A well-curated comp of Syd's best solo work. Some mighty fine and demented songs here. Enjoy the work of the world's most notorious psychedelic casualty. 
Gabo requested some DNA on my birthday post (thanks for the kind wishes people), and while I look for "DNA on DNA" on my disorganized shitpile of cds, i'll give you a compilation of rare material from another of No Wave's big 4, Mars. Includes the savage rush of "Puerto Rican Ghost". Happy holidays!
One of The Sun of Latin's Music most zonked out sets. Palmieri punishes that Fender Rhodes into pure utter craziness and conjures some nasty Tropical Cosmic Grooves with his scorching ensemble. Features white hot versions of "Bilongo" y "Pa' Huele". Features his brother Charlie "El Gigante de las blancas y las negras" on equally demented electric organ. Personal fave: "La Malanga". Respect to a true master of Caribbean Music. 
A few days ago Abe asked me about albums similar to Ry Cooder's soundtrack work in "Paris, Texas". I told him some few names and albums, but I totally forgot about this glorious solo effort by Television guitar maestro Verlaine. He crosses all moods from aggressive to deeply melancholic in his brilliant playing while the original Television rhythm section (Billy Ficca and Fred Smith) give rock solid support, even throwing some krautrock rhythm pulses here and there. But it's Verlaine who's the one allowed to shine, and they know it, so they just stand back and let him soar. Awesome.
Live Skull were from NYC and specialized in art-damaged, feedback-drenched noise rock, Contemporaries of Sonic Youth, Swans and Band of Susans, they fell in line stylistically. In this album they bring to the fore an unknown vocalist from Boston called Thalia Zedek, and sparks flew. Her delivery meshed perfectly with group's menacing sound, and helped push "Dusted" into the upper echelon of Live Skull releases and NYC groups.
"It's difficult – it's enormously difficult. It might have been expected from a master ironist that music for a new society turns out to resemble a series of requia. Songs begin to take form and crack and dissolve like angels of icing. There is no hopeful circumlocution. When, halfway through the second side, 'Changes Made' seems about to give birth to the optimism of a fresh world, the following 'Damn Life' breaks it down again.
It would be unbearable – parts of it are, particularly the sluggish agonies of 'Santies' – if not for Cale's elegiac touch. It's a heartless gesture to include a snatch from Beethoven's 'Ode To Joy' during 'Damn Life', but compassion finally overtakes despondency. The people in Cale's world are blind and sorrowful creatures destined for unpleasant ends, yet he is at pains to stress that it needn't be so.
In the extraordinary lyricism distilled in 'Taking Your Life In Your Hands', the cautionary 'Close Watch' or the frozen beauty of 'Broken Bird' the point of the music takes hold – from these lessons something better should come forth. The atmosphere of baroque meditation renders it a half-brother to Nico's Desertshore, which Cale also produced.
The final frame is 'Rise, Sam and Rimsky-Korsakov', a tiny and ghostly lament sung by Cale in a manner that actively recalls Desertshore's 'Le Petit Chevalier'. It sinks out of sight to fit in with a world wound down... to die in." - Richard Cook
In describing this period of his career, Budd said that he was "in full revolt" against the truculent, "tough" music of the avant-garde. The opening "Bismillahi 'Rrahman 'Rrahim" immediately sets the mood of the album, with the sax of Marion Brown (who played on John Coltrane's Ascension) bathing in a pond of warmth established by marimbas, harp, celeste, and the very celeste-like Fender Rhodes. The final piece of the album, "Juno," brings this mood to its conclusion, with Budd's gushing waterfalls of piano. In the intervening 45 minutes or so, you have music whose primary goal above all else is to be devastatingly beautiful.
"Madrigals of the Rose Angel" remains my favorite track on this album, and indeed, I still think it is one of Budd's greatest contributions as an artist. A work initially conceived for performance by "piano, harp, celeste, topless choir, and lights" is bound to be controversial. In a 1997 interview, Budd himself called it with a grin, "blatantly sexist." Maybe so, but there's a flip-side to that observation. I am convinced that if women really want to rule the world, their best shot is to get together, collectively listen to and study this track, for there is no greater example of the power in the female voice to bring swooning males irrevocably to their knees. Anyway, "Madrigals" implements an interesting technique of using the choir and the instruments as pivots to guide the music along. Typically, the choir is static in melody while the instruments change chords, and the next moment the instruments are static as the choir continues along with the melody.
Though Budd also uses the adjective "shallow" in describing this, I do not have that experience at all as a listener receiving these sounds. There is one moment in "Madrigals," right after the choir hits their first note (i.e., a C# minor seventh chord ripples with a gentle crescendo into C# major seventh) that always gives me chills. There is something hypnotic and mystical that reaches in deep for just that one ripple alone. The logic in my head tells me it's a simple change of sustained chords. But what I feel — it's like the sound of a portal opening to a new place — undefinable. Maybe if you listen to it to you'll discover a similar feeling as well. It's those kind of moments that make listening to music such a rewarding thing.
The use of primarily acoustic instruments lends this album an organic quality that increases its already burgeoning appeal. There are many that cannot get into the basic, Paradisic sensibility of this album, possibly because they feel it's too over the top. While I can't fault them for their opinion, I sure as hell don't agree with it. For those who are interested in exploring Budd's work, I feel this one is pretty much a given. After Pavilion of Dreams, Budd would concentrate primarily on solo and collaborative work in various settings, before returning to ensemble writing in the early 1990s." - Joe McGlinchey
The debut album of the incredible band that changed the lives of rock musicians and rock fans everywhere around the world. This album doesn't need and introduction.
After Fripp disbanded King Crimson he went in a 1o month hiatus and entered the American Society for Continuous Education where he took many classes that challenged his intellect and gave him a new sense of discipline. Fast forward ten months and he was offered a place in the board of directors of this society. He later went on develop a method he called Guitar Craft. Consequently, in 1985 Guitar Craft seminars started to take place world wide by the same time he was offered a teaching position in the ASCE. As a result of the seminars came this league of musicians that went by the name Crafty Guitarists wich recorded albums that include a live one. This is a true show of hands.
The two men worked as co-musicians on this project, and it was hannett’s synth washes underpinning Reilly’s arpeggios that anchored the work which in future years become more ethereal and less rooted in grim Noerthern reality.
The Return a bloody-minded contradiction of everything Factory stood for at that time. As if to underline its refusal to sit happily with its playmates, initial copies came housed in a sandpaper sleeve that would rub horribly against its neighbours: A situationist trick that, while as arch as the band’s name (appropriated from the Spanish civil war), still signalled Hannett and Reilly’s extreme faith in their vision. Hannett’s wayward nature would prove his undoing, while Vini merely kept on spiralling into some crystaline alternative universe. The Return is a perfect meeting of minds." - Chris Jones
