na: deep cut edition

If you like to dig, the weekend haul is a great one.

Aziza Brahim, Mi Canto: Aziza Brahim comes from Western Sahara, a non-sovereign area situated among a few North African nations filled with nomadic people and refugees, the same place as Terakaft and Tinariwin, two groups that she is aligned pretty closely with, musically speaking. Aziza is also a bit of a Moby Dick to my Captain Ahab. You see, ever since late summer of last year, I’ve been trying to sign her to eMusic Selects. She has a blog and a MySpace page, which I stumbled across way back and fell in love, and currently lives in Spain (she blogs in Spanish). I emailed and MySpace messaged repeatedly in both English and Spanish, but got no response. Finally about three months later I got an email saying something was already in the works for her musically, but thanks for the interest.

Mi Canto is that “something.” And it’s good! I have heard all of the songs here thanks to repeated MySpace visits, and I wholeheartedly endorse this for you African music fans. “Regresso” is the standout by far, but the rest holds up, too.

Bobak, Jons, Malone, Motherlight: The samples sounded like good, Creation-style ’60s psych rock, and searches brought up two blog posts (here’s the second) about this record being some lost, 1970 classic. I can’t go as far as to call it a classic, but after a listen I would definitely say it’s of interest to folks who like the era.

Cesaria Evora, Radio Mindelo: This compilation collects early recordings from the Cape Verdan singer Evora. They are incredible. It feels a bit like Folkways field recordings… only imagine all the songs having been written by Leonard Cohen. Great, depressing music.

Niwel Tsumbu, Songs of the Nations: Africa day! Well, this has to be the first African album in history to have a nu-rave album cover. Musically this is not nu-rave although it’s definitely more progressive than you’d expect. It’s really weird; I’ve been sitting here trying to think of Western artists that he reminds me of, and I can’t come up with much. Maybe early Animal Collective? Try the song “Yoka,” certainly the most striking here, and then sample some other tracks. So far I am very happy I downloaded this.

Banjo or Freakout, Mr. No/Someone Great: Alex called this to our attention this morning to point out the B-side of this single, “Someone Great,” which is an LCD Soundsystem cover. (Apparently The Blogs also have this band covering Burial, too.) The cover is very earnest and straight folky, and the original A-side is pretty good indie, too.

Kelly Page, Bitter Love: I still can’t figure out when this came out (guessing early ’80s) or whether Kelly Page matters in any way. What I do know is that this is a really, really great Italo disco track that will definitely make the next EVR show.

Son House, Live at the Gaslight Café, January 3, 1965: We have a lot of Son House as much of his stuff is public domain at this point, but not a lot of live Son House. I cannot speak to how this holds up to live recordings in general for the bluesman, but this sounds pretty great to me.

Some Black Dudes, Time Off: Okay so the name got me to click for samples, but the samples aren’t half-bad. Standard indie hip-hop. I’ll leave it to others to decide its quality.