July 30, 2008

		Photos by Alison Brady   Other Music is pleased to announce that we have partnered with the New Museum Store, curating a selection of music to be played in the lobby of the museum as well to be sold in the shop. Long considered a premier destination for those seeking a comprehensive selection of contemporary art book titles, the store has expanded in its new space to carry a wider range of artist-designed editions and gifts for budgets small and large, as well as two- and three-dimensional editions, and a cutting-edge selection of DVDs and now, CDs! At the new New Museum Store, you can find unusual stationery, hand-screened T-shirts and totes as well as ceramics, jewelry, tableware, and furniture -- all made by artists. Made-to-order carpets, chandeliers, and artist-designed furniture are also available through the new TOP SHELF department online and in the store. Please come have a look and a listen and see what OM has put together. The New Museum is located at 235 Bowery and is open Wednesday - Sunday.

		FEATURED NEW RELEASES Dave Mason & Cass Elliot Elodie Lauten Lucky Dragons Melvyn Price Sonic Youth w/Mats Gustafsson & Merzbow COH Plays Cosey Kangding Ray Pomassl Ronnie Von Branden Joseph (Tony Conrad Book) Tenniscoats Air (American Band) The Individuals   Melenudos (Various) Chris Abrahams & Michael Cooper ALSO AVAILABLE Neil Halstead VINYL PRESSING African Scream Contest Atlas Sound BACK IN STOCK Victrola Favorites (Various)

		AUG Sun 03 Mon 04 Tues 05 Wed 06 Thurs 07 Fri 08 Sat 09   FLOSSTRADAMUS TICKET GIVE AWAY There's probably not a better spot in the city for this party destroyin' Windy City duo who'll be bringing their mashin' & crashin' insanity to Santos next Monday, August 4th. You know what they say, Monday's the new Friday, so get ready to get stupid and dance all night. Other Music has two pair of tickets up for grabs! Enter by emailing tickets@othermusic.com. The winner will be notified this Friday, August 1st. MONDAY, AUGUST 4 @ 11:30PM SANTOS PARTY HOUSE: 100 Lafayette Street NYC

		AUG Sun 03 Mon 04 Tues 05 Wed 06 Thurs 07 Fri 08 Sat 09 AUG Sun 10 Mon 11 Tues 12 Wed 13 Thurs 14 Fri 15 Sat 16 Cat Power Andrew Bird   WIN TICKETS TO THE VIRGIN MOBILE FESTIVAL While Europe may have got America beat on the sheer amount of big summer music festivals taking place, there are definitely some notable ones happening on these shores this year, one of which is the Virgin Mobile Festival, taking place on Saturday and Sunday, August 9th and 10th. The line-up is loaded with many favorites including Bob Dylan, Cat Power, Wilco, Sharon Jones, She & Him, Gogol Bordello, Lupe Fiasco, Iggy & the Stooges, Bloc Party, Lil' Wayne, the Go! Team, Shudder to Think, Andrew Bird, the Black Keys, Soulwax, Erol Alkan, Richie Hawtin, Chromeo, and many more! Other Music has two pairs of tickets to give away (worth $175 each) to this event, and all you have to do to enter is send an email to contest@othermusic.com. (The two winners will have to cover transportation and accommodations.) We'll be notifying the winners on Friday, August 1st. SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, AUGUST 9 & 10 PIMLICO RACE COURSE: 5201 Park Heights Ave. Baltimore, MD Click for Mapquest Directions

		AUG Sun 10 Mon 11 Tues 12 Wed 13 Thurs 14 Fri 15 Sat 16 SEP Sun 21 Mon 22 Tues 23 Wed 24 Thurs 25 Fri 26 Sat 27   UPCOMING IN-STORE PERFORMANCES NICO MUHLY: POSTPONED Nico Muhly's upcoming in-store has been postponed due to some late-breaking logistics in his band members' schedules. We will, however, be re-scheduling the performance at the end of Muhly's tour in early-September, and will announce the new date on the Other Music Web site and in our email Update. CONOR OBERST & THE MYSTIC VALLEY BAND: Tuesday, August 12 @ 1PM We will be giving away 100 tickets to this in-store event to purchasers of Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band's great new album, to be released on Merge Records on Tuesday August 5. The tickets will be divided between our shop, mail-order website and download store. Beginning at 12 noon on the 5th until the tickets run out, buy any format of the album and get one ticket to the show, with a maximum of two purchases/tickets per person.

		$17.99 CD   DAVE MASON & CASS ELLIOT Dave Mason & Cass Elliot (Rev-Ola) "On and On" "Something to Make You Happy" From the opening acoustic guitar strains of "Walk to the Point," to the rich three-part harmonies that define this album, this one-off collaboration between these two superstars sounds so comforting and familiar, you'd swear that you've been hearing these songs all your life. Around the time of this recording, Dave Mason was in the process of getting kicked out of Traffic, and Cass Elliot's Mamas and the Papas were pretty much broken up. Mason was hanging out at Elliott's house playing some new tunes he wrote and when she started to add harmonies, it sounded so good they had to hit the studio. What they came up with was quite a departure from their work with their respective bands. It's not as gritty as Mason's work with Traffic, or his later solo material and it's not as poppy as the Mamas and the Papas. Mason had just gotten off the road with Delaney and Bonnie, and it's reflected in the 10 originals he penned for this record. It's loose, rollickin', and closer in attitude to the sound of D&B, CSN&Y, America, Terry Reid and the like. Mason sings lead on all but one of the songs here, but what truly makes this album special is the beautiful back-up provided by Cass and her sister Leah. The liner notes describes the sisters' vocals as "rays of light poking through the clouds," which is a pretty apt description. It sounds as if both of these artists used the recording of this album to gain some sort of therapeutic calm and relief from the tumult of their respective bands, which is why this record works so well. It's an easygoing, tranquil album, from two troubled yet talented stars who were still hitting some creative peaks. This CD has been stuck in my player all week and even if you are just a passing fan of these artists or their respective bands, I'd highly recommend you picking this album up. [DH]

		$14.99 CD $9.99 MP3   ELODIE LAUTEN The Death of Don Juan (Unseen Worlds) "Overture" "Death as a Woman" Unseen Worlds continues its streak of timely, avant-garde reissues with the release of Elodie Lauten's long out of print post-minimalist opera, The Death of Don Juan. Born in France and immigrating to New York in the early '70s, Lauten fronted the all-female, avant-punk band Flaming Youth for a few years before devoting herself to a life of composing acoustic, electronic and electro-acoustic music, partly at the urging of her one-time roommate, Allen Ginsberg, who gave Lauten her first electronic instrument -- a Farfisa organ he bought for her from the Fugs. Lauten's first opera, composed in 1985 and premiered at Boston's ICA in 1987, The Death of Don Juan was met by great critical acclaim before lapsing inexplicably into obscurity. In recent years, however, there has been a renewed interest in the piece and it has been hailed as one of the major post-minimalist works of the '80s and "a great lost experimental record" by critics like Kyle Gann and Alan Licht. For many reasons Don Juan can be seen as both a way out of the reductive ends of minimalism as well as a great feat of musical synthesis. The tight repetitive patterns that open and appear throughout the piece are classic minimalism in the Philip Glass/Steve Reich vein, but as Lauten says, "I heard another layer of improvisation on top..." A devoted Tibetan Buddhist compelled by universal correspondences between frequencies, colors, planetary bodies, and well...everything, Lauten often structures her works on compositional matrixes she calls "Philosopher's Stones" -- esoteric looking grids of musical and extra-musical information that can be used to generate sequences of patterns, melodies and harmonies. Improvisers on this recording include guitarist Bill Raynor, Elodie Lauten herself on harpsichord and trine (a seven stringed lyre of her own invention), Peter Zummo on trombone and Arthur Russell on cello. Russell's unmistakable voice also figures prominently in some sections, in counterpoint to operatic soprano Randi Larowitz and Lauten's multilingual spoken and sung parts. Overall, The Death of Don Juan is a mysterious work, suggestive of a grand cosmic vision that attempts to include everything from the insistent, bouncing pulse of minimalism to the rich tonal subtleties of eastern music -- Lauten studied with LaMonte Young and Pandit Pran Nath -- and the emotional weight of early choral music. Lauten's investigation into the mythic nature of gender roles -- here, the aged Don Juan archetype encounters Death who is, of course, a woman -- provides yet another layer of meaning to an already dense fabric of associations. The reissue of this long-overlooked masterpiece of new music is sure to spark a new wave of interest in Lauten's work, which has continued to follow the myriad entangled threads laid out in Don Juan. Highly recommended and essential listening for fans of minimalism, Meredith Monk, Robert Ashley, etc. [CC]

		$15.99 CD   LUCKY DRAGONS Dream Island Laughing Language (Marriage Records) "Givers" "Starter Culture" Imagine participating in something called the "Make a Baby" project with someone you've never even spoken to. Such has been the introduction of hundreds of people to Luke Fischbeck, the mastermind behind Lucky Dragons. A magical-looking, friendly giant figure with short bangs and long blonde hair, Fischbeck is famous for the aforementioned live experiment, featured in the Whitney Biennial, in which he distributes strange, colorful tubes bearing conductive sensors to audience members and allows them to compose music out of the fluctuating frequencies which result from coming into contact with other participants' skin. As in these live performances, Lucky Dragons is the project of Luke Fischbeck, Sara Rara, and an ever-changing combination of participants. Not a moment too soon, Fischbeck has begun to reclassify technologies that are typically regarded as sterile and alienating, such as laptops and samplers, as interactive tools with which to create communal experiences. The band's 18th release, Dream Island Laughing Language is packed with 22 nature-inspired meditations in acoustics, electronics, sampling, and processing; pitch, rhythm, repetition, and texture; and ecstasy, peace, interaction, and unity. Dream Island Laughing Language draws upon an impossibly vast range of influences, from the birth of hip-hop to Native American folklore to Balinese gamelan. Accordingly, the origins and meaning of these intensely personal, loosely improvisatory pieces are bound to encounter vastly diverse interpretations; "Typical Hippies," mysterious and gothic, might strike someone as a super sped-up Fleetwood Mac instrumental, whereas someone else might visualize "Wander Birds" literally, imagining that Fischbeck had documented every peck and movement of cranes and assigned each a distinct beat. One thing is certain: it is impossible not to revel in the fresh palette of sounds Lucky Dragons create from familiar sources, from the elastic, plucked duet of strings in "Morning Ritual" to the Dirty Projectors-esque chorus of voices awakening like an undisturbed ecosystem in "Very 2." While it's easy to sink your teeth into the analog elements, including discordant flute duets and a cappella playground songs, Lucky Dragons also have a unique knack for minimal, electronic dance jams -- including piano, handclaps, and yes, more flute -- which have a tropical, highly ecstatic and psychedelic bent, reminiscent at times of Four Tet. Highly recommended for fans of gentle pop and conceptual electronic music alike; required listening for fans of High Places, Caribou, and Animal Collective! [KS]

		$15.99 CD   MELVYN PRICE Rhythm and Blues (Wax Poetics) "Toward Brazil" "Happiness Is..." Soul jazz enthusiasts and record collectors around the world breathe a collective sigh of relief (and anticipation) as Brooklyn's Wax Poetics rescues yet another ultra-rare gem from dusty attic purgatory. This time it's the reissue of obscure conga-jockey Melvyn Price's soulful, jazzy labor of love, the entirely self-penned-and-arranged Rhythm and Blues. Virtually unknown in his native land, the Michigan-born trombonist was influenced early on by the beatnik, free-folk movements of the mid 1960s, leading him to pick up the congas. With social tensions and an impending draft on the horizon, Price relocated to a jazz-crazed Sweden to study theory and never made it home again. He instead opted to cut this record on his own label, which promptly dove under the international jazz radar and became a crate digger's holy grail. As the title suggests, the name of the game is instrumental, jazzy R&B, and Price and company deliver just that, with much head-bobbing abounding. Manning the congas and trombone and backed by a posse of surprisingly soulful Norsemen and South American imports, Price lays down some stripped-down and grooving Afro-Cuban-inspired soul jazz. With on-point cuts ("Behind Kungstradgarden") like these, it's a shame and a mystery why it never made it much further than Stockholm. [DS]

		$9.99 CD $9.99 MP3   SONIC YOUTH WITH MED MATS GUSTAFSSON & MERZBOW Andre Sider af Sonic Youth (SYR) "Andre Sider af Sonic Youth" (Preview Clip 1) "Andre Sider af Sonic Youth" (Preview Clip 2) The latest installment in an impressively long-running series, SY Records #8 is a live jam with Sonic Youth, Swedish free-skronk saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and Japanese noise god Merzbow. In that order. That is to say, this hour-long improv piece never loses momentum or dips into the predictable dynamics of rising and falling tides of noise, but instead starts fierce and grows more and more out of control as the focus shifts from player to player. Sonic Youth start the set with some of their better guitar freak-outs, a little wobbly at first, but slowly gaining fire. By the midway point, Gustafsson is steering the show, throwing out sax blasts either screaming or sickly guttural, trading back and forth with Kim Gordon's similarly always-uneasy vocal mutters. As the end approaches, rather than reaching some sort of resolution or feeling of peace with what's filled the air for the last hour, the noise goes from organic to harsh, with Merzbow's oscillator destruction making the last ten minutes of the disc the more insane and the violent than everything that came before. [FT]

		$16.99 CD   COH Plays Cosey (Raster-Noton) "Mad" "Near You" COH (Raster-Noton, Mort Aux Vache, etc.) collaborates with Throbbing Gristle/Chris and Cosey/Coum International icon Cosey Fanni Tutti with husband/producer extraordinaire Chris Carter doing sound engineering honors and making sure there's no hanky panky going on. Here COH is essentially pulling a Matmos/AGF on her voice, collected from diary-like vocal pieces entrusted to him by Cosey, with some lines added in response to Cosey by COH -- the liner notes detail who wrote what in a cute, almost love-note style. Whether stretched or micro-sampled, Cosey's words (sung and spoken), breaths, whispers and, at one point, yells are the only sound sources used by COH. The results are a strange combination of glitchy, edgy starkness and blush-inducing intimacy. Songs and experimental tracks are reminiscent of Panasonic's collaboration with Alan Vega; there's plenty of space around the bits and pieces, which are then layered to the point of sampleriffic chaos, with repeated phrases, but with bits of Cosey's childlike melody peeking through here and there. "Near You" has an almost violent flutter in it that feels like mid-'90s Einsturzende Neubauten. "Lost" has the yell I was talking about. "Mad" is probably the hit of the album. Let's be honest, "F**k It" is an embarrassing clunker while "Inside" has the IDM phone sex vibe we knew was coming. Up next: Cosey plays COH. [SM]

		$16.99 CD   KANGDING RAY Automne Fold (Raster-Noton) "Automne Fold" "The Distance" Kangding Ray's second release on Olaf Bender and Carsten Nicolai's venerable Raster-Noton imprint is a triumph in pop songs via sound art that could only surface from the mixed media and textured aural exploration that Berlin has embodied for the past decade. It is interesting when a label that relishes in the extreme and refined niches of glitch, clicks, rhythm and tone as produced for years by Alva Noto, Frank Bretshneider, COH and Cyclo puts out an album as accessible as this. Not to downplay the experimental edges to Automne Fold, but Kangding Ray is one of the most immediately appreciable artists coming from the Raster-Noton label, reminiscent of Thomas Brinkman. This makes his second full-length a wonderful jumping off point for anyone interested in the world of uncompromised electronic music that does not know where to begin. Also known as David Letellier, Kangding Ray polishes Automne Fold with strings and piano chords that bring the dichotomized worlds of electronic and acoustic sounds to a bridge, where the resulting songs are gorgeous and lush waves of melody. Still, the clicks are nearly always present and even with hushed vocals pushing things to the extremities of the pop world, electronic fuzz is not far behind, building, deconstructing, and reconfiguring the songs as they unfold. In a holistic and tactile manner, this disc fits into the label's lineup without room for contention. A listener can fully immerse themselves in the uncompromised vision characteristic of Raster-Noton releases while enjoying the playfulness that breaks up the seriousness that can weigh down experimental electronic music. The disc is packaged with absolutely flawless design, as minimalist and contemporary as the music, and like all of the label's records, the music radiates a sense of refined, harnessed, and sculpted artifice in sound. [BCa]

		$16.99 CD   POMASSL Spare Parts (Raster-Noton) "Lovozero" "Kaskada" In many ways, Austrian Franz Pomassl's album Spare Parts, his first for the Raster-Noton label in a decade-long string of activity, sounds almost like a throwback. After all, the disc's fifteen tracks are littered with the remnants of long gone digital debris, as skips and pops jockey for position throughout to create tense, terse rhythmic structures. At the same time, however, Spare Parts is hardly a mid-to-late-'90s genre exercise. Instead, Pomassl imbues the sounds of digital destruction and deconstruction with vintage analogue electronics, grafting grainy, distorted tone bursts onto "Tandem Distiller" and its manic pulse, while the serene, almost dub-like rhythm of "Terawatt Hours" is harshly punctured all throughout by fractured oscillations and piercing sine waves. Better still is "Allied Nippon," which takes a mutated vocal sample deep into the industrial depths, drenching it with corrugated metal waves until nothing intelligible remains but a distinct feeling of dread. Far from just another entry in Raster-Noton's impressive discography, Pomassl's Spare Parts is an unexpectedly excellent, if not slyly ominous, listen that commands immediate attention. [MC]

		A Misteriosa... $15.99 CD A Maquina Voadora $15.99 CD   RONNIE VON A Misteriosa Luta Do Reino De Parassempre Contra O Imperio De Nuncamais (Discos Mariposa) "Meu Bem" "Dindi" RONNIE VON A Maquina Voadora (Discos Mariposa) "Seu Olhar No Meu" "Cidade" Reissues of albums #4 and #5, respectively, from Ronnie Von, a force in Brazilian music and television. As with many of the oddball geniuses for whom Other Music pitches wares, the truth and the legend are both so voluminous and unreal that printing it all here wouldn't do justice. But here's the short version: young man with charmed life lands on the Brazilian Bitles [sic] Club on TV in Buenos Aires back in the '60s, with a singing career that not only took off overnight, but warped at a breakneck pace, as Von released record after record to a growing youth culture. He allegedly gave Os Mutantes their name, and had them on one of his many shows numerous times as his backing band, helped to bring the hippiefied notions that the Tropicalia movement embraced to his homeland, and once had a program called Ronnie Von and Robot that's pretty much how you'd imagine. Apparently he also contracted polio in 1979, and underwent a miraculous recovery. Kind of unreal to process all of this at once, but the music helps, a scintillating mix of traditional pop (he covers the Bee Gees' "I Started a Joke," Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour," the Beatles' "Girl," and Donovan's "Atlantis" on A Misteriosa...), seriously whacked-out fuzz, pro studio orchestration and top-flight arrangements, which he somehow manages to pull off like it's no big deal. A Máquina Voadora is the more adventurous of the two, though Von never gets close to the raw psychedelia of Gal Costa or Gilberto Gil, as his wilder moments are always leveraged with easy listening pop, bossa nova styles, and the like. Yet his ability to make it work, smooth as silk, just about every time, and his propensity for jarring transitions in the midst of all of this class, is nothing short of stunning. He's your new Brazilian pop obsession, and a handsome devil to boot. [DM]

		$34.95 Book   BRANDEN JOSEPH Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts After Cage (MIT) In mid-May we hosted an event at the shop to celebrate the publication of a great new book by Branden Joseph, a longtime customer of the store, as well as a Columbia professor and noted historian. Joseph is, among many other things, a foremost authority on and biographer of Robert Rauschenberg, and now he turns his pen on one of our favorite experimental musicians (and filmmakers), Tony Conrad. Conrad's early-'60s minimalist work with LaMonte Young and John Cale, for which he is best known, is just one small facet of this amazing artist's groundbreaking career, but the excellent history, Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts After Cage, uses Conrad's life as a lens through which to view the modern history of experimental art, music and film, and it is a complex and fascinating read that covers much beyond this one man's past. (Due to the weight of the book, a small additional shipping & handling charge my be applied to your mail order. For questions about rates, email orders@othermusic.com.) [JM] A few days after the release party, Other Music's Josh Madell sat down with Tony Conrad and Branden Joseph to discuss the book, and the full transcription is now published on the Other Music blog. It's a great read in which Conrad and Joseph discuss how the book came together, and it also includes some surprising conversation about art and commercialism and Conrad's recent eBay purchase.

		$15.99 CD $9.99 MP3   TENNISCOATS Totemo Aimasho (Room40) "Rasen" "Aurora Curtains" While it would be a stretch to call the Tenniscoats' music sinister, there's definitely a sinister feeling hiding in the corners of Totemo Aimasho, their latest outing. A Japanese duo, the band wanders through meandering found sounds and fragile ambient experiments, landing occasionally in fields of blurry, naive pop songs. Much like their contemporaries Maher Shalal Hash Baz, one gets the sense that Tenniscoats didn't make this album so much as they just kind of happened upon it, gently collecting sounds in a room until there was a finished whole. But where M.S.H.B.'s free-flowing sounds can feel accidental and twee, the 12 pieces here are downright ambitious for as gracefully floating as they'd seem initially. Dissonant sine waves and buried electronic tape gurgles undercut preciousness and call to mind an understated Fennesz influence, detuned pianos and nauseous woodwinds lurk distantly behind the more present female vocals. All these weird things just under the surface start to add up and there's that sinister feeling, a lot clearer than before, and a lot more exciting to hear manifest itself than it seemed a first glance. Excellent. [FT]

		$18.99 CD   AIR Air (DBK) "Mr. Man" "Lipstick" Not to be confused with the French kings of cool that this band shares a name with, this group from Queens put out one album in 1971 before promptly disappearing. Released on esteemed jazz-flautist Herbie Mann's Embryo label, Air's eponymous record was a stunning amalgam of shifting prog-rock composition, mellow folkisms and jazz funk. The one thing you'll notice from the get-go is lead singer Googie Coppola's strong, emotive vocals and lyrics. Like Julie Driscoll or Bonnie Bramlett, this white girl had some serious gospel pipes, and from the opening track, "Realize," to the sweet restraint of the closer, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free," Coppola's voice towers over the shifting organ- and piano-led tunes. Freedom and open-mindedness seem to be the recurring themes of her self-penned lyrics and she belts out these tunes as if her life depended on it -- it's hard not to be moved by this album, simply on the strength of her singing. The band was pretty great too though; their sound is kinda hard to describe, but if you can imagine Soft Machine jammin' with Weldon Irvine, you're almost there. Air definitely leans towards a more jazz-oriented sound though, as there isn't a single guitar lead throughout the record, but they definitely still could swing, and the rhythm section had some serious chops. Even though this was Air's sole album, they would go on to be Herbie Mann's touring band for many years after. Over the years the record has gained quite a reputation; hip-hop producers Pete Rock and Dangermouse have sung its praises and Zero 7 have been known to cover their tunes live, so it's nice to finally have this stellar album available on CD. [DH]

		$13.99 CD   THE INDIVIDUALS Fields /Aquamarine (Bar/None) "Dancing with My Eighty Wives" "Walk by Your House" The time is right for a reissue of the complete discography of the Individuals -- one of the seminal indie pop bands that helped define the "Hoboken Sound" of the late '70s/early '80s along with the Feelies, the dB's and the Bongos. Formed in the summer of 1979 as the result of a classified ad in the Village Voice, the Individuals were a mix of first-time musicians and precocious upstarts whose angsty, youthful "agit-pop" existed in a small New Jersey niche that was very aware of the '70s punk and no wave scenes raging just a few miles away on the other side of the Hudson. Previously only available on vinyl, here we have the Individuals' debut EP Aquamarine and sole LP Fields, released in tandem by Bar/None, the label run by Glenn Morrow who was the band's lead singer and guitarist. Youthful and edgy, free-flowing but constricted by existing pop and punk templates, these two releases are a blend of the dance-punk of minor radio hit "Dancing with My Eighty Wives" and the upbeat pop exemplified by the idealistic, Springsteen-esque anthem "Our World." From the start, one can easily contextualize Fields as a debut that was recorded in the same studio where R.E.M. was laying down their first EP, but the band's persistent basslines, revved up disco drum beats, and discordant, jangly guitar riffs steer the Individuals down a darker, more restless path. The Individuals hit their mark when this post-punk snottiness merges uncomfortably with dreamy indie-pop melodies, as with the Delta 5-style "Monkey," sung by Janet Wygal, whose angular basslines are a solid highlight of this compilation. A total keeper from a time when going to Maxwell's each night meant having band practice next door to a bar full of after-hours coffee factory workers. Topped off with four bonus tracks! [KS]

		$22.99 CD   VARIOUS ARTISTS Melenudos (Gorila) "Cuentame Cosas Tuyas" Los Ros "No Te Puedo Amar" Los Zincos Melenudos, the title of a new Latin funk re-issue from Spain's Gorilla Records, loosely translates to 'longhair', which should give you a good idea of the sounds contained therein. Assembled primarily of freakbeat, soul, and raw psych from old 45s and forgotten compilations released between 1967 and '74, this collection of funk nuggets spans from the overlooked (Los Z66) to the ultra-rare (Ethel y Los Drakers performing a Spanish version of "Let the Sunshine In" from Hair). Other covers include Los 5 Del Este's take on "We Ain't Got Nothin Yet" by the Blue Magoos, as well as the Spencer Davis Group's "I'm a Man" as reinterpreted by Els 5 Xics. But don't be mistaken, while this comp contains some serious oddities, it is by no means a novelty record, as the majority of the instrumentalists are on par with their American colleagues. The aforementioned Z66 played a show with Jimi Hendrix and was a personal favorite of collaborator Eric Burdon, while Los Shakers shared the stage with the Beatles in '65. Whether you're looking for 15 consistent tracks of excellent unheard of funk or perhaps just some Latin breaks, this package comes highly recommended. [MG]

		$15.99 CD $9.99 MP3   CHRIS ABRAHAMS /MIKE COOPER Oceanic Feeling - Like (Room40) "Oceanic Feeling - Like Part One" "Board/Wax" Since people have been making music, the unfathomably vast ocean has been vital to artistic inspiration. On the new release from Australia's Room40 Records, Oceanic Feeling - Like, Chris Abrahams and Mike Cooper recreate both the soothing ebb of the sea's tide and the rapturous flow of a breaking wave within minimal compositions that situate themselves between free jazz and electronic trance. Abrahams has been composing and performing genre-debunking instrumental pieces with his band the Necks for a couple of decades now, and both his piano and sample-based textures on this record, in conjunction with Cooper's "resophonic guitar," create nautically nascent sonic swells of maritime magic. Cooper is somewhat of a musical journeyman himself, with a CV that spans from playing blues guitar with Son House to writing the Hawaiian chapter in The Rough Guide to World Music. Together, they've avoided the predictability of many sea-themed records that emphasize the monotony implicit to the form, as their explorations also touch on the power and fear of the ocean's depths through the use of rumbling dissonant lines and tones. These two master craftsmen have created a layered sonic experience that would do even Poseidon proud. [MG]

		$14.99 CD $14.99 LP   NEIL HALSTEAD Oh! Mighty Engine (Brushfire) "Oh! Mighty Engine" "Queen Bee" The former Slowive man continues his quest as a solo artist, while playing in Mojave 3, and as with his solo debut from six years ago, gone are the effects pedals and walls of ethereal guitar. Halstead instead relies on a nylon-stringed guitar to create intimate and warm Americana, that is, however, lyrically quite British so he's not entirely belying his roots here. A shoegaze Gram Parsons, anyone?

		$26.99 LPx2   VARIOUS ARTISTS African Scream Contest: Raw Psychedelic Afro Sounds from Benin & Togo (Aanalog Africa) Now on double LP! Little mined until now, the countries of Benin and Togo, located between Ghana and Nigeria (shout out to my fellow geography buffs), are ripe for discovery, as proved by this amazing set of tunes. These fourteen songs are even more wild and unhinged than the Nigeria series, with a decided Western rock and funk influence. The guitar work is choppy and psychedelic and the drumming is airtight, with aspiring young vocalists who appear completely absorbed by the idea of out-belting James Brown. And as far as packaging goes, few releases will surpass African Scream Contest this year, with its gorgeous gatefold sleeve, printed inner sleeves with photos and liners, and huge poster. [AK]

		$13.99 CD $16.99 LP $9.99 MP3   ATLAS SOUND Let the Blind Lead Those Who See but Cannot Feel (Kranky) The solo debut album by Deerhunter's Bradford Cox is finally available on LP. Its fairly fractured presence, gently chopped arrangements, and dreamy, lithe atmosphere break free from the stylistic mishmash of Cox's other musical endeavor with confident, brushed-off ease. Synths hang in the air, their melodies colliding with guitar and drone effects, Cox's voice lingering somewhere above the surface like an apparition. Musically he's going after a narcotic/bucolic mindstate, a sonic hunk of sponge cake adrift in a sea of Pepto-Bismol. Uncertainty counteracts itself with safety, under Cox's reassuring wing, to create a memorable album, resting somewhere between Spiritualized and earlier moments by NYC's own Excepter. Highly recommended! Preview song clips off of Other Music Digital. [DM]

		$42.99 BK w/CDx2   VARIOUS ARTISTS Victrola Favorites (Dust-to-Digital) Dust-to-Digital keep spoiling us. From the amazing and ridiculously lavish Goodbye Babylon gospel box to the Fonotone and Art of Field Recording sets, the imprint's impeccable curating skills and knack for packaging is rivaled only by the dormant Revenant. The label's latest release, Victrola Favorites, is a luxurious two-CD/144-page clothbound book that collects 48 sides of Burmese guitar, Delta blues, Persian folk, Chinese opera, jazz, hillbilly stomp, and too much more to mention, recorded between 1920 and the mid '50s. The men behind Victrola Favorites are Rob Millis and Jeffrey Taylor of the Climax Golden Twins who originally used the VF name for a series of cassette compilations of 78s from far and wide, that came with a simple Xerox insert and no tracklisting, making for an even more mysterious version of Sublime Frequencies. Quite the opposite, this expanded version's accompanying book comes with a complete listing of the performers (from Blind Boy Fuller's dirty "Bottle Up and Go" to He Zemin/Huang Peiying's mind-boggling "Blind Idiot Buys a Pig," via Stanley Roper's fascinating London field recordings and the sublime Greek folk music of Stella Haskil) and is packed with gorgeous full-color images of labels, phonographs, exotic postcards, and a vast array of memorabilia. For fans of the aforementioned Sublime Frequences, Yazoo's Secret Museum of Mankind, Revenant's American Primitive, and any of Mississippi Records' output, this is perfection. [AK]

		PHONE ORDERS Phone orders are accepted at (212) 477-8150 (ext. #2, mailorder) Mon-Fri, Noon - 7pm EST EMAIL For general inquiries or other information please email sales@othermusic.com. Do not reply to this message. REMOVE This is an automated list. If you would like to be removed for any reason, please visit: digital.othermusic.com/subscribe.php   THIS WEEK'S CONTRIBUTORS [BCa] Brian Cassidy [CC] Che Chen [MC] Michael Crumsho [MG] Max Gray [DH] Duane Harriott [AK] Andreas Knutsen [JM] Josh Madell [SM] Scott Mou [DM] Doug Mosurock [DS] Daniel Salas {KS] Karen Soskin [FT] Fred Thomas THANKS FOR READING - all of us at Other Music

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