Kemialliset Ystävät - Suurempi pieni palatsi (2001)

Here's another incredible album of chimerical, twilight sounds from our chemical friends from Tampere, Finland: Kemialliset Ystävät. This one was released way back in 2001 on the French label, Alice in Wonder records, and this is certainly a record that leaves the listener in a state of wonderment. Difficult and nonsensical on initial listens, perseverence pays dividends as their communal abstractions break out into soundworld of exquisite beauty and bottomless melancholy.
Here's a suitably wobbly video for Nykyajan Tanssi:

Tracklist:

01 Puretaan Teltat
02 Hurja Taivas
03 Kuin Kaste Aamun
04 Sinistä Hohtaa Kangastus
05 Nykyajan Tanssi
06 Tallattujen Kielojen Surumarssi
07 Vuorille
08 Sytyttäkää Suitsukkeet
09 Pieni Palatsi
10 Heikoimmista Tähdistä
11 Urasorsalle
12 Sateen Varjo
13 Lammikko
14 Katkennut Rauhanpiippu

Get it HERE.

Conjunto Sol del Peru - Musica del Cuzco: La Tierra de los Incas

Back in November 2008, I posted an album of Peruvian music by Conjunto Orquestal Puno. Its strange stuff indeed. It was never downloaded much (I suppose many people imagined it to be pan pipe music like Incantation or something) and so I never bothered posting any of the other records that came in the same batch. Well for the few who did enjoy, or were touched by, the weird sounds of the high Andes, here's another album of music from the Land of the Incas.

If you've ever enjoyed the music of Yma Sumac, then this one's sure to please.

Tracklist:

01 Wuayllas Tusy
02 Paras Shayan
03 Cuando el Indio Llora
04 Waraka Tusuy
05 La Flecha Incaica
06 El Condor Pasa
07 Quenas
08 Pockra
09 Ckashampa
10 Saerrana Ingrata
11 Pfallcha (Flor Indigena)
12 Intillay Quillallay

Get it HERE.

Mad Professor Captures Pato Banton (1985)

I'm afraid I've been having trouble uploading to Mediafire at the minute, so this great album's been uploaded to Rapidshare. Sorry in advance to anyone who finds themself having to wait to download this. But I will say, this on IS worth a little wait...absolutely fantastic British reggae from straight out of the Ariwa studios in Peckham. Pato Banton works some lyrical magic over the Professor's super tight digital dub workouts. My favourite tune on the album is 'My Opinion', it has this violin snaking about in the background that just makes me go weak at the knees:

Tracklist:

01		Mad Professor Captures Pato Banton
02		Gwarn! (Go On)
03		Nuff Kind Of Dread
04		King Step
05		Give Me Oil
06		My Opinion

Get it HERE

Rifi: Sounds of Morocco (1972)

What can I say? Beautiful, beguiling music from the Rif mountains of Morocco recorded by Iain Adams in the late '60s and released as a private pressing in 1972. There are some quite fantastic field recordings here, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

"This record doesn't attempt to reproduce anything other than a microcosm of music from the north of Morocco. The Gnaoua and the mitah players and drummers are musicians who get paid, in cash or kind. The rest of the tracks were recorded when I was lucky enough to be with a family of mountain people near Tangiers. They have few possessions, they cannot read or write, they live on what they raise and grow - when you hear their music, its hardly necessary to add that they play music for pleasure."

Check out the photos above for all the info you could want and some lovely notes.

Get it HERE.

The Indo-British Ensemble - Curried Jazz (1969)

This was a great charity shop find as its provided me plenty of enjoyment over the years. Cool jazz sounds from swinging London that would go down great at any hippy smoke-out or love-in:

Tracklist:

01. Yaman (The Colonel's Lady)

02. Lalit (Meeting Of The Twain)

03. Bhimpalazi (Looking Eastward To The Blues)

04. Pahari (University Raga)

Get it HERE.

Negativland - Escape from Noise (1987)

Read THIS. Its a good overview of the album and the prank Negatvland pulled after its release. There's also some links to related stuff. For the unfamiliar, Negativland are a bunch of San Francisco subversives, painstakingly sculpting audio collages to scramble our brains. Escape from Noise features guest noises from a who's who of underground superstars including Jello Biafra, Jerry Garcia, Fred Frith, Alexander Hacke (from Einsturzende Neubauten), the Residents and thee Reverend Ivan Stang (mouthpiece of The Church of the Subgenius).

Tracklist:

01 Announcement
02 Quiet Please
03 Michael Jackson
04 Escape From Noise
05 The Playboy Channel
06 Stress In Marriage
07 Nesbitt's Lime Soda Song
08 Over The Hiccups
09 Sycamore
10 Car Bomb
11 Methods Of Torture
12 Yellow Black And Rectangular
13 Backstage Pass
14 Christianity Is Stupid
15 Time Zones
16 You Don't Even Live Here
17 The Way Of It
18 Endscape

Get it HERE.

Mataya Clifford - Star Fell from Heaven (1976)

This is a weird, mixed up mess of loads of different sounds and styles, all of which must have filtered through the ears of Mataya Clifford during his 1970s in Ladbroke Grove. The music here is sometimes kind of funk-rock, sometimes soulful and awash with mad strings, there's some reggae influences in there, and then the whole lot has this SOUND that is very pub-rock, or maybe influenced by the Notting Hill community bands of the period. I don't know. Maybe its none of these things and just some shonky old record I found in a flea market.

You decide:

Tracklist:

01. Star Fell From Heaven
02. Black Woman

03. Things Are Going My Way

04. Amazing Grace

05. Mama (Stay A Little While)

06. Just A Little Love

07. Running

08. Little Girl

09. Lost Child

Get it HERE.

Archie Shepp - Blase (1970)

This is a great album from jazz maverick (not Howard Moon), Archie Shepp. The title track is a slow burning killer, and the addition of two harmonica players on the first two songs gives the album a whole different feel. Here's a bit of the liner notes:

"This LP was recorded in Paris in late 1969, during a flurry if activity created by the simultaneous presence in that city of a good proportion of America's finest young improvisers. Under the aegis of the BYG organisation they found their way into the recording studio in a variety of combinations; not the least impressive result was a series of three BYG albums by the much-recorded Archie Shepp, of which 'Blase' is one.
By the time of this date, Shepp was one of the better-known standard bearers of the avant-garde. He had been a member of the short-lived but influential New York Contemporary Five (with Don Cherry, John Tchichai and Sunny Murray), he had published several anti-Establishment broadsides in the widely read American Jazz magazine Downbeat (one, in which he compared the function of his saxophone to that of the machineguns of the Viet Cong, brought down the wrath of half the publication's subscribers), and he had enjoyed the patronage of John Coltrane, who had not only made Shepp a part of his important 'Ascension' recording, but had secured the tenorist a recording contract with his own label, leading to brilliant LPs like 'Four for Trane', 'On This Night', and 'Fire Music'".

Lester Bowie: Trumpet
Dave Burrell: Piano
Philly Joe Jones: Drums
Julio Finn: Harp
Chicago Beau: Harp
Jeanne Lee: Voice
Archie Shepp: Tenor Saxophone

If you're impressed by Dave Burrell's beautiful piano playing throughout this album, then make sure you check out his free-jazz reinterpretation of Puccini's 'La Vie de Boheme', which I posed about a year ago.

Tracklist:

01. MY ANGEL
02. BLASE
03. THERE IS A BALM IN GILEAD
04. SOPHISTICATED LADY
05. TOUAREG

Get it HERE.