Angel Rada

This is taken from the Soul Jazz comp Venezuela 70 which was released this year. I don't think I'd ever heard anything from Venezuela before. I have many records from Brasil, Columbia & Peru but this is a new territory for me. The above tune is the outstanding one for me on that collection - South American space synth jam dedicated to Klaus Schulze.



This one's on Venezuela 70 as well.... pretty good too. Details about Rada on the web are v sketchy. He was in the band Gas Light then went solo. He studied music in Germany in the 70s. That's about it.



Wow...this tune is not on the Soul Jazz compilation but is incredible. Upadesa puts me in mind of an even stranger Illitch if that's possible. This is fabulous lost Kosmische synthesiser music. A musical revelation to the eardrums. So all of the above tracks were on Angel Rada's record Upadesa released sometime in the 70s (???). This is the kind of thing that would have been posted on Mutant Sounds back in the day. Is there more unheard gold out there?

...from1983 apparently [added entry 11/11/22]

On The Hi-Fi - Part !!!

The fog has lifted slightly but I feel like I can barely string a cohesive sentence together. I'm strugglin to get past 'I like/don't like' sort of writing at the moment. Deep analysis might be out the window until my brain gets flowing again. Sometimes it seems you need to be a musicologist to review this (above) kind of shit but no, I'm gonna give it a Space Debris crack. This is very bloody good. Before we had jungle we had the polyrhythmic mentalness of this Latino shit. Some of this music is as outre as Miles in the 70s while some of it sounds like it could have been off the soundtrack to The Love Boat. Many a legend is to be found on this comp that came out 20 years ago including Palmieris Charlie & Eddie, Joe Bataan, Ocho, Grupo Folklorico etc. This new version has an added cd with 8 tracks that weren't on the original collection.  Do I need to mention Cuba, Boogalooo, Salsa Classic, Puerto Rico, New York, Fonkay or whatever? This is Superfly, sometimes soulful, jazzy, summertime and everything else in between! Makes you want to drink cocktails in the sun and dance like you think you are the greatest dancer ever.

LIVE IN ALCALPULCO - DDAA (1981) (Tape 2)
Well I was not expecting this. I had previously heard DDAA's Nouvelles Construction Sonores Sur Fondations which was a lengthy drifting sonic art collage released in 1991. When the opening tune Ready With The Answer came on with it's rubbish bin percussion and mental guitar I was so shocked I thought this was a different group altogether. It caused a flurry of research and no it wasn't two different groups, it was the one and only DDAA. As far as I can tell they were a 3 piece who had formed in France in 1979. This release is surely where Sun City Girls got all their inspiration. Live In Alcalpulco is fabulously minimal stuff that sometimes sounds like a Middle Eastern no-fi Slint gone acoustic with drums made of cardboard. Then it goes psych post-punk like a No-Wave group stranded in the desert jamming while imbibing mushrooms then incredibly inventive drones, space invader noises and gamelan-esque percussive sounds enter the fray. The crowd of two like it a lot and clap enthusiastically (surely this is a faux-live record). I thought I was hip to all the under-underground classics by now, but no way, I was not even aware of this double cassette until today. Subterranean Gold!

I have been waiting for a new release from Gesaffelstein since his classic Aleph from 2013. I guess this isn't the true follow up to that masterpiece of 'beautiful paranoid atmospheres, bangin streamlined EBM and Cold Rushes.' It does have the cold and paranoid atmospheres but not so much the bangin club tunes. I assume Maryland is a horror film because this is quite the grim soundtrack. An hour earlier my brain had been comparing Burzum's ambient black metal tunes to those of the mid 90s electronic doom/gloom-core variety ie. Miro, The Mover, Reign etc. so it was weird that this turned up as surely Gesaffelstein loves all that stuff. Wall Of Memories could be a Burzum track with it's simple but bizarre piano phrase that is chilling to the (hard)core. Could a horror score be album of the year two years in a row?

*The Space Debris airwaves have been featuring the aforementioned Burzum plus the likes of Bathory, Ulver, Celtic Frost, Wolf Eyes (??), Bene Gesserit, Skin, Swans, Crime & The City Solution, Clint Ruin & Lydia Lunch, Terror Danjah, Isolee, Ricardo Villalobos, Arthur Russell, Future, Young Thug and er.....Gong. A little old school hip hop has been on the decks too including the likes of LL Cool J, Schooly D, EPMD, Slick Rick, NWA, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Dr Dre etc. with a blog post coming up on these ye olde artists and the current state of Hip-Hop.

2015 Ennui: When's That Rainy Day?

OR WHAT I'M NOT LISTENING TO IN 2015

The unlistened to cds, LPs, mixtapes, net DJ mixes and soundclips are piling up. There's not enough time or energy in my life. I am in no way a collector for the sake of having things, being a completest etc. If something's shite to my eardrums it goes out of my life pretty quickly. Then there's the magazines, webzines, blogs and books that aren't getting a look in either. Oh.... and that circus in town that I haven't been to (Was I gonna go to that? Well there is the off chance that a lion may eat its tamer or an elephant running amok)......and I've got 7 unfinished blog posts that have been sitting in the draft box for a good while now.

Let's start with the new, old and new old LPs & cds that are piling up.

I finally got a copy of this like 20 years after it was compiled. This was one of the first things released on Soul Jazz. I think this is some kind of anniversary reissue. Nu Yorican Roots!: The Rise Of Latin Music In New York City In The 60s also on Soul Jazz was fucking gold, so I'm looking forward to listening to this....one day

This should be good...found it on a trip to Adelaide a month or so ago. This came out a few years ago on Soundway. I love a bit of cumbia. Soundway's previous Columbia! was great, as were the 3 cds in their Panama! series ..... should be good ..... one day.

Been looking for this for like 10 years. Warner Jepson's Totenantz arrived in the mail the other day. That cover is awesome! ....don't really know what to expect from this one, which will be a nice surprise....soon....maybe.

This one arrived with the above....can't recall when this was reissued but it was made in like 69 or 70 or 71 or 72. Sonic Youth obviously ripped off the Perspectives Musicales series (of which there 10 LPs, the EMI ones I'm talking about) artwork. Another surprise package.....

Another one that's taken me like 10 years to get and I still haven't played it.....

Well at least I've heard this before but this is like the first proper reissue of Carlo Maria Cordio's classic soundtrack Rosso Sangue from 1981. Looking forward to hearing this in it's complete form....at some stage.

This one I know and love too....but I still haven't played it in it's full audio glory, having only had a crappy mp3 version previously.....oh well.....when's a rainy day?

I was very excited when this arrived but it remains unplayed....could be the first one to get aired. This is a 2015 archival release on Sonic Boom's Space Age label.

God I finally shelled out the cash for this only a few years after it's release. The Lost Tapes arrived a couple of months back..... how can a triple cd of lost Can recordings remain unplayed for so long?

Now this has been in line the longest. I bought it from Beatport when it came out earlier this year. The first Volume was in my best of 2014 list yet this 2nd Volume is yet to rack up any i-tunes stats. Is Deep-Tech still a thing? This has been on my phone for months.....geez....what's going on?

On it's way......another 2015 horror reissue. This one I've never heard but when it arrives it'll have to get in the queue.

Then there's the rap mixtapes...... OMG there are so many!

I'm surprising myself a lot since I started writing this absurd post. How on earth have I not listened to this? I don't even know if Barter 6 is rated or not. Young Thug featured so much in my Best Of 2014 list that I cannot believe the sounds contained within this mixtape have not reached my eardrums yet.

HBK Gang featured a hell of a lot in my Best Of 2014 list as well. Kool John's $hmopcity was one of the best albums/mixtapes of last year so like the above Young Thug it's totally unreasonable that this has had no airplay round at my place yet!!!

Cash Out, Young Dolph, Tink, Teeflii, Lucky Eck$, Boogie, Sauce Twinz & Sosaman, Denzel Curry, TM88, Katie Got Bandz, Bankroll Fresh, Snootie Wild etc. etc. have all released mixtapes/albums of note apparently. Downloaded, not played.

Don't even get me started on the DJ Mixes, articles, books.....

I could go on. My blog would be great if I'd listened to all of the above and written about them wouldn't it? Perhaps I should set myself the task of writing about every one of these releases once heard, surely that is why I started this blog in the first place.

Hang on....I almost forgot this one (below) from last year, which has been in the queue the longest....inexplicably I might not ever listen to it.