Bear in Heaven: Beast Rest Forth Mouth
Helado Negro: Awe Owe
The Sa-Ra Creative Partners: Sonic Seduction Volume 2
Little Dragon: Machine Dreams
Gorillaz: Demon Days
Lemonade
Purchase all these records. Everyone of these records is on wax. You will be happy.
Sheesh. My dude Rob of the incredible philly band READING RAINBOW got me hip to this Mingus performance of “Flowers of a Lady”. Check it out. I didn’t get too heavy into the hard bop… Mainly because Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane completely swept me away and I fell deep into the 1970s spiritual/free jazz movement. This Mingus piece is outstanding. A lot of times I watch jazz performances and just feel so confused as to how these guys are creating such an incredible sound. I don’t think that any music has come close to being as good as the jazz music from the 60s-70s.
My friend Val makes, probably, the best music that I have ever heard. A lot of my other friends will say that I say that about everything. They’re not wrong. They will agree with me on this one, though. I was really happy to see that there was something of Val’s music online. She deleted her myspace account a while ago and I have played her tape out. This is my favorite song of her’s. It’s not recorded anywhere so I’ve spent the last couple of days playing it on various computers. I hope you all enjoy this as much as I do.
This one is with Debby Harry and spotlights Philip Glass as a guest on the program that night.
I didn’t get much Ohio pride until I left. This performance of “Breathe” by Pere Ubu really holds a soft spot in my heart. I went to high school in Kent, OH and would frequently go up to Cleveland to see bands perform. My friend Mike, who was a “kewl older kid” as the time, used to come up to me at shows and smoke cigarettes and try to tell me that I needed to be more “tuff” to make it in “the biz.” His Mom later told me that he wet the bed until he was 17. Anyway, although I never saw Pere Ubu in their native Cleveland I feel a sense of pride whenever I see or here their music on the internet. Dave Thomas completely embodies the Northeast Ohio character that me and my friends came to love and embrace. For the record, he’s not weird, he’s awesome.
I truly believe that Erykah Badu is music’s savior. Such a powerful force cannot be stopped. I’ve never felt music like hers before and I’ve never believed in it as much. She can sway back and forth, ebb and flow emotion like no one else. I saw her when I was 13 yrs old on the Smokin’ Grooves Tour with The Roots, Outkast, George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars and Cypress Hill. Honestly I don’t remember much from that concert. I was young and naive to the world and didn’t know what to expect from that concert (I also didn’t understand how legendary of a line-up the 1997 Smokin’ Grooves tour was). The little I do remember is how captivating Erykah was (her drummer was also was unbelievably dope. Dude locked into a groove and rode the song like a wave. It was sickening). True chanteuse. Her record “New Amerykah pt. 1: 4th World War” is one of my favorite albums of 2008. I’ve posted a live version of the song “The Healer” from that album underneath. All should take notes from this performance. It is seriously fresh. Why don’t more artists give new light to their songs when they play them live? Enjoy!
currently obsessed with this record. i was turned onto it from jamey from of montreal while we were driving around in athens several weeks back. i might be a little bit slow on this but sheesh. such an incredible record. super spaced out cosmic psych-folk. very easy to fall back and just lost in this. im in a really big reggae/dub phase right now but this, and the omnipresent pharoah sanders & alice coltrane, are the exceptions. like sanders and coltrane, white noise creates interesting sounds with layers. effected tape loops over drum rolls and delayed vocals create a subtle wall of sound… does that even make sense? whatever. haven’t been inspired by much of the new music coming out right now. it’s interesting that a record form 1968 can sound more fresh and exciting than something that has been released 40 years later.
i really hope to be able to tear it down like this when im sly’s age.
I recently discovered this record and I just wanted to share with everyone its brilliance. Growing up and listening to hardcore and My Bloody Valentine records in an African household is pretty interesting. I had a million arguments with my parents about how they just can’t understand how amazing Harriet the Spy was and they would always tell me that I should just give other musics a chance. My parents are pretty awesome. They exposed me to a healthy dose of East and West African music as well as some really awesome pop music (Phil Collins, Paul Simon in particular). I can sing you all the words to Dionne Warwick’s “That’s what Friends are for” and then switch gears to singing any song from Ali Farka Toure’s album “The Source”. It was a fun upbringing.
Anyway, Tinariwen’s record “Aman Iman” brings me back to my youth. Saturday morning wake up calls to sizzling sounds coming from the kitchen while African music is blaring from a distorted Panasonic cassette player. The band is from Mali and Niger and the music is very similar to the “Desert Blues” that Ali Farka Toure popularized but with with curve balls. Poly rhythmic percussion accompanied by walking bass lines and up lifting group singing that’ll put any hardcore band’s gang vocals to shame. If you are in your right mind you will buy this record. It’s hypnotic and energetic and just down right great.
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