Carl Orff! Allegedly a Nazi, who knew? I can’t let that spoil this for me, sorry. Badlands is my favourite film. Try and tell me that this piece of music doesn’t make you wanna kill your girlfriend’s parents and hit the road?

Carl Orff – Gassenhauer (from musica poetica)

Also on my mind in this brave new year – the distant past. A past I never experienced, but re-live all the time in films, records, and my daydreams. Days of being wild, well combed hair, bad girls, UFOs, whisky drinkin’, yeah yeah yeah rock n roll was here to stay… so what happened??? Here’s some tunes to play in the car after slayin your elders.

Fats Domino – There Goes My Heart

Gene Vincent – Crazy Beat

Duane Eddy – Rebel Rouser

Oh yeah and how about some freakbeat while we’re at it

Johnny Wakelin – In Zaire (best track ever, guaranteed to win you friends)

I’ve been away in foreign lands playing computer bopping music to people in dark rooms and then we had a break for christmas as we 3 wise men went our own ways back from whence we came. Now, all is back to normal. 3 cheers!

Will post up a hefty back of goodies shortly.

Happy new fears to you all!

VV.

“…a Teutonic tribe standing in the ruins of some Roman temple, playing barbarian riffs on classical instruments too sizes too small. Aerosmith’s Joe Perry once said: “When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” He must have been listening to German Oak.”

- Julian Cope

Recorded in the Air Raid Shelter, Dusseldorf in 1972, this heavy, heavy record was largely ignored at the time. Perhaps not everyone in Germany was as ready to confront the ghosts of the war that the artwork and titles conjure up.

It’s now reissued on CD with three tracks not originally on the original release, as well as a 12″ repressing of the album as it was first available. Buy it here. I picked it up in Academy in Brooklyn on the recommendation of a friend. Dedicated to “our parents which had a bad time in world war 2″, I’ve had a few interesting conversations with German friends about it, with mixed reactions. But no one who actually listens, really listens to it, remains unpersuaded. It’s relentless. At first the repetition of riffs seems simplistic. But soon, the riff becomes everything, holy, monolithic, astonishing, relentless, undeniable. A pure dose of heavy psychadelic kraut freak-out.

Here’s the two extended jams from the album, as well as another killer groove from the CD reissue, opening with a tape sample that may not appeal to all…

Down In The Bunker

Raid Over Dusseldorf

The Third Reich

When it arrived I was slightly confused as I had obtained a few stray mp3s of songs over the years that weren’t included on the set and I now had no idea where they were taken from. It turns out the tracks I had downloaded were incorrectly labelled as This Heat when they were in fact the work of Flaming Tunes, a collaboration between Gareth Williams (from This Heat) & Mary Currie. They released one album together on cassette which seems to be getting a reissue soon (according to the Flaming Tunes Myspace page). I really hope it does as the tracks I have heard suggest that it stands alongside anything This Heat released.

Beguiling The Hours

Beguiling the Hours is probably the highlight from what I’ve heard from the cassette. It is the sort of tune that would sit comfortably alongside something from Brian Eno’s “Another Green World” or Arthur Russell’s “Another Thought” on a mixtape.

Here is the video for another one of the standouts, “Breast Stroke.”

This is incredible work that appears to have been overlooked over the years, possibly because of the format it was released on.

RIP Gareth.

Moebius makes the tea.

Being a Krautrock nut, it’s quite likely that I will fire off many posts dedicated to the awesomeness of motorik (boom boom tshk! boom boom tshk!) and ambient (plink, plonk…hum) rock n roll. Today’s post from me (sorry we have been a little slack in the last week, but we have land to plough and women to attend to) features a piece by Harmonia the uhh, i suppose “super” group of kraut rock. The line-up was mainly comprised of Micheal Rother from Neu with Roedelius and Moebius from Cluster over several studio albums, the last of which also featured Eno as one of the principal players. Please fly like winged beasts hungry for the flesh of knowledge to this quivering carcass HERE.

Harmonia – Immer Wieder

Buy the album from Amazon – HERE

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Jan Jelinek turns “parp” and “oo-wee-twoo” into “click” and “pop”.

It’s very nice too.

Several years ago he made a rekid called Loop-finding-jazz Records. It was comprised of many, many micro samples and processed recordings all from jazz music records. I find it perfectly inhabits a place, a medium between dance and ambient music.

I’ve used the song below in many dj sets, it kicks click & hiss ass and the waves come over you like the ocean to a doomed mariner! Boom! Here’s a video for another song of the same album. I find it hard to believe this was on MTV…ha, awesome.

Jan Jelinek – Rock in a Video Age

Buy the album direct from ~scape records – HERE

Ok, that’s your lot for today, we be busy men. There’s women to plough and land to attend to.

Anyway, the really great thing about this film is the soundtrack. It’s never been released, I’ve heard that it’s the most-requested soundtrack of all time (that hasn’t been made available).

Spoiler warning: this clip comes near the end of the film, so don’t watch it if you really care about that. But if you want to hear some badass authentic cajun music – this is ‘Parlez Nois a Boires’ by Dewey Balfa.

Anyway the really great thing on the soundtrack is Ry Cooder‘s guitar stuff. I’m not into Ry Cooder at all, I think it’s mostly new-age bullshit. But his Paris, Texas soundtrack is usually considered to be one of the best, a weird combination of drones, slides and harmonics; and this one is even better, a truly haunting piece of music.

 Ry Cooder – Theme from Southern Comfort

Saturday Night Fever could be cited as the reason why disco was burnt at the stake. After the film and soundtrack arrived, a scene that had slowly been moving into the mainstream was now catapulted into the spotlight. Record labels and artists realised that this was a chance to cash in and reinvigorate some dying careers in the process. Most of these attempts only compounded the problem and as a result disco went from briefly being the dominant force on radio to being a despised genre.

I’d like to share a couple of the buried gems that were created under these circumstances.

The Osmonds – I, I, I

The first one is an unlikely disco attempt by The Osmonds. Unlikely because it is a dark disco classic. The 12” of this has recently been fetching silly money on Ebay due to renewed interest from people like DJ Harvey and was featured on Radio Slave’s Creatures of the Night mix on Eskimo.

Instead of aiming for over the top cheese The Osmonds (with the help of Maurice Gibb and Steve Klein) manage to keep it very subtle. The overall vibe is a very convincing mix of dark disco and rock. Ignore it at your peril!

There is a slightly re-edited 12” available here which is backed with the awesome “Like An Eagle” by Dennis Parker.

The Walker Brothers – Nite Flights

Yes, you read correctly, even The Walker Brothers had a go! This sits comfortably alongside The Osmonds’ “I,I,I” as they both make good use of rousing strings. Lyrically, this is a long way from “Stayin’ Alive”, making use of very oblique phrases much the same as Scott Walker’s recent output.

“glass traps open and close on nite flights
broken necks
feather weights press- the walls
be my love
we will be GODS on nite flights
with only one promise
only one way to FALL”

Chicago – Street Player (Buy)

“Street Player” was reviled when it was released by Chicago’s fans and the album is still held in low esteem by critics. Luckily this song was rescued by a large sample in “The Bomb!” by The Bucketheads and will be instantly familiar due to its success. Disco was consigned to the waste bin in the late 70s and it was only through house that it was able to have its revenge.

This is the b-side and is by a Japanese dub group called Dry & Heavy, this is a really hot track and I had to put it up here. Could’ve done without the crackles but hey it shows it’s been played and (mis)handled over the years. Listen for the propeller whirling above you and those glistening keys dancing around in a world of echo, almost losing themselves were it not for that solid bass line keeping this cosmic body tethered to the earth. Sweet.

Dry & Heavy – Night Flight Pt2

May Day and The Car-Crash set….

Here’s a killer reggae disco cover by Grace Jones flanked by Sly & Robbie. Really tight version of The Normal’s classic and the perfect example of New York hitting Bahamas for some disco-fed, bastardised roots and the unmistakeable drawl of Jones as she takes us though her re-telling of the Ballard-influenced masterpiece.

Grace Jones – Warm Leatherette

Shit hot. Tracks from the new Burial album. Anonymous, faceless London producer. No sequencer. No quantized beats.

The first album felt like London being drowned, a sonic burial. This feels warmer, but still completely connected to the sounds of the city. Deep electronic glows. Subterranean rumbling bass. A heartbeat beneath the tarmac. Percussion like metal sliding over metal, a blade being honed. Waking up still in a dream. A phone rings somewhere, the girl next door is singing in the morning.
Desires either erase the city, or are erased by it.

This comes in delicious double vinyl. Order online at Boomkat.

“Divine music shall always be the sound of love, the sound of peace, the sound of life, the sound of bliss”

Alice Coltrane (1937 – 2007) is known for being married to John Coltrane. That he isn’t known for being married to her is a shame. They met on July 18 1963 and married in 1965. John became stepfather to her daughter Michelle, and they had three children of their own. She joined his band, playing piano with the group until his death in 1967.

After his death, she became deeply immersed in spiritual music and continued to explore the harp, which John had introduced her to. This led to some beautiful work, most famously Journey in Satchidananda (1970). Becoming increasingly devoted to eastern religion, she adopted the name Turiya. In 1974, she recorded Illuminations with Carlos Santana, who was also big into vedic religion.

She enjoyed a return to the spotlight thanks in part to a new generation of musicians inspired by the freedom and spirit of the music she wrote. Kieran Hebden’s 2003 album Rounds drew heavily on samples of her work. She returned to the stage in 2006 with her son Ravi Coltrane on sax, veteran Roy Haynes on drums, and Charlie Haden on bass. She died on 12th January in LA.

Alice Coltrane – A Love Supreme

Journey In Satchidananda

Journey In Satchidananda

Isis and Osiris

Illuminations

Bliss: the Eternal Now

Illuminations

Four Tet – My Angel Rocks Back and Forth