Expand your taste in music. Based in Beijing, China.
Our dear friends at the Lollipoppe Shoppe have released a freakily good album out of 1990s Poland. From the label’s Bandcamp site:
“Atman was an eco-activist collective, that released tape-only pastoral dwelling jams in the fine Polish-Jazz tradition… Hamered dulcimer and exotically tuned 12-string guitars among basket-loads of unknown sounds, since the 70’s! Personal Forest is the culmination of artistic and personal quest.”
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.
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.
As the name implies, Pete Swinton’s latest album is a series of gorgeous soundscapes that remind one of a more organic version of artists like Steve Roach and Robert Rich, but with more of a field recording vibe. Very nice for headphones.
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.
20 years ago, Marc Almond collaborated with musicians in St. Petersburg and recorded a magnificent album of Russian chanson. It’s as good as you would expect. The gems of the album include the title track and Gosudaryunia, penned by Russian rock legend Boris Grebenshchikov. A fine reissue, and I thank my friend Charles for being so kind as to point it out to me.
Psycada are a band out of Greece who produce some amazing psychedelic garage rock. The cover art caught my attention drew me in, but the music will keep you hooked.
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.
Jettenbach were reviewed here once before, and as I quite enjoyed this noisy ambient drone work touched with elements of post-Industrial and Kosmische Kraut, I thought it good to share some new work by the project.
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.”