Kim Salmon with STM - You Know Me Better Than That (1994)
Totally forgot about this tune and the Hey Believer LP it came from. Speaking of mid 90s rock performers in Australia I mean Kim Salmon (ex-Scientists) was killing it, well he was in Melbourne anyway. Kim Salmon & The Surrealists shows were reaching levels of delirium circa 93/94/95. I recall a couple of great packed ones at The Club and one at the Punters where his pants were so low we thought they were gonna fall off. It was magic how they stayed up.
The band he had for this particular song and half of the album though was STM which contained legends Warren Ellis, Jim White and that dude from King Idiot on bass who if I recall correctly later died of an overdose. They used to play at the Great Britain a lot then later I recall attending a week-night residency many times in probably 93 at the Punters. I'm not sure the band was advertised as STM. Actually I always thought they were called TheBody Electric like they were when they backed Charlie Marshall. It might have just been promoted as Kim Salmon solo actually. A lot of the live stuff didn't make it to this cd or anywhere actually. You forget that bands and artists have entire periods and phases that go undocumented.
Anyway this shit right here is peak performance from Kim. The entire group though is absolutely cooking. I'm saying this could be the finest track Warren ever collaborated on. I mean it's scintillating with its sort of Shaft-esque infectious energy. I dunno what Warren's doing here - some sort of picking at the violin. And Jim is effervescent on the skins once again. Whatever's going on with this fusion of lounge, symphonic soul, disco and swamp rock somehow they make it fresh and not particularly resembling any of those influences. The tense fluxion here makes this irresistibly pop and irresistible pop.
What a great tune. I ignored this era of The Go-Betweens. God knows why (well because I think band reformations are lame and they usually are). They were on a hell of a comeback roll. They used to play at a joint that was literally just around the corner from my place in the 00s. I regret not seeing them. My friends went. What was I thinking? This tune is right up there with the Grant greats Cattle And Cane, Dusty In Here, Bachelor Kisses, Streets Of Your Town, Bye Bye Pride, Providence etc. My lord Finding You is so good. There's something about this key that cuts straight to the heart. It's so emotionally devastating it's almost unbearable.
Ed Kuepper - Finding You (2007)
Who better to do a cover than our main man Ed in all his bittersweet and sour glory.
Ed Kuepper - Sea Air (1986)
Haven't heard this one since the 90s. Nobody finds despondency in happiness like Ed or is it the other way round? Or is it just life...ya know ying and yang and ups and downs and highs and lows and such.
Ed Kuepper - Electrical Storm (1985)
The early and mid 90s in Australia really belonged to Kuepper didn't they. On the radio, on cd and in live music venues across the nation. I still think that concert he did on the St Kilda foreshore in maybe 95 is one of the best shows I ever saw. The storm clouds rolled in off the beach as he struck the opening chords of Electrical Storm and the rain threatened to shut down the entire show because danger. You can't buy moments like that.
Some legends doing the guessing here. I gotta say though how good does this dude Joe Nebula aka J Shotter from Nebula II look. Also just his general air is such a good vibe, something to aspire to.
This guessing game is good fun. If you've not come across Blind Test before there's a bunch of old episodes worth watching on jungle, drum n bass, UKG, gabber, ebm and electro.
Listening to this through a computer makes these tunes sound pretty crap. You have to listen to the hardcore breakbeats on a good system or through good headphones at maximum volume otherwise you just ain't gonna get it.
Nebula II - Seance (1991)
tune
Nebula II - Atheama (1991)
Even in this profound dysphoric mood I can still see that this tune is so fucking great. Perhaps this is the ultimate test as to whether music is frivolous or not. Maybe it's the fact that euphoria is a baked in element to a rave track such as this. Hardcore might just save your life. Sounds as fresh as Joe looks.
*Probably not the best idea to get to the end of your tether just to test out whether a hardcore tune is still relevant though. Don't try this at home.
Nebula II - Flatliners (1992)
Classic.
The House Crew - Keep The Fires Burning (1991)
Spoiler alert this is the first track in the test. Wasn't Acen in TheHouse Crew at the time? I wish they had let him elaborate or comment further about this track...anyway...The House Crew were the in-house group for the Production House label.
DJ Biz - Losing Track Of Time (1992)
Spoiler alert part two...This is the one that nobody knew. I reckon maybe I've heard it in a dj mix before but never previously ID-ed it. Losing Track Of Time is the sort of rare lo-fi tune that would have turned up at Blog To The Old School fifteen years ago. Gotta love that it's on a label that had just five releases. Although I suspect No Limit records may have had another five releases that aren't listed on Discogs yet as the catalogue numbers jump from NL-1 to NL-7. Then again anomalies like this aren't uncommon.
DJ Biz - Losing Track Of Time (LTJ Bukem Remix) (1992)
The best phonkay electro jam. The futuristic atmosphere on this still electrifies today.
Jonzun Crew weren't just a a sequenced synthetic studio concept though, they liked to intermingle their technology with live playing making them perhaps a precursor to the original intentions of post-rock or maybe more accurately cyborg-rock. This term which never really took off was meant to categorise bands who mixed hands on real time playing with computerised and programmed technology, a man-machine music. Something about Jonzun Crew's electro funk is definitely different to most electro 12"s of the time giving them more of a timeless, swinging and expansive sound linking them to contemporaneous live funk groups like Gap Band, Zapp and Midnight Star.
*You gotta think INXS were fans as those instrumental sections in that break from 3:20 onwards bear an uncanny resemblance to a couple of tunes off their 1984 LP The Swing namely Melting In The Sun and Burn For You.
**Space is the place now more than ever (in our fantasies) as the abolition of liberty continues in the de-civilisation of the west era here on earth. If an autistic child being arrested in her own home for wrongthink doesn't alarm you to the horrors of our dystopia what more can I say.
Anti-nuke lyrics, industrial-style metal bashing, middle eastern synth breaks, a vocoder chorus and a prime electro beat. 1984 giving you more.
*Breakdancing, roller skating and the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Now one of these things is back in fashion when really what the world needs more of is roller skating and breakdancing.
For a start this is Disconcerto the opening track from the 1979 LP Cosmic Connection and not the title track. It's a synth-pop number done in the space-disco style with classic vocoderized vocals. Plenty of nods to the future here as well as many of its time traits. For synth history nerds, proto-house heads and those cataloguing every tune to ever use vocodered vocals. What a vibe, good stuff.
Yoshida Minako - Tornado (1980) That synthetic bass hook sound so beloved in tunes previously posted like Yarbrough & Peoples Don't Stop The Music, SOS Band's Just Be Good To Me and Chaka Khan's Ain't Nobodyrears its funky head here.
This is disco slowed to such a crawl that it's barely even boogie. Whatever it is, it's one of the great R&B tracks of 1980. The amazing thing is, it has gone unheard outside of Japan for thirty years until probably the mid-2010s when ye olde funky Japanese disco started getting western attention.
The synthetic bass is slowed to a veritable creak, you can hear the tape's been manipulated and decelerated filling Tornado with eeriness and dread. This slow jam is also notable for its exquisite vibraphone usage....oh and not to forget Minako's impeccable vocal arrangement executed immaculately.
This vibe says freedom and being a 70s baby it matches my wrapped in an Hawaiian shirt forever soul.
Masayoshi Takanaka - Tokyo Reggie (1976)
Hang on this needs to be the theme tune for our daily battles against the poisonous nonsense they are selling. I will be demoralised no further because samba jazz funk fusion. Remember when the government and media didn't demonise you for having normal boring viewpoints.
Masayoshi Takanaka - サヨナラ…FUJIさん (1976)
Bless Masayoshi's soul.
Breeze-y with nonchalant cowbell goodness!
"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."
Fuck the humourless anti-human death cult, live life in abundance.
Anyway Masayoshi Takanaka's debut solo LP Seychelles (1976) which contains the above three tunes was reissued a couple of months ago. Once again however if you missed out it's already going for silly prices. Although unlike Tatsuro Yamashita you can find many Takanaka records on Spotify and youtube.
I first heard this guy seven or eight years ago on that Nippon Funk compilation. He's since become a bit of a cult figure on the internet because his tune An Insatiable High (1977) went viral.
All bets are off folks. Enjoy the devastating demoralised euphoria of the greatest apocalyptic post-punk jam of them all. What even is this? What are the band actually doing? These random, out of tune, clangorous, gunk ridden and grinding sounds are strikingly moved around creating a potent dark dissonance that is unexpected and rare. Avant rock noise in excelsis.
Since discovering this thirty three years ago the intensity of this aural obliteration never gets any less astounding. Flipper conjure absolute revelatory black magic on One By One. It's negative, defeatist, bleak yet exciting...invigorating. The most utterly exhilarating downbeat gloom ever put to record.
More intense thick slabs of bass in your face from the 80s. This one might just be the peak for me. Everything about this...
Demented Australian subterranean rock (feedtime, Salamander Jim, Lubricated Goat, Thug, Box The Jesuit, Fungus Brains, Venom P Stinger, Black Eye Records et al.) was at a supreme level at the time. Unfortunately for me I was still in high school in the middle of Woop Woop so I didn't get to experience this post-Birthday Party/post-hardcore noise-rock first hand during its scuzzy prime. Indeed King Snake Roost were done and dusted by 1990 before I'd reached the big smoke.
The menacing funky bass here is provided by Michael Raymond who's obviously indebted to J J Burnel and Tracy Pew. I don't really know that much about him. The debut King Snake Roost album From Barbarism To Christian Manhood seems to be the only record he ever worked on. While KSR recorded three LPs in their time and were somewhat renowned because ex-Grong Grong and Bloodloss legend Charles Tolnay was the guitarist, this first LP in particular, artistically belongs to Raymond. He wrote the music and lyrics for six of the album's eight songs including Dead All Over. Then he appears to disappear from the music scene entirely never to return. Did he die or just retire? Déjà vu.
KSR would go on to infamy and acclaim with their following two LPs and subsequent signing to Amphetamine Reptile Records after Michael Raymond's departure. For me though From Barbarism To Christian Manhood is their highlight.
The greatest rock'n'roll tune you never heard. I first heard this on a Dr Boogie compilation 20 years ago and assumed it must have been a golden oldie that I somehow missed well... my dad must have missed thus not passing it onto me. However a quick look on discogs reveals this 1962 one off 7" single from Bobby Verne only started popping up on compilations during the 90s. Where the hell was it for 30 years?
Anyway what an incredible slice of mysterious lost rockabilly, complete with an array of premium atmospheric twangery, a sublime sax solo and a menacing undercurrent. It does not get better than this! Pop culture perfection right here folks.
Haha haha ha bahahaha. This is still so fuckin funny. Ironically it's also absolutely thrilling rock and roll-wise: The drama, the performance poetry, the seething vitriol, the scathing denunciation, the unbridled wit - all instinctual and within a genius innate dark art rock jam worthy of the most insufferable turd. This is taken from the second record of the double Great Truckin' Songs Of The Renaissance LP which was the performance poetry, prankster collage, lo-fi tape art record as opposed to the first disc which was more on the commercial new wave pop genius tip.
I Hadn't heard this since the 80s when I was in high school. Fuck I thought The Doors were naff when I was a teenager. My older brother liked them. He even had a fucking Jim Morrison t-shirt and permed his fucking long straight brown hair to emulate him or was that Barnsey or Hutchence or was there even a fucking difference. This is the funniest! I was just writhing in my chair in pain with laughter causing asthma. I love how it had a go at all the rock stars we liked Nick Cave, Hugo Race, Mozza, Bob Smith and even hilariously Albert Camus. Even though we were all somewhat fans to varying degrees of these "private school depression idols" we also knew they were absolute tools. I didn't become a bona fide Doors fan until after the 90s. I actually got drunk with Hugo Race once during the 90s and he was so normal it was weird, top bloke he was.
In my year eleven class level in 1988 there were probably 80 to 100 students and there was just me and my best mate Nicole who were into this record. Then again I didn't take a poll of the other kids and really, I didn't know any of them from a bar of soap so maybe there were a hundred owners of Great Truckin' Songs Of The Renaissance LP. I mean surely most of us saw that insane live performance on Rock Arena so...
*I have to say I don't think I fully comprehended the genius of This Is Serious Mum as a band, as a musical entity. I mean as comedians, pranksters, satirists, conceptual artists, polemicists and shit-stirrers they were obviously supreme. BUT I didn't recognise their music melded with these other outstanding attributes as the fascinating beast that it actually is.
**Listening to this today has made me disappointed in myself. The fact that I understood and loved a track such as this should have, for one, shielded me against being seduced by retarded French theorists for more than a decade. I mean it is a pure Aussie instinct to smell the bullshit from a mile off. I was a pure sarcastic Australian kid and many said this was to my detriment but fuck me it was my best characteristic. Even my best friend said my sneering cynicism was too negative. The fact that I ever became enamoured by any nonsense, poisonous ideas and mind viruses over the years is a fucking embarrassment. And hey I'll take the shame but hey at least I admit it.
*** I didn't really fanatically follow This Is Serious Mum after this record. I think my rationale must have been: You can't be a good band musically if you're funny. So while I appreciated them on a clever, comedic and satirical level, I could not also see that they were just as interesting musically and in fact the two concepts needn't be separated. I realise this makes me look stupid and yeah what a twit I was. I guess I was trying to shake off the image of being the doyen of sardonicism...yep what a cunt! I can see parallels to 80s NZ renegades like Axemen and Headless Chickens as well as new wave mavericks like Mental As Anything, R Stevie Moore and They Might Be Giants. TISM though have their own internal logic causing an idiosyncratic classic pop sound.
****The only ever overseas review of Great Truckin Songs... I saw was in Melody Maker but it was actually written by an ex-pat. I've always wondered what people who have never lived in Australia must think of TISM and wether they actually get it. Then I realise why the fuck would I care about that!
When thick slabs of bass ruled. In the 80s groups like The Birthday Party, PIL, Hunters & Collectors, Flipper flung menacing bass in your face and we couldn't get enough.
Runaway is an outstanding moment in The Moodists funny little catalogue. Actually it might be even better heard in the context of the first side of their Thirsty's Calling LP. In that scenario it's even more startling because what had gone before in the previous four songs had been more dense, energetic and upbeat. But Runaway strips it all back and slows everything down to a menacing crawl. This restrained seething atmosphere becomes an incredibly intense mantra. I mean for the first one minute and fifty four seconds it's just unadorned bass and drums while Graney's vehement tone builds in fervour as his vocals start overlapping and responding back. Then when the mangled guitar enters, the song is engulfed in a fabulously ferocious cacophony.
So while other Moodists here Mick Turner, Clare Moore and Dave Graney went onto further fame and acclaim during the 90s and beyond in acts such as The Dirty Three, The Coral Snakes etc. the star of the show here is virtually an unknown these days. Veteran bass player Chris Walsh was however an integral character in the Melbourne punk and post-punk milieu. He was even around in the pre-punk proto-punk days.
Previous to joining The Moodists Walsh had been in groups Judas Iscariot And The Traitors, The Reals, The Negatives and The Fabulous Marquises etc. with various legendary Melbourne musicians including Garry Gray, Ollie Olsen, Mick Harvey and Edward Clayton Jones. If I have this correct I think Chris Walsh's best mate in high school was Tracey Pew. Anyway his last bass playing credit seems to be on Dave Graney & The White Buffalo's 1989 LP My Life On The Plains. Then he appears to disappear and never reappears. Did he die or just retire? Anyway what a legend.
Side A's hypnotic techno sans the beats innit. In the tradition of Ashra's New Age Of Earth & E2-E4.
Side B's a bit like if Neu went all insane hyper cosmic electro disco and hosted an all night psychedelic dance party. This shit really was conceptually pre-rave even if it doesn't quite exactly sound like how acid house or rave-y tech ended up sounding. You could def have your hands in the air like you just don't care and lose yourself in the continuous upbeat bliss while participating in the stimulating or psychedelic drug of choice.
More 80s in-between scenes electronic music. Scottish synthesist Trucknell did a handful of DIY tapes and one cassette on the MIXMUSIC tape label whose roster included Tim Stebbing, Paul Nagle and Nik Arkle. Trucknell also appeared on comps issued by INKEY$, Synthtrax and Auricle. So there was some kind of underground network for these guys.
The ace title track of the 1980 Syrinx LP reminds me of something like Illitch circa 10 Suicides but with added violin. Syrinx's one and only LP Meteora is a cosmic prog electro jam. This German group never get mentioned anywhere by anyone and this album has never been reissued.
Maximilian Marzinkowski's, the mastermind behind the Syrinx, only other synth performance and songwriting credits post Syrinx were for a couple of (pretty bad) singles for fledgling pop stars. The other band members never participated any further in the recording industry.
Surely these qualities are all worthy of making Syrinx a mythical group...
For the gear heads here's a list of stuff Marzinkowski played on Meteora: KLH computer-controlled loudspeakers model 1 + 2, ARP 2600, ARP-AXXE, ARP String, Roland Jupiter, rhythm computer, analog sequenzer, digital sequenzer, vocoder.
Then you realise sometimes the best records are the most popular. For You, despite being a number one LP in Japan in 1982 and one of the most revered Japanese city pop albums ever recorded, is still an elusive listen. It had a vinyl reissue a month ago but if you missed it, like me, you can now only pay an absurd fortune for a copy. The For You full album youtube uploads keep getting struck down and Yamashita refuses to put it up on spotify. So you gotta grab a piece of the fleeting phenomenon while you can. I mean is anybody really gonna pay over sixty Australian dollars plus shipping for the bloody reissue of the tape? Enjoyment for tonight only and maybe tomorrow night too... you never know your luck in the big city (pop)!
*For those who haven't been paying attention the boring mainstream rock-crit consensus cannons have become increasingly irrelevant since the internet. Lists by the likes of Rolling Stone, NME etc. were notoriously snobby particularly towards non American/English acts and heaven forbid genres like metal.
So now we get to see ratings of music by the music fan people. The two lists of best albums of any particular year as voted by the website's users seem to be Best Ever Albums and Rate Your Music. The Best Ever Albums lists appear to best accurately reflect the choices and rankings of people I know. I love how Europe sits next to The Feelies as 43 & 44 respectively in the list of best 1986 LPs. Rate Your Music is more uber fan-ish but no less populist and with a broader scope than just rock & pop radio LPs. That is to say their lists encompass a lot more classical, experimental and niché genres.
In recent years it has been noticeable and pretty embarrassing to see places like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone retroactively scrub their canonical lists and replace them with lists that don't accurately reflect the magazine's past identity, past music obsessions and past musical biases. They're probably doing this for retarded cultural revolutionary (DEI) points, definitely for broader market appeal but also because they might have realised that legacy rock critics thought they were better than the average popular music fan, were narrow minded and had petty grievances with certain genre music tribes.
What I'm getting at here is that Tatsuro Yamashita's For You LP has gained a lot of status in the last twenty years. The World Wide Web is exactly that: Worldwide. For You never dented a western country's pop chart back in the day but due to a change in popular music listening paradigms, 41 years later it is rated by Best Ever Albums as the 30th best record of 1982 trailing Michael Jackson, Iron Maiden, Kate Bush, Donald Fagan, Bad Brains and The Fall while coming out ahead of 1982 efforts by Toto, Talking Heads, The Dream Syndicate, Gun Club and Siouxsie & The Banshees.
In the Rate Your Music's best LPs of 1982 list For You comes in at an astonishing number sixteen behind The Cure, Philip Glass, Glenn Gould doing Bach, Judas Priest & Prince but just ahead of Alice Coltrane, Discharge, SPK, Pagan Altar and Faustos.
Rare and unheard since the 80s this recently uploaded recording from cult synthesist Tim Stebbing is finally getting some exposure.
When you've heard the entire catalogue of 70s synth LPs but you still want more Radiophonic, cosmic and analogue synth experimentation, fear not, plenty of DIY cosmic synth stragglers were lurking in the shadows during the 80s. These guys were dwelling in the cassette underground and thank God for their stubborn love of all things synth-y.
This British fella from Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast released eight cassettes from 1985 - 1991. Orbiter from 1985 was his second tape. I guess you would describe this as an in-between scenes album. It's post cosmic synth and radiophonic heyday but it's before the new electronica and ambient house of early 90s Britain.
If you can't get enough of that glinting sweet melancholic synth texture beloved of Paddy Kingsland and later Boards Of Canada you'll find much to like here. An array of cosmic synth, peculiar, minimal, ambient and electro sounds are also assembled here for your listening pleasure. Somewhere between deep space exploration and cosy telly soundtrack quaintness. Today is the day you become enamoured with the sounds of Tim Stebbing.
When you hear a track like this and you know you've heard it before or is it just déjà vu? Who knows you might have heard this on ten different tv shows from the 70s and 80s. I'm surprised there's not a website documenting the historic minutiae of every single library track's film and telly usage. Surely I first heard Drifting in 1981 on a wildlife documentary or perhaps not at all.
A lot of these early Bruton libraries were used in British and Australian telly of the day. Tunes from Bruton Music BRM4 Fear were used in Southern Television/ITV series The Famous Five (1978/9) and that's about as specific as the information I've found gets.
The back cover of BRM4 Fear readsFear: Small Mostly Woodwind Instrumentation. Suitable For Both Drama and Documentary Application. At the bottom it's written BRM4 Suspense, tension.
The notes for this track state Drifting: Suspended with underlying fear.
Not just a top library album but one of the greatest albums of all time. Macchi was a master of atmosphere. His strings, scrapes, clanks, throbs and echoes conjure an unsettling ominous beauty all of their own.
Egisto Macchi a shadowy figure from the Italian electro-acoustic/musique concrète/contemporary classical/improv avant-garde also made a stack of music for telly and film. In the 1970s he got involved in making library music LPs where he could bring together and meld these disparate musical forms. Macchi combined outré and popularly conventional elements to create uncanny sound-worlds of the most delicious variety. High and low art were brought together like never before and he had a run of fabulous LPs.
I futuribili is notable for its irregular tenebrous space.
Chess please. Left to right Morricone, Evangelisti and Macchi.
Wozo - Hydro-Electric (Music De Wolfe DWLP 3412 Power Source) 1980
Cosmic library music at its best. Although I guess by the title of this track they were going for more of an environmental industrial engineering vibe. I mean it's all about the futuristic science and optimism of mankind so it all works well.
In the mid/late 00s I thought those early records by neo-kosmische acts like Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds etc. sounded much closer to this kind of gear than say they did with Tangerine Dream.
This track was used in the NASA documentary Space Shuttle: A Remarkable Flying Machine (1981) at the end when space shuttle Challenger was coming in for landing. Then used in the follow up doc STS-2 The Second Flight (1981) in the opening scene which is a flashback to the first flight's landing.
Even as a 9 year old I used to think "Sure this is cool and all but it's not better than going to the moon is it? Why aren't they going beyond the moon?"
Anyway getting back to this 1980 Music De Wolfe LP Power Source, it's one of the great cosmic electronic library records. Every track is a little gem and thematically cohesive so it works like a cosmic-synth or sci-fi soundtrack record. You can just imagine all these tunes as part of an early 80s science documentary series or space age exhibit at the planetarium.
Power Source is a classic instrumental synth album. On the back cover it states Unusual, atmospheric and futuristic moods played on electronic keyboards. I'd place it as one of the top British electronic LPs of 1980, vying for top spot with John Foxx's Metamatic. I don't recall this record being mentioned on that Synth Britannia documentary but perhaps it should have been.
Wozo info (and music uploads) on the interwebs is pretty scarce. The main guy behind this project is English fella John Hynde who also goes by the name of James Harrington and/or John Saunders. Saunders is also the man behind prolific production/library music act Astral Sounds who released over 20 LPs between 1977 & 1986 on labels like Music De Wolfe, Rouge and Hudson Music Company.
More golden carefree sounds. An ez tropical faux-bossa jam with that little bit of wah-wah puts this in the sweet summer soundz zone. As it's the middle of winter and I'm freezing my bollocks off this seems rather fitting.
Like Summer was originally from the 1973 KPM 1127 LP Happy Rainbows which also featured compositions from James Clark, Steve Gray and the legendary Alan Hawkshaw.
Breezing Along - Laurie Robertson Murphy (1979) There was a time sometime in the 00s when library music was pretty much all I listened to. At the start of the sharity blog thing there were a bunch of collectors putting up all manner of impossibly rare and unheard library delights. I reckon I must have downloaded between a thousand and fifteen hundred library LP win-rar files. I've got a hard drive gathering dust in the bureau where all these sounds reside. ....
The whole thing started in the mid 90s when the exotica and easy listening scene had to go further afield to find deeper cuts and a bunch of great library compilation series cds followed: The Sound Gallery, Blow Up Presents Exclusive Blend, Mo'Plen, Beat At Cinecitta, Music For Dancefloors, Cinemaphonic et al. I should go through my old cobwebby cds, I loved these collections.
Okay I'm off on a tangent. This tune I think I only discovered recently. It's taken from an American Library called Major Records who I know nothing about. Roger Roger did some work for the label apparently though.
Breezing Along is a perfectly apt title for this song that just breezes along like a soundtrack for somebody just breezing along. A sweet low-key funky jam with splendacious strings, it comes from Production Music6114 LP a 1979 Major Records library. Laurie Robertson Murphy contributed five tracks. The only other credit I can find for Laurie is another Major Records Library from 1978 Untitled 6109 of which she contributed five tracks also.
Laurie Robertsson Murphy is quite the mysterious figure. I'm guessing it's a woman. If it is a woman she might have been married to soundtrack and library composer Walter Murphy who also worked for Major Records.
This 12" Club Version mix on West End Records is by Larry Levan. My God it's t's the jam. Everything here, I'm sure, is intuitively designed for maximum psychedelic dancefloor affect. That funky bass, yes it's a funky sensation. That slowed down disco beat makes this entire monster jam an outstanding anomaly: weird and infectious. The breathtaking hand clap science is also absolutely fascinating. The hook that is the hypnotic swirling funky guitar riff that begins to mutate at 4:12 in on an irresistible groove. The break at 5:57 that just halts everything is so on the money, I mean how could it not be with the alchemy of synergy taking place here, everything seems to be serendipitously falling into the right place.
Dre surely ripped this off for his G-funk blueprint did he not? This particular version of Heartbeat seems to be a vastly influential track. Don't let that put you off though because it's infinitely better than what it influenced. With regard to the history and aspects of this tune the club version of Heartbeat is the main show.
Heartbeat like the previous post's Funky Sensation by Gwen McCrae was written, arranged and produced by Kenton Nix in association with Henry Batts. So they were having a killer 1981.
Get your foots out for some toe tappin...it's is the funky sensation!!!
Funky Sensation's right in that funky post-disco boogie zone and it's a sweet spot innit. Only problem is it's way too short. We need another ten or fifteen minutes of this!
Francesco Castelluccio with Bob Crewe producing and writing, you can't go wrong. Sweet funky disco love song with an ace guest appearance from Patti Austin. The more you listen the more you realise there is a lot going on here. I mean Swearin' To God's got those divine strings, big brass action, that funky wah-wah Shaft scratch guitar and an even funkier bassline. This epic is also a trumpet and saxamophone extravaganza, with an array a saxes including my favourite saxophone, the rarely heard in pop music outside of Pet Sounds, baritone sax.
For me though it's all about those congas. Conga players never get the credit they deserve and yet they contribute so much to a dance floor number. I mean they are integral just about more than anyone else as to whether your disco track is going to be a toe-tapping success or not. So I'd like to highlight the wonderful Miss Bobbye Hall. I'm assuming this is her as she's the only one credited in the sleeve notes with playing congas although there are also several percussionists with credits too. Hall's credits are vast and many, you've heard her play congas and bongos on a lot of records throughout the years including those by Judee Sill, Boz Scaggs, Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, The Doobie Brothers etc.
Another short but sweet bit of 80s Pärt. More bells. This time though they're accompanied by the insanely intense brass from the Brass Ensemble Staatsorchester Stuttgart. This was the title track from his second ECM album. Pärt was on a roll here with his solo ECM albums that continued on with a classic run of five masterpieces from 1984 to 1993: Tabula Rasa, Arbos, Passio, Miserere and Te Deum.
Another one from the "wow" playlist. When this came on... just wow. That opening guitar line took took my breath away and my heart went funny. My body had a memory of this song before my mind did. A vibe like this is priceless, it's simply the best. All the elements are in perfect unison to create one of the greatest toe tappers in history.
My brain's not functioning beyond "ME like" today so it's handy that the fans of this very special tune in the comments are unusually articulate.
- A bass riff to die for...
- My world changes from winter blues to summer sunshine in just a few minutes...
- Absolutely stunning - beautifully understated - sends a shiver down my spine!
- Quietly addictive..and that opening riff! digs real deep!
- Great organ bridge moving to solo guitar...
- Proper music...
- So cool...
- This is faultless...
- Doesn't come any better. Pure 100% class...
- Sublime...
Nobody mentioned that insistent rhythm which makes If I Could Only Be Sure so joyously infectious.
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.
