Menu

Compilations

Frog-LP-pack

Various Artists, “When the Frog from the Well Sees the Ocean (Reports from English UFOlklore)” (Folklore Tapes, 2023)

,

This latest collection from Folklore Tapes borrows its title from a Japanese proverb about knowing one’s limitations (“the frog in the well knows nothing of the sea”), which was itself borrowed from a Chinese fable. In the context of an album devoted to UFO lore, of course, humans are the frogs, the infinite universe is the ocean, and the usual eclectic Folklore Tapes cast of characters gleefully devote themselves to celebrating the colorful hoaxes and stories of their countrymen who claim to have experienced a visit from extraterrestrial life. While alien visitations are admittedly a bit outside the usual realm of Folklore Tapes’ research, I would be hard pressed to think of a roster of artists better suited to tackle the topic, as just about everyone involved brings a freewheeling playfulness to the theme and surprises abound. This is yet another characteristically brilliant and inspired compilation from the inimitable Folklore Tapes. Hell, it might even be their best yet.

As is the case with most major Folklore Tapes releases, this collection exists only in physical form, as music and scholarship are eternally intertwined for the label (the LP includes quite a comprehensive essay by Jez Winship, as well as artist notes about stories that inspired their individual pieces). Also as expected, the album’s contributors are a welcome murderers’ row of names that will likely be familiar only to those who have delved into previous Folklore Tapes collections. That said, the album does include a killer (if brief) new piece from Dean McPhee (“The Second Message”) that is predictably an album highlight. Unsurprisingly, I am predisposed to enjoy just about everything he releases, but “The Second Message” is doubly enjoyable for being something of an aberration, as McPhee’s usual sustain-heavy melodicism is beautifully enhanced by a gorgeous descending chord motif and an unexpectedly wild and psychotropic finale. I was also thoroughly delighted by the trio of Carl Turney, Brian Campbell & Peter Smyth, as “July Aitee” is a perfectly distilled swirl of groovy, synth-driven dreampop magic (as well as a healthy bit of howling chaos).

The remaining pieces are frequently wonderful as well, as the fertile subject material inspired quite a lot of charmingly weird, wonky, and hallucinatory compositions and performances. Also, nearly every piece sticks to a tight two- or three-minute duration, which is very effective at ensuring that no pieces overstay their welcome or slow the album’s momentum. Naturally, there are plenty of samples of people describing their supernatural experiences throughout the album as well, which provides a consistent (and compelling) thematic thread throughout the stylistically varied cavalcade of surreal miniatures. That said, there are a couple of strains that occur more frequently than others. One of those strains is best described as a sort of retrofuturism that feels indebted to ’60s sci-fi television and BBC Radiophonic Workshop-style electronics, while the other is more atmospheric in nature (squelching abstract weirdness, drifting voices, crackling shortwave radio transmissions, etc.).

Naturally, there are a decent number of compelling outliers as well and several of them occupy a niche seldom found anywhere outside of Folklore Tapes’ collections, such as the closing spoken word piece (“Glorious Green Globe”) from poet Emily Oldfield. Thorn Wych’s “Windy Hill” is another favorite, resembling a scratchy recording of a traditional folk ensemble (and possibly a nearby horse) getting sucked into a time-distorting extra-dimensional portal. Notably, the pleasures of this album further deepened by the accompanying artist notes, as there are several pieces that instantly became significantly more compelling once I knew their backstory. In fact, this LP would still be a fascinating release even if all the music vanished, as the stories are an incredible Pandora’s Box of weirdness that crosses into counterculture and outsider art in some very unexpected ways (Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, tape music, and The Happy Mondays all play a role and the hypothesis that Hendrix himself may have been an alien is certainly not something that I had previously considered).

As much as I enjoy many individual pieces and stories, however, the star of When the Frog from the Well Sees the Ocean (Reports from English UFOlklore) is Folklore Tapes’ curatorial vision, as the label has a singular talent for finding unusual, intriguing, and thoughtful contributors, which combines beautifully with the label’s “anything goes” approach to creative freedom (as long as the result roughly sticks to the album’s theme, of course). Consequently, the best Folklore Tapes compilations transform scholarship and history into a charming and eclectic collision of tall tales, high art, humor, literature, pop culture references, kitsch, folk horror, and playful experimentalism unlike anything being released by other labels. And, of course, there is always Jez Winship around to provide necessary context and tie everything together. The label truly outdid themselves with this one, as the liner notes alone are an endlessly fascinating rabbit hole of secret societies, enigmatic CIA projects, and obscure books that illuminate some very enticing cultural undercurrents that will probably hold my interest long after the album falls out of rotation (first stop: researching visionary artist Charles Dellschau). Much like previous Folklore Tapes classics like The Folklore of Plants and Calendar Customs, this LP is much more than a mere compilation: it is a one-of-a-kind labor of love that celebrates the weird, wonderful, forgotten, and oft-unexplainable bits of humanity’s long and strange history.

Listen here.

R-22524584-1647627821-9565

“Swifter Than the Moon’s Sphere – English Fairy Lore” (Folklore Tapes, 2021)

,

There are a number of fascinating small labels exploring unusual niches these days, which I suppose makes the current era something of a golden age for curious outsiders with deeply arcane interests. My favorite imprint in that vein is unsurprisingly the “open-ended research project exploring the vernacular arcana of Great Britain and beyond” that is Folklore Tapes, as their major releases exist on a plane all their own, elegantly and entertainingly blurring the lines between art, history, folklore, scholarship, music, poetry, visual art and whatever other compelling threads catch their fancy. This latest opus is characteristically another glorious cultural artifact, which is hardly surprising given the fertile nature of the subject. N

evertheless, the label have still outdone themselves, as Swifter than the Moon’s Sphere celebrates the hidden history of fairy folk with an eclectic array of fairy-inspired spoken word pieces and sound art, as well as a deep and endearingly witty scholarly dive into fairy class structure and how shifting views of the supernatural mirror our society. In fact, this is one of the rare albums in which the liner notes (courtesy of Jez Winship) are every bit as compelling as the actual music (“there is something oddly impotent about the fairy aristocracy”). Beyond that, Swifter than the Moon’s Sphere is a welcome return to familiar territory for the label, bringing together an inspired host of known, unknown, obscure, and enigmatic artists for a freewheeling tour de force of supernaturally charged and backwards-looking folk horror and rural psychedelia.

Like most (or all) great Folklore Tapes compilations, Swifter than the Moon’s Sphere features an inspired cast of unique collaborations, house bands, unfamiliar names, and familiar names in unfamiliar roles. In the “familiar” category, we have the usual Hood Faire contingent, as well as artists like Ian Humberstone and Bridget Hayden. All are characteristically strange and wonderful, but Humberstone’s “Swinging Lamps in Starlit Globes” stands as a particular highlight, resembling an eerily sliding and smeared underwater vibraphone performance accompanied by a chorus of psychedelic frogs. 

One of the main pleasures of a great Folklore Tapes compilation is being surprised and delighted from more unexpected corners, however, and this one is particularly rich in that regard. In fact, the opening “Genuine Leaf Fairy Sighted in English Woodland” (credited enigmatically to “DBH”) is the first of many such pleasures, as harmonic sparks spray from shivering, tense strings that fitfully resolve into snatches of gorgeous melody. Brian Campbell, Peter Smyth and Carl Turney’s “Requiem for the Lost” is another favorite, resembling a warm and wistful strain of post-rock backing a spacy, swooning, and dreamlike swirl of layered psychedelia.

Elsewhere, historian Jennifer Reid sings a haunting folk ballad (“Boghart Hall Clough”) about a farmer who fails to outwit a household boggart, while Emily Oldfield brings a lovely musicality to her poetry reading and Sarah Lundy goes post-everything with a spoken word piece that feels like she is casting a terrible hex on me from inside an echo chamber. Obviously, some ideas work better than others, but the artists are invariably hampered more by the constraining brevity of these pieces than by lack of inspiration (most pieces are only around two minutes long). That hurdle admittedly posed a challenge for individual artists more accustomed to working in more expansive circumstances, but the album as a whole benefits nicely from that approach, as it is a playfully shapeshifting and immersive experience that seldom wanders off course. 

Moreover, I will probably be quoting the liner notes for the rest of my life (“an emphasis on the grotesque and the foppishly foolish” and “this persistence of hope in the face of experience is oddly admirable” are current favorites). In fact, I was especially struck by the line “the magic power of invisibility results in fairies being more often heard or felt than seen,” as everyone involved seemed admirably devoted to getting the elusive haunted “feel” of a good fairy legend just right (no matter how much academic rigor they brought to the table). I am tempted to say that Folklore Tapes consistently offers one master class after another on how to make a meaningful, memorable, and compelling compilation, but releases like Swifter than the Moon’s Sphere actually shoot past that mark to feel more like I just stumbled upon a dust-covered grimoire in a mysterious bookstore that I had never noticed before. This is an instant classic.

Samples can be found here.

a1854020896_16

“Phương Tâm: Magical Nights – Saigon Surf, Twist & Soul (1964-1966)” (Sublime Frequencies, 2021)

, ,

This collection, which I hereby deem an instant Sublime Frequencies classic, is devoted entirely to the long-unheard and elusive discography of one of the most magnetic singers of Saigon’s “golden music” age. Part of the reason why Phương Tâm’s work has languished in undeserved semi-obscurity is grimly predictable, as most of her music was destroyed during Vietnam’s great purge of American-influenced culture in 1975, but Tâm also abruptly ended her singing career in her prime to pursue forbidden love instead (an acceptably cool reason, I feel). According to her daughter Hannah Hà , Phương Tâm remained something of a highly localized karaoke supernova in the years since her stardom days, but Hà did not discover how truly famous her mom actually was until late 2019.

One thing led to another and Hà found Mark Gergis after discovering his beloved Saigon Rock and Soul compilation. Gergis and a handful of like-minded crate-digging luminaries then set about tracking down as much of Phương Tâm’s rare and often mistakenly attributed oeuvre as they could find, much of which even Tâm herself had not heard since the recording sessions. While the journey to this album is undeniably a fascinating and heart-warming one, the best part is the songs themselves, as this album is a treasure trove of fun, soulful, and sexy genre-blurring gems from the golden age of swinging Saigon nightlife. Moreover, I was legitimately gobsmacked to learn that these songs were all recorded by the same person in such a brief span, as Tâm channels everything from Brenda Lee to Ella Fitzgerald to the kind of impossibly cool, sexy, and ahead-of-their-time numbers that feel like would-be highlights from Lux Interior and Poison Ivy’s oft-anthologized record collection.

Fittingly, the story of Phương Tâm’s rise to stardom is nearly as strange and improbable as the story of this compilation, as her passion for music was first ignited by the ambient sounds of the courtyard where she played with friends as a child (“from one particular house, all sorts of American music seeped into the courtyard”). Once Tâm was thusly “introduced to a new world beyond traditional Vietnamese music,” she proved to be a natural at assimilating the rapidly evolving cultural forces of the era (“musical trends with wild, ephemeral dance crazes were being thought up weekly; the twist, hully gully, the mashed potato—none of them a problem for Phương Tâm.”). I dearly hope the same can someday be said of me.

Fatefully, Tâm entered a singing competition at age 16 and soon became a fixture at various legendary Saigon nightclubs (often performing at multiple venues in a single night). Unsurprisingly, she quickly caught the attention of all of Saigon’s most influential record labels and composers, as she was a “commanding presence” as well as “one of the very first singers to perform and record rock and roll.” Demand for Tâm was such that she recorded “almost 30 known tracks” between 1964 and 1966 that seemed to effortlessly channel every fun twist- or rockabilly-esque trend of the time. Most (or all) of those hits are here and they are invariably a delight, yet the real magic of Magical Nights is the handful of less “bubblegum” pieces that feel like a killer surf band, a Bollywood dance party, a James Dean-style teen exploitation film, and a sensuous cabaret chanteuse all blurred together in a perfect cocktail of soulful, kitschy, and hip-shaking fun. One such gem (“Có Nhớ Đêm Nào (Remember the Night)”) kicks off the album in style, but that is only the first of many bombshells to come.

My other personal favorites are currently the slinky-sounding “Ngày Phép Của Lính (A Soldier’s Day of Leave)” and the rolling lurch of “Anh Đâu Em Đó (Wherever You Are, I Will Be There),” but there is also an extremely generous helping of second-tier highlights destined to keep growing on me, as Tâm was almost always backed by musicians who knew how to whip up a hot groove. This entire album is pure pop bliss.

Samples can be found here.

a0277769360_16

Dagar Gyil Ensemble Of Lawra, “Dagara – Gyil Music of Ghana’s Upper West Region” (Sublime Frequencies, 2021)

, ,

This mesmerizing and unique gem from Sublime Frequencies documents some killer field recordings made by Hisham Mayet in the Upper West region of Ghana back in 2019. I knew absolutely nothing about gyril music before hearing this album, but the most salient detail is that the primary instrument is a traditional xylophone used by the Lobi people. That does not even remotely convey how strange and wonderful these recordings are, but SF’s description includes phrases like “long form trance music” and “acoustic techno,” and those seem to hit the mark in spirit. 

To me, this album sounds like a ritualistic drum circle, but way more sophisticated, melodic, and psych-damaged than anything I would expect from actual communal percussion. As with a lot of field-recorded Sublime Frequency fare, it is very easy to dismiss this album as just an interesting window into an underheard culture from a cursory or casual listen. Once I listened to Dagara in a focused way, however, it quickly revealed itself to be something quite transcendent, as it seamlessly merges the otherness of great “experimental” music with an almost ecstatic visceral intensity.

This album is ostensibly composed of two separate pieces that each span one side of vinyl, but the digital version is presented as a single 40-minute track, and the latter is exactly what it feels like. You can drop the needle anywhere on Dagara and roughly expect to get the same thing every time: vibrant percussion rhythms and unusual-sounding, interwoven xylophone melodies. That is primarily because no one piece of the puzzle stands out as particularly brilliant or memorable on its own. That said, the insanely complex web of overlapping rhythms and processed-sounding textures is legitimately amazing. And so is the way that the piece subtly and organically transforms like a dense cloud of migrating birds effortless shifting direction in perfect unison. 

It all cumulatively amounts to something psychedelic as hell, leading me to both envy whatever wavelength these cats are on AND marvel at how they managed to get there in perfect harmony. This is total hive mind, wheels-within-wheels territory in the best way. Beyond that, I would describe the overall aesthetic as “a tropical steel drum band went to India to study classical raga and Eastern spirituality and returned home completely unrecognizable and waaaaaay into psychedelics.” That is a compliment (I would totally listen to such a band), but it also feels like that hypothetical band was then grist for a killer sound collage by a great tape artist. 

While I assume this was recorded entirely live, the smearing, deep vibraphone-like tones and the stammering, hesitating melodies sound alien and hallucinatory, similar to a serendipitous pile-up of unrelated loops locking gloriously in sync. There is much happening and all of it is interesting. In fact, I would be truly hard pressed to think of a “complex polyrhythm” opus from the 20th century avant-garde that could beat this ensemble at that game. Albums like this are exactly why I love Sublime Frequencies, as Dagara is a richly immersive tour de force of constantly shifting, interwoven patterns.

Samples can be found here.

a2532932690_16

“MIEN (YAO) – Cannon Singing in China, Vietnam, Laos” (Sublime Frequencies, 2021)

, , ,

This collection of (mostly) acapella field recordings from Kink Gong’s Laurent Jeanneau truly emphasizes the “sublime” part of the Sublime Frequencies vision, as this is quite an eerily lovely and mesmerizing album. While the recordings span three different countries (China, Laos, and Vietnam), they are all roughly rooted in a single cultural milieu: the Chinese hill tribes known pejoratively as the Yao (“dog” or “savage”). Understandably, a large number of these tribal folk prefer the name Mien (“people”), but they are a multifarious bunch that have spread beyond China into Southeast Asia and evolved into numerous distinctive and divergent subcultures. 

The first half of the album is devoted to very pure and simple canon singing (“an initial melody is imitated at a specified time interval by one or more parts”), while the second half offers some compelling and more fleshed-out variations. While the “raw, ethereal, and cosmic” performances that Laurent captured need no additional enhancement to captivate me, the variations are every bit as great as the undiluted essence and give the album an impressively strong dynamic arc.

The opening “Lan Pan Moon” is a haunting and chant-like duet between two Laotian women (Keo and Na) centered upon a droning root tone. While the piece could not be much more simple melodically, the two women achieve an otherworldly beauty in the way they harmonize around the hypnotically cyclical motif. In fact, it feels akin to a harmonic dance, as the two voices keep diverging then reconverging into quavering unison, and the whole thing feels akin to a Lucier-ian feat of phase manipulation. The following “Kai Tian Pi Di” is a similarly unaccompanied duet (from China this time), but it shares some common stylistic ground with old African American work songs (there is even some bluesy note-bending). 

The album’s second half kicks off with another piece from China, but it seems like an especially virtuosic version of the form, as the lead voice embellishes the central melody with a host of unusual bends, stammers, and ululation-like flourishes. The closing “Dao Cham” (from Vietnam) is still more divergent, however, as the heart of the piece is the clanging and rattling percussion of a lively ritualistic street procession. 

Gradually, the voices of the singers grow more prominent, yet the real beauty of the piece lies in how the various voices (singing and otherwise) lysergically drift in and out of focus. While I am not sure how intentional that was on Jeanneau’s part, I certainly enjoy the effect, as it nicely blurs the line between field recording and sound collage. Due to the propulsive rhythm, the metallic physicality of the cymbals, and the surprise psychedelic elements, “Dao Cham” is my personal favorite on the album, but every single one of these pieces could be a revelation for adventurous ears.

Samples can be found here.

a1211575738_16

“Afrobeat Airways 2: Return Flight to Ghana 1974-1983” (Analog Africa, 2013)

, ,

This sequel to 2010’s fine Afro-Beat Airways delivers still more Fela-free gems from Ghana’s golden age, which is (of course) is exactly what I wanted and expected. While many of the featured artists (Vis-A-Vis, K. Frimpong, etc.) will already be quite familiar to anyone with even a casual interest in African music reissues, the material is uniformly solid and offers enough obscurities to keep things interesting. Even the most jaded aficionados will enjoy Samy Redjeb’s characteristically colorful and exhaustive liner notes though, as he has unearthed a slew of rare photos and tracked down some interesting interviews with a lot of people who probably never expected to be interviewed by an excited German in 2013.

By now, the “Analog Africa compilation” aesthetic is a very well-established formula, and Redjeb wisely does not mess with it for Afrobeat Airways 2. Occasionally, Samy will surprise me with something completely amazing like last year’s Diablos Del Ritmo, but most releases just offer up a generally likable batch of songs rescued from obscurity mingled with a handful of legitimately great ones that I wind up listening to in fairly heavy rotation for months (or years) afterward. 

Nearly all of those gems this time around predictably come from the usual suspects, like Uppers International’s stuttering, darkly funky “Aja Wondo” and K. Frimpong’s lurching, understated “Abrabo” (a piece sans his Cubanos Fiestas that I have not heard anywhere else). And, of course, the ever-reliable Rob delivers yet another predictably lascivious delight (“Loosen Up Yourself”). Also, while I was previously unfamiliar with Pierre Antoine (whose “Say Min Sy Soh” is probably the album’s highlight), he is backed by the awesome Vis-A-Vis, which explains everything. Actually, Vis-A-Vis are also the uncredited backing band for the K. Frimpong song, so they more or less steal the show on this compilation.

Music aside, what makes Analog Africa compilations so unique and special is their lavish and exhaustive liner notes and Afrobeat Airways 2 boasts some of Redjeb’s best work, as Samy seems to have been in an uncharacteristically poetic and reflective mood. For example, he summarizes the abandonment of horn sections for synthesizers, drum machines, MIDI, and computers thusly: “The harvest of this dispassion is three decades of sonic mediocrity.” 

He also tours the former site of one of the scene’s hottest clubs (since converted to a church) and notes “I was shown around by a kind gentlemen who was trying to convince me that there were an infinite number of paths to accept Jesus as my personal savior. Little did he know that my ‘saviors’ had left the stage many years ago.” On a related note, it was morbidly fascinating to learn that the entire scene was essentially killed by a government-instituted curfew, a decision that more or less forced every relevant musician in Ghana to pack their bags and head elsewhere.

The real coup for this compilation, however, is that Redjeb was able to get access to the archives of Modern Photo, whose somewhat disinterested proprietor let him sort through boxes and boxes of forgotten negatives that had narrowly survived a flood. Many of those photos are included in the booklet and some of them quite wonderful, particularly one of Fela Kuti exiting a plane with his entire female entourage, though I also enjoyed all of the Boogaloo competition shots. 

Even the less spectacular aspects of the liner notes are endearing though—even though guitarist Sammy Cropper’s interview yielded the usual litany of names, dates, and places, it was life-affirming that Redjeb went through the trouble to track down an aging school security guard to tell him that he is regarded as a guitar god and that people are excitedly trying to track down forgotten recordings that he made four decades ago (I am perhaps getting a bit sentimental in my old age).

Overall, this is a much better than average Analog Africa collection: it is not quite essential, but it should disappoint absolutely no one. Aside from the songs mentioned above, there are quite a few other strong moments, particularly Waza-Afriko 76’s “Gbei Kpaka Hife Sika.” Such a high success rate is surprising for an Afrobeat compilation, as the genre has historically been plagued by wild excess and indulgence—to Redjeb’s credit, very little of that surfaces here, as most songs are under five minutes and few are even under three(!). 

Even the few songs that I do not particularly like (Tony Sarfo’s American funk pastiche and De Frank’s repetitive, sing-songy “Waiting For My Baby”) are appealing enough to avoid being dismissed as mere filler. Of course, the music is only part of the picture in this case, which is why Analog Africa compilations are so great: Afrobeat Airways 2 is basically yet another important chapter in a lovingly assembled crash course in African culture and history taught by one singularly enthusiastic crate-digger.

Listen here.

a3603151515_16

“Bambara Mystic Soul: The Raw Sound of Burkina Faso 1974-1979” (Analog Africa, 2013)

, ,

Situated right in the middle of West Africa’s musical hotbed (Ghana and Nigeria are close neighbors), the country of Burkina Faso has remained relatively unanthologized thus far, a situation that Analog Africa’s Samy Ben Redjeb decided to remedy after hearing Amadou Balaké’s “Renouveau.” 

Unfortunately, Balaké was not exactly the tip of a great iceberg of undiscovered brilliance—he was very nearly the entire damn iceberg. That said, there are definitely a few other good songs by other artists on Bambara Mystic Soul, but almost half of the album is consumed by Balaké and he is very much the star of the show (deservedly).

As is usually the case with Analog Africa compilations, the story of how this album came into being is at least as fascinating as the actual music. For example, the aforementioned “Renouveau” record was part of a trove Redjeb unearthed in Niger, where it improbably survived for 30 years in an extremely hot and sand-filled environment where the preservation of records is basically the least of people’s concerns. Then came the requisite detective work and tireless scavenging, where he had the good fortune to locate a box containing the entire catalogue of Burkina’s most popular ’70s label (CVD). Of course, he also had the very bad fortune of being mugged at gunpoint in Togo, then of being the hapless mediator between a very angry Balaké and his former record company (who later ended up breaking Redjeb’s contract by selling the same “exclusive” songs to another label).

Whether or not all that effort was worth it is hard to say, as I am a fairly casual, non-blog-scavenging fan of Africa music and see Bambara Mystic Soul as one of Analog Africa’s lesser compilations, albeit one with a handful of fine songs. For more serious fans, however, some of this material may be absolutely revelatory: Balaké is fairly major figure in African music circles and the songs that Redjeb found are both extremely rare and from a period which many consider to be Amadou’s prime (his later work is less raw). 

In fact, I have even seen a blog that was excited to post a single from this period that was ripped from a damaged record—even somewhat mangled work from this period is considered well-worth hearing. Also, after tracking down the whole CVD catalog from the scene’s prime, finding and interviewing all the major players, and providing an absolutely overwhelming amount of information and background in his liner notes, Redjeb has basically dropped the definitive Burkina Faso collection: there is absolutely nothing he left that still needs to be done. While I sure there are a number of great songs that are not included, I am equally sure that it is because they either could not be found or that Redjeb simply could not secure the necessary rights.

As aforementioned, Balaké completely steals the show, though his numerous backing bands deserve a lot of the credit. Though originally a percussionist, it is Balaké’s soulful voice that made him a legend. As great as that voice is, however, I was equally impressed by the guitar-work on most of his songs, particularly the clean, hypnotically repeating riff in “Johnny” (courtesy of l’Orchestre Super Volta). 

All of Amadou’s included songs are invariably quite good though. In general, Balaké’s more sultry, languorous work was with Les 5 Consuls (“Renouveau” and “Baden Djougou”), while his other incarnations are bit more funky and American soul-indebted, but there are exceptions. Curiously, it is rare for any distinctly “African” percussion to appear, which is why this collection initially underwhelmed me a bit. Most of Bambara Mystic Soul sounds like it could have been played by a ’70s American soul or funk band, rhythm-section-wise, though it is admittedly more repetitive and raw. Without the mesmerizing repetition and the awesome guitarists, many of these songs would sound like mere pastiches, albeit good ones.

Of course, there are some noteworthy exceptions, as the non-Balaké selections are far from dire. In particular, the two songs from Mamo Legbama stand out, largely because he is a very charismatic (if a bit hammy) frontman. The hard funk of “Music, Love, and Dance” is probably his finest moment, as I especially enjoyed his amusing use of high-pitched female backing singers. 

His “Zambo Zambo” is also great though, boasting a very vibrant, roiling groove and some very likable turns by his guitarist, horn section, and organist. Mangue Konde’s “Kobendo” is also quite catchy, blending breezy Highlife-style guitars with some very propulsive and spirited percussion. The other songs that caught and held my attention usually did so for the wrong reasons though, as Compaore Issouf’s “Dambakale” sounds a lot like a relentlessly cheery soundtrack to a terrible ’70s porno, while Orchestre CVD’s “Rog Mik Africa” initially sounds like a live Allman Brothers jam.

The remainder of the songs are generally quite good, but mostly lack the uniqueness that I am looking for when listening to music from a faraway place and time, though a few pieces succeed simply because they appropriate American funk/soul and regurgitate it in harder, more frenzied form (Abdoulaye Cissé and Coulibaly Tidiani, for example). 

Ultimately, this is a solid and exhaustively researched compilation, which I suppose is a success, but I have been so spoiled by the recent spate of great African music compilations that I am left a little disappointed whenever there is not at least one song that sends me obsessively searching for the rest of an artist’s oeuvre. More succinctly, I respect rather than love this compilation: Redjeb certainly poured his heart into his work, but it just just did not connect with me as much as some of his others. Other people might feel very differently, however (music is quite subjective, you know), and those lucky people will be rewarded with all the information they could possibly want to embark upon an epic scavenger hunt centered around Amadou Balaké and his unsung contemporaries. 

Listen here.

a4242864470_16

“Kenya Special: Selected East African Recordings from the 1970s & ’80s” (Soundway, 2013)

, ,

There are certainly a number of fine labels currently trawling record bins in Jamaica, Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia in search of great lost, unheard, or forgotten music, but Soundway compilations (particularly the African ones) are almost always my favorites. The reason for that is quite simple: Miles Cleret and his collaborators are especially adept at 1.) knowing a great song when they hear it, and 2.) making damn sure that there are a number of such songs on every single collection they release. Unsurprisingly, Kenya Special continues that hot streak, being every bit as essential as their classic Ghana and Nigeria collections.

Unlike some other compilations of great regional African music, the 32 songs compiled for Kenya Special are rooted in a time of relative prosperity and stability. Kenya was far from a dull place politically in the ’60s, owing to their newfound independence from England and a war with ethnic Somalis, but Nairobi was very much a thriving city with a booming tourist industry by the time of these recordings. Tourists, of course, need to be entertained, so many talented West African musicians wound up playing Afro-beat and American soul covers in the city’s finer hotels. 

Predictably, that fateful collision of cultures eventually yielded its own thing, as intrepid musicians soon began finding ways to combine those tourist-friendly sounds with their own distinctively Kenyan styles of Benga and Rumba/Lingala (and they also found that Nairobi was an easy place to quickly record and release records). While this compilation includes a few classic examples of those two “native” styles, most of the focus is upon the less-easily categorized cross-pollination that followed.

As a non-expert in African music, I found the sheer number of intermingling styles (chakacha rhythms, taarab music, etc.), regions, languages, and bands represented on Kenya Special a bit overwhelming, but my dim understanding of what is actually happening did not prevent me from enjoying the music at all. While there is certainly lot of variety on display, the primary recurring stylistic theme that most of these songs share is a tight, killer rhythm section (as well as a refreshing tendency towards relative brevity). 

In general, combining a traditional, percussion-heavy African rhythm with a thick, funky bass line seems to be an especially winning formula (Loi Toki Tok’s “Ware Wa” being a fine example), particularly when that groove is bolstered by instrumental flourishes like great sax playing (Slim Ali & the Famous Hodi Boys) or dueling flute and organ solos (The Mombasa Vikings). Other bands shine in very different ways though, such as The Lulus Band with the clean guitar stabs and train-like snare roll of “Ngwendeire Guita.”

The most memorable pieces, however, take a bit more dramatic detours from the expected. Predictably, my favorite piece on the entire album (Orchestre Baba National’s “Sweet Sweet Mbombo”) opens with an amusingly ridiculous monologue in heavily accented English, but everything else about the song is equally spectacular. Hafusa Abasi & Slim Ali’s “Sina Raha,” on the other hand, stands out both for being one of the only songs to feature a female vocalist and for being noticeably influenced by Arabic music. The Rift Valley Boys also tread rather unique territory with their “Tiga Kurira,” which flogs an insistently moronic groove so thoroughly and so exuberantly that it actually becomes perversely infectious and likable.

As is usual for Soundway, the liner notes are very informative, thorough, and well-written, providing all of the context and biographical information that I could possibly need to delve into these artists more thoroughly on my own. Sadly, no one has a particularly lurid or improbable backstory this time around, but it was still fascinating to learn that artists worldly enough to be appropriating American funk and soul could still write songs discouraging women from drinking alcohol or marrying outside their immediate community. 

I was also surprised to learn that many songs were sung in Swahili rather than local dialects in order to avoid alienating rival tribes. In any case, the music itself (compiled by Miles Cleret, Johan Fredrik Lavik and Rickard Masip) could not be better. The worst I can say is that a lot of the good songs sound similar to one another and that there are not as many truly great songs as there have been on some of Soundway’s other comps (i.e. The World Ends), but those “flaws” are easily balanced out by a near-total lack of weak or even average material.

Listen here.

various-artists-pop-yeh-yeh-psychedelic-rock-from-singapore-and-malaysia-1964-1970-vol-1-Cover-Art

“Pop Yeh Yeh: Psychedelic Rock from Singapore and Malaysia-1964-1970” (Sublime Frequencies, 2013)

, ,

Sublime Frequencies’ first new compilation after a long dormant spell is quite an ambitious one, as compiler Carl Hamm spent almost 8 years researching this project. That effort shows, as his liner notes could probably be stretched into a book with minimal effort. As for the music: anyone expecting the titular “psychedelic rock” or even anything particularly outré is likely to be disappointed by 85% of the material, but the Malaysian interpretation of ’60s Western rock and pop is otherwise quite enjoyable and catchy (though not as endearingly wonky as some of the Thai pop that SF has previously unearthed).

As near as I can tell, this is the first ever major Western compilation of Malaysian rock, but Malaysia’s story is quite similar to that of Thailand: Cliff Richard and the Shadows played a gig in Singapore and an entire generation immediately bought electric guitars and started playing every party and talent show they could possibly find. Of course, The Beatles also managed to insinuate their way into the national consciousness, as the short-lived Pop Yeh Yeh genre retroactively got its name from the chorus of “She Loves You.” 

The phenomenon only lasted about five years, beginning when Malaysian musicians started to actually write songs in Malay rather than English and began dissipating around 1970 due to the influences of Bollywood, Indonesian music, and (later) disco. Pop Yeh Yeh was huge while it lasted though, as its major figures were fixtures in the nation’s gossip and culture magazines, a fact that is extremely surreal given that most of them were still maintaining day jobs like normal, non-rocking people.

Most of the songs sound a lot like a surf-damaged early Beatles with female vocals: short, formulaic pop structures, strong melodies, and quite a bit of cool twanging guitar riffage. Most of the exceptions originate later in the ’60s, as quite a few groups added an organ. While that may seem synonymous with ’60s psychedelia, it is mostly just employed to play chord progressions or simple melodic lines (I guess no one could find Iron Butterfly records in Singapore, which is probably for the best: there is absolutely no excess or self-indulgence to be found on this collection at least). The few real nods to psychedelia come from A. Halim, Salim I, Nur Azila, and M. Said, all of whom seem to have invested in fuzz and wah-wah pedals. Of those artists, A. Halim & De’Fictions probably boast the most searing guitar solos, but it is M. Said & Le Ramaja who seem most categorically intent on kicking out the jams.

Most of the musical highlights, however, tend to be fairly straightforward pop with strong melodies and clean, surf-y lead guitar, like Roziah Lateef & The Jayhawkers’ “Aku Kecewa.” There are two particularly strong aberrations though: Siti Zaiton & The Twilites’ “Rindu” features some fairly wild sax playing, while Zaliha Hamid and Orkes Zindegi’s “Bertemasha (Party Time!)” completely steals the show with its exuberantly yodeled chorus (must have been quite a party). In general, however, there is not anything especially brilliant or revelatory here, just a solid batch of likable pop songs.

Hamm helpfully provides translations of the lyrics, which greatly enhanced my enjoyment of some songs. For example, M. Said’s raucous barn-burner is about a “joyful party” and features lines like “It’s a joyful party, a celebration! Greeted gloriously.” and “Wow! Dance!” I was even more impressed by Nur Azila’s foray into psychedelia, as it contains the profoundly un-psychedelic couplet “Take a look at your prospective son-in-law, I’m in love with a responsible man.” 

Carl’s liner notes, while quite scholarly, also contain some fascinating trivia: J. Sham of J. Sham and the Wanderers, for example, is a cat-breeding enthusiast and was once president of the Malaysian Cat Club! I was also amused to learn that Sham’s contribution to the collection is written as a letter rather than a song, as he was learning about Surrealism in art class at the time.

Along with simply being the only real Malay rock compilation available outside of Malaysia, the greatest achievement of Pop Yeh Yeh is definitely Hamm’s exhaustive, picture-heavy liner notes. While they can be somewhat dry or seemingly repetitive at times (many of the artists have very similar stories), they are as definitive and well-researched as anything put out by Soundway, Folkways, or Dust-to-Digital and provide as effective a crash-course in Malaysian rock and youth culture as could possibly be expected (especially coming from a non-Malaysian).

a0342889014_16

“Angola Soundtrack: Special Sounds from Luanda 1965-1978” (Analog Africa, 2012)

, ,

Hopelessly smitten by Buda Musique’s long-defunct series of albums devoted to Angola, Analog Africa’s Samy Ben Redjeb decided to try to pick up where his predecessors left off. Characteristically, he quickly discovered that such an endeavor was much more convoluted and challenging than he had ever imagined, but ultimately made it through the gauntlet of denied visas, obligatory bribes, prohibitively expensive hotels, and ill-timed food poisoning to assemble what is possibly his finest compilation to date.

There is something about adversity tends to result in great music, and conditions don’t get much adverse than those in Angola during the time of these recordings. For one thing, the country was the battleground for the Colonial War from 1961 to 1975, as Angolan revolutionaries fought to expel their Portuguese rulers. Then, that finally accomplished, the country immediately plunged into a 27-year long civil war and a whole lot of poverty and social unrest. 

Even today, Angola has the world’s second lowest life expectancy. Of course, the arguable silver lining to all that death and misery is that nobody had the time or patience for frivolity, self-indulgence, over-orchestration, over-production, or pretension in their music: these guys were lucky to just be cutting records and tried like hell to make them count. In fact, hardly anyone even seems to have had access to a horn section: just a guitar, a bass, whatever percussion they could get together, and maybe an occasional organ. It is unfortunate that these bands were so stripped down out out of sheer necessity, but it is an aesthetic that suits my discerning ears quite well.

Much like many of the other exciting and highly localized music explosions that have been anthologized recently, the prime period for music in Angola coincided with a collision of African and Latin influences. It also coincided with a strong desire to create a distinct Angolan sound to assert their cultural independence from Portugal. For the most part, the Latin influence makes itself felt mostly through driving, vibrant percussion and simple, insistent bass lines. 

The African elements, on the other hand, manifest themselves most strongly in the clean, intricate guitar lines. The blending of cultures gets a bit blurrier than just that though, as touches of American surf music and other esoteric surprises occasionally pop-up as well. Also, there is a definite feel of urgency and melancholy in a lot of these songs, which serves to tone down the Latin percussion to a suitably non-manic pace.

The definite stand-out piece on the album is Quim Manuel’s “Eme Lelu,” one of the rare times horns make an appearance. The cool brass parts are just gravy though, as the song’s real charm lies in its mesmerizing, sinuous rhythm. I also loved the tensely repetitive “Mecongo Mi Chiquita,” by Ferraro Do Nascimento. There’s quite a bit of other strong material here too—nothing that quite floored me, but the hit-to-miss ratio is quite a bit better than it has been on the last few Analog Africa comps. 

I think the probable cause is that a lot of these musicians have a solid understanding of understatement and nuance, which is greatly appreciated, as the more hyperactive strains of Latin-African hybrids tend to grate on me. As do most jubilantly happy, major key songs, which is why I was very surprised to find that the man behind the jaunty “Uma Amiga” (David Zé) was murdered in a wave of repression that followed a failed coup (along with several other influential musicians). In fact, most of his music is impossible to find even now because people were so frightened to be caught with it during that dark period. Sometimes, even seemingly innocuous music holds morbid surprises, I guess.

Obviously, the music is the main draw here, but I have definitely fallen completely in love with Analog Africa’s packaging: each new album is like the next chapter in the unfolding autobiography of a passionate and compelling eccentric. There are lots of people out there scavenging the world for great lost music and many of them do an excellent job providing colorful or informative context and liner notes, but only Redjeb makes a point of also explaining exactly why he is excited about each project, recounting the absurd lengths he went to to make it happen, and including as many interviews with the people involved as possible. 

I get the feeling that each new release is the most important thing in the world to Redjeb, not just “the next album.” For Angola Soundtracks, he even postponed going to the hospital while seriously ill just because people kept stopping by to sell him records; I’m sure someday I will probably read about him braving an alligator attack or navigating a minefield or something just to interview some guy that played maracas on a 45 he likes. Samy is truly the music nerd’s music nerd, as it is impossible to remain unmoved by his enthusiasm.

Listen here.

Load More