Twittering Machines

Buffalo Daughter
New Rock

I finally picked up this favorite record on vinyl. From 1998, suGar yoshinage: guitars, tb-303, short wave radio, vocals | yumiko ohno: bass, mini moog, vocals & moOog Yamamoto: turn tables, voices are joined by atsushi matsushita, chika ogwana and kin-ichi motegi (all on drums on different tracks) and motoko fujii on voilin for the funk-pop-rock-noise-dj-kraut-kitsch-synth-smorgasbord that make Buffalo Daughter flat out full and filling fun. I love this double LP from the first blip to the last bleep and every rockin funkin sampled super-tight spaced-out groove in between. Released on the Beastie Boys Grand Royal records.

This is New Rock / I’m tingling / That’s New Pop / Popping up
That’s New Rock / We found it / That’s New Pop / It’s fun!
Born tomorrow / That familair music

Serge Gainsbourg
L’Homme A Tete De Chou

Jonathan’s recommendation finally arrived and all I’ve got to say beyond this is some cool shit is a picture (not the LP cover the ones that follow) is worth lots o words. Serge’s ‘concept’ album from 1976 reissued by 4 Men With Beards.

Plot summary:

In this morbidly comic song cycle the narrator’s muse is Marilou, a black shampoo girl: during their ill-fated fling, he descends into unhinged obsession, beats her to death with a fire extinguisher and ends up in a psychiatric hospital (convinced his head has turned into a cabbage).

Do ya think Serge was a Warren Beatty fan, Shampoo came out in 1975, or was it the other way ’round? I just want to add Mr. Gainsbourg was one fortunate Frenchman and Ms. Birkin, his muse, leaves me…

(more…)

Valet
False Face Society

Yup. A new Valet release this time a limited pressing of 500 on Mexican Summer. More dreamy (even dreamier than Naked Acid) psych from Honey Owens with some tribal beats backing hushed processed vocals, synth wash, moaning guitar and strung out violin. 3 song LP including a bongo-driven wah-crazy cover of ” Rainbow,” originally by Boris and Michio Kurihara. Honey is joined by Brian Foote (Nudge), Ashby Collinson, Brian Thackeray (Galactic Core) and Jordan Dykstra (Parenthetical Girls, Atlas Sound). And I love the b/w xerox insert again. Run don’t walk.

Jacques Coursil
black suite

Composer, trumpet player and double PhD (linguistics and philosophy of language) Jacques Coursil has released a total of 4 records – 2 on BYG Actuel — this one and The Way Ahead both from ’69,  then 36 years later a solo outing on John Zorn’s Tzadik label titled Minimal Brass, and Clameurs from ’07 released on Sunnyside. Born in Montmartre (his parents were from Martinique) in 1938, he moved to NYC in 1965 were he played with Sun Ra, Marion Brown, Sonny Murray, Anthony Braxton and Frank Wright.

While I’d never heard of Jacques Coursil when I bought this record at PREX, it came as no real surprise once I’d read about him that a) he studied contemporary classical composition (under Noel Da Costa) and b) he spent some time studying with Bill Dixon (Coursil performed the Black Suite in 1967 with among others Alan Silva and Lawrence Cook who appear on a number of Dixon’s LPs). These compositions are related to Dixon’s Intents and Purposes in their seamless blending of composition and improvisation. Featuring Coursil on trumpet, Arthur Jones on alto sax, Anthony Braxton on the amazingly flatulent contrabass clarinet, Burton Greene piano, Bob Guerin bass and Claude Delcloo on drums.

But don’t let all the intellect fool you into thinking these are some cold musical chess games. They’re not. Whatever was happening in Paris in 1969 it lit a fire under all of the BYG Actuel artists and we’re fortunate for each of these stunning moments captured.

then

 
now – Jacques Coursil (left), Aïssatou Thiam & les fondateurs de l’association Keemia

What I am interested in is how people listen, not what they want to listen to… The human is a musical animal basically. So I am not trying to play things for him that he wants but things that he can hear in his range, his capability of listening.

Montego Joe
Wild & Warm

 ”The music of Wild & Warm was designed to get people to ‘shake that thing’ — not just that thing, but everything, from top to bottom, in all directions — and the more directions at once the better. Clothing is optional — as it should be in a free country.” from the liner notes by Francis Squibb

Montgeo Joe, aka Roger Sanders, arrived in the US in 1939 from Jamaica (age “9 or 10″) congas in hand. Wild & Warm is his 2nd LP on Prestige from 1965 and he’s joined by Al Gibbons on tenor sax, Leonard Goines on trumpet, Arthur Jenkins on piano, Ed Thompson on bass, !! Milford Graves on drums and timbales !! and Sonny Morgan on maracas, chekere, clave, bell and panderos.

Think world jazz dance music or an early Budos Band — a mix of jazz, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, African, rock ‘n roll and r&b — a real musical soup all geared toward getting you to shake that everything! Mostly short 3-minuteish tracks, I guess the idea was to get the non-jazz crowd groovin to these crazy beats. Even though it is on the ‘lite’ side, there’s a wacky variety of styles from the hot solo trumpet over percussion on “Ewe” to the Fats Waller-inspired “Ouch” (Get your big feet, off my toe!) to the fairly straight forward jazz on “Bata Blues” all tied together by Montego Joe’s congas giving everything that wild & warm flavor.

Roger ‘Montego Joe’ Sanders seems like one cool cat – he was also the founder/leader of the HAR-YOU Percussion Group which Sanders formed in part to help kids escape the violence of Harlem in the ’60s by getting them involved in music. Their release on ESP – Sounds of the Ghetto Youth looks like another must-have LP.

Paul Metzger
Anamnestic Tincture

A trio of live recordings from 2002 and 2008 by Paul Metzger string-man & “mutant instrument” maker extraordinaire. 2 tracks use variations on Metzger’s modified banjo while “Dark Green Water” employs his modified 10-string guitar with cymbals inlaid in the sound board. Raga-inspired strummed bent and uniquely reverberant one-man band O goodness. While not as theatrically wacky as Mr. Daniel A.I.U. Higgs, I find this just as captivating.

btw – each cover is unique and  includes an original vintage photo. I got a most excellent ‘dish leaning on running board with dress reflected in car door‘ but I’m certain every one will make you feel you own something special. Isn’t that really — nice? 425 copies released on Roratorio.

A frustratingly short (just over 3 minutes per side) tribute to our man Washington Phillips.  Simply, this is a gorgeous record that leaves the beauty of Phillips intact while sounding completely different.  Comes in a cool pre-WWII 78 style sleeve courtesy of Dekorder.

Here’s a shot of how it all went down.

Cold Cave
Painted Nails

Imagine forgetting to take Joy Division out of your pants before you put them in the wash and you’ve got Cold Cave and what could very well be a perfect 7″. Already mostly sold out 2nd printing.

SIDE A:
sex ads
I’ve seen the future and it’s no place for me

SIDE B:
always someone

Fennesz
Black Sea

There’s noise and there’s noise. These pieces hiss moan and crackle with otherworldly processed beauty accented by the occasional plucked string teetering with a wonderful balance between sound and song. And this music sounds – vast -. Huge sound/dream-scapes open up to reveal a peaceful if lonesome space. I hear dashes of Durutti Column especially in the guitar / synth  / mix but Black Sea is more ambient, less beat with no human voice to break the sweet bleakness. This is the kind of record you want to hear in the pitch dark letting it wash over you until you disappear.

Kodama
Turning Leaf Migrations

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,
Sing “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.” 

At first this record sounded queer, a little bit jumbled and jivey — nature noises, flute, bowed ?, oscillations, creeks, groans grunts and chant.

Then I listened more and read that Kodama are Japanese tree spirits but this Kodama is “visual and sound artists” Hitoshi Kojo and Michael Northam’s debut making and recording sounds on-site.

Kodama as pictured in the movie Princess Mononoke

From Hitoshi Kojo:

we are the spirit of forest. our howling has been offered to the many goddesses of the valleys. teething our emptiness they, licking the stars, until white holes appear in our sky through them towards regenerative guides of the tonal-morphic omni-verses.

using found objects to seduce voices from unlikely sources as well as traditional instruments of wind, wires and wood. kodama weaves between emotional poetry and dynamic forces of noises. the recordings have a strong atmosphere of each location – the top of a mountain in switzerland, a campground in ohio, lofoten island in norway, the arctic circle in finland, niagara falls, etc. it includes a lot of the dirts of the raw recordings, but also incredibly beautiful moments such as the session with an owl in a slovenian forest, an alpine summit singing meditation under the vast galaxy, and an encounter with the small people through strange ritual…

tonal-morphic omni-verses
Cover and sleeve art by Hitoshi Kojo (who has a nice sense of humor)

Time to eat some trail mix, take a hike and listen for our own Kodama.

Blank Dogs
Seconds

Any record that has me singing Joy Division tunes in my head after the first play is all right in my mind. Mike Sniper‘s home grown label limited 300 copy 12″ EP comes with silk-screened cover art and 4 songs of hazy fuzz-faced post-most all things garage and lo-fi. More importantly these are some damn good catchy tunes from a one-man Brooklyn band. Woof!

Pocahaunted
Passage

I’m in love with some music I can’t live without
I’m in love, but I sure picked a good time
To be in love
To be in love

4 track, 12″ 45RPM slow burner from the girls kown as Pocahaunted. They’re joined by Bobb Bruno and Cameron Stallones of Sun Arraw for a hot mystical desert ceremonial trip. Throb, drone, pulse wail & strum. Yum. 500 copies.

Ofege
Try And Love

You don’t have to try and love this record. Simply amazing music from a group of Nigerian high schoolers (yes, they were actually in high school when producer Odion Iruoje found and recorded them in 1973), Try And Love channels everything from Santana to reggae to southern rock all with that sunshiny African spirit. Berkley Jones’ overdubbed lead guitar ‘fits’ especially if I ignore it but no matter this is a rare polished reissued gem.