Bon Iver-For Emma, Forever Ago


I kept seeing his name around and I never paid attention. But fooking christ, this shit is good.

Animal Collective-Water Curses EP



Horace Andy-Dance Hall Style

Miriam Makeba-Folk Songs From Africa




"I became aware of her through a book on linguistics. She is singing in Xhosa, which is one of the click languages. It is thought that the click languages are the most ancient language group on Earth. The first tune here is titled A Click Song AKA Qongqothwane, where the q's are alveolar clicks.
She was pretty popular in US in the 70s. I have no release info on this CD, but it sounds genuine to me: no synths, no drum programming, the instrumentation is sparse and authentic. So this is most likely a collection from her original 60s albums, or even if it's a recent (re-)recording, then it's just as good."-What's in my Ipod?

M83-Saturday=Youth

Mount Eerie-Black Wooden Ceiling Opening

Jamie Lidell-Jim

Ruby Suns-Sea Lion

Portishead-Third

Fleet Foxes-Ragged Wood

First International Sex Opera Band- Anita

don't try to understand, just listen.

Grizzly Bear-While You Wait for the Others (Live on Morning Becomes Eclectic)

Boris-Smile

Earth-The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull

Crystal Castles-Crystal Castles

El Guincho-Alegranza


Much like the beginning of last year, I am being inundated wih amazing new music to share. In the next number of days I hope to be able to get as much of it up as possible. This is a good jumping off point as many of you will have no doubt been tipped off to this one by Pitchforkmedia by now. I'm wary of typing that, as it may automatically turn the few of you I know who don't keep regular tabs on that website (a belief I totally understand and respect). But believe me your distaste for Pitchfork's multitude of shortcomings might very well be trumped by your future love for the 40 minutes of ear-orgy contained in Alegranza.

I have been known to wax poetic on the virtues of artists such as M.I.A. and Panda Bear in the past. Particularly in my ardent belief that they are pioneering new ground in pop music to mythic proportions and helping to usher in, for the first time in pop music's history, a true global musical tradition. Well, you can add El GUincho's Alegranza to that list.

Totally refreshing, celebratory, psychedelic, innovative song-writing with all the familiar DNA that makes pop music so appealing.

highly recommended!!!

Coming soon... Bradford Cox and Cole Alexander Ghetto Cross, French divas Yelle and Lykke Li, and the band I've been freaking out more than any other this year, SALEM.

High Places- 03/07-09/07

Franco Battiato-Fetus


Franco Battiato is an italian experimental songwriter. He began his career covering Italian pop songs in the 1960's. In 1970 he collaborated with infamous Italian psych act Osage Tribe. Soon after, his music took a decided turn towards the experimental side of pop song-writing. Franco's music became increasingly minimal and began to incorporate electronic elements. The three albums Fetus (1970), Pollution (1972), and Clic (1974) aptly represent his gradual shift from experimental pop not entirely removed from the tradition of Os Mutantes and even Brian Eno into something more akin to minimalism and musique concrete.

Guilty Simpson-Ode To The Ghetto

Clinic-Do It!



password: no-datta.blogspot.com

MGMT-Oracular Spectacular

The Lollipop Shoppe- Just Colour

you must be a witch...

Hot Chip-Made in the Dark

boa constrictor & natural vine- s/t

stoned weirdo pseudo-hippy acid folk meanderings, like roky erikson meeting up with the fugs to go on a cough syrup picnic with the incredible string band.

puffy areolas- double live evil

heavy krautsploitation & back to ohio blues... total damage.

Clark-Turning Dragon

Did you just see what I saw!?!?

Radiohead's live set at some club across the street from Rough Trade Records in London? !?!?

HOLY EFF!! this is gonna be the best summer EVER!!

Howard Tate-Get It While You Can

Cat Power-Jukebox
Cat Power-Jukebox

note: this is the full album and bonus disc NOT the advance version that has been floating around for awhile with the ends of the songs cut off.

Xiu Xiu-Women As Lovers

16 Bitch Pile Up- Satanic Student Bible
old school evil noise from the OH ex-pat queens of noise. as the ladies themselves told me, "never name your band when you're drunk".

Moondog- The Viking of Sixth Avenue
i'm so glad the world has finally caught up to Moondog.

Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band- The Brown Star Sessions
good & raw versions of the songs that are limp and lifeless on the Captain's many wack-as-fuck 70s albums. a lot of instrumental stuff, but also some excellent work by the Captain. the Magic Band takes things back to Mirror Man-era scruffy raga blues rock on amazing tracks like Dirty Blue Jean pt II (which rocks my world like the Fire Engines buried under a mountain of rockabilly records).

Arcesia- Reachin'

40s big band crooner moves to California during the late 60s, drops acid and creates this bizarre "psychedelic rock" album. priceless strangeness from the 'real people with real damage' department.

joe meek & the blue men- i hear a new world

Jobriath- Jobriath

Zolar X wasn't the only American glam act to get lost on the path to glittery superstardom. The US was just not ready for androgynous alien space boys on American Bandstand in 1973... On his 1st self titled album, Jobriath delivers some absurdly pompous glam rock that almost out-Bowies Bowie with an extra mix of David Johansen sneer. He sleazes his way through some Spiders from Mars style rockers and some laughable ballads like the unforgettable "Space Clown". my favorite tracks are probably the pseudo-revolutionary "World Without End" and the Thin White Duke stylings of "Earthling"(chorus: "I have to know why you do the things you do/ I wanna examine you/Oooh!"). i have no doubt that Wayne County and friends were spinning this one a lot while working the NYC leather scene. if you enjoy this, you should check out his rock opera "Creatures of the Street" for even more absurdity.

Kraftwerk- K4 Live Bremen Radio 1971
Kraftwerk+Neu!=Heavy Metal Kids

maybe their best recording. totally heavy motorik grooves from the pre-robot era with the Neu! dudes before they split to pursue the repetitive krautpunk grail.

Uncle Wiggly's Favorite Albums of 2007 which may or may not be in any order at all:

• Silvester Anfang- Kosmies Schlactaval (Belgo cult mutants rape the corpse of freak folk, best album cover and artwork of the year= pictures of goats and girls licking skulls)
  
• 16 Bitch Pile-Up- Bury Me Deep (imaginary 80s slasher soundtrack from the queens of noise. sound effects pounding the inside of your brain. headphone album of the year)
  
• Panda Bear- Person Pitch (now let's stop talking about how sweet it is)
  
• Cadaver in Drag- Raw Child (pure fucking evil, Julian Cope's album of the month so you know it's good, right?)
  
• The Bad Trips- s/t (amazing.)
  
• Flower/Corsano Duo- The Radiant Mirror (stonedrone masterpiece)
  
• Wooden Shjips- s/t (or anything else they put out this year...)
  
• Kemialliset Ystavat- s/t (these fairie-piss-drinkers continue to raise the bar for finnish psych folk noise)
  
• Burning Star Core- Amelia (well, everything C Spencer Yeh put out this year ruled, but this one got the most plays on my stereo)
  
• Group Inerane- Guitars From Agadez (best Sublime Frequencies release yet? heavy Nigerian guitar sounds that kicks that overproduced Tiniwaren album's ass)
• Sword Heaven- Entrance (intense feral monstrosity from one of my favorite live acts of the year)
  
• Caribou- Andorra (the perfect summer album... two months too late. thank goodness for the internets)
  
• Eric Copeland- Hermaphrodite (too fucked for words)
  
• Hair Police- The Empty Quarter (they rule.)
  
• Black Dice- Load Blown (if you're too cool to dance, get the fuck out of the way)
  
• Blues Control- Puff (this is what tangerine dream should sound like)
  
• Acid Eater- Virulent Fuzz Punk A.C.I.D. (Masonna reincarnated as the second coming of ? & the Mysterians. it was bound to happen eventually...)
• Islaja- Ulual yyy (maybe not her best record, but give me a couple months and i'll be laying on the floor crying uncontrollably while listening to it. thumbs up for pulling off the addition of saxophones)
  
• Mats Gustafsson & Yoshimi- Words on the Floor (ummm... wow.)

you can find a bunch of these in the archives. or you could go buy them, jerk. i'm probably forgetting a bunch of great records, but it was a busy year. here's to another year of mind-melting music!

Uncle Wiggly's link round-up, just in time for not-jesus'-birthday:

Raven- Back to Ohio Blues (1975)
Les Rallizes Denudes boxsets & other goodies at Bruitage...
Fantastic Planet Soundtrack at Tonton Manhood
Lots of amazing South American Psych at En Busca...

and of course...

A John Waters Christmas at Multiple Maniacs

Flashlights-Eckords


Eckords 'is the first release by Flash Lights, the duo of Liz Harris
(better known as Grouper) and Bay Area sound sculptor Jorge Behringer.
Here, Liz's spectral vocal transmissions (the ones that blew our collective
minds on last year's superb opus "Way Their Crept") are augmented by
disorienting field recordings, bubbling electronics, meditative guitar lines,
and Jorge's angelic, processed viola. Each piece is unique and bursting with
vibrant, otherworldly energy, running the gamut from almost poppy (!)
songforms, to distant choral ghost codas, and moving effortlessly from
seering blasts of electronics to calm, glacially evolving, painstakingly
wrought towers of dynamic vocal murk. Beautifully mastered by Pete Swanson,
presented in a sleeve adorned with Liz's wonderful black and white artwork.'-Complicated Dance Steps

Kelly's Birthday Winter Mix


Happy Birthday Kelly. Here's your Birthday Mix. Which is probably the most epic mix I've ever made. It's certainly the longest. I did my best split it into two halves while keeping a decent flow. The first "side" is all the moody wintery stuff. The second is mostly ice cold beats and shit. I bookended it with a few slower pieces to bring it all full circle. And then I tacked on an Elliot Smith song on the end, cause duh.

All in all it's 30 songs long, and along with being your birthday mix, and a winter mix, it's also contains mostly songs released in 2007, with a small handful of exceptions. So maybe it's a year in review mix. No, fuck that. There's a bunch of songs I left off of it that would need to be on there.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. I'll see you next Tuesday.

xo,

Jowel.

P.S. I'm pretty sure it won't be in the right order when you open the .zip so here's the tracklisting:

Lee Moses-Adorable One
Atlas Sound-Recent Bedroom
Caribou-Yo Yo
Cocteau Twins-Ice Pulse
Clinic-Sunshine Boy
Panda Bear-Take Pills
John Cale & Terry Riley-The Soul of Patrick Lee
Radiohead-Reckoner
George Delerue-Camille
The Tenniscoats-Oetsu to Kanki no Nanoriuta
Jens Lekman-Shirin
Caribou-Irene
Giles, Giles, & Fripp-Little Children
Feu Therese-Nada
-
Otis Redding and the Pinetoppers-Shout Bamalama
Glass Candy-Getto Boys
M.I.A. ft. Bun B & Rich Boy-Paper Planes
Fred Falke & Alan Braxe-Rubicon
DJ Copy-Tha Crossroads
The Field-Everyday
Crystal Castles-Airwar
Gui Boratto-Beautiful Life
John Maus-Do Your Best
The Chromatics-I'm on Fire
Antony & The Johnsons-Fistful of Love
Bonnie "prince" Billy-Kelly
Bjork-Boho Dance
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band-Peon
Radiohead-4 Minute Warning
Elliot Smith-Whatever (Folk Song in C)hg?%^

Horrific Child - L'étrange Monsieur Whinster
Creepy French progadelic ethno freakout from Jean-Pierre Massiera (of Les Maledictus Sound & Chico Magnetic Band's killer "Pop Pull Hair"). The cover should indicate how much you need this album.

Basil Kirchin- Worlds Within Worlds Pt. 1
early drone/experimental sounds from legendary soundtrack composer & king of library music, Mr. Basil Kirchin.

Fuck Buttons-Sweet Love for Planet Earth




















Beach House-Devotion












Lee Moses-Time and Place

Jonny Greenwood-There Will Be Blood Original Score

Radiohead-In Rainbows CD2

For those of you too poor to shell out $80. Note: this is not the full cd quality version of the disc, as I haven't received my discbox yet. But it's sounds fine nonetheless.

Silvinha- Silvinha (1971)
Another great album of completely bat-shit insane pop music from brazil. it's got some jazzy brazilian pop sensibility but also features some wailing psych fuzz guitars and Silvinha's bizarre scream singing, which turns most of it into some kind of funky acid soul rock freak-out. no matter how poppy they tried to make this one, silvinha's vocals are always really weird, even on the kinda icky orchestrated song. a strange and fun album from a very drug-induced era of Brazilian music... "Voce Já Morreu E Se Esqueceu De Deitar" makes me wanna dance around my apartment like a drunken fool.

Wu Tang Clan-8 Diagrams Mixtape






















John Maus-Love is Real

Review excerpts from John Maus's myspace profile:

"It took this Ariel Pink cohort five years to write and record his debut album, and only five minutes to become more annoying than Ariel Pink.
- CMJ

For me, this is just too weird. The first couple of tracks make this the most skip-able album of 2006.
-Subba Cultcha

Apparently, Maus spent five years working on this album, which is a shame because, frankly, its awful.
-Vice

There isn't one song you could call 'good' on the whole album.
-Music Zine

Overall, I can't recommend this album even as a novelty listen. Maybe I just don't get it. It seems as if Maus sabotages practically any hint of an interesting melody, lyric, or instrumental part with a blatantly grating one at almost every turn.
-Indie Workshp

Maus's baroquely deadpan voice - and thats being polite - effectively spoils many a song. Some will hear a little Nick Cave in it; others will hear a man crapping out of his mouth.
-Drowned in Sound

If it is supposed to be funny, it is not. If it is meant seriousy, then Maus needs some SERIOUS help.
-Another Zine"

PURPLE IMAGE- PURPLE IMAGE
Cleveland's finest 70s funkadelic heavy acid soul rock band's only album. the opening track "Living in the Ghetto" is one to add to your mix tape... the 15 minute phased-out closing track is a bit excessive, but overall it's another great lost album that needs to be heard.

people who do noise.

V/A-Pop Ambient 2008




























Glass Candy-Beat Box

time for robot sex music from the analog synth lounge.

T.O.N.T.O.'s Exploding Head Band- Zero Time

Dear Frequent Seize, please click here.

if you haven't been following the underground hype so far, here's a quick update. Les Rallizes Denudes were a group of Japanese noise terrorists who, from the late 60s until 90s, played the loudest, most misanthropic, minimal 'rock' music never recorded. due to leader Takashi Mizutani's hatred of recording studios, the band never released a studio album (except for the posthumous 'mizutani'), so the entire history of the band has to be researched by diving into a massive amount of semi-official bootlegs and cd-r box sets. LRD's sound is characterized by retardedly simple "my girl"-meets-krautrock bass grooves that sound like they may collapse at any moment. when Mizutani decides to 'sing', he unleashes various yelps, gurgles and frail, damaged melodies all sent through way too much echo. and all of it is buried under the unholy amount of feedback coming from Mizutani's guitar amps. a comparison to the Velvet Underground is the closest thing anyone can come up with... they also had an exploding plastic inevitable-style lightshow for a while. they were originally connected to experimental filmmaker/performance artist shuji terayama, who kicked them out of his theater troup when they refused to turn their amps down. and they continued to play the loudest, most fucked up music in existence for the next 30 years... despite their total obscurity outside of japan (or in japan, for that matter) up until recently, they've been extremely influential in the world of Japanese psych/noise/rock; it's doubtful that the Acid Mothers, High Rise, LSD March, Boris, Keiji Haino or any of the others would be quite the same without their influence.

December's Black Children is probably one of the better quality bootlegs out there, it's from 1980. find out why this is my favorite band...

Surrent-Little Internets

The Cool Kids-Totally Flossed OUt EP


I'm going to se M.I.A. tonight at The Roseland. I'm almost as excited to see The Cool Kids as I am her. The snare on "88" reminds me of the maintenance guy at The Everrett Street Lofts. He was this really srange Californian who listened to a lot of Bread and would always show up in the weirdest places without any warning to stare me down as I walked by. Once he scared the living shit out of me by popping up out of heavy refuse dumpster when I was taking the garbage out. I never really knew him all that well. Our relationship centered around me occasionally peering into the van he was living out of in the garage. But he loved Mark. And used to tell him about chasing crack dealers off the block by pounding a baseball bat on the curb, red-faced and screaming, "NO, DO YOU HAVE THE TIME, MOTHERFUCKER!?!?!"

Bonnie "Prince" Billy-Ask Forgiveness EP

Burial-Untrue

White Williams-Smoke

2MinuteMediaPDX-Bastardgeist

Last Spring my good friend Armando approached me about doing a short film on Bastardgeist for a series he was working on in conjunction with another Portland filmmaker. I, of course, ecstatically accepted. When they finally came to shoot, however, I was completely unprepared. I had been working long late night hours at the Portland Art Museum (which, ironically, is where I'm writing this post from), watching Shannon's unruly four year old during the day, and trying to figure out how in the hell I was going to make a three month tour through the EU work with no money in my pocket, much less the bank. Fortunately, this hectic lifestyle and my utter lack of planning for the shoot beforehand ended up working in my favor, as I feel I come across a bit like an eccentric genius.

It's also worth mentioning that while performing a stirring rendition of "Black, Blind, and Blonde" I got naked.

Many thanks for everyone at 2minutemedia for the opportunity.

my new favorite blogs:
jap rock, no wave, oddities at sector 2814
cleveland protopunk, japcore, general misanthropy at spending loud night
(you are required to check out the cleveland confidential comp and the mirrors album- they will greatly improve your life)

Id- Where are We Going (1976)

ultra-rare psychedelic texan weirdness... hyperactive speed fuzz guitar and lots of lo-fi phasing effects on this acid rock classic. obviously too many drugs were involved in the making of this record, if you don't like endless guitar wankery that doesn't really go anywhere you probably won't enjoy this. for those of us that love lost weird private press albums, this one's essential.

be sure to check out bravo juju for some cool eclectic stuff (like the derek baily & the ruins album!). and if you want to hear some acid fuzz rock with steel drum, check this one out.

although i am not a Sun City Girls fan, i have been enjoying Sir Richard Bishop's recent solo albums. lots of acoustic finger-pickin' goodness, sort of a mutant strain of John Fahey/Django Reinhardt acoustic adventures exploring the murky backwaters of folk musics with a hip flask of moonshine and a jimson weed cigarette.


Fingering the Devil

The Flower Corsano Duo-The Radiant Mirror





Remember that time when Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty played at the church? Well if Mick Flower, a founding member of the Vibracathedral Orchestra, had been there wailing on his pedal enhanced "japanese banjo" we probably would all be walking around right now with melted faces. Such is the listening experience of The Flower Corsano Duo's latest release.
Immediate and mind-expanding The Radiant Mirror probably won't get the attention it deserves. But if you have even the slightest inkling of interest in improvisational music, it would behoove you to give this instant classic a couple of spins.

Serge Gainsbourg- Histoire de Melody Nelson

this is the essential album for when you're drunk and trying to seduce underage girls. seriously, no woman can resist the sleaziness of Serge Gainsbourg... (link fixed)

Wooden Shjips-s/t

It's not possible to communicate how much Radiohead means to me. Every album seems to shift the paradigm in such a way that I experience all other music differently. I'm trying to speak as conservatively as possible when really what I want to say is that this band is the greatest single accomplishment in human history. But that's obviously not totally fair.

However it goes, In Rainbows will end up being recorded in my own private history as a landmark album if for no other reason than that you aren't here to enjoy it with me.

Black Dice-Load Blown

I was reminded that I hadn't posted this yet when I noticed Ian's bulletin petitioning for someone to go see Henry Rollins in Ann Arbor with him.

Load Blown is fucking revelatory. On this record the boys in Black Dice dive ever further into the cracked rhythms, and day-glo collage orgies they started toying around with on Cone Toaster and before. Rock it on your stereo or in your headphones or on the little radios you put in your shower (P.S. Those things are dumb).

san ul lim is a korean garage psych band of three brothers and a sister. super fuzzy goofy psych music, very DIY, with lots of great vocal harmonies & fuzzed-out guitar riffs... their third album is apparently them trying to sound like ACDC but failing because they're a bunch of nerdy Korean kids. great stuff. if anyone's interested i also have a record rip of some of their demos, including a bitchin' cover of 'jingle bells'.

1.Ah! Already
2.As Laying Carpet on My Mind
3.My Heart

kim jung mi- songs of shin jung-hyun

kim's probably the best known Korean psych folk pop singer thanks to the internet's proliferation of her albums "Wind" and "Now". this is her debut album, it has some kinda funky pop songs with music by shin jung hyun himself. i really really like the track "i can't forget". if you downloaded the shin jung hyun albums you might recognize a song or two...

well, they did it. they finally killed music.

LIQUORBALL- HAULS ASS/FUCKS THE SKY LPS
LIQUORBALL- LIVE IN HITLER'S BUNKER/STERNKLANG I
BAD TRIPS- S/T

if you haven't been convinced to download these just by the titles, i can only begin to describe the sounds within as sounding like a black mass circle jerk between members of tivol and warmer milks, while hawkwind pounds whiskey in the corner and swears loudly. bad trips is newer and slightly more musical, or at least less holy-fuck-what-is-wrong-with-these-guys. but only slightly.

(thanks to the original posters of these monsters, i am indebted to you forever.)

shin joong-hyun is a major figure in South Korean music, his early bands were the first uniquely Korean pop bands in a time when Japanese-influenced pop ruled. by the late 60s, shin was getting in trouble with the authorities for his leftist politics and marijuana use, leading him to being banned from the radio until the 80s. this didn't stop shin from being influential, whether he was putting out amazing epic psych rock records under his own name or doing the producing and backing music for some of Korea's best pop and psych folk singers. he recently retired, so i'm going to give you a taste of some of my favorites. "it's a lie" is one of the best psychedelic albums ever, featuring great korean melodies stretching out into massive jams with shin's amazing guitar playing battling organ and electric oboe. "in-a-kadda-da-vida" is a live album, the first half of which is dedicated to mutilating the classic iron butterfly tune beyond recognition, plus the best garbled english this side of krautrock. side two features guest singers and a bizarre version of the wilson pickett classic "funky broadway". yes.

more korean psychedelia coming soon, including some more stuff with shin jung-hyun, probably some san ul lim too.

shin joong-hyun & the men- it's a lie
shin joong-hyun & the questions- in-a-kadda-da-vida

Ten days. Ten short days.