Can - Queueing Down

live paris 1973 krautness from the masters themselves. great sound quality and half-hour jams with classic tunes like 'vitamin c', 'spoon' & 'one more night'. damo suzuki at his finest.

do this.

King Crimson - The Great Deceiver: Live 1973-1975

enough said. classic fripp/wetton/cross/brufford lineup. check out this wiki article for more information.

CD1: Things Are Not As They Seem

CD2: Sleight Of Hand (Or Now You Don`t See It Again)

CD3: ...Acts Of Deception (The Magic Circus, Or Weasels Stole Our Fruit)

CD4: ...But Neither Are They Otherwise

have a nice day!

Arthur Verocai - Arthur Verocai

there is only one word to describe this album: TIMELESS. yes i said it. TIMELESS. a 1972 album that was so ahead of its time that it was never given its moment to shine as one of the greatest albums of the 70s. not until he was rediscovered by music historians and was invited to LA in 2009 to do a concert of the full album. this man made a fusion between contemporary brazilian harmony, strings, electric pianos, acoustic guitars, electronic instruments, male and female singers to create a wide musical palette that is still regarded as one of the biggest achievements of the 20th century. he gave his heart and soul to create and record this album but nobody cared about it at the time of its release, so Arthur got depressed, he quit making symphonic arrangement and started making commercial jingles for tv to make money.

please donwload this album and witness the beauty of music.

sylvia

Burning Spear - Social Living

a classic roots album filled with awesome harmonic explorations and praises to marcus garvey. this was one of the first reggae albums that i bought when i was in highschool and still it sounds like a timeless achievement in jah music. light one up and give thanks.

marcus say jah no dead

Shellac - Terraform

another one for the books. one of their greatest albums. classic bad-ass overdriven shellacness.

rush job

Luciano Perrone - Batucada Fantástica

1959 recording.

taken directly from toque-musicall:

"Indiscutivelmente um dos melhores discos de percussão que eu já ouvi. Luciano Perrone foi o grande mestre da bateria. Considerado por muitos anos o melhor baterista/percussionista do Brasil. Por este disco de ritmos brasileiros ele recebeu em 1967, o Grande Prêmio Internacional do Disco, instituído pela Academia Charles Cros de Paris. Este álbum é obrigatório na discoteca básica de qualquer DJ que se preze. Quem ainda não ouviu não pode perder essa oportunidade. Aliás, é bom dizer. Este disco está presente como indicação nos melhores blogs de música da rede."

que brazilón!

fuck yeah.

grab this QUICK!

Fantasmes: Album Release Party

Last Bummer y Red Shield presentan el release del nuevo disco de Fantasmes, Sidetracked.

Actos invitados:

Astrolab/io
Un.Real

DJ sets por...nosotros!


September 16, 9:00pm
Red Shield (ave. Roosevelt, Hato Rey)

Pink Floyd - Ummagumma

Because everyone should listen to it at least once in their lifetimes.

Sacre

Gavin Bryars - Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet/The Sinking of the Titanic

Gavin Bryars played bass with Tony Oxley and Derek Bailey in The Joseph Hoolbroke Trio (one of the frist groups to explore non-idiomatic Improv), was a member of the Portsmouth Sinfonia and is a major composer of meditative, beautiful pieces that have a precise, focused system at heart. This are two of his best and most notorious compositions, released on Eno's label Obscure in the 70s.

"A holy grail among contemporary music collectors, this release on Brian Eno's Obscure label, which went out of print almost immediately, features two of the finest compositions of the late 20th century, both by Gavin Bryars. The title track had since been recorded again on two occasions, arguably to better effect on Les Disques du Crepuscule in 1990 and once, more pallidly, on Point in 1994, but this initial production was an extremely special event. Bryars' idea was to construct an aural picture of the disaster, complete with songs and hymns supposedly played by the ship's orchestra even as she was sinking. He combined this with the acoustical phenomenon of the enhanced ability of sounds to travel great lengths underwater and produced an eerie and romantic sub-aqueous soundscape of remarkable subtlety and beauty. Using minimalist techniques, the repetition and overlapping of hymns like "Autumn" assume a surreal aspect, at once sad and peaceful. His score was designed to incorporate new discoveries about the shipwreck (or to dispense with elements that proved false) over time; this performance includes taped reminiscences of one survivor and the tinklings of a music box salvaged by another. This is one gorgeous, haunting piece of music. As though one masterpiece wasn't enough, the second composition on the album might be even greater. Surely one of the most beautiful "concept" works ever created, "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" begins with the faint, faded-in voice of a London tramp singing the old hymn plaintively but without pathos and more or less in tune. Bryars looped this tape so that it resolved in non-jarring fashion, then introduced -- ever so softly and gradually with each iteration of the verse -- instrumental accompaniment: first strings, then guitar and bass, and eventually the entire chamber orchestra. The lush, sensuous music, entirely sympathetic to the song, gives it increased strength and humanity as it swells to near-majestic proportions and then, just as gradually, subsides. The emotional impact of this 25-minute piece, in its honest and charitable stance toward the singer, cannot be understated. With this simple idea, limned with precision and beauty, Bryars was graciously content to achieve a lofty goal one time, to let it stand by itself and move on. A version recorded for Point in 1995, which included the gratuitous addition of Tom Waits accompanying the tape, pales in comparison to the original. Long a collector's item on vinyl, a CD issue was released in England on VirgiJAn U.K. in 1998 but it, too, quickly went out of print." - Brian Olewnick

JAMs

Gary Higgins - Red Hash

Obscure, magnificent psychfolk classic, recently dug out of its ignominious grave.

"Gary Higgins' only album has much in common with many other vaguely hippie-ish singer/songwriter records from the early '70s on small or vanity labels. There's a laid-back feel that seems two or three years out of time (or behind the times), like an exhausted hangover from the wilder peaks of the psychedelic era. Relative to this collector-oriented genre, however, the record's very much above average. For one thing, the production is much better than it is for many such endeavors that suffered from limited distribution — subdued and no frills, perhaps, but clear, well recorded, and well played and sung. Too, few other records of this sort are so downright melancholy, though without succumbing to the unhinged despair that consigns many of them to an extremely limited audience. It's more like being trapped in a room where the candles are burning down to their wicks, with the knowledge that there will be no encores once the music's over. Higgins was in prison in the early '70s, and while it might be too much to project his personal circumstances onto judgment of the proceedings, it does rather sound like the musings of a gentle soul who somehow lost his way or got steered down the wrong path. There are dark insinuations of insomnia, doubt, a loss of hope, and in the last lyric of the closing "Looking for June," desperate wondering as to where he's gonna get some dope. "Down on the Farm" sounds almost like a folky Captain Beefheart with its guttural vocals and twisted blues progressions, but it's not typical of an album that usually goes for a far more placid and mainstream (though slightly bent) singer/songwriter sound." - R. Unterberger

lloigor

Great Success!

Had a blast last nite. Thanks to everyone for showing up and cutting a rug, and the collaborators from both blogs for bringing the goods.

Charanjit Singh - Synthesizing: Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat

this is the reissue of the original 1982 album chopped into individual tracks thanks to Bombay-Connection. an electronic gem.

taken directly from The Wooliest Mammoth.

"In 1982, Bollywood session musician Charanjit Singh imported the latest synthesizer equipment into India, to modernize the sound of Bollywood scores. After studio hours however, Singh went to work on his own experiment using the new equipment, (Roland TR-808, Roland TB-303 ((the synth responsible some 5 years later for creating the sound of acid house)) and a Roland Jupiter-8 keyboard) which was to record traditional Indian ragas using the latest in musical innovation. The result is an amazingly fluid minimal record that sounds far ahead of it's time. It just so happens that in this recording Singh made the first house and acid house recordings ever. Three and five years respectively ahead of their appearance in the west. All the elements are there: hypnotic beat, mesmerizing melodies, danceability."


RAGA TIME!

Davey Graham & Shirley Collins - Folk Roots, New Routes

Extremely influential in the English folk scene & the predecessor to The Pentangle. The masterful Davey Graham showcases his innovative jazz-folk stylings with Shirley Collins celtic crooning. A gem.



here.

Radiohead - Hail To The Thief: Glastonbury 2003

full concert in HD!!
incredible performance.

Sam Cooke - Live At The Harlem Club, 1963

The epitome of CLASSIC. Energetic and fun in a way only Cooke is capable of.

Don't fight it (feel it)

Johnny Dowd - Wrong Side of Memphis

Dark tales spun by Death's troubadour from the land where the Power's in the Blood.

"An anomaly in contemporary rock right from the start, Johnny Dowd, a 49-year old moving company owner, debuted in 1997 (in Europe in 1998) with this sparse (most of the songs feature only Dowd himself) and often morbid collection of country noir. More closely related to Nick Cave, Sixteen Horsepower, and Tom Waits than to Uncle Tupelo, Steve Earle, or The Jayhawks, Dowd’s twisted tales of murder, obsessive dedication, and other sinful behavior can be truly disturbing. The music is a fitting match for his lyrics: “Murder” sets the awkward tone with a hypnotic country-blues rhythm accompanied by Dowd’s distorted slur, as he reports a murder (“there’s been a murder here today, the weapon was a knife, the woman wore a wedding ring, I don’t think she was his wife”). “Ft. Worth, Texas” is the story of a convict on death row reflecting on his sinful life. The protagonist “shot and killed (his) girlfriend, then (he) sat and watched her die”. There’s no time for repentance (“there’s still too many people I hate”), although his only company is the ghosts in his head. The minimally executed and bluesy “One Way”, which contains several biblical references (a thorny crown, a sword in the side, the burden of the cross), is followed by “Sick Like a Dog”, one of the album’s scariest songs by virtue of its hypnotic percussion, eerie synths, and Dowd’s croaking voice informing us that “Momma Death ain’t got no respect”.

Songs like “Average Guy” and “Wages of Sin” are other ventures into the neo-gothic religion-obsessed worlds of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood or A Good Man Is Hard to Find, and Nick Cave’s The Ass Saw The Angel, where mentally scarred outcasts try to live with their obsessions (often women, liquor, and their own sinful past).“Ballad of Frank and Jesse James,” in which the murderer of Jesse James asks to be buried next to his victim, reminds me of Lou Reed’s calmer work, with a guitar tone that’s a ringer for VU’s “Jesus”.
In “John Deere Yeller” a man expresses his lifelong commitment to a girl, whom he describes in a set of comparisons that could be a proof of his love, but sound rather peculiar (“Cotton candy sweet are the taste of her lips, like Brigitte Bardot are the shape of her hips, her mind is as blue as the Texas sky, gonna love that girl ‘til the day I die”) and ultimately obsessive ("Gonna love that girl 'til the day I die" sounds wicked, coming from Dowd's mouth). This is made even worse by Dowd’s almost drunken slur. “Thanksgiving Day” is another album highlight whose central line “Be content with your life, it may not get any better”, combined with the repetitive finger-picking and shards of electric guitar, provides an eerie and utterly original atmosphere. In “Heavenly Feast,” Kim Sherwood-Caso is introduced as (co-)vocalist. While she would play a prominent role on Dowd’s later albums, her role is limited here to three songs. Notwithstanding that fact, she does make an impression, as her clear and icy voice is the exact opposite of Dowd’s broken voice, and it’s particularly weird to hear that girlish voice (combined with the gently paced music) utter phrases such as “hung me in a courtyard, they let me hang up there a while” (“First There Was”). “I Don’t Exist” might as well have been written by Ennio Morricone, as Kim Sherwood-Caso’s soprano, and Dowd’s melancholy melodica and classic guitar strumming reminds of the composer’s classic Western-work.

All this makes Wrong Side of Memphis, despite a few minor shortcomings (“Idle Conversation” and “Welcome Jesus” are lightweight collages that merely function as atmospheric mood pieces), one of the most intriguing debuts of the past few years. It's not that Dowd's main themes (love, loss, death) are that remarkable, but the uncanny way in which he presents them, often combining seemingly contradictory instrumentation, makes sure he's out of step. With a lo-fi debut like this, it was hard to predict where he’d go next, but very few people expected him to choose the path he chose for his subsequent albums." Guy Peters

Grit

Tom Zé - Se O Caso E Chorar/Todos Los Olhos

And here I give you a twofer from the most insane practitioner of the original Tropicalia. Amazingly creative sound-searcher with the melodic gift deep within him, no holds barred. In my opinion, superior to Os Mutantes, Veloso et al. If you can guess what's the cover of "Todos..." you get a no-prize :-)

hanging gardens

Cocteau Twins - Treasure

The ethereal classic.

Sandpaper

Chrome Children

Stones Throw & Adult Swim comp featuring MF, Dilla, Madlib & others.

giddit.

Shellac - Excellent Italian Greyhound

another nicely overdriven bad-ass production from the Shellac of North America band. its all about the attitude.

SPOKE!

Cluster - Zuckerzeit

kraut klassic.

Bachi Da Pietra - Non Io

"Bachi da Pietra (“stone worms”) is a two-man band whose dark and resonating music wraps around tunes of desolate candour and lyrics (in Italian) as dark and imaginative as broken love can be. A relentless drumming hovers over a huge wash of ride cymbals and a deep, plaintive voice, which is able to capture sadness, anger and yearning. The entire album is a visceral emotional journey: the dissonant blues-based songs develop around the steady drone of the singer’s voice, a trance-inducing vocal presence singing of grim meditations on life that are crafted and performed with disarming sincerity. Just like the mysterious and enigmatic characters that orbited their doom-laden, disturbing world, Bachi da Pietra is an unpredictable band that leaves the listeners feeling vulnerable, moved, and sometimes totally spaced out" [Last.FM]



Non Io

Caribou - Swim

caribou did it again with a nicely sounding production but very different from his earlier works. it seems he got pretty influenced by this new electro-club fad and he did his own take on it. its full of his trademark mixture of acoustic and ethnic sounding instruments along with a tribalist percussive feel that gives his music a unique vibe.

hell yeah for cover arts.

Shellac - 1000 Hurts

steve albini is the producer man behind the magic of many albums including Slint`s Tweez, Nirvana`s In Utero, Don Caballero`s American Don and Surfer Rosa by the fucking Pixies just to name a few. he actually estimated that he has worked on like 1,500+ albums by underground artists. anyway, THIS IS HIS BAND (yeah, he actually has a band) and its pretty rough sounding, distorted bass packing, spoken word cursed and overall fucking bad-assly performed. it`s an interesting listen. give it a try.

he kinda looks like a geek though and he drives a PT Cruiser too.

Fucked Up - The Chemistry Of Common Life

this punk-ass hardcore band from Canada shows some mad skills in music making. its a little hard these days to start a punk band and actually stand out from the rest. pushing the limits of its hardcore roots and making some good ol` noisy piss music while having a beautiful cover art for their debut album makes it worth to listen to. their live shows are a bit of a spectacle; things get destroyed and people get hurt. good times. the campo-formio boys are going to love this.

beautiful fucking cover art.

Pearls Before Swine - Balaklava

One of PBS's best (their 2nd album), a perfect introduction to the songwriting and soundcrafting genius of Mr. Tom Rapp and co. True Cosmic American Music.

" A record that virtually defies categorization, Pearls Before Swine's 1968 epic Balaklava is the near-brilliant follow-up to One Nation Underground. Intended as a defiant condemnation of the Vietnam War, it doesn't offer anthemic, fist-pounding protest songs. Instead, Rapp vented his anger through surrealist poetry, irony, and historical reference: Balaklava was the 1854 Crimean War battle that inspired Alfred, Lord Tennyson to write his epic The Charge of the Light Brigade; in reality, the "Charge" was a senseless military action that killed scores of British soldiers. Balaklava begins with "Trumpeter Landfrey," an 1880's recording of the actual voice and bugle charge of the man who sounded the charge at Balaklava. It makes the transition into "Translucent Carriages," a mix of acoustic guitars, a basic vocal, and ghostly narration ("Jesus raised the dead...but who will raise the living?"), all the more stunning. "Images of April" continues the mystical feel, combining flutes, cricket chirps, and frog croaks for a nether-worldly effect. Rapp virtually cries "I Saw the World," backed by a powerful string arrangement that makes the song even more impassioned. Like One Nation Underground, Balaklava is somewhat unfocused: "There Was a Man" is a little too Dylan-esque, and Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" detracts from Rapp's compositions. Unfortunately, the record closes with "Ring Thing," a morbid piece that refers to Tolkien's famous Lord of the Rings trilogy. Still, this is superb psychedelic music, successfully merging exotic instruments like marimba, clavinet, French horn, and swinehorn with Rapp's unique lisping vocals. But Balaklava isn't just acid-trip background music. It's probably the best example of what Rapp calls "constructive melancholy" (also the name of a recent CD collection of Pearls songs), a combination of the real with the surreal, and it's indispensable to any serious '60s rock collection." Peter Kurtz

Max and Noodles

Foetus - Hole

You've enjoyed Steroid Maximus, now try Mr. Thirwell's main thing, the viciously funny and at the same time quite disturbing roar of FOETUS.

"WHAT DO we want to hear of pop?

A sense of danger, a danger to the senses, passion (bruised and abused), humour, sexuality. They’re all here, if not as smoothly blended as some might like – a pot pourri rather than a puree. If there’s some less palateable additions – horror, murder, death and disease – it adds to the fatal attraction. One swig from this will send you head over heels off lover’s leap. ’Hole’ is somewhere between a terminally sick joke and a masterpiece.

Masterpiece? There’s been enough unwarranted hyperbole splattered on the bathroom tiles of 1984, but in the middle of the confusion, two LPs have arisen that genuinely aspire to classic status. Nick Cave’s lovesick ‘From Her To Eternity’ (inevitably) was the first; and now rasping, coughing and grunting over its head comes the conflict-charred ‘Hole’.

It’s not the job of Foetus to be the resurrection of modern music (he makes it clear enough that crucifixion’s his addiction) but his flaring human torch act is a brilliant light in this gloom.

But just what is this Foetus? The maverick spirit that’s manifest itself through Foetus over Frisco, Philip And His Foetus Vibration and You’ve Got Foetus On Your Breath. There are indeed many faces of Foetus and throughout ‘Hole’, his masks are many and lurid; from (Iggy) Pop parody to torured dictator. He can be an adept joker, a terrifying atrocity exhibitionist, wretch and retcher; but never a waste of time.

The Foetushow twists and turns the cliches of everyday conversation and the familiar shapes of rock, soul and pop and fashions out of them a new and unique form – by turns funny and horrific, often both at once. Humour to Foetus is a weapon – and what use is a weapon unless it’s off it’s offensive?

Throughout, there’s scarce a chance for a Foetus to gasp a breath: ‘Clothes Heist’, with its bizarre juxtaposition of found voices and its blend of the relative cacophonies of Einsturzende Neubauten and James Brown, lurches straight into the Iggy parody ‘Lust For Death’. Mounted on a testy snatch of an organ melody, Foetus spouts forth on the myth of the Pop: “Libido in Limbo – Legs Akimbo/Never even read a word of Rimbaud/The walls of my stomach think they’re Jericho/I’m about to meet my MEXICO/Make mine a double TEXACO.”

The barb of the parody is that Pop’s mantle of literate figure of self-destruction could rest so easily on the f lesh of Foetus. He sunk in the commotion not the myth – in railing Iggy, he’s excising a part of himself.

From the heights of satire we’re dropped without warning into the landmined terrain of ‘I’ll Meet You in Poland Baby’. The ease of the transition from something as superficial as the ‘Rock and Roll edge’ myth to the chillingly realistic evocation of the horror of World World War II is shocking enough in itself. But even without such cold ironies of juxtaposition, ‘Poland’ is possibly the most flesh-crawling sound put to record.

Presented as a lover’s tiff between Hitler and Stalin, accompanied by the sound of falling bombs and cheering rallies, it recognises the fact that nothing is more pornographic than sentimentality and nothing more terrifying than the banality of evil. At its climax it slips out as easily, back into the mode of more overt humour in ‘Hot Horse’, with Foetus playing the slobbering hillbilly, hunting for a human headscarf.

The game of flippant humour versus tendchant horror is continued on the second side.

In the analogy: pop music in the ’80s is a tattered circus shooting-stall, the gaudy, peeling paint no longer attractive. Along the target line run a series of plastic heads, each one more or less the same as the other and for the most part beyond the range of anyone with the guts to try and shoot at them.

As for Foetus – he’s a whole different rolllercoaster. ’Hole’ will leave you exhilarated, slightly shaken and maybe just a little nauseous. But more than ready to go through it all again." Don Watson

Link removed by request.

Yuca Tapes.

Surveying humid interzones between free improv, merengue, musique concrete, dub, cracked Manati sidewalks, warm Keystones, L & M cigarettes, 1st generation antipsychotics, Echoplexes, Grand Puma Masters, Mr. Pincho and the Miguel Cotto Republic, Yuca Tapes is devoted to releasing junkyard cultural artifacts from the depths of the Rican Parcelas and Barrios where people stage cockfights in their lawns for their own amusement and still celebrate Candelaria Day. Our first release in digital form is this borischizo effort by Mu., aka Nomar Diaz the pride of Sector Quemados and the Maria Cadilla High School. Also a compilation of jam tapes from defunct marquesina Can-obsessed psychonauts Flow Notion, Arecibo represent. Capéalo. More to come oh soon soon...

La terraza boricua

Campo-Formio - AZ`s

now here is a nice new interesting punky ass album full of screaming madness that reeks through your nostrils? recorded in just 5 hours in our hometown of San Juan, comes the second album by a band of friends that sounds like a kick in the face. hell yes.

candyflip = el mas raver

Watch Segundo CD Release Campo-Formio in Music | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

myspace.com/campoformio

Chasm-Filler: Disco Funk Party

Put on your boogie-shoes and join the gang from Chasm-Filler as we bring "the funk, the whole funk and nothing but the funk."

Layin' down the tracks'll be Howard Roark, Sandunga Cat, Raoul Duke, Abelardo Diaz Algaro & guests.

Thursday, May 27
9:30 til tha break'a dawn.
Cafe-103, Rio Piedras

The Durutti Column - Another Setting

More Vini Reilly greatness.

Sandunga Reflections

The Golden Palominos - Dead Inside

Grumpy Oldman aka Pops request. Not what you expect from a GP album, this was quite a detour for Fier's project, very dark and brooding. And also only Fier, Laswell and Knox Chandler (Psychdelic Furs, Siouxsie and the Banshees) play. Poetry by Nicole Blackman.

Vacilon

The Golden Palominos - S/T

Anton Fier's "revolving-door band", in their first stellar effort, comprised of such masters as Bill Laswell, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn & Fred Frith. This shit is absolutely essential.



geet.

Steroid Maximus - Ectopia

Jim Thirwell of Foetus/Clint Ruin/Manorexia/Venture Bros./etc. fame, in one of his main projects, exploring hard-nosed big band arrangements and spy film soundtracks to malevolent ends.

"Another twelve outbursts from this alter-ego of JG Thirlwell, aka Foetus. It may be safe to say that nobody else can so successfully create a symphonic or big band song via samplers and programming. Having been a Foetus fan for longer than I'd care to admit, I've found it interesting to trace his progress and the divergence of personalities in his various projects. In the days of "Nail", misanthropic lyrics, heaviness, and orchestral abandon mixed together. Later, Thirlwell seemed to decide that Foetus was the place for loud guitars and rock star excessiveness, while Steroid Maximus was his forum for instrumental expression. Nowadays, he's also got his Manorexia project for more experimental and electronic work, and with Ectopia, Steroid Maximus continues to delve further into methods of modernizing the big band, symphonic, and jazz genres.

"The Trembler" opens things here with a deceptively calm atmosphere. Echoing, distant drums begin to pick up the beat, then horns and woodwinds give things a feel akin to a 70’s cop show, all suspenseful and cool. "Seventy Cops" begins quite differently, with a synth-bass pulse and synthesizer tone over tribal percussion. Chanting voices enter, then the horns, and finally the drums kick in more heavily, turning the song into a fast-driving piece of energy.

This album is all about drama and setting a mood. I'd bet a fair amount that Thirlwell's a film noir fan, as there's quite a bit of that feel spread throughout this music. The frequent use of horn breaks and percussion, mixed with fat synth lines, immediately places me in that "someone's double-crossing me" frame of mind.

"L'Espion que a Pleure" is based around a spy-movie horn break with strong drums and delicate percussion, together with a goofy, cool synth line. The pounding piano may make you drive well over the speed limit if you drop this in your car. Somewhat unique here, "Chain Reaction" is a heavier electronic hip-hop/big band conglomeration, if you can imagine such a thing. Excellent synth bass over powerful drums leads into horn and keyboard imaginings. Another odd bird on the album is "Wm," a strange, quiet piece filled with buzzings, distant minimal drums, and eerie sounds. A repeated electronic tone wavers through like a warning as the song progresses.

"Bad Day in Greenpoint" is a slower, ominous piece with operatic vocals, clanking percussion, and doom-laden strings. It would be a fine soundtrack to a really good horror film, while "Pusher Jones" is clearly an exploitation flick soundtrack, some guy selling drugs to kids outside a high school. It sounds just like that. You know what I mean. Suddenly halfway through we hit the chase, as the guy runs through the back alleys with the cops right behind him.

"Chaiste" picks up the pace again with fast drums and a thick synth progression. When the drums kick in even heavier, it's like a boot to the head, and things really take off. Then "Enzymes" concludes the album on a quieter, mysterious note. Couldn't tell you what the title might mean, but the delicate woodwind-like sounds and xylophone over a gently insistent rhythm provides a cloudy, rainy-day feel. Perhaps this is musical accompaniment to a chemical reaction.

For someone like me who cherishes instrumental music, and what it can say without words, Ectopia is like a long-awaited prize. I admired Thirlwell's prior Steroid Maximus releases, but with this one he's combined all of the big band bombast of those with a wider sound palette and a perfect feel for dynamics. Each song is structured just so, and the album perfectly balances quiet moods with outbursts of energy. As much as I love the Foetus releases, and was impressed by the recent Manorexia album, this is certainly one of Thirlwell's finest achievements." Mason Jones

Link removed by request.

African Head Charge - Off The Beaten Track

One of the main acts of audio-shaman Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound collective, formed around African percussionist and vocalist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah. pioneering the use of dub tricknology into ethnic patterns and styles years before the shit was common, and while respecting and undiluting the mainline.

"In the intervening years between the 1986 release of “Off The Beaten Track” and its immediate predecessor 1983’s “Drastic Season”, African Head Charge had been moulded into a live blood-pumping band by its main man Bonjo lyabinghi Noah, who had truly come out of the shadows where percussion usually resides, fuelled by a righteous desire to occupy that front-of-stage position. Also during that time producer Adrian Sherwood had volunteered to be fed through the funk-mangle by Messrs.

(Skip) McDonald, (Doug) Wimbish and (Keith) Le Blanc, had come out the other end more disciplined and focused on what fresh sounds might be possibly created through the blatant use and abuse of state of the art technology, where he had previously generated samples as a “captured sound” by-product of the studio hardware or bled all over the old Studer decks as a result of a thousand razored edits. The result of this “great leap forward” was the fourth actual, but first “modern”, African Head Charge album – “Off The Beaten Track” – which sounded like nothing else around at the time, and whose combination of fat beats and ethnic chants was to provide the template, which many lesser lights were to attempt to emulate over the ensuing years.

Compared to previous efforts the "new" AHC rhythms were less abstract and more direct, with continuous and flowing percussion lines and more managed tempo shifts. The application of loops and samples of increased time duration made all the difference when combined with the more fluid and confident approach of the musicians involved in the build of the tracks. Sherwood shows up once more under his by now redundant guise as "The Prisoner". Skip McDonald makes an early non-funk entry and the reappearance of Jah Wobble makes clear his creative commitment to his old friends at On-U. But most remarkably, and making his debut as a recording artist, is the twentieth centuries most radical scientist - the super-cool Albert Einstein, laying down a sweet rap with the most conscious of lyrics in "Language And Mentality". Of course, Albert was in the studio in spirit only and the exercise, to my knowledge, has never been repeated.

The title “Off The Beaten Track” was not just an example of a great piece of wordplay, but also incredibly apt as the music was not only a departure for On-U Sound, but also a landmark album for what was to become the whole new ethno-beat strand within the commercial category of what we now know as “World Music”. – Steve Barker

Afeitate

PD: Also, re-upped this.

Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma

The latest from the low flier, this time he brings it with a badass bassist, Thundercat a.k.a. Stephen Bruner. This album shows how much flylo's concept of time has changed in the past few years, with unquantized loops streaming freely over each other, you might get confused at times, but the pocket is ALWAYS there. This reminds me of Zach Hill's (Hella) "hidden pocket" technique, where the beats are not so easy to follow, so pay close attention to where the downbeats are. The impressive thing is that even though some songs are very intricate, they won't let you go.

A mi entender, esto no es un link a cosmogramma.

Flying Lotus - Los Angeles

Released in 2008, Flylo returned with sweeter tones and even better progressions. He also lets us know how much he likes his synths. This album sets a darker and more melancholic vibe than it's predecessor.

Los Angeles

Flying Lotus - 1983

Debut album from the nephew of the man himself, John Coltrane. Without putting too much weight on the fact that he is so close to musical genius, Flylo has been known to produce some of the more interesting electronic/hiphop oriented music. I don't know if he has any musical training, but he seems to be able to go much further than the standard for producers of this genre. This is what happens when you soak in lots of music from Koji Kondo's Zelda compositions, Bruce Lee movie soundtracks, 70's orchestral works, Karlheinz Stockhausen's Elektroniche Musik, et cetera.

You might have heard some of his stuff while watching Adult Swim (I always asked myself who made those interludes).

1983

The Bad Plus - Suspicious Activity?

Hands down, one of the best recordings ever. The maximum expression of The Bad Plus (and I include Tchad Blake). This is one of the albums that keeps me interested in music. Enjoy.

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