mustafa ozkent (rare earth XXV)

mustafa özkent orchestra - gençlik elele (turquía, 1973)

In those days, outside the core of Western musical culture, an instrumental album with somehow psychedelic improvisations was never called "psychedelic", more labelled as A Go-Go, often dance rhythm related item. Acid jazzrock was more often one influence for such music. Similar try-outs were already done by groups like Gence 5, who later further developed the jazz reference (evolving to Gence 10). Psychfolk.

The best in early '70's Turkish pop is presented here, an extremely rare unbelieveably forward thinking record that has to be heard to be believed. Drums riffs, healthy solos and high end brass attacks fill this album. Not featuring any vocals or 45 releases, it achieved high club value and was constantly played on the TV and radio on its Turkish release in 1973, but like many Turkish LP's of the time most copies were destroyed or recycled. Perfect for all instrumental psychedelia collectors, this is a genuine find. Great cover as well. freak emporium

Pendiente desde Ananda Shankar, quizá el mejor y más raro album del psych-rock del middle east que mira hacia occidente. Mustafa Özkent habitual músico de estudio grabó con su banda Orkestasi alguna gema perdida a principios de los setenta. Repleto de efectos, improvisaciones, anatolian-folk, 'Gençlik Elele' es funk-jazz turco a-go-go. La hipnosis rítmica definitiva.

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josephine foster

josephine foster - graphic as a star (fire records, 2009)

Fire Records are very excited to have Josephine Foster joining the roster. Her new album Graphic as a Star is based upon the poems of the 19th century American poet Emily Dickenson. Josephine lays stairsteppy melodies beneath a collection of Dickenson gems and sings them with a burnished soulfullness like the purple sunsets so often described in the poems. Massachusetts mountains pearled spiderwebs and folk heroe William Tell are all present in this unforgetable meeting of Dickensons posey and Fosters music making a natural and inevitable whole.

No acabo de comprender la etiqueta de freak-folk que casi unánimemente se ha venido adherir con el paso del tiempo a las críticas de josie, no porque me disguste sino porque su música es producto de la inquietud. Para 'Graphic as a Star' la de Colorado vuelve a retroceder en el tiempo para anclarse en el S. XIX.

La insipiración parece ser que nació del aislamiento en un pueblecito de nuestro país, como si se tratase del Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band en busca de su 'Trout Mask Replica' particular. Sólo que aquí no hay experimentación, ni vanguardia (entendida como tal), josie opta por refugiarse en los poemas de Emily Dickenson y los recita a su manera, no los reinterpreta. Así nos encontramos con canciones mínimas que en realidad, son los poemas en la tan especial voz de Josephine, la cual es de capaz de contarte historias de héroes, montañas y naturaleza y conseguir que más de un escalofrío recorra tu cuerpo.

Tal es el respeto a la obra de Dickenson que varios de sus poemas son recitados a capella 'exultation is the going', 'wild nights!' o 'how happy is the little stone' donde parece estar más cerca que nunca de Shirley Collins. También hay serpenteantes melodías 'tell as a marksman', rasgeos mínimos 'the spider holds a silver ball', una harmónica mágica 'she sweeps with many-colored brooms'...en un disco tan único y personal que al igual que 'A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing' sólo de josie podría salir. Sí hoy día habláramos de appalachian-folk sólo esto podría ser.

aldea f.: jose-pine, a wolf in sheep's clothing, josie & the cherry blossoms, this coming gladness
microphones in the trees: australian tour, a diadem
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diminished men

diminished men - shadow instrumentals lp (abduction, 2009)

Seattles Diminished Men present a full-length record for the Abduction label. This LP is a limited edition of 500 copies and comes pressed on 180 gram vinyl. "If current instrumental music was always as majestic and compelling as this, Id hang up my retro-Italian soundtrack collectors boots for good. From the explosive drums rolls on the opening track, the only cover on the record, "LAppel du Vere," from Roman Polanskis The Tenant (music by Philippe Sarde), to the darkly exotic finale, "A Housewifes Dram," this album is a superbly crafted mosaic of whip-cracking vengeance, speak-easy hallucinations and haunted geography. Besides the Italian-Western overtones, the carnival-esque freakshow backdrops, Korshid-Egyptian guitar passages, and flipped-out electronic space-psych, are perhaps the best surf-inspired tracks Ive heard in years. Its spine-chilling how producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Eyvind Kang, Sun City Girls, Secret Chiefs 3, Six Organs Of Admittance, Wayne Horvitz, Matt Chamberlain, Grails, Wolves In The Throne Room, etc.) managed to make this record the ultimate mid-60s surf-vampire-Western revival soundtrack. Elements of Joe Meeks best Moontrekkers productions cross with a dash of Badalamenti murder blues-drama, setting the stage for Steve Schmitts cobra-twilight guitar work and the outlaw drums of Dave Abramson to leave their indelible stains across this 41-minute epic journey." - Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls).

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helena espvall & masaki batoh

helena espvall & masaki batoh - overloaded ark (drag city, 2009)

A sequel to last year's eponymous debut as a duo, this new Drag City LP from Espers cellist Helena Espvall and Ghost's Masaki Batoh delves even deeper into traditional and ancient musics, making use of an armoury of instruments that extends beyond 'mildly obscure' (renaissance harp, sho, hurdy gurdy, etc) and enters into the realm of 'are you sure you haven't just made that up?' (auschpfeife, crumhorn, cornamuse, rig and darbuka). On hand to assist in this piece of instrumental archeology is ancient music specialist Haruo Kondo as well as two of Batoh's Ghost bandmates (namely Junzo Tateiwa and Kazuo Ogino). Overloaded Ark reinterprets songs dug up from a variety of different cultures, from Scandinavian folk to French and Italian medieval court dances - with a spot of German madrigal thrown in as a crowd-pleaser. In addition to the album's appropriation of Cuban protest songs and Latin hymns, you do actually get to hear some original compositions by the duo themselves: beautiful, elongated pieces like 'Until Tomorrow' and 'Over The Luminescence Land' find the pair on terrific form, with the former in particular capturing the unearthly prog-folk magic (possibly with a 'k' at the end) these two can summon up. Recommended.

Esperaba con inquietud e incertidumbre una segunda colaboración y al final llegó... y que decir, Ghost es un favorito entre favoritos, el primer disco parecía difícil de superar pero lo han conseguido. Helena se deja llevar y aterrizan en un universo más cercano al de Ghost pero en él sólo aflora una hipnótica y diversa tradición, hasta Helena se atreve en español rodeada de serpientes. Habría tanto que decir que lo voy a dejar aquí: mistery-magic-folk.

aldea f.: in stormy nights, helena espvall & masaki batoh
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united bible studies

united bible studies - the jonah (camera obscura, 2009)

The album title is a reference to the James Herbert novel where a "Jonah" is a cursed person who brings bad luck everywhere, and is also the title of the 16 minute avant/progressive folk suite that forms the record's centerpiece. Richard Youngs' progressive rock project Ilk provided the impetus for the band to make a "Prog Album" (which was the working title) so they started with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink opus "The Jonah". It was the first track recorded for this album during a two week burst of industry and creativity when the band locked themselves away in Mullingar. David's imagery for the first section was partially inspired by the Vin Diesel film Pitch Black and it takes flight in all kinds of different dream directions from there. Running the gamut from delicate acoustic guitar to Sunn 0))) style doom metal and back again, it's an extraordinary feat of the imagination.

With a sound like expiring infant suns weeping for worlds they'll never warm, "The Jonah" should appeal to lovers of the likes of Espers, Black Forest/Black Sea, Sharron Kraus, and Nick Castro, as well as darker matter like Current 93 and Sol Invictus.

microphones in the trees: the shore that fears the sea

noah howard

noah howard - patterns/message to south africa (1971/79)

Noah Howard remains one of the great, under-appreciated saxophonists of free America. The tension-fraught brilliance of his alto playing during the1960s &1970s has an edge of palpable liberation that is both unquestionable & unmatched. A student of Sonny Simmons & Dewey Johnson, Mr. Howard's success in transmuting thejoy-wedge of his instrument's post-Ornette identity is well documented on sessions issued by the ESP, Freedom, & America labels.

Originally issued on his own Alt Sax label in 1971, the "Patterns" session is one of the great mystery spots in the Noah Howard canon. Mr. Howard was in Europe, subsequent to the American jazz diaspora of the 1960s. His Parisian-based group with Frank Wright, Muhammad Ali & Bobby Few was in merge process with Alan Silva to form the Center of the World Collective. When a Dutch radio broadcast beckoned, Mr. Howard connected with fellow expatriates, bassist Earl 'Goggles' Freeman (who the following year would appear on Noah's Live at the Village Vanguard), & conga player Steve Boston. Enlisted for the rhythm section were Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg, then in the heat of their duo functionality as ICP, along with the guitarist Jeep Schoonhoven (Wally Tax, etc), who is blinding here. The resultant music was a thirty-eight minute spasm of creative thunder.

The 'Message to South Africa' session is another kind of spirit flare. Written in Paris the week that Steve Biko was killed, the date came together around two of the great South African jazz exiles, pianist Chris McGregor & bassist Johnny Dyani. Drummer Noel McGhee (who had played on Noah's Live at the Swing Club date) was enlisted to give the band Caribbean representation. In Paris as well was Kali Fasteau, who lends the proceedings some of the same vibrational magic she had used so notably on Archie Shepp's Bijou.

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the skygreen leopards

the skygreen leopards - gorgeous johnny - (jagjaguwar, 2009)

When the Jewelled Antler crew ‘broke’ all those years ago, most of us pigeonholed them as back-to-nature, field-recording characters – hippies, basically, though of a surer cut than usual. But while there was some overlap with the free-folk underground, their concept was more complex and fascinating than most of their contemporaries: each branch from the tree (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Giant Skyflower Band, Der TPK, etc) further complicated your understanding of what they were about. The Skygreen Leopards (a.k.a. Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn) first appeared a good number of years ago, and across a number of albums they’ve refined their chamber-pop duo-cum-collective approach, such that Gorgeous Johnny feels effortless while ticking all the right referential boxes. (...)

When listening to Gorgeous Johnny, I’m strangely reminded of the almost polemicalXYZ album. This was an important move, because it broke with general (and reductive) understandings of the ground that ‘underground artists’ could rightfully cover. With Gorgeous Johnny, avant-pop, folk, improv etc artists Donaldson and Quinn similarly light down in an imagined reconstruction – this time, of fey ’60s baroque – which, given how hampered underground discourse is by its language of unexamined extremity and drone/noise redundancy, feels pretty wilfully contrary, in a welcome way. But most importantly, all of the songs here are strong enough to be bolstered (rather than swamped) by their rococo touches and period piece flourishes. recuperation of country and folk undertaken by one-time shoe-gazers Moose in the early 1990s, their leap from the by-numbers guitar-noise-pop of “Jack” to the Buckley/Hardin/Gentry fantasia of 1992’s

aldea f.: disciples of california, donovan quinn & the 13th month, franciscan hobbies
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circulus

circulus - thought becomes reality (mythical cake, 2009)

Circulus make me want to take my clothes off. Not in a do a streak across the centre court at Wimbledon way, no, that wouldn't do at all. No, it's in the stripping away all the clutter and burden of modern life sense, I would of course then don the gold lamé jump suit or suit of armour that Michael Tyack, the funky medieval main-man of Circulus, demanded of me and board the good ship Circulus for a voyage amongst the glittering orbs of outer space...

Hence we have the third Circulus album, Thought Becomes Reality, and it throws a teeny dose of psychedelic space rock into the bubbling witches brew of medieval pomp that we know and love. The line-up has changed slightly, most noticeably in the departure of the distinctive voice of Lo Polidoro, however the addition of Holly-Jane Shears and the 'Circulus Ladies Choir' more than makes up for her absence. Within You Is The Sun being a dreamy highlight.

Adiós a rise above, el tercer larga duración de Circulus llega desde su propio sello, no es ésta la única novedad, hay nuevas incorporaciones y Lo Polidoro ya no es la fémina de Circulus y se nota. Puede seguir hablándose de medieval folk-rock con las reverberaciones electrónicas acostumbradas, psicodelia... pero éste es su disco más preciosista, soleado, accesible, menos intricado, así Dando Shaft o Pentagle parecen ya olvidados. Otro horizonte es el que se ve tras la irrestible 'within you is the sun'.

aldea f.: clocks are people

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