archived brainwashed reviews
“The Sound of Siam: Leftfield Luk Thung, Jazz and Molam from Thailand 1964-1975” (Soundway, 2010)
As anyone who picked up Siamese Soul or Electric Cambodia last year will probably attest, there was some absolutely amazing music being made in Southeast Asia in the ’60s and […]
Big Blood, “The Grove” (Phase!/dontrustheruin (2008)/Feeding Tube (2023))
I loved Fire on Fire’s The Orchard, so I was pretty disappointed to learn from a recent Michael Gira interview that they had dissolved. My despair turned out to be […]
the fun years, “god was like, no” (Barge, 2010)
The last album that Ben Recht and Isaac Sparks put out (baby, it’s cold inside) was named Boomkat’s “Album of the Year” for 2008, so there was quite a bit […]
Sun City Girls, “Funeral Mariachi” (Abduction, 2010)
Over the course of their incredible 27-year career, Sun City Girls seemed to make a point of doing everything as triumphantly and aggressively wrong as possible, precluding any possibility of […]
Cyclobe, “Wounded Galaxies Tap at the Window” (Phantom Code, 2010)
There are very real reasons why Cyclobe albums are so infrequent, as Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower seem to deliberately eschew or expertly conceal most of the tools that similar […]
Legendary Pink Dots, “Seconds Late For The Brighton Line” (ROIR, 2010)
I have always had a love/hate relationship with Edward Ka-Spel’s work, as he has written some of my all-time favorite songs (Tear Garden’s “Romulus & Venus,” for example), but he’s […]
“Saigon Rock & Soul: Vietnamese Classic Tracks 1968-1974” (Sublime Frequencies, 2010)
In characteristic Sublime Frequencies fashion, Mark Gergis’ latest compilation documents a truly unique and flourishing scene that very few people even knew existed. It is hard to think of many […]
“Afro-Beat Airways: West African Shock Waves (Ghana & Togo 1972-1978)” (Analog Africa, 2010)
The origins of this compilation read like the plot to an quirky indie comedy: a German musicologist misplaces his passport, loses his luggage, misses his flight, and winds up taking […]