B12: "B12 Records Archive Volume 1" (B12, 2008)

B12 are one of the UK techno scene's longest serving and most cherished production units, playing a highly influential role in the development of what became known as IDM with their releases on Warp's 'Artificial Intelligence' series. Their location in Birmingham situated them close to the source of the first Detroit techno imports and their sound quickly assimilated the chiming synthetic soul and dancing machine beats of the Motor City into their own brand of UK techno and electronica. The first CD of tracks from the lauded B12 archive includes the seminal 'Musicology' EP under their early pseudonym of the same name, bearing the Rob Hall favourite 'Metropolis', the soul warming Carl Craig alike 'Obsessed' alongside 'Fear Of Expression' and 'Telefone 529', both highlights of their 'Artificial Intelligence' installment. For the hardcore fans there's also a couple of unreleased bonus cuts on 'Ming' and 'Eiyla', two lush old-skool electronica tracks that couldn't have come from anywhere else but the hands of B12. The second CD is another treat for any fans of the original techno sound, with all four tracks from the original 'Space Age' EP under their 2001 alias included in fully remastered glory, saving you from shelling out daft money on one of the super limited vinyl copies. Producers simply don't make tracks like these any more, and despite being completely of it's time, this stuff still raises the hairs on the back of your neck with synth induced ease, from opener 'Space Age' sounding like anything from Ae's 'Incunabula' or 'Rings Of Saturn' sounding like some skewed refraction of the Detroit sound in their inimitable style. The two bonus tracks were originally recorded in 1992, with 'Colloid' being worthy of note for sounding like something from this weeks Marc Houle album, only 16 years ahead of it's time, and a hell of a lot deeper. If you want to dig a bit deeper than your Artifical Intelligence albums then this is a brilliant place to start. Beautiful techno.

Taken from http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=147640

Jazz & Improv TV: Ornette Coleman

En la emisión de hoy, el cuarteto de Ornette Coleman en una actuación en Roma, registrada por la RAI, en el año 1974. El tema interpretado es "School Work", que más tarde se convertiría en la base de "Dancing in Your Head".
Le acompañan James Ulmer a la guitarra, Sirone al bajo y Billy Higgins a la batería.

BBC Radiophonic Music (1962-70)

BBC Radiophonic Music was the first compilation of music released by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. It featured music by three of the Workshop's most prominent composers, John Baker, David Cain, and Delia Derbyshire. The music varied between incidental music and signature tunes, which had been used by various BBC programmes, as well as some radio jingles. The selection demonstrated many of the methods used by the composers at the Radiophonic Workshop, including musique concrète tape editing and their use of primitive early electronic oscillators. It featured mostly original compositions, except for Baker's arrangements of the traditional "Boys and Girls" and "The Frogs Wooing", and Derbyshire's version of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Air". In 2002 the compilation was remastered by Mark Ayres, and re-released with two bonus Derbyshire songs; the original composition "Time to Go" and her version of "Happy Birthday". The album was originally released in 1968 for use as library music, but later given a commercial release in 1970 on the new BBC Records label.

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BBCRadiophonicmusic.jpg

Punk TV: Crime

Voy a iniciar una nueva sección con este vídeo en directo del grupo punk californiano Crime.
El tema en cuestión es "Baby, you're so repulsive".
Para el que no quiera esperar a próximas emisiones:
http://fataltv.blogspot.com/

These Wonderful Evils

Muy bueno este grupo de Chicago formado por Zak Boerger, Dan Hyatt y Alex Killough.

Hasta ahora sólo he podido escuchar las canciones que tienen colgadas en su myspace y algunas otras desperdigadas por la red(http://www.myspace.com/thesewonderfulevils), pero ya tienen publicado su primer disco, con el título "Regine Flory", en la discográfica Sparrows & Wires; además de un CD-R autoeditado de título homónimo. Los dos se pueden conseguir en su página web: http://www.thesewonderfulevils.com/evils/

Merece la pena investigarlos.

Les dejo una reseña publicada en la siguiente página:

http://bolachasgratis.baywords.com/?p=3607

This is in fact the debut album of this Chicago trio (or is it just one man with some guest accompaniment…the plot thickens), and it is well worth a listen. This is another band whose hauntingly subtle sound pays heavy homage to the many other Middle American greats. With buzzing, growling chords suspended on wisps of singing feed back the album opens with a nicely crooned dark ballad. The rest of the album continues in this incredibly sparse sound and ploddingly meditative tempos that are always accompanied with very well placed strums. This is a definite gem of an album for those who still enjoy the solitary sounds of a man and his guitar.
The real beauty on this one comes from the range in tones used; from the incredibly muscular overdriven tones of the opener to the much more ethereal acoustic and a capella ponderings interspersed among the remaining tracks. The effects are pleasantly minimal, reverb, fuzz, and maybe a hint of tremolo, but always the pure tone of the guitar and voice is the emphasis. This is definitely one you must check out if you are into earlier Songs: Ohia, Pearls Before Swine, or Skip Spence as this is probably the best release of this ilk that I have heard since Pyramid Electric Company. 8/10 – Kevin Richards (17 December, 2008)

The Higher State: "From 'Round Here" (Teen Sound, 2006)

Una auténtica orgía de sicodélicos jingle-jungles y fuzz-tones que incrementan tus ansias de agitarte, torbellinos de farfisa que te engullen y voces que te trasladan a los grandes tiempos de finales de los 60. Y es que no es para menos cuando detrás de este grupo nos encontramos a los maestros de la talla de Mole (miembro de los Embrooks y ex-Mystreated) y Marty Ratcliffe (ex-Mystreated) , cuyo único objetivo fue juntarse junto con sus amigos de siempre para divertirse y hacer la música que más les gusta.

La música que vais a encontrar es un auténtico sonido West Coast con titntes garajeros. Catorce temas, doce de ellos originales y 2 versiones , ninguno de ellos tiene desperdicio y muchos de ellos pasarían por ser auténticos clásicos de los 60 si se hubieran grabado entonces, tenlo por seguro. Ahí pues teneis una de esas joyas que sólo pasan una vez en la vida. Que ustedes lo disfruten.

Reseña algo exagerada sacada de: http://trashsistors.blogspot.com/2008/04/higher-state-from-round-here.html

The Ladybug Transistor: "Can't Wait Another Day" (Merge, 2007)

A grupos como The Ladybug Transistor se les suele racanear elogios y atención mediática por su filiación sixties, por ser un grupo del “palo” que apenas es saboreado por los devoradores de vinilos más excelsos y más listillos. Y a pesar de contar con muy buenos discos y con canciones excelentes a cascoporro, nunca han salido del ghetto indie pop donde se encuentran.

Pues bien, esto debería cambiar con “Can’t Wait Another Day”, un disco que deja atrás ese amor por los sesenta que no era tan enfermizo como decían, para adentrarse en ese pop atemporal, ese que es capaz de picotear en un buen número de referencias sin perder un ápice de personalidad. ¿El secreto? El tono grave e inconfundible de la voz de Gary Olson (alma mater de The Ladybug Transistor y algo así como un Lee Hazlewood moderno), y la facilidad para los arreglos que tiene este espigado Juan Palomo del indie yanqui. Olson mira ahora hacia el mejor pop mainstream del mundo, el de The Carpenters (“Lord, Don’t Pass Me By”), el de The Cars (“This Old Chase”), el de Prefab Sprout (“Always On The Telephone), y encima aun tiene tiempo para plantarle cara otro de los héroes del pop sin fecha de caducidad, Richard Hawley, en la conmovedora “Terry”, cumbre de un disco casi perfecto.

Autor de la reseña: Xavi Sánchez Pons.

Nick Cave: "From Her to Eternity" (Elektra, 1984)

From Her To Eternity es el álbum de debut de Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. Fue editado en 1984, tras la disolución de la anterior banda de Cave, The Birthday Party. En realidad varios de los temas habían sido compuestos para ser grabados en un hipotético nuevo álbum de esa banda.

En la banda de este álbum, que es la primera formación de los Bad Seeds, se encuentra Anita Lane, la por entonces novia de Cave, que además colabora en la composición de algunas de las letras.
El álbum incluye como single una versión de In The Ghetto, primer síntoma de su fijación por la etapa más decadente de Elvis.
También se incluye un versión de Avalanche, tema de Leonard Cohen al que Nick Cave profesa una gran admiración.

El tema A Box For Black Paul trata sobre la ruptura de The Birthday Party.

Este disco acaba de ser reeditado por Mute, junto con otros álbumes del mismo autor. Buen motivo, pues, para recordarlo.

(La mayor parte de esta reseña está sacada de http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Her_to_Eternity).

Björn Olsson: "UPA" (Gravitation, 2001)

As founding member of retro-psych hipsters Soundtrack Of Our Lives, and prior to that Swedish legendaries Union Carbide Productyions, Bjorn Olsson has established a cozy little niche for himself in the Swede rock world. Yet, after Soundtrack’s excellent 1997 full-length Welcome to the Infant Freebase, Olsson split from the touring faction of the band, deciding instead to focus on solo material.
UPA, Olsson’s latest offering, is a complex and vivid journey through Bacharach-inspired orchestral pop and soothing psychedelia. Assembling a group of 16 musicians, Olsson assumes the position of master composer, creating what Brian Wilson referred to as “pocket symphonies” of sound. Though not shrouded in pop harmonies, Olsson’s work echoes Wilson’s in its warm atmospherics and intricate instrumental layering.

Taken from http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/549.

Angel: "Hedonism" (Mego, 2008)

This is technically the fourth release by Angel, but is in actuality the first recording produced by Dirk Dresselhaus and Ilpo Väsiänen as a duo -- a project which started in 1999. Five years in the making and started before Hildur Guðnadóttir joined forces, Hedonism is a collision of urban and rural settings. The opening five blistering tracks retain a full-on sci-fi punk feel, created in Dirk's Berlin studio. Tracks such as "Holding Loose" and "Adrenaline Strike" are brutal urban mantras bristling with energy. These are followed by electro-acoustic exercises manipulating various concrete sources, leading up to the final two pieces recorded at Ilpo's lakeside cottage in the wilds of northern Finland. Here, fragile field recordings of insects, fish eating mosquitos, and birds mesh with the duo's shiny electronics to create the massive "Mirrorworld." The closing "Hornet," while stating a calm atmosphere, has a somewhat startling surprise in store for the listener.

(Taken from http://www.theomegaorder.com/s.nl/it.A/id.22937/.f).

Harry Pussy: "You'll Never Play This Town Again: Live, Etc. 1997" (Load, 2008)

From its formation in 1992 until its 1997 split, Miami scuzz trio Harry Pussy--guitarists Bill Orcutt and Dan Hosker, alongside screamer/drummer Adris Hoyos--practiced a particularly pithy, violent form of noise punk. You'll Never Play This Town Again, which collects assorted out-of-print vinyl recordings circa '97, documents a delicious psychosexual tension between these players: again and again, Orcutt and Hosker fat-finger their phallus-like axes with porn-star intensity while Hoyos' out-of-breath geek-girl veneer slips to reveal inhuman, Linda Blair-in-The Exorcist vocal malfeasance. Eighty minutes of this panic-attack fare would grate if the task of distinguishing songs and various takes were easier; thankfully, though, brevity was one of Harry Pussy's many virtues. The band also had a sense of humor, leavening its smoldering canker-sore aesthetic with random stage banter and unlikely covers.
Immediately following a raw live version of "Chuck!"--feral yelps straddling quick, tuneless riffs like bucking broncos--Hoyos declares, "We're the Toxic Drunks, and we have Harry Pussy records and T-shirts for sale." The five versions of "Smash the Mirror" here range from suggestively and to-the-point blunt in January '97 (the swift-thrusting guitars seeming to presage Hoyos' abbreviated barks) to giggly staggered and shambled that May. A bashing, shouting take on Kraftwerk's "Showroom Dummies" sounds nothing like the original, while the handful of "Mandolin" incarnations display the trio's nascent ability to carve a contemplative, art-rock sensibility out of zippy chaos. Ultimately, Town's nerve-jangled no-wave sear comes off as straight Lower East Side 1980, right down to the sparse smatterings of applause that trailed the live performances and Hoyos' hippie-mocking poetry on "Peace of My Ass," adding an extra layer of disorientation to this grandly spasmic enterprise. Harry Pussy's spirit lives on in any number of noise and underground extremists, but it's hard not to wish the trio kept it carnal cacophony going.

(Taken from http://www.citypaper.com/music/review.asp?rid=14159).

Marianne Faithfull: "Easy Come Easy Go" (Naïve, 2008)

Ruta 66 (Spain) // Album of the Month // Nov 08

“Easy Come Easy Go – Conveniently highlighted as 18 songs for Music Lovers is a Master piece extremely rich on its concept and content. (…) A music quiz full of magic and mystery. (…) Defining this record as a Master piece is not enough, not enough at all”.

Bon Iver: "For Emma, Forever Ago" (Jagjaguwar/4AD, 2007)

The biographical details behind the creation of an album shouldn't matter when it comes to a listener's enjoyment, but For Emma, Forever Ago, Justin Vernon's debut as Bon Iver, exudes such a strong sense of loneliness and remoteness that you might infer some tragedy behind it. So, to skirt the rumor mill, here are the particulars, as much or as little as they might apply: In 2005, Vernon's former band DeYarmond Edison moved from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to North Carolina. As the band developed and matured in its new home, the members' artistic interests diverged and eventually the group disbanded. While his bandmates formed Megafaun, Vernon-- who had worked with the Rosebuds and Ticonderoga-- returned to Wisconsin, where he sequestered himself in a remote cabin for four snowy months. During that time, he wrote and recorded most of the songs that would eventually become For Emma, Forever Ago.
As the second half of its title implies, the album is a ruminative collection of songs full of natural imagery and acoustic strums-- the sound of a man left alone with his memories and a guitar. Bon Iver will likely bear comparisons to Iron & Wine for its quiet folk and hushed intimacy, but in fact, Vernon, adopting a falsetto that is worlds away from his work with DeYarmond Edison, sounds more like TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe, not just in his vocal timbre, but in the way his voice grows grainier as it gets louder.

(Taken from http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/45817-for-emma-forever-ago).

Jed Speare: "Sound Works 1982-1987" (Family Vineyard, 2008)

Born in 1954 in Boston, Speare’s trajectory takes in composition study, acoustic communication, ecology and design, hearing conservation, photography, film, historical research, alliances with text-sound poets, and writing, among others. He’s multimedia avant la letter, insofar as when listening to this disc, or reading the liner notes, Speare comes across as an artist who thinks first, acts second, and doesn’t necessarily give a damn about where his productions might be placed within any putative field. On Sound Works: 1982-1987, you primarily hear Speare the magnetic reel cadet, as it collects tape compositions from that most inauspicious of decades, some of which were constructed with collaborations and performances in mind.
Speare’s tape pieces are concrète in the most literal, tactile sense. He privileges dislocation from acoustic origin via analogue means and hand-cranked manipulation. This means his sounds carry the ghost presence of the familiar within their mutant genes. For 1982’s At the Falls, an attempt to create “an ambience like water” without using “any water sounds,” this means the displaced source material goes through a sequence of abstractions only to be called to attention as an imitation, or approximation, of nature at its least abstract.

Levon Helm: "Dirt Farmer" (Vanguard, 2007)

Fantástico álbum de Levon Helm, antiguo batería de The Band, como todos sabreis. Para escuchar una y otra vez, un disco de largo recorrido.

Benga: "Diary from an Afro Warrior" (Tempa, 2008)

One of the scene's youngest and brightest talents finally drops off his debut album proper for Tempa, and needless to say, it's mucking fassive. Benga has been an integral cog in the dubstep machine since the genres inception, producing his first genre defining e.p at the tender age of 16, with 'Skank/dose' on the original dubstep label, Big Apple, and has since proceeded to rule the scene with a slew of irrefutably influential releases for everyone from Planet Mu to Hot Flush, and his own Benga Beats imprint. Alongside his school pal Ollie Jones, aka Skream, Benga has come to define this particularly virulent and effective strain of the the hardcore continuum known as dubstep, marrying a rudeboy raving attitude with a devastatingly raw production talent and passion for bass to come up with the freshest dancefloor sound currently coming out of the UK right now. Kicking off with the jazzing juxtaposition of 'Zero M2', the CD moves through outright anthem 'Night' onto the massive 'B4 the dual', placing Moondog style big band wind instrumentation over a skipping Benga special, with unreal effects. Why isn't this on the vinyl copy fo f*cks sake?!?! Again, another CD only cut, 'someone 20' shows another previously unheard side to benga, with a slack and moody electro disco cut sounding quite unlike anything we've ever heard from him before. The album moves through more anthems on 'Crunked up' before arriving at electro hardcore beast 'go tell them' sounding like it could have come from Luke Vibert's Spac Hand Luke project. In the albums final 3rd, the lights are dimmed for the awesome run of 'emotions' (the b-side to 'night'), followed by '3 minutes' and the tranced out minimalism of 'pleasure', indicating very exciting new directions for dubstep as it embraces the funky house and techno scenes and moves slightly away from the skunked out rave bliss of yesteryear.

Taken from http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=72138