Expand your taste in music. Based in Beijing, China.
This album is magnificently weird. Imagine a band out of Thailand with minimal, ghostly musicianship, slightly ghoulish, off key vocal dronings, the plinky-plonking of piano and spoken words that sound like it might have been influenced by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. This sublime mixture comes from the band a world wondered full, and I have to saw that the album is creepy gorgeousness to it. I’m now a convert to their music.
It is with a heavy heart that we have to report the passing of Dino, one of the pioneers of Taiwan’s noise scene. This squealing, squelchy noise masterpiece was released on Bandcamp in May of 2021 on Karma Detonation Tapes out of Taipei. May his memory be eternal.
HT: Stacy Lipp.
Our dear friends and CPL-Musik stun us again with a popping single! Some info from the band’s Bandcamp site:
Divanhana is a Bosnian sevdah band which performs traditional music in new arrangements created under the influence of jazz, pop and the 20th century classical music. Divanhana’s intention is to cherish and present the urban traditional music not only from Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also the traditional music from the whole Balkan region, with a particular accent to Sevdalinka.
The music is far more energetic, though less sultry, than a lot of Sevdalinka I’ve heard previously, but it’s a joyful listen.
You can pick up the single from the CPL-Musik website, or you can stream via Spotify or Qobuz (which I prefer far more). The track is part of the album, Zavrzlama, which you can read about here, courtesy of World Music Central.
Now and again I stumble onto something pleasant, even if there is no CD or download available (yet) of the artist’s music. Nigar Marjanova (see her Youtube channel here) is a jazz singer out of Baku, Azerbaijan, a country known for producing some rather fine musicians (think of Vagif Mustafazade and his daughter, Aziza). I like that her voice is incredibly relaxing, a pleasure to hear. If she has the opportunity to produce a proper album in the future, we’ll be happy to share it.
This is a curious release. Cergy-Pontoise are an Italian duo, and their albim starts out with drone-y ambient sounds but then falls into atmospheric progressive-folk at times, sounding like a better recorded lo-fi artist out of New Zealand, perhaps. There are also elements of space rock, prog and psychedelic music in this. It’s a mixed bag in the positive sense of the word.
From July of 2021 we have a release from the French ambient project Esmez. The gentle, dulcet sounds of each of these four tracks have made for very pleasant Sunday listening, and would really appeal to fans of Brian Eno’s earlier ambient works.
For Esmez’s motivations on making the album, consider visiting their Bandcamp site.
Iceland is one of those countries who seem to produce musicians at an incredible rate in comparison to the size of its population. Atli Örvarsson is one of a handful of gifted soundtrack composers to hail from the island nation, and is the first one I can think of who doesn’t originally come from the capital, Reykjavik. He is now a Los Angelino pursuing a career in composition, and is becoming well-known for his scores.
The standout track for me on this album is one titled Anka & Robert, which reminds me of a meaty slab of post-Industrial ambient. The music has a dark ambiance and sounds magnificent even without visual accompaniment.
During the next few weeks, I’ll be catching up on releases I could not get to in 2021. This one is really a gem that I’m surprised I didn’t get to earlier, but thanks to Jeff Gburek reminding me of it, I can happily present this release he did in collaboration with another one of the blog’s dear friends, George Christian.
The two tracks which go under the name The Charles Ives Observatory (Parts 1 and 2) bookend the centerpiece of the album, the 28-minute opus Magellanic Clouds. The CIO tracks have the feeling of classic-era electroacoustic music imbued with energy and, dare I say, a touch of humor, but also an element of something that would not have sat out of place in one of Pink Floyd’s early album period, when they were far more a psychedelic band and less a blues-rock project, whereas the centerpiece allows Gburek’s synthesizer and zither and George Christian’s organ to flow into each other, again, in a way that reminds me of really good psychedelic music circa 1968 to 1973.
Credit to Ulka Pind Records out of Bhopal, India, for publishing the music. I look forward to learning more about their catalog as time passes.
This gem, released by Buda Musique, came out on May of 2021, and it’s simmering!
Balkan Taksim is the corduroy-clad brainchild of Bucharest-based multi-instrumentalist/artist Sașa-Liviu Stoianovici who, along with his electronica producer companion Alin Zăbrăuțeanu, is on a quest to inform, educate and entertain audiences around the globe about Balkan psych, roots and grooves.
The project started by searching for something to link the sense of what has been with what will be. Sașa’s exploration of traditional music of the Balkans, ancient Romanian music and Slavic cultures led him to travel a lot through the region and work with local singers and musicians to record the traditional tunes he later reworked with contemporary electronica sounds, heavy bass and powerful beats.
The music is not a corny pastiche of electronic music with a few horns thrown inside the mix. This is a sincere and well-balanced album. Sașa is weaving some gold together here.
Czech vocalist and cellist Dorota Barová is a new name for me, but her rather glorious voice brings up memories of Portuguese singers like Teresa Salgueiro, who you might remember as the lead singer of Madredeus. Barovà has had an impressive career, as her first album, the award-winning debut “Iluzja” (Anděl Award), propelled her to fame in the Czech indie music scene. Her sophomore release, Dotyk (Touch), brings a collection of new songs and lyrics authored by Barová, which she recorded in trio with guitarist Miroslav Chyška (member of Illustratosphere, J.A.R. and Sexy Dancers) and bass guitarist Miloš Klápště (known for his collaboration with Aneta Langerová, MarZ, Janoušek-Wroblewski Quartet, Beata Hlavenková).
Curiously, the album is sung entirely in Polish. Her phrasing makes the language sound elegant even to foreign ears like mine. The lyrics are inspired by the poet Krzystof Kamil Baczyński and the author and journalist Teresa Drozda. It’s pleasing to hear such a cross-country endeavor like this.
To hear samples from the album and to purchase the CD, MP3 or WAV files, you can go to Animal Records’ website, and for further inquiries, go to HM Management.