what are you listening to in 2014?

Essential Afrobeat triple CD
Trentemoller - The Last Resort
new Neneh Cherry album
Sleaford Mods - Singles Collection/Austerity Dogs
Wilco - Summerteeth

Some records I've been enjoying lately...

Migos - No Label 2
William Onyeabor - World Psychedelic Classics 5: Who Is William Onyeabor?
Holly Herndon - Chorus
Future/DJ Esco - No Sleep
Various - Hardcore Traxx: Dance Mania Records 1986-1995
Jermaine Dupri - Life in 1492
Omar S - 1 (FXHE 10 Year Mix)
Katie Gately - Katie Gately
Nguzunguzu - Perfect Lullaby Vol. II
Matias Aguayo - The Visitor
Lil Herb - Welcome to Fazoland
Sevyn Streeter - Call Me Crazy, But...
Various - Let No One Judge You - Early Recordings From Iran 1906-1933

Really enjoying the repetitive guitar sounding stuff on the Remebetika set I have on my 3 changer. Disc C of Have they Got hashish in Hell. I'm assuming that the instrument is more likely to be a bouzouki or something, this being 1930s Greece. But could be wrong. The box I got didn't come with the extensive booklet taht similar sets I've bought from Proper have, this being the first box I've bought from JSP I don't know if I'm missing something that should have been included or if there is just less attention to detail than their rival historic recordings label.
Anyway, really enjoying this and very easy to see comparisons to the contemporary country blues being recorded in the US. I'm assuming there was little or no awareness of either music in the respective music scenes, but there is even some similarity in sound. Not sure how well known things like delta blues were before the blues revival in the 60s. They were marketed as race records though I assume there was some very marginal interest from other parts of society. Even wonder what the people marketing that stuff thought of it since the record companies were presumably to some great extent white. Was it viewed as good music on any other level than that was what was bringing whatever money in?
If Lomax was travelling the South recording supposedly pure forms of the folk tradition was it to some extent supposedly Sociological or was there a white audience picking up on this 'primitive' material.
Anyway surprising to hear similarities across the Atlantic and then Mediterranean from artists who presumably weren't being marketed outside of very marginalised areas.

The new Calle 13 has some good tracks (and some not so good ones)

Remebetika is tasty stuff. Dunno how popular Delta country blues was, but in The Story of the Blues, Paul Oliver says that the massively migratory Mississippi-to-Chicago workforce audience had a certain amount of fondness for sentimental-condescending songs about new arrivals, bumpkins fresh off the bus-turnip-truck-boxcar etc. The country bluesiness of Jimmie Rodgers, who also played the vaudeville etc venues, led The Mississippi Sheiks to try a crossover sound, but dunno how well that worked commercially---creatively, great stuff.
John Hammond included a minority of country blues-associated performers, like Sonny Terry, in his Spirituals To Swing concerts at Carnegie Hall, in 1938-'38. He wanted to include Robert Johnson, but RJ was already dead. Most of the blues he used is jazzier, with a predominance of outright jazz, incl. Charlie Christian, first genius of the electric guitar, whom I associate with blues, proto-rock & roll, proto-rock, for that matter, with Goodman's small groups. The box set is worth seeking out, though more affordable on vinyl. I'm told the original late 50s LPs were hits in the UK, around the time that trad jazz and Lonnie Donegan skiffle took off, so may have influenced those trends.

Anyway, check Oliver's The Story of The Blues and especially Robert Palmer's Deep Blues.

Can imagine that the electrified downhome-to-Chicago (not as rhythmically idiosyncratic as Delta, but just as bold)blues of formerly acoustic-picker/ plantation worker Muddy Walls was the sound of liberation for Chicago workers (incl. the ones who now worked their asses off in steel mills, as Waters did by day---not in Mississippi shit). Great sound, so glad I got to see him, but also glad Delta blues and its influence got taken up again, by the original performers and later generations (think it influenced the sound of Beefheart and the Magic Band,and Otis Taylor is one of the most creative blues artists of our time, to give two wide-ranging examples).

was there a white audience picking up on this 'primitive' material

There were Brits and French folks interested in more citified African-American sounds in the 1920s and '30s, so I am sure there were also some folks into more rural sounds as well

It was very interesting to see the documentary on the blues that BBC4 showed. Not remembering all of it but sticks in the mind that the picture of teh delta that form of the blues is named after seems to have been handed down wrong. Instead of it being a rural area where folk forms were preserved in a pure form as I think it has been thought, that documentary points out that the delta was a new development peopled by a young workforce. & the delta bluesmen had come in as entertainers for them so the sound was unlikely to be traditional per se.

Am wondering what other music that was recorded at that time correlates with blues etc. I know I have heard echoes of Irish stuff recorded then in rock & roll but that probably was an understood influence.
I've not heard other folk stuff from that ilk of society the workforce that is just on the borderline with crime and interested in having a good time.Seems to be a theme of Remebetika certainly & I'm not sure what else compares.
Klezmer? Anything else? Not sure what was actually getting recorded at the time either. Thinking about immigrant workforces to the US and elsewhere. The big wave of the time was from the Mediterranean parts of Europe, so Italy & France? Might assume that German & Polish working groups might have a similar casual music or at least less formal stuff.
Must look into it.

Also check The Blues, documentary series Martin Scorcese produced for PBS. It's pretty thorough, incl. Lonnie Donegan, Jeff Beck, etc., although could've been even more so--still, pretty distinctive, and with music recorded for/during some of these docs ( was also a radio series; don't know if that's available, but the DVDs and CDs are)
Feel Like Going Home by Martin Scorsese
The Soul of a Man* by Wim Wenders
The Road to Memphis by Richard Pearce
Warming by the Devil's Fire by Charles Burnett
Godfathers and Sons** by Marc Levin
Red, White & Blues by Mike Figgis
Piano Blues by Clint Eastwood

*This includes J.B. Lenoir, previously known to me only via a couple of 60s John Mayall songs about him. He turns out to be a musical link between Sam Cooke and Bob Marley, a lilting tenor with personal-political lyrics, like Cooke was just getting to before he died--not that any of his songs here are as great as Cooke's and Marley's could be, but they're a find, also the story behind the footage that Wenders found.
** Speaking of new sessions, they even got Pete Cosey in there!

I'm thinking mainly about the music of various ethnicities as captured around the time those musics were first widely recorded so roughly 20s & 30s. Mainly the liesure time music of those groups, not sure how else to categorise it.
But have been very interested by what I've heard of those musics I've heard which has so far consisted of blues, Rembetika, the Irish stuff recorded in New York & Boston in the 20s & 30s, and a few other bits and bobs, early country, folk etc.
Can't think of what is represented somewhere that I'm not aware of. Seems that once the technology was around to record and play back easily there was also an audience to buy it. At least in the 1st world, not sure if people were venturing elsewhere to record widely.

Also been getting into Nico's Desertshore for the first time. THink I still prefer Marble Index so far but it is an interesting record.
I found the copy of Frozen Borderlines I had misplaced a while back so been getting into that.

& Neil Young ON The Beach which I should know a lot better having got it in boot form before it was finally officially released & I got that when they did so too.

Kraftwerk
Harmonia
Martin Rev

death and vanilla's debut ep.

the description on the boomkat site nicely summarizes the sound.

**White vinyl 2nd edition limited to 300 copies. Includes download code redeemable from the label** In case you missed out on the instantly sold-out 1st edition, or have a thing for Stereolab or Broadcast, Hands In The Dark have repressed Death and Vanilla's gorgeous debut album. Hailing from Malmö, Sweden, the duo of Marleen Nilsson and Anders Hansson started recording their ideas in an unheated attic overlooking Malmö's largest and oldest graveyard in fall 2007. Taking inspiration from smooth '60s/'70s psych-pop, library electronics and classic French and Italian film soundtracks, their frame of reference is as righteous as the music they make, and authentically so, using samples, vibraphonette, moog and lots of spring reverb to create haunting, cinematic pop songs. Their eponymous debut features 9 darkly sublime creations already tipped by many and getting much airplay round our way. Highly recommended.

metronomy - love letters
warpaint - s/t
real estate - atlas

Tyree Neal featuring Level-"Get Up Stand Up" (zydeco w/ some autotuned vocals and keys plus trad zydeco instruments)

Avail Hollywood-"Club in da Woods" (southern soul w/ programmed beats plus zydeco accents)

xpost re: death and vanilla

i like this!

yikes, their EP is $37 from their bandcamp page ($20 + $17 shipping)

:-/

let's see, that's $1.23 per minute

Ornette Coleman Birthday Special, 24 hrs. This morning, I checked into "Focus On Sanity," and many more from The Shape of Jazz To Come. Had to go out, came back to a big dipper of Science Ficton, and now--back to "Focus On Sanity," and more from The Shape of Jazz To Come to come. Oh well, I'll stick with it for a while. Tomorrow, The Bix Beiderbecke Birthday Special (is there enough of that for 24 hours?), and this Tuesday's Afternoon New Music showcase is Carl Stone---stream it all here: http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/wkcr/

Really good sound quality, on my def. sub-audiophile headphones even.

yikes, their EP is $37 from their bandcamp page ($20 + $17 shipping)

:-/

― Karl Malone, Sunday, March 9, 2014

cuz label's based in france, i imagine? digital ep is $7.00 from bandcamp. not so pricey.

i like the death & vanilla totebag, for $10.00.

Malmo is the coolest town in the world that I have been to yet. I could see myself living there.

certainly looks nice. check out the architecture!

http://www.archinoah.com/files/architekturfotografie/foto241.jpg

whoops. trying again.

http://www.woonq.com/uploaded_images/TurningTorso11.jpg

Yeah, you can see that from the beach. In the winter people walk out on a long pier, where there is a hot tub/sauna deal inside, and you sit in it and sweat and then go outside and jump in the freezing water. I was too chicken to do it, but it sounds like it would be amazing.

Also, you can buy a train ticket for $20 that takes you over the water straight to Copenhagen in under 30 minutes.

this is the probably a terribly stupid thing to say, but after the malasian airline disaster, i'm not inclined to go -- or support my family going -- anywhere via plane for a while. so don't feel bad about chickening-out of the hot-tub/freezing water combination.

streaming the new war on drugs

kinda taps into this weird alternate version of my childhood memories of 80s albums by classic rock artists

man does this stuff sound like a boomer in the 80s. he should change the band name to Deadhead Sticker on a Cadillac

― mizzell, Monday, March 10, 2014 11:36 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

from the Kurt Vile / War on Drugs thread

yeah def....i dig it a lot
tunnel of love bruce!

Listening to that xpost Bix Beiderbecke Birthday: right now, he sounds like the Fred Astaire of cornet on "Singin' The Blues," Frankie Trambauer's Orchestra, with Eddie Lang on guitar. Now they're adding Joe Venuti on violin. Somebody on bass sax? Haven't got the title yet---something Django and Stephane might've liked---'scuse me folks, getting back to it
http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/wkcr/

Current work stack... I've been loading a ton of records into my player and just sorting through the bunch for the past couple of months. I load about 25-30 records into a playlist and just work my way through it over the next week.

Brown, James- Funk Power 1970
Doors, The- Strange Days
Dr. John- Gris Gris
Rolling Stones- Black and Blue
Flamin Groovies- Flamingo
Guns N’ Roses- Appetite for Destruction
Fleetwood Mac- Mr. Wonderful
Erickson, Roky- The Evil One
Bruce, Jack- Trust Live at the BBC (D1)
Badfinger- Magic Christian Music
Nice, The- Five Bridges
Captain Beefheart- Bat Chain Puller
Cheap Trick- Heaven Tonight
Deep Purple- Fireball
Doobie Brothers- Stampede
Drake, Nick- Five Leaves Left
Diddley, Bo- Go Bo Diddley
Edgar Broughton Group- Harvest Years (D3)
Faces, The- Ooh La La
Funkadelic- US Music
Genesis- And Then There Were Three
Gentle Giant- Free Hand
Santana- Live at Woodstock
Seger, Bob- Against the Wind
T. Rex- Tanx
Ten Years After- Ssssh
Hazel, Eddie- Dames, Games and Guitar Thangs
Hendrix, Jimi- Valleys of Neptune
JB’s, The- Funky Good Time (D2)
Kinks, The- Face to Face
Little Feat- Hoy Hoy
Molly Hatchet- Flirtin with Disaster
Miller, Steve- The Joker

Back to WKCR listening--started in the middle of "Darul Kabap," which the host said had started in "kind of a free jazz vein," what I heard was voices/languages and instruments maybe from different Asian countries, or different parts of the same Asian country, bobbing in the harbor around noon, thoughtful and salty, then rude bursts of bass you learn to wait for, then glitch-pop scythes and cycles---basically speeded up r&b, and/or j-pop? glitch-pop fevah, but off-handed too. This guy:

Afternoon New Music welcomes Carl Stone, pioneer in live computer music. In addition to international recognition in new music and media arts circles, his acclaimed electro-acoustic compositions have run through film, choreography, radio, theater, and all streams in between. Collaborators have included Nels Cline, Min Xiao-Fen, z’ev, Aki Takahashi, and Otomo Yoshihide. He is on the faculty of the Media Department at Chukyo University, Japan.

I love Carl Stone

Carl Stone's own thread

Jorge Reyes - Mort Aux Vaches / Comala / Rituales Prehispanicos
Austin Wintory - Flow (mp3's of gameplay captures, not the official soundtrack)
Harry Bertoia - F/W 1030, 1031
Clancy Eccles All Stars with King Tubby - Sound System International Dub
Gescom - Minidisc
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Ecophony Rinne
Robert Ashley - everything
Lovely Music Limited 1976-1990)

Now one with Japanese female singer, unaccompanied, perfectly at home, unselfconscious; he (eventually)slips in some grainy mirror images, like Tuvan throat singing, then simplifies, just letting his touch linger on some syllables occasionally, then little swoops toward the end of lines, underscoring, kind of like Laurie Anderson's "Oh Superman," but with different effect (maybe because I don't know Japanese), morphing into really sweet, deft strokes of harmony---now arpeggiated notes (somewhat like Robert Wyatt's ladytron) squelch into Japanese-accented "Oops I Did It Again," but underwater cool, darting---hookiness avoiding the shaken pole of the impatient fisherman, but not leaving; in fact, grooving with and through the keys, and
(it was two pieces: the first was actually a Vietnamese singer--not catching the titles, but both from Al-Noor)
Now a couple things he calls acid bop pieces, though he doesn't like acid jazz. Starts good.

Stein Urheim - s/t
Kassem Mosse - Workshop 19
Tinariwen - Emmaar
Donato Dozzy & Nuel - The Auqaplano Sessions
Luciano Cilio - Dell'universo assente
Curren$y - The Drive In Theatre

NPR's SXSW showcase tonight:
http://www.npr.org/event/music/279055940/npr-music-presents-live-from-sxsw-2014
March 12 @ Stubb's
Perfect Pussy
7:50-8:20pm CT
Eagulls
8:40-9:20pm CT
Kelis
9:50-10:30pm CT
St. Vincent
11:00pm-12am CT
Damon Albarn
12:30am CT

SXSW KeynoteMarch 14
Lady Gaga
11:00am CT

Stream the mix
Download MP3s
Tuesday Recap
SXSW Preview

Perfect Pussy's starting---kind of a swaying, chanting, feedback-whistling dragon balloon behind her shouts---briefly. Then a more predictable punky scramble, with police car UFO etc appearing. Anyway, check it out yall (gotta turn it way up, even on headphones)

The keyboard's making the best, ugliest sounds, though the guitar's helping. The more freeform they get the better; otherwise (voice x all instruments) does get--yep--predictable (rammaramaaOhrammmaIDontCareramamamram)

)The keyboard player, Shaun described how he samples the band, then plays it back through tape delay, screwing with the pitch, also tours on his own as The Pretengineer, or something like that. Bloody good. Interviews lasted longer than the set, while Eagulls set up, but worth the wait: a much fuller, deeper, more robust ensemble sound than Perfect Pussy, though just as, ah, vintage--damn, that bass! Get Shaun in there and it would be outrageous.

(although pattern recognition is starting to take its toll, on me and maybe them---seems like they're trying not to turn whatever this is into "I Fought The Law"...)

okay, the vocalist's Johnny One-Yelp, and now it seems his approach fits right in, tipping the scales---should I stay or should I go? Go for now.

in a silent way
thou
ride the lightning
sturgill simpson
charles wright & the watts 103rd st rhythm band

an obscure band called precious-stones, from africa, recorded in 1972.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrdeVL-ALYA

on a loop right now.

oh i almost forgot

TUPAC

Missed Kelis (hope some of these will be posted, as has happened for prev SXSW and other festival sets on NPR), but back as St. Vincent begins with the one about taking off her clothes and walking around in the desert at night, then running from a snake (true story). Twisting her guitar quite a bit.

Yowee. St Vincent w Toko Yasuda, keyboards, vocals, bass; also a drummer and another keyboard player way back there, at least when Yasuda stepped out with her bass, especially for some prog-metal toward the end. Rocking art rock, at times close to warp-toned Zep (with some early King Crimson,also late, no middle). Concise, though. New songs, supposedly more straight-forward, fit with old, as lyrics came off like marginalia, flying notes to self, bits of her self-cited "Joan Didion-esque" persona's elliptical clarity; ditto Marilyn Monroe's writing ("Surgeon" inspired by the latter). Stage show hyper-focused,floaty(rockin').
Albarn can't follow; don't think I'll stay awake for that (maybe they'll post his and hers).
Set List for St. Vincent:

Rattlesnake
Digital Witness
Cruel
Birth In Reverse
Regret
I Prefer Your Love
Surgeon
Cheerleader
Prince Johnny
Year Of The Tiger
Marrow
Huey Newton
Bring Me Your Loves
Krokodil

Think the persona she described is or was meant to be "Joan Didion-esque middle-aged woman on the verge," but on this occasion she also seemed to enjoy being young, eerie (buzzword of our age, after all), hot and dead(pan).

Also, as Houston Press blogger Chris Grey described her show better and earlier this week:
the mechanistic robo-funk of the rhythm section versus the overwhelming omnichords of the synthesizers or the shards of post-punk guitar versus that delicate little dance she yeah, yeah.

Ghana Soundz - Afro-beat, funk and fusion in 70's Ghana

this is sooo good