As today is March 4th, let's march forth once again with the Now Sounds of alternative marching/brass bands with a sampler of releases from recent years from bands that you won't see parading onto a sporting events field, or serenading politicians. A sterling example of 'antique-garde' music - new, experimental sounds using pre-rock, antique instruments and methods. I don't know how mobile they all are. I did see Mucca Pazza live a year or two ago, so I can vouch for them- they went marching all over the place before they finally hit the stage. March Forth 2015 1. 9th Ward Marching Band - Halloween Beat [covering John Carpenter, and a bit of Mike Oldfield] 2. 9th Ward Marching Band - Slowride [a couple of classic rock covers, from this krewe that features the king and queen of New Orleans high weirdness, Quintron and Miss Pussycat] 3. 9th Ward Marching Band - The Letter 4. Duk - Bilbo [from the excellent Bandcamp release "Early Worm Gets The Bird"] 5. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - Moments [cover of Art of Noise's "Moments in Love"] 6. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble & Tony Allen - Marcus Garvey [w/Fela Kuti's master drummer Allen] 7. Mucca Pazza - Chick Habit [two songs from their super album "A Little Marching Band"; this wild take on the France Gall/April March classic features a rarity in this field: vocals] 8. Mucca Pazza - Dirge [doesn't get any less traditional than this: a creepy circus waltz for accordion and musical saw] 9. No BS! Brass Band - Take on Me [A Ha cover; always amazing to hear a great take on a song I'd never given the slightest thought to before] 10. Youngblood Brass Band - Human Nature, Pt. 2 [quite an improvement on Michael Jackson's original] 11. Youngblood Brass Band - Nate Mccarish Handbills For No Man [can't quite determine what strange sounds are featured here]
By request, the "Soft, Safe and Sanitized" collection is back on line. DJ Useo, when not creating mashups, or blogging and podcasting, scours the internet for strange and silly song stuff, as featured in his previous collections, "Music For Maniacs Tribute," and "Fun Music." And here's his latest 'n' greatest, exclusively for us, and hence, you: Nugglets vol. 1 This is the sound of new millennium DIY bedroom-producer kooks operating blissfully free of any illusions of "makin' it in the music biz," with many tracks downloaded from the old MP3.com. Apart from boasting one of the greatest album covers ever, this disreputable collection also features Dr Demento-ready novelty songs, odd experiments, youngsters screwing around, a "Death Metal Alphabet" lesson, a 36-second Dylan parody about a dead squirrel, a musical saw, some actual catchy tunes, and inexplicable sounds from folks in various states of mental health. Plus! Not just one, but two techno-polkas. Worth it for the DJ My Ass track alone, the kind of spazzy nonsense that the internet was created for.
If the GlassDuo album I posted last week had you hungering for more musical wine glasses...
My review of the first Musical Betts album posted here three years ago also applies to this one: "The Musical Betts were a husband-and-wife duo who played (mostly) instrumental versions of gospel songs on such instruments as cowbells, marimba, musical saw, slide guitar, and sleigh bells. And vibraharp, which I think is like a vibraphone. Really cool stuff, but alas I know nuthin' about 'em...It's a bit odd hearing melodies played on instruments like cowbells performed not as Spike Jones-like comedic music, but in a stately, emotional manner." Well, that was easy. I have nothing further to add except that we know a little (very little) bit more about these two, thanks to this album's liner notes: Mrs. Betts was a "college teacher" in Michigan before she met Rev. Clarence, but we don't even learn her first name! Also, this album's volume level has to be one of the lowest ever. Nice relaxing music for when that tryptophan kicks in. The Musical Betts "The Golden Bells" UPDATE: reader Richard L. writes "The low level may be result of a very astute engineer. The bells have an incredible amount of very high frequency (even ultrasonic) sound levels. Early analog audio equipment could not handle this at normal levels resulting in a lot of audible artifacts (partial erasure of the tape, thumps, and distortion). Also, the VU meters would not respond to the quick attack of the bell clapper hits. This is the sad voice of experience speaking. One solution was to run everything at -10 dB to get more transient headroom."
Like I was saying...Listen for free, buy if you like. This batch is loosely associated by a shared fascination with the surreal and fantastic, injecting a little much-needed magic into our world.
- Ergo Phizmiz "Idiot": The prolific madman across the water has two more winners. This one's a generous 18 tracks of mostly instrumentals (w/some sampled vox) cobbled together out of found-sounds and whimsical instruments. "Ornidisco" is a dance track ingeniously fashioned entirely from sampled bird sound effects. "Night on The Town" is an absurd disco raver performed entirely acappella (complete with beatboxing) that's as funny as it is funky. Avant-garde, or just good ol' British eccentricity? Price: free. - Ergo Phizmiz "Music for Pleasure": "A 17 track behemoth of Ergo Phizmiz's singular take on guitar based rock'n'roll & pop music." Yep, these ramshackle constructions suggest actual rock music, sometimes in the Neil Innes or Syd Barret vein, with much Kink-y garage punk energy. Bonus points for reviving Bobby Goldsboro's '60s bubblegum gem "Little Things." Album title = truth in advertising. Price: £7.
- Doctor Midnight "Crotch Rocket Extremities and/or Popular Culture Atrocities": What the ..? This short (12 tracks in 23 minutes), utterly unpredictable album makes as much sense as that album title. This duo comes from Alabama, not with a banjo on it's knee, but plenty of other noises: sound effects, screaming, computers, piano, marimba, guitars, and scary hillbilly voices that may be sampled, or may belong to the band members. My fave moment is when "Chocodino" almost turns into a remake of Steve Reich's "It's Gonna Rain," followed by 38 seconds of "There Ain't Shit On TV!" Price: free. Paul and Pierre "Eggs Benedict With Mr Wu On The Seahorse Monorail": Pierre is the man behind naive/ toy-pop masters Carton Sonore; this time out he's joined by Scottish warbler Paul Vickers for actual songs, but still retaining the whimsy of past projects. Acoustic instruments like musical saw and mandolin meet Casio-tronics to realize sea shanty-like sing-alongs replete with fantastical imagery. Well written, wonderfully evocative, effortlessly enjoyable. Price: €7, tho the super song "Lon Chaney" is free, and you know a song has to be good if it's about Lon Chaney. -Zlata Sandor/Shaun Sandor "Band on the Moon": If you're pressed for time, here's 5 minutes of a father and his 4-year-old daughter singing about the kinds of things you would expect little girls to sing about, e.g.: party balloons, animals, and playing on the moon. C'mon, how can you not like this? Price: $1.00.
Timur and the Dime Museum "X-ray Sunsets": These Angelenos conjure up a dark carnival for accordion, ukulele, violin, and on the rollicking "Distance Of The moon," a spot of toy piano, with a bona-fide opera singer up front; I featured their amazing take on Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" here previously, but this album is all original and it's all good. Don't be surprised if David Lynch uses the dreamy doo-wop ballad "Asleep At The Wheel" in his next film. Flamboyantly theatrical without quite being campy. Recommended, even if you hate opera. Price: $7.
Tho he was hardly an indie band/ bedroom producer like the above, I still would like to point out that - holy crap! - there are now 48 Fela Kuti albums now available on Bandcamp.
The first thing many Americans think when they hear the phrase "folk music" is still the Joan Baez/Dylan types listlessly strumming acoustic guitars and singing protest songs in coffeehouses, none of which has much to do with actual American folk traditions. The excellent new compilation Turn Me Loose: Outsiders of Old-Time Music features not only the weird 'n' wild obscurities you maniacs crave, but it also serves as a nice corrective to the '50s/'60s folk revival's rewriting of history. For one thing, acoustic guitars were not too common (almost no songs on this album feature them), banjos were originally a black instrument (derived from African instruments), silly humor was much more common then protest politics (e.g.: the wacked-out duo Mustard and Gravy), and plenty of "non-folk" instruments like the piano really were used in folk music, Charlie Tweedy's berserk stylings on the ivories being one of this albums' many highlights (which reminds me of Tom Lehrer's crack introducing his song "The Folk Song Army": since the piano isn't considered a folk instrument "imagine I'm playing an 88-string guitar.") Ernest Rodgers' Greek lesson "Mythological Blues" punctures holes in the notion that these were all dumb, uneducated hicks.
Most of these recordings, taken from old '78s, are by fairly professional if necessarily rough 'n' raw performers, but at least one character here, Willard Hodgin, is just flat-out nuts. To quote from compiler Frank Fairfield's extensive liner notes: "He recorded 18 sides (1927-1928) for various labels, which is quite an outstanding feat considering how unusual a performer he was. The combination of the occasional verse speckled in with his own unusual yet charming stanzas and his delirious haphazard banjo strumming make him one of the most unique performers to ever record." 18 songs? Someone put out a complete Willard Hodgin album! (Clicky on song titles to take you to Divshare-land:)
Another great new comp recently purchased at my local record emporiums is "Enjoy The Experience: Homemade Records 1958-1992," a two-disc set plus 44 page booklet, all for only $15. Explore the wonderful world of private-press records! I was amused to see that the booklet featured reproductions of the covers of a couple albums I own, namely Mike Hudson and Wayne & Marin Foster. No tracks from them featured on this, but I included them on my own collection "I'll Take Las Vegas." This album goes way beyond Vegas-y lounge performers, tho, ranging from the already sorta-well known punk jazz of Gary Wilson and the middle-aged former Big Band singer-turned-hippie Arcesia, to such unknowns as the hip Christian behind this absurdly catchy upbeat bit of apocalyptic pop:
The booklet includes interviews with some of the performers the compilers were actually able to track down. The heartbreaking tale of Joe E.'s swindle at the hands of a fly-by-night record label is particularly memorable. Unfortunately nothing is known about one Vinny Roma, but he recorded what could be this blog's theme song. Hell, it could be my (or your) life's theme song:
And if that's still not enough outsider music for you, Colchester, England's premier mental patient/transvestite/stoner/coprophiliac singer-songwriter has a new album out called "Hippie Heaven" for your free downloading pleasure. It's like a 12" single more than an album, with the same songs appearing in slightly different forms throughout. Highlights inc the biting "Parasite Pest," and "Rock 'n' Roll Brothel" ("Why won't any of the girls have sex with me? It's quite frustrating...I could get a complex!") The backing track of "Lady Dub #1" could be by Martin Rev. And paging Yoko Ono! The final track is a 20 min field recording of wind.
It took me a while to track down some albums by this very obscure group, but it was worth it - The Forgotten Fish Memory Orchestra is as wonderfully strange and unique as its name. They are (were?) apparently based in Amsterdam, tho I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure about anything with these guys, except that they are a fairly large ensmble that utilizes unusual and invented instruments to create exotic, dream-like instrumentals. There's a large Asian influence, Eastern European/gypsy touches pop up as well, but it's all too surreal to approach 'authenticity.'
Here's a seven song sampler of tracks from the three albums of theirs that I do have. It looks like their site is gone, but bandleader Makmed the Miller is selling CDs on his site. "Atlas" sports some exciting ethnic pounding percussion, but "The Devil's Fishwife" is a sad waltz for accordion and toy piano. Songs like "First Japanese Landing on the Moon" and "Mexican Day of the Funeral" actually do sound somewhat like their titles. Just when you think that you're in some cloud-shrouded ancient land, the title track to "Our Tin Tribe" delves into - surprise! - electronica.
Their many videos attest to their highly developed theatrical sense. The "Performances" section of Makmed's site seems to include a video from every show they did. Visit America, won't you, fine Fishies?
Atlas (from "Our Tin Tribe") The Devil's Fishwife (from "The Bicycle Lesson") First Japanese Landing on the Moon (from "Iron Shoes") Hu Dy Da (from "The Bicycle Lesson") Mehmed's Your Uncle(from "Iron Shoes") Mexican Day of the Funeral (from "Iron Shoes") Our Tin Tribe
The French invasion of wonderful naive/toy-pop continues with the loveable Carton Sonore (Sound Card). The three all-too-brief "Petit Themes" albums available for download are well worth the few euros/pounds/dollars/clams purchase price. Mr. Sonore sez: "It's mainly acoustic and instrumental music with various instruments, like: charango, ukulele, guitar, melodica, saw, saz, glockenspiel..." Yes! to more musical saw. Xylophones, ocarinas, kazoos and toys are also present. But as much as I'm drawn to unusual instruments, as usual, it's the top-notch songwriting that sucks me in - there's a dreamy, innocent-but-not-corny quality to these tunes.
I've included a couple tracks from each album, as well as a few tracks he's made available for free in this sampler:
They're not just for cutting down trees, y'know. In the hands of master musicians like Kev Hopper, when bowed the humble saw can produce lovely ethereal sounds, such as those featured on his EP "Saurus." It, like most of Hopper's recorded works, is now available for free download on his site, generous chap that he is. Of the EP's 6 tracks, the first five are for musical saw. "Soulkeepers" might be my fave track, with wordless female vox joining the saw for a 'Star Trek theme' feel.
Very late '80s, a friend of mine who worked at a record store pointed to an album by a band called Stump entitled "A Fierce Pancake." "You'd probably like this," he smirked. "It's this really weird kinda Beefheart British silliness. No one here likes it. " I bought it on the spot. Great album, esp. the American version with the single 'Buffalo' added. And Kev Hopper was the band's bassist.
No Stump, sadly, but other albums available for free dl on his site include the 1990 sample-fest "Stolen Jewels," which digitally grabs everything from banjos to African vocals - the cartoonish "Punch and Judy" and "Meantime," and the sound effects-laden "Chain Smokin'" are indeed jewels. 1999's "Whispering Foils" boasts great tracks like the Steve Reich-like "Skitch Pics," and "Mr. Chuff Chuff" which sports more saw, plus marimba and Brasilian percussion. I'm not sure what to make of "The Stinking Rose," a concept album about garlic (yes, the food garlic) and apparently no-one else did, either - it never found distribution. Still, songs like "From Herb to Eternity" and the Kate Bush-y "Sulphur Symphony" are plenty yummy. Get 'em all here:
The first "Cover The Earth" collection we posted here a couple of weeks ago has been quite the success - twice as many downloads as usual for these parts. And since some of you nice maniacs out there have been emailing me mp3s and suggestions for other foreign/ethnic cover tunes, I was inspired to dig thru my cd archives and come up another volume. And this batch is really nuts, more out-there then Vol. 1, I'd say, sometimes veering pretty far from the originals. The versions of "Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart" and "Imagine," in particular, are especially retarded.
Ingredients: a version of The Champs' "Tequila" by an out-of-control Indian wedding brass band; "Rock Around The Clock" played on a Spike Jones-like honk-horn novelty instrument (pictured right); two salsa artists (Celia Cruz, Manny Manuel) who start off fairly faithful to the originals, apart from singing in Spanish, before pushing the songs into Afro-Latin territory that has nothing to do with the original songs; a Frenchy version of "Witchy Woman" on musical saw (just about the only way I can take The Eagles); lots of Beatles, inc. a small taste of the zillions of Beatles covers recorded by Jamaican reggae artists in the Sixties; more Tuvan throat-singing; an early-'80s Dutch track (RTC) that would have fit on one of my "New Wave Covers" collections; and "Purple Haze" on bagpipes. What more could you ask for?!
COVER THE EARTH 3 1. Tokyo Panorama Mambo Boys (Japan/Afro-Cuban) - James Bond theme 2. Tobi Rix (Netherlands) - Toeteriks-boogie [Bill Haley & Comets "Rock Around The Clock"] 3. Tanh Nam Teu (Vietnam) - Bat Ghen [Theme From 'Bonanza'] 4. Babu Band (India) - Tequila 5. pedro de la hoya (Spanish, tho he's French) - kiss kong five [Prince "Kiss"] 6. Celia Cruz (Cuban) - Yo Viviré [Gloria Gaynor "I Will Survive"] 7. The Presidents (Germany) - Love Bug [Supremes "Love Is Like An Itching"] 8. Bugotak (Tuva) - Kon Togethy [The Beatles - Come Together] 9. Alton Ellis (Jamaica) - And I Love Her 10. Charlotte Dada (Ghana) - Don't Let Me Down 11. RTC (Holland) - Drive My Car 12. cachicamoconcaspa y leyko el perro de la IIII dimensión (Venezuela) - Imagine 13. Keith Lynn, The S.P.M's & Byron Lee & The Dragonaires (Jamaica) - My Sweet Lord 14. Svetlyo Zhilev (Bulgaria) - Purple Haze 15. Yat-Kha (Tuva) - Love Will Tear Us Apart 16. Dan Bau Vietnam - Rider in the Sky ["Ghost Riders In The Sky"] 17. Manny Manuel (Cuba) - I Want To Hold Your Hand (Tu Mano Cogere) 18. Beau Jocque & The Zydeco Hi-Rollers (Cajun Louisiana, USA) - Hi-Rollers Theme/Low Rider [War "Low Rider") 19. Barat Dangdut-Terpopuler 95 (Indonesia) - Hotel California 20. Randall Throckmorton w/ Larmes de Colère (French, tho Mr.Throckmorton is from Minneapolis) - Femme de Sorcière [Eagles "Witchy Woman"] 21. Yat-Kha (Tuva) - Black Magic Woman
The Musical Betts were a husband-and-wife duo who played (mostly) instrumental versions of gospel songs on such instruments as cowbells, marimba, musical saw, slide guitar, and sleigh bells. And vibraharp, which I think is like a vibraphone. Really cool stuff, but alas I know nuthin' about 'em. I do know they had at least one other album besides this one cuz Otis Fodder and Dana Countryman posted a song off it for their Cool and Strange Music Magazine comp, included here as a bonus. It's a bit odd hearing melodies played on instruments like cowbells performed not as Spike Jones-like comedic music, but in a stately, emotional manner. If Tom Waits has this album, I would not be surprised.
1. I'd Rather Have Jesus 2. The Lords Prayer 3. What A Friend We Have In Jesus 4. Rock of Ages 5. He Lifted Me 6. Ring The Bells of Heaven 7. Dwelling In Beulah Land 8. Near The Cross 9. Let The Lower Lights Be Burning 10. Jesus Loves Me 11. Church In The Wildwood 12. Just As I Am 13. BONUS TRACK: Grumblers
It's a "Two-For-Tuesday"! On Wednesday! Here are two absolutely spellbinding albums by French composer Pierre Bastien, who, since childhood, has been fascinated with the idea of incorporating machines into music. His first experiment was with a spoon attached to a metronome striking a pan. Since then he has come far indeed, constructing Erector Set-like rockin' robots, and on his "Mecanoid" album, brilliantly incorporating (non-hip hop) turntablism. Over the repetitious rhythms of his machines he often blows cool Miles-like jazz horn. The results, on his "Musiques Machinales" album, range from the Steve Reich-like minimalism of "Chez Les Crânes" to "Marchin' Band," reminiscent of "Rain Dogs"-era Tom Waits. Scratchy fiddle and, on at least one song, what sounds like a musical saw also feature in his cabinet of curiosities. Like Frank Pahl and his Scavenger Quartet (whose "We Who Live On Land" album I recently posted in it's entirety) gorgeous melodies such as the one on "Vipers" from "Musiques Machinales" sell these obtuse ideas. Magical.
Originalljudet are indeed original. From Sweden, the land that gave us Tor Johnson, comes this five-piece who make dreamy/nightmarish modern antiquities out of sad accordians, spooky musical saws, acoustic bass, and horns that whisper rather then honk. Tispy violins and pianos occasionally show up to crash on the couch. One song starts off just like Screaming Jay Hawkin's "I Put A Spell On You" before it goes off and joins a broken-down traveling carnival.
A reader named Antov (thanks, dude!) who tipped me to their new debut album described it as "weird but beautiful." Yup. My favorite new late night/early morning cool-out record.
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