In the burgeoning new field of hip-hop-destroys-rock-music mixes, as typified by DJs Z-Trip and Jester, local DJ Ted Shred breaks out with a second totally weird and hilarious cd. He'll throw on The Stanley Bros vs DJ Rectangle, Armenian music on top of Method
By the way we've got a few more copies of his debut cd too; this is the one that made into Art Forum and Tower Pulse magazine tops of the year 2001 lists!
Actually a quintet, Smokey & Miho are: Smokey Hormel (guitar), John Birdsong (trumpet), Don Falzone (bass), Joey Waronker (drums) and Miho Hatori (vocals). An altogether mellow EP from this outfit that includes one half of the perky, groovy Cibo Matto (we
The prolific Jason Molina and co. bring some scant shades of light into their usually achingly melancholic proceedings on what is -- if my counting is correct -- their ninth full length in less than five years (this count includes the three S:O albums from
The Taj-Mahal Travellers double cd 'August 1974' has to be one of the most essential drone music documents of the 20th century. Our description of that record describes the Taj Mahal Travellers sound perfectly: "epic higher key improvised drone extravaganzas
Three extended tracks of sublime and transcendental musique concrete/drone. Sparse and spacious. With vocals and electronic trumpets augmenting the violin, contrabass, harmonica, sheet iron, castanet, vibraphone, guitar, percussion and radio oscillators. Dreamy and otherworldly, three epic tracks of hum and rumble, squeak and skree, clatter and tinkle envelop you in a completely new world of sound. So essential.
Now here's a sure fire way of ensuring your album's spot in the bargain bin of record stores everywhere. As if Teenage Fanclub's popularity hadn't fallen off enough already, they decided to get rid of any remaining fans by teaming up with friggin' Jad Fair!!
The third album from this Chicago quartet who lovingly weave together harmonium, piano, guitar, trumpet, and contrabass. While their previous album was also a serene, dreamy gathering, Town And Country's new one reveals a lessening of their gentle guitars
A collection that only begins to scratch the surface of the rarely heard of underground jazz scene in South Africa. Compiled by Jake Behnan, "Afrika Underground" covers "jazz funk & fusion" stuff from the mid-seventies to the early eighties, from the
Oh boy, can the stellar reissue label Strut do no wrong? Doubtful, cos they just keep coming out with amazing compilations and reissues, unearthing the most forgotten genres and movements mostly taken from the seventies. There's the Disco Not Disco comp,
Now they've compiled the first ever look back at the best of Black Rio, that movement in the seventies that saw young black Brazilians getting political and turning away from the far-too-commercial samba in favor of James Brown. This is funky soul music, and the tracks here are so fun. There's everything from hard gritty funk to smooth soul to an unlikely instrumental cover of "Rapper's Delight" (the last sample below)! And as with all the Strut releases, there are voluminous liner notes placing the entire musical movement in a clear context, as well as lots of photos. Highly recommended.
Long overdue reissue of this wonderful soundtrack to the film Downtown 81, which starred the now-deceased artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and was written by Glenn O'Brien. Here we've got 20 tracks representing the breadth and range of the hip downtown NY
This is not only a cool document of a scene that was breathtaking in its diversity, but this is also a very handy sampler to the music of this time, much of which is now recognized as seminal. It's rare that a soundtrack documents a scene well (as opposed to just featuring throwaway tracks by bands who saved their best stuff for their own albums), but this album does it! The booklet's got a bunch of film stills and lots of information on the bands.
Listen to *all* the soundclips to get an idea of the range of styles represented on this great record.
Similar to the spirit of those 'Ein Wigwam...' compilations of film music from East German westerns (Vol. 2 we listed just a few weeks back), 'Kosmos' collects the music from East German science fiction films and television programs, which while maybe not
Similar to the spirit of those 'Ein Wigwam...' compilations of film music from East German westerns (Vol. 2 we listed just a few weeks back), 'Kosmos' collects the music from East German science fiction films and television programs, which while maybe not
Fans of The Steps, Ho: Roady Music From Vietnam and fans of instrumental exotica weirdness take note. We are happy to have chanced upon this brand new collection of gems from the cracks of music history. According to the notes on the back of the case, the
This year's fest marks a decade of Noise Pop! And if the rumblings suggesting that this might've been the final one are true, this double cd succinctly encapsulates the music and spirit of Noise Pop. Featuring pop notables Spoon, Flaming Lips, Preston School Of
For those thinking that maybe there's some sort of contradiction in terms with the words "skinhead" and "reggae" used in the same breath, it is Trojan's job to educate as well as tittilate. Way back in the late sixties, before any of the current breed of
A new group on Low's label! Slow to mid-tempo janglin' folkish pop very much along the lines of mid-'90s college radio standby Lois. The male and female vocalists sing with a seeming bittersweet hesitance, each straining a bit pitch-wise in their efforts to
Wobbly (aka Jon Leidecker) cites Dilated Peoples, Goran Bregovic, Julio Iglesias, Stilluppsteypa, Dr. Dre, Montell Jordan, and Daniel Miller as the most 'blatant' samples found within this documentation of his mutated electronica live performances around
Wobbly's plunderphonics were born out of his work on Negativland's weekly "Over The Edge" radio show on KPFA; and have developed into a distinctive sound fitting roughly in the Negativland comedy / commentary style of media cut ups. His work never smacks of provocation, as he has been very keen on disfiguring his pop culture references to stand clearly within the parameters of "fair use." As can be inferred from a couple of those aforementioned references, Wobbly's recent work has been venturing into hip hop, but not as another whiteboy ironic appropriation. Rather, it's an exuberant decontextualization of all of hip hop's hyperboles: scratching becomes so excessively technical as to lose all recognition of the rhythm, diva vocals wail and wander through impossible notes for an eternity, breakbeats are decimated into ungroovy robotic anti-funk. Wobbly's closest comparison is in how Matmos performs surgery on house music, sewing everything back together with ample semantic and compositional counterpoints.
What is also amazing about Wobbly's live shows is that they involve no laptops, no sequencers, no midi. He edits in real time using just a mixer, a couple of cd players, and several cheap samplers. With an album coming soon on Tigerbeat 6, Wobbly's definitely one to watch!!!
"Krautfolk" is what Workshop's music has been called. You're intrigued, aren't ya? Me too. While I haven't heard Workshop's supposed four other albums, this one piqued my attention immediately. It's simply the combination of elements that keeps this
In Europe this record was released on Mouse on Mars' label Sonig, and here it sees light via David Grubbs' Blue Chopsticks imprint. Yay.
Pathos makes for difficult subject matter, with the good intentions of an artist often getting derailed, ending up in a wasteland of Hallmark sentimentality. Yet, this eccentric Scotsman has been pushing further into the artistry of Pathos with record after
