sometimes i worry that i'll die and no one will have an easy means to navigate through all the great music that i've been lucky enough to collect. so this.
A French saxophone & percussion duo that I'm not truly sure how I stumbled upon, but I very well may have just been looking for records with both vibraphones and saxophones -- that is a thing that I recall doing -- Noco Music tap into a wonderfully breezy sensibility.
I haven't found much info about the group, so I will talk about the song's subject matter, eclipses. Total eclipses are wonderful and you should do whatever you can to see one within the totality zone. I have seen one and it was among the most beautiful and amazing things I've ever witnessed. Everyone else I've talked to who has seen one from the totality seems to feel the same way. In conclusion, you should try to see a total eclipse form within the totality zone.
Doo-wop has become one of my favorite genre's to explore. It's like a concentrated from of the most soulful vocal jazz, and was perfectly suited to the technological limits of it's recording era, filling the mono sound spectrum with vibrating harmonies.
This is one of those tracks we're lucky to have, and almost didn't. After sitting in with other members of the later-to-be group a few times, lead singer, Gene Mumford, was arrested for a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. At the dogged urging of his father, the case was re-examined, and evidence was discovered eliminating him as a suspect. He was pardoned and released after serving two years, picked up with the group, and went on to record several classics.
Rejected by their label, Virgin, and unreleased until fifteen years after its recording, "Das Meer" is one of the most peaceful tracks the experimental German group, Faust put out. The title translate to "the ocean", and the sounds that follow it fit it to a T, capturing its unique feel of unsettled fluidity. The sea isn't just expansive, it's listless and random. To be on it is to be tossed about without ever landing. You can learn a lot about the world by listening to music.
I have had pieces of this song popping up in my head for months but couldn't remember who did it for the life of me. I guess it's still an oddly under the radar track as none of my searches for the lyrical sections I could recall turned up anything, but eventually I broke down and just started playing old playlists from parties I DJ-ed and finally landed on it. (For some dumb reason, I had convinced myself that doing a search of my music library for "dance with you" couldn't possibly yield the song as it was too obvious of a name")
Perfectly balanced between the soulful-disco of the late 70's and the funky-pop of the 80's, its charms are instantly obvious, but what always thrills me me is how well written each part is. From the Giorgio Moroder-esque intro to the wonderfully bouncy vocals of the bridge to the full soul rinse of the chorus, it always feels like you're in good hands.
Kwick spent the 70's under the name The Newcomers working their way up through the southern soul hub of the Stax-Volt label system in Memphis, contributing background vocals to other acts, performing as an opening act on live tours, and occasionally releasing a single. But when the label closed down in late 1975, the members were left without a home, releasing only one lackluster single on Mercury in 1978 before they made a bold retooling. Adding a new member, changing their name to Kwick, and signing to EMI, they came out with a wholly different and more modern disco-influenced sound that few would have expected based on their previous material.
A lot of people tried their hand at Bob Dylan mimicry in the sixties, but few aimed at the apocalyptic diver bar blues that filled Highway 61 Revisited, and it's hard to imagine anyone pulled it off as well as Bill Fay did here on the B-side of his debut single. That's not to say that Fay wasn't a talent in his own right, but the connection here seems undeniable. The shared sense of vicious judgement and deep disillusionment with the culture of the day in their lyrics combined with the similar circumstances of their recordings -- they were both solo songwriters that were taking a fresh spin fronting already existent bands (here Bill is backed by a group called The Fingers that the producer brought to the recording date) -- may explain a certain amount of stylistic overlap, but the link still stands.
I don't mean to sound critical of the song. In fact, I wish there were more songs like it, because for any of us who has had that moment of clarity deep in the midst of a party where you find yourself saying "who are these monsters and what am I doing here?", how many songs do we really have?
Named after a bootleg alcoholic drink that can be brewed in one day and initially recorded in 1950 by the African Dance Band of the Cold Storage Commission of Southern Rhodesia (and what a name), "Skokiaan" became a worldwide phenomenon in 1954 spurring a multitude of covers from artists across the musical spectrum; The Four Lads to Perez Prado. To me though, this Bud Isaacs take of it on his pedal steel guitar stands above all the other versions I've heard.
As the originator of adding the pedal to the steel guitar, Bud Isaacs certainly earned his place in my personal heroes of music history, but his playing here is so ebullient that he'd probably have earned the spot with this song alone.
A good thing this blog gets me to do is finally look up the meaning of song titles that aren't in English. I'm such a nut for getting lost in in the sounds that I often forget to investigate the meaning the music held for the artist.
Here, we have a beautifully sweeping Klaus Schulze-produced synth-stunner that translates to "That Sweet Summer on the Pianet". The pianet is a model of electric piano made in Germany, which I don't believe was actually used in the making of this track (it's not listed), and so the song is an ode to a summer spent with a specific instrument that we aren't hearing. I love that. To have such a strong feeling for an instrument that you have to express your feelings through music made on other instruments.
Why even name songs when you can woo me with the list of instrumentation? The version I downloaded also included "and Rain", which made me say "yes, please" to no one in particular when I saw it.
While Craig Kupka's more new age oriented albums, Clouds and Crystal, are on Spotify, the album this is from, Modern Dance Techinque Environments is, sadly, not. They're all good listens, but this one has the best spiral, so much so that if you told me it was from a hypnosis record, I'd believe you.
Both unrushed and well paced, the track is constantly building variations just when you would want it to. And did I mention that great combination of instruments? Cause it's truly something special.
A proper vintage psychedelic ballad with cymbal swells and strawberry mellotrons doesn't necessarily have to do much too get my attention. Here we have a song that went unreleased in its day, but was dug out in 1991 to glide out into a very different world than it had been born in.
The thing that amazes me about psych-pop is how it presents such a transportive experience in such a small capsule. Staying true to its pop side, there's no time to waste in getting you hooked in to a pleasant melody. Staying true to its psych side, the perspective feels warped and the sounds may as well be a dream. Glad someone finally found it.
Came across this one in a record store, and haven't managed to find out much about it yet, but melodic steel drums mixed with furious funk drums are always gonna be a winner in my book. Some instruments just speak to you, and the way steel drums always seem to ring out with their unique sense of vitality makes them hard to let pass. Pair them up with another delightful element like they are with that kit drummer here, and, really, why would you even try to resist.
A gentle epic built out of piano and delay. These sort of minimalist/new age pieces, perhaps unsurprisingly, do a lot for me these days. They seem so private, but shared; expansive, but small. Maybe it's just nice to hear percussed strings fractalize all around you.
Performed during an LA radio show where Harry Nilsson live demoed some of the tunes he was working on for his upcoming album/animated film The Point, this is definitely my favorite version of the song. For my taste, the official version got a little over-produced for the simplicity of the song itself, whereas, here, we get Harry solo at the piano, which is always going to be tough to beat.
One of Harry's great skills was his ability to harmonize, as his incredible adeptness at overdubbing on his albums makes crystal clear, but here, with no multi-tracking to play with, you can still feel his harmonic sense in the way that he truly sings with his piano rather than on top of it. It's a subtle thing, but the loveliest things often are.
As a bonus, there are some other great song performances here as well as prescient warning about simplistic demagogue TV politicians from the host, Skip Weshner, at 58:38.
There are a ton of great versions of this Johnny Mercer song from 1944, the Pied Pipers original, Roy Orbison, Santo & Johnny, Little Stevie Wonder ... it's a good song. This run through of it comes courtesy of one of my personal favorites, Pete Drake, the man who hooked up a talk box to his pedal steel guitar and made some magic.
The combination of the saccharin Nashville choral vocals & strings with Pete's otherworldly distorted tones, all on top of a slow country swing, adds up to what may as well be a transmission from another timeline, perfectly fitting the song.
It's funny, on my iTunes playlist of things I might want to post on here, this is followed up by Frank Ocean's recent "Moon River" cover, which also happens to be a song by Johnny Mercer (co-written with Henry Mancini), which kicks off with what I think is a vocoder vocal. The lifelong through lines of taste are always sneaking up on me.
I remember hearing that Selected Ambient Works Volume II was a lesser album for Aphex Twin, but I was just beginning my dive into the world of electronic music and I picked it up anyway at Volume, the local used CD store in Virginia Beach. Inside that CD, I found none of the frenetic digital programming that had made me take wide-eyed notice of Richard D. James in the first place, and I imagine that's what turned a lot of people off. I loved it though.
SAWII, as it's shorthandedly known, took more influence from Brian Eno's work with tape delay, such as Discreet Music, which I wouldn't come across for another decade or so. As an album, it sways between lush, loving pieces and those that dwell in a feeling of unsettling spook. I tended to go through the forgotten routine of programming my CD player to skip the one's that brought unease.
Looking back, it makes sense that it's probably my second favorite of his albums (all praise to ...I Care Because You Do), as it was my first glimpse of the world of the genre's of ambient & new age that I've grown a strong appreciation for over the years. It's also an album of songs that take their inspiration from photographs, which is a commonality shared with the previously discussed Arthur Russell's "Instrumentals" and definitely makes me curious to find other albums that employ the process.
I say all that to get to the point that this track was not on the double CD album of SAWII that I bought and played over and over, it was, unbeknownst to me, only on the LP release, so I only found out about it last year when it was included on the digital re-release. Hearing it for the first time, I was floored. It fit in so well to the collection and stands out as one of the best pieces from the project. It's such a lovely meditation that I think I'll stop waxing nostalgic and just give it another listen.
So ... I've gotten kind of into obscure Moog cover albums recently. The Moog synthesizer lended this goofy, chunky charm to the world of futuristic sounds, and there's something about that view of the world to come that I find endearing. Over the course of my life, I've oscillated between being hopeful for the future and worried for it, and we're certainly at one of those times where I'm more worried for it, so these Moog records are a little bit of a break from that.
Well, that's the self-analysis on it. The facts about the track are that you've got a cover of a T. Rex classic that's here to have fun, put together by a pair of guys for the always out for a quick buck Music For Pleasure label. I'm not mad at Music For Pleasure at all; more fascinated by what other fun oddities might be sitting in their discography. Oh, but that's a rabbit hole for another day.
A chef's kiss to the use of double-tracking on this song about an imaginary friend. I am always there for a singular bold effect on otherwise acoustic music, and here it's implemented so perfectly that I want to hug somebody. Stylistically, this sits quite nicely next to a previous selection from Horace Silver & Salome Bey, and it would clearly behoove me to investigate that era of vocal jazz more closely, as the focus on spiritual self-care is an influence that I always appreciate.
I could do with a lifetime of this. An incredible marriage of expansive psychedelic minimalism and the most soulful spiritual jazz, from masters of each. Together they explore the far out and the innermost as the same thing. It's hard to imagine that they performed this and didn't just hole up in a studio for a decade or two, but then again, maybe they said it all here.
Take a drift down that pedal steel stream. Few sounds can soothe my soul like these sliding string blues. Part of the pedal steel's secret is that the instrument begs the player to take the journey through all the tones between a song's notes, letting the listener tap deeply into the ebbs and flows of the music. And what a river this one is.
Picked this one up over at Mono Records in Glendale the other day after cueing up this track at the listening station and damn near cracking my neck to the beat. Dick Hyman was a jazz pianist who got caught up in the space age pop craze, eventually venturing into the world of experimental electronics. Here, he has the electro-funk grooves cranked all the way up and gets his Moog to replicate an incredibly believable whistle. The fact that it kicks off with the lead sample for Beck's "Sissyneck" is just the avocado on the toast.
Coming out of the wonderfully reverberating El Cometa De Madrid record series, which were united by Luis Delgado's loving production, this track radiates that sort of coastal contentedness that I'm always looking for. The guitar seems to run up and down the beach as we sit back and let our thoughts take us wherever they might want.
And come on, look at that picture. That's a b-shot from the album's cover and I don't know if anything could make me pick up an album faster than someone sitting at a bank of old ass computers holding an electric guitar.
