Last year’s Imaginational Anthem: The Private Press, was one of the best compilations in quite some time, bringing to light a host of extremely obscure guitarists from the 1970s and 1980s – players who lurked in the considerable shadows of Fahey, Basho, Bull and Kottke, but still . . .
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There's been no shortage of national focus on Arizona of late. The president showed up, there was trouble; our disgraced former sheriff slithered back into the headlines; and a federal judge ruled racism as the main factor in a ban on ethnic studies in Arizona schools. From the outside, Arizona likely seems like a land of extremes, of extreme ideologies and extreme heat. And it is that, but for those of us listening with our ear to the ground, those extremes extend to artistic vitality and spiritual growth. From the dusty cowgirl songs of Billie Maxwell to the blistered soul of Eddie & Ernie, from the exoticism of the Sun City Girls to the fried psychedelia the Meat Puppets, from the proto-freak folk of Black Sun Ensemble to the cosmic crush of Destruction Unit, Arizona has always harbored strange musical aberrations.
The Old Arizona was weird, but so is the new. Two stalwart examples of this New Weird Arizona? Tucson combo the Myrrors and the Phoenix-based Sunn Trio. Recently, the bands released new LPs, titled Hasta La Victoria and Sunn Trio, respectively.
Their connections are more than geographical; Sunn Trio arrives via Sky Lantern Records, the label run by Nik Rayne of the Myrrors, which has released music by like-minded explorers Eternal Tapestry, Dead Sea Apes, and Kikagaku Moyo. And even though Hasta La Victoria, released by the psych-leaning Beyond Is Beyond Is Beyond label, finds the Myrrors playing an entirely discrete combination of Krautrock, ambient, and drone than Sunn Trio’s Middle Eastern/free jazz/bizzaro excursions, it’s clear a psychic connection ties the groups together, a unity that exists despite vastly different sonic frameworks.
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Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday — Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST.
SIRIUS 492: Jean Michel Bernard — Générique Stephane ++ Rosebud - Interstellar Overdrive ++ Talking Heads - I Zimbra ++ Gal Costa - Relance ++ Lee “Scratch” Perry - City To Hot ++ Ekambi Brillant - Africa Africa ++ Tom Tom Club - L'î‰léphant ++ Omni - Afterlife ++ Medium Medium - Hungry, So Angry ++ Talking Heads - Seen And Not Seen ++ Vivienne Goldman - Private Armies Dub ++ Maximum Joy - Let It Take You There ++ Atlas Sound - Recent Bedroom . . .
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Come for the drums, stay for the humid washes of Cameroonian fuzz. Originally released in 1975 via Ekambi Brillant's Africa Oumba lp, "Africa Africa" has been resurrected of late by the Paris based Africa Seven imprint. Dig in, as the track appears on both African Funk Experimentals 1975-1982 and volume one of the label's ongoing African . . .
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Mic control, Jamaican DJ Winston Williams had it. Released last year as part of the latest excavation of Studio One's vaults, Radio Show finds the famed selector mc'ing two episodes broadcasted for the Jamaican Broadcast Corporation; 1977's Sounds of Young Jamaica and 1978's Soul, Power And Sound . . .
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Lifted from a 1977 collection known as Discoballs: A Tribute to Pink Floyd, Rosebud was a French studio project featuring a number of notable players (composer Gabriel Yared, Magma's Jannick Top and Claude Engel), bent on reinterpreting eight Pink Floyd tracks in the vein of "disco". Emphasis on parentheses, as the results skew more toward early electronic music and the pulsing mutant polyrhythms of Talking Heads, rather than, say, Gloria Gaynor.
Forty years later, whatever the project's original intent, the end results . . .
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On Indiana power trio Cloakroom's new album Time Well, the band weds shoegaze's blurry impressionism to post-rock heaviness and a rootsy framework. It's a heavy record, but its heft is due to more than the thick layers of guitar. On songs like "Seedless Star" and "Concrete Gallery," singer Doyle Martin conjures a particular atmosphere with his airy vocals; listen closely, and the influence of country rock and blues emerges, woven deeply into the band's dream rock aesthetic. But that influence can also be heard explicitly -- see the band's cover of Songs: Ohia's "Steve Albini's Blues," in which the band inhabits the song of another heavy metal-leaning Indiana boy -- and Time Well's "Hymnal," which finds the band reworking the 19th century American spiritual "Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)," imbuing the traditional song with space rock textures.
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Earlier this month marked the 10th anniversary of the departure of Lee Hazlewood from our plane, on August 4, 2007. In the decade since his passing, Hazlewood's music has been the source of no small amount of fascination. The focused attention on his work feels as strong as ever, bolstered by a series of reissues and retrospectives from Light in the Attic, the tremendous personal biography Lee, Myself, and I: Inside the Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood by Wyndham Wallace, and numerous covers and interpretations of his work.
But the final word, it seems, always belongs to Lee himself. Released shortly after his death, "Hilli (At the Top of the World)" remains a fitting tribute to Hazlewood. Recorded with Icelandic quartet amiina, known predominately for their work with Sigur Ros, the song featured Hazlewood reading lyrics written by Wallace, capturing a spirit of environmental wonder and beauty.
At the top of the world there’s an island
A place where the sun never shines
But the people don’t care
Because the snow over there
Is so bright that the sun’s in their mind.
The song was recently reissued digitally and as a limited 12" record in honor of its 10th anniversary, and precedes the reissue of amiina’s kurr. Haunting and quizzical, "Hilli (At the Top of the World") serves as a reminder of Hazlewood's playful spirit and singular voice. words/j woodbury
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There’s no shortage of Leonard Cohen live albums from over the years, but there's never been an official release from the man’s 1976 summer tour of Europe. This masterful two-hour Montreux set would do the trick nicely — backed by a versatile band, Cohen leans into his hits with a swagger worthy of Sinatra and offers up a handful of less-traveled tracks. You don’t really think of his music as particularly funky, but hey, it was ‘76 and disco was in the air; “Lover Lover Lover” and “There Is A War” are darkly comic boogies . . .
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Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday — Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST.
SIRIUS 491: Jean Michel Bernard — Générique Stephane ++ Gil Scott-Heron - Message To The Messengers ++ Sinkane - U’Huh ++ Gal Costa - Relance ++ Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy w/ Tortoise - Cravo î‰ Canela ++ Yoko Ono - Mind Train (AD edit) ++ Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Wawa ++ Yabby U - Conquering Dub (excerpt) ++ Serge Gainsbourg - Javanaise Remake ++ Brian Eno - No One Receiving ++ Faust - Just A Second (Starts Like That!) [excerpt] ++ Bitchin Bajas - Bajas . . .
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Composed by jazz guitarist Pierre Cavalli, swirling widescreen French psychedelia lifted from the short-lived 1971 television drama Un Soir Chez Norris.
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Reflecting on the ebb and flow of his career, three years prior to his death in 1994, Sonny Sharrock noted "the last five years have been pretty strange for me, because I went twelve years without making a record at all, and then in the last five, I've made seven records under my own name." Or more simply put, an artist in his fifth decade unquestionably hitting his stride.
As a final curtain call, Ask The Ages is exemplary. Released in . . .
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This Friday Mr Bongo Records is set to reissue Gal Costa’s fourth album, 1973’s îndia. A record heralded for its brave experimentation, it's a bold and cohesive work the label deems a “post-Tropicalia masterpiece.” We wouldn't argue.
India is a subtle yet revolutionary statement, one in which Costa stands her ground by remaining her uncompromising self. Brave, generous, and genuine, the nine performances marvel across . . .
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Ahmed Gallab is Sinkane. The Sudanese-American multi-instrumentalist, who to date has released six genre bending albums of rhythmic poly-global funk, pop and electronica, returned earlier this year with Life & Livin' It. That record, like much of his discography, roots freely; a borderless aural cross-pollination of soulful pan-African and Jamaican sounds stirred into a bouillabaisse of American pop, rock, r&b and beyond. It's an intoxicating . . .
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Ask the most dedicated followers of British folk rock about the most sought after lost classic of the canon, and you'll likely hear 1972's Bright Phoebus: The Songs of Mike and Lal Waterson cited as a holy grail. The work of two siblings, it followed the dissolution of their family band the Watersons. Mike and Lal assembled a massive cast to record the album, including sister Norma Waterson, Ashley Hutchings, much of the lineup of Steeleye Span, Martin Carthy, Richard Thompson and Dave Mattacks of Fairport Convention, and more. But it was released to little fanfare. Due to a manufacturing error, only 1,000 copies ever found their way into the hands of folk fans, many of whom were confused by the band's peculiar mix of avant-garde, country, folk, and psychedelia, and bewildered by the disillusioned and wounded lyrical sensibility.
But dedicated listeners kept Bright Phoebus alive, passing the album along around as a bootleg. It gained high profile fans like Stephen Malkmus, Billy Bragg, Arcade Fire, and Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley. Though the Lal and Mike both passed away (in 1998 and 2011, respectively) the album continued to grow in esteem. Recently, it was finally reissued by Domino Records, with great great taken to enhance its fidelity and expand its context (the new edition features demos and longform notes by scholar Pete Paphides).
One of the album's most vocal admirers is M.C. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger. It's one of Taylor's favorites, and it's not hard to hear a similar play between the elements of light and shadow in the songs of his forthcoming album, Hallelujah Anyhow, due out September 22 via Merge Records. AD spoke to Taylor at his hotel room outside of Portland, Oregon, where he was prepping for a set at Pickathon. Below, his thoughts on the haunting longevity of Bright Phoebus.
Mike and Lal Waterson :: Scarecrow"
M.C. Taylor: I got quite into British folk music in the early 2000s through a friend of mine named Michael Talbot who, he was younger than me, but he just had an encyclopedic knowledge, particularly of British folk music. I really liked the Watersons...you gotta be in it totally...you gotta have a dedication [to listen]...you've got to wanna be there at that place. That music speaks to me, their particular voices, there was something about them that I really felt compelling.
There was something that felt timeless about it, it was sort of biblical in that way. Then of course...I heard about Bright Phoebus, probably in 2005, I would say. I tracked a copy down. I actually have an original Topic pressing. I didn't realize until really recently that only 1,000 copies of that record actually made it out, because there were manufacturing issues and stuff with that record. I found a copy back then and there's something about that record that sort of put it in the same space that all of my favorite records exist in, which is that I didn't get it on first listen -- or even the first 10 listens -- but there was something that compelled me to keep going back to it.
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