Posset - Mump Grumpy (Infinite Exchange 2009)

Brain curdling cassette hum and buzz, this skrree takes the sounds of everyday life and turns the volume up to unbearable, in the process making everyday life into something exotic and strangely mysterious. Real freedom propaganda, this is the wobbly sound of Dali's spindly legged elephants learning to walk. It is the sound of children ransacking The City and exchanging bullion for bubblegum, the sound of spontaneous fun.

Posset is J.G. Murray, the North-East's premier purveyor of dictaphone jazz. He jams with a bank of old dictaphones and broken walkmen, ring modulators and antique effects pedals all wired together with strings of snot, scraps of sticky tape and bits of old wool. The noises he makes might not be everybody's cup of tea, but then what is?

Tracklist:

01 Children's Film Foundation
02 Coleslaw Surfeit
03 Verunk Bluaghh
04 Wooden Bells
05 The Pete Best Of Noise
06 Cafe De La Halle
07 Pekar

Get it HERE. And go leave him a message at myspace.com/iamposset

Scotty - Unbelievable Sounds (Trojan 1988)

Sweet reggae and rocksteady sounds from the very early '70s. This'll help ease you through the winter nights.

Tracklist:

01 Draw Your Brakes
02 Children Children
03 Penny For Your Song
04 Jam Rock Style
05 I Worry
06 Musical Chariot
07 Sing Along
08 Rosemarie
09 Sesame Street
10 Lonely Man
11 Riddle I This
12 Monkey Drop
13 I Count The Skank
14 Clean Race
15 Skank In Bed
16 Unbelievable Sounds

Get it HERE.

Normal Service is Now Resumed.

I've been having some difficulties since getting a new laptop (bloody technology - I was led to believe it was meant to make life easier!), I thought the problems would be over when I bought a cheap external soundcard from Maplins. How wrong I was, I recorded a couple of albums through said cheap soundcard, and was annoyed by a low level buzzing or humming noise that droned on in the background of the recordings (anyone who managed to unzip the A.R. Kane album may have noticed the noise). This has been preying on my fragile mind, causing sleepless nights, my place in the world feels tenuous if I can't deliver sounds to the music hungry masses - what would I do without the love I receive from my adoring public? All this is now resolved, I took the buzzing sound card back to the point of purchase and explained my problem and they very kindly replaced it with one they said should work. I have tested it out and the hum is no more. Hooray!

HERE is an entirely re-recorded copy of the aforementioned A.R. Kane l.p. for those of you who were annoyed by the buzz, and those who were unable to unzip the zip.

A.R. Kane - 69 (1988)

A.R. Kane dubbed their sound dream-pop, and that's about as good a description as I can think of. This music has the strange and elusive quality of something you might hear during sleep, its a bizarre and wonderful mix of disparate sounds that create something unique and surreal. There are elements of shimmering melodic pop, fragments of reggae and funk, ghostly smears of electronic noise and washes of atonal guitar. Echoes of echoes of echoes. And like in dreams there are disembodied and seemingly random scraps of the real creeping around - the song Baby Milk Snatcher may or may not be a song about Margaret Thatcher.

Check out the gorgeous Spermwhale Trip Over:

Tracklist:

A1 Crazy Blue
A2 Suicide Kiss
A3 Baby Milk Snatcher
A4 Scab
A5 Sulliday
B1 Dizzy
B2 Spermwhale Trip Over
B3 The Sun Falls Into The Sea
B4 The Madonna Is With Child
B5 Spanish Quay (3)

Get it HERE.

An apology and an explanation.

I acquired a new laptop recently (hooray!), unfortunately it has no line input to record sounds from vinyl or cassette (boo!). I certainly wasn't brought up around digital technology and I have this kind of blind faith that things should just work. As such, when I plugged my mixer into the mic input of said new laptop, I just expected that the recordings would be fine. How wrong I was, the last post sounds absolutely terrible. My apologies for that, and a rerecorded version will be posted as soon as possible as I have now found a solution to the recording conundrum.

Thanks for your patience people!

Your Favourites from Laxmikant Pyrelal (1974)

Laxmikant Pyrelal were a duo who composed over 500 songs for Hindi films between the early '60s and the '90s. They worked with all the great Bollywood playback singers over the years. This compilation album that I picked up at a local boot sale features songs recorded between 1969 and 1974 and features great singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Mukesh and Mohd. Rafi, but its Asha Bhosle who takes my top prize with this inspired piece of musical mania:

Tracklist:

01 El Pyar Ka Naghma Hai
02 Sharafat Chhod Di Main Ne
03 Mere Dil Men Aaj Kya Hai
04 Sa Re Ga Ma Pa
05 Khilona Jan Khar
06 Bindiya Chamke Gi
07 Chabi Kho Jae
08 Hangama Ho Gaya
09 Yeh Jeevan Hai
10 Achha To Hum Chalte Hain
11 Jal Bin Machhli
12 Sawan Ka Mahina

Okay, the poorly recorded tracks have been replaced with nice clean recording which you can get HERE. My apologies to those of you who downloaded the first attempt.

Warped Sounds from an Old Cassette of Arabic Music

I picked this up at a boot sale a couple of weeks ago and was initially disappointed that the tape doesn't play 'properly'. The sounds coming from my old walkman were twisted and warped and chunks of sound kept dropping out - suddenly all the bass is gone, or there's a weird flanging effect. It didn't take long for my disappointment to turn to delight and curiosity, I've now played this a few times and suspect that it might sound better now than it did when it was initially released. This is urgent, percussion heavy, bellydance music from somewhere in the Middle East, though I have no idea where. A period of neglect has done some strange things to the cassette, and this music now sounds like time has played at being King Tubby at the controls of some celestial mixing desk. Exciting stuff and I hope you enjoy it. As usual, any information about this music would be greatly appreciated.

Tracklist:

Side One
Side Two

Get it HERE.