african field recordings
An album called Forgotten Guitars From Mozambique is pretty much the perfect record ever for me, and Joe’s now in the doghouse since he never told me about it when we first got it in a while ago. (Joe has much ’splaining to do.) The record was put out by Dutch label SWP Records, which solely puts out a mix of African field recordings and slightly more professional stuff. The Mozambique album sounds more like a blues record than it does a “world” record, the vocals being an obvious big difference.
There’s way more amazing stuff at SWP — I’ll let Joe, that slimy bastard, speak to some of that in the comments — including Royal Court Music From Uganda, which is one of the most amazingly bizarre records I have ever heard: the lead vocals are hyper-fast and the backing music is a mix of what sounds like weird wind instruments that sound like attacking cockroaches and vibrating human voices. I can’t quite splice what it is, but just incredibly nuts. Check “Gganga Alula” for the deal.
Finally, there’s Kalimba & Kalumbu Songs, a collection of likembe music that sounds like Konono No. 1 on opium. So good.
thanks for the recommendation. i do love me some african field recordings, or any field recordings for that matter, and will check this out post haste. know what else i love? weird, atmospheric, occasionally beautiful “metal” albums, of which y’all got a treasure trove from Profound Lore. this is one of those labels where i’ll pretty much check out anything that they release, but the undisputed masterpieces that hit the site are Wold’s Screech Owl (think Tim Hecker doing black metal), The Angelic Process’ Weighing Souls with Sand (the most beautiful album that will ever crush your skull and loosen your bowels), Alcest’s Souvenirs d’un Outre Monde (think a jangly mid-90s indie rock record with double kick drums and blackened guitar riffs). there are also albums from the infallible Nadja and Atavist, plus a whole bunch of other promising stuff that i’ve yet to year.
banner year, emusic. banner year.
I was pretty impressed when I found that emusic landed pretty much the ENTIRE Smithsonian Folkways collection. That is a lot of great great music. A few nights ago I was picking through some stuff from Afghanistan, some Ewan MacColl and then I got a hard core jones for some Nasrat Fateh Alli Khan. Good good stuff.
It was the Green Linnet collection and the Smithsonian that finally convinced my oldest friend to join.
http://www.emusic.com/browse/b/b/-dbm/a/0-0/1011593147/0.html
p.s. RSS feed is not working properly. I keep getting ask Amishi from before the crash as the last post. Any ideas when that will be fixed?
I wrote a really nice post about some of the great traditional musics you can find which was eaten when the Captcha image didn’t come up properly.
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Great minds, I SFY’d the Forgotten Guitars disc just a couple of days ago. The “international” section of eMusic is a constant wonder.
Completely off topic, I know, but has anybody sifted through any of that French stuff that landed on the site this weekend? There was loads… Anything good in there?
Yancey, you should try to get ahold of the Japanese version of the new Boris album Smile. I haven’t heard the American version yet, but the Japanese version is amazing, and I think you’d like it based on other things you’ve reviewed.
On an unrelated note: NEW MATMOS TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And from the reviews it sounds even better than the last one.