Sandals Endless Summer Rar Play
Bit of synthy electro-pop from this belgian starlet, featuring some help from superstars TELEX. From the booklet: Born out of a belgian comics writer's imagination, the character of Lio soon became known all over Europe as the alias of glamour pop icon Wanda Maria de Vasconcelos, a 18 years old, smart and provocative singer. Teamed-up with belgian songwriters Jacques Duvall, Jay Alansky and Marc Moullin (from the electro-pioneer band TELEX), the alchemy was soon to be accomplished with their first single 'Le Banana Split', a light-hearted sugary pop tune co-written by Alansky and Duvall - also known as Hagen Dierks. The first hit was launched, soon to be followed by plenty of others which would all hurl Lio at the top of european charts. The second single, and probably the most successful in France, was the now classic 'Amoureux solitaires', a refreshingly naive and at the same time deeply emotional song. The text is signed by Eli Medeiros and the music is produced by Jacno (from the french infamous pop-rock duo 'Eli et Jacno'), resulting a catchy halting beat with a minimalist melody which will be engraved in your memory as soon as you hear it.
Anyway, one can feel a clear and distinct touch of contemporary atmosphere all over the record, a certain kind of 'Avant-Gardism' which is not without reminding us the later oversea productions of electro legends as New Order, Yaz, Human League, etc. Intresting patchwork of typical french pop ('Si belle Et inutile', 'La Petite Amazone') and dance oriented songs (see the amazing break part of 'Comix Discomix' or the twisted beat of 'La Panthere Rose'), this debut effort also includes, among other things, the more languid and ambient cover of Gillespie and Coot's 'You Go To My Head', later interpreted by Billie Holiday. I've got a stack of similar bits of euro and japanese electro-pop, probably start ripping more of it in the next month. Think of it like the minimal fan's answer to twee, only a lot more fun. My first foray into minimal synth when it came out. Unfortunately I can't seem to find the original rips I did and the CD hasn't fared well, so it's missing the final three tracks. Otherwise a good rip.
I'll update it if I can get the missing songs. Not a single bad track, but the one which caught my ear at the time was the Artefact track, 'Mae'. I'd listen to that over and over back then. To this day, I aspire to it. The rest of the tracks are amazing to me now, given a few years to increase my familiarity with the genre and contextualize. If you've never gotten into minimal synth, here's your starting point.
The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms (1980) Unfortunately, this post earned me a DMCA notice. With any luck, this amazing album will be re-released soon. This is one everyone ought to have by now, but it means so much to me that I've got to post it. I found a copy of the 1990 cd release of this in a used bin in my hometown when I was 14, before I'd ever heard the Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop, or even the original Rolling Stones version of Paint it Black (shit, I think I was still listening to Blink 182 then. I picked up the album because the cover resembled the first Weezer album.
Forgive me my transgressions). Possibly before I'd ever heard Led Zeppelin, not that they're relevant but to give a proper picture of the impressionable mind that discovered this. This is one of those rare albums that surpasses the scene which allowed it's conception. It's one of those albums that probably shouldn't exist, the kind of thing that drives home how impressive a group of friends making their own kind of music can really be.
Easily the greatest influence on my own guitar style after the Beatles and Hendrix, and only then because that was all I had until I was 12. Their later albums weren't nearly as impressive, that version of the Feelies only had two of the original members and fell into a bit of an REM-esque Athens-type rut in my opinion (though still retaining the style and approach that made this). The rips come from my original WAVs of the album, which was stolen many years ago.
There has never been another album like this, and somehow I doubt there ever will be. This is one of my all time Vortex finds, from the first trip i ever made there. I'll let the back liner notes speak for themselves.
Might do a re-rip at some point but for now, enjoy. When asked to write the liner notes to this album, I questioned myself: 'Am I the Nat Fletcher of Highlife Music, or is my prowess as a music critic being tested?' However, after listening to the album several times, I was obviously convinced that the RENAISSANCE of Highlife Music has finally arrived. The art has been dormant for over a decade. Attempts have been made by amateurs to revive the music, but their efforts contributed to its further decline in quality and texture. There is no need prodding into Mr.
Aquai's musical background; my colleague Mark Duodu took care of that on Aquai's premiere album 'Wodo, Yi Ye, Odo' released in June 1984. It is not an overstatement to compare the man 'Aquai' and his music to Van Gogh and his painting.
In a nutshell, it is a blend of artistic discipline, innovation and the interweaving of the sum of the parts that make Highlife a unique art form from Ghana to Guyana. The frequency by which Aquai is releasing LP's and the quality of his compositions and arrangements is testimony that the man has a large REPERTOIRE and obviously has more surprises for his fans.
Music as a universal language has always been Aquai's central theme. As a composer and arranger, he makes sure there is a musical element in his work that touches the musical foundation of people from different ethnic and cultural background. Notice his treatment of 'Mutea Masam'. A mixture of African, Caribbean, Latin and Western contemporary ballad. Although some of the lyrics are in Fanti or Twi, the message is about love and life as opposed to hatred and death.
Isn't that what living is all about? Against a warmly lush backdrop, Aquai instills, emotion, grace and depth; just other words for perfection. This album celebrates the return to musical activity and creativity by a truly great keyboardist. The calmness and serenity that embodies the music of Aquai is merely an artistic extension of the inner peace of the man.
This inner peace is translated into musical statements of delicate beauty. Aquai has this passionate infatuation about his heritage as an African. His parents are from Togo, Ghana and Sierra Leone. No wonder his lyrics are constantly directed towards his love for the African Continent and its people. He once confided in me that an artist should serve his or her people through the arts and not capitalize on their fantasies. Some of the songs on this album are a collage of themes based upon Aquai's childhood experience of the joy, sufferings and aspirations of the black race south of the Sahara.
Sam Arthur Jr. Tracy Towers Bronx, N.Y. Gonna do one last big batch of rips tonight before I have to start breaking down my setup in prep for a move this weekend.
Hope it stops raining before then. Huge file on this post, planning on two others tonight but we'll see what I get through. This singles post is not precisely WBMX but all of them fall under what I'd consider the 'style' they used to work within, a mix of electro-funk, early house and cut-up party mixing.
First, my favorite track of the lot, is. A sparse sort of down-tempo electro-funk jam, the kind of thing you'd drop at the beginning or the end of a late night set. Very deep disco track. Next is, a bootleg of old school turntablist funk cut-up. Then there's Morgan's mid 80's electrofunk soul jam. Provides an uptempo bit of proto-house sampler overuse with a ripping guitar solo, from Jamaaladeen Tacuma produced by Francois Kevorkian. Don't know why the fuck discogs says it's 'Acid Jazz/Dub' but I don't know how to fix their shit and they get pissed like wikipedia editors about it when you do it wrong.
The final two are proper house jams, squeezing into the WBMX era by a hair coming out in '87 and This Time Around by Deneen (not even listed on discogs, that one!) missing it by a bit at '89. A bit of vintage cultural tourism for tonight, another roommate request. Cigarette Blues (love that organ) and Farewell to Tokyo are the standouts to my ear, along with Black Flower Petal. (if anyone has any info on Capital T10250 let me know, it's nowhere to be found online.
Mono LP.) From the back: Authentic Japanese pop songs and international hits in Oriental dress by Nippon's favorite singers. As you might hear them on THE STREETS OF TOKYO TOKYO'S BUSY STREETS reflect the pulse of this modern metropolis of almost nine million. Besides being the economic and industrial center of the orient, Tokyo is also a fantastically active center of the lively arts. Almost any evening in Tokyo you might choose your entertainment from many theaters offering traditional Japanese forms of drama and dance - kabuki, no, or bunraku - or lavish modern spectacles like the Takarazuka troupe; you might prefer to choose from some dozen nightly events of Western style symphony concerts or opera; or you might scan the brilliant marquees of the thousands of movie houses in the city, for the Japanese love both imported movies and their own fine dramatic and musical films.
Movies, radio, television, and especially long-playing records have stimulated the rise of many musical personalities. Splendid engineering facilities are producing records of excellent fidelity. Top stars compete for places on the best-seller lists, and the public is responding with devoted enthusiasm (and yen) for their favorites. Here are two girls and four young men who are among the very top artists in Japan today, singing a dozen of their hits that have won extreme popularity. There's no international language like popular music, and just as American pops reflect many other countries - think of Morgen, Vaya con dios, and Gomen-Nasai - so Japanese pops are well up to date on European, American, and Latin-American trends.
Some of these songs are characteristically Japanese, and others are Japanese versions of imported favorites. They are sung mostly in Japanese, with a chorus in another language now and then. The older Japanese style, always fresh to Western ears for it's rhythmic brightness and its supple vocal style, is represented in this album by The Nikko Folksong and Farewell to Tokyo.
The main current of Japanese pop music, with its characteristically 'minor' keys and dark moods, is typified by Lullaby of the Birds and Cigarette Blues, while a strong American pops feeling is apparent in Black Flower Petal and Brown Leaves. Most of the other tracks are European and Latin hits subtly transformed by Japanese imagination and sung both in the original language and Japanese. Passion Flower is an even more fascinating transformation: it's based on the familiar piano piece of Beethoven, Fur Elise. These then are the songs you might hear on the streets of Tokyo, piped out of the record shops and theaters.
As crowds hurry by in kimono or Western style clothing they pause to hear their favorites, which belong to the world as much to Japan. I've decided to just make this a singles series, so it won't just be things classified as house.
Tonight it's Italodisco, next time it will probably be minimal synth and euro post-punk. Two singles on tonight's roster are not technically italodisco, one is american funk (check it on the zshare links before you download the whole thing. Or in addition to something if r-s gives you trouble.) and one is polish electronic stuff which is kinda disco, kinda not-quite. First, you can get/preview the funk tracks without dealing with rapidshare: Now for the full set: you can still see the academy recs price tag on the last one/first one, but the rest of them were thing finds. One great trip there, haven't been so lucky since. I can put it up in one file upon request.
Today we've got two of the most ridiculous extremes of the anglo-rave movement. First, the More Protein Sampler which is mostly an outlet for MC Kinky's decadent drug-laden rave-ragga toasting over extremely campy rave techno (she was a Boy George discovery, this is out on his label of the time as a matter of fact). Starting off with the so-awful-it's-hilarious 'Everything starts with an E' camp rave tune, the sort of thing that says more about the entire line of people that it had to get through to reach production than it does about the blissed out gang of ravers who managed to produce it. Rest of the disc isn't nearly so bad, but it's camp soulful house divas to the last. Funny thing to point out: nearly all the vocalists on the album are black, and yet all the people on the cover are white. Including Jesus. A Thing find, of course.
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Still keeping an eye out for a single. Haven't got the slightest idea why Madonna still has a career and Boy George doesn't after that, but maybe the english are a bit more attentive to their respective undergrounds and know who to punish when things go too far.
Endless Summer Band
Spiral Tribe - RESPECT TO THE HARDCORE MOTHER EARTH! Second, the 's final album Respect to the Hardcore: Mother Earth (also included is Tecno Terra, their debut). These were a gang (always 23 of them) of ravers who ran a travelling free techno soundsystem and preached a techno-holistic worldview. Essentially they attempted to fuse the early 90's brand of pagan earth-worship environmentalism with the concurrent techno-millenialism on a vaguely revolutionary line.
Still amazes me that anyone took such nonsense seriously, since computer technology wreaks terrifying havoc on the environment and requires a global class division between the poor laboring nations and wealthy technological countries to produce and consume it. Chalk it up to the self-centered thinking that dominated the US and UK during and after the Thatcher/Reagan years, or just drugs. As for the album, the tracks are thankfully more enjoyable than those of the Protein sampler for the most part.
There's a few camp tracks ('Forward the Revolution' - thanks, you educated non-laboring children of a former colonialist power) and some weird pseudo-environmentalist duds ('World Adventurer Traveller', though that might be more of a 'traveller' thing, I'm too much of a boorish American to understand all these weird subcultural deals the English have going), but much of it's interesting and the punk-infused vibe can't be denied. Certainly better they preach contradictory nonsense with some positive aspects than the pure hedonism of their Club bretheren, though pure hedonism does enter into it all a bit too often to be forgivable. Either way, it's never boring. Still looking for my own proper copy of this, something more reasonably priced than the $200 discs I've seen on ebay. A bit of googling reveals this is still available, so I've taken it down. It's cheap as hell and worth the listen if you have any interest in this period in techno.
Turning Shrines was the name of Fred Giannelli's home recording experiments up until he joined Psychic TV. The album contains three songs and four tracks (one of which is side-long) of sampler experimentation. The sampler stuff isn't of much interest, coming off like a very low rent tape collage (which, twenty years on, we now know to be what it always sounds like anytime someone without much idea what he's doing sits down behind a sampler). Forgiven of course because sampler use hadn't been much refined by that early date and he clearly found his footing in very little time. The proper songs are a bit more interesting. Are You Experienced? Was redone as an acid single with Carese P-Orridge's vocals to good effect.
The version here is an early 4-track instrumental. Mystification and Iron Nights are both good-if-a-bit-amateurish sequenced synth tracks, great inspiration to me in my own amateurish sequencing attempts. I'd guess this is all FM synth and sampler, but there could be an analog in there somewhere. Wish I had access to his sample library from the time.
Now I don't know if you're familiar with it, but 60's bargain label Pickwick used to put out weird bootleg versions of popular film soundtracks. I've got a fifty-cent copy of their Clockwork Orange knockoff, easily among my oddest finds just because it sounds so unlike what you would expect from a cut-rate version of Wendy Carlos' classic. I can't imagine they made much money off of it at the time but it provides a precedent for this album.
In the same series as the previous 'synthesizer fantasy' post, this is an earlier LP consisting of sequenced synthesizer covers of the soundtrack to the film, an animated science fiction story based on a series of novels according to the wiki. Laid to tape in June of '83 according to the insert, this is 100% pure, delicious analog synth.
Were I to guess, it was probably done on Roland synths with multiple MC-4's given the complexity of the programming/compositions and the sequencers available at the time. Could be some Juno-60s off DCB, could just be a stack of monos running off CV.
Only thing I'd be willing to lay odds on is that drum machine being an Oberheim. I've got a few more of these I'll be posting in the future, and I might try tracking some others of the series down from Japan if my limited import connections find them in stock.
The Sandals Endless Summer Theme
If anyone happens to have one I don't, I would be interested in picking it up. This is highly recommended (required?) listening for anyone who is a fan of John Carpenter, the Legowelt soundtrack sideprojects, italodisco (Bloodbath Highway, Panic in Disco), and analog synthesizer recordings in general.
This is a tape I found with the pleasant woman who sells odds and ends out in front of 'Love will Save us all' in the village. Had some good finds with her through the last few years, which i'll be posting in the future. I can only assume that the Pierre Takal credited here is the same, check out the site for more info on his current work.
This is presumably an old demo reel of his, marked from 1988 and chock full of late model analogs (filters sound like Alpha Juno/MKS-50 which would be about right for the time) and some DX-7, with what must have been a tremendous rack of samplers given the usual memory size of the period. Some great songs here (Pleasure, Going Nowhere, the ambient bits like Desert Plateau and Lawn Gone are also good), but mostly interesting to me for the technique. Wasn't sure what was what with Laughing All the Way so you've got two tracks instead of one. There's a fault on the tape on the first track, apologies but that's what you get when you're shopping out of bins on the street. First in a series of noise/pe posts I think I'll try to do. Today we have some old tape rips I've got lying around. Old hard drive is dying so I need to archive these somewhere safer anyway.
Next I'll try to put some vinyl comps into the stack waiting for a rip & post. Easily among my favorite noise recordings, never released on vinyl. Alternates between proper 80's tape noise and overloaded & self-oscillating analog synthesizers. Not a clue as to the equip but if I'm gonna roll on that gimmick I'd guess a polysix or juno type polysynth, lot of arpeggiated blipping that you probably couldn't squeeze out of a mono. Very, very highly recommended as an intro to this period in noise. Power electronics with a drum machine, heavy heavy broken flag influence on this. Check out he's been selling off his collection for years now (possibly copies rec'd on contemporaneous tape but such an amazing collection i can only thank him for it).
If anyone else was lucky enough to get the broken flag posts back when he dropped them, you'll enjoy this. Samples a speech by hitler (marked 'untitled' since it wasn't listed as a track, in case you'd like to avoid it) for a few seconds but is otherwise free of such. Judging by sound it's a homemade modular or early monosynth with a few different delay effects and a cheap microphone, maybe a hacked up consumer keyboard going off the drums. Classic 4-track material. More from the same guy who produced the Graveyard album. I can only assume that he listened to the SS Leibstandarte MB tapes and didn't get the joke, because it's PE similar to the Graveyard material with nazi speeches played over it.
Bits of nazi speeches interspersed with a japanese guy screaming in broken english through a self-oscillating delay effect, circa 1988. First side is mostly speech samples and Second side is one long analog noise track with a continuous nazi speech fading in and out and a tick-tocky analog drum machine beat run through a ton of delay. I do want to make a point of saying that I do not support whatever political message you might take from this incomprehensible mess, and staunchly support the death/slaughter of fascists everywhere. Snapshot of a time in production and all. Enjoy, if that's the word.
LOOK AT THAT FUCKING THING Medley of instrumental tracks from the earliest era of MIDI, apparently a mix of background music from contemporaneous scifi movies and anime with some pop songs? At the time, a cheap cash-in by a broke studio. Now, a snapshot of a bygone era of music production. Emulator II, Oberheim X-pander, Yamaha TX-816, three DX-7s, Roland Super-Jupiter (MKS-80), Roland HP450 Piano, Simmons SDS-9, Yamaha RX-11, Roland TR-727. Also used an NEC PC-9801 and six PC-8001 MKII's, either for sequencing or tone generation, does not mention.
'24 hour trial periods' are nonsense. Same for music as they were for video games and movies. Everything I post is out of print and unavailable aside from the used market; if you can show me to be wrong I will remove the download.
Endless Summer Duo
Otherwise, cash in or get over it. If I post links which I did not upload or rips I didn't do please feel free to comment the post or email me and I'll attribute them properly. I would prefer to do this but unfortunately most of them are things I've found without proper attribution.
Please leave a comment if you download. Not a requirement of course, but it makes doing this that much more fun.