Month: March 2023

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Willos’ – From Now On

Willos’ are an Italian/Irish/Canadian folk band currently based in lovely Siena, Italy.  The name of the band is a play on Will o’ the Wisp, the band’s original name.  According to their bio, a French journalist that named the band “les willos”, it the name stuck.

The music is bright, fresh, and it would have been brilliant to play this four days ago on St. Patrick’s Day, but it’s perfect music to brighten up our rather dour weather here locally.  For those of you who enjoy bands like The Chieftains, Craobh Rua and Planxty, you’re going to enjoy the hell out of this.

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Tündra – Voces del Desarraigo (Voices of the Uprooting)

Tündra are a massively interesting bands from La Rioja, Spain, mainly famous for its red wine and its location on the Camiño de Santiago.  The music shows traditional Iberian and Celtic roots, and one can hear influences from bands like Milladoiro and Dead Can Dance in pieces here and there.  It’s a stunningly good album.

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Marin Škrgatić – Dawn of the Yugoslavian Prog​-​Rock Era Unreleased radio recordings 1970​-​1976

Marin Škrgatić was a singer and bandleader of Croatian extraction whose work here should have been given a wider audience during the 1970s.  If you can believe it, according to Everland Music’s Bandcamp site, some of these songs were too progressive, if such a thing could ever exist.  The tracks are not only influenced by prog, but you can hear jazzy and operatic elements in some of the tracks.  This is an undisputed gem of Yu-Rock.

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Cinnamon Soulettes – I’ll Show You How

This is some beautiful soul from the Pacific Northwest.  The Cinnamon Soulettes were, apparently, from Seattle and recorded this private single sometime during the 1970s, but according to the Bandcamp site, “Unfortunately, most information the estate had was lost in a flood and none of the collectors and music historians from the PNW area we contacted, nor the University of Washington State who inherited a large part of (producer Kearney) Barton’s tape collection knew anything about the band or its mysterious songwriter “L. Leavy.””  With luck, L. Leavy will be found and properly compensated.

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O Yuki Conjugate – A Tension of Opposites Vols 3 & 4

O Yuki Conjugate are among the top-tier post-Industrial/experimental projects of the past 40 years, and it’s been an amazing experience going over their catalog over the past few weeks in my personal collection.  This is archival material and a complement to A Tension of Opposites Vols 1 & 2.  From the band’s Bandcamp site:

“Two years after the first two volumes of A Tension of Opposites (ATOO) were issued OYC return to the form they created to house their looser more exploratory works. ATOO allows them to expand their musical horizons and release their music more expediently.

The original ATOO was born out of 2020’s virus state where both OYC members were left working in isolation. Two types of music emerged spontaneously, and rather than try to combine them OYC decided to present the results separately, two sides of a contrasting whole.

In need of a suitable format and frustrated by their usual lengthy release schedules, OYC returned to the quick and dirty compact cassette – the place they started back in the 80s.

ATOO is ‘Dirty Ambient’, a phrase coined by OYC for the process of working quickly and instinctively, embracing errors and honouring imperfections. It’s also a jibe at what is sometimes a hideously manicured genre.”

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Various Artists – Keb Darge & Cut Chemist Present The Dark Side: 28 Sixties Garage Punk And Psyche Monsters

Legendary Scottish Northern Soul DJ Keb Darge teams up with Jurassic 5 DJ and producer Cut Chemist to release 28 magnificent tracks of classic garage punk and psychedelic rock.  From the release’s Bandcamp site:

“Picking up where they left off on the 2007 compilation ‘Lost & Found – Rockabilly & Jump Blues’, Keb Darge & Cut Chemist join forces once again, this time to explore the wonderful world of 1960s Garage music. While Rockabilly could be defined as a DIY emulation of the music of Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and others by young American artists, Garage was heavily influenced by British bands of the day like the Beatles, Kinks & Rolling Stones. Simple drum kits, guitars and the occasional organ keep the sound honest and raw, retaining a palpable sense of excitement even to this day. With a multitude of bands springing up all over the USA, many of these wonderful records were released in tiny numbers, making certain titles almost impossible to find. Keb Darge’s love affair with this intriguing genre happened almost by accident, while on the hunt for obscure Northern Soul records. “DJ Shadow told me I would like Garage years ago, but I didn’t listen.” Hearing a few records he liked and being assured by collectors that they were classified as ‘Garage’ got him hooked, so for the last years he’s been digging obsessively for the stuff. Knowing Cut Chemist was a collector, he suggested they collaborate on a compilation, and ‘The Dark Side’ was born. 30 obscure records, some of which change hands for frightening amounts of money, all with wonderful stories attached as told in Keb’s encyclopedic and entertaining liner notes.”