Thanks to Pista Sin Titulo, who posted this amazing album of Estonian pop from between the sixties to the eighties.
Month: August 2017
[Music] Los York’s – Los York’s ’69
Peru had their version of the Kinks during the middle-to-late 1960s. Los York’s are given the reissue treatment thanks to Peru’s reissue label repsychled.
[Music Podcast] Mundofonías 2017 #66 | Samarcanda, Jerez, La Habana
I implore you, my friends…
Make time to catch the best World Music podcast in the world. Mundofonías‘ Juan Antonio Vázquez & Araceli Tzigane have spent years introducing an international audience to world music with their themed podcasts, and this one is no exception.
To hear this week’s episode, click here or on the image. The track list is as follows:
Zulya – Kubalagem – Aloukie
Zulya and The Children of the Underground – We twelve girls – 3 nights
Ulzhan Baibussynova – Talim – Music of Central Asia, vol.4: Bardic divas, women’s voices in Central Asia [VA]
La Banda Morisca – En toíto yo te encuentro – Algarabya
Manuel Parrilla – Bulerías “Abuelo Parrilla” – Pa mi gente
Burruezo – La mora d’Aragó – Dervishes & troubadours
Mujeres con Raíz – Sale el sol por la mañana – Las edades de la vida
Tündra – Baile de procesión – Bastardüs
Al Valdés y su Conjunto – Guajira – Cuba! Cuba! [VA]
Ignacio Carrillo – Pico y pala – Cuban playground [VA]
Rubén González Jr. – Pianísmo – Best of Cuba [VA]
Rubén González – Descarga Rubén y Cachaíto – Introducing… Rubén González [ed. 2017]
(Ska Cubano – Loca rumba – Cuban playground [VA])
[Music] Fatal Casualties – Filter
Dutch label Seja Records graces us with a magnificent new release by Swedish neofolkers Fatal Casualties. It’s amazing to thing that Stefan Ljungdahl and Ivan Hirvonen have been performing off and on as Fatal Casualties for 30 years now, as the current release is perhaps the freshest, most vibrant music they’ve put out in more than a decade. It’s hard to even consider this neofolk, because it uses so many other genres as a touchstone. One can hear post-punk, goth, dark electronic music, a bit of a soundscape here and there. Ivan’s vocals top the aural cake off beautifully. Kudos to the engineer who managed to balance the sounds perfectly.
This album was released in 2016, but as I came around to it only recently, I’ll gladly consider this a new-ish release. Well worth your time.
[Music] Julian Borrego – Xeriscape
What a pleasant slice of pop-psych, updated for the 2010s!
Julian Borrego is a multi-instrumentalist based in Los Angeles, California (the scribe’s home town). Though you can hear hints of Antônio Carlos Jobim and funk-era Stevie Wonder in his music, there’s also a touch of garage psych which makes the tune much more than palatable to my taste.
[Music] Various Artists – Love is a One-Way Traffic: Groovy East Asian Chicks, 1960s-70s
Ian Nagoski of Canary Records has released yet another gem! This one is a compilation of really great pop singers from female pop singers from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
[Music] George Hadow / Dirk Serries – Outermission
George Hadow in an English percussionist currently residing in Amsterdam. It was a bit of a shock to see that he would be pairing with Dirk Serries, who won his fame as Vidna Obmana, his dark ambient project out of Belgium, but they blend together rather nicely.
[Music] Awalom Gebremariam – Desdes
Awalom Gebremariam has quite an interesting story. Originally from Asmara, the capital of the Republic of Eritrea, he left his home country at age 28 to go to the United States, having stayed at an Ethiopian refugee camp while waiting to hit his final destination. This album is the only disc he cut, and it’s quite a lovely example of Eritrean pop.
Many thanks to Awesome Tapes From Africa, who put out gem after gem. Follow them, as they never seem to fail in their picks.
[Music] Simon James – Akiha Den Den
I think this is a case where the description of Simon James’ latest release speaks for itself:
This vinyl and CD package collects electronic music created for an abandoned space: Akiha Den Den, the crumbling amusement park at the centre of a surreal radio drama, and the setting for a story woven from the very fabric of radio.
Radiophonic and other dimensional library inspired cues soundtrack dilapidated ghost train rides, rusty dodgems and the domed Panatrope. The dark musings inside the mind of a talking thought-mining cockroach, a mysterious character known only as Monday Man and the main protagonist, M.R Cuttings (played by Star Wars’ Ian McDiarmid), a radio ham picking up the desperate transmissions from this strange ethereal place they call Akiha Den Den.
Simon James has conjured up an eerie world of pure escapist sound for this fever dream of radio waves and half heard transmissions. The full radio drama can be heard at http://www.akihadenden.com
Radio interference, snatches of intercepted broadcasts, codes, tones, signals and other haunting sounds from the wireless feature heavily alongside the soundtrack conjured up on an array of vintage, unfathomable synthesisers including the Buchla 200e Electric Music Box and the EMS VCS3. Occasionally the voices of Akiha Den Den’s inhabitants and M.R Cuttings burn through the white noise offering a glimpse of their tangled patchbay story.
Released on a specially requested opaque clear vinyl LP, the physical package also includes a redacted Akiha Den Den booklet (all artwork designed by Nick Taylor) and a beautiful bonus CD filled with over 70 minutes of Buchla Modular, EMS, drones, dramatics, cassette 4 track abuse and noise from the Akiha Den Den radio series.
The 70 minute CD “The Panatrope” is NOT available for download and is only available as part of the vinyl LP package.
Simon James has previously released space age synthesiser records as The Simonsound (with Matt Ford) and as celebrated night time doom project Black Channels (with Becky Randall) on Death Waltz Originals and Castles in Space.
This package is a must for fans of radio, inventive electronica, radiophonics, vintage synths and imagined worlds. It’s the future and the passed.
Legendary electronic pioneer Scanner has reviewed the radio drama:
“…. employs some truly inventive and exploratory use of sound in its structure…. frequently submerging and corroding voices beyond all recognition, as if burning the meaning of the words in a sonic inferno. “Akiha Den Den offers an immersive world for the listeners to lose themselves in a most alluring fashion. Free of the screen, let your ears roam around this imaginary world and let the sound take you into a lost world of fact and fiction, balancing on the borderlands of illusion and reality”.-Electronic Sound Magazine.
[Music] Yazz Ahmed – La Saboteuse
A magnificent release from Nawa Recordings (introduced in the last post), Yazz Ahmed is a trumpeter who blends jazz, Arabic music, and a cinematic, film-noir style to her recordings. Think of an ECM record with the vibe of a hard-boiled soundtrack.
A Miscellany Of Tasteful Music 