Ooooh. Some really nice, gentle Japanese acid-folk here, from this female duo, first heard (by us that is) on Alchemy's Night Gallery 2: 21st Century Psychedelic Underground compilation. If you like Nagisa Ni Te, or L's Holy Letters, or the ghostliest Ghost you'll certainly welcome the embrace of Eddie Marcon's dreamy, folky, psychedelic soundworld. As with Nagisa and L, you'll find here similarly drawn out and sparse compositions infused with strange and subtle atmospheres -- mostly acoustic/electric guitars with some snare and piano (cymbal drones, scrapes, gasps -- all acoustically hand-crafted). The record also has some haunting horn blasts and lots of rattling percussion, bells, etc., and the whole thing is sedated by ongoing mallet flourishes on drums and cymbals. Vocally, this could be Takako Minekawa or Tojiko Noriko stripped of the electronica element. There's all the seductive conventions of melancholy folk with just enough eccentricities to place this in a continuum of modern Japanese underground psychedelia, such as LSD-march (an early line-up of which apparently featured both Eddie Marcon's singer Eddie and guitarist Marcon -- aha, now you see how Eddie Marcon came up with their name!) and the female bass-drums duo of Coa (singer Eddie's other band). Eddie Marcon is quite a bit more quiet and mellow than either of those outfits tend to be, though! And outside of the Japanese comparisons, we'd think anyone into anything in the psych-folk vein from Vashti Bunyan to Islaja might quite find this to their liking...
Australia's Preservation label has stylishly packaged this disc in/with an intriguing minimalist graphic design fold out poster. Totally recommended!
While just about everything Holy Mountain puts out is awesome they also tend to focus on the heavier side of the underground musical landscape. With this debut by Eden Express they're showing their softer side, while managing to keep the awesomeness on full throttle! There would be no other time for this record to get released then smack dab in the midst of summer as this is some sun-soaked-tripped-out-bake-at-the-beach-psych-pop that we can't get enough of. Featuring one member of Cloudland Canyon, this is a group who understand how to evoke colorful and vivid sensations. Mixing Eastern tinged psychedelia with delicious hints of washed out samba with such an effortless and breezy delivery. This is a timeless sounding record that could just as easily be some lost early '70s South American psychedelic gem (which the cover design suggests) as much as a much more drugged out Antena or Brightblack Morning Light jamming on the beach with some Finnish folks like Lau Nau and Islaja at their side. Such delicious delay and reverb, just the right touches of flute and otherworldliness, and it's about time psych gets out of the forest and onto the sand. A record made to soak in sun and melt with.
A gang of totally talented women from Brooklyn making some intense and engaging off kilter psych post-punk that's been thrilling us big time via this new Sacred Bones release. We love how Effi Briest bring worlds of post-punk, krautrock, garage goth, and psychedelia into a propulsive whole that is so charged and hypnotizing. It's always a good sign when you can't immediately start rattling off other bands a record reminds you of, as there is something very honest and unique about the songs on Rhizomes. We do think of some of those awesome amalgamations that are fun to dream up. Like Erase Errata doing early Siouxsie & The Banshees covers, or White Magic shedding their folkish leanings and diving full throttle into psychedelic overload, Gang Gang Dance and Zola Jesus joining their mystical powers or Au Pairs and The Raincoats risen from the ashes but sounding a bit weirder and more rhythmic, or even a more intense version of those awesome Helium records that Ash Bowie from Polvo played on, or heck, maybe what early Wire might have sounded like with a young Patti Smith on vocals.
At a time when so many new records are so loyal to the one sound or style they are trying to capture it's so fucking cool to come across a band that is bringing together many great influences and undoubtedly have great taste (they are named after a great Fassbinder film after all) but for the most part are really bringing something fresh, immediate and unique to the table. One of those records that draws you into its world more and more with each listen. And we have to say we are totally and utterly hooked!
Out of all the great rare-groove productions Roy Ayers did for other artists, Ramp, Ethel Beatty, Bobbi Humphrey, and Sylvia Striplin, the sole 1980 full length by Eighties Ladies may be the most sought after cult boogie classic. Their most well-known single, the monster jam, "Turned On To You", has been featured on so many DJ mixes and has been sampled rather heavily over the past couple of decades that for a long time, we thought that the track was their only output. Of course we're proven wrong by this hefty reissue. Hefty in the sense of the mean boogie (Rick James plays in the backing band!) and sass these five ladies bring to the groove, marrying Sylvester's sensual disco to Bettie Davis's harder-edged empowered funk. What the reissue lacks in backstory, more than makes up in eight fine jazz-laden funkified gems. These Eighties Ladies could have been better named, they were the template for all the eighties r&b/funk girl groups to come: Vanity 6, Apollonia 6, Mary-Jane Girls, The Flirts and Klymaxx. Listen in and get schooled!
We couldn't be more stoked that Egyptian legend Hamza El Din's first two records have finally been made available to us on cd. His music has had such a lasting impact on such a wide range of artists. You can hear hints of his exquisite playing in the work of everyone from Sandy Bull (who he lived with for a bit while in the states) and John Fahey, to The Grateful Dead (who toured Egypt thanks to his help), to Ali Farka Toure, Tinariwen, James Blackshaw, Debashish Bhattacharya, etc. The way he used his oud to make such resonating and soulful sounds transcends language, culture or geography. Even with his soulful vocals, it doesn't matter if you don't understand the words because it's the rich emotional tone of his voice that taps into something greater then letters, words or language.
Al Oud was his second album, released in 1965, billed as a record of instrumental and vocal music from Nubia. What haunting yet majestic and soul piercing sounds. No doubt about it, El Din belongs in that special class of transcendent musicians like Alice Coltrane, Ali Farka Toure, Ravi Shankar, and Ali Akbar Khan. Totally essential!
Oops. Here's a straggler from the Africa portion of the Explorer series that we never got around to listing. Oh well, better late than never. A popular lute throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East, the oud has 6 six strings, all of which but for the lowest in pitch are paired up (like in a twelve string guitar). Hamza El Din hails originally from Nubia (which is absorbed within Egypt near the Sudan) and on this album he claims to fuse elements of both Sudan and Egypt into his distinct Nubian style. A couple of interesting facts I never knew about El Din: he not only played with the Grateful Dead live occasionally, he organized their tour of Egypt (Yikes! But don't let that dissuade you non-deadheads out there.) He also roomed at guitarist Sandy Bull's place for a spell (hence the source of the influence on Bull's piece "Blend".) Escalay was originally released by Nonesuch in 1971, but unlike many other artists featured in the Explorer series, it wasn't Hamza El Din's first commercial release (In fact, it was his third release and was apparently recorded after he had emigrated to the United States.) But this was the album that everyone, including Mickey Hart, initially went nuts over and the album that everyone still hails as his greatest -- Kronos Quartet commissioned El Din to arrange the title track for their 1992 release Pieces Of Africa. The first two tracks are mesmerizing -- 21 and 12 minute respectively -- pieces for oud and voice (both El Din's) and the third is a 5 minute piece for tar (frame drum) and voice. Hamza El Din's oud playing is so damn seductive, it seems to warp one's perception of time. The first time I put this disc on to listen to and write, I found myself just sitting paralized through the first two tracks before the crisp snapping of the tar awoke me from my reverie. His playing is so effortless as to understate his virtuosity, it's no wonder that it's so easy to become completely absorbed in his compositions. Listening closely, you can hear El Din manipulating the timbre of his instrument on a macro level: coaxing out texture from the warm buzz of the strings. Buying this CD, your only disappointment will be in its brevity of just under 40 minutes.
We couldn't be more stoked that Egyptian legend Hamza El Din's first two records have finally been made available to us on cd. His music has had such a lasting impact on such a wide range of artists. You can hear hints of his exquisite playing in the work of everyone from Sandy Bull (who he lived with for a bit while in the states) and John Fahey, to The Grateful Dead (who toured Egypt thanks to his help), to Ali Farka Toure, Tinariwen, James Blackshaw, Debashish Bhattacharya, etc. The way he used his oud to make such resonating and soulful sounds transcends language, culture or geography. Even with his soulful vocals, it doesn't matter if you don't understand the words because it's the rich emotional tone of his voice that taps into something greater then letters, words or language.
Music Of Nubia was El Din's debut album, released in 1964, this really was one of the first records from Africa to breakthrough and find a wider audience in the western world, and for great reason! What haunting yet majestic and soul piercing sounds! No doubt about it, El Din belongs in that special class of transcendent musicians like Alice Coltrane, Ali Farka Toure, Ravi Shankar, and Ali Akbar Khan. Totally essential!
Summer in San Francisco is a funny thing. It doesn't really happen, most of July and even August is chilly, grey, and windy. We know we have no room to really complain about the weather here, but it can get you down. Luckily we do usually get this small blast of Indian Summer that hits late in September and we all run to the park, the beach, a lake, anywhere to soak it all up as much as we can, as we know it will be gone before we know it. So in these times of packing in as much summer as we can in just a handful of days we really need and relish when an end of the summer jam shows up just in time to blast as we play in the sunshine.
El Guincho has given us the perfect bright, bouncy and colorful soundtrack that's beyond perfect for tapping into the carefree vibe of running through waves and playing in sand, the fleeting summer state of mind that is already on its way out. Picking up perfectly where his 2008 debut left off, and even upping he quality of songcraft and irresistibility. While El Guincho is from Spain, his music really sounds like someone so in touch with so many great sounds being made across the globe. It's a universal kind of super smart and catchy dance minded pop, filled with so many cascading melodies, catchy rhythms and such impeccable taste.
One of those perfect records that seamlessly mixes synths, samples, and live instruments along with warm and welcoming vocals to create songs that are made for letting down your guard and soaking up some much needed joy and sunshine. So damn good!
El Michels Affair and Budos Band should have some crazy battle of the amazing modern soul/funk bands sometime, because both groops are such heavy hot groovers in their own takes on instrumental soul/funk. Last time we heard from El Michels Affair they were interpreting the work of Wu Tang Clan in a way that was strong and soulful and not at all some sort of gimmick. They have returned, doing the same to the amazing music of Isaac Hayes, paying tribute to him by interpreting his songs (both his hits and more obscure tracks) in such a rich and free flowing way. They don't try to mimmick the originals, instead they really do inject a new vibe and energy into them, and they help remind us all that Isaac Hayes was much more than just Shaft, or a cartoon character on South Park, but in fact one of the most brilliant musical minds of our time. This sizzles and burns with such delight! Some parts remind us of the slinky grooves on that Xero soundtrack by Rockford Kabine.
Want some honey with your tea? Want a little bitter with the oh so sweet? El Perro Del Mar follows up her debut with a record of songs that glow in that open space somewhere between sadness and hope. With a sound and voice as breezy as a lazy afternoon drive, when you just have to get away so you can figure some things out, El Perro Del Mar has made a record that we'll be listening to on long drives as well as long nights inside our bedrooms for years to come. From The Valley To The Stars comes across like a collection of heart melting pop-hymnals that fall somewhere between Beach House, The Concretes, Camera Obscura and Spiritualized. We love the sparse quality of so many of the songs on this record and even when she is backed by the Gothenberg Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Choir it always feels so tasteful and never overdone. This Swedish chanteuse is makes perfect moody pop that has her sitting comfortably at the same sonic table as Francoise Hardy, Isobell Campbell and Victoria Bergsman.
So elegant, tasteful and tasty!
We've been smitten with El Perro Del Mar ever since her enchanting debut a few years ago, and with each release it feels like we fall in love all over again. Last year's outing, From The Valley To The Stars, was one of the most underrated releases of the year in our opinion, with its completely elegant and bittersweet pop crafted and delivered with such subtle and satisfying results.
The latest from this dazzling Swedish chanteuse finds her in absolute top form with swirling pop melodies, haunting and sultry vocal delivery and songs that are so immaculately crafted yet still flow with such perfect ease. With every EPDM (not to be confused with EPMD!) record, she manages to create a sound that is very much her own while mixing it up enough so that every record really has its own identity. On Love Is Not Pop we are hearing the first hints of a Kate Bush influence on her songs as some of the tracks here, especially "L Is For Love" sound like they could be the perfect B-side to a track on Hounds Of Love. With a few of us here in aQ land way beyond obsessed with the sounds of Kate Bush it's been making us love El Perro Del Mar all the more! She continues to make records that are beautiful and darkly melodic and moody yet don't pander to the lowest common denominator. It would be all to easy for EPDM to keep her songs so simple and straight forward to cash in on the coffee house crowd, but there is a deeper integrity and range of emotions conveyed in El Perro Del Mar's songs which is what makes her one of our favorite songstresses of today. Highly recommended!
Electrelane have always been about momentum. Their songs have an anthemic quality and a building tension to them that always leads to an intensely exhilarating experience. That momentum seems to be seriously peaking right about now. No Shouts, No Calls is the sound of a band totally coming into their own. We totally dug their past records but this is the one that really gets us, our love affair with Electrelane suddenly seems to be in full bloom. Electrelane revisit some of the same sonic qualities that made Stereolab so irresistible for a while, but with a more revved up engine under the hood, they're a band that's not afraid to go full throttle. This is one of those records that's pretty much a unanimous favorite here at AQ. Even Andee who claims to not dig this stuff (and is admittedly dancefloor-phobic) can't help but shake some of his seldom seen fine moves every time this is blasting from our speakers (Andee denies everything). Vocal melodies soar and swirl, organs are used to rocking perfection, and that aforementioned momentum which reels you in from the get go and will not let you go, dragging you in deeper and deeper as the album plays out. This is truly a record that the always over zealous UK press should be drooling over right now, cause we sure are!
What is it about this new Electric Wizard record? Don't get us wrong, we are longtime worshippers at the altar of the 'Wiz, but for some reason, this new one, has everyone around here freaking out, even the more non-metal folks, ESPECIALLY the non-metal folks. People who normally don't spend much time listening to witchy druggy demon conjuring sonic rituals, like those practiced by EW, suddenly can't get enough and play it EVERY day. We've tried to get to the bottom of it, cuz Black Masses doesn't seem that far removed from any of the other EW's, but it must be. Cuz it's cast some serious bongsmoke spell (smell?) over pretty much everyone here, which if anything is a good argument for the power of this slab of post Sabbathy psychedelic spaced out drugdoom heaviness.
Everything we love about Electric Wizard is in full effect here: the epic slabs of downtuned doomy crunch, the swirled clouds of lysergic effects, the crushing riffage, the thick pulsing bass, and of course EW high priest Just Oborn's wailing vox, all wound into druggy doomy trancelike jams, the vocals repeated mantralike, the guitars churning and roiling, totally hypnotic and mesmerizing, spaced out and impossibly catchy.
One difference this time around is the production. It's way less obviously heavy, less downtuned and sludgey, the low end is dialed way back, the sound much more raw and trebly and high end, which maybe makes it sound less metal and more psychedelic and garagey, although it definitely sounds like plenty of both to us. But perhaps that's the mysterious component that suddenly has everyone in its thrall.
The record is rife with the (un)usual sonic filigree, swirling winds, loads of effects, long drawn out dirgey drones, bizarre samples, voices, laughter, loops, film clips, all laced within long drawn out psychedelic space jams, the sort of freakouts that would sound just as at home on a Monster Magnet or Hawkwind record, but they always eventually find their way back to whatever satanic drug doom groove they had been exploring before they drifted off.
Heavy and doomy and druggy and psychedelic and seriously tripped out and apparently not just for metalheads anymore. A unanimous aQ fave for sure...
Housed in a fancy embossed slipcover! (Vinyl version sadly has not yet materialized here, we're hoping someday but dunno what's up...)
What a total gem! An amazing unearthed, ultra obscure album from way back in 1986. Hailing from Rochester, NY, Eleven Pond crafted super infectious dark pop with wonderful synth moments and song writing that has really held up over the years. Some of the production, and much of the overall sound reminds us a bit of Seventeen Seconds era Cure, where basslines lead the tracks and the guitars and synths add such a nice mood and texture. We're also reminded a lot of another obscure mid '80s band, For Against, who had the same ability to take Factory/4AD elements and influences and meld them so nicely with classic eighties American college rock, they kind of sounded like this amazing hybrid of Joy Division and R.E.M.
With new romantic vocals that totally tap into vintage Depeche Mode and New Order territory, we also hear echoes of other lesser known yet great bands of this era like Soul Merchants and Jet Black Factory. With so many new bands lately referencing that era and looking to similarly vintage sounds for inspiration, it's so refreshing to hear an actual relic from that period, too bad it sadly somehow slipped through the cracks, but now we can finally enjoy this set of songs, so worthy of much wider appreciation.
Limited to a pressing of 500, each copy has been silk screened and contains two Eleven Pond postcards as well as a sticker from Dark Entries, the label who mark this as their first release and who we have a pretty good feeling we're going to be hearing a lot more from in the future. Grab one while you can, as this is highly recommended!
The crude cover painting is sorta psychedelic, and though this album dates from 1982, the breathless obi text claims this to be the work of an "unknown brilliant all original outsider loner singer songwriter who completely sounds trapped in 1972 not '82!!", so we kinda had to check it out, being big Bobb Trimble fans after all, who also fits that description. But, we were also a bit wary, 'cause while it's true that the reissue label Riverman, based in South Korea, HAS put out some pretty cool stuff - including the George-Edwards Group and Ted Lucas discs we've reviewed recently - they also have reissued a lot of things that, uh, we don't quite "get". They seem to have a thing for American '70s singer-songwriter soft rock, maybe it's more "exotic" for them than it is for us, but a lot of their catalog seems to consist of justly-forgotten thrift store mediocrities that we have a hard time understanding why collectors (in Korea or elsewhere) care about. But yeah, once in a while they nail it. So we're always curious about their reissues, hoping they'll come up with a really amazing, acid folk obscurity or something like that. Plus they sure look good in their mini-lp style sleeves, with beguiling blurbs on their obis - that, again, they rarely really live up to. However, guess what? Peter Elizalde's oddly titled Winter Playground Mystery, kinda actually does! There is certainly something "outsidery" about it, that's for sure. Your mileage may vary, indeed ours already has, some of us here are totally digging on this (enjoying it a bit ironically, maybe, but for reals too), others like Andee gave it the gong...
Here's the deal. While there's elements of psych and prog here, what this really is, is "yacht rock"! Outsider yacht rock, but yes, yacht rock. Even though it's from '82, the Berkeley-based Elizalde, an obviously talented multi-instrumentalist, was super into seventies soft rock and jazz fusion, and we figure exceedingly influenced by the likes of Todd Rundgren and Steely Dan. So, much of this is synth laden, sprightly '70s sounding AM radio pop, with, naturally, the occasional cheesy saxophone solo. And oh boy is it poppy, these songs sound like hits that never happened, y'know, totally like they should be familiar, and in fact soon will get stuck in your head... yet they're just a bit weird and warped at the same time. In part that's 'cause Elizalde has an ever so slightly strange singing voice, often oddly high and nasal, which might have to do with the fact that he grew up in Peru, perhaps that's a little trace of a Spanish accent we're hearing? Or more likely he was a big Al Jarreau fan. Besides that, this disc is also full of surprises. For instance, track 5, "Passion Play", an exuberantly uptempo, POP-PUNK song that we definitely weren't expecting, which would have opened the original lp's second side with a bang. Really cool though, especially with its slightly incongruous keyboard lines, like some sort of super happy new wave. The wild guitar soloing on this one is also pretty choice. Later on, the album's big finale, "Day Dreamer", is another stop-and-stare-at-your-stereo number. It's one of the catchiest cuts on the record, with high pitched Bee Gees style vocal harmonies, but Elizalde also cranks up the distortion on his guitar, and also indulges in some over the top synth soloing, turning the track into a burnin' jazz fusion freakout by the end of its rather proggy 7+ minutes! Wow.
Overall this album is an eccentric mix of goofy pop pleasures, synth shred, and moments of truly emotional beauty. We also wonder if the several songs with a lyrical focus on winter, are somehow part of an exercise in Beach Boys/Brian Wilson emulation, but just about the opposite season to summer?
Well, you'll either love this or hate it, if the AQ staff is anything to go by. Enough of us love it, though, to suggest you open your heart to it, those of us here who did are happier for it. If we're gonna listen to "yacht rock", this gets our boat afloat... Though Elizalde is no Bobb Trimble, this is still pretty cool, and catchy, and quirky, and equally kitschy.
Classy!!! That's the first word that comes to mind whenever we think of Alton Ellis and his sister Hortense. Without a doubt, two of the smoothest and most elegant voices to ever be captured on tape. Alton Ellis is not only one of the greatest singers in the history of Jamaican music, he just might be one of the best singers ever! One of THE original artists in the early years of Clement S. Dodd's Studio One, Ellis helped usher in an era of rocksteady and ska that would influence generations to come. But truth be told, Ellis was a classic soul singer. Making words melt in ears, taking sentiments of longing, love, and heartbreak and making them sound so sweet, smooth and irresistible. We've yet to hear a bad track from Ellis which pretty much says it all.
With such warm and dreamy Studio One rhythms surrounding the vocals, it just doesn't get any more soulful and seductive then this. Every single one of these 18 tracks is pure gold. And 8 of them are graced by Hortense's equally delightful vocal stylings. The perfect record to mend a broken heart. Music that will make you melt!
Wow! While Brazil gets most of the attention in terms of creating some of the best South American psychedelic music, we've recently been checking out the left coast of the continent, namely Chile, and have been digging some amazing stuff. Perhaps it's the epic geographical relationship of mountains and coast in close proximity that inspires such transcendent music or perhaps it's the constant political unrest of the period that cultivated a longing for the more earthy populace-empowered past. Smooth romantic harmonies, ancient flutes and dreamy textures of jungle and nature sounds are all key variables in the sound of great Chilean psych bands El Congreso, Congregacion (also reviewed on this list), Kissing Spell (featured on the Love Peace and Poetry Latin America comp), and their later incarnation, Embrujo. While Kissing Spell was more of a mellow psych-pop confection singing songs in English as was the trend of Latin groups seeking to become more commercially viable, the decision to become Embrujo stemmed from a revolutionary stance possibly inspired by the Brazilian Tropicalia movement both politically and sonically, to write songs almost entirely in Spanish and create a dynamic sound on their own terms upping the ante on their songwriting craft and musicianship. What they add to the equation is Gr-ooo-ve, driven along by fuzzy organ, simmering guitar and funky drumming, building on the traditional Chilean sound with fluid changes, solid rhythms, and like Os Mutantes, occasional wackiness. Tight hook-laden arrangements, lyrical breaks and progressive interludes are what make this sole 1972 album fetch astronomical prices amongst collectors of private press recordings. This is its first CD reissue and seriously, we haven't stopped playing it since it arrived in the store a few weeks ago. Finally we have enough to share this with the rest of you. Embrujo means "bewitched" in Spanish, and we are positive you too will be captured by its spell! Recommended!
Yes! Finally, J.D. Emmanuel's late seventies, early eighties mind expansion music is more readily accessible. Mostly previously available through rare private pressing lps and vinyl rip blogs, Emmanuel is pretty much one of the main underground touchstones of the present wave of sunny new age meditative minimalist outfits such as The Alps, Emeralds, Ducktails, and White Rainbow. We had that limited reissue of his 1982 Wizards LP which flew out of here in a flash and now we have the less-limited Solid Dawn disc, which is a compilation of works between 1979 and 1982 in which Emmanuel seemed to be superhumanly productive. Taking the minimalist template of Terry Riley, the continuous music of Lubomyr Melnyk, and Brian Eno's discreet music, filtering it through a more soft-focus mystical kosmiche veil of Klaus Schulze, Ariel Kalma and Eberhard Schoener, Emmanuel makes long-form compositions that are vaporous and propulsive like swiftly moving clouds using wind chimes, blurry shifting drones, and arpeggiated synth-scapes. Check out his website for more info about this Texan native, who not only offers spiritual consultation, but offers automotive and business management solutions as well! Outsider New Age doesn't get much better than this!
Back in 2007, when J.D. Emmanuel was reintroduced to the world via Lieven Martens (aka Dolphins Into The Future) through Martens repress of Emmanuel's 1982 masterpiece Wizards, it completely revived his career, and we've seen many archival releases of Emmanuel's organic new-age synthscapery reissued since. Soon after in 2011, he was touring Europe with Martens and Paul Labreque and finding large new audiences embracing his fluid performances, Emmanuel decked out in a cowboy hat and Hawaiian shirt complete with psychedelic visuals behind him. We even managed to see him live at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival that same year performing on a bill with Kevin Drumm and Gregg Kowalsky (what a night!). This new double lp on the Aguirre label documents his live set from that tour with long form excursions that have great sci-fi titles like "Adrift in The Gamma Quadrant" and "Ghost Emanations From Seti Alpha 6", but also new age references like "At-One-Ment" and "Path Inward" that reveal Emmanuel's lifelong dedication to meditation, healing and cosmic harmony. Emmanuel's sound is rarely dark, but it's otherworldly in a way that avoids coming off as fluff. We can follow his mind-journeys through music anywhere he wants to take us. Recommended!
The combination of Brian Eno and Cluster proved to be a golden match. The sounds they delicately created together have been echoed again and again in the three decades since their collaborations. A feeling of both effortlessness and a total awareness of the space and sounds they were building radiates throughout the recording. You can hear the tinkering hands of Moebius and Rodelius giving elements of warped spaced out bliss. Eno approaching the songs in a magic space somewhere between Before & After Science and Another Green World. When his vocals appear they just begin to melt and dissolve into your ears. For sure the best backwards vocal delivery we've ever heard can be found on the track "Tzima N'arki". There is such a sublime feeling of melting on this record. These three knew how to meld warmth with an motherly feeling that takes you into golden horizons, mesmerizing twilight and an afterglow that you just want to surrender yourself to. Originally released in '78, once again Water has done the fine service of bringing it back to a world that's more ready for these sounds then ever.
Finally a new Brian Eno solo record, his first for Warp (his past two Warp releases were collaborations, mind you), and it's a record we can fully get behind without apology. His first solo record since 2005's Another Day On Earth (which was a return to rock forms), Lux is a beautiful ambient recording reminiscent of his classic period especially the records, Discreet Music and Thursday Afternoon, Lux serving as a continuum of those same ideas, namely his "Music For Thinking" project started on those records and continued on 1993's Neroli. Lux is a 76 minute composition broken into 12 movements over 4 tracks, at its core a progression of layered loops of piano and synthesizer that shift in unpredictable ways. Evolved from a work currently housed in the Great Gallery of the Palace of Venaria in Turin, Italy, if you try to listen to this with intense scrutiny, it may just come across as merely pretty and evocative, but it actually evolves in ways that are very compelling. If left to play and forgotten about, it has the ability to sink into your consciousness and subtly vibrate your peripheral surroundings with an unidentifiable charge. Eno once said that the inspiration for Discreet Music was from being in a hospital bed unable to turn up the radio in the room, so had to lie motionless listening to a barely audible murmur and was trying to recapture that strange disembodied audio-acoustic feeling. Lux works on that same level. It's a rare ambient release that we could seeing being used as a tool of meditation, as well as a score for a psychological horror film. It will play with your mind! This first edition comes with a series of prints Eno made exclusively for this release, and there's a download card with the 2lp verion.
We've always wondered why Entrance never got the appreciation they seemed to so fully deserve. But we're thinking might just get set straight with Prayer of Death. Where past releases displayed totally gifted guitar player Guy Blakeslee in a fucked up drugged out modern blues context, Prayer Of Death demonstrates a new urgency and pretty much an entirely new sound. With an over the top (in a great way!) delivery, including an amplified electric orchestra, a paranoid disposition, and death on his mind, Blakeslee has made his most intense and rocking record to date. Maybe it was his move from Baltimore to LA but his flamboyant nature has totally come to the surface and we couldn't be happier. He still plays amazing raga-like guitar, and his sound is still a wander in haunted woods but now he's got ROCK on his radar, all throughout Prayer Of Death. Imagine Sandy Bull joining Queen and you start to get an idea of the fucked up beauty that is this record. You get the feeling something really monumental must have occurred in Blakeslee's life, because these are the sounds of someone with a newfound spirit, not taking anything for granted, making the most out of every note and channeling all the energy, emotion and life into every song he can. We've ALL been digging this record like crazy. So fucking good!
Not to sound all old and grumpy, but they really don't make perfect hip-hop albums like they used to. Yeah, there is still some great hip-hop going on but so much of it seems to be 'single' based and not so much about a tight coherent album from start to finish. But man there was a golden era of hip-hop glory when groups like Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, The Beastie Boys, and Boogie Down Productions were making such fucking amazing jams, the sort of records you could listen to from start to finish over and over again. One of the most madly respected groups from that era is EPMD. We couldn't be more stoked that this Long Island duo's classic 1988 album Strictly Business has been reissued. It really is one of the best hip-hop albums of all time. There is something so immediately unique and recognizable about Eric Sermon and Parrish Smith's laid back yet totally intelligent, playful and infectious rapping skills and their use of such awesome samples and beats. One of the things that made this era of hip-hop so damn great was that the source material that they were sampling, chopping and making beats from was drawn from so many of the amazing warm soul records from the '60s & '70s. Zapp, Kool & The Gang, James Brown, George Clinton, they knew how to take from those greats and make something totally brand new which was the bread and butter of the EPMD sound.
What also makes Strictly Business such an all-time classic and different from so many of today's hip-hop albums is that there is absolutely NO FILLER. No stupid skits, no throw away tracks, every single one of the 10 songs totally kills and never overstays its welcome. It was so awesome when this reissue came into the store and just about everyone working here freaked out and we must have played it like ten times in just the first couple days, never realizing before we all shared such a feverish love for EPMD.
While it's a bit annoying that this remastered reissue has a big 'Snoop Dogg Approved' banner on the cover, his name bigger than anything else, we guess we don't mind too much if his endorsement helps a whole new generation get into the greatness of EPMD.
This is a Krautrock masterpiece!!! This cd reissue of the 1975 debut release by Eroc has totally floored us. Eroc's the solo project of Joachim Heinz Ehrig, who was the drummer in Grobschnitt. He used his solo project as a way to explore electronics, cutups and sound collage all surrounding totally beautiful & harmonic instrumental pieces. Of the albums he made under the Eroc moniker this is the one that shimmers with the most beauty while still showing his crazy range and unpredictability. From the blissed out to the bizarre, Eroc 1 is one of those records that you can't believe you've never heard before, and one that once heard will surely go down as one of your favorite psych/kraut/prog gems of the '70s.
Every time this plays in the store, someone in the back inevitably comes up front to see what the heck is playing. And often they begin to think that if this keeps up, they just might just have a new favorite record. Striking the perfect balance between experimentation and melody, Eroc melded the use of modular synthesizers, tape, overdubs, sound generators, guitars and percussion into an incredibly forward thinking, densely layered, crazily original sound. There is a golden sonic glow reminiscent of the best moments of Cluster / Harmonia, every track is fantastic and original, each one drives us wild, and the four bonus tracks on this collection are just as good as any of the tracks on the album proper! You can hear the early blueprints of so many musical movements that would take shape in the decades following Eroc's 1975 debut. Moments of dreaminess that foreshadow Durutti Column, glimmering electronics that anyone on Morr Music would kill for, and an integration of so many elements that sonically predate groups like Fridge by decades! We can imagine Andy Votel (Prog Is Not A 4 Letter Word, Finders Keepers) freaking out over this album much like Julian Cope who sang this disc's praises on his Head Heritage website.
And certainly all of us here at AQ have discovered a record that is pretty much a shoe-in for many of our all time favorite lists!
In the last few years we all seem to have come down with serious cases of "Anatolian fever"! With amazing reissues of '70s Turkish psych by the likes of Selda, Mogollar, 3 Hur El, Erkin Koray, Edip Akbayram, Bunalim, Mustafa Ozkent and a bunch of great comps. We've been totally and completely blown away time after time by how charged and colorful the sounds coming from the Turkish underground in the '70s were.
Now Ersen gets the proper reissue treatment from Finders Keepers and it's about time, as his amazing and seductive voice has been evoking the most resplendently colorful memories and images of people and places. With instrumentation that's as immediate, funk filled and catchy as his comrades Selda and Edip Akbayram, and a voice that can really do no wrong, Ersen has become our newest Turkish Psych obsession.
It's amazing how well these songs have stood the test of time, sounding so alive, and relevant nearly 35 years after they were first recorded. Ersen has a very special place in Turkish music history, being a vocalist for a period of time for the pioneers of Turkish psych/pop, Mogollar. The truth is Ersen's voice could probably sing over any kind of music and make it all sound so damn good, as it's soulful and filled with such flair, that sort of voice doesn't come around that often. It's no surprise that hip-hop folks like Oh No, Madlib and the whole Stones Throw family have been quite obsessed with Ersen's sounds as well, every song jam packed with so many breakbeats and innovative sounds, just begging to be sampled and blasted on the dance floor. A true gem from a magical era in Turkish psychedelia!
Brand new record from this Finnish aQ fave, every new album a slowly blossoming mystery in sound, whether it's manipulated chunks of old vinyl, rickety campfire psychedelia, or expansive soundscapes of delicate crystalline shimmer. Es is the musical monicker of Sami Sanpakkila, who also plays in some other aQ Finnish favorites, most notably Kemialliset Ystavat and Kiila, and who is often joined by various members of the ever shifting and constantly collaborating Finnish underground community.
Kesamaan Lapset seems to be a record composed and performed entirely on keyboards and synthesizers, the opening track is a gloriously sun dappled chunk of skittery sunshiney new age synths, lush swoonsome swells of fuzzy whir, tinkling little melodies, and soft tangles of squiggly glitches, looped and chopped, like a more kinetic caffeinated Oval. The follow up begins with some circusy lo-fi keyboard melodies, that get more and more dense and intricate before the vocals swoop in, super effected and lush, wrapped in delay and reverb, ghostly and otherworldly, drifting lazily and dreamily over the softly chaotic jumble of tones and melodic fragments, managing to be pretty and soft, but fractured and off kilter at the same time.
The first of the two long tracks is a slow building dronescape, thick swells of warm lush organ whir, beneath delicate spidery piano melodies, the whole thing growing ever brighter and more insistent, various keyboards beginning to stutter and skitter creating all manner of incidental rhythms before finishing off in a dense swirl of hissy soft focus drift.
The 21 minute title track is all woozy dream pop, female vocals, over a constantly undulating bed of looped pianos and swirling synths, male vocals offer up some unlikely harmonies, horns slowly surface as do gauzy clouds of effects, before transforming into a deep, dark, almost brooding bit of keyboard driven drift, replete with all manner of Oval like digital glitch, warbly and underwater sounding, super hypnotic and intense, eventually giving way to a strange bit of majestic fanfare before fading out in a brief blur of warm abstract melody.
The final brief track is a buzzed out coda, all electronic glitchery, fuzzy drones, plonked electric piano, howled vocals buried in the mix, tons of grit and texture, buzz and whir, like a way more abstract Animal Collective.
Certainly a bit different than any of the other Es releases, but in its own warm and warped, tripped out and twisted way, a logical extension of Es's ever expanding soundworld. And we dig it.
As always, the packaging is super cool full color 4 panel gatefold, with some amazing childhood photos, printed insert with more cool art and liner notes, and a gold and white printed obi.
How many other groups can you think of that have been equally embraced by the house, the hip hop, and the punk scenes? There ain't no one but ESG. The four black Scroggins sisters from the South Bronx formed their band in the late '70s (mom bought 'em intruments to keep them off the streets). They released their first single on Factory in the UK, and on 99 Records (No-Wave home of Liquid Liquid, Glenn Branca, etc) in the US. So not only did they play with groups such as The Clash and Gang of Four, but their single "Moody" was a bona fide disco hit, and the B-side of that single "UFO" has become one of the most recognizable, most sampled parts in the history of hip hop. Everyone from LL Cool J to 3rd Bass to Marley Marl to Big Daddy Kane has sampled ESG, you will be AMAZED when you listen to these original tracks. Super stripped-down, raw percussive tracks with enough groove to make a girl forget she's not swimming in jewels. Three full lengths and a couple of singles later, ESG (Emerald Sapphire and Gold) gets the best-of treatment in this excellent compilation of the group's best tracks (including Windy's personal favorite "Erase You": "Well I got news for you boys / I'm gonna erase you / just like a drawing / Erase you / flush you like my toilet / Pump it up girls!"
Rarities discs from most bands usually seem superfluous or at the very least only for their most obsessed fans, but when it comes to ESG, we'll gladly take any kind of extra material we can get!
If you don't already own the first volume of A South Bronx Story we hereby demand that you stop reading this and get it right away! It's an all time AQ favorite that you can still hear blasting in the store all the time, and it's one of those records that just about everyone we've ever played it for has totally fallen head over heels for. Volume 2 features lots of alternative mixes, b-sides and unreleased tracks, from their early days all the way up until their more present incarnation. The day this arrived we of course immediately threw it on and every single person in the store at one point or another made their way up to the counter to find out what was playing. It was so cool because they were all folks who don't normally gravitate toward dance minded music, but their ears obviously knew that this was the real deal, and no matter what your regular sonic inclinations may be, it's pretty much impossible not to be swept up by the wholly unique sounds of ESG. Highly recommended!
With a brand new record released earlier this year and their first ever live show here in SF, it's for sure been nonstop ESG fever here at AQ. We could probably write the longest most glowing review ever of that live show but suffice to say it was a mind blowing experience which we aren't soon going to forget.
When ESG were on tour last year in Japan they realized that people were spending hundreds of dollars to get their hands on their rare second album called Come Away With ESG, so they asked Soul Jazz to reissue it and now here it is, all gussied up and at a nice price. Originally released in 1983 on 99 Records, the great NY underground label that also put out records by folks like Glen Branca, Bush Tetras, Liquid Liquid, etc. While the bulk of these songs can be found on the great A South Bronx Story collection it's still so thrilling and a little mind blowing to understand how an entire album can actually sound like the best greatest hits album you've ever heard. Pretty much hands down the best dance music made in this quarter century. ESG have been sampled on countless hip-hop records, helping to inspire an entire generation of forward minded dance/punk/dub/funk artists, and have thus continued to keep their vision alive and well. For those who already have A South Bronx story there are a few absolute gems on here not included on that collection. And for those who don't have any ESG yet in their collection, get this right away!!!
Little did ESG know, 20 years ago, when they first hit New Yorkers with their dub influenced, soul fired, minimalist funk, proto-hip-hop sound that they would impact future generations of post-punk dance minded music makers all over the globe. From Le Tigre to Tussle, M.I.A. to LCD Soundsystem, Erase Errata to Peaches, the influence of the Scroggin sisters has been felt in a HUGE way. In 2000 the world finally got to hear their prescient sound when Soul Jazz released A South Bronx Story, a killer collection of their, until that point, quite obscure recordings. Which in case you missed school that day, is absolutely an essential record for any music lover. What's so great and unique about ESG is their ability to cross, blur and erase genre lines. Sounding more minimal n' stripped down than ever, ESG show that subtlety can be the greatest weapon when you want folks to keep moving. We like their new moves and as always AQ loves our ESG!
True desert blues! Originating from the never-ending dunes of the Sahara Desert, Etran Finatawa have been casting quite the entrancing spell on our ears with their second full length. While they do share many similarities with folks from their region like Tinariwen and Toumast they also have their own identity and places of departure. It's mostly their guitar sound and sense of melody that will have many comparing them to Tinariwen (which is an awesome thing in our book!). But we love how there are also moments on the record where their use of stripped down percussion, chanting call and response vocals and odilirou flute are used to perfection to help carve out a sound that is more of their own. And we have to mention how mesmerizing the soulful vocals that fill the record are, something that you almost take for granted as you listen, as it it so perfectly melds with the music. Another gem from the Sahara that will be in our ears and hearts for a long time to come!
We've loved everything we've heard from this great Saharan outfit, but with this latest outing they have definitely made their best record yet. With ex-members of all time aQ faves Tinariwen they exist in a similar sonic realm that sweeps us up in a desert trance, every single song on Tarkat Tajje is a stunner. One of those records that when you blast it loud there is no way not to get drawn in by the repetitive and hypnotizing guitars, polyphonic singing, call and response refrains, hand claps, heady percussion that drives all the songs with such a warm groove and steady pace, a sound that resonates with such beauty. For sure influenced strongly by Ali Farka Toure, EF continue to grow so much as a band and really deserve so much more attention and praise then they receive. This is an album that is as great as anything Tinariwen has released, in fact we think we might even be more in love with it then the last Tinariwen album which was pretty smoking in its own right. One of those records that doesn't need so much to be described, all you have to do is listen to the sound and the music speaks loud and clear for itself. So damn great!
We love how far and wide across the globe Dark Entries have been traveling to find us some of the best and most overlooked synth sounds of the early '80s. This time out they take us to Valencia, Spain in 1980 for the bright, DIY inspired synth pop of Europa. Originally released as a cassette, these songs now get their proper place on wax and goddamn is this a set of irresistible electro-pop perfection. Just goes to show that the UK wasn't the only place turning out amazing, catchy, synth pop bands, as this really stands at the same level of excellence as records by folks like Depeche Mode, OMD, and The Human League that were released around this time.
While most bands that surrounded them in Valencia were still trapped in over the top prog rock conventions, Europa took inspiration from punk and the burgeoning electronic scene and proved that you didn't need fancy, expensive equipment to make an awesome sounding record. They built their synths from scratch, and recorded this on a 4-track reel-to-reel, and it pretty much blows away what so many folks these days with so many more resources and endless plug-in's use when trying to capture this sort of sound. Some reissues are cooler in theory than in actual listening pleasure, but this one is all about pleasure! Anyone who loves great early synth-pop will want to jump on this right away. Viva Europa!
Much has been made about the Dual 7"+ cd set that Fabulous Diamonds released a few years back through Nervous Jerk, a small Australian imprint which had the good fortune of also releasing an Animal Collective single. Dual did make an appearance here at Aquarius, although it arrived rather mysteriously (perhaps from the band, perhaps not) and vanished after just a single play of the disc on a busy Saturday afternoon. Yes, that's always a good sign when we don't have to ballyhoo the merits of a record, and the strength of the tunes speak for themselves. Woozy hypnosis from organ, sax, drums, monotone female vocals, and lots of delay patterning is what we can remember from back in 2007. The arrival of Fabulous Diamonds' II (whoops, somehow we missed their self-titled Siltbreeze LP in '08) jogged that memory to the forefront of our collective mind, and we're happy that at least we got hear those early tracks at least once. BUT, damn if Fabulous Diamonds haven't made a stellar album here with II.
This Melbourne duo - Nisa Venerosa (drums, voice) and Jarrod Zlatic (organ, effects) - channels a quasi-mystical hybrid of post-Terry Riley time-lag accumulation and the proto-electronica riffs of the Silver Apples through deliriously simple means. Venerosa lays down a slinky percussive groove without much in the way of variation what so ever, much like finest of motorik krautrock drummers (e.g. Jaki Liebezeit, Zappi Diermaier, etc.), and pairs it with Zlatic's spellbinding layers of interwoven phases, loops and moire patterns snatched from his arpeggiating mantras on organ and synthesizer. Venerosa's stoned lullabies are well suited in their simplicity and echoplex ooze to the Diamonds' hypnotic arrangements. On this album, three short tracks about three and half minutes each are bracketed by two lengthy hypno-zoner jams. Those untitled shorts are great on their own, with curiously catchy phrases of repetitive pop minimalism, but Fabulous Diamonds are clearly at their best when sprawling their rhythms and sounds over longer durations, when Zlatic's organs, electronics, and loops have plenty of time for a lunar trajectory around the dark side and back. Anyone with a passing fancy for the likes of Stereolab, Can, Pocahaunted, Aavikko, Shogun Kunitoki, and of course The Silver Apples would be well served with these Fabulous Diamonds. Excellent!
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John Fahey hated hippies. Well, that's no surprise coming from a curmudgeonly genius that made his dislikes very well known. In a 1997 interview printed in one of the booklets in this 2cd anthology of recordings on the Table of Elements label, he says he hated playing for audiences who only wanted to hear him play his old stuff -- "I'm picking up more of an audience from younger people who have an open mind, who are more into experimentalism. I don't want to live in the past." Which explains the subtitle of this anthology: A Young Person's guide to John Fahey. Collecting the now out of print Table of The Elements releases, Womblife (1997), Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts, & Other Contemporary Dance Favorites (1998, recorded live) and the limited posthumously released suite, Hard Time Empty Bottle Blues (2003), this anthology sees Fahey at his most iconoclastic. Opening with "Sharks" from the Womblife album, produced and recorded by Jim O'Rourke, Fahey's dissonant and impressionist guitar work is more predatory than pastoral, eventually careening into cinematic textures of gamelan and sandy rain. The sea theme throughout Womblife is appropriate as it sounds like it was recorded deep in the ocean giving voice to the organic shape-shifting rhythms of its creatures. Only the 13 minute closer, "Juana" recalls Fahey's early self with solo acoustic guitar. The Second Disc compiles the live set from Georgia Stomps, and here he trades his acoustic for an electric (or amplified acoustic, we're not sure) and soaks it in reverb and chorus. Seeming to take cues from Loren Mazzacane Connors stark electric guitar work, Fahey builds upon his earlier delta-inspired acoustic pieces and takes them into sparse and charged new territories. Fans of Fahey's vast Takoma catalog may not like this anthology as much, but it is amazing to see an artist late in life continuing to take his sound to new worlds. We only wish the current wave of Fahey inspired string pickers could do as much. Highly Recommended!
Besides the incomparable freakiness of Betty Davis, and sheer force that is Chaka Khan, we don't see too many female soul singers that can equally seduce us with their soulful wiles, then go in for the kill with their hard-hitting funk edge, and still make us feel their pain. Beginning her career as a featured singer for the James Brown Revue, Fair cut her teeth at Motown recording a single with Marvin Gaye that made Motown producer Norman Whitfield (Undisputed Truth, Rose Royce) take notice, producing a string of singles in the early seventies. Her lone album, The Bitch is Black has been thankfully reissued by Reel Music and features her version of The Temptations classic "Funky Music Sho Nuff Turns Me On", Stevie Wonder's "Tell Me Something Good" and her UK hit "It Should Have Been Me", a spurned lover's soul-shattering breakdown. Just check out the cover, you don't want to mess with this 'bitch'!
Where the long, amazing and intense road that is Mariane Faithfull's music career began. This is her debut (actually one of two simultaneous debuts) she released in 1965. This was the darker companion to the more cheerful pop of her self titled release of that same year. The record gives a sneak peak at the darker side of Faithfull, that would unravel in the decades to come. She takes on many folk standards and with her immaculate voice and charismatic touch and makes them very much her own. Relevant as ever, as these days you can hear her influence all over the recent great underground folk scene through the voices and stylings of folks like Marissa Nadler and Josephine Foster amongst many. With her own great release last year Before the Poison it's really nice to get a listen back to her roots and marvel at the trajectory of an amazing artist's career. The record ends perfectly with "Sister Morphine" which she penned with one time lover Mick and his cohort Keith, which predated their rendition on Sticky Fingers. When you can love what someone made in 1965 as much as you love what they came out with in 2005 you know you are dealing with someone so totally special. While those boys Mick and Keith, we haven't cared about them for decades.
Besides being such a cultural icon, Marianne Faithful has some pretty amazing music in her back catalog. Her last album, 2005's Before The Poison was one of the most potent and emotionally stunning records of her career. It's an album some of us still listen to a lot, her voice with all its life experience shines through with so much truth, pain, and beauty. Her latest record, Easy Come Easy Go finds her tackling twelve cover songs and while we do think there should be a moratorium on covers albums, heck Marianne Faithful can do whatever she wants, and has made a career of turning other people's songs into her own.
If you are a musician and got a call that Marianne Faithful wanted to cover your song you would likely be pretty thrilled and honored, so we can't even imagine what folks like the Espers or the Decemberists thought when they got word that Marianne was going to cover their songs (those covers are two of the big standout tracks on this record!). Along the same lines, getting the call to be a part of Marianne's back up band would be pretty much mind blowing as well, so it's no surprise that the musicians on this album are some of the biggest heavy hitters around: Jim White (Dirty Three, Smog, Cat Power, etc.) on drums. Marc Ribot on guitar, Greg Cohen on bass and the list goes on and on. She also called upon some pretty recognizable voices to join her on some of the tracks like Antony, Cat Power, Rufus Wainwright, Jarvis Cocker and Nick Cave!
But make no mistake, this record is still totally all about Marianne Faithful and the way her weathered but brilliant voice is able to truly wrap itself around your ears. Whether tackling tracks by Dolly Parton, Brian Eno, Merle Haggard, Smokey Robinson, Morrissey or Judee Sill, she brings such emotional weight and such a volatile punch to these songs. Produced by Hal Willner, whom she last worked with on Strange Weather, you can feel his influence a bit too much on a few of the tracks, which go for a more old timey/cabaret feel, but luckily there are only a few of those, the rest of the album is much more driving, powerful and present sounding.
While The Rolling Stones may have ushered her into the spotlight all those decades ago, it's clear that as time has gone on Marianne Faithful sounds a million times more relevant and full of integrity than the Stones do now. A true living legend!
Wacked-out French-not-French pop? Avant-dub? Post-punk for the anarchically happy? All of those are applicable and more for the bizarro-world citizens of Family Fodder. This was less of a band, and more of a ridiculously loose collective that spun around principal songwriter Alig Pearce and chanteuse Dominique Levillain, with a genealogical tree that is confoundingly complex. We CAN say that both Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward (of This Heat) passed through the quickly revolving door of Family Fodder with the Flying Lizards' David Cunningham also offering his disjointed madness; but there were probably dozens of different players who dotted each record. Those two projects - This Heat and the Flying Lizards - could be referenced for sure as a shorthand equation of what Family Fodder was up to; but there was also plenty of situationist stabs at jubilantly rendered black humor and boisterous sarcasm that rippled through the tumbling weirdo-punk joy of Family Fodder's music. Sparks meets Stereolab might be another non-entirely-off-the-mark description.
Monkey Banana Kitchen was the band's first full album (following a string of singles including several head-scratching / loving homages about Debbie Harry's rumored hermaphrodism - yeah, how about that for a topic of a poptune?!). The album's jittery punk-dub songwriting has its roots in the British classics of Public Image Limited and the Clash, although the anthemic pop-hook has been tossed out the window in favor of a glossalaic patter of semi-coherent lyrics. The triumphantly kaleidoscopic "Savoir Faire" operates in the same art-pop lineage of Stereolab, with Family Fodder being freakishly unfettered in their exuberance where Stereolab would play it ultra cool behind their Moogs and Gauloise cigarettes. Then, there are the deep-dub tracks of "Organ Grinder" and "Bass Adds Bass" which could have easily get confused for anything by The Slits or New Age Steppers. Sprinkled throughout the album are a series of short slapstick pieces of spring-loaded vaudevillian tunes and elliptical dada / slapstick lyrics: "Darling, reason's in the monkeyhouse with a banana in the kitchen." The compact disc is fleshed out with the tracks from the Schizophrenia Party EP plus a couple of singles (sadly none about Debbie Harry). The highlight of these tracks (for some of us) is the ridiculously over-the-top "Dinosaur Sex" - a totally stupid / brilliant rock-opera / punk-dub number that parodies Broadway musicals in an engorged number about, ah, fucking like a dinosaur!!
The wonderful flood of Japanese '70s psych rock reissues continues, something those folks who have yet to hear these previously hard-to-find gems (many "popularized" by megafan Julian Cope in his Japrocksampler book) can be quite glad of. The item under consideration here, a compact disc reissue of the final, 1977 release by hippie space travellers Far East Family Band, is another nifty one, though we'd probably recommend the other, earlier FEFB albums before this if you don't have those already. Fans looking to complete their collections, though, won't be disappointed - even though by this point keyboardist Kitaro had left the family / band (for eventual New Age stardom), on Tenkujin FEFB were still quite potent at making tripped out, synth-laden, New Age friendly psych. In other words still the kind of band where the same guy credited with operating a pile of synthesizers (Teisco 100F, Hillwood SY 1800, Combo, Basky, Rockyboard, Korg 700S, Mellotron, Yamaha, Solina String Ensemble) also plays the bamboo flute. And then there's all the guitars and other things as well that are part of their big wash of psychedelic sound.
The title track, with a driving, almost disco beat, and echoey, dubby FX, would fit in with a lot of late '70s kosmic krautrock, the Ashra, Michael Rother sort of stuff, heck it sound a bit like some bands today too, we're thinking Jonas Reinhardt and Maserati. Lots of burbling electronics and shimmering synth over propulsive percussion. FEFB's usual Pink Floydisms certainly come to the fore too, on the blissful, balladic likes of "Timeless Phase" and elsewhere... Make that blissful AND bombastic, the latter especially on the album-ending instrumental "Ascension".
Numbered, limited edition reissue in the usual Phoenix wallet sleeve.
We all agree here at AQ that this is a really amazing disc. We also all agree that it's tough to describe! Which is maybe why we didn't manage to review it right when it first appeared a few months back. But now we'll try, since we like it so much and want you know about it. Simply put (which is impossible), Farmacia from Argentina straddle the line between minimal dance music and rhythmic noise. Crucial Sky In The Land Of Premonitions At Lorenzo's Weekend (there, doesn't that title tell you all you need to know? no? uh, yeah, you're right) is the work of a trio who are making their OWN original music first and foremost, not something we hear everyday. There's an experimental, home-brewed, kit-bashed approach here that possesses some of the charming weirdness of Argentine AQ faves Reynols without sounding like them... much more user-friendly, these guys! It's a sort of playful industrial/electro music, part Throbbing Gristle, part Aphex Twin, part Mouse On Mars, part Ratatat. One track even reminds us of Itavayla, or Trans Am. There's bopping abstract noises, wordless vocals, distortion and drone and disco-friendly beats. Surprisingly beautiful, beautifully surprising. The three members are credited with the use of plenty of analog synths, samplers, computers... an array of ethnic flutes... eggs, noises, and "atmospheric crucial voices"... y'know, the usual stuff. And the results are, as we said, tough to describe. But we figure it's got a wide appeal, to fans of Kraftwerk and Cluster back in the '70s... to fans of Lindstrom yesterday. Totally recommended.
Damn, the Numero Group does it again! At this point we don't need to go on about what an amazing and trusted label NG is. As their Eccentric Soul, Cult Cargo, and Wayfaring Stranger series continue to offer up so much amazing music that might otherwise have gone unheard.
Gathering dust in some garage for the last three decades due to the worst side of the music industry, this deep hitting, politically charged soul record finally gets to see the light of day. Father's Children were from the nations capitol, and took the influence of groups like the Stylistics, the Delfonics and the Dramatics and doused those sounds with fiery social consciousness and a slow burning psychedelic undertone. Like early Earth Wind & Fire, crossed with Curtis Mayfield's less funk and more full on deep soul moments. It's a record that really encompasses the most lasting and satisfying sides of '70s soul. The kind of record you can imagine inspiring folks like Erykah Badu, The Roots, Common, and Lauryn Hill.
As always packed with endless love and care featuring amazing photos and the story of the group's history.
We had no idea that Thomas Fehlmann had been making music for more than 30 years, beginning with his time in the band Palais Schaumburg moving on to his work in Detroit/Berlin techno group 3MB (with Juan Atkins and Moritz von Oswald), finally playing in the Orb to this day, as well as tons of solo records, quite impressive for sure, but this one, this is something else, selections from a score Fehlmann did for a film called 24H Berlin, which is the longest documentary film in history, a full 24 hours long, the filmmakers employed 80 cameras, and followed various Berliners over a 24 hour period, documenting a day in the life in Berlin. It's hard to even fathom trying to compose 24 hours of music, thankfully, Fehlmann shared those duties with another composer, so he probably needed to only come up with 12 hours worth of music, but still, incredible.
And the sounds here are of course gorgeous, that Kompakt sound we love so much, a lush mix of old school techno, modern Berlin dub, and washed out dreamlike pop ambience, if you didn't know this was a soundtrack, you might just assume this was a regular Fehlmann release, which for listening purposes it might as well be. After some cool, late night skitter and thump, the record blossoms into some truly lovely dronemusic, prismatic and crystalline, before slipping back into some clipped stuttery dub and we're off.
The whole record is very warm, and soothing, dreamy, melodic, from the hushed pulse of "Speeding", definitely evocative of late night drives, to the almost Kraftwerk sounding "In The Wind II", lilting and lovely, but underpinned by a busy bit of warbly bass, to the hazy ethereal blurscape of "Von Oben", that eventually transforms into some minimal ambient techno, to the lush and warmly melodic closer "Schieben", which musically sounds like a time lapse photo of a city growing dark as the sun slips beneath the horizon, reminds us of Tim Hecker or Fennesz, so gorgeous.
The songs are balanced pretty evenly between beats and ambience, the two elements constantly blurring into one another, the result being a lush, easy flowing, drifting, dolorous electronic dreamscape.
Aside from a couple of respectable collaborations and some soundtrack work, Christian Fennesz hasn't released a proper solo album since the album Black Sea, which came out on Touch WAY back in 2008. On Becs, Fennesz returns to the label that introduced him to the world, in Editions Mego; and he pretty much continues along the same path that he set for himself on that last album he recorded for them, the much lauded Endless Summer from 2001. That was a fracturous record of polygonal melodies bathed in a candy-crush fuzz of pixelated, shoegazing blur, always alluding to the sunkissed glow of the California Dream, whatever that may be. Becs may not have the advantage of following up one hell of a single by Fennesz (in the very late '90s, he covered The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones, the latter of which was originally commissioned for tUMULt's Painted Black anthology!), whereby he contextualized his sonic dislocation within the lineage of rock'n'roll and all of its mythologies of dissent, rebellion, sex, and whatnot. Yeah, it's a tough act to follow; but Becs is a wildly adventurous album with a substantial parity when it comes to the risk/reward equation. A heavily flanged, blindingly bright corona of digital treatments surrounds the Fennesz' guitar sound at the album's introduction, with all of the soft melodies buried in twinkling electronics and mirrored refractions. Fennesz follows this with a detuned alarm-call pulse that forms an insistently crawling rhythmic structure blasted with a malleable distortion, which in turn he counterpoints with a gorgeous, cathedral drone of sustained harmonics. An incremental retinal burn of guitar distortion shapes the brilliant track "Liminality" built upon a beautifully bittersweet, slowcore guitar chord whose roots lie in Slint, Codeine, or maybe even the Durutti Column. Sparkling ambient passages beget discordant piano treatments akin to a computer-cracked Angelo Badalamenti which in turn beget more blossoming noise. Fucking brilliant.
Experimental electronica (particularly the glitch techno and collage work on the Mille Plateaux label) is getting dangerously close to self parody, with the definitions of very specific electronic music forming ever increasing legions of devoted followers
Fennesz' third album -- the aptly titled "Endless Summer" -- picks up where his ep of Rolling Stones / Beach Boys covers left off with a digital dispersion of "fun in the sun" rock mythologies. While there are no obviously discernable pop culture references, Fennesz builds a sound that really is quite summery from odd duets between disintegrating acoustic guitar strums and the coalescence of digital errata. Thus, this album has the feeling of the classic Beach Boys sound, but very little of that structure. These are NOT Beach Boys covers; but if he said they were, we'd have no basis to call him a liar. Regardless, Fennesz's "Endless Summer" is just fucking great.
It's fitting that the year closes with a breathtaking collaboration between Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamato, as 2011 was a great year for both of them individually. This past summer Fennesz released Seven Stars, his first solo recording in almost three years. Sakamato not only teamed up with Alva Noto for perhaps their best collaboration yet, Summvs, but also hit the road with his legendary old band Yellow Magic Orchestra to rave reviews.
This is not the first time these two musical visionaries have collaborated, as they released a great ep back in 2005 that left us very hungry for them to come together again. With Flumina they have created one of the most patient, subdued, and beautiful records of the year. In fact, a few of us are already rearranging our end of year best of lists to make sure we include this, as the record has already seeped so deep into our subconscious, in just the few weeks its been out. Sakamoto's fragile piano playing and Fennesz' gauzy and blurry guitar sound glide in and out of each other to create a melancholic daydream of sound. Much like some of our favorite Harold Budd records and collaborations, these tracks really do sound as if they are unraveling slowly from the heavens. We've been going to sleep with one of the discs playing and then starting our day slowly with the the alternate disc, as its such a perfect record for the space between sleeping and dreaming.
We also really love that despite the use of their laptops, the record seems so minimally processed. This isn't about forced static or manipulative feedback, but instead a powerful restraint in sound that allows each note to leave such a lasting impact. Highly recommended!
While not a proper new Fennesz 'album' per se, Aun is in fact a soundtrack to a new film by Austrian director Edgar Honetschlager, incorporating a few collaborative pieces previously released on the album Cendre, which found Christian Fennesz teamed up with pianist Ryuchi Sakamoto. Surprisingly, those tracks, already pretty cinematic, fit perfectly amidst Fennesz' original music for Honetschlager's film. And while we've yet to see the film, the music on its own is lovely, and hauntingly contemplative, especially the tracks with Sakamoto, the pointillist piano lending the music a certain gravitas, moody and melancholy. While the rest of the tracks find Fennesz weaving lush tapestries of deep glowing drones and warm whirring ambience, opening track "Kae" is dense and thick, a lush gauzy melodic stasis rife with buried melodies, the sort of sound that evokes those time lapse nature films, plants breaking through the soil, blossoming, then withering and dying. Poignant and moving, quite a feat for a track that barely cracks two minutes. Later on the soundtrack, Fennesz returns to the guitar, letting gentle strums and delicately picked notes become gently obliterated by clouds of digital errata, transforming the sound into a glitchy dreamfolk drift, those bits of glitchguitar ambience surrounded by thick slabs of deep dense digital dronemusic, tracks like "Euclides" imbuing what would otherwise be an ethereal shimmer, with an almost black hole density, while other tracks display a knack for melding airy ambience with gristled laptop buzz, the results sometimes spare and ghostly, other times bleak and blackened, but always haunting and lovely. In some ways, the sounds are almost too perfect as a soundtrack, the sort of abstract minimal ambience that seems to underpin most movies these days, but close listening reveals that this is more than rote ambience, instead, each track here is a dense multilayered mini-symphony, that even sans visuals, offers much to discover on repeated listens, and seems to blossom before the listener's ears, the sound rich with the promise of endless sonic discovery.
Simply superb. The Field could release the same damn album over and over again, and we'd be completely content, so perfect is his signature style of minimal techno. Cupid's Head is his fourth album in six years, a relatively slow pace of output for such top shelf work; so with each album comes the opportunity to savor what Alex Willmer is up to. From Here We Go Sublime was the debut album that introduced the template for all of Willmer's other albums; and like Wolfgang Voigt's pinnacle of minimal techno - the four Gas records - Willmer's success is through the presentation of inventive variations on a theme. His begins with a sparkling arrangement of delicately arpeggiating pixel points and micro-samples, which might have been lifted from soft-rock ballads of the early '80s; and with the skill of a crafty plastic surgeon, he deftly eviscerates an ugly source material and renders it exquisite and wholly refined. All of his taut melodic phrase and clipped gasps of romantic exhortation latch perfectly onto the archetypal Kompakt monophunk techno pulse. The minimalism of Cupid's Head is not one of stasis, as there are rather broad gestures of emotional dynamism even within the framework of a constant beat. "Black Sea" begins with a classic set of The Field's pink-n-pastel electronic colorations, but slips oh so gradually into a more nocturnal set of jet-blacks and engorged reds that really would be the perfect transitory track between Ulrich Schnauss and Surgeon. These long-view structures look backward to how Arthur Russell produced with some of his slowly developed strings that slowly resolved a melody over a 10 minute New York house track. Radiant, glassine, and downright rapturous.
