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This Week's Free Song Downloads
This coming Tuesday, we get a double-helping of Konk, first being the digital release of Live at CBGB Nov 6 1981, a great, raw concert recording that captures these influential NYC avant-funk-punkers in their prime. Their killer four-song "Your Life" 12-inch (originally released in 1984 on the seminal Sleeping Bag imprint, which includes the rare "Skull Whip" version b-side) will also be available for the first time ever digitally. Here's a little taste, a Free Download of the single's title track.
We're pleased to offer a Free Download of "Together," one of the many highlights on Colour Yes, the new album from Matthew Halsall. Beautifully combining the modal jazz and spiritual lyricalness of John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders, with the stately grandeur of an earlier generation of British improvisers and composers like Stan Tracey, Keith Tippet, and John Surman, this is seriously one of the best jazz albums we've heard all year. Halsall's star will undoubtedly be on the rise.
Free Song Download of "Keep Me in the Dark," taken from the Fiery Furnaces' forthcoming album Take Me Round Again (out next Tuesday, November 24). While the Friedbergers are constantly re-imagining their songs for their live shows, here we find Matthew and Eleanor essentially covering themselves, completely reworking tracks from I'm Going Away for this digital-only album release. Surprisingly bare-boned, these versions stand on their own and are a testament to the band's great song craft. This Week's Featured Downloads
Another great find from Trunk Records, The John Baker Tapes is a compilation of sound effects, ambient interludes, and electronic experimentations that the prolific composer made for various BBC programs at the station's Radiophonic Workshop. A true innovator, Baker produced unconventional soundscapes for the Workshop, ranging from the eerie to the ecstatically jumbled, using live music as well as electronic manipulations and field recordings.
Nice little obscure jazz single from the granddaddy of the U.K. jazz scene, Tubby Hayes. Originally recorded for a cult British film called Dr. Terror's House of Horror, the master was just recently dug up and sent over to Trunk Records, who subsequently issued a limited 45rpm record of said tape, which I believe is already OOP. All three tunes are lovely, but the lead track really blazes, a slightly exotica tinged groover topped with a nice bit of growly flute, accompanied by a really roiling and clangy rhythm section. Hot stuff! -Michael Klausman
Oregon-born composer Peter Broderick has been a busy man over the past couple of years, issuing a stream of good-to-great solo records that stretch his multi-instrumental talents across some fairly stunning lyrical compositions, an approach he's also honed as a member of bands like Norfolk & Western and Efterklang. Every bit as busy if not more prolific under the guise of Machinefabriek, Rutger Zuydervelt has spent his time crafting a stream of releases that cover a wide spectrum of sound, from warm, gauzy drones to nigh-on-industrial clatter. At first glance, then, it might seem as if this pair of composers would make strange bedfellows -- one explores the depth of acoustic expression, while another seems more intent on mutating those sounds and pulling them apart. However, that's decidedly not the case with Blank Grey Canvas Sky, the pair's first collaborative effort, a beautiful and oft-brilliant album that's as strong as anything else these two have done. As with any great duo recording, Broderick and Zuydervelt engage here in a taut, compelling, and almost intuitive dialogue, with the hallmarks of their respective sounds complementing each other effortlessly. Thus, while it's relatively easy to guess at the originator of any component of a track -- like the urgent piano and string lines of "Planes" that would sound at home on any of Broderick's other records, or that same piece's enveloping, static-y drones that are vintage Zuydervelt -- the real joy here is the way in which these two manage to retain their own style while creating a work that never once feels like a forced pastiche. While every track here goes a ways towards maintaining the same dour (yet surprisingly enjoyable) mood, it's "Blank Grey" that shines above all. Opening with jarring, chopped radio transmissions, Broderick's keys gradually come to the fore, reveling in that sense of unease that finally breaks into an inspired passage of ambience, with a chorus of voices slowly building to drown out everything else. In Blank Grey Canvas Sky, Broderick and Zuydervelt have managed a carefully composed work that still managed to flow freely and with a subtle power all its own. -Michael Crumsho
Download edition of the much-anticipated Alan Lomax in Haiti box set, featuring nine hours of field recordings which the preeminent 20th century musicologist made for the Library of Congress during his stay in Haiti between December 1936 and April 1937. After you make your purchase, email info@othermusic.com and we'll email you back a 165-page PDF file featuring Lomax's Haitian field journal, extensive liner notes, essays, photographs and more.
Quite lovely solo piano works written by Cornelius Cardew in 1974, after he'd shed his status as the enfant terrible of the U.K. experimental scene in order to stridently engage in Marxist/Leninist class politics, via his somewhat puzzling ideas about what constituted the "music of the people." No doubt much of Cardew's music from this era gets a bad rap on titles alone, as giving your songs names like "Long Live Chairman Mao" (as he did on another album at this time) are not going to endear you to too many folks these days. You can't deny that his convictions were deeply felt, however, and on pieces like "Part II: Thalmann Variations," written in memory of the secretary of the German Communist Party who was executed at Buchenwald in 1944, he evinces a sensitivity miles from the bellicose rhetoric he became known for. Frederic Rzewksi, a famed composer and pianist in his own right, and a friend of the late Cardew, gorgeously handles the interpretations. -Michael Klausman
Bordeoms Super Roots 10 is finally available on these shores, the Japanese avant-noise-rock pioneers offering a sprawling (of course) yet surprisingly cohesive new track in which cosmic arpeggiating synths climb and descend over tribal rhythms and chants, with three remixes that follow courtesy of Altz and Lindstrom. When listened to as a whole, the four tracks flow together and almost come across as a 40-minute long epic.
Sancocho is a typical Panamanian dish, usually incorporating large chunks of meat and various vegetables in a spicy broth. The word "sancocho" usually describes a meal that incorporates all of the leftover food lying around that gets cooked up into this multi-textured stew, and the shifting combinations of exotic, five-alarm flavors and unusual textures make the consumption of sancocho a gastronomical, anarchic adventure. Panamanian music follows a similar recipe: throw some calypso, samba, guajira jazz, American soul and funk, and cumbia tipica onto a stage and see what boils to the top. Panama's singular geographic identity, as the fusion of North and South America with a shoreline lapped by waves of Caribbean influence, contributes to its peculiar musical heritage. With this comprehensive third installment of the fantastic Panama! series, Soundway continues its exploration of a seemingly bottomless singles collection, with some more astonishing results. "You've been moving and grooving all night," moans the singer of Little San Francisco Greaves on "Moving-grooving," the fifth track on the record and the one that blows this compilation wide open. He squeals and whinnies like James Brown, hammering out guttural ejaculations like "Uh-huh!" and "Come on, now!" like he invented them. The muddy recording quality belies the band's young age, but the bass line cribbed from the Famous Fames themselves and the firecracker funk drumming propel you out into the stratosphere, and every squeal and "Soul brother!" is pure ecstasy. The funk tracks are the most obvious North American influence on the Panamanian music scene, but Panama! Volume 3 sizzles the hottest when it heads south and submerges you in the tropical calypso and sensual samba rhythms, as on tracks like Panaswing's "Me Lo Dijo Una Gitana" and "Llegamos Ya" by Los Mozambiques. Los Silvertones' "Up Tight" is a groovy bilingual number that features the irresistible shouted group chorus of "Sock it to me, baby!" The entire record hums with fierce musical talent spread across a range of instruments; clangy percussion is most prevalent, while accordions tangle with trumpets and chime with electric guitars. Consistently ingenious bass lines keep your feet hovering just above the ground across 23 tracks, the lengthiest Panama! release yet, but easily the most intoxicating of the three compilations, and well worth going back for a third helping! -Michael Stasiak
Born in Calcutta in 1912, Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh was one of the greatest tabla players of his time, having accompanied the likes of Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan on some of their most famous recordings. He worked for the famed All India Radio for over fifteen years, and in addition to being an almost superhumanly gifted percussionist, he also happened to be equally gifted as a composer. The first volume of Drums of India was released in the sixties to showcase not only breadth of the famed tabla, but also more obscure Indian drums like the mridangam, khamak and huruk. While the pieces are generally quite concise, there's nevertheless a gorgeous range of textures and tones, ranging from highly virtuosic and jaw-droppingly frenetic showcases, to songs that seem to drift on soft, lulling pillows of sound. Drum showcase albums in general can get to be a bit of a bore, but this one is remarkably engaging throughout and a very unique listen besides. -Michael Klausman
At work now for over four decades, minimalist composer Phill Niblock hardly needs an introduction, as a solid cornerstone of modern composition who has over the years crafted a series of compositions that show a gradual evolution to his unstudied and yet still principled approach. Ever exploring the complex interactions of layered, long-form tones and drones, Niblock has maintained a particularly fruitful relationship with the Touch label since the dawn of the new century, one that has resulted in three increasingly immersive and staggering collections of his work. Touch Strings represents the man's fourth collection for the label, and while it doesn't necessarily add any new wrinkles to Niblock's oeuvre, it continues his peerless succession of beautiful and subtly detailed releases. As one would probably guess from the title, Touch Strings collects a series of compositions all written for stringed instruments. While this presents an obvious ideological theme, Niblock manages to explore distinctly different terrain throughout the two hours of music presented here. "Stosspeng," which takes up the whole of disc one, traffics in neatly understated guitar and bass, conjuring a gently undulating (and mildly menacing) sea of sound that's surprisingly delicate. "Poure," which opens the second disc, stands in stark contrast. Crafted from sweeping cello lines, this one aims for a more distinct cacophony, developing into a billowing din of hums that threatens to overtake the listener. Best of all, however, is "One Large Rose," a live quartet performance that eschews Niblock's normal production approach in favor of the immediacy of four players in a room. Their presence gives the piece a remarkable depth and vitality, as they amass tones that energetically bring Niblock's latest series of works to a graceful conclusion. -Michael Crumsho
Just in time for the holiday season, a spare and spooky Morricone soundtrack to an Italian thriller from '74 about two teenage girls being stalked on a train while on their Christmas vacation. Morricone cunningly matches the slow building velocity of the train's journey with some quite minimal and repetitive themes, with the level of dread steadily mounting as the ambient sounds of mechanical puffing and chuffing get going. Okay, so maybe you won't be playing this one on Christmas Eve, but the level of suspense Morricone conjures is simply ingenious. -Michael Klausman |
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