I know this one has popped up on a number of other evil file-sharing blogs over the years, but it really is too good to miss. If you've never come across them before, the Ikenga Super Stars of Africa play the kind of dizzying, funky highlife that is sure to move both asses and minds. The interweaving guitars on these two long songs never fail to send me into a kaleidoscope hypno-trance, and that could never be a bad thing, could it? And, just in case you're wondering, the file is hosted on mediafire. I've had a think about my options since all this megaupload kerfuffle started, and I've come to the conclusion that we humble muzak bloggers are but small fish. I'm really sorry to those (Moos at Global Groove, Owl at Holy Warbles, the team at Mutant Sounds amongst many others) who have had their files deleted - I can only imagine how upsetting this is - but I'm sure we're all going to be able to find ways to keep on keeping on.
It's been a long time since I posted any music from Morocco as I've been too busy trying to keep up with the gorgeous deluge of Mauresque sounds coming out of the fantastic Moroccan Tape Stash to bother posting any of the stuff I have sitting here in my living room. However, I've been playing this tape quite a bit recently and I'm loving the infectious playfulness of it all. The man with the guitar is Rais Mohamed Outhnaout, a musician from Marrakech. I can't find any biography or anything on the internet (Wikipedia is blacked out today!) but there are lots of fairly recent videos of his performances of youtube. Here's one I picked almost at random:
Fantastic electrified salsa from Larry Harlow and his orchstra with the wonderful vocals of Ismael Miranda. There is some fabulously funky electric piano stuff going on here and great rhythms that make it extremely difficult to sit still.
We're full of the Christmas spirit here at the Snap, Crackle and Pop HQ. The sloe gin is flowing and I've just thrown another log on the fire. I thought I should share the love so here is some festive roots reggae for y'all.
Tracklist:
01 The Tamlins & Trinity - Silent Night 02 Barrington Levy & Trinity - I Saw Mommy Kiss A Dreadlocks 03 Home T-4 & Trinity - Dub It For Christmas 04 Carlene Davis & Trinity - Santa Claus Do You Ever Come To The Ghetto 05 Barrington Levy & Trinity - Flash Your Dread 06 Jah Irie Chorus & Dean Fraser - Sensimilla
The music on this unloved piece of vinyl from Kenya is simply gorgeous. Twelve fantastic songs featuring delightful guitar picking and very simple percussion, this should go down well with those of you who enjoyed the George Mukabi album I posted earlier in the year. You can read more about the CMS record label here.
Any info about these artists or songs would be much appreciated.
Tracklist:
01 Watoto Hatujubui Kiingereza 02 Niko Taabuni 03 Wanajiita Sisi Wahuni 04 Baba Kumbuka 05 Wimbo Wa Uruma 06 Mpenzi Josifina 07 Vijana Mnayesoma 08 Africa Tusikilizane 09 Mpenzi Katerina 10 Ofafa Jericho 11 Samwell Ndeje 12 Namulia Rehema
Black Sun Ensemble play the kind of unashamed ultra-psychedelia that can easily slip from the interstellar into fried cliche, but they always seem to just stay on the right side of the line never quite spilling into noodling. When they break into some extended freakout or jam its like being launched into the starry skies of some far off desert land. You can read about the band here.
"It was painful for me to keep my eyes open above a few seconds; the light of day seemed to fill the room with a blinding glare. Yet every object, in the brief glimpse I caught, appeared normal in color and shape. With my eyes closed, most of the visions, after the first chaotic display, represented parts of the whole of my body undergoing a variety of marvelous changes, of metamorphoses or illumination. They were more often than not comic and grotesque in character, though often beautiful in color. At one time I saw my right leg filling up with delicate heliotrope; at another, the sleeve of my coat changed into a dark green material, in which was worked a pattern in red braid, and the whole bordered at the cuff with sable. Scarcely had my new sleeve taken shape than I found myself attired in a complete costume of the same fashion, mediasval in character, but I could not say to what precise period it belonged. I noted that a chance movement -- of my hand, for instance -- would immediately call up a color vision of the part exerted, and that this again would pass, by a seemingly natural transition, into another wholly dissimilar. Thus, pressing my fingers accidentally against my temples, the fingertips became elongated, and then grew into the ribs of a vaulting or of a dome-shaped roof. But most of the visions were of a more personal nature. I happened once to lift a spoonful of coffee to my lips, and as I was in the act of raising my arm for that purpose a vision dashed before my closed (or nearly closed) eyes, in all the hues of the rainbow, of my arm separated from my body, and serving me with coffee from out of dark and indefinite space. On another occasion, as I was seeking to relieve slight nausea by taking a piece of biscuit passed to me by H. E., it suddenly streamed out into blue flame. For an instant I held the biscuit close to my leg. Immediately my trousers caught alight, and then the whole of the right side of my body, from the foot to the shoulder, was enveloped in waving blue dame. It was a sight of wonderful beauty. But this was not all. As I placed the biscuit in my mouth it burst out again into the same colored fire and illuminated the interior of my mouth, casting a blue resection on the roof. The light in the Blue Grotto at Capri, I am able to affirm, is not nearly as blue as seemed for a short space of time the interior of my mouth. There were many visions of which I could not trace the origin.
"There were spirals and arabesques and flowers, and sometimes objects more trivial and prosaic in character. In one vision I saw a row of small white flowers, one against the other like pearls of a necklace, begin to revolve in the form of a spiral. Every flower, I observed, had the texture of porcelain. It was at a moment when I had the sensation of my cheeks growing hot and feverish that I experienced the strangest of all the color visions. It began with feeling that the skin of my face was becoming quite thin and of no stouter consistency than tissue paper, and the feeling was suddenly enhanced by a vision of my face, paper-like and semitransparent and somewhat reddish in color. To my amazement I saw myself as though I were inside a Chinese lantern, looking out through my cheek into the room. Not long after this I became conscious of a change in the visions. Their tempo was more moderate, they were less frequent, and they were losing somewhat in distinctness. At the same time the feeling of nausea and of numbness was departing. A short period followed in which I had no visions at all, and experienced merely a sensation of heaviness and torpor. I found that I was able to open my eyes again and keep them fixed on any object in the room without observing the faintest blue halo or prism, or bar of glowing color, and that, moreover, no visions appeared on closing them. It was now twilight, but beyond the fact of not seeing light or color, either without or within, I had a distinct feeling that the action of the drug was at an end and that my body had become sober suddenly. I had no more visions, though I was not wholly free from abnormal sensations, and I retired to rest. I lay awake till the morning, and with the exception of the following night I scarcely slept for the next three days, but I can not say that I felt any signs of fatigue, unless, perhaps, on one of the days when my eyes, I noticed, became very susceptible to any indications of blue in an object. Of color visions, or of any approach to color visions, there was no further trace; but all sorts of odd and grotesque images passed in succession through my mind during part of the first night. They might have been the dreams of a Baudelaire or of an Aubrey Beardsley. I would see figures with prodigious limbs, or strangely dwarfed and curtailed, or impossible combinations such as five or six fish, the color of canaries, floating about in air in a gold wire cage. But these were purely mental images, like the visions seen in a dream by a distempered brain.
"Of the many sensations of which my body had been the theater during three hours, not the least strange was the feeling I experienced on coming back into a normal condition. The recovery did not proceed gradually, but the whole outer and inner world of reality came back, as it were, with a bound. And for a moment it seemed strange. It was the sensation -- only much intensified -- which everyone has known on coming out into the light of day from an afternoon performance at a theater, where one has sat in an artificial light of gas and lamps, the spectator of a fictitious world of action. As one pours out with the crowd into the street, the ordinary world, by force of contrast with the sensational scenes just witnessed, breaks in upon one with almost a sense of unreality. The house, the aspects of the street, even the light of day appear a little foreign for a few moments. During these moments everything strikes the mind as odd and unfamiliar, or at least with a greater degree of objectivity. Such was my feeling with regard to my old and habitual self. During the period of intoxication the connection between the normal condition of my body and my intelligence had broken -- my body had become in a manner a stranger to my reason -- so that now on reasserting itself it seemed, with reference to my reason, which had remained perfectly sane and alert, for a moment sufficiently unfamiliar for me to become conscious of its individual and peculiar character. It was as if I had unexpectedly attained an objective knowledge of my own personality. I saw, as it were, my normal state of being with the eyes of a person who sees the street on coming out of the theater in broad day."
Havelock Ellis - Mescal: A New Artificial Paradise (1898)
Tracklist:
01 Celestial Cornerstone 02 Da Da Is Gaga 03 Sunset On The Sphinx 04 Three Picks In A Bottle (Somewhere Out There) 05 Leviathan Song 06 Lilith 07 The Burning Lamp 08 Beneath The Sapphire Sky 09 Blues For Rainer
The music is, of course, for evaluation purposes only. If you like what you hear then go out and try and buy stuff...or something, give money to a down on his luck musician, or sponsor a good busker, it may be the start of something beautiful.
If any of the zips die, then post a comment and i'll try to repost. And leave comments, abuse, name calling, any response is welcome.
I think all of the albums posted are currently unavailable, but if this is not the case we'll remove the offending files.
I know this one has popped up on a number of other evil file-sharing blogs over the years, but it really is too good to miss. If you've never come across them before, the Ikenga Super Stars of Africa play the kind of dizzying, funky highlife that is sure to move both asses and minds. The interweaving guitars on these two long songs never fail to send me into a kaleidoscope hypno-trance, and that could never be a bad thing, could it?
.jpg)
