorites, a militaristic beat, some spidery guitar melodies, buried crooned vocals, lilting melodies, but over the top super loud dubbed out drums and a thick super distorted low end buzz, that erupts every once in a while like a squelchy rib cage rattling pppppthhhh, not to mention some squiggly Bollywood melodies. Portray Heads offer up "Elaborate Dummy", which is a killer slab of futuristic electro-punk with sweet crooned girl vox over the top, pulsing and pulsating synthscapes that should have fans of Zombi, Umberto and all the rest flipping their lids. Gunjogacrayon channel early P.I.L. and the Slits for a noisy chunk of super rhythmic punkfunk, wreathed in all sorts of effects and guitar scrabble and garbled wild vox.
Flip the record over, and things start off with "Urahara" by Phew, a weird bit of stiff robotic funk, with cold sung/spoken female vox over theremin like melodies and an almost Kraftwerk like arrangement. Tako's "Funk Of The Hostage" is indeed funky, bit a sort of sinister soundtracky funk that slithers and swaggers, a creepy bit of stuttery broody psychedelic spacefunk, with processed vocal garble and shards of squealing feedback and fractured melodies, as well as flurries of atonal piano, and bursts of distorted yelps and swirling FX. The awesomely named Daisuck & Prostitute almost sound like they could be some sort of proto-Ruins project, progged out scrabbly lurching grooviness, peppered with horn bleats and strangled guitar squiggles, all beneath dramatic vox, the song slipping from frenetic skitter, to grooving post punk. Shinobu's "Earth" is another track that sounds like a mutated version of HH's "Rockit", this time pelted with all manner of spaced out swirl and stuttering swoosh, a collage of sliced and diced sonic fragments raining down on a mesmerizing sci-fi synth groove, with some bizarre bellowed vox. And finally, PTA's finish things off with their epic "Woo-Guy After Dark", which weds post punk guitar jangle to tribal percussion, swoonsome synth swells to sweetly crooned female vocals, a slow build to something that more resembles a lost Bollywood soundtrack or some strange Southeast Asian cassette reissued on Sublime Frequencies, the song slipping from dense and percussive to swirly and ethereal and back again, all the while super rhythmic and hypnotic.
Phew! So good, and so awesomely crazy and over the top! So totally recommended. We definitely can't say how long these copies will last, or if we can get more once they're gone, so better probably to not risk it. You have been warned!
For a long time, this record was a Japanese psych holy grail, originally a super limited double lp, later a double cd, originally released to commemorate the closing of a club in Tokyo called Oz, where presumably all of these bands were recorded. The main reason this was such a sought after artifact is no doubt the presence of not one, but TWO all time Japanese psychedelic legends, Les Rallizes Denudes and Taj Mahal Travelers. In fact those of is who did manage to track down a copy, never even really listened to the first disc, since the second disc was so goddamn good. And odds are, most aQ Japanese psych obsessives stopped reading about two sentences ago and lunged for the 'add to cart' button. Cuz while this is/was quite a rarity, we just discovered a source for a bunch of copies, incredibly cheap too, and snapped 'em up, cuz we figured that there were enough folks out there like us, who would definitely be keen on more from either/both TMT and Les Rallizes.
Juts in case you actually need to know what it sounds like (as if you couldn't guess), Les Rallizes offer up their usual dose of super distorted psychedelic blues, opening with a droned out guitar thing, before slipping into a surprisingly pretty and folky, and distortion free bit of strum and croon, might be a big surprise for Les Rallizes fans out there, in fact it almost sounds like a Japanese Grateful Dead, until about the last minute, when the guitars come out, offering up a surprisingly, sweetly distorted lead. The second track too, opens up with a wild squall of distorted guitar, only to slip right back into mesmerizing bit of dirgey folky drone rock, this time sounding more like the Velvets, with some seriously emotional wailed vox and more sweet psychedelic leads. And then finally, the appropriately titled "The Last One", find the band returning to much noisier distorted realms, thick wandering basslines, super distorted guitar crunch, pounding drums, an explosive intro, and while the rest of the song dials it back again, it's awesomely dirgey and droney, laced with lots of tangled guitars and swaths of distortion.
Taj Mahal Travelers do what they do best, unfurling a long minimal dronescape, all sawed violin, distant chanted vocals, swirling muted melodies, wheezing harmonicas, all blurred into lush sonic swells, Kosugi's violin driving the sound here, but with all the other various instruments contributing their own more subtle elements, a hazy, drifty, tripped out bit of druggy psychedelic drift that is perfectly divine.
Like we said before, worth it just for the second disc, but heck, there's a whole other disc, which we actually never dug into until NOW. Up first is Miyako Ochi, who are a sort of Group Sounds, Beatles worshiping rock band, all British style rhythm and blues, the songs could very well be covers, one sounds exactly like "Twist And Shout", then there's Minami Masato, who are a lot like Miyako Ochi, at least with their Beatles-esque opener, but after that, the sound shifts to a more contemplative folk music, again looking to the UK and the US for inspiration, subtle simple strummed acoustic guitar and woozy croon, again quite cool, but a strange mix to be paired up with Les Rallizes and TMT. But then there's Acid Seven, who we were already hoping would be a bit more bad ass based on the name alone, and while they are ANOTHER band that is doing that Group Sounds sound, they manage to inject it with some grit and swagger, shouted gang vocals, super distorted production, wild psychedelic leads, and a vocalist who has a pretty bad ass raspy bellow. The following track is a strange sort of jaunty sing along, with some rad slippery slide guitar and there's even a KAZOO SOLO! Finally, they finish things up with a bit of brooding dark folk, urgently strummed acoustic guitar, and some heartfelt almost anguished sounding vocalizing, surprisingly pretty, especially considering the wild biker rock bellowing that preceded it.
All in all pretty great. Japanese psych obsessives NEED this, and heck for $12, dabblers can definitely afford to give it a chance. But don't dawdle, pretty sure we got every copy our distributor had, so not sure when/if we'll be able to get more. Packaged in a slim sleeve with brown paper wrapper, duplicating the presentation of the original lp.
The New Rubble series hits volume six with this collection of rare '60s pop psych singles, entitled Painting The Time. We haven't reviewed all the volumes in the series so far but this one's worth a mention, with enjoyable tracks by twenty different artists (the few we've heard of before being Aphrodite's Child, The Velvet Opera, The Orange Bicycle, and The Nashville Teens).
The truth is, though, that we expected to sell a lot more copies of volume FIVE in this series than we did -- that was the girl-fronted freakbeat comp Scratch My Back we reviewed here last list. So go back and review that review, folks! It's a damn good comp.
Not that this isn't pretty cool too, but doesn't have quite the same level of thematic unity as Scratch My Back. The common denominator here is that these tracks, many but not all of 'em by bands from the UK, have for the most part never been compiled before. So says complier and liner notator Nick "Bevis Frond" Saloman, at any rate, and he's obviously knows more about this stuff than you or I! So even if you're a rabid '60s psych comp collector maybe you haven't yet heard the songs by The Twilights, Andy Ellison, Abel Fletcher, Chris Kerry, Cats Pyjamas, The Bystanders, Herbie's People, The Executives, The Shame, and all the others found here. And the good news is that though obscure, these songs are definitey better than mere barrel-scrapings, many of 'em excellent uptempo fuzzy finger-snappin' popsters. So '60s fans, check this out...and definitely think about picking up vol. 5 too while you're at it!
Here is a compilation of obscure British psych groups that, with the exception of a couple semi famous artists (the Flying Machine, the Status Quo), is comprised of a bunch of bands that never really were recognized here in the U.S.. There is quite a variety here, ranging from trancy, drugged out slow ones, to out and out goofiness with silly meaningless drabble, and then there's some great songs that illustrate what 60's psych / garage are all about. Some very Syd Barrettesqe moments. This is ideal for British psych fans that want to get their hands on some rare songs.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The king of the Patty Duke fan club has just gotta be Mike Dereniewski of Detroit, MI. He's the man behind this musical mammoth ode to Ms Duke. His Patty Duke Fanzine has evolved over the last decade from a traditional cut'n'paste paper zine to one that included a 7" compilation with bands covering Patty songs to its current and final state, this double cd compilation. Talk about goin' out with a bang! Likewise, Mike D's musical periscope has stretched out beyond his early ultra pop focus, discovering and sharing sounds of all shapes and sizes from around the globe. Mind you, a big part of his record collection is still clearly reserved for the sweet sounds of girl groups.
These two cds collect together tunes from past Patty Duke Fanzine releases and a whole lot more. You get an astounding fifty four tracks of music and almost as many dialogue snippits of Patty Duke from her tv shows and movies! Allow us to give you a mere sampling of the artists included: Asobi Seksu, Gore Gore Girls, His Name Is Alive, Jessica Bailiff, Kevin Blechdom, Mark Robinson, Rose Melberg, Slumber Party, Stereo Total, V/VM, and Windy & Carl. Wow!
Giddy up! Let's rumble! It's a plethora of twangorama on Phantom Guitars, the new disc from the fab Psychic Circle label, who have brought us a ton of cool comps of '60s and '70s prog and psych grooviness (some recent highlights including White Lace & Strange, Blow Your Cool, and Return Of The Instro-Hipsters). This one, like several of those, was compiled by Nick "Bevis Frond" Saloman, who we're beginning to think must have the most amazing record collection ever. This disc wanders back a few years earlier than usual for these comps, to delve into the way out world of British instrumental guitar combos circa 1961-'64. Well it's mostly instrumental, but for some non sequitur exhortations of excitement that might lend a song its title...
Basically, before the Beatles, one of the biggest pop sensations of the era in the UK were The Shadows (sorta analogous to The Ventures over here in the USA, with a dose of Duane Eddy and a lick of Link Wray). The 25 tracks here are from some of the groups that followed in their wake, with monikers like The Falcons, The Champions, The Executives, The Cougars, The Players, Group X, The Gladiators, The Vengers, The Planets, The Hunters, The Violents, and The Phantoms, just to name a few of 'em. Generally awash in reverb, these cooler-than-thou guitar twangers specialized in surfy, cinematic Spaghetti Western suspensefulness and galloping grooves. Nick's picked a bunch of winners, not a duff track in the bunch if you're into these sort of vintage sounds. Zounds! If these bands were from Indonesia or Cambodia or someplace more exotic than the British Isles (or Sweden, he's included one Swedish band actually) we're sure we'd sell a ton of this disc, so c'mon why not give it a go anyway?
FYI, one of the tracks was written by John Barry, another one produced by Joe Meek. How do we know? Well the cd booklet includes notes on each track, for which we are always grateful, though learning that for instance Group X was actually The Martin Jay Five and that they made only two singles but did manage an appearance on a TV show called Thank Your Lucky Stars isn't really as interesting as just groovin' to their catchy beat (in their case, boasting some jazzy sax along with the six string bendin'). Darn cool.
Subtitled Les Plus Grands Groupes De Rock Des Annees 70 En France, here's a 23 track collection of, indeed, swinging '70s French rock n' pop... we imported 'em directly from France just about as soon as we found out about this and scoped the track list. It's on the same label that brought us those Sixties Girls comps, as well as the now out of print Les Variations and Triangle anthologies, amongst other goodies.
Styles here vary, and not every track is a killer, but that's how comps go. We certainly found enough tres bon poppy psych, prog rock bombast, AM radio sunshine, melancholic balladry, glam production and fat beats and flutes and grooves and blues and more to enjoy, for sure! Some of it's seriously cookin', some of it's on the softer side, and either way for the most part we're falling for the combination of Gallic charm and '70 kitsch on display here.
There's some groups here we'd heard of and many more we hadn't. Here's the line-up: Triangle, Time Machine, Les Variations, Dynastie Crisis, Jupiter Sunset, Ange, Alan Jack Civilization, Zoo, Costa-Yared-Costa, Trust, Tai Phong, Presence, Doc Dail, Martin Circus, Alice, Ilous & Decuyper, Labyrinthe, Trianglophone, Starshooter, Pop Tops, Total Issue, and two "bonus instrumentaux" from Le System Crapoutchik and Pachyderm. Too bad there's not much info given in the cd booklet about all these.
By now, we're used to the idea of rock n' roll in its sixties heyday as a GLOBAL phenomenon, kids everywhere, East and West, North and South, rockin' to that crazy beat. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of quite a few internationally-digging DJs and collectors, the past few years have been especially fruitful ones for reissues of far-flung rock artifacts on labels like Sublime Frequencies, Now-Again, and Soundway.
We've heard groovy groups from Turkey, Cambodia, Ghana, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and seemingly every place else. Certainly there's been a few releases that have delved into the scene in Malaysia and Singapore, but this fabulous new collection on Sublime Frequencies is THEE one to get if you want to learn about the great electric beat music being made by and for teenagers in that part of the world, circa 1964-1970.
Despite the conservative nature of Malaysian society, the rock n' roll revolution took root among its youth too. This Pop Yeh Yeh comp proves it! (The term "Pop Yeh Yeh", by the way, referring to rock music sung in Malay, was apparently derived from the "yeah yeah yeah" chorus of The Beatles' song "She Loves You", though it may have been another British band, Cliff Richard and The Shadows, that was the bigger influence on the nascent Malay rock scene.) While the kids there didn't get as wild in the streets as they may have elsewhere, with drugs and sex and all of that, they were still happy to let their hair down (if only just a bit) to make some sweet rock n' roll records. There's 26 such tracks are collected here, full of catchy melodies, fuzzy guitars, warbling organs... There's energetic dance numbers, and lovely ballads both. Some have the twang of surf music, others the sultry singers and lush arrangements of Hindi movie soundtracks, which were another big influence on Pop Yeh Yeh, besides Western pop rock and traditional Malay folk music forms.
This compilation is an obvious labor of love, years in the making, and can't be faulted for any lack of thoroughness. The physical product and depth of research set the bar pretty high for future collections of this type! It's a big package all right, colorful and informative. The tri-fold digipack contains not one but TWO thick booklets, they're both needed to contain all the extensive liner notes (book 1, a general essay on the history of rock n' roll in Malaysia and Singapore, plus lyrics to the songs on the cd; book 2, detailed write-ups on each and every track on the disc) plus tons of vintage photos of the sharp-dressed young men and women who made this delightful music, which despite all the interestin' reading, is still the main draw here after all! Another winner from Sublime Frequencies, guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
One of two Sublime Frequencies vinyl reissues for Record Store Day (the other being by Omar Souleyman). This fave is out of print on cd, and also already out of print in the this new vinyl version, too. We didn't even think we'd be able to list it, but one our our suppliers got their copies late so we snagged a few post-RSD. But this is probably it. Here's what we said about this great comp before...
By now, we're used to the idea of rock n' roll in its sixties heyday as a GLOBAL phenomenon, kids everywhere, East and West, North and South, rockin' to that crazy beat. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of quite a few internationally-digging DJs and collectors, the past few years have been especially fruitful ones for reissues of far-flung rock artifacts on labels like Sublime Frequencies, Now-Again, and Soundway.
We've heard groovy groups from Turkey, Cambodia, Ghana, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and seemingly every place else. Certainly there's been a few releases that have delved into the scene in Malaysia and Singapore, but this fabulous new collection on Sublime Frequencies is THEE one to get if you want to learn about the great electric beat music being made by and for teenagers in that part of the world, circa 1964-1970.
Despite the conservative nature of Malaysian society, the rock n' roll revolution took root among its youth too. This Pop Yeh Yeh comp proves it! (The term "Pop Yeh Yeh", by the way, referring to rock music sung in Malay, was apparently derived from the "yeah yeah yeah" chorus of The Beatles' song "She Loves You", though it may have been another British band, Cliff Richard and The Shadows, that was the bigger influence on the nascent Malay rock scene.) While the kids there didn't get as wild in the streets as they may have elsewhere, with drugs and sex and all of that, they were still happy to let their hair down (if only just a bit) to make some sweet rock n' roll records. 26 such tracks are collected here, full of catchy melodies, fuzzy guitars, warbling organs... There's energetic dance numbers, and lovely ballads both. Some have the twang of surf music, others the sultry singers and lush arrangements of Hindi movie soundtracks, which were another big influence on Pop Yeh Yeh, besides Western pop rock and traditional Malay folk music forms.
This compilation is an obvious labor of love, years in the making, and can't be faulted for any lack of thoroughness. The physical product and depth of research set the bar pretty high for future collections of this type! It's a big package all right, colorful and informative, with extensive liner notes (first, a general essay on the history of rock n' roll in Malaysia and Singapore, plus lyrics to the songs on the cd; second, detailed write-ups on each and every track) plus tons of vintage photos of the sharp-dressed young men and women who made this delightful music, which despite all the interestin' reading, is still the main draw here after all! Another winner from Sublime Frequencies, guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
The psych rock maven appropriately known as The Psychomaniac is back with another killer comp, one of the best we've heard from his comp-happy label in fact. Super groovy, super fuzzy, super psychedelic!! First off, though, you might be wondering, what happened to Psych Bites Volume One? Why start with the second volume in the series? Well there indeed is a Volume One, and it's probably very cool, but we haven't had a chance to check it out yet. Also that one's entirely devoted to Australian bands, so this new, geographically unfettered volume isn't precisely a sequel to the first. We'd like to review vol.1 too, but for the moment prefer to direct your attention to this disc, which has SO MUCH GOOD STUFF on it, it's kinda ridiculous. Stuff that, when you hear it, you'll be wondering, why haven't I heard this before? (Maybe you have, we knew a few of these tracks, but there's twenty of 'em here, so not to worry.) Recorded circa 1968-1974, with 1970 most heavily represented, and from all over the world, England, Germany (West -and- East), Holland, USA, Quebec, all the way to Nigeria, the unifying factor being only that these tracks are obscure classics to the max. And full of fuzz, let's not forget.
Let's touch on a few of the many highlights. The disc begins with a band with the bizarre name of Zappatta Schmidt, doing a horn-fueled, sweat-soaked, funky-drummed groover called "Someone In The Crowd" that's like if Otis Redding showed up on that old Chains and Black Exhaust comp... badass! That's followed by "Tomorrow Night", performed by the hopefully-named Chartbusters, more ye olde "hairy funk" with jamming organ, which might sound familiar though 'cause it's an Atomic Rooster cover, and a good one. We can't skip Spencer Mac's "Blues Up In Downtown", which keeps the party goin'. And that's followed by Milwaukee's Motown signings the Messengers telling us what it's like "In The Jungle"... good grief, we're mentioning ALL the tracks so far. Well, here's a few further highlights, though it's hard to choose, as you can see...
Gotta mention the kuriously monikered Kannibal Komix (aka Die Anderen) who offer up their klassic "Neurotic Reaction", which sounds like a cross between something by The Count Five and The Sweet, part freakbeat, part proto-glam, all unhinged and awesome. Heard it before on another comp or two, but always kool to hear it again. Another one we already knew was Ofo The Black Company's Afro-funk fuzz bomb "Allah Wakkbar" from '72 (a standout on the Love's A Real Thing comp from Luaka Bop, and also heard on Afrostrut's Nigeria 70 collection). But what's neat is that the almost as freaky flipside to that single, "Beautiful Daddy", is also included here too, new to us! (This disc also includes more Afro-rock from London-based Danta.) Madeline Chartrand's mesmeric "Ani-Kuni" we know we've heard somewhere before, as well, but can't remember where, so glad to have it here. Tranced out Native American chant meets space age psych, with some electric sitar thrown in for good measure. A treasure.
What else? There's the swinging sixties freakouts of Blackbirds 2000's "Let's Do It Together" and Janie's "Psycho", the latter being the sort of get everyone in the studio and get high and see what funny things wind up on the tape party that Kim Fowley was partial to, too. Oh, and this disc also provides a healthy dose of krautrockers: Frumpy, Krokodil, Orange Peel, and the prae-kraut pandaemonium of The Rattles. All good stuff. And the cd booklet provides notes on everything, plus full color graphix.
So, if you have been digging the comps done by the B-Music crew, or Psychic Circle, or similar various artists international fuzz-psych collections like Obsession, Neurotic Reaction, Cherrystone's Rocks, the best of those Electric Asylum comps (also put together by ol' Psychomaniac), etc., etc. then this is for you!
Looking at the cover of this comp, what catches our eye? Well, of course the words PSYCH and FUNK in big electric pink letters. Pretty much had us right there, we're easy like that. But then the fine print on the sticker on the front adds an extra tingle of excitement: "None of these tracks have ever been reissued"! So what we have here is a survey course on some obscure shit, an international collection of freaky, fuzzy, funky jams from the golden years, circa 1968-1975 or so, mostly from groups we'd never heard of before. The ones did know were a good sign, being super groovy and decidedly eccentric. (Though we do have to point out that at least a few of the cuts here actually have been reissued before, that's how we knew 'em!). Here's the lineup: Hunsu Ozkartal Orkestrasi (Turkey), Kukumbas (Nigeria), Mulatu Astatke feat. Belaynesh Wubante and Assegedetch Asfaw (Ethiopia), Kim Sun (South Korea), Petalouda (Greece), Mehr Pooya (Iran), Staff Carpenborg and The Electric Corona (West Germany), The Group (Italy), Armando Sciascia (Italy), Wadih Essafi (Lebanon), Omar Khorshid (Egypt), Metin H. Alatli (Turkey), George Garanian with The Melodiya Jazz Ensemble (Russia), and Eskaton (France). 14 tracks in all, all of 'em b to the a to the d to the ass. Get ready for plenty of percolating percussion, infectious bass lines, analog synth buzz, chicken scratch guitar, greasy organ, drugged out FX, and in many cases Middle Eastern or African or other 'exotic' ethnic elements as appropriate to their nation of origin. Highlights are almost impossible to pick. All the African stuff is killer (Ethiopiques fans take note), so are the Turkish tracks (you want weird? check out how the Metin H. Alatli cut somehow segues from Richard Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith music to stoned cocktail bellydance improv!!), so is everything else. We dig how eerieness and jazziness are combined on "The Feed-back" by The Group (aka Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, featuring Ennio Morricone), and also Armando Sciascia's suspenseful "Circuito Chiuso" is pretty eerie too. Both are from Italy, where it seems that it's hard NOT to sound like you're scoring a phantasmagoric horror flick a la Goblin. Also, we love love love the grandiose extended electro-funk from Magmoid progsters Eskaton that closes out the disc. But why keep writing about this, you know you need it - unless your record collection already includes all these rarities, and there's no way it does.
Lovingly compiled with the help of DJs like Cut Chemist and Stone's Throw's Egon, Psych Funk 101 is truly a lesson in, well, a variety of awesome vintage funkiness, in the tradition of other cool comps like Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word, Obsession, Trap Door, and the Afro-centric Love's A Real Thing. Housed in a handsome digipack, it boasts a thick, 36 page booklet featuring a two-page spread on each track, with full color repro of the original LP or 45 sleeve from whence the cut originated, along with a page of text giving more info than you'd expect.
FYI this also came out on vinyl, but was gone so fast, we don't have any to list. However, we are told it is being repressed, soon we hope...
Psych. Funk. India. The '70s. Yes it's gonna be awesome. Sitars and Bollywood stars, badass grooves and acid rock guitars. This excellent new collection comes from the same folks (deeeeeeep diggers they are) who brought us that incredible international Psych Funk 101 comp a while back. They are EXPERTS. It's not entirely a joke that they present these comps in the guise of academic coursework, their research is extensive and if you pay attention you're gonna learn somethin'. According to the liner notes, Psych Funk 101 is considered a pre-requisite to this new "seminar", which is subtitled "Aesthetic Expressions Of Psychedelic Funk Music In India". Fortunately they don't carry the academic gag too far, and keep grad school jargon to an amusing minimum. (By the way, if you don't have Psych Funk 101, well, we figure you can still audit this course... though we DO recommend picking that one up too).
So, what's this Sa-Re-Ga! all about? 20 tracks, all killer no filler, circa 1970-1983, that showcase several "key figures / movements in Indian Psych Funk", from the garagey late '60s Sgt. Peppery stuff you'd expect from a former British colony (and from anywhere else in the world the Beatles had made their way), to the work of genius Bollywood composer R.D. Burman (and his eventual wife, the famous singer Asha Bhosle), to the Go-Go stylings of brothers Kalyanji Aalyanji Anandji, to hard rock bassist Keith Kanga's "wild beat group" Atomic Forest and related acts. Much information is provided about all of those artists and more in what must be the BIGGEST damn cd booklet we've ever seen. 52 pages!! The digipack sleeve can barely contain it. Packed with tons of dazzling full color graphics and learned text. Totally gettin' your money's worth with this one. (It's packaged like the Forge Your Own Chains comp, equally fat and deluxe.)
But even without the frills, just the music alone would make this a must. You can't listen to this without getting a gleeful smile on your face, from the get-go it's great and then somehow each song manages to top the one before it, with insistent propulsive percussion, bombastic orchestration, impassioned vocals, musique concrete techniques, and indeed some heavy, Hindi, FUNK. We're having trouble picking individual tracks to single out, only because they're ALL so good. But we gotta mention just a few of the super standouts, one of 'em being a live version of the classic "Dum Maro Dum" performed Bhosle and Burman and band at the Royal Albert Hall in 1978. That's a song you've heard before, most likely (the Kronos Quartet even recorded it, on their 2005 album with Bhosle), and it helps to realize that not only does a lot of the music on this disc seem like it oughtta be the most popular stuff in the world, in many cases, it really was quite popular, and not just in India. This rendition of "Dum Maro Dum", which means "Take Another Toke" by the way, was their concert's deliriously ecstatic, well-received finale. Then there's "Freak Out Music", another R.D. Burman number, that couldn't have been a hit, but is certainly Freaked Out. (And it's not even the one here by him that combines the sounds of strings with that of smashing glass.)
We also were excited to hear more from Atomic Forest, a band that provided the title track to the great international fuzz compilation Obsession a few years back (now out of print). They do a cover of a Deep Purple tune, "Mary Long", and of course laden it with extra fuzz. Another one for classic rock fans would be Bappi Lahari's "Everybody Dance With Me", which sounds suspiciously like Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" given an exotic Indian disco makeover, with bongos and wild wails... And, conversely, as an early example of Indian groove filtering into the West, the compilers have included a track by krautrocker/fusioneer Klaus Doldinger, "Sitar Beat", which is indeed just that, and must have been a highlight of the 1969 spy movie soundtrack on which it originally appeared. Which is interesting, 'cause the entry by Indian garage band X'Lents, "Psychedelia", originally from the Simla Beat 70 compilation, sounds like it would be perfect for a James Bond style spy movie too.
So, in sum, quite a lesson, and definitely a fun one. We'd go so far as to say this should be a required course/comp. We've been lucky lately with the quality of comps and other archival releases coming out, documenting vintage music from (for us) far off lands. We recently made the Soundway's The Sounds Of Siam a Record Of The Week, now this Sa-Re-Ga! is making us so happy... and we've got our eye on an upcoming Now-Again comp devoted to '70s Indonesian rock and funk, called Those Shocking Shaking Days, we've got high hopes for that one, it promises to be rad too. The vaguely connected network of collectors and DJs who are responsible for these comps, true labors of love, deserve all our thanks!!
As we said, the compact disc version boasts a massively thick booklet, and the swank double vinyl comes with a large 20 page one too.
Subtitled: Heavy Underground (1967-71). Some great, late '60s heavy garage psych stuff here. Yep, another compilation of obscure bands from before you were born or at least before you were buying records. And even if you were buying records back then, chances are you didn't ever pick up any of these, tracks from obscure bands released on obscure 7" singles on obscure labels from obscure places, from Peru to Malibu! And amazingly, these dozen tracks really are all pretty darn killer, no filler. Seriously, We've been listening to this pretty much non-stop since we got it in. Like it says, this is heavy, but in that '60s way -- not really proto-metal but rather psych-pop garage rock jams turned up and turned on, folks gettin' a little freaky with the volume and the effects and the sonic psychedelic drug explorations. Lotsa FUZZ of course, that's a major ingredient.
Here's who's here: Blackrock, Sound Machine, Yesterday's Obsession, Mastermind, Sangre Mexicana, Bhagavad Gita, Protein Bros, Purple Canteen, Los Nuevos Shains, Blow Mind, and Dirty Filthy Mud. It's hard to pick faves, though the B-side of the single by Oakland California's Dirty Filthy Mud, "Forest Of Black" from 1967 is pretty much worth the price of admission all by itself if you're into ye olde heaviness like we are! All in all an excellent comp for the psychedelic minded, a bunch of great-sounding tracks we'd never heard before with a decent helping of vintage graphics and liner notes about each act in the cd booklet.
Two of our favorite words! (Though we normally spell Phinland, Finland.) The current Finnish psych
phenomenon -- Avarus, Kemialliset Ystavat, Circle, Pharaoh Overlord, Kiila, etc. etc. is of course a major AQ obsession. As is vintage psych from, well, heck just about anywhere, but certainly Scandinavia. So this double-disc compilation, subtitled "Finnish Hippie & Underground Music 1967-1974" has got us all excited. There's 29 tracks from almost as many artists, a fantastic trip into the early daze of the Finnish freak-scene. Perhaps another good subtitle would have been: "When Drugs Came To Finland". There's even a few songs about marijuana to set the mood, starting off disc one. But Psychedelic Phinland is just as political, and parodic, and perverse as it is potheaded. There's plenty of Flower Power pop and/or fuzzed-out blues rock, but you'll also find jazz-damaged prog and mystic folk, revolutionary theatre and electronic insanity. There's so much here, we can't mention it all, but look out for heavy psych jammers Baby Grandmothers, "rocking lavatory anarchists" Suomen Talvisota 1939-40, and progrock pioneers Wigwam... then there's there's Eastern-inflected psych-folk from Pekka Streng and the Yippie ranting of Markku Uto...
And then on disc two things get REALLY weird. Yeah this one's even further out, crossing over a bit into "Arktinen Hysteria" territory (you maybe remember, that great collection of early Finnish avant-weirdness from a while back, also released by Love Records). It starts off innocently enough with our new favorite band(name), Those Lovely Hula Hands. Really, that's their name, and they included several 13 and 14 year old sisters playing violins and recorders, singing gently amidst tape-recorded bird-twitter... a song about Tarzan! Then we hear from Pekka Airaksinen and also his band The Sperm, doing extended feedback and tape music experiments. We remember The Sperm from that Arktinen comp and had wanted to hear more. Later on, there's some wonderfully primitive, ceremonial hippy jamming, particularly from a band called Sikiot, who have a krautrockish vibe like Siloah or Amon Duul. And there's plenty more, some other names of note on these cds include J.O. Mallander, Charlies, Topmost, Juice Leskinen & Coitus Int, Apollo, Blues Section, Hector & Oscar, and Kruunuhaan Dynamo...
All of this is pretty much totally obscure, in fact a lot of it consists of previously unissued archival recordings from the vaults of Finland's Love label and other sources... A true labor of Love. Comes with a twenty page, full color cd booklet with English-language notes on each track and tons of cool old photos and graphics.
Recommended!
Our pal Stan at Aether Records put together this comp of modern-day psychedelic bands paying tribute to the psych greats of the past. Like most comps, it's got its winners and losers, but the concept works out pretty well, and it makes for a good introduction to both the contemporary acts doing the cover versions and the '60s/'70s era artists being covered, who range from Woodstock-era big shots to obscure artists mainly known today only to psychedelic record collector freaks, here's some of 'em: The Doors, The Stones, Jefferson Airplane, The Who, The Pretty Things, The Fox, Apple, The Syn, Linda Perhacs, The Churchills, The Incredible String Band... Meanwhile, the international array of artists doing the covers are *definitely* obscure, with the best-known to AQ customers probably being the Bevis Frond, P.G. Six (doing the ISB cover of course!), Abunai!, and SF's own Mushroom. Then there's Israel's psych-popsters Rockfour (who tackle a track by Israel's premiere '60s psych export, The Churchills), Japan's Kaminumada Yohji (whose 'cover' of AQ-fave UK pagan weirdos Comus is actually more of an improvisatory interpretation inspired by Comus, sorry to say) and ten others, some of which Terrastock types will doubtless recognize. Fortunately, Stan provides plenty of background in his detailed liner notes on every band/track. Generally you can't tell past from present with these covers, one exception being female-fronted LA duo Senseri who start things off with what's maybe a too modern-sounding (and cheesy) take on The Doors' "Peace Frog". After that though you're totally in the realm of retro nirvana though, geared towards fans of the genre. Of course fans will have their own ideas of what bands shoulda been on here (both old and new)...
MPEG Download: BEVIS FROND "Grounded" [/audio/pgsixmynameis.mp3]
MPEG Stream: BEVIS FROND "Grounded" [/audio/pgsixmynameis.m3u]
The Sanity Muffin cassette label just keeps bringing out the gems. This one is a fantastic mix of obscure psych guitar gems from Asia from the '60s and '70s. From cinematic Spaghetti Western-ish sojourns to go-go pop, electric guitar weirdness, pastoral exoticism and funky eastern soul. Like the Teenage Dance Music from China, Indonesian guitar, Shadow Music of Thailand and Cambodian Rock comps, this is an incredible mix of little heard guitar driven music coming out of various Asian countries. Here are the groups included: The Red Stars, Cousen Brothers, M. Shariff and The Zurah, Salim I., The Caterpillars, Adnan Othman & The Wanderers, The Tones, The Steps, Jong-Yee Sho, The Hawks, M. Johari & Quandos, TLA Production Group, Mei Fong W/ Tony & The Polar Bear Five, Charlie and The White Cloud Orchestra, Group 123, and Apollo Band.
Super limited to 100 copies! Get it while you can!
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.
Another special release for this year's Record Store Day, that we managed to get enough of to list and review for all the aQ peeps who weren't able to visit the shop in person.
By now most regular readers of the aQ list are well aware of just how much we love Andy Votel's B-Music label, the dizzyingly eclectic home of recordings from Jean-Claude Vannier, Selda, Mustafa Ozkent, Sarolta Zalatnay, as well as purveyors of all things Turkish psych, lost disco, weirdo proto metal, lost soundtracks, Pakistani film music, Hungarian psych prog and more more more.
We raved about the Pomegranates comp recently, as well as The BYG Deal collection, also, the Sound Of Wonder, Well Hung, if there's one thing these guys do better than anyone, it's make mixtapes, transformed into head spinning, ear tickling compilations, so it should come as no surprise that their Record Store Day sampler is another killer mix. And instead of just being ONLY a handful of tracks you can get on other releases (although some in fact are), it focuses on harder to find B-Music gems, whether from WAY out of print records, or not yet released jams.
Beginning with a killer chunk of slice and dice space synth disco from weirdo French mad scientist Jean-Pierre Massiera, the record flits from sound to sound, from country to country, from era to era, but somehow still manages to flow. Persian psych pop slips right into some gritty synth funk, which leads right into some woozy, tripped out Asian psych, finishing off with some awesome Italo fuzzfunk, wild and trippy and druggy and awesome.
The flipside begins with some warped easy listening which is transformed into some seriously far out skittery fuzzy outsider funk, followed by some "synth bass stoner funk", then a Curved Air cover, taken from the Absolute Belter comp reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, sequing into some exotic soaring string driven dancefloor Bollywood style groove, before finishing off with a bit of Welsh Rare Beat.
Awesome stuff. An absolutely killer mix, and maybe the ultimate party platter of the year. LIMITED too, we probably won't be able to get more of these, so best to snag one while they last...
