Nordic Affect, Clockworking (2015)

Nordic Affect is an experimental chamber music ensemble from Iceland. A string quartet made up of four women, doing a handful of compositions all by women. Well that's pretty cool on some level, in and of itself; but that's a bonus, because it is the magnificence of this CD that demands it be included here. I mean, you could tell me all the songs were by guys named Larry and they were all born on a Tuesday, and the poetry contained here would continue to float above the land. Or, maybe there is something to it. Maybe this fact allowed for a communal energy to drive it toward fruition. Anyway, I'll be honest, chamber music doesn't take up a lot of time on the old turntable at my house, percentage-wise. I recommend this because I think people who AREN'T particularly into chamber music will really find it incredible. Once in describing the atmosphere they were attempting to evoke, the director said that it is meant to harken back, to a time when "rhythmical rhythms permeated life, be it through the chopping of wood, making of butter or spinning yarn." Yes, they did it, there is something timeless and ancient here. I might make a movie just so I can use this on the soundtrack. PREVIEW

Ata Kak, Obaa Sima (1994)

The discovery of this recording is so fascinating on many levels, but before I run the risk of information overload, for goodness sakes, if you just want to hear a really great tune, find the preview track below and check it out.

In the early 2000s, an ethnomusicologist, Brian Shimkovitz, was in Ghana studying a local music subculture called "Hiplife". One of the habits he acquired while there was purchasing completely unknown (to him) music cassettes from street vendors. Much of this music was underground in its truest sense, certainly outside of Ghana. Let's just say, you couldn't Google it. Can we even imagine? After unearthing so much fantastic and interesting music, he thought for certain the right thing to do would be to work to bring it to a larger audience. He started a website that no armchair ethnomusicologist should ignore: Awesome Tapes From Africa! The website offers streaming music for much of these cassettes that you will simply not find anywhere else, and its offerings have expanded to include other music, from other street carts, in other countries. I'm sure you will soon see if you check it out, it is brimming with more unique, infectious, and just culturally interesting music than can usually be found under one umbrella. The readership for this blog grew by so much that Shimkovitz decided to turn it into a record label, Awesome Tapes; which through proper licensing and working with artists, brought many of these artists more recognition than they'd had in a while, or ever.

The very first post on that blog was this cassette, Ata Kak's Obaa Sima, and read in part:

"This is it! ...You may never hear anything like this elsewhere. I bought this on the street from a guy selling tapes displayed on one of those big, vertical wooden racks in Cape Coast, Ghana."

Of all the amazing, colorful music he had come across, it was the Ata Kak cassette that garnered the honor of the inaugural blog post; because it was certainly one of, if not THE most unique cassette he had come across. But as his label got up and running, try as he may, Shimkovitz could not track anything down about Ata Kak, and so could not license this cassette for a proper release.

Well to make a long story less long, after traveling literally to Africa, to Germany, and Canada, multiple times, he finally tracked down Mr. Ata Kak (real name: Yah Atta-Owusu). Turns out Ata Kak had moved from Ghana, done some traveling, internalized musical influences like Reggae, Dancehall, early Hip Hop pioneers like Grandmaster Flash, as well as American soul and disco; then while living in Ontario in the early '90s, cranks out this gem of a cassette while somewhat isolated from what was going on in Ghana's own rap scene. The result of this isolation is a completely unique sound that makes it undeniably different from anything going in in the US, Canada, OR Ghana.

So they finally licensed the recording, rereleased it on CD, and then sold a few copies to us, the NYPL. And now the artist is getting more recognition and compensation than he ever did in the 90's when he recorded it.

Then there's the whole story of its digital restoration, but I've gone on too long. If you like unique music, this one is very worth your time! PREVIEW

Read more on Ata Kak's mysterious cassette saga: The Incredible Story of Ata Kak's Obaa Sima and The Art and Aesthetics of Audio Restoration (details on the restoration of this cassette).

Natalia Lafourcade, Hasta La Raiz (2015)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Mexico is, let's face it, the coolest neighbor ever. And anyone who says otherwise needs to spend some time enjoying the ways that culture has permeated the very fabric of our country, like many countries and cultures actually. Ms. Lafourcade is awesome and I'm here to tell you why. She started singing in a mariachi band when she was 10. She wrote AND produced literally every song on this album. When she toured Mexico in support of the recording, she only played venues that were landmarks of at least 100 years old. She did this really fantastic duet with Juan Gabriel, what harmonic blending! She combines musical elements like a master chef combines ingredients: a dash of French Ye-ye here (eg, Françoise Hardy's "Mon Amie La Rose,") a dollop of bossa nova here (eg: Astrud GIlberto's "Agua de Beber,") knowing what elements will combine well to create something lovely. The other ingredients in here, I can only guess; I wasn't in the kitchen. But I just know whatever is in there is delicious!  PREVIEW

The Rough Guide to Bollywood Disco (1970s)

I think if Philip K. Dick wrote a book about a possible future of music, or would it be a parallel present of music, it would be called "Bollywood Disco," and it would read like this disc sounds. The title says it all. To pick a track to preview from this most interesting nugget of globalized culture is a combination of Sophie's Choice and shooting fish in a barrel. Oh, but here's one, "I Am A Disco Dancer."

The added bonus here is the supplemental disc, which is "The Rough Guide to Kishore Kumar." Kumar was an extremely prolific playback singer. In Bollywood cinema, pretty much all singing parts are recorded by professional singers and then lip-synched on-screen, during a "playback" of the recording, by the actors. That is why, perhaps, you've watched a Bollywood movie or two and thought, "Hey, that actor sounds exactly like the one in the last movie I saw...when she sings anyway." That is likely that, it was. In fact, the most prolific playback singer, Asha Bhosle, is in the Guinness Book of World Records as being the most recorded voice in history, her voice having appeared in somewhere over 1,000 films. For many of those films, Bhosle would sing the lead female parts, and Kumar would sing the male parts.

But enough about Bhosle, she has become known to a degree outside of India that Kumar has not. Yet, it was Kumar who adopted the Jimmie Rodgers-style "Blue Yodel" to Bollywood cinema, and it is definitely something you haven't heard before (unless you have). Let me repeat, singing cowboy-style yodeling by way of Indian cinema. What in the world are you waiting for! You've got to check this out! Click here! → PREVIEW

Orenda Fink, Blue Dream (2014)

Have you ever had a friend, say, tell you about the genius of a film and how it changed their life; and then you go and see it and find it to be less than it was advertised? That somehow your friend, by over-selling it, raised your expectations in a way that caused you to, for some reason, enjoy it less? Expect too much? Well you know what? I don't care! I mean, maybe work it out with your friend; but right now, listening to this song, I just don't care. I can't!

I wish I knew the words, Ms. Fink. I want to build a house, out of clay, and live inside this song. A lean-to perhaps, out of fallen limbs and leaves. Or would it be to build a boat, out of the air, or clouds, and float in the slow unfolding of sound that is "Blue Dream." It must have been written in a dream. Or is it I who am dreaming when I listen to it? You must have slept, and watched as ancient juggernauts transformed into gossamer visions, watched mountains erode into dust, in time, and stood in awe as the whole universe just danced, danced eternally in front of you. And I am there too, in that dream, where music is magic, and everything is blue. It is my honest opinion that if you could build a spaceship and travel several billion light years, to the edge of the universe, the threshold at which no scientist on planet earth can tell you what lies beyond, you'd find that the entire universe rests in an eternal pillow made of this song. I think Cyndi Lauper said it better, "Oh, the sleep in your eyes is enough. Let me be there, let me stay there awhile." PREVIEW

Gogo Penguin, Man Made Object (2016)

You've got to love the word "jazz." To say "I like jazz" is a lot like saying "I like clothes." It's almost too broad; and many of us, as it is with clothes, like these and not so much those. I mean, the genre is like over a 100 years old! A teen-aged Louis Armstrong got his first gig playing hot jazz on a riverboat in New Orleans harbor in 1918; and though his is the first widely known name associated with jazz (please, jazz enthusiasts, don't kill me), the genre certainly predated him by many years.

In that time it has challenged itself and the listener, rebelled against its own conventions, diversified, redefined itself and dramatically changed directions multiple times.

So this is fun:

• Listen to Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five performing "Heebee Jeebies" recorded in 1926 (an early example of scat singing!)
• Now compare Alice Coltrane's wonderful meditation from her Journey to Satchidananda from 1971, "Shiva-Loka."
• Both of these are filed under "jazz" in your local record store. That's a pretty big range, no?

Even more fun, demonstrating this range using just one artist:

• Listen to Miles Davis' "Freddie Freeloader" from his seminal 1959 release, Kind of Blue.
• Now listen to Davis's brilliant, 1972 funk-inspired masterpiece, "On The Corner", from the album of the same name.
• Yep, there it is: jazz.

So yea, I like clothes, some of them anyway. Some of them just aren't "my thing." But like clothes, jazz continues to change, redefine itself, and stay, well, "fresh;" and I'd put Gogo Penguin up there as the newest thing that's actually pretty awesome, and infectious, and worth a try. Jazz, I'll be danged, you've done it again! PREVIEW

Zammuto, Anchor (2014)

Zammuto is a not-so-minimal synth outfit that really pushes the boundaries in creative ways, obviously using in-studio production techniques as an important tool in composition. There are a lot of elements woven in here, weeping guitar riffs, glitchy casio-sounding breaks, atypical yet lilting vocal harmonies, all over a tremendously effective atmospheric synth bass line. They've certainly got a unique sound. PREVIEW

 

Headless Heroes, The Silence of Love (2008)

A short-lived indie-folk studio supergroup project that happened to hit on really nice versions of some songs you may know. Take this Simon & Garfunkel song for instance: PREVIEW

 

 

 

 

Neighb'rhood Childr'n, Long Years In Space (1968)

I suppose it's more common, when we think of the Summer of Love, to think Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and a host of other pretty well-known bands. Though the Childr'n may not have stayed a band long enough to start making terrible pop music in the '80s, they DID manage to drop one and only one LP that seems to capture the spirit of that magical summer. The track, "Long Years In Space," is an epic saga built on a psychedelic drone, while the lyrics reflect the simultaneous hope and hopelessness of the era. Something is wrong, social norms, corporate underwritten warfare, the very direction of civilization; but is it too late? It reminds this listener very much of the lyrically similar "Into The Void" by Black Sabbath. And that is, the world is just too full of injustice and hate; perhaps the only logical response is to build a rocket and fly out into space, where maybe we can find a planet and settle it based on the values of love and mutual respect. Yeah, Black Sabbath said that. But these guys aren't quite as hopeless, still. Or maybe they are, but they don't want to be, and you can tell when you listen. Because as sad as they found the world, those hippies seemed to offer us an olive branch of hope. Ah, the hippie era, when music provided a reflection on society, and a dream. And here's some you might have missed the first time around! PREVIEW