We first heard about this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group when three of their records were reissued on Chicago label PlusTapes, we all went nuts for them, as did you, we couldn't keep them in stock, but sadly they were crazy limited. Even at the time, and even on tape, we wanted to make one or all of them Records Of The Week, but they disappeared before we had a chance. But now Sublime Frequencies swoops in and saves the day, reissuing on a compact disc all three of the Dara Puspita's records proper (all the stuff on the cassettes, and then some!). But what's so great about these ladies? Read on....
Dara Puspita (Flower Girls in English) were Indonesia's most successful girl group in the sixties, and one of the few -actual- bands, who played their own instruments as opposed to just singing with all male backing bands. Even though rock and roll was banned at the time, with some bands being jailed for performing rock music live (Koes Bersaudara in particular, whose Sublime Frequencies disc we reviewed a few lists back - Dara Puspita and Koes Bersaudara had very similar histories, their careers often directly influenced by each other, the whole story to be found in the copious liner notes). Dara Puspita took their influence from that banned rock music, borrowing liberally from the Rolling Stones, The Beatles (whose songs they were warned by the authority to not perform, the very songs that got Koes Bersaudara jailed!) and the like, but giving it their own twist.
Performing a mix of covers and originals, these ladies were legendary for their wild live shows, but they really shine on record, with a totally distinctive and keen pop sensibility, gorgeous lilting vocals, an awesome rhythm section and some really excellent guitar playing. Dara Puspita weren't avant garde or super far out, not really heavy or psychedelic, instead they were just a kick ass pop group, an awesome garagey rock and roll band, catchy and fun, super energetic and with a distinctly unique vibe that makes this sound so special. Just listen to the sound samples. You'll be hooked in no time.
Lavish packaging, a full color six panel digipak, with tons of photos, a huge booklet of liner notes, with the story of the band, of the recording, more about the state of Indonesia at the time, the producer and more more more. So great!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From the newly launched Plustapes cassette label comes THREE tapes from this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group. Do you really need to know any thing more? Indonesian. Sixties. All girl. Garage? We didn't think so, but just for the heck of it...
We were gonna write separate reviews for each of these, but they're so cheap, and so good, and odds are if you want one, you're going to want them all. So far pretty much everyone who has heard these has gone totally nuts for these kick ass garage rock girls.
Dara Puspita (Flower Girls in English) were Indonesia's most successful girl group in the sixties, and one of the few -actual- bands, who played their own instruments as opposed to just singing with all male backing bands. Even though rock and roll was banned at the time, with some bands being jailed for performing rock music live, Dara Puspita took their influence from that banned rock music, borrowing liberally from the Rolling Stones, The Beatles (whose songs they were warned by the authority to not perform) and the like, but giving it their own twist.
Performing a mix of covers and originals, these ladies were legendary for their wild live shows, but they really shone on record, with a totally distinctive and keen pop sensibility, gorgeous lilting vocals, an awesome rhythm section and some really excellent guitar playing. Dara Puspita weren't avant garde or super far out, not really heavy or psychedelic, instead they were just a kick ass pop group, an awesome garagey rock and roll band, catchy and fun, super energetic and with a distinctly unique vibe that makes this sound so special. Not to mention all the fuzzy record crackle, which only adds to the appeal! For us at least...
Each tape is strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the tapes are the same color as the covers, each of which sports original artwork from Plastic Crimewave!!
ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From the newly launched Plustapes cassette label comes THREE tapes from this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group. Do you really need to know any thing more? Indonesian. Sixties. All girl. Garage? We didn't think so, but just for the heck of it...
We were gonna write separate reviews for each of these, but they're so cheap, and so good, and odds are if you want one, you're going to want them all. So far pretty much everyone who has heard these has gone totally nuts for these kick ass garage rock girls.
Dara Puspita (Flower Girls in English) were Indonesia's most successful girl group in the sixties, and one of the few -actual- bands, who played their own instruments as opposed to just singing with all male backing bands. Even though rock and roll was banned at the time, with some bands being jailed for performing rock music live, Dara Puspita took their influence from that banned rock music, borrowing liberally from the Rolling Stones, The Beatles (whose songs they were warned by the authority to not perform) and the like, but giving it their own twist.
Performing a mix of covers and originals, these ladies were legendary for their wild live shows, but they really shone on record, with a totally distinctive and keen pop sensibility, gorgeous lilting vocals, an awesome rhythm section and some really excellent guitar playing. Dara Puspita weren't avant garde or super far out, not really heavy or psychedelic, instead they were just a kick ass pop group, an awesome garagey rock and roll band, catchy and fun, super energetic and with a distinctly unique vibe that makes this sound so special. Not to mention all the fuzzy record crackle, which only adds to the appeal! For us at least...
Each tape is strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the tapes are the same color as the covers, each of which sports original artwork from Plastic Crimewave!!
ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From the newly launched Plustapes cassette label comes THREE tapes from this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group. Do you really need to know any thing more? Indonesian. Sixties. All girl. Garage? We didn't think so, but just for the heck of it...
We were gonna write separate reviews for each of these, but they're so cheap, and so good, and odds are if you want one, you're going to want them all. So far pretty much everyone who has heard these has gone totally nuts for these kick ass garage rock girls.
Dara Puspita (Flower Girls in English) were Indonesia's most successful girl group in the sixties, and one of the few -actual- bands, who played their own instruments as opposed to just singing with all male backing bands. Even though rock and roll was banned at the time, with some bands being jailed for performing rock music live, Dara Puspita took their influence from that banned rock music, borrowing liberally from the Rolling Stones, The Beatles (whose songs they were warned by the authority to not perform) and the like, but giving it their own twist.
Performing a mix of covers and originals, these ladies were legendary for their wild live shows, but they really shone on record, with a totally distinctive and keen pop sensibility, gorgeous lilting vocals, an awesome rhythm section and some really excellent guitar playing. Dara Puspita weren't avant garde or super far out, not really heavy or psychedelic, instead they were just a kick ass pop group, an awesome garagey rock and roll band, catchy and fun, super energetic and with a distinctly unique vibe that makes this sound so special. Not to mention all the fuzzy record crackle, which only adds to the appeal! For us at least...
Each tape is strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the tapes are the same color as the covers, each of which sports original artwork from Plastic Crimewave!!
ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
After a couple fantastic cd reissues on Sublime Frequencies, of this incredible Indonesian sixties all girl garage rock group, a handful of those tracks have been gathered up and released on vinyl! Pricey import, but still quite cool...
We first heard about these Indonesian girl group garage rockers when three of their records were reissued on Chicago label PlusTapes, we all went nuts for them, as did the aQ legions, we couldn't keep them in stock, but sadly they were crazy limited. Even at the time, and even on tape, we wanted to make one or all of them Records Of The Week, but they disappeared before we had a chance. So when Sublime Frequencies swooped in and reissued on a compact disc all three of Dara Puspita's records proper (all the stuff on the cassettes, and then some!), we got to gush like crazy and indeed bestow Record Of The Week honors on these amazing ladies and their incredible music. And now, for those of you who were holding out for something on vinyl...
Dara Puspita (Flower Girls in English) were Indonesia's most successful girl group in the sixties, and one of the few -actual- bands, who played their own instruments as opposed to just singing with all male backing bands. Even though rock and roll was banned at the time, with some bands being jailed for performing rock music live (Koes Bersaudara in particular, whose Sublime Frequencies discs we reviewed a while back - Dara Puspita and Koes Bersaudara had very similar histories, their careers often directly influenced by each other). Dara Puspita took their influence from that banned rock music, borrowing liberally from the Rolling Stones, The Beatles (whose songs they were warned by the authority to not perform, the very songs that got Koes Bersaudara jailed!) and the like, but giving it their own twist.
Performing a mix of covers and originals, these ladies were legendary for their wild live shows, but they really shine on record, with a totally distinctive and keen pop sensibility, gorgeous lilting vocals, an awesome rhythm section and some really excellent guitar playing. Dara Puspita weren't avant garde or super far out, not really heavy or psychedelic, instead they were just a kick ass pop group, an awesome garagey rock and roll band, catchy and fun, super energetic and with a distinctly unique vibe that makes this sound so special. Just listen to the sound samples. You'll be hooked in no time. So great!!
Here's a nice reissue of this English fuzz-filled psych rarity from '72, considered by collectors to be a bit of a holy grail, since they only made 50 copies of the original! And while THAT may have a lot to do with why this is blurbed as "one of THEE greatest guitar-heavy psych records in the world" by the Machu Picchu label, it's definitely a contender for one of the RAREST pretty great ones. So thank Machu Picchu for making it available again, this time officially licensed from the band, something most previous versions probably weren't.
You may have heard their track "Maypole" way back when, on the British installment of the Love, Peace & Poetry series. We likened 'em to Blue Cheer-ish acid rock in our review of that comp, but Cream would have been a better comparison. And actually that track's rather gentle compared to some of the truly fuzzed out onslaughts on here, fuzzy though it is. And by the way, remember the Wicked Lady reissues we recently reviewed? Well axeman Martin Weaver from Wicked Lady joined up with the Dark right before this was recorded, so that's his fuzz you're hearing, which should give you some indication of what this sounds like. A more sophisticated, proggier Wicked Lady perhaps, a Wicked Lady with more in the way of "songs" rather than freakout jams, though this gets bluesy/jammy at times too.
While Dark aren't as, uh, dark as their name suggests, having a light side too, no heavy psych/fuzz fan will be disappointed, they're right in there with the likes of Wicked Lady, T2, May Blitz, Human Beast, NSU, Clear Blue Sky, Arzachel, and other heavy fuzzy but still sorta poppy UK psych outfits of the era, and that's good company.
This reissue has been remastered and restored by His Name Is Alive guy Warren Defever, and features a band history written by the Dark's Steve Giles. Also included are lyrics and rare photos. The packaging is a digipack for the cd, or a tip-on gatefold jacket for the vinyl.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Volume two of these recently discovered long lost recordings of seventies synthesizer music from a mysterious Belgian musician named Edmond De Dyster. Like the first volume, these pieces were discovered on unmarked reel to reel tapes in a box marked simply with the year, 1975. Discovered by Ultra Eczema head honcho Dennis Tyfus, these recordings, along with those on the now out of print first volume, are only part of a trove of unreleased, and for the most part unheard recordings De Dyster made in private, who seemingly had no intention of releasing them, in fact, even his family didn't know he had been making recordings.
None of this mystery would be worth anything if it weren't for the music, which is weird and wonderful, raw and primitive, all analog synthesizers, almost like a lo-fi BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The sounds are tripped out and abstract, bleeps and bloops and beeps and sine wave tones, and crumbling distorted rhythms, plodding ominous low end melodies, spooky squalls of glitch and squelch, reverbed squiggles, ghostly tones, haunting and otherworldly like a Theremin, here and there some new age flutter, deep soft swells, fuzzy staticky streaks of buzz, muted rhythmic thumps, that low end creeping and slithering through clouds of swirling tones and shimmering textures, all set adrift in wide open expanses of distant rumble and soft fuzzy whir. Amazing stuff. Think Tangerine Dream, Conrad Schnitzler, Battiato, Schulze, Heldon. And you may as well add De Deyster to that list. Anyone into experimental electronic music, should absolutely check this out.
Who knows how many other lost boxes of tapes or mysterious music makers lurk in bedrooms and basements out there? Probably more than we might imagine...
Gorgeously packaged in a hand screened, extra thick jacket, with a full color printed insert. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
Dead Moon are one of those bands that seems to be revered and loved by everyone who's ever heard them, but considering how long the band has been around, it's a little hard to believe just how few people that is. SO we're pretty psyched that Sub Pop decided it was time to rectify that. With a massive double disc collection, gathering up all kinds of rare and essential DM tracks.
Dead Moon seem like they've been around forever, and they sort of have. The band formed in 1987, so we're talking almost 20 years. And husband and wife band leaders Fred and Toody were BORN IN 1948!! AND GOT MARRIED IN 1967!! Twenty years before they even started the band that would continue rocking to this day. And they pretty much out-rock any garage rock outfit you can think of. Dead Moon are classic, lo-fi, fuzzed out, stripped down, blues drenched garage rock nirvana. The drums sound like garbage can lids recorded in a cave, the guitars go from scrabbly thick riffing to reverby surf rocky fuzz, to smokey blues moodiness. The songs tend to be super simple, sometimes skeletal, but the band have a serious knack for the hook and they just kick out the motherfucking jams. Fred's got a killer Bon Scott-like growl and Toody has a cool sixties girl group sort of shout, and along with drummer Andrew Loomis every track they whip up is a winner, going from sounding like kick ass classic rock, to fuzzy garage groove, to psychedelic lo-fi blues rock, to some rare lost AC/DC demo, all slathered in Stoogesy swagger and swinging Stones stomp.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The lp re-issue (after a cd reish a couple years ago) of one of those albums collectors would trade their first born for. Gladly. This is head-damaged, heavy Oklahoma psych-punk circa 1975, predating the Butthole Surfers by a solid decade but with the same references to Captain Beefheart and the Red Crayola. Not too many bands in the '70s sounded much like this, with maybe Pere Ubu,
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Oooooooh aren't you a saucy one?! Trashy garage rawk fans, we know you're happy to see this come 'round the bend. The always scantily clad Demolition Doll Rods will rev yer Detroit psychobilly engines with this live dvd of the trio letting themselves go in Madrid last year! Whoa nelly, the front cover tells it all! Check out that package. Ahem, the only thing missing from the photo is all the sweat the gang pumps out while they're stompin' shoutin' and workin' it on out!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is yet another cd that is not new but is -so- important to our Sadie that we are listing it now. "Mink Rat or Rabbit" was the first release by this lovely Detroit quintet, a band I just can't shut up about. I've convinced, like, seven of my friends to buy
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Italian vinyl-only reissue of Mick Farren's 1968 pre-Pink Fairies psych-proto-punk band's best-loved album.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We LOVE this album, and have for a long time. We first reviewed a reissue of this "exotic" 1967 garage-fuzz gem back in 2001, in fact making it a Record Of The Week. That reissue was a somewhat odd 2-fer-1 deal that included an album by another, pretty much utterly unrelated '60s psych band, The Freak Scene, kinda cool but not Middle Eastern styled like The Devil's Anvil. And it was The Devil's Anvil that was the real treasure on that disc, as far as we were concerned. If you haven't heard it yet, you're in luck, 'cause it's just been reissued again, getting a disc all to itself this time, courtesy of vintage rock specialists Rev-Ola, who do their usual nice job with the packaging and all.
The cover art shows the band hangin' in the desert in front of the pyramids of Egypt - but don't be fooled, they were actually mostly Arab-AMERICANS, based in New York City. Still, their rock n' roll was as authentically "Middle Eastern" as their Turkish contemporaries. They could have held their own with the likes of Erkin Koray and Mogollar.
The Devil's Anvil got together in the happenin' mid sixties Greenwich Village scene, playing their Middle Eastern influenced music at folk cafes and rock clubs. Eventually they hooked up with classical musician-turned-rocker Felix Pappalardi (producer of Cream's Disraeli Gears, later to play alongside Leslie West in Mountain). He began playing bass with the band and eventually scored the group a record deal. The resulting album was truly one-of-a-kind and would certainly made greater impact had it not been released on the very eve of the Arab-Israeli war in 1967. Thus, we're told no New York radio stations would play it and unfortunately the album has remained an expensive collector's find until its cd reissue.
The rock contained herein is absolutely kick ass, with bluesy and impassioned Arabic vocals, electric (or at least amplified) oud, bouzouki, tamboura, durbeki as well as the usual rock suspects of (fuzz!) guitar, bass and drums. The majority of the tracks here are either rock arrangements of traditional Middle Eastern and Greek numbers or original compositions, but a couple are actually straight traditional numbers with no western instruments at all. Plus there's an excellent Middle Eastern-esque rock arangement of surf classic "Misirlou" (of course, a song with its roots originally in Greek rembetika) that's perhaps the best version ever recorded, in our humble opinion. And the record ends with a Devil's Anvil original that kinda reminds us of one of the Beatles' more Eastern-influenced tunes. This is about as good as it gets. Very, very highly recommended! Nay, ESSENTIAL.
The cd booklet of this new reish includes original album graphics along with brand new liner notes from one of the writers at Shindig magazine, and a blurb on the back that just might have been parapharased from -our- Record Of The Week review of this album.
The psych/prog reissues label Akarma from Italy has begun a campaign of mid price repressings, with stuff they had previously put out in their usual mini gatefold LP sleeve style packaging now being issued in jewel cases with the price knocked down a few bucks (a good thing, considering that the falling US dollar is making so many imports much more pricey). So we'll be getting a few old faves back in... Here's one for the old school stoner rockers among you: Dias de Blues. Heavy psychedelic blues rock from Uruguay circa 1972, kind of a slightly more wasted Latin American take on something along the lines of Cream. This album ventures from uptempo fuzz rockers to wailing blues harp jams to backwards-effected dirges, all with killer guitar leads and Spanish vocals. Cool. And there's a severed head being brandished by an equally disembodied arm on the cover!
If there's any artists that really deserves some sort of epic retrospective that digs deeeeep into the archives, it's Bo Diddley. All too often he's celebrated for his unique charisma, but it's sometimes forgotten how many great records he actually made. Originally released in 1970, The Black Gladiator shows a much more psychedelic rock/blues side to Diddley's sound. The songs pack such a punch, and there's so much energy and conviction that you can almost feel Diddley's sweat oozing from every note. The lyrics cut to the core, perfect for the music, so raw, dirty, and full of attitude. Like a way more fucked up Booker T. & The MG's or Meters, or maybe Hendrix and Black Merda doing a tutorial for Lux from the Cramps. We're even reminded of that amazing weird blip in Chubby Checker's career that was documented on the mind blowing Chubby Checker Goes Psychedelic album.
There's no doubt that many future garage psych/blues masterminds were influenced by these sounds. You can pretty much hear the origins of folks like the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Make Up, Dub Narcotic Sound System, The Gories, White Stripes and we even clocked a moment that The Beastie Boys sampled. And we're pretty sure that our favorite current garage rock artists like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees either already treasure this album or would freak out if they were finally hearing it for the first time.
From the same studio that produced the amazing prog rock blowout that was the Cannabis India record from last list, comes this amazing flute led free jazz freakout from the Dieter Bihlmaier Selection, and as you probably know full well by now, we're suckers for the flute, especially when it's in the context of some fierce prog or far out jazz, as is the case here, a stripped down trio of just flute, bass and drums, recorded in 1973, this finds the band lean and mean, and so fierce, yet melodic and moody, groovy and jazzy and dreamy, slipping from fluttery drift to full on frenzy, Bihlmaier is an incredible player, expressive and all over the place, pure tones give way to stuttery breathy bursts, wild melodic runs, all tangled up with the bad ass rhythm section who lay down some seriously krautrocky jazz rhythms, locked in tight, mesmerizing and hypnotic, letting the flute do its thing over the top, but occasionally rising up and meeting the flute head on, the instruments doing a dense and dangerous dance, swirling, whirling and wild. The drums and bass get their time in the spotlight, but it's definitely all about the flute, and how the three mesh, even when they're all going full bore, which is much of the time. Hard to get your head around how three guys can be playing so wildly and so free, and yet the sounds can all fit together so perfectly. Heavy and heady and definitely far out, one of our new favorite jazz discoveries. Dying to find out what other amazing stuff SWR has tucked away in their vaults...
Here is one third of a triple dose of bizarre that's just arrived at AQ! What's so bizarre? Well, first off, the pairing of buoyant sixties pop tunes featuring a young lad's sweet voice with the incongruous sepiatone vintage porn pics on the record sleeves. If we were to stop our description there, these would be pretty darn odd enough, but let's continue shall we? The almighty catch is that the voice in question just happens to be the one that would go on to sing for Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and Dio! Yes, these singles are early sixties recordings by none other than Ronnie James Dio himself! We all know he's an old guy, and had heard rumours for years that his recording career began way back in 1957...well now we pretty much have the proof in the form of these three singles, reissues of tracks circa 1962 done by Dio and his teenage cronies. This is not just pre-Heavy Metal Dio, this is pre-Beatles! Poppy, doo-wop, sock hop styled stuff in the vein of Dion, Richie Valens, that sort of thing. These singles with their risque covers come randomly assorted between plain black and nice thick swirly colored vinyl. Quite a curio. And as you might imagine, we have only a few in stock!
Here is one third of a triple dose of bizarre that's just arrived at AQ! What's so bizarre? Well, first off, the pairing of buoyant sixties pop tunes featuring a young lad's sweet voice with the incongruous sepiatone vintage porn pics on the record sleeves. If we were to stop our description there, these would be pretty darn odd enough, but let's continue shall we? The almighty catch is that the voice in question just happens to be the one that would go on to sing for Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and Dio! Yes, these singles are early sixties recordings by none other than Ronnie James Dio himself! We all know he's an old guy, and had heard rumours for years that his recording career began way back in 1957...well now we pretty much have the proof in the form of these three singles, reissues of tracks circa 1962 done by Dio and his teenage cronies. This is not just pre-Heavy Metal Dio, this is pre-Beatles! Poppy, doo-wop, sock hop styled stuff in the vein of Dion, Richie Valens, that sort of thing. These singles with their risque covers come randomly assorted between plain black and nice thick swirly colored vinyl. Quite a curio. And as you might imagine, we have only a few in stock!
Here is one third of a triple dose of bizarre that's just arrived at AQ! What's so bizarre? Well, first off, the pairing of buoyant sixties pop tunes featuring a young lad's sweet voice with the incongruous sepiatone vintage porn pics on the record sleeves. If we were to stop our description there, these would be pretty darn odd enough, but let's continue shall we? The almighty catch is that the voice in question just happens to be the one that would go on to sing for Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and Dio! Yes, these singles are early sixties recordings by none other than Ronnie James Dio himself! We all know he's an old guy, and had heard rumours for years that his recording career began way back in 1957...well now we pretty much have the proof in the form of these three singles, reissues of tracks circa 1962 done by Dio and his teenage cronies. This is not just pre-Heavy Metal Dio, this is pre-Beatles! Poppy, doo-wop, sock hop styled stuff in the vein of Dion, Richie Valens, that sort of thing. These singles with their risque covers come randomly assorted between plain black and nice thick swirly colored vinyl. Quite a curio. And as you might imagine, we have only a few in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From the same great tastemakers who put together the Dirty Space Disco collection that has become an all-time AQ favorite, comes this collection of sultry and sensual French psychedelia. These are the sounds and artists that have influenced folks like Sebastian Tellier, Air, Islaja, Blonde Redhead, Bjork, Broadcast, Komeda, etc.
And while we of course love the peppy sounds of classic French ye-ye pop, it's the more seductive, warped and tripped out sounds from France in the '70s that really gets us going! When we realized that one of our favorite songs of all time, "Il Pleut" by Brigitte Fontaine (complete with arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier!) was included, we knew there was some mighty fine curatorial work going on here.
But it's not just that one track, not even close, this comp has turned us on to amazing sounds from new-to-us folks like Christophe, Nino Ferrer, Jeanne Marie Sens as well as long beloved AQ faves like Dashiell Hedayat, Ilous & Decuyper, and Francois de Roubaix. While many of their US and UK counterparts were injecting large amounts of blues and hard rock into their psychedelia, the French kept it sensual, steamy and tripped out, realizing an alternate yet completely enticing musical universe. Full on sexy psychedelic seduction! Weirdness too, like the awesome track whose grooves are backed with the sounds of revving race cars.
The latest from DJ Female Convict Scorpion comes in the form of this SUPER limited cassette, one that requires some work on the part of the listener to truly enjoy, or at least enjoy as the artist intended. That artist being Josh Pollock, member of psychedelic space rockers 3 Leafs and weirdo noisescapers White Pee, among others, but as DJ Female Convict Scorpion, he concocts lush landscapes of cinematic sound, purloining various bits from other songs, and movies, playing some bits himself, a lo-fi DJ Shadow of sorts, whose past outings have blown our minds and been hugely popular around here. This new one looks to be no different, the rub this time around being, that BOTH sides of the cassette are meant to be played simultaneously, a la Zaireeka or something. So you have several options, the first of course means buying two tapes, and playing them on two tape players, the second is buying just one tape, and using the link that comes with the tape to play the other side on your computer, while you play the first side on your tape player. Phew! A third option, is to attend the upcoming debut performance of Los Balls Del Norte, happening across the street at Lost Weekend, during which, both sides will be played, accompanied by a special film created just for the occasion. More info can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/147509788771228/?fref=ts
And finally, one last option, one that isn't mutually exclusive, which is to listen to each side of the tape on its own. We did, and both sides sound great, killer breakbeats, shifting textures, mysterious voices, movie samples, vocal snippets, dizzying sonic collages that unwind like psychedelic krautrock grooves and funky heavy soul breakdowns, dreamy lullabies sung in other languages, banging gongs, shimmering FX, woozy slowed down basslines, soft symphonic swirls, muted ambient murk, loose free jazz drum freakouts, squiggly theremin like melodies, rumbling crumbling distorted low end, new wave-y electronics, swirling cosmic synths, and more more more more more!
But what does it sound like all together? A seriously warped psychedelic sonic headtrip. Check out the sample, that's a little snippet of the two sides in perfect sync, which ultimately they never will be, which is part of the joy, every listen the sounds will shift, and interact differently, a perpetually unique recording, in fact, essentially MULTIPLE recordings, all of them super cool, one side, both sides, one side started 5 minutes in, 10 minutes, hell, play one backwards, every variation is its own special warped lysergic soundworld to get lost in, over and over and over and over...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
Nice new vinyl reissue of this 1978 classic. Those of you familiar with Boston's garage-scuzz legends The Lyres will immediately recognize -that- sound, as DMZ were essentially a Lyres prototype, equal parts blasting garge-y punk rock, fuzzed out organs, crunchy guitar, and Jeff "Monoman" Connolly's howled vocals. Think the Seeds, the MC5, the Kinks and the 13th Floor Elevators, but filtered through a sludgy stew of Stooges, Rocket From The Tombs, Electric Eels and the Ramones. Awesome cover art with the band hugging what appear to be either beer kegs or Daleks (or maybe they're supposed to be in a pinball machine).
French heavy psychedelic acid rock proto-metal. Yes we said French. Last year, via the interweb, we got clued in to the existence of some way rare and obscure late '60s / early '70s heaviness from the land of baguettes and berets. Rotomagus, Les Variations, Chico Magnetic Band, Quo Vadis, Zoo... Francais Metal de Proto!! We'd had no idea. So we're happy now we've tracked down a few import cds bearing proof of this hitherto unknown phenomenon. This one's by a band from Paris called Docdail. Housed in a cardboard sleeve, this cd features just four tracks -- the A and B sides of Docdail's first two singles, from 1969 and 1970, which might be their entire recorded output as far as we know. In fact we don't know much about these guys at all -- except that at they wrote at least one song, found here, that is mindblowingly heavy for 1969!!!
This disc starts off with "Sad Harold", an electric blues number that while decent enough probably won't get anybody too excited. It definitely betrays nothing of the utterly ahead-of-its-time onslaught of psychedelic instro-sludge found on the flip, track two here, "Aere Perennius". A way HEAVY acid jam, man. Doubtless this one was influenced by Jimi Hendrix, but to us sounds more like freakin' Steel Pole Bathtub! If we were told this was a band from the early '90s on AmRep, we'd have believed it, except maybe during a breakdown halfway through when some vocals come in, briefly shouting in Latin and French. Simply astonishing, and worth the price of this disc to those of you obsessed, like us, with the early daze of the heavy. Following that, third up on the disc, is the not-quite-as-heavy "Stone Me", a song as groovy and stonery as you'd hope from the title. Reminds us maybe of Steppenwolf. The B-side to that wraps things up, a much mellower track called "Why Do You Cry" that is slow, sad and sweet, which Docdail manages quite nicely. Leaving us puzzled though... it would seem that Docdail didn't really "get it" (or their management/audiences didn't), 'cause otherwise why the heck wouldn't they have taken the incredible, extreme sound of "Aere Perennius" and run with it?? Maybe they scared themselves, who knows!
Dr. D is a New York DJ best known to us for mashing up obscure '60 psych with current, crunken hiphop hitz. This limited edition cd-r mix, however, is pretty much all '60s and '70s grooves as far as we know -- no hiphop anyway. And it's got our number, 'cause so much of what he's spinning is that Turkish psych stuff we love, mixed in with some old and new Afrofunk a la Ethiopiques and Tinariwen, along with some further exotic flavors that fit. Some names we know/tracks we recognize: Selda, Bunalim, Edip Akbayram, Les Mogol, Erkin Koray, Baris Manco... and of course there's a bunch more we don't, all of it pretty cool though. It's a bit like that Trap Door mix, in a romantic mood. Plus this is a true turntablist mix, featuring 31 short selections (mostly 1-2 minute edits), flowing quite nicely, occasionally enhanced with some scratchy-scratch whip-whip-whap. The discs we have are from the first numbered 250 copy edition, in screenprinted cardboard sleeves.
Whoa...what a great find this is! Being a big fan of early seventies/heavy folk rock and of course the Incredible String band (who Dr. Strangely Strange most resembles upon first listen), we just can't get enough of this strangely strange record! There's the surrealistic multi-instrumentalism similar to that of ISB (and whimsy not unlike Bonzo Dog Band) but Dr. SS offers something moodier, too. With layered acoustic and electric guitar and lots of harmonized vocals, some songs sound almost like the Velvet Underground's Loaded record (which, incidentally, came out the same year). And with a young Gary Moore (who went onto Thin Lizzy fame) there's lots of solid guitar soloing going on. A nice bonus is the elaborate die-cut packaging made to look like the original LP artwork. Very recommended!
Wow. Imagine Captain & Tennille, Shuggie Otis, and Broadcast making a record together. Or even Gary Wilson and United States of America making some skewed electronic but totally weird and catchy seventies yacht rock (ok, we realize that may sound terrible to some folks, but it really works awesomely here!). The Dragon brothers, Doug and Dennis (of Surf Punks fame!), sometimes joined by their other brother Darryl (aka "The Captain" of Captain and Tennille!) and sister Carmen on harp, recorded BFI (short for Blue Forces Intelligence?!) in Malibu during the early seventies inspired by surfing and the explosive late sixties west coast music scene of The Doors, Byrds, CSN, etc. Unfortunately, all the connections they had as a popular musical family in Los Angeles (their father was a well known conductor and symphony arranger in Hollywood) gave them great studio access but didn't yield the recording contract they were looking for. Most of the labels they shopped it to liked the record but didn't see any single potential. So the masters were shelved and the brothers went their separate ways. It wasn't until DJ Food from Ninja Tune contacted Dennis Dragon to ask permission to use a Dragons' track ("Food For My Soul") from an obscure surf movie soundtrack for a mix tape he was making, that it was discovered that a whole Dragons album was recorded. Thankfully Ninja Tune resurrected BFI from the musical graveyard because it's fast becoming one of our favorite "buried treasures". Full of Moog grooves, break beats, jazz inflected piano, and high and low male voices, BFI is one of the most surprising and eccentrically sunny LA records we've heard in these parts in awhile that sounds completely timeless. Highly recommended! Oh, and if you loved the reissue by hippy surf psych band The Farm on EM Records, these are some of the same guys responsible for that album!
Here's an odd posthumous release that very well may only appeal to those hungering for *any* 'new' Nick Drake recordings. If you have Time Of No Reply, some of these songs might seem a little familiar. Many of that album's songs appear here in alternate versions that were either recently 'discovered' or have had one or all of the following applied to them: rerecorded, remixed, remastered. Released thirty years after Drake's passing, Made To Love Magic has a few moments that are indeed a bit sticky. Some artistic decisions were made that obviously Drake had no say in -- for instance, the addition of some very recently recorded orchestral arrangements to a couple of songs. This compilation closes with the one truly previously unreleased track "Tow The Line". For Drake completists only.
This long-awaited legit reissue of the lost classic by one man band the Dreamies will easily provide hours of crypto-analytic fun in response to the question "Who else besides the Beatles have the Olivia Tremor Control blatantly copied/paid homage to?" Kidding aside, we promise you could totally mistake this for an OTC record...a *great* OTC record! From 1973, it is an outstanding if bizarre psychedelic album with spartanly bleak arrangements for acoustic guitar and hauntingly Donovanesque vocal melodies, injected with trippy sonic squiggles and snippets from 70s newscasts to paint a disillusioned picture of the failure of 60s ideologies. Mesmerisingly beautiful and faithfully reissued from the original masters. Recommended!!
Hmm, it's 2005 and we've got the 2006 edition of a record that originally came out in 1973! And it's an album that we first encountered five years ago via a previous (and now out of print and obsolete) compact disc edition released in 2000. But much more important than all these dates and whatnot, is that this is such a great record that we at AQ have loved for a long time, and are super duper happy to have back in again in this improved, special edition!! As you may know, we're also long time fans of the band Olivia Tremor Control, and when we first heard the Dreamies we were struck by the similarities. Indeed, our original review of this made much of the seeming OTC/Dreamies connection. And we still promise that you could totally mistake this for an OTC record...a *great* OTC record! (And come to think of it, it also reminds us a bit of another AQ fave band, When). But it was recorded over three decades ago by a fellow from Delaware named Bill Holt, who, nearing 30 years of age in the early '70s, dropped out of his corporate job working for a Fortune 500 company to reinvent himself as a singer-songwriter, despite having little in the way of prior musical experience! Holt invested in an early Moog Sonic Six synthesizer and set up a recording studio in his basement, where he created this lost classic, an outstanding if bizarre psychedelic album with spartanly bleak arrangements for acoustic guitar and hauntingly Donovanesque vocal melodies, injected with trippy sonic squiggles and snippets from newscasts to paint a disillusioned picture of the failure of '60s ideologies. Mesmerisingly beautiful... and definitely dreamy. Never was a name so well-chosen!
Like the Olivias, Bill Holt is obviously a huge fan of the Beatles. That's pretty clear. Sgt. Peppers definitely. And, he must really have liked the White Album's notorious "Revolution Number 9"!! With two side-long songs called (hmm) "Program Ten" and "Program Eleven", the Dreamies album is a similar venture into psych-pop meets musique concrete territory, an elaborate tapestry of samples -- and this is from long before anyone called them samples, and before there was such a thing as samplers and sequencers, which means Holt used the old fashioned, labor intensive tape n' razor blade splicing method, working at home on his beloved TEAC Model 3340 reel-to-reel four-track recorder. Densely woven into his otherwise highly laid back and melodic mix, you'll hear clocks ticking, chattering machine guns in Vietnam combat, JFK speeches, crickets, frogs, NASA transmissions, and ominous but unidentifiable minimalist pulses of electronic/industrial white noise. Or even samples of the Beatles themselves! (Bits of "All You Need Is Love" and others are buried in Holt's sonic collage.) It's both unsettling and soothing at the same time, like surfing through shortwave transmissions from the late '60s psyche. And along with all the sound bites/effects, he also weaves together what must have originally been several different, distinct, enchanting songs he'd written for his voice and acoustic guitar. It's one man and his melodies alone amidst the chaos of the times. Unfortunately, the Dreamies album didn't end up leading to a career in music for Bill Holt, so sadly he was forced to return to the straight moneymaking world of 9-to-5 work. But his venture into the realm of hippy psychedelic rock music concrete lives on. And happily he's proud of his creation, leading to this "special edition", remastered by Holt himself from the original LP, claiming "better stereo sound" and "enhanced audio detail". It certainly sounds good to us. It also boasts liner notes, lyrics and photos in the cd booklet, while the cd itself for the first time divides the two original 26-minute LP tracks into thirteen more convenient parts, although really you should still listen to 'em all the way through in one sitting.
By the way, we for some reason we always used to think that this record was titled Auralgraphic Entertainment: An Incredible Mental Experience, but it seems that that was just descriptive front-cover copy, not the actual title. It is, however, a fairly accurate statement! We're so happy that this has come out again, giving us the chance to get reacquainted with an old fave. And recommended it to anyone who missed it before (or who wants to upgrade their old edition).
Now reissued on vinyl! An old, old fave here at aQ, this album originally from 1973, that wowed us when we first heard it 'cause, as you may know, we're also long time fans of the band Olivia Tremor Control, and we were struck by the similarities. You could totally mistake this for an OTC record... a *great* OTC record! But it was recorded over three decades ago by a fellow from Delaware named Bill Holt, who, nearing 30 years of age in the early '70s, dropped out of his corporate job working for a Fortune 500 company to reinvent himself as a singer-songwriter, despite having little in the way of prior musical experience! Holt invested in an early Moog Sonic Six synthesizer and set up a recording studio in his basement, where he created this lost classic, an outstanding if bizarre psychedelic album with Spartanly bleak arrangements for acoustic guitar and hauntingly Donovanesque vocal melodies, injected with trippy sonic squiggles and snippets from newscasts to paint a disillusioned picture of the failure of '60s ideologies. Mesmerisingly beautiful... and definitely dreamy. Never was a name so well-chosen!
Like the Olivias, Bill Holt is obviously a huge fan of the Beatles. That's pretty clear. Sgt. Peppers definitely. And, he must really have liked the White Album's notorious "Revolution Number 9"!! With two side-long songs called (hmm) "Program Ten" and "Program Eleven", the Dreamies album is a similar venture into psych-pop meets musique concrete territory, an elaborate tapestry of samples - and this is from long before anyone called them samples, and before there was such a thing as samplers and sequencers, which means Holt used the old fashioned, labor intensive tape n' razor blade splicing method, working at home on his beloved TEAC Model 3340 reel-to-reel four-track recorder. Densely woven into his otherwise highly laid back and melodic mix, you'll hear clocks ticking, chattering machine guns in Vietnam combat, JFK speeches, crickets, frogs, NASA transmissions, and ominous but unidentifiable minimalist pulses of electronic/industrial white noise. Or even samples of the Beatles themselves! (Bits of "All You Need Is Love" and others are buried in Holt's sonic collage.) It's both unsettling and soothing at the same time, like surfing through shortwave transmissions from the late '60s psyche. And along with all the sound bites/effects, he also weaves together what must have originally been several different, distinct, enchanting songs he'd written for his voice and acoustic guitar. It's one man and his melodies alone amidst the chaos of the times. Unfortunately, the Dreamies album didn't end up leading to a career in music for Bill Holt, so sadly he was forced to return to the straight moneymaking world of 9-to-5 work. But his venture into the realm of hippy psychedelic rock music concrete lives on - now, again, on (remastered) vinyl!
You know it's not just us recommending stuff to our customers here at aQ, it works the other way too, with our customers recommending stuff to us all the time. An example being one of our very favorite customers, David Katznelson, whom you may know as the mastermind behind several different, quality labels including country/blues/folk vinyl reissue specialists Sutro Park (and also WTF? specialists Birdman). David asked us to order this for him and then after he picked it up, immediately emailed excitedly about how fantastic it is, so we checked it out ourselves and then asked him to write it up for us to share with everybody else! Here's the great guest review Dave came up with:
I will not tell you how much money I have wasted on reissues of private press records from the '70s, bullied into buying them by well written descriptions namedropping other need-to-know ultra obscure artists, saluting their eBay sales price and touting their snot-nosed record collector desirability. It has gotten to a point that when I read, "ONLY 100 made back in 1972" - I figure I know why. To be honest, thank GOD for aQ's curation of the best, as well as big props to YouTube which lets me preview the other potential expensive crap-takes before I make a wrong decision and sacrifice money that could just as well be used at the local pot dispensary.
Thus, the discovery of a killer record from the outsider world is so sweet. Hell, the name of the label behind John Drendall & B.A. Thrower's lp is called OUT-SIDER RECORDS. The name of the game, plain and simple. Their record, "Papa Never Let's Me Sing The Blues" has all the markings of a brilliant mirage: a questionable title, a bizarre cover layout, and a slide guitar player named "Stiff-finger Eddie", but throw the needle down and BINGO, you realize that there is something more here. It starts with the early-'70s Stonesy-vibed "Cold Night In August", and flows into the very pushin' groover "Old Man Gibbs". The whole record is a groove...and to name drop sundry band names to stir the pot: there is definitely some late-late-period Byrds going on here...maybe a taste of Lucifer's blues abandon, the swagger of The Faces, or a smattering of the acoustic-side of Zeppelin. And there are meandering guitars that are the basis from many a great 60s downer (check out "I Feel" for example). The resultant sound for John Drendall & B.A. Thrower is bluesy brownish muffley warm outsider magic...the kind that you hope for!
Limited to 500 copies, 180 gram vinyl, thick sleeves. Includes liner notes by Patrick "Acid Archives" Lundborg.
The Driving Stupid were naive, silly teenagers from New Jersey who, in the summer of 1966, decided to form a band, drive cross-country to Hollywood and become famous rock stars. Two out of three ain't bad. And apparently they did become minor celebrities on the Sunset Strip -- not from playing shows, but for cruising around always in barefeet and funny hats. They did manage to release one single, a deranged-sounding piece of nonsense called "Horror Asparagus Stories" (original title and sample lyric: "My Mother Was A Big Fat Pig") that quickly sank from sight but probably has been heard on Dr. Demento's show more than once since. The full album they recorded at the time was, not surprisingly, never released -- until now, courtesy of the weirdos over at Sundazed who apparently have nothing better to do. At long last, you can check out The Driving Stupid's complete ouevre of self-admittedly "incredibly stupid" songs (hence their name, actually, which also alluded to their "driving" beat). Such beyond-novelty numbers as "Hide The Lobsters", "The Reality of (Air) Fried Borsk" and "Green Things Have Entered My Skin, Gladys" were goofy garagey proto-punk numbers with some of the absurd humor of The Monks' 1966 "Black Monk Time" but none of their politics or malevolence. Ok, songs like "I'm Gonna Bash Your Brains In" sound scary but it's joke malevolence. All in all, this is assuredly silly stuff, that lives up to at least half of their motto "so stupid, it's fantastic!"
MPEG Download: "Hide The Lobsters" [/audio/drivingstupidhidethe.mp3]
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Here's an interesting new single from Drunkhorse, that SF/Oakland crew of '70s lovin', hard rockin' stoner dudes who are smarter than you think they are. As the purported volume two in a series of "Unearthed Gems" releases, it features Drunkhorse covering two way rare, obscure tunes by their rock n' roll forebears: "The Weed Elf" by Sri Lankan '80s metallers Zilla, and "Pismo", by late '70s Cali bar-rockers Andy Sherman And The Sherms. Yes, we said obscure...maybe suspiciously so... Liner notes by Dr. Armando "Mondo" Johnson of Great Crates! Magazine (which, we must confess, we've never heard of either...) provide more info, in copious detail (Zilla's lone album was called "Heavy Yeti"...believe it, or not).
The Zilla tune, which in the hands of Drunkhorse comes across like a cover of something by Slough Feg, is a NWOBHM styled romp with jaunty, folky Thin Lizzyish guitars and Dio-esque lyrics. It's like Drunkhorse crossed with their pals the Fucking Champs. On the flip, the Andy Sherman and the Sherms composition is revealed to be a good-times, summer-time, all-the-time rocker, an ode to Pismo Beach were one can "relax and play hackysack".
Here's to Drunkhorse for digging up these "gems" and giving them such loving treatment -- hopefully we'll see these influences shine through on their next album of originals.
And as promised last list, when we made the reissue of seventies Mexican psych legends Los Dug Dug's 1971 self-titled debut a Record Of The Week, here's their equally Record Of The Week worthy second album, 1972's Smog, now also reissued on both cd and, for the first time, vinyl! And as we said then, we love this band! Why? 'Cause Los Dug Dug's kick out jams that are part garage rock grooviness, part Beatlesy bliss, part power pop, part proto-metal, and part prog (with flute!!). What's not to love? And we haven't even mentioned the heavy dosage of FUZZ they supply, either!
Unlike the debut, which was Mexico's first rock record sung all in English, Smog is sung in Spanish, and sees Los Dug Dug's stripped down to an amped up power trio format, led as always by guitarist/vocalist Armando Nava (he's on the right in the cover picture, with the dyed grey long hair and beard, looking like some pensive psychedelic wise man or wizard). Pretty sure he's also the one playing the flute here, pumping up the progginess in a hard rock context that could kinda be likened to Jethro Tull meets the MC5, yeah, and reminds us of Italian prog faves Osanna, too.
Smog is one smokin' album, it's hard to pick favorite tracks, as they're all so good, but we'd have to mention both the lovely ballad "Voy Hacia El Cielo (Voy Hacia El Sol)" and the motorcycle revving, ecological protest rocker "Smog". Yep, just like their self-titled debut, this one's got plenty of both the heavy rockers and the gentler, poppier stuff, but leans towards the former, and seems more '70s than their first album, which had more of a '60s feel to it.
Air pollution is certainly a '70s theme, also something that any band based in Mexico City would be concerned about, and the title Smog gives this a heavier vibe than if they'd called it something like Flowers & Incense, eh? In keeping with their new style and attitude, they do a Spanish-language remake / update of the debut's frantic garage beat number "Let's Make It Now", stretching it to almost 12 minutes, as a totally progged out, flute-fortified five part suite, now titled "Hagamasolo Ahora (2a. Parte)", while retaining all the energetic excitement of the original. The energy level of this entire album is exhilarating, there's a couple pleasant acoustic numbers but otherwise it's quite rough, rhythmic, and riffy.
As we said when we reviewed the reissue of the debut, we've listed this album (and several others by the band) before, but it was always tough to keep enough of 'em in stock, they were Mexican imports and never reliably available, seemingly going in and out of print in quite random fashion. Hopefully these new editions will be around longer, and remain easy to stock. Also, these reissues are the very first time we've seen any Dug Dug's reissued on VINYL, yay!!!
As with the self-titled debut, the new cd version of this comes packaged in a handsome plastic-protected miniature lp style sleeve, complete with obi strip. Other than the text on the obi, there's no liner notes for this reissue, which we're told is a result of the difficulties inherent in licensing a release like this from a major label (it's owned by Sony BMG). In any case, we're glad it got reissued again, at all, and it's nice enough! Sooo recommended, equally up there with the debut, maybe even better, especially for folks who dig the cowbell-knockin', fuzz rockin' action.
