A fabulous toe tappin' symphonic-soul number that sounds like a Curtis Mayfield production but is actually some dude from Scotland. Everything here is just pop perfection. I was going through a mysterious playlist I'd created on youtube a while ago called "wow" and this popped up. So it was actually a "wow what a great tune" moment so I thanked my past self for compiling this list. I imagine this is some kind of northern soul classic.
Name It You Got It will put a smile on your face, a spring in your step and make you feel glad to be alive!...well for the duration of the track at least but hey that vibe just may stick with you for the rest of the day.
Rewind.
[Later research]
Reveals the music director here is none-other than producer, arranger and guitarist Pip Williams. His prolific production and arrangement credits include Sweet, Walker Brothers, Status Quo, The Moody Blues, Shirley Bassey, Richard O'Brien, Dr. Feelgood, Barclay James Harvest, Geordie, Mud, Uriah Heep, Colin Blunstone, Carl Douglas, Ringo Starr, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, The Kinks and many more.
Arvo Pärt - Cantus in Memoriam of Benjamin Britten (1984) Because sometimes the best music is the most obvious music cf. The Rolling Sones. Bells bells bells. Listening to this just makes me want more bells. I kinda wish some mental improv group would do like an hour long interpretation of this with way more bells. Also why didn't Arvo write way more suff for bells?
There's a shitload of versions of this on youtube but it's a case of the original is best. This was the recording most of us first heard Cantus In Memorium... as it featured on Pärt's breakthrough album Tabula Rasa on ECM in 1984. I can't find an earlier version but one must exist because, if I recall correctly, the head honcho of ECM heard it on his car radio years before he ever tracked Arvo down and organised the Tabula Rasa recording project. Perhaps it was a live radio only concert version... who knows?
Five of the best minutes in recorded music history.
Geez this Shizuka tune is fucking devastating. If you don't know but you love yer Velvets, Paisley Underground, Galaxie 500, Mazzy Star etc. this is for you but it's way more emotionally cathartic.
The core of Shizuka were singer-songwriter guitarist Shizuka Miura and her husband ex-Les Rallizes Dénudés/Fushitsusha guitarist Maki Miura.
In the 90s they appeared on volumes two and three of PSF's Tokyo Flashback compilation series and Virgin's Cosmic Kurushi Monsters double cd. This nine minute epic comes from Shizuka's one and only studio LP Heavenly Persona released on the legendary PSF label in 1994.
Similar to Les Rallizes Dénudés, Shizuka were mainly a live concern. They also had a bunch of live records and several live vhs video tapes issued during their 18 year existence. Shizuka have become near mythical since the rumoured suicide death of Shizuka Miura in 2010.
This was Vajra's opening salvo and it was infernal to its psychedelic core.
We've got both Keiji Haino and Kan Makami sharing insane vocal and guitar duties while Toshiaki Ishizuka takes care of percussion in this trio.
I think it was Keiji Haino who said in the pre-Napster/pre-Spotify 90s that he'd listened to something like thirty three thousand LPs so it's no surprise that this instrumental odyssey could be claimed by at least ten different genres: Psychedelic, avantgarde, cosmic, no-wave-y post-punk, improv, goth, shoegaze, folk, noise rock, black metal, post rock, drone etc. In a way I feel like it's closest to Swans in spirit and sound than anything else though.
I guess I'm talking about the song up until the 5:16 point where it then proceeds to become another song entirely. I still don't know what this second stage is exactly...some kind of absurd avant folk blues.
Haino and Makami are very rarely about comforting the listener with musical compositions similar to what you've heard before so whilst the first five minutes here seem to have a past within their present and future the remaining 27 minutes of Vajra's debut LP doesn't have such easily navigable coordinates. You need to be a fearless psychonaut to venture beyond this track which has the English translation Before The Snow Falls, Falling Leaves Have No Meaning as it was included on that Virgin comp Cosmic Kurushi Monsters sans the second part if I recall correctly.
Vajra - Tsugaru (1995)
In the 90s I used to wonder; why isn't Keiji Haino (and his myriad of projects) a massive indie star on the same sort of level as Sonic Youth or at least as popular as Boredoms. After listening back to Vajra's brilliant 1995 cd Tsugaru today I can understand why. Maybe his other outfits Fushitsusha or Nijiuma could have been big though as they had more accessible potential whilst still being immensely dark in tone.
I finally caught Haino live sometime in the early 00s in Melbourne and I have to say it was the least fun show I think I've ever been to. I honestly don't know how he did it. I can listen to the most unlistenable rackets at the best of times but on this bleak winter's evening on a week night he improvised the most discomforting dysphoric music possibly ever created. Haino assembled the most aesthetically displeasing sequence of sounds these ears have heard. He made Neubauten and Masonna sound like Herb Alpert but hang on perhaps that's a misnomer as noise artists actually often create music that's incredibly pleasing as it might have psychedelic or cathartic properties. No the music on this night while not sounding like a cross between Polka and Celine Dion style pop had a similar revolting aesthetic affect on me and my mate. Then again maybe we'd just smoked too much pot, drank the wrong amount of beer and were a bit grumpy.
Another latin pop delight from Elia & Elisabeth taken from their self-titled 1973 LP. My mind has gone blank, was there a name for this genre of music?
This one has a vibing sweet pop sound that is along the lines of what you would expect to come out of South America in the late 60s/early 70s except it has a wide eyed innocence all of its own.
Soy Una Nube is a tropical funky-psych-pop confection of the most enchanting variety. It's still garage rock though innit. I mean it feels like the backing band are gonna fully break loose any minute with G-L-O-R-I-A!
This is the sweetest, breeziest tropical garage pop sound ever.
In 2014 Vampi-Soul issued a compilation of Elia y Elisabeth's work from the early 70s, introducing this wonderful duo to the western world forty years after their heyday. These tunes were little revelations of the latin tropical pop variety. Elia and Elisabeth Fleta were sisters who were somewhat famous in Spain and Columbia where they appeared often on television. They were grandchildren of famous Spanish musician Miguel Fleta.
Ponte Bajo el Sol is an infectious tropical pop gem infused with a garage psych vibe. Check out the subtle fuzz, farfisa and wah-wah here. This tune even popped up on an episode of the tv show Narcos. Elia y Elisabeth's two LPs have recently been reissued in terrific remastered form which I recommend.
Heard this for the first time today. This is wild, great fun flute damaged driving heavy psych with bonus cowbell. I Know nothing about Mexican music whatsoever so this has opened my eyes. I've got psych comps from everywhere on earth but I don't own one from Mexico. I guess nobody ever recommended any and I never heard any Mexican music on the radio. I thought I had all of those great Love, Peace & Poetry psych comps but somehow no I missed the Mexican one. Anyway how good is flute in rock music? Don't trust the anti-flute taste police. The world needs more funky heavy psychedelic flute led rock!
So the last post was 2023's The Beggar Lover (Three) from Swans and it is apparently the last piece in the trilogy which started here twenty five years ago with the first Body Lovers album. The Body Lovers were Michael Gira's first post Swans project. This was recorded not long after their 90s break up and it was an auspicious debut cd. When we first got to hear this, it made the demise of Swans seem not so bad. If we were going to get incredible recordings like this who needed the Swans moniker anymore.
This is the the first part of the trilogy. A beautiful yet brutal expansive epic instrumental jam encompassing an infinite plethora of cosmic thrum. Check out some of the underground travellers contributing to this eternal monolithic mother of "psycho-ambient"* James Plotkin, Norman Westberg, Christoph Hahn, Larry Mullins, Mika Vaino, Martin Bisi, Helge Sten etc. Now lots of all star recordings end up with too many cooks spoiling the musical broth but not here. I think my favourite contribution here is by Ultra Vivid Scene's Kurt Ralske who plays a mesmerising flugelhorn for a glorious ten minutes from the 17:10 mark. He creates an entirely eerie stillness of the most wintry variety.
Number One Of Three is a whirring rumble of infinite proportions and is indeed one of the great recording of the 90s. I can't remember if it was held in high esteem like say Techno Animal's Re-Entry or Talk Talk's Laughing Stock or Deathprod's 90s trilogy or early Pan Sonic but it deserves to be. It was disappointing that The Body Lovers/Body Haters project only went on to record one more cd before Gira started the less inspired Angels Of Light (I gotta say I stopped buying their cds after the first couple, maybe I need to go back...)
*Psycho-ambient is a nifty term Michael Gira created to describe Number One Of Three.
**Swans sleuths have pointed me in the direction of the bonus cd accompanying the deluxe edition of 2010's My Father Will Guide Me... cd for the location of part two of the trilogy. It's a 46 minute track called Look At Me Go.
It was extraordinary that Swans released the best LP of 2012 because you know they'd been around forever and even broken up. Recalibrated bands never really work cf Pixies: Nobody cares about their new music. Thee Seer (2012) however was glorious and quite possibly their best work. This never happens.
So it is excellent to hear this new 44 minute epic because it is actually comparable to the title track to The Seer as well as The Body Lovers/Body Haters project. There are no classic era Swans members left like Mosimann, Jarboe or Westberg. I love my 80s & 90s Swans but somehow I can just accept this 2023 band without many qualms. I guess in my head it is the 21st century Swans: A separate entity where the boundaries of Soundtracks For The Blind era, The Body Lovers, Angels Of Light and solo Gira dissipate then intermingle...anyway blah blah...I was not expecting anything from the second resurrection of Swans to be this monumental, so The Beggar Lover (Three) is like Christmas.
A Michael Gira megamix of cosmic proportions. Expansive to infinity...
This went to number one in Italy and Switzerland. I do find it interesting when songs are way more successful in certain territories. I mean this didn't even crack the Australian top 100 and only reached number 49 at home in the UK, yet it went to number two in Germany and Austria. What about this tune made it appeal to Europeans so much? Or was it just marketed better in those regions?
Anyway what a great sense of dynamics they had along with classic tunefulness. The sound sometimes gets wild like it could get totally out of control but it is tightly conducted to an exquisite degree.
Some say they couldn't see their later career aesthetics coming but come on you can hear they are absolutely on a different sonic plain to any mid 80s pop band right here.
This just tears me apart. All these conflicting emotions within this song mixed with nostalgia for a time when music like this was on the radio and the dysphoria of 2023 coalesce for a perfect storm of intense poignancy. I honestly couldn't tell ya if Browne had any other decent songs but who cares, it this one that matters.
The demented elated loneliness of being so in love but knowing your relationship is a doomed slow burning ticking time bomb, the heart wrenching jealousy of imagining the one you love fucking somebody else, the empty bliss of one night stands and all that shit comes rushing back upon hearing this.
Then there's that whole vibe of the song being on the radio when you were eleven. So you could only imagine what this song's sentiments were all about but you felt them through your preteen heart anyhow. And flashing back to that feeling as an old bastard who ended up going through all those emotions, it's a complex array of feelings. All the feels.
Because it's like the greatest 80s tune: An undeniable timeless anthem.
We need more songs like this in our lives to remind us that, yes this is our life and it doesn't belong to the fucking retarded government, the insane cultural revolution people who run everything, the fucking hideous mega corporations, the mental patient climate alarmists, big tech, big pharma, the UN, the WHO and all these unelected fucks trying to social engineer everything.
Australia is done. They have forgotten what pluralism means and there must only be one viewpoint à la Stalin & Mao style otherwise you are demonised as an extremist.
I'm not changing any of my fucking words. I'm not participating in the daft cultural revolution. Fuck identity politics. Fuck the victimhood olympics of the mental intersectional oppression hierarchy. Fuck cheerleading endless war. Fuck the idiots who think male-inclusive lesbianism can be a thing. Fuck the censorship industrial complex. Fuck the racial division of Australia's voice to parliament. Fuck Kieran Perkins. It's all nonsense!
Anyway thank you Mark Hollis for your song that strikes me right in the heart of my human-ness. A lot of us wish it was still 1984 instead of Nineteen Eighty Four.
Old school Norwegian ambient black metal that's now categorised as dungeon synth. Had to post this as it's an example of what a masterpiece in the genre is. Creepy organs, even creepier liturgical chanting and whooshes of exquisite darkness. Supreme sombre tone throughout.
This is the sorta sound that I was expecting from the previous post's Gnometopia by Eldergleam. Even though this album has been termed "Comfy Synth" it's still pretty much "Dungeon Synth" ie. it isn't dissimilar to Burzum's ambient tracks or early Mortiis. Flies The Coop would have been called black metal or dark ambient back in the day. In the last fifteen years however many of these recordings dating back to the early 90s have been retro-actively categorised as Dungeon Synth. Then in the last five years a few current divergent micro-genres have emerged from that including "Winter Synth", "Dino Synth" and "Comfy Synth". The type of music in these new categories is pretty self explanatory and perhaps a bit stupid.
In the comments of this Hole Dweller video I notice a lot of nerdy references to gaming, tech, hobbits, pipeweed etc. but it's just good synth tunes to me. Like church organs emanating from a Norwegian woods, these pastoral synth jams sometimes become haunting and at other stages quite anthemic.
So I came across this somewhere on the interwebs and thought well thats the best album cover ever. Hoping it was gonna be some kind of cute black metal crossed with something like Tubular Bells or at least some classic old school dungeon synth. That wasn't to be. It's eleven minutes of simple wobbly synth ambience which is lovely enough while it's playing. Apparently this is part of the recent "Comfy Synth" genre which is actually related to "Dungeon Synth" which was a 90s black metal micro-genre. Anyway there is a childlike innocence here to match the cover, perhaps just not matching what the band logo promised. I guess it has a retro science/kids telly vibe which in turn makes it a somewhat distant cousin to "Haunty-logic" music. I mean this is much closer sonically to Paddy Kingsland than say Depressive Silence.
This group didn't even release a single in the 60s. The New Breeds only had one recording Girl In Love which appeared on a 1966 compilation album that was never commercially released. Hillside Album No. 1 was a promotional sampler for a bunch of Columbus Ohio bands that was used to try and get gigs. Then this tune wasn't rediscovered until it appeared in 1998 on the brilliant Teenage Shutdown Volume 6: I'm Down Today compilation.
Hearing something like this you might assume half the 80s Flying Nun roster, The Blue Orchids, The Moles or The Beta Band were big fans but Girl In Love wasn't in wide circulation until 1999 long after The Moles Tendrils & Paracetamol or Beta Band's The Three EPshad been released.
A moody garage classic: The rolling jangles, atmospheric organ and to die for enthusiastic gloomy harmonies all add to the el-cheapo lo-fi bargain basement Beach Boys charm of this record.
One of the best 60s tunes you never heard...unless of course you have.
Premium moody garage. Swirling horror movie organ with menacing guitar strums and a dark bass tone weave their black magic and yet the doomed melodic vocals are somewhat uplifting. You gotta ride the doom to escape the gloom... I think I just made that up. Timmy's discount aphorisms: I'm giving them away.
The Outsiders - She's Coming On Stronger (1965/6?)
Then sometimes you just need an insane rave up where everything's in the red. A manic stomping beat with spirited crowd chorus vocals to shake off your cobwebs. A wild energetic burst of sound to obliterate your mind for a moment, well, two minutes and eighteen seconds of moments.
This is The Outsiders from Tampa Florida not to be confused with The Outsiders from Cleveland or The Outsiders from The Netherlands. This lot recorded two 7" singles on Tampa's Knight Records.
Another charming slice of pre-Velvets moody & broody teen beat garage that really sounds like it coulda been an 80s or 90s Velvets-damaged lo-fi indie tune. If you told me Lou or Sterling or Dean had played on this I wouldn't have battered an eye.
The Innsmen were a bunch of teenagers from Edsel Ford High. They were another Michigan group who did just the one 7" single in 1966 and that was their recording career done but...
Then there's the other side of garage rock, quite often literally the flipside. These groups would put a garage rocker on one side and a slow sad tune on the other. One Teenage Shutdown compilation's sub heading summed it up nicely calling it "Moody and Brooding Teen Misery Garage Rock". A lot of this stuff is pre-Velvets proto-indie slow-fi.
This tune Girl by Keggs is a fine example of what we're talking about. A wide eyed and innocent break up song with an atmospheric tone set by the minimalist low key instrumentation that really is a blueprint for the twee-core of Jonathan Richman.
For creating such a seminal tune Keggs really get fuck all recognition. Anyway it's a crackin' tune whether it's part of the narrative or not innit.
Then sometimes a song just insidiously inserts itself into your life. This was on a 60s garage mixtape youtube video along with like 35 other tunes. It was a very lo-fi, almost unlistenable version but I got drawn back to it time and time again. Then I had to find a better version and after several fidelity upgrades I think this one on @musicmastersdrumtracks2428 channel is the best. I'm For The Things You Do hasn't got the most monstrous fuzz or the most insane neanderthal snarls or a gimmick to sell you. No it's just sweet, subtle and sneaks into your consciousness. All of a sudden it's one of your favourite tunes from the 60s.
