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This Week's Featured Downloads
Alex Gimeno (a/k/a Ursula 1000) has been building a pretty noteworthy and successful career creating infectious, genre defying music that reflects a voracious appetite and unquenchable thirst for dance music in all of its forms. Over the course of three albums, everything from flamenco and rhumba to new wave and '70s glitter-glam have weaved their way into Ursula's signature booty shaking sound. On Mystics, we hear that sound moving into leaner, more angular musical territory, and the cocktail kitsch of yore fading away. Vocalists are featured on almost every track, and the styles vary from cut to cut. Fidget house, dub, bhangra, dirty disco and new wave are all referenced and seamlessly woven into standouts like "I.C.O.M.E.," featuring Rochelle Vincente Von K, and "The Wizard," which boasts a modern glam rock edge, similar to Goldfrapp. Elsewhere, tracks like "Losin It" and "Step Back," featuring Sista Widey, incorporate dancehall and hip-hop rhythms to great effect. But through it all, the playful, unpretentious party vibe of his old work still purveys. Fans of Fort Knox Five, Cut Chemist, Quantic and the like will find a lot to get into here. -Duane Harriott
Any French pop fan worth their weight in baguettes should own this record, plain and simple. Though technically a Belgian group, the Honeymoon Killers (no relation to the American group of the same name who came a few years later) can be summed up nicely as a hybrid of Jacques Brel and James Chance; they combined classic French chanson with the aggressive perversities of the punk movement to create two albums and a handful of singles which still resonate today as cornerstones in the Euro post-punk movement. This, an expanded reissue of their flawless second album, is bursting at the seams with musical collisions. Breakneck tempos, roller-rink organs, squawking saxophones, and that bottleneck guitar sound so beloved in New York No Wave all rub elbows with dub reggae mixing techniques, ennui-saturated female vocals, and the bile-spitting of frontman Yvon Vromman, the heart of the Brel/Chance hybrid mentioned earlier. The album includes two splendid covers of French chanson classics -- they turn Charles Trenet's woozy "Route Nationale 7" into a funhouse romp straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon (and make it catchier, to boot), and they transform Serge Gainsbourg's classic "Laisse Tomber Les Filles," originally performed by France Gall, into a breakneck romp akin to the Contortions' cover of James Brown's "I Can't Stand Myself." The bonus material includes an excellent 7" b-side and the entirety of their final release, the Subtitled Remix EP, for which they rerecorded three tunes from the album with new vocals in English in collaboration with UK post-punk nutcases the Family Fodder (who were also on Crammed Discs at the time). Criminally overlooked, forever underrated, this album is seriously one of the best things to emerge from the post-punk movement of any region, and still stands up as an eternal personal favorite, and one of the most punk records I've ever heard. Any fan of Other Music's Decadanse/International Pop section needs this in their collection. 'Nuff said. Mikey IQ Jones
I've been waiting quite a while for this one. Salah Ragab and his Cairo Jazz Band is the unsung missing link between Dizzy Gillespie and Sun Ra, and this is a long overdue overview of his significant work. A major in his country's army, Ragab was also an aspiring jazz composer and drummer. After getting fired-up from a Randy Weston concert that he attended, he vowed to start the first real Egyptian jazz ensemble. Two years later, Ragab was appointed Chief of the Military Music Departments and set about finding army musicians to form a national band. The arrangements are out of this world, combining traditional Arabic scales and Muslim prayer melodies with large bebop-influenced brass phrasings and rhythms. Sun Ra is also a very obvious comparison, and it was Ragab who invited Ra and the Arkestra to play at the pyramids; they recorded an album together as well. But Ragab's music is un-mistakenly rooted in the traditional music of Egypt. These are some of the most vibrant sounds that I've heard in ages. -Duane Harriott
South African vocalist Simon "Mahlathini" Nkabinde was one of Africa's most innovative musicians and song stylists. As the widely acknowledged originator of the now ubiquitous mbaqanga "groaner" vocal technique, his deep, full-bellied Beefheart-meets-Zulu growl is one of the most distinctive, beautiful sounds ever set to magnetic tape. He, along with his backup group the Mahotella Queens (also amazing solo performers in their own right), recorded hundreds of gorgeous, rootsy dance tunes for various labels in South Africa, and went on to become shining lights in what would become the world music boom of the 1980s, featuring on the ubiquitous Indestructible Beat of Soweto compilation, collaborating with the Art of Noise, and being a key participant on Malcolm McLaren's essential 'South-Africa-meets-South-Bronx' album Duck Rock. This flawless collection by Earthworks compiles many of his best recordings from the 1970s into a package that proves not only to be an essential entry point into Mahlathini's career but that of the world of South African zulu jive as well. These recordings also tap straight into the veins of what folks like McLaren, Paul Simon, and the kids of Vampire Weekend have subsidized as the lifesblood of significant parts of their own careers. This is the real s**t, plain and simple; give a listen and hear the Lion of Soweto roar -- it's a sound you won't soon forget. -Mikey IQ Jones
Ludus was Linder Sterling and Ian Devine, and together they created some of the most uncompromising art-damaged post-punk that still to this day defies the stasis of one category. One of their biggest fans is fellow Manchester resident, Morrissey. In 1981 he wrote: "Ludus perch uneasily on the fringes of all things bright and avant-garde. Being the only sensible recipe for the culturally damaged, theirs is a name destined to be in everyone's mouth, should justice prevail. Knowing that it very rarely does, Ludus are out to at least stretch their patience with the world to the very elastic limit. And it is never denied that their music is unlike almost anyone else's." Erratic, subversive, angular, feminist, inspired -- this is a much-needed retrospective complete with extensive liner notes. Ludus is certain to find a special place in the hearts of Family Fodder, Liliput, Malaria, Crainium/Centuries, and Erase Errata fans. A must for any and all that are fond of art-punk. -Andy Giles
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