Top Ten Time!

It's that time of the year! Put up christmas lights, air your grievances, and post your top ten lists online in front of god and everybody. I really enjoyed Erik's review of good dj mixes for the year, I think I listened to that Johnny Nash mix way more than the doctor ordered.

So, let's put an end to revisionist history right here by posting our top tens up before everyone else does. After seeing everyone else's lists I always want to pretend like I listened to something way more legit than I really did.

More realistically, I had to put together a list a week ago, so I'm not leaving much hope for the releases of the month of December. However, those Academy reissues of SJOB Movement and Mebusas are real hot. That and the Nosmoke release of the Ngozi Family LP 45,000 Volts is so good, I may like it more than the Chrissy Zebby Tembo and the Ngozi Family LP from last year. Super heavy on the Sabbath riffage and still throwing down some traditional Zambian percussion and language in between is about as essential as they come.

Because I spent a ton more time on reissues than new music this year, I will start the list off there.

Reissues:
V/A Ouga Affair (Disques Savannahphone)
V/A Take Me To The Water (Dust-to-Digital)
V/A Psych Funk 101 & School Me Volume One (STA)- Strong start for an oddball label!
Alan Lomax in Haiti (Harte)
Mortika: Recordings from the Greek underground (Mississippi)
The Units -History of (Community Library)
The Durutti Column Box Set (Kooky)
Death… For the Whole World to See (Drag City)
Ofege – Try and Love (Academy)
Jerusalem - Jerusalem (Vintage)


As always, many <3’s to Analog Africa, Honest Jon’s, Monk, and Norton (particularly those early Sun Ra Doo Wop jamz and "I am Strange" 7".


New Releases: No Particular Order

Julianna Barwick - Florine (Self-Released)
Desire (Italians Do it Better)
Lindstrom & Prins Thomas - II (Eskimo)
William Fowler Collins - Perdition Hill Radio (Type)
Dam Funk - Toeachizown (Stones Throw)
Ducktails - Landscapes (Olde English Spelling Bee)
Music Go Music - Expressions (Secretly Canadian)
Ata Ebtekar &The Iranian Orchestra for New Music Performing Works of Alireza Mashayikhi - Ornamentalism (Sub Rosa)
Neal Morgan – To the Breathing World (self released)
Life’s Blood releases 001: Cole’s Gifts and 003: The Endless Bummer’s Modern American Calypsos For Voice and Computer

Record digging highlights for 09: Gems from the bargain bin
Willie Guy Rainey - s/t (Southland Records)
The Sufi Dance & Song Record, San Francisco CA (Rainbow Bridge Distro)
Kitaro - Ten Kai aka Astral Voyage (Wergo/Spectrum)
Level 42 - Starchild (Polydor)
Manhar Udhas - Aagman (Super Cassette Industries)

A friend of mine asked me to do a "balearic" set at his party. Not sure he knew what I knew, but I found that song just in time and squeezed it between this great cheeseball gypsy disco song called "sandstorm" and some Japanese folk ragas. Turns out doing a "balearic" set is a good way to loose friends who DJ Detroit techno using Serato the rest of the night. Saved myself by pulling out a Ricardo Villalobos suite and getting the hell out of there. I wish I could've recorded my set, I would have posted it. It was fun, switching off with a kid who showed up with a bag of Chicago house records (many of which he preferred to play at 33 rpm?).

That wraps it up for me. Miss you dudes. I'll be in CA for the holidays, and I think I am going to the Rickshaw Stop for New Years. Hopefully be able to see you guys when I'm out there, nerd out and listen to some records!

We will miss you Jack Rose!

Our thoughts and best wishes go out to Jack Rose's family and friends. I was very sad to get a call and hear that Jack Rose passed away. He will be missed out here in Philadelphia, as he was an extremely talented and inspired musician, and I am sure he will be missed even more by his family and friends. The likes of his self titled LP on Tequila Sunrise and his seminal Kensington Blues as well as his work with Pelt are wonderful artifacts to remember him by. Here he is playing his classic "Kensington Blues."

Let Us Give Thanks For Hella Rad Mixes

YO DUDEZ. It sure has been awhile. Kinda awkward how we have to start the majority of our posts here with that disclaimer :(

BUT HEY GUESS WHAT I found some rad mixes. I know you all probably hear me talk about stuff like Beats in Space and Resident Advisor and think "Shut the fuck up about your gay techno shit Erik." And hey that's ok, but stop being a douche and actually check these out. It's not all 'hella gay techno shit' per se, but y'know sometimes it is so EMBRACE IT. I'm basically using this post as an outlet to list my favorite mixes of the past year or so (as well as an outlet to abuse the use of UPPER CASE TEXT), and maybe I can even almost make up for my recent drought of posting with this flood of goodness.

So FIRST UP- gotta support my broheims, and this mix from my SF dudepal Jason has been on constant rotation in, err, my apartment for months now. Runs the gamut from the pastoral psychedelic organ perfection of Bo Hansson to obscure '70s folky prog gems by Jade Warrior to the pan-global pop fusion of Masami Tsuchiya (featuring the fretless bass stylings of Mr. Mick Karn) to rad cosmic noodly synth shit like Tagerine Dream and Steve Hillage. And it's all tied together with field recordings and spoken word passages and the like, so FUCK beatmatching. At least temporarily.

Robots in Heat - Obscured by Crowds mp3
tracklisting

NEXT- my vote for mix of the year that wasn't made by one of my DJ friends, but rather by a Parisian fellow by the name of Vidal Benjamin. I have been forcefeeding this to pretty much everyone so apologies if this is redundant, but GOOD GOD is this mix awesome. Dude carves out a pretty well-defined vision of oddball balearica, but he wisely avoids being weird-for-the-sake-of-being-weird in favor of selecting tracks that are amazing and just happen to be really weird. No tracklist yet, but you may recognize the Guy Cuevas number here from the 'Funky Nassau' comp that came out last year. Otherwise prepare for some dope 80's reggae-pop, weird loping disco with what sounds like children singing about E.T. atop it, french synth-wave, and other great tracks I wish I knew enough about to say anything meaningful. Oh and this is hosted on the same site as Jason's mix- a mix-blog called Noncollective (no payola honest), definitely worth checking out.

Vidal Benjamin - Balearic Nightmare

OK so now something a little more house-y; Belgian duo Aeroplane have been releasing monthly 'mixed' mixes (not just playlists) of their favorite newer tracks since June, and pretty much everything they've done has been a thoroughly enjoyable blend of populist yet tasteful electro-house dance JAMZ (tho maybe avoid the August one, tbh). Seriously I've discovered some impressive recent tunes and remixes from these and they're actually pretty varied from month to month so check 'em out. (Actually looks like everything before September is no longer hosted by Soundcloud, so grab them while you still can)

Aeroplane - Monthy Mix Chart September 09
Aeroplane - Monthy Mix Chart October 09
Aeroplane - Monthy Mix Chart November 09

ANOTHER fine mix in 2009 came from idiosyncratic producers Ronny and Renzo for one of my fave blogs- Cosmic Disco. It's full of fantastic psychedelic disco edits, tribal drums, deep house, and various other seemingly unrelated ephemera that still wind up sounding pretty seamless side-by-side. And AGAIN no tracklist here, but do you really need one? Don't be pussies guys.

Ronny and Renzo Mix for Cosmic Disco

And here's the part where I risk looking like a dork and talk about PODCASTS. Seriously all of you should subscribe to Beats in Space, it's insane. Tim Sweeney is an amazing DJ, it's been around for 10 years now and he consistently has the best DJs in the world come on each week. And it's just a college radio show at WNYU, so you even get to hear his uncomfortable nerdly voice at the beginning of every mix (...eh?!). My favorites this year are from Tensnake- an amazing house producer whose mix starts out vintage balearic and quickly proceeds to indulge in vintage diva house, Rub- N-Tug- who are gods among disco-house DJ mortals, KZA- a Japanese producer who nicely bridges balearica nu and old, Johnny Nash- another Japanese dude who instead geeks out on new age and a supremely funky Don Cherry cut, and DJ Strangefruit- one of the masterminds of Mungolian Jetset who turns out a fairly epic two-parter. OOOH and don't forget about the Aeroplane (yes more) one from last month which goes kinda all out on the italo front. And that's kinda just the icing on the cake, lately every week has been good folks.

(NOTE: I'm linking to the tracklists here, for convenience purposes. Download and streaming links are on the right)

Aeroplane on Beats in Space
Johnny Nash on Beats in Space
Strangefruit on Beats in Space
KZA on Beats in Space
Tensnake on Beats in Space
Rub-N-Tug on Beats in Space

There are also lots of great Resident Advisor podcasts that are no longer hosted on their site, as well as phenomenal commercial mixes that I can upload in my next post if you guys are interested. Just thought I'd keep it simple and use other people's links tonight. Plus I'm tired. Hope you guys enjoy...

Rocktober: The Axman Swings His Blade

Can't let a Rocktober pass without some offering to the deities of rock's past. The eighteen year old dorm room rebel that blared Black Sabbath, Slayer, and Led Zeppelin with unabashed adoration is jumping out of me as I follow the stonerific releases from White Hills and Gnod. In name of the fall, in name of girls named Autumn, beards, and looking back at our American heritage, I invested in the releases of Vintage Records, a subsidiary of Rockadrome in Texas. They've been releasing some spectacular reissues of collector item hard rock LPs from the seventies and eighties that strike you right in the stoner bone. Only lame part is that they are on CD, so it is harder to pretend that it actually is 1974, you actually are stoned, and you are just deciding that the hardest rock of all is named metal.

First, hailing from the invincible Camden, NJ (Represent!), recent guest to Bon Jovi's playground build, hails Negative Space who recorded the landmark LP Hard, Heavy, Mean, and Evil in 1970. Fantastic reissue of the dream high school band, digging into some of the hard rock masterpieces of the time like "Johnny B. Goode" and "Purple Haze," these kids took cues from all the right places. So what if they are not sure exactly how to play in the same key as the rest of the band. So what if the drummer drums to his own tempo. This is rock and roll at a gritty and raw reality. The kind that can't be taught. Lester Bangs said that "grossness was the truest criterion for rock 'n' roll, the cruder the clang and grind the more fun and longer listened-to the album'd be." I agree. These kids were definitely on to something, and you will spot this record in Trenton fetching a mighty high fee, despite the fact that it is mostly garbage. I mean treasure. The first eight tracks are the most inspired, from the original LP.

Negative Space - Hard, Heavy, Mean, and Evil

Beyond the reissue, it looks like these guys reincarnated as a hard rock tribute band of the same name. so good. my favorite part of this video is the commentary arguing about whether one band member is a nerd or not.

Another great release from Vintage Records is the reissue of Iron Claw. Iron Claw is a Scottish roots-rock band that grinds out some burners, psychedelic blues rock in its purest. Their release Dismorphobia is fantastic. Though they were supposedly a Black Sabbath cover band for much of their career, their LP from 1970 is golden metal. If my internet was working better I'd upload that too. Maybe I will update this post with it soon enough.

Columbus Day

Columbus incited the annihilation of the 3 million Taino people of Haiti. Happy day off!

Five hundred years later Alan Lomax visited Haiti to document the music of a displaced people. Anthropologically the music connects the polyrhythmic essentials behind blues and jazz with African music. Some historians argue that due to the nature of slavery in the Caribbean, African culture was not subject to the same paternalism as in America (where drumming was outlawed for fears of rebellion). Coupled with the successful rebellion that formed the first black republic in the world, music in Haiti remained distinctly African. By the time Lomax records this, the music evolved to include elements of Highlife and Cumbias. Musically this is sounds like early Cajun music, cumbias, Dominican merengues, and fife and drum. Harte Records 102 will be a ten CD box set of Lomax's Haitian field recordings. Here is a taste.

ps: TURN IT UP!

Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Tell You performed by Dave Paul, originally recorded by the Bee Gees.

















The Difference Between Mechanized Reverb and Delay

Delay attempts a perfect echo; reverb attempts a natural one.

A delay device, like a pedal, will try to replicate or sample and repeat the sound being sent to it at timed intervals, most through a chip called a bucket brigade. The invention of this in the 1970s lead to the development and concept of the charge-coupled device, or CCD, which is in every digital camera or video capture device. However, there are limits to the fidelity of the devices, and even sophisticated tape delays, which use a series of magnetic tape recorders to sample and loop the sound like the Gibson Echoplex, will colour and change the sound of the repeats from the original.

Mechanical reverb was first built for the Hammond electric organ when it started being used in homes and smaller churches. Pipe organs were always accompanied by a large reverberation, and it was thought any organ must have that large cascading sound of a shout heard on high. The solution of how to create echo in a small space was to bounce the instrument's electrical sound around inside a metal spring, as in spring reverb, or across a metal pan, in plate reverb, and have it come back to you after being bounced around.

These are just for analog types of delay and reverb. If we were to start talking about digital types of the same effects, the point becomes moot, as digital emulations are essentially virtual sound, and not real.


Elijah James Santoyo
www.myspace.com/perfectrack

Sofrito Mixes

So.... guys.... remember this blog we started? Well, I am going to try to start throwing more posts up here. Plus, remember how great you all are? I mean, you guys are like the best there ever was, and this public forum gives us a voice to share our awesomeness from afar. You guys know soooo much about music, but I don't see you posting..... What's up with that? Its not like I can read Wire and pretend like they are my friends, but you guys are my friends, and I want to read about what you like.

Gushing aside, this post is simply a posting to put up a new link. Erik and I both snagged the Tropical Discotheque 12"s in 2008, and the Sofrito group are back with some more latin disco edit gold. I walked into my local haunt and saw this one on the wall.

Another smash hit 12", a summer scorcher that I will toast as a winter dancefloor Afro oasis for my livingroom. After listening to it a few times, I checked out their website and low and behold, it is filled to the brim with spectacular mixes of just this kind of funkytropicaldancespecials, links to other tropical websites, and even pictures of people having a good tropical time. Oh, and the best part is that they post TRACK LISTINGS! So, next time you are in Nigeria, you will know exactly what you are looking for. I'm sure Erik would have posted this, but didn't want to offend us by posting something we all of course knew about and relished, but I just got the tip on it this afternoon. So I've spent the afternoon listening to Sofrito mixes and drinking mango smoothies as summer slowly fades to fall here in Philadelphia. One things is for sure, and that is that these mixes will make me the hit of tomorrow's regional Puerto Rican Day parade.