Boomkat: Australia's Chris Abrahams, Tony Buck and Lloyd Swanton return again as The Necks for this frankly incredible three track album which sees them on their finest form. It's no secret that we're very fond of the Antipodean improvisers here, but this album sees them drop their familiar one-track route in favour of far more bite-sized 20 minute excursions. The first piece, entitled 'Fatal' is where we begin the ride and the familiar sounds of Abrahams on piano (he's one of Australia's most acclaimed jazz pianists), Buck pounding the skins and Swanton on bass - the track builds up in an almost Krautrock fashion, looping percussive sounds and pulsating bass getting gradually more and more dangerous and distorted as it goes on, Abrahams piano rattling and rolling and the guitar noises becoming more and more intense until it ends on an almost noise rock note. Strangely the second piece 'Buoyant' takes a totally different angle, with an electronic drone and glitch which could easily be Mika Vainio in disguise underpinning the band's improvisations, this is a particularly haunting track with the dark lounge feel of Angelo Badalamenti at his finest, I want to call it dark jazz but that wouldn't be doing it justice, it's far far more than that. The best though is saved for last ;'Abillera' is a looping Steve Reich influenced chunk of Krautrock, with the kinetic power and energy of the best of Neu! Or Can, by the time we reach the 13 minute mark the sound is jubilant - pure genius. These guys are simply at the top of their game at the moment, and if you've never managed to check them out before I urge you to grab this album, it's just too too good.
Allmusic bio: The excessive, drug-fueled Pink Fairies grew out of the Deviants, a loose-knit band formed in 1967 by members of the West London hippie commune Ladbroke Grove. Initially dubbed the Social Deviants and consisting primarily of vocalist Mick Farren, guitarist Paul Rudolph, bassist Duncan Sanderson and drummer Russell Hunter, the group also featured satellite members Marc Bolan, Steve Peregrine Took and players from the band Group X, later rechristened Hawkwind. After three noisy, psychedelic albums and a U.S. tour, Farren exited to become a music journalist; the remaining Deviants returned to London, where they recruited vocalist and former Pretty Things drummer Twink (born John Alder), who suggested the name Pink Fairies. Despite gaining a reputation for mythic debauchery, the group remained largely an underground sensation before signing to Polydor and issuing their 1971 debut Never Never Land, a manic, decadent album featuring the live staples "Do It" and "Uncle Harry's Last Freak Out."
Allmusic.com: As the object of intense devotion for so many fans, it's fitting that Big Star receive a box set designed for the intensely devoted: four discs containing every song the band cut in the '70s, often present in slightly alternate mixes or versions in addition to the originals, a clutch of solo songs from both Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, as well as a handful of pre-Big Star cuts by Icewater and Rock City, all topped off with a live disc culled from a three-set stint at Memphis' Lafayette's Music Room in January of 1973, not long after Bell left the band. Excepting subsequent reunions in the '90s and 2000s, no corner of the band's career remains untouched on Keep an Eye on the Sky and rarities are abundant, with 55 of its 98 tracks previously unreleased. This is a staggering statistic but it's also misleading, for 20 of those cuts are from the live disc and the rest are either alternate mixes, alternate versions, or demos -- there are no unheard songs, aside from an excerpt of Rock City's "The Preacher." Of these, only a handful are markedly different either in their lyrics or attack, with all finding the songs and even arrangements essentially intact, even in their demo form. Consequently, Keep an Eye on the Sky contains fewer revelations than it initially appears, which isn't to say it lacks any: the earliest demos for 3rd are by and large lighter in tone than the album (although there's no way "Holocaust" ever could seem cheery), a testament to how much a song can change during the recording process.
In a way, all of Big Star's career is a testament to the recording process. They were a creature of the studio, not stage, having free rein at Ardent Studios, where they stayed up into the next morning tinkering at the same set of songs. This resulted in the crisp, sterling sound of #1 Record and the deliberately looser Radio City, as well as the sliding, sprawling mess of 3rd, but it didn't result in outtakes -- it resulted in alternate mixes and instrumental scraps, the stuff that enthralls fetishists, sometimes justifiably so. Those are the listeners who will find Keep an Eye on the Sky most rewarding, but anybody who has loved the band will find something to cherish here, whether it's the crackerjack live show -- which provides roaring covers of the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Hot Burrito #2," T. Rex's "Baby Strange," and Todd Rundgren's "Slut" (later revived 20 years later on their reunion concert), as well as a startlingly effective take on "The India Song" -- or merely the context of the set, which tells the story of America's greatest cult band this side of the Velvet Underground in a complete and affecting fashion.
The cover display of a robotic humanoid relaxing in a futuristic living room with copies of Kraftwerk and Pink Floyd LPs on the floor, is quite appropriate: Warp virtually pioneered the concept of applying the concepts of '70s ambience to '80s techno.
The result is a superb collection of electronic listening music, and a great place to start for the newly interested.
01. Polygon Window.......The Dice Man........5:12 02. Telefone 529.............Musicology........... .4:11 03. Crystel.......................Autechre..................4:38 04. The Clan....................I.A.O........................5:08 05. De-Orbit....................Speedy J.................6:13 06. Preminition...............Musicology..............4:04 07. Spiritual High....... ....UP!...........................7:43 08. The Egg...................Autechre....................7:32 09. Loving You Live.......Dr Alex Paterson.....3:42 10. Fill 3..........................Speedy J...................4:01
Surprisingly catchy, listenable, oddball and talented in a Fugs sorta way. "Home is Where You're Happy" is a really great song.
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Lie: The Love and Terror Cult is the debut album by Charles Manson, originally released by ESP-Disk. Recorded on September 11, 1967 and August 9, 1968 (overdubs), its distribution began during the Manson murder trial by Phil Kaufman who initially pressed a run of 2000 copies, that of which only 300 sold. He later approached ESP-Disk about putting out the album in hopes for a wider circulation, which they agreed to.
The cover is a copy of the December 19, 1969TimeLife front cover, on which Manson had appeared, only with "LIFE" substituted with "LIE."
"Cease to Exist" had been previously recorded by the Beach Boys under the name "Never Learn Not to Love," and it appears both on their 1969 album, 20/20, and as the B-side of the single of "Bluebirds over the Mountain." The single gives songwriting credit to Manson and Dennis Wilson. Manson is not given co-writing credit on the album. It is worth pointing out that the Beach Boys's version includes such significant changes as the inclusion of a bridge that was not part of Manson's version, and the change of the line "Cease to exist" to "Cease to resist," which alters the meaning of the song.
Portions of the album have been sampled or covered by many other artists, such as Front Line Assembly. Many of the songs have also been re-recorded; a version of "Look at Your Game, Girl" appears as a hidden track on the Guns N' Roses cover album "The Spaghetti Incident?", while GG Allin covered "Garbage Dump" for his 1987 album You Give Love a Bad Name and Redd Kross and The Lemonheads have both covered "Cease To Exist." The Lemonheads's recorded two other songs from the album, a version of "Home is Where You're Happy" appeared on the 1988 album Creator and Evan Dando reappropriated some of the lyrics and melody of "Big Iron Door" into his song "Left For Dead," which appears on the group's 1990 album, Lovey. Dilute released a cover of “Home is Where You're Happy” in 2002 on the CD compilation If The Twenty-First Century Didn't Exist It Would Be Necessary To Invent It (5 Rue Christine).
An acoustic version of the song "Sick City" was recorded by Marilyn Manson, but this has never been officially released. The Marilyn Manson song "My Monkey," from the album Portrait of an American Family, contains samples of Charles Manson speaking, as well as lyrics from the track "Mechanical Man."
All proceeds from one reissue of the album, released by Awareness Records, were donated to a California fund for victims of violent crime, as California law prohibited Manson himself from collecting any money or royalties for his work.
In 2006, the album was reissued by the revived ESP-Disk label[2]. This version included twelve bonus tracks. A label employee confirmed that all artist royalties would go to the family of Wojciech Frykowski, whom the Manson "Family" was convicted of having murdered.
Honey Bean: “Peter Grudzien is an American country/psychedelic singer-songwriter and musician. His music is well-known in the outsider music community for its idiosyncratic instrumentation and often openly gay subject matter. Grudzien’s music has strong roots in country, as he grew up listening to such artists as Johnny Cash, who he met as a young man. In the 1960’s, Grudzien began performing on the Greenwich Village coffeehouse circuit, where he met many notable folk musicians, including Bob Dylan. It was also during this time that Grudzien supposedly participated in the Stonewall riots for gay rights. Grudzien continued to make music, and released The Unicorn in 1974. The Unicorn, now considered extremely rare by record collectors, was produced in a very small quantity. The album, entirely written, played, and produced by Grudzien, was long unavailable until its re-release on CD by Parallel World in 1995. The CD release of The Unicorn also included several new songs by Grudzien, including his take on the American standard,There’s a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere, updated with many openly gay sentiments. This song was included on Songs In The Key of Z Vol. 1, a popular compilation of outsider music. With the release of Songs In The Key of Z and its book companion, Grudzien’s music was received by a somewhat larger audience. Peter Grudzien, while known for his reclusiveness, still occasionally plays in the New York area, where he lives, and continues to create and record music in his home studio. Currently, The Unicorn is the only collection of his music that is available.”
BOOMKAT says: Renegade dubstep mavericks Shackleton and Appleblim finally commit their Skull Disco back catalogue to a shiny double-CD format. Over the past two years Skull Disco have kept us right on the edge of our seats with a timely succession of mould-breaking, vinyl-only releases and the odd exclusive dub to really get our bones going.
In a steady stream ever since, the Skull Disco clan have constantly upped the ante on each new installment, with the contrasting sonic personalities of Shackleton and Appleblim chasing the dubstep dragon deeper into their own personal visions.
Shackleton heads on a deeply percussive journey into the mid-East territories on 'Hamas Rule' or the pan-generic, peerless low-end melancholy of the astonishing 'Blood On My Hands', and belying a strangely coincidental fascination with the sonic possibilities of this turbulent part of the globe with his Lancashire counterpart Bryn Jones a.k.a Muslimgauze.
Appleblim continues to forge a headstrong and unique dubstep expression with tracks like 'Girder' or 'Fear' owing as much to Monolake as the Bristol and FWDsounds he is heavily involved with.
From a shared palette of sounds, influences, and ideas, Shackleton and Appleblim have developed a fierce arsenal of future Soundsystem weapons showcased on CD2 with the Villalobos mix of 'Blood On My Hands', an 18-minute trip into opiated minimalism, and the jackin stepper 'New Dawn', alongside Appleblim's previously unreleased 'Gold and Silver'.
The Eno slick, oily thing with a prog Manzanera thrum and hum. Absolutely tight and seamless and filled with dreamy-eyed spacenoodling and some sweet "rush" touches.
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Allmusic.com: 801 provided Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera with one of his most intriguing side projects. Although the band only played three gigs in August and September 1976, this album captures a night when everything fell right into place musically. That should only be expected with names like Eno and Simon Phillips in the lineup. (Still, the lesser-known players -- bassist Bill MacCormick, keyboardist Francis Monkman, and slide guitarist Lloyd Watson -- are in exemplary form, too.) The repertoire is boldly diverse, opening with "Lagrima," a crunchy solo guitar piece from Manzanera. Then the band undertakes a spacey but smoldering version of "Tomorrow Never Knows"; it's definitely among the cleverest of Beatles covers. Then it's on to crisp jazz-rock ("East of Asteroid"), atmospheric psych-pop ("Rongwrong"), and Eno's tape manipulation showcase, "Sombre Reptiles." And that's only the first five songs. The rest of the gig is no less audacious, with no less than three Eno songs -- including a frenetic "Baby's on Fire," "Third Uncle," and "Miss Shapiro"'s dense, syllable-packed verbal gymnastics. There's another unlikely cover of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me," while Manzanera turns in another typically gutsy instrumental performance on "Diamond Head." This album marks probably one of the last times that Eno rocked out in such an unself-consciously fun fashion, but that's not the only reason to buy it: 801 Live is a cohesive document of an unlikely crew who had fun and took chances. Listeners will never know what else they might have done if their schedules had been less crowded, but this album's a good reminder. HEAR
Spent a solo Saturday night on the couch with some falafel and This Is England, which I've put off watching for way too long. It brought me back to a few Cockney Rejects records I should've dusted off long ago.
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NME bio: Discovered by Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69, this skinhead band came to the fore in London, England, in 1980 with an irreverent brand of proletarian-focused punk. The band comprised Jefferson Turner (vocals), Vince Riordan (bass, vocals), Micky Geggus (guitar, vocals) and Keith Warrington (drums). Daring and anti-everything, they were virtually a parody of the "kick over the traces" punk attitude, while also betraying a stubborn parochialism in keeping with their band title. The "anarchic" contents of their albums were reflected in their garishly tasteless record sleeves. Nevertheless, they had a certain subversive humour, titling their first two albums Greatest Hits when the sum of their UK Top 40 achievements rested with "The Greatest Cockney Ripoff" at number 21 and the West Ham United football anthem, "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles", at number 35. On their second album they included the "Oi! Oi! Oi!' song/chant, thereby giving birth to a musical genre that came to define the brash inarticulacy of skinhead politics. Their gigs during this time also became an interface for working-class culture and the extreme right, and like Sham 69, the Rejects were judged guilty by default. By the time of 1982"s The Wild Ones the band were veering away from their original punk influences towards heavy metal. Significantly, their new producer was UFO bass player Pete Way. Equally significantly, their career was well on the decline by this point. They disbanded in 1985 but re-formed to public apathy at the turn of the decade, Lethal hardly living up to its title.
All that haunting moodiness of trad 80s post-punk, complete with reverb'd lyrical abstractions, gloom but with a cutting herky/jerky Shellac-y necksnap beat. A sprinkle of Gang of Four, PIL and Devo. Chameleons really.
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Allmusic.com: Mercurial punk survivor Spizz made his debut at the Birmingham, England club Barbarella's during an all-day music festival held August 27, 1977, performing an improvised set on a borrowed guitar; returning two months later by drummer Pete Petrol, he now billed the act as Spizz 77, the first of numerous name changes to follow in the years to come. Rechristened Spizz Oil, the duo earned their first significant notice in 1978 opening for Siouxsie and the Banshees, resulting in a John Peel session which itself led to an offer from Rough Trade to record an EP, 6000 Crazy. The record topped the UK indie charts, as did its follow-up, Cold City 4; however, Spizz and Petrol parted ways soon after, and with new bassist Jim Solar and keyboardist Mark Coalfield, Spizzenergi was launched in early 1979. Petrol then returned on guitar for the group's stint on the Rough Trade tour; after "Soldier, Soldier" was named Single of the Week in the NME, the follow-up, "Where's Captain Kirk?," earned the same honor in Melody Maker, topping the UK indie charts for eight consecutive weeks in 1980.
After the next single "No Room" / "Spock's Missing" notched advance orders totalling over 50,000 copies, the group -- now touting themselves as Athletico Spizz 80 -- signed to A&M and released their much-anticipated full-length debut Do a Runner. Despite endless line-up shuffles, a brief tour of the U.S. followed before the band returned home to record their second album Spikey Dream Flowers, credited to the Spizzles; however, the emergence of the New Romantic movement had altered the prevailing musical climate so severely that the record not only flopped, but after just two more singles, A&M cut the group loose altogether. As Spizzenergi: 2, they returned to Rough Trade for a pair of singles, "Mega City: 3" and "Jungle Fever," but despite the return of Pete Petrol the outlook continued to dim, and by 1983 Spizz had largely receded from the music scene to focus on painting, resurfacing only for a lone solo show billed as Spizzorwell. A year later, however, he organized a large-scale stage production dubbed The Last Future Show featuring a six-piece female backing group.
By 1985, the show had evolved into a cult-favorite nightclub attraction, although no record deals were yet forthcoming. A year later, Spizz signed on with members of the band Friends of Gavin, touring under the name Spizzsexual; splitting with the group in 1987, he recorded a new rendition of "Where's Captain Kirk?" and toured Germany, followed by a new single, "Love Me Like a Rocket." 1989 saw the emergence of Spizzvision, while in 1990 Spizz and Pete Petrol reunited yet again, this time pursuing a techno-influenced direction under the revived Spizz Oil banner. When Petrol relocated to New Zealand, Spizz again returned to the Spizzenergi moniker, although a 1994 cover of John Lennon's "Merry Xmas (War Is Over)" appeared credited to Spizzmas. The original Spizzenergi line-up reunited in 1996 to appear at the Blackpool Holiday In The Sun punk festival, while 1997 saw Spizz and onetime bandmates Jim Solar and Dave Scott enter the studio with producer Martyn Ware to record as Spizzenergi 2000.
So this was nothing new when it appeared but it was so thick n snotty n no bullshit it easily attracted a bandwagon. I got on for a bit...cuz it bloody rocks regardless of it being stupidly derivative, witless and all-around dopey.
Just think of all the Big Muff pedals this record sold!
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allmusic.com: Mudhoney didn't invent grunge, and Sub Pop Records had close to twenty releases under their belt when they unleashed the band's first 12" release, Superfuzz Bigmuff, in 1988. But if this wasn't the first shot fired in the battle to bring The Seattle Sound to the four corners of the world, it was the first one that well and truly hit the target. Superfuzz Bigmuff codified the first wave of grunge the way the Model T codified the first modern automobile; this is where the ingredients came together in a way that clicked with listeners, reworking the rudiments of hard rock and garage punk into a formula that made sense in the world of alternative rock. The band's snarky wit, brazenly sloppy guitar work, and songs that combined melodic hooks with Godzilla-sized riffage reinterpreted the visceral kick of metal into a format that celebrated its power while stripping it of its pomposity. And Superfuzz Bigmuff's six songs captured a great rock band as they were just starting to hit their stride; Mark Arm's vocals dripped attitude even when he was making fun of the material, Steve Turner's guitar work generated massive walls of fuzzy power, and drummer Dan Peters was Mudhoney's secret weapon: his crisp but forceful pounding giving the songs a rock-solid foundation no matter how far Turner and Arm drifted into the void of slop. Mudhoney made better and more compelling music than Superfuzz Bigmuff, but as a snapshot of the moment where grunge became a sound that meant something outside of a few dim Seattle beer joints, it's absolutely invaluable and a lot of grimy fun.
TRACK LISTING 1. Sun-Earth Rock 2. The All Of Everything 3. Impromptu Festival 4. Blue Soul 5. Narrative 6. Outside The Time Zone 7. The Night Of The Purple Moon 8. A Bird's Eye View Of A Man's World 9. 21st Century Romance 10. Dance Of The Living Image 11. Love In Outer Space 12. Love In Outer Space (Alternate Take) 13. Wurlitzer and Celeste 14. Wurlitzer Solo 1 15. Wurlitzer Solo 2
PERSONNEL Sun Ra: Roksichord, mini-Moog (4-6), Wurlitzer electric piano (13-15), Celeste (13) Danny Davis: alto saxophone (1, 8), alto clarinet (9, 11-12), flute (2), bongos (10-12), drums (3) John Gilmore: tenor saxophone (3), drums Stafford James: electric bass
TRACK LISTING 1. Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue 2. I'll Get By 3. My Favorite Things 4. Untitled 5. Nature Boy 6. Tenderly 7. Black Magic 8. I'll Get By 9. I'll Get By
PERSONNEL Sun Ra: piano, organ (8-9) John Gilmore: tenor saxophone Akh Tal Ebah: trumpet, flugelhorn (8) Marshall Allen: alto saxophone and flute Danny Davis: alto saxophone and flute James Jackson: flute and bassoon Eloe Omoe: bass clarinet Richard "Radu" Williams: bass (1) Ronnie Boykins: bass (8-9) Luqman Ali: drums Atakatune: conga
Lubbock (On Everything) came to me at a birthday party as a gift from a former roommate who knows a thing or three about obscure outlaw country. I don't think he said more than 4 or 5 words to sell it to me, something along the lines of "You're gonna love this." Perhaps that's all my surely inebriated state seemed able to process. Drunk or no, an economy of hype (you won't be so lucky) delivered in reverent tones always gets my attention and I found this album really helped me nurse a hangover the following day.
Concept country is a rarefied art. With few entries in the field, the The Red-Headed Stranger is generally held up as the unassailable pinnacle. Lubbock (On Everything) operates in a Kinksish environment as a collection of loosely tied character sketches illustrating the foibles of humanity--small town prosaic tragedies that could fit into the pages of A Fan's Notes. Terry Allen is coming from somewhere like the "fictional memoir" of Exley, as he grew up in Lubbock but traveled around before returning and recording this album. Allen is also an accomplished visual artist, a true renaissance man who interlaces his songs with comical insight from dealing with dealers, art mobs and a truckload of art.
Even if you are no fan of country, hear this 20 track double album out in its entirety. The lyrical phrasing is occasionally surprising and the excellent arrangements feature the finest session guys Lubbock could offer in 1979. Haul a truckload of haute avant-garde.
Allmusic: Glissandro 70, recording on Montreal's Constellation label, are the creation of Torontonians Craig Dunsmuir and Sandro Perri. Perri is also known as Polmo Popo, and Dunsmuir plays in Polmo Popo's live rock band incarnation. Glissandro 70 are an entirely different animal. Dunsmuir wrote the material with Perri, and Perri produced the set with help from Dunsmuir. These five tracks incorporate a ton of guitar and electric string-based variations (from simple riffs to melody lines and even percussive effects based on pulsing rhythms created from two- and four-string patterns), some sound effects, and vocals. "Something," the record's opening cut, is an exercise in glissando guitar. Related in some ways to Michael Rother's taped experiments, it is also something more, with intricately played patterns staggered via digital delay, rhythmic undertones brought to the fore with middle to high string lines stacked upon one another and staggered ever so slightly to create beat, breath, and pulse. When bass strings enter the frame, they add an entirely new rhythmic component to the proceedings.
"Analogue Shantytown" is introduced by a harmonica breathing the word "shantytown" over and over again, as a background human voice echoes the word audibly and in whispered form before the instruments stroll into the tune wholesale. Voices and guitars entwine and separate, each adding a new piece of the tune. It becomes a funky, chanted mess that would not have been out of place on a latter-day Talking Heads record. "Bolan Muppets" has nothing to do with Marc Bolan on the surface, but its simplistic approach to measure, distance, and groove is not far removed, either. "Portugal Rua Rua" could be an Andy Partridge outtake. It's quirky and herky-jerky but also beautifully engaging as pop. The album's longest cut -- and its closer -- is "End West." Maracas, a bass or two, and hand and vocal percussion create a dreamy, nocturnal atmosphere, a sound world that unravels slowly while rewinding itself simultaneously. Percussion instruments sound strange and dislocated given all that's preceded them. Here too, skeletal funk and Pan-African rhythmic pulses wrap themselves over voices that chant, entering and leaving mysteriously, all of it a hypnotic, nocturnal shamanic bliss fest. This is engaging, warm experimental music that borders on the gorgeous; it creates its textures seemingly organically and lets them float, hover, drive, and dance unhurriedly toward the listener. Glissandro 70's self-titled CD is one of the more auspicious debuts to come down the pike in a long while.
I spelunked the field of external drives today and have dredged up some soupy gems. Thishere being a def favorite. Pure.
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Pitchfork: It is entirely possible that an amplified, slightly distorted likembe creates the most awesome sound on earth. There's no other sound quite like it, and there's no other band like Konono No. 1, the assemblage of Bazombo musicians, dancers, and singers from Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) that makes the likembe the center of their sound. It's something of an accidental update on Bazombo trance music, and it's thrillingly unique stuff, a torrent of kinetic sound that straddles the line between the traditional and the avant-garde. The likembe is commonly known in the West as a thumb piano, and there are variations of the instrument in different cultures across Africa-- perhaps the most well-known is the mbira, which is used across Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and parts of South Africa. The instrument has a pinging tone that is practically designed by nature to sound awesome with a bit of amp fuzz on it.
Konono No. 1 are the kind of band that remind us that music still possesses vast wells of untapped potential, and that there's virtually no limit to what can be developed and explored. There's little precedent for a record like Congotronics, even as the music at its core goes back many generations and predates the discovery of electricity by some time. It's important to note that these are not pop songs in any sense of the word-- this is traditional trance music with an electric twist, and should be approached as such. That said, it's among the most fascinating music I've heard and deserves a listen by anyone with even the remotest interest in the possibilities of sound.
This one oozed into my ear in May and I meant to post it earlier (as a Summer accompaniment) but fucken forgotten. Never too late to soundtrack the last few sunsets of your Summer, lovers. Breezy, pina colada, real. Warm hugs. A real treat.
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Drowned in Sound:“I just wanted _Alegranza to be a space age-exotica kind of record. Like Martin Denny, Esquivel, Attilo Mineo, Arthur Lyman, Jimmie Haskell and all that. The kind of record you play and it makes you feel like travelling to all these places but never stopping at one and then finding an empty space in the middle for you to get into it.”_ - Pablo DÃaz-Reixa
Amid the sickening carousel chimes, tin-pan Tropicália and corroded dub, Alegranza leaps manically from one beaming influence to another, constantly shifting guises, knitting a comfortable coastal paradise. Reminiscent of Panda Bear’s pursuits on the Portuguese coast with Person Pitch, Pablo DÃaz-Reixa’s debut outing was recorded off the lapping Catalunyan shores and, as influences come colliding, manages to provide the same intoxicating carnival-esque procession for all to marvel at.
Sickening as it is captivating, as maddened chants gather round a familiar psychedelic wash, ‘Palamitos Park’ opens and el Guincho’s ambition to make a space-age exotica record suddenly seems realised as beats chime and chatter with an itching delirium as disorientating calypso hooks loop. ‘Antillas’ soon rolls in on events, indebted to the frenetic acid trip bop of Baltimore mainstay Animal Collective, Black Dice and Ariel Pink and their deranged frolics.
So set adrift though, Alegranza is difficult to pin down, picking at benga and bhangra in equal amounts, and seems its own odd spectacle. ‘Fata Morgans’ mutates from an unassuming calm to darting delirium with effortless ease as el Guincho’s signature rasping chants rear up throughout; familiar echoes impossible to place, music without a home.
Wilting with sunstroke, ‘Bueno Matrimonios Ahi Afuera’ and its stuttering military drum rolls offers a rare spot of calm before ‘Costa ParaÃso’’s jittering beat interrupts and recalls the psychedelic psychosis of Os Mutantes. With retiring grace ‘Polca Mazurca’ is an appropriate comedown close following the festivities that have just passed by.
Out in glorious hyper-colour, Alegranza feels so beguilingly withdrawn from reality, a tropical idyll creeping ‘round repetitious routine like a friendly iguana cooling you in humid heat. Pieced together from bits of wreckage, this is music created in glorious isolation, drawing on its own influences to create something just as fresh and just as joyous; drifting out into the ocean on its own shonky raft.
BIO yo via allmusic: Though he's known mostly (if at all) for his early membership in N.W.A., the Arabian Prince had been a producer and DJ since the early '80s, which undoubtedly helped him sustain his career after leaving N.W.A.. He began in the music business while still in middle school, recording mixtapes during after hours at KACE radio (where his father worked) and DJing school dances as well as the occasional club date. Arabian Prince began recording his own tracks during 1982-1983, and co-produced Bobby Jimmy & the Critters as well as doing live dates with the Egyptian Lover, World Class Wreckin' Cru, and the L.A. Dream Team. Early singles like "Innovator" and "Situation Hot" got much respect on the Los Angeles club scene, and his consistent studio experimentation led to some work with Dr. Dre and N.W.A. for 1988's Straight Outta Compton. One year later saw the release of his own first full-length, Brother Arab, for Orpeus. The single "She's Got a Big Posse" found some chart action, and Tha Underworld followed in 1992. Where's My Bytches, released in 1995, was his last LP of the '90s, though he pursued several musical projects as well as ownership in a special-effects company and animation studio.
