danny cohen

danny cohen - shades of dorian grey (anti, 2007)

With Shades Of Dorian Gray, Danny Cohen has crafted the musical equivalent of an accomplished painting. Equally cerebral and serendipitous, his third Anti- album is an eclectic song cycle that thrives, informs and rewards with each successive listen.

Danny Cohen, known for his sharp storytelling, observant lyrics and and poised vocal delivery brings Wilson-esque arrangements and ambitious instrumentation to his latest Anti- release, “Shade Of Dorian Gray”. Mellotrons, horns, organs, and lap steel adorn these 16 terrific songs full of riotous images and indelible hooks.

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fit & limo

fit & limo - astralis (september gurls, 2007)

New studies on strange folk conducted by the Franconian institute of applied psychedelic sciences have resulted in a fine album entitled Astralis. 18 new refined psychedelic folk songs, which remind of Fit & Limo's mid-90ies releases, but also include progressive/wyrd/mystic folk elements of their more recent work. British folk of traditional and late 60ies/early 70ies style is combined with 60ies US flower power harmonies/West Coast acid rock and Fit & Limo's own special brand of Kraut/space folk playfulness. Influences of Incredible String Band and Pearls Before Swine are more distinct again; Beau Brummels, Beatles, Witthüser & Westrup come to mind, as well. Included are three excellent versions of British traditional songs based on recordings by Shirley & Dolly Collins ("The moon shines bright", "Down in yon forest", "The snow it melts the soonest") and a cover of Alex Campbell's "Been on the road so long".

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This might be the most, -slightly romantic-, dreamy release of Fit & Limo, multiple arranged, in cloudy organic movements, with a misty attention attached to the effect of arrangements. Like always they use a lot of instruments of which sitar, mellotron, and soft fuzz guitars found most of my attention amongst other elements of the layers. On just a few tracks I am taken slightly to Elly & Rikkert’s “Parzival”. On a few other tracks it seems like some songs were inspired from medieval or comparable, old songs. The 18 songs are compiled with a convincing consistency; they give me a slightly stoned and take-me-way effect.

'Astralis' es de primeras un disco bonito y en que todas las voces son en inglés. El influjo de un psych-folk enrarecido desaparece al poco de comenzar la escucha con 'The Lovers', las melodías se pasean más desnudas que de costumbre y a mí no me deja de sorprender como los de Bavaria en cada disco, y son unos cuantos, se sumergen en una misma dirección pero con distintos destinos, esta vez me recuerda a sus primeros viajes, se escucha un raga pero de ensoñadora inspiración. Quizá haya algo de romananticismo sugerido por las 3 maravillosas versiones de Shirley Collins. Fit & Limo es uno de esos grupos con los que coincido plenamente en lo que hacen, como con Ghost, a pesar de que no me emocionan tanto, todo me parece digno de escuchar, pero sí algo creo que es cierto, es que alguna que otra vez son capaces de codearse con Emtidi, Carol of Harvest, Flute & Voice... u otros de los inalcanzables del space-folk alemán, sólo ellos, porque en realidad son los únicos herederos.

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maulawi nururdin

maulawi nururdin - maulawi (1973)

Blood should pump nowadays at the mention of another Soul Jazz/Universal Sound release, this one an absolute original that flies in the same circles as some of the greatest jazz and soul records of the early '70s. Maulawi Nururdin's Maulawi covers a staggering landscape, and does a virtual Sherman's March across the territories of funk, blues, post-Palladium latin jazz, samba, and his own unique take on the outtasphere; burning it all down with punishing resolve, and reviving it all in his own image. Maulawi, Nururdin's solo album that died a commercial death shortly after its 1974 release, reveals a palette of compositional depth and sonic intelligence that Nururdin would have had a tough time topping had he recorded again. The product of an era rife with social and political tension, this work highlights a street-hot assembly of musicians as they document their composer/bandleader's detailed, colloquial vision.

A product of Chicago's disparate musical heritages, Maulawi's music, at its roots, shines and glows with the same crackling energy as predecessors like Sun Ra, Muddy Waters and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Nururdin, himself a multi-instrumentalist, composer and band leader, places his own thumbprint high atop the mix with his sax playing, a sweet, razor-thin layer of liberation to the often dense, and sometimes dark, journeys in sound. Stacks of percussion drive the body of this work, buoyed by the staccato thrust of Rufus Reed's bass work, and every song on Maulawi jerks the listener sideways and back again with shifts in key, time and timbre.

El trabajo de Maulawi Nururdin se encuentra abandonado, tirado en un callejón de Chicago en una bolsa vieja en la que nadie ha reparado, al abrirla, un destello te ciega y te queda la sensación de que uno no es capaz de condensar, en pocas palabras, su contenido. Es un jazz salido de la alcantarilla, allá donde va a parar casi cualquier cosa. Avant-garde que se ve abrazado por el funk y los ritmos latinos y quizá por el ya aparecido rap de The Last Poets. Él, que pasó y sobrevoló por la AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) de la que nunca llegó a ser miembro.

Strata Records editó originalmente el álbum y Soul Jazz no los recupera hoy, presten atención a la sección de vientos y a las voces y cuidado con la infección rítmica que está por venir, deep jazz en estado puro.

street rap
eltiton

seesselberg

synthetic

Eckart y Wolf-J, es decir, Seesselberg es otro de los muchísimos grupos alemanes que apenas salieron del subsuelo y que brevemente circularon por los terrenos más creativos, intrigrantes y oscuros de la incipiente eléctronica alemana. Tan solo quedó un album, 'Synthetic' en 1973, que recorre latitudes que los referentes de la escena no vislumbraron, así, su propuesta industrial y verdaderamente weird podría haber sorprendido y calcinado muchos oídos. Clic arriba y vereis.

santiago mutumbajoy

santiago mutumbajoy - yagé pinta! psychedelic shaman songs of santiago mutumbajoy (locust, 2007)

Weaving in and out of the shaman's body, which is the same as the body of the song, these songs are the medi-um by which spirits are conjured, witchcraft laid to rest, and the universe put on edge. Treat them accordingly.They might change your life. They did, mine. They are sung by Santiago Mutumbajoy whom I taped with a cheap old tape-recorder at different times, mostly in 1976, when I was living with him and his wife Ambrosia. Their two room wooden house sat on a hill in the cloudforest near the town of Mocoa where the Andes drop into the Putumayo River Basin in southwest Colombia. Todaytheir son, Luciano, carries on the practice there, while their daughter, Natividad, sustains it in neighbouring Caqueta province. For the whole night, under the influence of a hallucinogen called yagé, the healer sings his song the power ofwhich is due not to words, lyrics, or poetry. Instead it lies in the quality of the sound and the way that sound cre-ates pictures in your mind while dissolving your body. The singing is the key to the magical power. It is that power.It is what brings the healer and the patient into the realms of the spirits that lie within and behind every visiblething.

Nearly 80 minutes of hypnotic, droning wild microphone field recordings of shamanic ceremonies recorded by celebrated anthropologist Michael Taussig.

Por cierto, los beneficios del disco irán destinados a la Fundación Renacer de Bogotá, dedicada a la rehabilitación de niños y jóvenes explotados sexualmente.

Evocando a los espíritus:

untitled 1
untitled 4

the keith tippet group (rare earth XVII)

Keith Tippet Group - Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening (1971)

"I'm a jazz musician", he states flatly and categorically, without qualification. But whant kind of jazz musician, for heaven's sake, plays with musicians from albeit experiemtnal rock bands like King Crimson, Soft Machine and the late Blossom Toes? The answer: a new breed, and all the men you'll hear on this album come into that category. (...)

The six cuts were recorded in two glorious days at Philip's studios, near Marble Arch, and Keith says: "It was fantastic - everybody was leaping around, very happy. Not drunken... just merry. You can tell what it was like from the fade-outs; the tracks weren't faded for musical reasons, but because we never wanted stop playing". The album opens with Nick's 'This Is What Happens', with horn fanfares over the fiery, striding rhythm. Mark has some nice half-valve effects in his solo, and Keith is very funky and exciting before the enjoyable chaotic coda. The link between this and Keiht's 'Thoughts To Geoff' uses a speeded-up trombone, eacuse "Nick thinks that he sounds like Freddie Hubbard when you speed up te tape, so we gave him a chance prove it". 'Thoughts To Geoff' has just about the most exciting Rhythmic feel of any British music I've heard. All seven muscians are marching to the same drummer, and words can scarcely do justice to the splendour of the way Babbington and Spring mesh to inspire the others.
Keith jagged runs, Elton's duet with Gary Boyle, and Nick's bluff yet sinuous trombone are the highlights. 'Green and Orange Night Park' starts with the feeling of a Coltrane coda, all majestic and thrashing, before moving into the theme, will make your hair stand on end. It's Elton's feature, with a written riff behind him which Nick gradually mutates into a related improvised phrase. It dissolves in beautiful frenzy. Nick tells me that "gridal" means "raucous" and Elton's compositions has an orgamisc possessed by-devils spirit which makes it an awesome experiencie. It doesn't really matter, but electric alto is overdubbed in some places. If you thought that was pretty weird though, 'Five After Dawn' will come as a slight shock. Written after an all-night party to depict musically people and things awakening and starting to move at dawn, it makes use of plunk and flutters, including bowed cymbals, plucked paino strings, and the spooky overdubbed voices of Keith and Robert. The link here is ' Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Liestining' a line by the Soft Machine's Hugh Hopper, played by Mark and Elton. The Final track, Nick's 'Black Horse', is a staple of the band's, which Nick rearranged for the session. It's the kind of cut that you're still dancing to an hour after it's over, with the horns coming down hard on the strong rhythm, and all through the band is one entity, one metabolism, breathing together. For days after these sessions, people were calling me up to say how incredible it had been. Now we can all see what they were on about: this music sticks to your ribs, keeps you satisfied makes you breathe in perfect harmony.

Estas son casi en su totalidad las notas de Richard Williams en el Melody Maker incluidas en la edición del álbum por arkama en 2002. Es curioso como en los ya más de dos años de aldea f. no he dedicado apenas palabras a la música que más me maravilla y a unos pocos músicos que crearon un universo muy especial, variado y distintivo, el canterbury. En realidad, puede que esta vez tampoco lo haga, aunque echando un ojo a los participantes parezca difícil pensar lo contrario: Keith Tippett (piano/hohner electric piano) , Elton Dean (alto/saxello), Mark Charing (cornet), Nick Evans (trombone) , Robert Wyatt (drums), Bryan Spring (drums), Phil Howard (drums), Tony Uta (conga drums/cow bell), Roy Babbington (bass/bass guitar), Neville Whitehead (bass) y Gary Boyle (guitar) el plantel resulta increíble, bien es cierto que varias colaboraciones son muy puntuales. La composiciones se reparten entre el propio Keith, Elton y Nick (suyas son las 2 piezas que actúan como introducción y cierre). Bajo la batuta de Keith Tippett el componente de jazz es total. Tras acabar el explosivo inicio de 'This is What Happen', la sensación es que nos ha abordado un jazz deconstruido, elocuente y libre, algo que no nos abandonará hasta el final.

Habría mucho que contar de cada uno, así, destacar a Nick, Mark y Elton en sus dinámicos solos y lo interesante de comprobar tantos a éstos como al resto en sus trabajos previos y posteriores con otras bandas. Keith junto a Julie Discroll y con varios de los presentes, firmaría algunos de los discos más imperdibles que se han hecho.

Apuntar un detalle, el título del disco, es un pequeño interludio de medio minuto que Hugh Hopper compuso junto a Mark y Nick, cuando Wyatt formó Matching Mole le "compondría" a su amigo un 'Dedicated to Hugh, But You Weren't Listening'. Antes de los 3 clicks decir que con este nombre, también publicaron previamente 'You Are Here...I Am There' en 1969 que ya contaba con el trío de los Softs a los vientos.

this is what happen
thoughts to geoff
black horse

soft circle

soft circle - full bloom (eastern developments, 2007)

Full Bloom is an ecstatic percussion and voice exercise. Perhaps exorcism is a better word. Over seven tracks we delve into the depths of his one man band aesthetic. In the live experience, Hisham sits behind a drum kit, along with some samplers and triggers, a guitar sitting in his lap and a microphone headset strapped around his head. This image should give you a sense of the dynamics enclosed in the Soft Circle album, as most tracks were recorded in one live take, with few overdubs. From opening title "Ascend," to tracks like "Sundazed," "Stones and Trees," "Shimmer," "Whirl" and "Earthed"...you get the picture. Yes, this is a dose of new freak-folk, but more in the Panda Bear style of emotional release, or even that of Bharoocha's former band, Black Dice. Full Bloom is filled with ethno-acoustic/electronic vibes culled from hand percussion, drone vocals, yelps and howls, sitars, bird calls, electronic washes and slight dance rhythms. References could be made to Eno/Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and the Wild Orchid soundtrack at one moment, and in the next, like Steve Reich meeting Pandit Pran Nath in a drum circle. A surprise outing from the NY underground.

Hisham Baroocha, se despega de la cartasis de noise de Lighting Bolt y se sumerge en un atmosférico amalgama, voy a llamarlo trance-world-folk. En fin, uno de los discos más inspiradores de lo que va de año, los dos clicks de abajo eso dicen.

moon oar sunrise
sundazed

tom carter & christian kiefer

tom carter & cristian kiefer - a rather solemn promise (the great pop suplemente, 2007)

Charalambides' Tom Carter teams up with fellow string alchemist Christian Kiefer for some Loren Mazzacane Connors-influenced spectral blues. Once you've got over the gorgeous hand-screened sleeves (courtesy of Badgerlore's Rob Fisk) you're in for the kind of freeform guitar duets that made similarly-minded outings (such as last year's excellent Tetuzi Akiyama & Donald McPherson head-to-head) such captivating listening. The tone varies between the rollicking Takoma-isms of 'Glass Palace' and the slide guitar weirdness of 'Song the Land Sings', via the ghostly banjo bust-ups of 'Snake River', with each piece delivered with a stereo dynamics setup whereby one musician takes the left, the other the right, giving a real sense of being in and amongst the performance. Tom Carter's guitar in Charalambides has always been enriched with a kind of starkly atmospheric resonance, and in Kiefer he's clearly found a likeminded artist. Consequently, it's a great pleasure to hear the two meandering through these psyched-up American Primitive discourses with such a gnarled authenticity.

Edition of 500 copies in screened fold-out card sleeves with art by Rob Fisk (Badgerlore).

Para paseos en solitario al amanecer, para aventureros retirados y para que entre tanto sol haya un poco de niebla.

song the land sings
red flower in the greys