On The Hi-Fi

I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age In America 1950-1990 -

Various Artists

Totally diggin these mellow vibes man. Some of my/your favourite new age/ambient heroes are here like Laraaji, Iasos, Don Slepain, Constance Demby, Michael Stearns & Larkin. Then there's a whole bunch of fellow astral travellers I've not heard of like Judith Trip, Daniel Emmanuel... The best discovery for me here is Aeoliah who gives us 11 and a half minutes of cosmic ear candy, waves of plinky keyboards give way to moon desert guitar bliss to free your mind on the track Tien Fu: Heaven's Gate. That Constance Demby track is killer and indicates her influence on the neo-cosmic underground er.. hello Motion Sickness Of Time Travel. Actually this compilation probably would never have come out if its artists weren't such a big influence on the whole hypnagogic/vapourwave scene of the last few years. This once reviled genre (new age) continues its much warranted rehabilitation.  Fans of the excellent but now inactive blog Crystal Vibrations rejoice, your album of the year has arrived. 

Cosmic Machine: A Voyage across French Cosmic & Electronic Avant Garde (1970-1980) - Various Artists

When I read that an LP was coming out with that title I got very excited. I thought 'Yeah about time the French got their due in respect this kind of gear.'  I guess I was expecting to hear from the likes of Heldon, Spacecrft, Fondation, Patrick Vian, Illitch, Thierry Muller, Metal Urbain, Puzzle etc and maybe a bit of French library by Jean Pierre Decerf or Bernard Fevre. Anyway Fevre appears but none of the rest do. France's 3 most famous musical exports appear however ie. Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Michel Jarre & Jean-Jaques Perry. I possibly would have used the word pop in the title like 'A Voyage Across French Electronic Pop.' but hey that's not gonna fit for the market they're aiming for though is it? Semantics aside this is a good survey of 70s electronic pop French stylee much of which I'm unaware of.

Bandidos OST - Egisto Macchi (1967)

Choice Spaghetti Western soundtrack from possibly my favourite Italian soundtrack/library composer. We all need more of this in our lives. We should all live like we're in a Spaghetti Western doncha think? I don't know even what that means. Oh dear.....

The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue OST-Giuliano Sorgini

This tedious film had like 15 different names and it was set up north in the UK but it was Spanish! Sorgini is Italian and I'd previously heard his Under Pompelmo LP which was some funky shit from 1973 and also went under a different name, London Transport! That's all very confusing isn't it? This soundtrack however is one of the best Italian horror soundtracks ever. Its up there with Goblin's Suspiria and Profundo Rosso, Riz Ortilani's Cannibal Holocaust, Morricone's Argento trilogy, Libra's Schock, Nico Findenco's Zombie Holocaust er... and the list goes on. This soundtrack from 1974 has all the right spooky psych-funk vibes with strings, electronics and awesome drumming. The atmospheres are creepy with haunted organs and witchy woodwinds.  Sinister laughing and screams permeate the soundtrack and I loves it. 

Debris Pics 1

Me likey this one a lot.

These 4 photos (i-phone-no fx) come from the Sunraysia district in November 2013.

Two are from me backyard!

Steve Brule-Puppets

This is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I can barely watch this, it hurts!

Girls & Menda

The Year My Voice Broke (1987)
Menda (left) and Taylor (right)

Menda in Girls

Noah in Game Of Thrones

I just watched the second season of Girls and hey that was weird wasn't it? Way less laughs in this season. It had me thinkin of Woody Allen doing Interiors after his early comic hits ie. Girls season 2 was really quite bleak and disturbing. Then in maybe the second to last episode my continuity/disbelief suspension was totally ruptured. Great Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn shows up as Jessa's dad! My viewing then switches from identifying with the kids/20 somethings to then having to readjust to relating to Mendelsohn's character's situation as he's only a couple of years older than me. Funnily enough it was not that dissimilar to mine as in he'd moved to the country and was watering the grass, something I'd never done until 2 days ago. I guess I relate to the characters in Girls in a retroactive kind of way. I watch them and see what they're up to and mainly think 'Thank god I'm not that age anymore'. I still relate to their more universal human characteristics though. Just like when I watch The Simpsons I still relate to Bart on a lot of levels but I'm also surprised how Homer-like I can be. Is this navel gazing? Anyway seeing Ben Mendelsohn put me in mind of a time in the early 90s when late at night after boozing on there he was in the same St Kilda kebab shop as me. I remember thinking 'He's from one of my all time fave movies (The Year My Voice Broke) and here he is just as drunk and in need of late night lamb sandwich as me'. Noah Taylor from that same movie turns up in Game Of Thrones but that wasn't nearly anywhere near as jarring as Menda being in Girls makin me feel well old. I guess also Taylor's appearance doesn't jar because Game Of Thrones is fantasy while Girls almost feels like Cinema Verite. Oh shit I'm in trouble now with the pretentious police for saying C..... V.....  Judy Collins, yes the singer from the 60s, makes an appearance too, looking quite frightening. Lena Dunham, Girls creator, has created some exceptional characters including Hannah played by herself. One wonders/worries how autobiographical Hannah actually is with her escalating OCD and Hypochondria. In Girls the boys are especially brilliantly acted. Ray, Charlie and Adam are confusing, complex, frightening, stupid and real. Then there's the ladies, Jessa is fabulous, Shosh is just weird and how much do you hate Hannah's mum and bloody Marnie? It's one of the few telly shows right now worth watching.

Ray. Service with a sneer.

Australian Landscape

 Classic Australian Landscape (I-phone pic, no fx).

RIP LOU REED

What can I say? You either know what this man means to music or you don't care. One word from me will do: Legend.

Jesus Christ, I forgot how good this tune is!

Rihanna-Pour It Up

Love this tune. One of her best ever no doubt.

Loving this too. I've never paid much attention to this dude until I saw this video today. It's kinda like 70s Rod Stewart meets Prince (er.....that's meant to be a compliment). It's pretty pretty good.

Other observations after watching the top 50 on channel V today.

*Why do people insist on using ye olde microphones in their film clips? Its like they have to give us a visual representation of the fact that they are influenced by ye olde music. They've been doin this in music videos since at least the 80s. Anyway there was a slew of ye olde microphones in the top 50, I'm lookin at you James Arthur.  Which is funny coz all the songs in the top 50 pretty much sound the same. If one of these (see below) turns up in a video you know the song's gonna be shite. MK20 have 2 antique microphones doubling the shiteness of their song. Then there's 2 more in the Capital Cities video. James Arthur went for a triple shite threat!  Retromania gone wild.

*Bruno Mars also has a vintage microphone in his video but its kinda cool (late 60s/early70s, not like the above) so he gets away with it. 

*Ham's The Wire has got to be the worst thing I've seen/heard in a long long time. I can't even begin to describe that attempt at a song.

*Britney's new track has got a riff like a UK 'ardore tune from 92!

*I was shocked by all the Mumford wannabes.

*The dude from One Republic looks like Australian cricketer Michael Clarke a lot, it's weird.

*All you fogeys complaining about sex in videos need to redirect your outrage toward the Arcade Fire. Words like vile should be saved for discussions on the artistic merits of such a pop group.

*Who buys all these Jason Derulo tunes? He had like 3 in the top 50 but I can't remember how any of them go.

*Has GaGa run out of steam?

*Do they make pants for ladies in the 21st century?

Arcon 2 - Liquid Earth

Loving this track. The opening 1 minute 15 seconds is Burial ten years early. The weird thing is I was listening to Burial's Untrue on my phone while I was surfing the net (that's a quaint term now innit?) and the album finished. 7 or 8 minutes later this tune came on. I thought 'er..this must be a secret track that I've never noticed before.' But I went to now playing and it said nothing was playing. I thought 'Gee that Burial is freakin me out with his ghost trax that aren't even playing.' Anyway by the time the drum and bass breaks arrive I realise something's up. So I scroll through what I was looking at on the interweb and it turns out I'd accidentally hit play to start this mix over at blog to the oldskool.  Coincidence or not?

Luke Vibert's Nuggets 3

Just discovered this on i-tunes today and couldn't wait for the vinyl so I downloaded it. This is Luke Vibert's 3rd volume of selections taken from various library music archives. Volume 3 is material taken exclusively from the Bruton Library vaults I believe. Volume I had tunes from Chappell, Southern, IM and PIL music libraries and was where i discovered such luminaries as Roger Roger and Nino Nardini. Further Nuggets was the second volume in this series and was my introduction to the likes of Eric Peters, Bernard Fevre and Roger Davey. Since the release of those two compilations over 10 years ago now, we are all a lot more informed about music libraries thanks to the many blogs that popped up specialising in this music. Many library classics and not so classics (there's a lot more of those) have been shared and heard thanks to the likes of Funky Frolic, Dusty Shelf, Val Verde Music, Retro-Teque, Library Music Rarities et al. Many of these blogs though have now closed down. Anyway thanks to those legendary bloggers I am well aware of the Bruton catalogue. Having said that many of the tunes on Nuggets 3 I've not heard.  Down-tempo crime funk, space age disco and car chase themes are the order of the day here. However there are some anomalies. Scratch City is as the title hints a scratching hip hop jam!? Adrian Baker & Ray Morgan give us the Beach Boy-esque In Close Harmony while Bill Campbell & Aaron Harry throw up (apt word for it) Galaxy a Reggae tune! Alan Hawkshaw and Brian Bennett both make several excellent contributions ensuring that this collection's status goes beyond mere novelty. The discovery for me though is these five tracks from Francis Monkman (The prog guy of Curved Air/Sky fame). These top synthetic noir funk jams sound like they could be coming out of today's underground. Now where are all those library music files.....

Scarecrows

Those three are actually quite scary but this next one is just awesome.

Foo on the farm.