Complete Stax/Volt Singles

Somebody - maybe my man Pete Angeli - hooked me with "The Complete Stax / Volt Singles: 1959-1968" 5 disc set in a trade one time. This thing is a score. Thanksgiving, my mom and sister and mother-in-law are over. What do you put on? "The Complete Stax / Volt Singles" on shuffle. Tons of jams, some you know, lots you don't... some straight up funk jams, some mellow soul ballads. 5.8 hours of music. It's like the best oldies station. Perfect background music. If we trade some music remind me and i'll throw it on there, good to have in your back pocket.

Stay up.

dc

Berlin Anyone?

Speaking of Lou, there's been some press about a recent live performance of this which I don't really give a crap about, but it has made me want to revisit the album. I 'm honestly not much of a Lou man except for the Velvets and this, and I think the germ of most of these songs are Velvets bits. For all its hype about being the most depressing album of all time it's no biggie by todays standards, and it's no more of a downer than say Lenny's "Songs of Love and Hate" or Big Star's 3rd. It does share similar moments of beauty and despair with those two albums, and it has one of those big 70's analog productions (Bob Ezrin) that they just don't do anymore. Too lazy too post tracks but if you've never heard it I'd say you should...

The Closet Mixes

I got the Velvet Underground "The Closet Mixes" in a trade with Gabino ( I think it was part of the "Peel Slowly and See" box set).

I think The Closet Mixes were Lou Reed's mixes of the "Velvet Underground" album on MGM, called Closet Mixes because they sound tight and cramped in.

Anywho, all I'm saying is I can listen to "Some Kind of Love (Closet Mix)" on infinite repeat for the rest of life. Luckily it was on YouTube, because as far as I can tell the BooMP3 era is over... that site is totally fucked.



Happy Thankgiving, my friends.

J-pop drum and bass

This is a London Elektricity remix of Japanese dance pop band Nirgilis. The singing is primarily in Japanese, with as few English words thrown in. I've heard some of their other tunes and she does the same thing. Kimi wa daremo aise ya shinai, whatever that means! I'm really digging the more pop sounding dnb tracks these days. Rock on Broheims!

Kid Scooba

The other thing I'm checking out this weekend is the latest joint from Kid Scooba. No one really knows who Kid Scooba is, he's more reclusive and weird than that German dude who makes music under the name Burial. I heard Kid Scooba is also German, but that he spent a lot of time in Asia. Hard to describe what the music sounds like, but if Sun Ra was raped by that weird Aphex Twin Man/bikini-babe character, and the bastard  child was brought up by Brian Eno, it would probably sound like Kid Scooba. 

Brightblack Morning Light

Brightblack Morning Light sound like that Morcheeba album "Who Can you Trust" if you took that down a notch even further down the mellow meter. This is music to take a heavy downer to, have a glass of wine, cue up the lava lamp and just chill hardcore. I was just reading a profile on them in Fader, they have the whole White Stripes thing going on in that they claim to be platonic friends/musical partners, but it is hard to believe. These two apparently live like nomads, camping out and crashing in various places when they are not touring. There was a quote from the guy about how they spend all the money they make on tour to pay for good musicians and they live like homeless people. They are apparently renting a house in rural New Mexico and they hang out there making crazy spacey music and smoke huge amounts of weed. I gotta check out their new album, "Motion to Rejoin", but I was listening to this last night and felt like posting about it.

Miriam Makeba

Hello everybody! Don invited me to this fantastic blog, and when I said "I don't know nearly as much new music as you and your funky friends do", Don says "dude you can just post some kick ass bluegrass." Well I haven't been listening to much bluegrass lately, but I have been listening a lot to Miriam Makeba.

Miriam Makeba is from South Africa (which is a country, not a province of Africa, Ms. Sarah Palin!), and has that really great uplifting africa-meets-jazz-funk sound. She has something in common with Hugh Masekela, both in her music and in that they were married for a time. Sometimes there's some Nina Simone and sometimes there's that clicking you hear in some native african languages. "I Shall Sing" from this album has got to be one of the most joyful recordings ever made.

Miriam just died - November 9th, 2008. She had a heart attack shortly after performing one of her hits - "Pata Pata" - at a benefit concert in Italy.

Deerhunter

Best new shit I've heard in a few weeks is the new Deerhunter joint, 2 CD set "Microcastle" and "Weird Era Cont.".

I'm not going to go into a whole thing here about it, I don't have too much in depth to say, but rather I'll just say it is really good listening with really good songs. (Pitchfork will give you the long-winded spiel)

The songs are so good that they made me get over my adversion to their freakishly anorexic lead singer (shudder):




YIKES!

dc

Just A Souvenir

Anybody check out the new Squarepusher? I just got it, only listened through once, still having mixed feelings about it.

I've been listening to soundsystem recordings as of late. One of my favorite music sites to go to is Who Cork the Dance? They're now featuring a bunch of "line in" recordings (aka soundboard recordings) rather than "in the dance" recordings (aka audience recordings). Love that site a lot...especially now that I'm more interested in early 80s dancehall reggae.






I've also been listening to some jazzy stuff as well. I went to a used CD store the other day and got a fair amount of good stuff. I picked up a copy of the remastered Repeater + 3 Songs. Now, I sold my original copy of this a long time ago so hearing this again really brought me back. Way back. Joe #1!

Okay, so Fugazi isn't the jazzy stuff I mentioned but that trip to the CD score also dug up Jimmy Smith Live! Root Down:




And for the record the other CDs were Happy Monday's "Yes, Please," Lagwagon's "Let's Talk about Feelings" and a CD/DVD by Funki Porcini "Fast Asleep." Not bad for a little over $20.

I've also had Miles Smiles in my CD player a lot lately:



And last but not least, in the CD changer after Miles Smiles is "It's All Around You" by Tortoise.

Telefon Tel Aviv

My buddy Talley came through from Prague this weekend, dropped about 2.5 gigs of music on me. Have been enjoying Apparat, an electronic musician in Berlin, but I checked out Telefon Tel Aviv today and it is the biggest find so far. Reminds me of Four Tet, but a bit more down-tempo, sometimes a really heavy ambient vibe. Perfect for late night, after work and a few drinks........

Fond Of Tigers

Looking for that post-rock fix and can't find anything to fit the bill? Every instrumental post-rock recording sounding like the same old thing over and over? Look no further.
Fond Of Tigers are just the ticket. They are coming from more of a "free jazz" place than a "rock" place, but don't let the four-letter word "jazz" make you think it's gonna be sans balls, because these motherfuckers rock like demons. The songs are very vamp-y, with lots of intricate ostinatos happening (4 bars of 6, then a bar of 7 thrown in) and other brainy, artsy bullshit that would be annoying if it didn't make such complete musical sense. They have a massive sound, employing 2 drum sets, bass, guitars, violin, trumpets, electronics, the whole kitchen sink. All the tracks flow perfectly together to make for one very rewarding continuous listen.

I know of two releases: Release the Saviours and A Thing To Live With.
I prefer the latter; it just seems to all come together in a very special way, like chocolate and peanut butter.

And just look at that cover:

Terje Pt2

By popular demand, MP3 of "Keep It Like That - Tight"

Boomp3.com

dc

Terje Rypdal

This is one of my all time favorite records, Terje Rypdal was a guitar player from Iceland (?) who was down with Jan Garbarek. He did a bunch of records for ECM, and some with Flying Dutchman. I believe Terje was originally in a 60's pop group, his country's Beatles, almost, but then went on to make esoteric jazz records.

Some of the later records like that on ECM are gaaaaaay, but this one is fucking awesome. 1971. The first song "Keep It Like That = Tight", starts with a funky sparse electric bass line intro that slowly builds, until the drums (courtesy of Jon Christensen, another guy who played with Garbarek alot) comes in with a fat ass crazy heavy drum break for like 4 soild measures. But more than a rare break LP, this thing goes on to be top notch. Saxophone solo kicks it off, spacey rhodes, then Terje comes in with the shredding yet outside the box guitar solo a la Ribot at his rippingnest. Those drums!

2nd track is a sparse, spacey jam with bowed bass that is amazing.

3rd track has his wife on the free jazz vocals. Hahaha, did you notice that all those guys had their wives on their records? Larry Coryell, Sonny Sharrock, Doug Carn... all those free jazz cats. But this jam is just more of the awesome same. Then a cool interlude, then a rocking closing tune like The Blues Project on acid. Consistent all the way through. I digitized this shit so a lot of you may have it. "Bleak House" is his other must have.

TERJE RYPDAL S/T. BEST ALBUM EVER.

dc-looch

In Search of Manny

I guess this was recently re-released or something. Anyway I found it on eMusic and it still sounds great. 15 years old, I can still dig it and still love that album cover.

I never owned this album, it was a cd that my roommate in college (ahem, Bolsinga) owned, and I could never play it enough.

I never got into their second album "Natural Ingredients" and I lost track of them after that.

Keep on rockin' it.

Boomp3.com

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