Is it just me or has anyone noticed how crap and just plain dull music coverage is on the internet? Has the discourse run it's course? Let's briefly look at a few examples.
All Music Guide - Oh fuck me this is one of the most frustrating music websites in existence. Sure perhaps they shot themselves in the foot right there with their name ie. they are not covering all music and will often just have a couple of reviews for a band with 20 + releases. Even then quite often the reviews are below par or written by people who seem to not like music very much. It feels like some reviewers have been given a job to sit sit through a stack of records from a genre they can't stand. The Monochrome Set's 1982 LP Eligible Bachelors is called a classic in their review yet it only gets 3 stars, that's 6 out of 10. How many classic albums are rated 6 out of 10? Baffling.
Pitchfork - Much to my annoyance I've started looking at this site again due to one Mr Reynolds now doing the occasional article. He's good, can't vouch for anybody else though. They are so embarrassing sometimes like their 50 best shoegazing LPs list and the 50 best IDM records article. You walk away after reading those and just think 'What a fucking clueless list. How are these fucking people in the music writing game?' They are not an authority on music, which begs the question 'Why am I reading this?' Sometimes I think Pitchfork just wish they were as cool as FACT but they can't pull it off because they're not. I mean they've got current stories on The Shins, Spoon and Fleet Foxes for fuck's sake. They just don't have the insight or a capacity to be thinking about music interestingly. They also don't have taste making skills.
I'm not even going to bother examining The Quietus and several others I can't even recall the names of. It's dismal out there. Anyone know of any good sites concerned mainly with music? Maybe I'll have to go back to printed media. Perhaps The Wire's improved in the last couple of years. At least Mojo used to have excellent articles despite their historical stance. NME, Melody Maker, The Wire, Mojo even Rolling Stone and probably a few others (Creem, Spin, Sounds etc.) all knew what they were talking about back in their heyday or at least had some conviction to persuade. Nobody wants to read clueless fucks writing about music and making us bored or angry.
Breaking News.....here's some new music. This is a collaboration between Farmer Glitch and Ekoplekz (who we haven't heard from in ages). 20 Acid Clonk Greats by pHarmerz is 8 tracks on a double 3" cdr or a digital download. The album doesn't include the just below Hack The Tab (part 1) but does include the further below Sheena Is An Acid Casualty.
I am not the guy who has written an article in this month's Wire magazine about Canadian experimental music going by the name of Tim Rutherford-Johnson because I don't have a Johnson at the end of my name. I'd be more likely to write an article about experimental music from Melbourne or Sydney anyway. I did notice there's also a piece on Moroccan trance music which has caught my attention, I may have to actually buy this issue. I'm assuming this article is not about the techno variety of trance, however I may be wrong.
I've been interested in Moroccan music ever since I discovered The Master Musician Of Jajouka in the early 90s. In the last few years after exhaustively listening to my half a dozen Jajouka/Joujouka recordings I've been tuned in to the great blog Moroccan Tape Stash. This blog is a treasure trove with music from pop to sacred trance music and everything else in-between. This scene is still hard to navigate though and can often be confusing. Some of the best tapes posted by Tim Abdellah (a lot of Tims today) on his blog are by unknown artists. I tried to get some youtube clips of the below tape but there's a language barrier. Anyway it makes being a fan of this music a bit more...I dunno...challenging. A bit like in the old days when you had to seek the arcane knowledge of the subterranean music scene, you know before the interwebs. To be honest half the time I don't know exactly what constitutes berber, Jilala or Bendir music. Fuck I like it though. Along with Gamelan music Moroccan music is where I go when current music's not doin it for me, which is 75% of the time.
Couldn't find this on Youtube...It's great though.
So this is the record that started it all for a lot of Moroccan music fans. Brian Jones arranged this recording of The Master Musicians Of Joujouka and this LP was issued in 1971 on Rolling Stone Records. All your favourite creepy hipster Morocco dwellers were involved with the liner notes of this album as well ie. William s Buroughs, Brion Gyson, Paul Bowles etc.
Now here's another surprise from the San Fransisco pre/proto/post-punk milieu. I rate all those 70s Residents records from 1974's Meet The Residents right up until 1980's The Commercial Album plus all the singles, EPs and tapes in-between. I've heard a few things here and there since, some I've liked a bit and others that I really didn't. 13 or 14 years ago I borrowed a couple of live Residents dvds from the city library. One was a mid 90s concert while the other was from the early 2000s. I really wanted to like these films but they just weren't that good. By that I mean the band had become pretty lame and very boring. Watching those dvds almost ruined the old records for me but thankfully I soon forgot about them. The 70s catalogue remains a treasure to me.
So I was trying to get some sleep during a crazy heat wave we're currently having here in the Desert City. Yesterday it was 44 degrees and today it's currently sitting at 46, that's Celsius! That's 115 degrees in Fahrenheit terms. I went on youtube and found a Residents playlist, hit play and lay down on the couch with the dog at my feet. As I drifted off I could hear some old Residents classics and a few I was not too familiar with. After an hour I woke up just as the above concert was starting. The first track was great but I was expecting it to swiftly get rather shite. No, an hour and a half later I was still transfixed, forgetting the heat for a little while.
The band here are stripped down to a 3 piece and are perhaps a little more guitar-centric than they were in the 70s. Musically/sonically they were in incredible form, at the peak of their powers. They have lost the eyeballs though. Two members had skull masks with grey dreads while the singer had an old clown face mask. I couldn't help but think that the singer's real face was probably quite similar to his mask. Anyway it was a hell of a nice surprise to be engrossed by this concert. Then I started regretting not going to see them when they played in Melbourne for the 'What Is Music?' festival in 2005. Those old dvds had really put me off. So now I'm wondering how much good stuff I've missed. There's a good 25 years of their work I haven't explored. I'm guessing at least a quarter of it is probably good and quite possibly more.
Holy shit how the fuck did I miss this? These tapes were certainly lost on me. Half Machine From The Sun: The Lost Tapes From 79-80 was released in 2013! San Francisco's Chrome circa Alien Soundtracks (77) & Half Machine Lip Moves (79) were one of the greatest bands ever, hands down. There were some choice moments on their following 3 LPs too. Chrome's brand of scuzzy sci-fi psych rock was a supremely innovative creep show. So what a belated surprise this was today. These 4 tracks that I've posted could have easily made it onto the proper albums, for sure. Some of this collection's tunes are pretty eye opening and you can see why others were never released. There are even rather commercial songs that were putting me in mind of Roxy Music and even Blue Oyster Cult. I reckon you could cut this 18 track compilation down to about 10 or 11 and you would have a classic missing Chrome LP.
Recently I revisited Hakim Bey's TAZ album that he did with Bill Laswell. I'd heard it on the radio in the 90s. Even local Melbourne fanzines had big write ups on the book and cd. He was some kind of modern day cult figure with his feet in anarchistic and post-situationist camps. I remember thinking he was a bit didactic but had a couple of good things to say about modern life. The TAZ record contained Bey reading excerpts from his book, of the same name, over Laswell's world muzak. So I listened to it last week and it really got my goat. Within the first 10 minutes I thought this guy's philosophy really opens itself up to normalising some dodgy shit ie. paedophilia and incest. Then as I kept listening I was convinced this guy had spent his whole life studying radical movements, anarchism, esoteric history, secret societies and whatever else so he could justify paedophillia. The entire cd became very creepy (not in a good way). I was thinking 'Am I just reading too much into it?' So I went online to see what he was on about. Right there on the interweb was a lot of chatter about Paedophillia and Bey who is also known as Peter Lamborn Wilson. He'd allegedly written for a Paedophile journal etc. etc. Its funny though because I felt so guilty and disgusted after listening to TAZ and some of Wilson's lectures on youtube but back in my early 20s I don't think I ever felt guilty reading William S Burroughs. Another weird thing is that Bey goes on and on about many figures in secret and forgotten history and calls them creeps......the irony.
The first Can song I came across was this in cover version form by The Jesus & Mary Chain!
Everyone's doing a bit on Jaki so I'll keep it short and personal. In my book he was the best drummer ever closely followed by Tony Allen. If Can didn't have him they simply wouldn't have been Can. You could say that about all the instrument players in the Group, I guess. They had the synergy, They were synergy! I also enjoyed Liebezeit's drumming on other projects though. He often played on fellow Can members solo records as well as with other great artists like Michael Rother, Eno, David Sylvian, Jah Wobble, Pluramon and Burnt Friedman.
I think the last time I heard him was in 2013 in collaboration with Burnt Friedman on their 5th instalment of Secret Rhythms. He still had it on Secret Rhythms 5 and I thought he would just go on infinitely like his style often conjured.
How can you choose just one tune from Future days? They all belong together in this sequence. Is this the most cohesive LP ever? Well perhaps you could say that about Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi and Soon Over Babaluma as well. The tunes on Future Days feel like 4 movements of the one piece.
This blows me mind every time! I could keep on posting Can songs, particularly everything off those aforementioned LPs. Monster Movie, Soundtracks, Landed, Unlimited Edition, The Lost Tapes and most of Flow Motion are great too ...... RIP Jaki Liebezeit.
These first two are on the same record from 1990!!!
From 1992 this is a one sided LP.
A classic from 96. A pretty ominous title right there and a rather fitting sound for now doncha' think?
Of course these are all Marc Acardipane aliases and that was an alias for Mark Trauner. Marc was THE German producer of hardcore techno/gabba/gloomcore from 1989 onwards, more like a genre unto himself! Acardipane must have had over 100 pseudonyms and trying to collect his full back catalogue must be a futile task but it would be kind of heroic if you had them all. He had a big thing about 2017. I'm not really sure what it was, can't remember if I ever knew, but perhaps all will be revealed this year. On his record sleeves he kept saying See You In 2017. Surely he's gonna make a comeback and be as big as Beyonce....well it's a nice thought anyway. Perhaps It'll just be the end of the world as we know it and Acardipane will feel fine.
LONG
Professional Sunflow - Laraaji & Sun Araw
Rock To TN34 - eMMplekz
Purple Reign - Future
Exit Pantomime Control - Moon Wiring Club
Blackstar - David Bowie
Lodestar - Shirley Collins
Creaking Haze & Other Rave Ghosts - Assembled Minds
Black Peak - Xylouris White
Blank Face - Schoolboy Q
Caramel - Konx-Om-Pax
Strands - Steve Hauschildt
Return - Blue Smiley
Toll - Kemper Norton
2845 - Convextion
Colour - Katie Gately
Pacific Image - Hybrid Palms
...Presents The Mechanical Abrasions Of (Volumes 2&3) - Ashtray Navigations
Stranger Things OST - Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein
Holy Sauce - Sauce Walka
FENCE I, Gemini - Let's Eat Grandma Sometimes I think this is a fantastic missing link between Kate Bush, Grime and god knows what else, other times I just wanna smash the stereo in. Jeffery - Young Thug Some good tunes here but something about the production is not quite right....but it's good though...I think... maybe it's still growing on me. Borderland: Transport - Juan Atkins & Moritz Von Oswald Classic intersection of Detroit techno and 90s Berlin dub-tech or a bunch of old geezers recording trax for the electronic music preservation society? WTF? Islah - Kevin Gates His mixtape run up to this, his major label debut, was unsurpassed. What happened? New Ways Out - Belbury Poly Their previous 4 records were ace, this however... The Life Of Pablo - Kanye West I listened and listened again but I'm sure there's only two good songs here.
ARCHIVES Close To The Noise Floor (Formative UK Electronica 1975-1984) - Various
No Cabs, Numan or Depeche, but hey you've heard them. Have you heard Third Door From The Left, We Be Echo, Storm Bugs or 5XOD?
The Emperor's New Music - Gerry & The Holograms
Even unplayable art prank 7"ers are getting reissued. Why not?
When A New Trick Comes Out I Do An Old One - Moon Wiring Club
A 3 cd compilation of archive material from Hauntology's finest.
Cryptik Stepperz - Ekoplekz
Archival gear from 2012. Nick's off-cuts are just as good as his on-cuts.
Venezuela 70: Venezuelan Experimental Rock In The 1970s - Various
Soul Jazz Records go in search of further afield South American sonic delights and strike gold.
Boogie Breakdown: South African Synth Disco 1980-1984 - Various
Get down to these sweet South African soundz courtesy of the marvelous Cultures Of Soul Records. Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1984!
Doin It In Lagos: Boogie, Pop & Disco In 1980s Nigeria - Various
Soundway Records does it again! Get down to these sweet Nigerian soundz. Contains one of the greatest tunes ever in Steve Monite's Only You.
Space Echo: The Mystery Behind The Cosmic Sound Of Cabo Verde 1977-1985 - Various
Get Down To These Sweet soundz from Cabo Verde. Another Analog Africa joint.
TELLY Fleabag Atlanta Line Of Duty Happy Valley
BOOK Shock & Awe: Glam Rock & Its Legacy - Simon Reynolds Grant & I - Robert Forster
Pick Up The Phone - Young Thug & Travis Scott feat Quavo Perky's Calling - Future The Face In The Mirror Is Not Mine - Assembled Minds Why You Always Hatin' - YG feat Drake & Kamaiyah So High - Beatking feat Gangser Boo Eat Shittake Mushrooms - Let's Eat Grandma That Part - Schoolboy Q feat Kanye West OOOUUU - Young M.A. Starboy - The Weekend feat Daft Punk Guwop - Young Thug feat Quavo, Young Scooter & Offset Awake Awake/The Split Ash Tree/May Carol/ Southover - Shirley Collins Wolves (Balmain Campaign) - Kanye West feat Sia Webbie - Young Thug feat Duke Low Life - Future feat The Weekend Lazarus - David Bowie 50 On My Wrist - Sonny Digital Black Beatles - Rae Sremmurd feat Gucci Mane Do Ya Mind - DJ Khaled feat Nicky M, Chris B, August Alsina, Jerimih, Future & Rick Ross Bad & Boujee - Migos feat Uzi Vert
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?
I think Schizophrenia, which opens Sister, was the first Sonic Youth song I ever heard. This was on a visit to the big smoke in 1987 and it was played on either 3RRR or 3PBS in Melbourne. What an introduction to a phenomenal band. I’d listened to the Primitive Calculators, The Birthday Party and Cosmic Psychos before but who knew you could make noise beautiful? This is probably the Sonic Youth album I’ve played the most. The cover was perfect. This is the sound of skyscrapers, cows. suburbia and intergalactica all rolled into one. Cotton Crown still sounds unbelievable today with its girl/boy vocals and those swirly out of tune guitars then when that change where the bass goes bezerk Sonic Youth elevate rock to one of its loftiest peaks. This band were on an outstanding roll that had begun with the two previous LPs and would continue for their next three records. Then as elder statesmen/women of art rock they had a terrific late re-flowering and issued a classic trilogy of albums that began with 2002’s Murray Street. Sister = Awesome!
We're not talking about Kool Herc or The Bronx here. This doc tries to set the record and history books straight on who the real innovators in hip-hop were. Founding Fathers presents an alternative narrative to hip hop's past that shines a light on a bunch of forgotten cats who were involved in block parties from other boroughs of NYC other than The Bronx. It's all about turntables, big sound systems, DJs, Bigger sound systems, park jams and really big sound systems. Chuck D narrates. I wouldn't post it if I didn't think it was excellent.
One of Morricone's lesser known scores but it's another fucking cracker. I only came across this one last year and it blew my mind a little bit, couldn't believe my ears. Kick off your festivities with this cranked on the hi-fi. This is the score to a 1972 Giallo directed by Massimo Dallamano which features saucy female students, sleazy teachers, nudity, abortions, girls on bikes and murders. What did you expect?
Now this has to be one of Morricone's most underrated horror scores. If you're dropping acid at your festivities tonight this will be the perfect soundtrack! I've never watched the film but the sounds here get pretty insane, perhaps I'll finally watch it tonight. They even made an Exorcist III ...who knew?
Ooh...I just found this. It's a collection of tunes from a bunch of Ennio's Giallio scores, nothing new to me here but looks like it'll be a great creepy mix. Tracklist below.
COSA AVETE FATTO A SOLANGE? (TITOLI) from “Cosa avete fatto a Solange?” 00:00
1970 from “Il gatto a nove code” 02:37
NEBULOSA PRIMA from “Il segreto” 11:17
VALZER from “La corta notte delle bambole di vetro” 16:49
SEGUITA from “Gli occhi freddi della paura” 19:07
OSTINAZIONE AL LIMONE from “Cosa avete fatto a Solange?” 22:21
IL SERPENTE from “Il serpente” 24:48
BAMBOLE DI VETRO from “La corta notte delle bambole di vetro” 31:24
SPASMO from “Spasmo” 38:07
OLTRE IL SILENZIO from “Il diavolo nel cervello” 40:04
EMMETRENTATRE from “La corta notte delle bambole di vetro” 43:32
LE FOTO PROIBITE DI UNA SIGNORA PER BENE from “Le foto proibite di una signora per bene” 47:45
TRIO INFERNALE from “Trio infernale” 52:23
INSEGUIMENTO E FUGA from “Revolver” 56:30
SENZA MOTIVO APPARENTE from “”Senza movente” 01:00:15
LA RAGIONE, IL CUORE, L'AMORE from “Il diavolo nel cervello” 01:04:38
EVANESCENZE from “Gli occhi freddi della paura” 01:08:04
L'ATTENTATO from “L'attentato” 01:11:25
NINNA NANNA IN BLU from ”Il gatto a nove code” 01:16:04
Don't ya just love this cover. Eyeballs, eyeballs, eyeballs. Eyeball goodness. Eyeball art! Below is a review I once did on this soundtrack.
Gli Occhi Freddi Della Paura - ENNIO MORRICONE
Now this was another 1971 soundtrack but it didn't get a release until 2000. I didn't miss this one. I think it has been reissued again in the last year or two. So Morricone recorded this with his improv band Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. This score is not only one of the best soundtracks ever, its also one of the best albums ever. I guess people into AMM, Nihilist Spasm Band, Spontaneous Music Ensemble or Miles Davis in the 70s should take a special interest here. This is some top notch improv jams under the direction of the one and only Bruno Nicolai. Produced by none other than Gianni Dell'orso. We've got fuzz guitar duelling with jazz bass and electronics. That's just for starters. This LP is so unpredictable you never know where it's heading next. There's many a clank and a scrape to be heard amongst other haunting sounds. The group had been going since 1964 and are considered one of the pioneering collectives of experimental composers. It was by no means Morricone's band. Other members included Egisto Macchi (library music legend), Walter Branchi and Franco Evangelisti. I think it was Evangelisti who got the whole thing together. They were aspiring to a new form of composition through improvisation and other methods such as (like John Cage) chance. Apparently they sometimes used the game of chess as an inspiration. Anyway the credits on this one go to Morricone but that seems arbitrary as surely everyone contributed to each tune. Fabulously free percussion mixed with of sour sax/trumpet(?) and textural keyboards play their part on this recording. More than anything though its not the separate sounds that make up the music, its the sound of the unit itself. This is an incredibly switched on unit comparable to Can and the ensembles Miles Davis put together in the 70s. Half the time I don't know what's making the sounds anyway. This doesn't sound like any other soundtrack I've ever heard. Most of the time you forget this incredibly fluid music even went with images as the tangent of where the hell they'll go next has you so engaged. You start to feel that your own ear is also an integral part of the unit as well. This is a hell of a strange trip that never gets old. They have other albums as well, maybe I'll discuss them another time. Its quite hard to believe a film director just saying 'yeah sure' to this mental project. This is a unique record that could have a special place in your heart if you give it a listen. Like Harmonia's Deluxe this is an unheralded classic of 20th century music that deserves a better status.
REWIND THIS (2013 DOCUMENTARY)
Here's another doco on VHS culture and another excellent cover/poster. This one is a bit all over the place but it is watchable as opposed to Adjust Your Tracking from the same year (more on that another time). It feels like they're trying to cover too much of video culture all at once though. As if they were in a rush to cover a little bit of each part of the dying, ephemeral culture of video stores and VHS before any other filmmaker got there first. Rewind This was at least compelling enough for me to make it through to the end of the film.
They could have really made 4 or 5 in depth documentaries covering certain aspects of video culture because there is some great subject matter here ie. Cover/poster art, nostalgia for video libraries, how B-grade and horror videos got their foot in the door ahead of studio/hollywood stuff, the bootleg trade/grey market and who the hell is going to preserve straight to video videos. Speaking of straight to video videos, any form of a convincing case isn't really put forth that there is any greatness worth preserving. There however will always be people who are willing to archive and preserve anything no matter how crap or inconsequential it may be because 'it's all relative man.'
