Record collectors, check it out: in a sense, this is a compilation of tracks from some of the rarest records EVER -- even though they were just recorded last year! That's cause they only existed in editions of, like, one. Ok, this is gonna require some explanation. The Gold Record Studio is the latest contraption/conception from our man Jon Brumit (whom we first met when he brought us field recordings from the San Francisco dump!) and colleague Lisa Mezzacappa... Basically a set-up where one-of-a-kind vinyl records were pressed on-the-spot with an antique record cutter for folks who recorded live (and impromptu) in an open-air, homebuilt studio at a local flea market! This was totally free of charge, with instruments and even guest musicians provided, and apparently proved very popular. This took place over several weekends last spring at the Laney College Swap Meet over in Oakland... the City of Oakland actually ponied up some arts-funding money to help make it happen. And it seems like a pretty cool thing, for both the participants (the "recording artists") and now listeners who get to check out the diverse array of talent (and otherwise) who made records at the flea market, the best (and worst? no such distinctions really being made) have been compiled onto this sprawling double disc set. There's contributions from folks of all ages, backgrounds and ethnicities. Some musical pros show up (including a couple Serbian prog rockers, and the DJ from the Ghetto Boys!), but also many total amateurs, young kids n' senior citizens. Lots of surprises in other words!
This man-in-the-street, instant-gratification, no-rules recording project really let some folks get, shall we say, expressive. And creative. And downright weird. Portions of this do come off like a rather dubious talent show, or drunk mom karaoke -- but lots of tracks could be some really underground, experimental cd-r fodder, too. As a whole, it's almost like a hypothetical installment of the Sublime Frequencies series dedicated to the sounds of why-be-normal urban America, jumping from track to track with ADD abandon. For instance, among the many tracks of disc one, you've got a woozy improv session with a barking dog factored in, followed a few tracks later by a version of "My Favorite Things" recast conversationally (and humorously) between teenage girls. There's also a pretty badass blues rock guitar instrumental, some crazy scat singing, and a song that sounds to us a lot like The Shitty Listener! And much much more... It's mind-boggling and exhausting and pretty darn special. Even the recognizable tunes that people try (for good or ill) are enhanced in our ears by the bustling flea market field recording happening in the background.
And then, there's a whole 'nother disc. 50 cuts on disc two, starting off with some very lovely solo guitar from "Sam"...which is followed by a much more maniacal track with a shouting child... and then some guy singing "Let It Be"... a super-distorted rap by a teenage girl... and on and on and on. There's definitely some Gong Show moments, which are good for a laugh or can be taken as something maybe unintentionally avant-garde. We really like the more "damaged", confusional tracks (of which there's plenty), where it sorta sounds like the people you hear DON'T know they're being recorded, or at least seem unaware of where the microphone is, or when the song is supposed to start or stop.
Even in the age of mp3 and MySpace, this Gold Record Studio project has taken the democratization of the "music industry" a step further, down to street level! There's just something really joyful about it, possibly due to the serendipitous social interaction happening right then and there at the point of creation. You're getting a glimpse at the inner musical burgeonings of people who until that fateful day they were wandering around the flea market, probably never ever ever dreamed that they would so soon be the proud owners of a physical vinyl artifact with their own singing/rapping/playing/barking/whatever on it, whether silly or serious. And that's pretty cool.
Also, if you get this, you'll definitely have some good material to put on your outgoing answering machine message for months to come... file it with stuff like MSR Madness anthologies of song-poem recordings, or Jacob Smigel's Eavesdrop disc of found sound recordings, although this takes its own unique place in that array of oddity...
- MPEG stream: Lee, Jon, Suki, Brian, Tom, Jesse
- MPEG stream: Emily, Amara, Lucio
- MPEG stream: Sam
- MPEG stream: Birana, Tanaya, Shelley, Micha
There's really nothing 'freak folky' going on in this British folk compilation. The music here is all pretty traditional. And thus pretty fantastic. Think Incredible String Band, Steeleye Span, Comus, Richard Thompson (and Fairport Convention), Trees, C.O.B., Shirley Collins, or the Wickerman Soundtrack (there's actually a song called 'Wicker Man' by The Story). As much as we love us some freak folk, none of that stuff would exist it it weren't for the above mentioned bands.
And the groups included on this comp, whose focus here is the fairly abstract 'dark folk', do a pretty amazing job of sifting through the various strains of classic British folk, and offering up their own subtle interpretations. And again, nothing shocking or even that experimental, just a new generation of musicians, paying tribute to the music that they grew up on, and that informed the music they make now. A handful of AQ faves are present, the Story, Far Black Furlong, Alphane Moon, Sharron Kraus, Martyn Bates, as are the A Lords, the Kitchen Cynics, Sol Invictus, and tons and tons of bands we had never heard of: The Horses Of The Gods, The Triple Tree, Pumajaw, English Heretic, The Anvil, Electronic Voice Phenomenon, The Purple Minds Of Lazeron, Quickthorn, Sand Snowman, Stormcrow, While Angels Watch, Xenis Emputae Traveling Band, Drohne and we could go on and on.
Two discs of glorious, classic sounding 'dark folk.' From lilting shanties, to tense ominous dirges, to brooding apocalyptic folk, to buzzing ragas, to dreamy lullabyes, fluttering flutes, fiddles and bongos, steel string guitars and an incredible array of vocal styles, male and female, raspy and weathered, wispy and dreamlike, mournful and melancholy, soft and breathy, dark doleful melodies, rich harmonies, weaving a gorgeous landscape of a lost sonic Britannica.
Amazing liner notes too, text on the source of the title, an introduction and explanation to the compilation, various short pieces on folk music and the history of folk music from a handful of the artists on the comp, concerning their songs, their groups and their musical journeys, lyrics, reproductions of old woodcuts and more. So fantastic. And absolutely essential listening for fans of freak folk, dark folk and seventies British folkmusic.
It is with no small significance that we end this year highlighting one of our very favorite artists of all time, Caetano Veloso. If we were anything like Time Magazine, we could definitely see ourselves making him Man of the Year, because indeed, it has been a stellar year for Veloso. Not only have some of the many highlights of his extensive back-catalog been made available once again, but he also began the year, at age sixty, releasing one of the best rock albums of the year (Ce) that has made many of our top ten lists. If you were lucky enough to catch his performance at this year's San Francisco Jazz Festival, he shocked and delighted the audience by performing with just a stripped-down rock band, three young men on electric guitar, bass and drums, barely over a third of Veloso's age, his voice in amazing form, running from one side of the stage to another working the audience into a frenzy, causing a seemingly endless string of female (and one male) fans to jump on the stage for a quick kiss. Here was someone who could of easily just sat on his laurels and played his popular hits with the kind of over-orchestrated band you see in concerts on PBS, but instead embraced his forward-thinking musicality playing mostly new songs with a tight killer band and still managed to sway his oldest fans to cheer along. One of the best shows of 2007 for sure!
Years ago, when we first discovered the sounds of Tropicalia, it was through the more blatant psychedelic spectacle of Os Mutantes and their first three well-beloved records. But while we were aware of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil being the main songwriters and architects of the movement, most of their songs, until recently, we got to know through compilations and cover versions rather than through their full length records. While we have seen in the past couple of years so much amazing music being dug out of the far reaches of that fertile period and the post Tropicalia boom from Alceu Valenca, Jorge Ben, and Lula Cortes, as well as the amazing Soul Jazz comp, Brazil '70, it's been nice to see some of the best full length albums from Gilberto Gil and Veloso becoming available again. Earlier this year, Lilith reissued Veloso's first solo record from 1967 and his post-exile experimental jaunt from 1972, Araca Azul. So for a year that began with a return to musical form from this beloved Brazilian musical master, it's even more fitting that by years end we see the reissue of arguably the most important and most essential album of his vast discography, the second self-titled solo album from 1969.
Notice the blank cover with just a signature? Much different from most of Veloso's records which almost always feature his picture. That's because when he recorded this album, Veloso and Gilberto Gil were in captivity by the Brazilian Government for violating recently imposed orders against artists performing non-nationalistic music or expressing any statements that could be perceived as antigovernment. While confined, their long hair was shaved off, hence the decision to not display a picture. Allowed to play acoustic guitar and record songs through a masterful use of the media to keep a connection with the public for fear of being "disappeared" or tortured, both Gil and Veloso recorded albums (Gil recorded his masterful 1969 album as well at this time) using just voice and guitar and then sending the tapes to Rogerio Duprat, who added all the arrangements: electric guitars, strings, flutes and rhythm tracks. For such a strange and backwards production process, what results is a fervently articulate statement of politics and personal freedoms, with some of his first songs sung in English, namely the very pointed, "The Empty Boat".
Of course with time, it may be difficult to understand how radical the situation was, especially with the language barrier. Album opener "Irene" may seem like a pastoral groover with its opening flutes and guitars, but when he sings in Portuguese, "I want to see Irene laughing", it's rumored that the "Irene", he was referring to was the name of the machine gun of Tenario Calvacanti, a robber famously celebrated in leftist circles. While "Os Argonautas" is based on the belief that all oppressive dictatorships are fated to be temporary (Let's hold on tight to that belief!). The penultimate track "Acrilirico" is Veloso's response to the Beatles' "Revolution #9", a track very fitting to be on Veloso's own white album.
Like most Tropicalia albums, the urgently emotional song writing is tempered by a need to unite multiple populist musical forms together. So there are bits of Fado, Tango, Carnival music, psychedelic rock, with lyrics sung in English, Spanish as well as Portuguese. Veloso through the Tropicalia movement understood that the politics of freedom are best communicated through the musical language of the people. This record is more prescient than ever!
In a world full of tiny labels, it takes a lot to stand out, whether it's some amazing and mysterious sounds or super unique and hand made packaging. And if anything RuralFaune as shined in both respects, a crazy collection of some of the weirdest noisemakers in the world, and some seriously amazing, and in many cases, fragrant, packaging. Hand printed, painted, folded, pasted, held together with string or wire, often filled with branches or flowers, scraps of paper, seeds or bits of plant matter, many of them very strong smelling, all of them amazing.
Well, Bruno, the man behind RuralFaune, was really getting into heavy music, and decided that maybe RuralFaune was not the place for such musics, so he started FaunSabbatha, a new label dedicated to heavy, creepy, dark music, metal, metallic, or just plain evil. Four new releases, each one outrageously limited, gorgeously hand packaged, and gone before you know it.
Any band that thanks funeral doom horde Rigor Sardonicous is alright by us. Especially if RS are one of the only four entities thanked. One being the label, the other being one of the other bands featured amidst this recent spate of Faunasabbatha releases, Sorc'Henn.
So what comes of an unhealthy love/obsession with Rigor Sardonicous, how about a creepy, ultra sick, noise drenched slow motion doom crawl? Downtuned, and lurching, stumbling and heavyheavyheavy. After a brief intro, all mournful windblown twang, a spidery latticework of spare, sorrowful melodies, plucked out over a whirling expanse of emptiness, comes the filthy, crusty, noisy multiple o'd doom. But sonically, Waverly Hills don't so much resemble funereal doom, as they do, modern noise rock, or Japanese ultra psych. The guitars are caustic coruscating streaks of blurred buzz, unleashed in heaving waves, while much of the band's time is spent crawling doomlike through a field of sonic broken glass, the guitars spend most of their time erupting in squalls of near white noise that sound like Keiji Haino fronting the Dead C. Thick clouds of whirling buzz, deconstructed riffage, super abstract percussion, the vocals a subsonic rumble, a blurred low end gurgle (except when it's a haunting ghostlike falsetto!) underpinning the soaring and drifting slabs of buzz overhead. Imagine doom metal being pulled apart, the notes and chords and riffs being rent asunder, the resulting squall still dark and doomy, by way more tripped out and damaged.
So yeah, you doooooooomlords will definitely dig this, especially if you lean toward stuff like Moss and Khanate and Bunkur and of course Rigor Sardonicous, but it might be even more appealing if your cup of tea is abstract psychedelic noise a la Sunroof!, Total, Dead C, White Heaven, etc...
LIMITED TO 74 COPIES, hand numbered on a tattered, torn piece of cloth, with the Faunasabbatha logo stamped on there as well, in a paper sleeve held shut wit a piece of metal wire.
We've been torn over hip hop jam of the year. It's either gotta be Birdman's "100 Million", from the new Five Star Stunna record, with its "Stuntin' Like My Daddy" verse and crazy soul harmony "Gangster's Paradise" chorus, or "Wolves", from the long awaited Wu-Tang Clan disc 8 Diagrams, with its classic Wu verses (including a killer from Method Man), and a rambling sort-of-sung chorus with George Clinton channeling Old Dirty Bastard, and well, the more we listen to it, the more the Wu-Tang seems to have the edge...
But before we get to the jam of the year discussion, holy shit is 8 Diagrams a killer comeback! And comeback it is. The last few discs, were admittedly weak, but always had at least a few stone cold classics on each, but not nearly enough to make any of those records worth more than a cursory listen or two, on 8 Diagrams though, they're almost all killers, a few missteps here and there, but even those tracks have some amazing part, or some crazy chunk of lyricology. Everyone's been talking about "The Heart Gently Weeps", the first legally sampled Beatles track, but it's kinda weak, a schmaltzy slow jam, with a bland Eryka Badu chorus. They could have transformed the original into something hard and fierce, but instead it turned out a limp ballad, -except- for the warbly refrain, a falsetto vocal singing "that bitch is crazy�", never fails to crack us up, but not enough to save the song.
But elsewhere� where to start? Howabout "Rushing Elephants"? The best Wu track since "Uzi (Pinky Ring)", but the same sort of vibe, with each Wu-Tang-er offering up an awesome verse, the loop playful and dramatic, then there's "Unpredictable", with it's Bernard Hermann like orchestral stabs, and the throbbing Prince like squalls of guitar feedback, the shuffling rhythm, all over long slow building swells of dissonant melody, the flows rapid fire and super aggressive. And so it goes throughout 8 Diagrams, RZA's beats bad ass, all the various Wu-Tang-ers are on fire, Method Man sounds better than ever, had us hankering for a new solo record, even the second stringers shine.
But as far as we're concerned it's all about the aforementioned "Wolves". The main loop is fucking perfect, twangy strum, a drone of low harmony vocals, some Morricone-ish whistling, mariachi horns, the drums simple and stripped down, but funky as shit, and then the flows over the top. Method Man's in particular. When his verse starts, he sings "Defecating on the map...", and it makes you laugh at first, but the way he spits it makes it sounds like some timeless Buddhist koan, a pearl of obtuse wisdom, and soon, that and a handful of other perfect turns of phrase are lodged in your cranium. And then there's the refrain. A raspy George Clinton, singing about the wolf that killed grandma, and about how he's your St. Bernard in a snowstorm, all delivered in a wavery old man croon, like some funky elder ODB, again, so goofy and funny and fucked, that it sort of makes you giggle, until it reveals itself as THE perfect hook, and suddenly, you realize, without a doubt, that this is in fact, the hip hop JAM OF THE YEAR! And the more we listen to this whole disc the more we can't seem to stop, which is leading us to believe that 8 Diagrams might just find its way onto plenty of 2007 top ten lists, ours included...
