No reviews today as my girlfriend and I will be walking around the Buda area in Budapest, but I’d like to introduce you to Adam Baruch, an exceptionally gifted writer who I have been following for many years. He has a gift for writing eloquently about jazz and rock, is a director of the Singer Jazz Festival, and on this post, he writes about the legendary jazz-rock/brass-rock band If. He is worth following, and if you like what you read, consider joining his Facebook group.
The Ansambl Mileta Petrovića were a band out of the former Yugoslavia (namely, the area of Niš, Serbia) who were around from the early 1980s until around 1991, before the erstwhile Communist union fell apart and hell broke out everywhere. Radio Martiko document some of their finer moments on this album.
Our comrades at German’s finest psych label, The Lollipoppe Shoppe, release a wild album of heavy-duty psychedelic rock by The Cosmic Kangaroos that sounds more like a 1960’s California (West Coast) indie monster rather than a gem recorded in the 1990s. This label has a knack for absolutely incredible rare gems!
I grew up with Electronic Body Music during my high-school years when my little brother and I would go clubbing in Hollywood, and the music has stuck with me for well over three decades. Spain’s Spammerheads have made a sound that would compliment early Front Line Assembly, the harsher vocal aspects of Front 242, and a recording technique that was compressed just enough to make me feel like I was dancing around in my old iron “Mad Max” boots over at Club F**k! back in the day. Well done!
Once an Industrial music icon during his time performing in Cabaret Voltaire (pre-disco), Chris Watson now records natural sounds with such skill that he makes something that goes well beyond ‘ambient’ music. As a tribute to his work, Touch Records commissioned several artists, including recently reposed ones like Philip Jeck and Mika Vainio, and supplemented by Fennesz, Biosphere and Watson himself.
This track by Seah and Mykel Boyd (working together as post doom romance) is part of an elegant series of sound art made in their local area. Mellow and very engaging music.
Esa Ruoho is a project out of Finland who works with really long, sinewy drones and atmospherics to get lost in on a headphone trip. Fine ambient music, something rare in a time when the term is so badly abused.
Duke Ellington’s Shakespearian masterpiece, Such Sweet Thunder, is the first album I bought for its typography alone. I had heard older releases by him, had classic discs like Money Jungle, but this album caught my eye because I had had a deep interest in typography around 1994-1995. The text on the right was so crisp despite its size, and of course the iconic photo of Duke meditating on the piano with big block capital letters made the album look more like an artifact. The music is, of course, sumptuous, but if you have a Spotify account, you can enjoy it…
What a tribute from Irmán, a composer from Portugal. From his Bandcamp website: “Für Eline is a love song, a testimony to my relationship with my wife. We’ve been together for over 20 years, we have a beautiful daughter and we’ve been through many things, both good and bad. Since mid-2020 my wife has been a champion, guiding me and our house while I’m physically unable due to depression. This song is my gift to her.”
L’Orange are a band led by the drummer Nelson Schaer, and they produce a sumptuous jazz that is a heady mix of acid and downtempo. It’s relaxing, but intriguing, listening.