I have to tip my hat in respect to Room 40 Records. The catalog is normally known for it’s shimmeringly gorgeous soundscapes and ambient music. This is, at least to my recollection, the first time I heard them delve into the weird, murky world of Keiji Haino. Slow, screamy, and not the sort of record you want to consume psychedelics to unless you like bad trips. Even so, it’s a stripped-down psych masterpiece.
The legendary Free Music Production (FMP) Record Label is reissuing some classic free jazz these days. This particular release features trumpet player Heinz Becker on a record from 1983.
Ketoret are out of Israel and produce a sludge-laden doom. This release has only one track, but it’s a slow, lava-like 10 minutes of heavy rock.
Roli Mossimann was a Swiss-American drummer and electronic musician who worked with some of the greatest of the no-wave bands to come out of New York City such as Swans, Foetus and their side project Wiseblood. He was an in-demand producer working with legends like New Order and Skinny Puppy, but the subject of today’s post is a short documentary on some of the amazing bands he worked with. Rest in peace.
Former Mott The Hoople member Morgan Fisher never stopped making great music. This is a recent release from August of this year intended to help fund Morgan Salon, his studio in Japan. It is, indeed, a worthy cause.
From the Canary Records Bandcamp site:
“When middle-class Americans in the 1950s found that they could get access to a tape recorder and a microphone, it then became possible for them to make recordings that they could pay to have pressed into discs. One didn’t need to go to dedicated recording studios, most of which had been for decades in the cosmopolitan centers – first New York, then Chicago, then the temporary make-shift, studios set up in hotel rooms Georgia, Texas, Tennessee and Virginia, or the independent studios in Grafton WI, Richmond IN, Los Angeles, etc. It was part of a process of decentralization of the business of making records that exploded into thousands of small labels quickly sprouting up and, more often that not, just as quickly collapsing through the 1940s, the last days of the 78rpm disc in the ’50s, and the parallel emergence of the microgroove 45 and 33rpm formats. Regional bands playing musics in an enormous number of vernacular styles seized the opportunity to include themselves in the marketplace of home entertainment for their own communities.
To get a picture of those communities and of the kinds of music being played and enjoyed in them, one has to encounter the discs themselves. Easier said than done. Of the eight discs presented on this collection, at least half have so far survived without either a trace or a whiff of the fact of the existence anywhere on the digital megamind. So, here was are, “fixing” that as if the potential of them as an experience might open a door to something for someone somewhere.
Meanwhile, if you run into any more discs by Costas Kamanis, send em on over. They’re bound to be very good. “
Matryoshka are a band from Japan who play a nearly heartbreaking version of post-rock topped with gentle, almost drowned-out vocals. This adds to the character of the record. It’s one of the saddest albums I’ve heard in a while, but achingly so.
This release by Doltz, a Japanese band released on the South Korean record label Huinali Recordings, came to me by sheer good fortune. The music is far more interesting than most ‘ambient’ or techno music these days namely due to it being played on what sounds like a combination of traditional instruments and some electronic processing, though if it is purely electronic, the band have done wonders with the sound.. The pulses are gentle, individual tones have a haunting quality, and this should pass muster with the hardest core aficionados of the genre. A stunningly good release.
From Mulatu Astatke’s own Bandcamp site:
“Formed in 2012 on the south side of Tel Aviv, the 12 member Hoodna Orchestra is a collective of musicians and composers who initially bonded over a shared love of Afrobeat. They have gone on to incorporate psychedelic rock, hard funk and soul, jazz, and East African music into their sought after releases, winning praise and airplay from the likes of Iggy Pop and Huey Morgan on BBC Radio 6 Music. The collective draws together a huge array of musical talents such as guitarist Ilan Smilan and organist Eitan Drabkin of Sababa 5 fame, Shalosh trio drummer Matan Assayag, and percussionist Rani Birenbaum of The Faithful Brothers, many of whom also contribute compositions to the orchestra, ensuring its collaborative environment.
Over time, members of the orchestra came to find they shared a growing interest in Ethiopian music, particularly the Ethio-jazz of Mulatu Astatke. Since releasing a recording with Ethiopian singer Tesfaye Negatu, Hoodna Orchestra had been looking to find ways to collaborate with Astatke himself and in early 2023 the opportunity arose to invite Astatke to Tel Aviv, record an album and perform it live for their home audience. Stars aligned as Neal Sugarman, multi-instrumentalist member of the Dap-Kings and co-founder of Daptone Records, joined and produced the session with Smilan.”
The Brothers Freeman grace us with a recent edition of the premier progressive rock magazine, full of in-depth reviews of new albums in the genre as well as trips down memory lane in terms of the Italian prog scene. Also included, of course, are sound samples of the of the material reviewed herein.