I duno if you guys remember Alexis Georgopoulos AKA Arp and his wonderful album 'In Light' from back in 2007, but i sure do. It contained soothing tunes full of analog-synth minimalism, kinda like Terry-Riley's "Descending Moonshine Dervishes' on vintage synthesizers instead of organs. Well, he has a new album, and it is similar but also great. This time he seems to be more focused on kraut-y electronics more akin to Cluster or Eno, and if you are a hard-liner for that type of thing you might be put of by the inescapable derivative-ness of these two albums. But I don't really mind, and if you can get down with Emeralds' latest album then you can definitely get down to this. Let's face it, the world will never stop needing more new-agey komische records. So I'm posting the whole thing, because I have absolute faith that no one reads this blog and that therefore I will not get in any trouble. Arp - The Soft Wave
DUDE. I know I talk a lot about Resident Advisor mixes, and really I have to give props to Jimmy for alerting me to the presence of both this mix and the Scott Grooves one I posted a week or so ago, but DAMNS. They are on a serious roll. This week, for the special spooky Halloween edition of the RA Podcast they got frickin ALAN HOWARTH to put together a few tunes from his heyday of making amazing soundtracks to your favorite horror films of the '80s and '90s, along with frequent collaborator JOHN CARPENTER. This is the real deal, as they say, and most of my favorite JC jams are here and accounted for. I don't think I should have to sell you dudes too much on this stuff... synthy, tense, dramatic, repetitive compositional amazingness is contained in these here megabytes... dl soon or forever hold your peace.
Hey brahs, thanks for inviting me to be in your blogging club!
I'll start with a little post about Linda Perhacs. I work for Human Ear and we just hosted Linda and her band two weeks ago for a concert at San Francisco Art Institute. This was her third public appearance ever! Unlike all of us at The Society of Mutual Affirmation, she's incredibly generous and modest. She literally talked to probably everyone who attended the show afterwards. She currently lives on her ranch in Topanga Canyon - continuing to work as a dental hygienist while writing new music on the side.
You're probably familiar with her, but her album might be worth revisiting since it was just released on Mexican Summer. Linda received the new vinyl the night before traveling to SF for the show! I would definitely recommend buying a copy, it looks great. There's a print of her visual score as an insert! Parellelograms was originally released on Kapp Records in 1970, but Linda told me the original recordings were so crappy she gave up hope as a musician - and the label pushed her aside when they found it unmarketable. It's really soo amazing what music blogs have done for rediscovering artists.
SRC - Milestones Detroit, 69, their second record. Their first release is their best, but their first two are solid records and not too easy to come by. This was the hit from their first album.
Second record gets more of a prog lean.
Another find worth sharing is the Paul Clark Songs from the Savior LP from 1975. I always want to find the good private press christian folk, acidy, oddball records (cause they're often overlooked and cheap), but am never sure what will be good and what will be just like the rest of them. This I got really cheap, and it is a solid soft rock record with fun backwards guitar and neil young vocals. Can't find youtube from this record, but one of his later records is here, and it kinda gets at the idea. Yacht rock + baby jesus = good used record.
I also picked up a good Wild Man Fischer record, Bukka White's Sky Songs, which Elijah got to before me when we went to the record store in redwood city, Albery Ayler's Love Cry, and an Eddie Hinton album I'm really into.
Yoga Records is one of my favorite reissue efforts around. I've raved about them here before when that Robert Lester Folsom album came out last year. I just saw Folsom play his first show in decades tonight, and it was amazing. I wasn't the only one singing along to every word. There was at least one other dude in the crowd that I saw doing it too. For reals though, this is the real deal. Yoga's two latest releases are totally worth getting your mittens on. The first is this Ted Lucas Record, which no one has ever not liked. The second is the record by Dwarr called Animals, and it is like if Bobb Trimble covered Sabbath. Like some proto-doom metal shit. So so so excellent.
I also really like Matthew Young's Traveler's Advisory and Jeff Eubank's A Street Called Straight. Yoga put all these out as digital releases and some vinyl and then bigger outfits (Drag City, Mexican Summer) put them out on vinyl later. I think he's running a really smart and effective label this way. Getting this stuff out into the world. I can't say enough to support this dude's label. I hope to catch him at the wfmu record fair tomorrow to pick his brain more about doing reissues and how to be so damn cool and stuff.
This track sounds like it could be by the Durutti Column (sorta). He is just reading lines out of his car's owner's manual. His hammered dulcimer work is technically, nerdily, brilliant. The record also has a spectacular cover of Michael Hurley's Werewolf.
So there's a new EP on DFA from Delia & Gavin, who brought us the incredible full-length The Days of Mars in the mid 2000s. "Track 5" is an outtake from that album, that first was featured on the DFA Holiday mix in 2005 that aired on Beats in Space that year. You may also recognize Gavin Russom from his Black Meteoric Star and Crystal Ark projects, both also on DFA and both quite excellent. This track is actually pretty different from the stuff on Days of Mars, beginning with a characteristic bubbling synth line but eventually changing course with a psuedo-balearic guitar riff towards the end that almost reminds me of something Studio could be responsible for. Good stuff, and don't forget about the also-excellent remix from deep-house producer Ame, who turns the original slow burner into something far more uptempo and dance-worthy.
As you all know, I've got this sad little soft spot for really awful blues rock. I got embarrassingly into the new Grinderman record, only listening to it on headphones cause I didn't want my roomies to think I wasn't cool. Then I started going back through my stuff trying to find some more shit to scratch the itch. Jon Spencer Blues Control didn't do it, Doo Rag didn't do it, Delta 72 didn't do it, and well, shit man, you get the idea.
So it all came back to Gun Club and The Pontiac Brothers. 80s Los Angeles alternatives to X, the cramps, or the bad seeds. Both Gun Club and Pontiac Bros. hit the white dude blues sound on the head better than anyone since Canned Heat. Like REM, White Stripes, and like, other people you dont care about couldn't exist without these bands. They also covered the Dead and shit. Anyways, this is the stuff I'm listening to on headphones lately. My latest Steve Hillage record lost my living room music privileges for the month.
Lots of people have been predicting an early-90s vocal house comeback for a while now, and while it might sorta behappening, it probably won't make any real inroads into the U.S. for a while. Projects like Azari & III, Hercules & Love Affair, House of House and The Juan MacLean have been experimenting with this sound and garnering critical attention for years, but sadly most average "independent music-lovers" seem to be so much more likely to be fucking with thuggy dubstep than affeminate diva-house with cheesy organs. But YOU GUYS should. Just because DJ Sprinkles ranted about labels like Strictly Rhythm co-opting pure underground instrumental house music by adding vocals and turning it into 'commodity' (or something) doesn't mean it doesn't rule. And now you can hear a bunch of great tracks from the era on one convenient Resident Advisor podcast from Scott Grooves, who apparently played keyboards for Kevin Saunderson's Inner City project. "Good Life" and "Big Fun" are jamz...
But yeah, this mix is apparently a 90 minute mix-tape Scott made sometime in 1993, with two sides of classic house tracks... here's the tracklist he gave RA, and a link to both the article about the mix and the mix itself (since the official link just expired). And YES, it's even awesome enough to have that Robin S song on there even though it was a giant hit and now we can all sing it at karaoke parlors worldwide. And a remix of "That's the Way Love Goes".
Side A 1. India - I can't get no sleep (MK remix) 2. Bizzare Inc. - You took my love (MK remix) 3. Robin S - Show me love 4. Neneh Cherry - Buddy X (MAW remix) 5. Underground Commitment - I know a melody - Suburban records 6. TMVS - Don't be Shy - Suburban records 7. ? 8. ? 9. Innercity - Pennies from Heaven (Tony Humphries Delancey mix)
Side B 1. ? 2. A Better Love 3. The K London Production Club - I Believe in Love - KFB records 4. Make it thru the Night - Street Players vol 1- Emotive records 5. ? 6. Runaway - Loop D Loop - Pal Joey 7. Victor Simmonelli - Sound of One EP - One records 8 ? 9. ? 10. ? 11. Reese Project - So Deep (CJ Mackintosh remix) - Network records 12. Janet - That's the way Love goes (CJ Mackintosh remix)
This is a bargain bin album that I grabbed because this guy did work with Muscle Shoals back in the day, and one of my favs of that sound, Eddie Hinton, is on a track or two. So in looking into it, apparently all the strings, flute, and orchestral arrangement was added in post production, and Mr. Lampe was not happy about it. He thinks they destroyed his record. I love that crap, so it works for me, but you can hear, underneath that, some hard wrought, bare bones southern soul ballads that would be amazing without all that orchestration. Could've been like Dan Penn or Jim Ford if they'd produced it differently. Regardless, you guys probably didn't know that you didn't even care about this.
I'm sure I've said this before but chillout-tent music wasn't always the trancey pap that embarasses us today, at one point in time electronic artists could actually navigate the terrain between beat-driven and ambient without making you feel like you entered some godawful yoga studio. Choice examples of 90s ambient include the KLF's Chill Out, Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, Terre Thamelitz's Soil, The Future Sound of London's Lifeforms, that kind of thing. I think SAWII is probably my favorite of the bunch, but it's also a frickin canonical album and an unqualified classic so I'll post one that you guys may not have checked out yet- 76:14 by Global Communication. This album is great but just a forewarning- two tracks here sound strikingly similar to "Love on a Real Train" from the Risky Business soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. If that sounds like your kinda thing then you are in luck my friend. Global Communication - 76:14
I thought this would be a nice first post in our newly revived blawg, a looooong piece of foreboding minimal jazz from Australian trio The Necks. This one is from 2003, and is considered by most to be pretty different than the rest of their catalog but definitely the grooviest and the best (I haven't explored much but I also like most of the rest of what I've heard, too). I know that cover reeks of POST RAWK but I promise this shit is amazing...
