On The Hi-Fi Part 39

An Ambient EP of loveliness from Loscil. Reminding me of the great Spectral Cassettes series that Pontone posted a few years ago. Those Pontone tapes were my gateway back into electronic music and current music in general. They can probably still be found at his ghost blog. Anyway For Greta is just what I need at the moment. Splendid aural serenity. This is soo good. Hey FACT is this 'power ambient' or just plain old ambient?

Never gone beyond the 70s with Baris Manco before but my GP who's from Turkey played me a track off this because I told him I loved 60s and 70 Turkish music. He asked me what my favorite Manco LP was and I said 2023 which he agreed is very good. He doesn't think the scene has been as good since the 80s and he's not an old guy maybe 40-45. So 'Retromania' goes on in Turkey too. He was also into Mogollar but not familiar with Bunalim, I guess they're obscure, whereas Manco was a big star. Sozum Meclisten Disari is an LP from 1981 and maybe his 6th album. I'm getting music recommendations from doctors now? Strange world indeed. Some good stuff on here. The title track includes lighting cigarettes, talking, pouring drinks, smoking, and what I assume is some sort of whispered words of seduction, a bit like a Turkish Serge Gainsbourg. Of course Baris Manco is a legend and musical innovator in his own right and needs no comparisons. I'd really like to know what the fuck he's saying in that tune. Gulpembe is irresistible Turkish prog synth gold with a hard riff and dark heavy bass. Funky 80s sounds with great keyboards and even a chipmunk choir are all put to good use on this recording. At certain stages during the album it's like Compass Point has been resituauted in Turkey and I mean that in a very good way. This LP contains a classic tune 2025 which is a top shelf cosmic Turkish prog funk jam. Donence the final track is an epic too, great space age synth and over the top guitars but with that unmistakable Anadolu vibe. Still getting deep with this one, however I reckon it's going to be another Manco classic to go along with his other three that I know and love. Thanks Doc, now about fixing these headaches...............actually I wonder if he has any other LPs he can recommend.

Came across this the other day. It's a 70s (1971?) library record on the Italian Leo label from Giuliano Sorgini. He recently came to people's attention due to the reissue of his soundtrack to The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue on Death Waltz in 2012. Previous to that he was a renowned cult figure in the Library music scene. The one record I had back then was Under Pompelmo, from 1973, which actually got the reissue treatment this year on Italian label Cinedelic Records apparently. Percussioni In Crescendo is a drum heavy, dark, funky and an occasionally bombastic record. This LP can be Incredibly atmospheric and minimal at times. Percussioni In Crescendo's incorporates some good twanging guitars, quirky electronic tones and big big symphonic drums. A little library gem right here folks.

Digging this. Club Godzilla is back with Club God 4. You know what you're getting here songs about gettin booty and songs about getting booty, oh and songs about strippers and headjobs. The instant highlights are the Gangsta Boo contributions which are incredible. I can't help thinking there's too many features though and not enough of just Beatking on his own. Not sure what to make of Chedda Da Connect yet. Is he Houston's answer to Young Thug? Or is his flow way to close to that of Thugga's? He's only on one track so who cares? The rest is sounding v good. How To Make Love To A Woman is skit gold that had me laughing out loud as well as quite astonished at Beatking's audacity. Chamillionaire makes an appearance. I'm not really sure who he is is. He was someone in my hip-hop black spot area (98 to 2011*). Like was he good, cool or innovative? Beatking is really pushing taste boundaries on this release, which I guess is nothing new for him. Like he could give a fuck anyway! Particularly What Dat Mouth Do which is creepy but mainly really funny and probably the most pop tune on the album. Only got it on i-tunes yesterday so I'm still processing it all. I'll do a full review down the track.  It's getting a thrashing though. That's a pretty bloody good sign in this day and age, innit though?

WHAT I'M NOT LISTENING TO

Or the extended version of John Cage's 4.33. More like 4 hours & 33 minutes. Due to debilitating migraines I have to go into a dark room at the first sign of head pain and do nothing. No devices, people or books allowed. Just darkness, the sound of the house and its surrounds. Not as boring as one might think and kind of refreshing and definitely relaxing except for the headache part. Try it without a headache. Humanoid unplugged.

Power Ambient LOL

I couldn't help but have a little chuckle to myself when I read an article at FACT on "Power Ambient". This is some kind of re-branding so the writers don't seem recalcitrant. Terms like New Kosmische, Nu New Age, Hypnagogia,Vapour Wave and even good ole Ambient have obviously become embarrassing and passe for these writers. So Motion Sickness Of Time Travel get a second bite of the cherry under a new genre pseudonym "Power Ambient". Hey I've always liked em no matter what category they've been put in. What about one of my other ambient favourites Panabrite, do they get to be rehabilitated? They released another excellent LP this year Pavilion, or do they remain in the backwaters of passe pigeon holes?

This is taken from Panabrite's 2014 album Pavilion.

We're In The 70s Again...

A really great weird list over at FACT on their top 100 LPs of the 70s. It's just one LP per artist. I love how they really don't stick to the rock-crit consensus. I couldn't have predicted that they'd put half of these in their list. I own about 63 of these records. There's no Bob, Neil, Bruce, Pink Floyd, The Clash or even Led Zep! That should rile up a few rock bores. Some of my faves on the more esoteric side of things from the list include A.R. & Machines Echo, Guru Guru's UFO, Libra's Schock, Annette Peacock's I'm The One, Bruce Haack's Electric Lucifer,  Rot by Conrad Schnittzler, Flower Travelling Band's Satori,  Fern Kinney's Groove Me, First Utterance from Comus etc. Hawkwind make an appearance but no Ash Ra Tempel or Amon Duul 2. Funkadelic but no Parliament or Bootsy. Heaven forbid no Big Star what will the indie kids say? Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality over Vol. 4 and Paranoid. That would have been a hard choice. As would the Bowie decision with at least 11 classics to choose from. No T-Rex! No AC/DC! They went wild with their Lou Reed pick Live-Take No Prisoners. Nico in, John Cale out. No Iggy, that's outrageous! The 70s I guess was a peak time for fine albums so really they could have made a top 200. Can's Ege Bamyasi over Tago Mago, Future Days and Soon Over Babaluma. There's plenty of Krautrock, Jazz, Avant Garde, Punk/post-punk and the just plain weird. Not much Glam (That was more of a 7" trip) or Prog, No Country at all (it must have exhausted its hipness).

Of the punk & Post-Punk we've got Wire, The Sex Pistols, The Buzzcock, Stiff Little Fingers, Suicide, No New York, Patti Smith, Cabaret Voltaire, Crass, Pere Ubu, The Slits, New York Dolls, Nurse With Wound, Throbbing Gristle, Modern Lovers, The Residents (another hard choice, so many classics), Richard Hell, Devo and Talking Heads who all make the cut. Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures is mysteriously overlooked. The Saints (I'm)Stranded is the highest placed punk record, right on FACT!. No Radio Birdman or X(Legendary Australian band not the inferior American one) though, or X-Ray Spex, Dictators, Germs, Gang Of Four (is Entertainment not one the best album of the 70s?), Magazine, Television or The Ramones?! Metal Box by PIL is oddly missing. There ain't no Tubeway Army, Pop Group, Durutti Column, Thomas Leer & Robert Rental, Swell Maps, Minny Pops or Gary Numan solo. Der Plan's Geri Reig would have been my left field pick with its gloriously demented electronic toy town post-punk German stylee.

Soundtracks are thin on the ground. You could make an excellent list of 100 70s soundtracks I reckon. I think there are only 3 OSTs in the list. I'd have probably had Life On Earth, Eraserhead, Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist, Death Line, Quintet, Wickerman, Enter The Dragon, Shaft, Cannibal Holocaust, The Taking Of Pelham 123, Phantasm, Vanishing Point etc. etc.

On the soul and funk tip Curtis Mayfield makes the grade with his excellent Curtis/Live but Isaac Hayes doesn't. Stevie Wonder in, Michael Jackson's Off The Wall out!? Sly Stone, Gil Scott Heron, Last Poets, Shuggie Otis and Millie Jackson are here. The Meters, James Brown, Bill Withers, Al Green, Betty Davis, Marvin Gaye, Bobby Womack, Teddy Pendgrass, The O'Jays, The Isley Brothers et al. are not. My esoteric Pick would have been Lightnin Rod's Hustlers Convention from 1973 which is a proto gangsta rap concept album that is some funky superfly shit man. On the disco tip no Risque from Chic or Donna Summer's Once Upon A Time. But we do get Cerrone's Cerrone 3: Supernature and the aforementioned Fern Kinney.

There's no records from Sweden ie. International Harvester, Harvester or Trad Gras Och Stenar (I'd probably have included an LP by each of those groups even though they're all pretty much the same group). Maybe my other Swedish pick would have been Algarnas Tradgard's Framtiden ar ett Svavande Skepp, Forankrat I Forntiden. That's a nice slice of folky space prog jams. From France you get Serge Gainsbourg, Magma, Ghedalia Tazartez and Heldon. Some other French weirdness would have been good too like Pole's classic meandering electronic psych trip Inside The Dream from 1975. Brazil still seems to be on the hipster map with several entries, however Milton Nascimento & Lo Borges sprawling opus Clube Da Esquina misses out as does Jorge Ben, Edu Lobo etc. On the Yank/Brit folkish tip you get Linda Perhacs, Judee Sill, Bridget St John and Robbie Basho but no Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan, Dr Strangley Strange, Tim Buckley (losing his hipster cache?) or my fave of the lot John Martyn. It would have been a toss up though for a Martyn LP between Bless The Weather, Solid Air, Inside Out or One World. Only one LP from Japan shows up so there's no Les Rallizes Denudes, Masahiko Satoh, People, Far East Family Band or Brast Burn. Nothing from Turkey at all! I'd have perhaps put in Baris Manco's funky Anadolu psych classic 2023 or LPs from Mogallar, Bunalim, 3 Hur-el or Eric Koray's masterpiece Electronic Turkular. On the Avant Garde front you get Bernhard Palmigiani, Charlemagne Palestine, Gavin Bryars, Basil Kirchin, Harold Budd, Robert Ashley etc. I reckon Taj Mahal Travellers August 1974 would have got my overlooked vote for its eerie deep psych drone goodness. Even maybe something from the legendary Ron Geesin who put out several classics of 70s cult electronics on the KPM label. Where's Delia?

I could go on forever, perhaps I should have made my own list. Klause Schulze's Moondawn gets a guernsey but it could just have easily been 7 of his other 70s classics. Tangerine Dream's Ziet would have got my vote over Phaedra. On The Corner from Miles Davis seems a conservative choice to me. I'd have gone for something like Get Up With It, Dark Magus, Big Fun, Agharta, In Concert or Live/Evil. Cult bands like The Screamers, The Electric Eels and Simply Saucer, I don't think had official LPs released in the 70s, which could explain their absence. On the more rock front The Rolling Stones, Blue Oyster Cult, The Allman Brothers, King Krimson, Dr Feelgood, Thin Lizzy, Steely Dan, Buffalo, Budgie and The Pink Fairies don't get a look in. I guess those bands are for other lists. FACT do things their way and the worlds a better place for it.

Here's ten LPs that haven't been mentioned yet in this or the FACT article that are essential 70s recordings in my book:
Edge Of Time - Dom
No Other - Gene Clark
For Your Pleasure - Roxy Music
Ball Power - Coloured Balls
Tres Hombres - ZZ Top
Split - Groundhogs
If Only I Could Remember My Name - David Crosby
Alien Soundtracks - Chrome
Delta Momma Blues - Townes Van Zandt
Dub From The Roots - King Tubby

Wow this has made me realise once again how rich and deep the music goes in the 70s. I'm lookin forward to going through all my Miles Davis and Klaus Schulze records oh and then there's some I've never heard from the FACT list. I might finally check out Henry Cow, Millie Jackson, Cymanade, Judee Sill or Gary Wilson. I never could get into Stiff Little Fingers, Joni Bloody Mitchell, Genesis or pre-Swordfishtrombones Tom Waits though. But hey any list with Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats at number 1 is fine by me.

The 80s Again....

It doesn't get much better than this.

Here's a Top 100 LPs of the 80s list that isn't the usual rock-crit consensus. FACT certainly do their own thing and good on them for that. Good to see one of my all time favourite records Julee Cruise's Floating Into The Night getting some recognition, although I thought it came out in 1990 but no the date on the label on the vinyl says 89. Steve Roach's ambient masterpiece Structures From Silence, which is an endlessly listenable LP, doesn't usually make these lists so that's a pleasing surprise. Rapeman's LP makes another 2013 appearance which has surely pushed it into cult LP territory. The Cocteau Twins and Felt make it but AR Kane and Siouxsie And The Banshees miss out. The cult of Coil continues its ascendancy, with Horse Rotorvator making an appearance. This list is so hipster it doesn't include This Heat but has a This Heat side project! The same goes for Swans, no Children Of God but (World Of) Skin's 1st LP makes it. This is definitely a 2013 look at the 80s which FACT acknowledge. It's funny what's seen as hip or worthy from the 80s by the kids of 2013 (some of these writers were maybe there in very mini form). Virgo come in at no. 2 with their self-titled LP. Who the fuck are they? More music to discover from the 80s who'd have thunk it? Hang on no Birthday Party! What? No MX 80 Sound! Perhaps it's a joke list....

Ministry over this?! Naye.
Ministry over Pat Benatar?! No Way!

AR Kane & Disco Inferno

Wow an interview with AR Kane as well as Disco Inferno over at FACT. The godfathers and their godchildren. I've still got AR Kane's Sixty Nine and "i" on tape. Released on Festival Australia licenced from Rough Trade. Still sounding fantastic by the way, recorded on BASF chrome tape. Most record companies would not have used such great quality tape. I love those tapes. They were so fucking original, like no one ever before! While the classic debut LP Sixty Nine gets all the kudos  "i" is their eclectic & surreal underrated other classic. Must admit I never heard that 3rd album, was that like a reformed/comeback kind of thing? On those 2 Rough Trade LPs they were magnificent!

I wanted to play Down and Love From Outer Space from "i" but they weren't on the youtubes! I must admit they are one of those bands I rediscover every 6 months and go 'How are they not legendary?' Well they are in my book. These albums are an essential peak of late 80s musical creativity, along with fill in________________.

Hang on I found it!

Then there were some acolytes I recall on AR Kane's own label hArk. I had an ep by Papa Sprain called May I think ..er...can't find that one in the closet. I had a cd Onomatopoeia by Butterfly Child as well. Those were both good records. Those acts came and went in a flash though.

Anyway Disco Inferno were influenced by AR Kane and were a great, unique, strange and groundbreaking band as well. All I can find is a lone cd single Summer's Last Sound/Love Stepping Out in my closet. They had some fine records DI GO POP & In Debt are 2 more gone missing from the crates! Whatever. Post Rock in its original meaning. Radiohead wish.

Nice & weird.

Onya FACT!



Rowland S Howard - A Reprise

I watched that Documentary autoluminescent again last night and geez it's hard going towards the end. This is a doco about the life and times of Rowland S directed by Lynn-Maree Milburn & Richard Lowenstien. It contains some fantastic footage of the great man from the early days onwards. It's when it gets near the end and there are scenes of him in hospital and sad stories from his last days that really hit you with the sadness of his tragedy. He was starting to gain momentum with his career again. His Pop Crimes LP was critically acclaimed and a whole new younger audience was becoming aware of his magnificence. He had so much more to give and his regret was heartbreaking ie. not looking after himself at certain stages of his life.

He ended on a high note though and I hope he was proud. What a top record to go out on! Ha... just noticed 10 minutes ago that the FACT Webmagazine has his Teenage Snuff Film record in their best albums of the 90s, coming in at #20. So it takes an international website to recognise his excellence and the Aussie list maker wankers to overlook it. Typical.