Tag: Sublime Frequencies

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Music

Jesse Paul Miller – Dream Boxes and Psychic Microphones • Radio and Other Sounds From Southeast Asia 2008 – 2017

We find music in the strangest of places.  This release from Jesse Paul Miller is proof of it.  From his Bandcamp site:

“These tracks consist of a series of sequential “sound collages”, based on recordings I gathered in Southeast Asia, between 2008 and 2017.

There is NO Multi-Tracking or “Over-Dubbing” on these tracks.

Original artifacts of these recordings are self apparent and un-alterated.

Five of these tracks were initially made in 2014 as potentials for release on my Sublime Frequencies album entitled “A Distant Invitation”
(Tracks 1, 2, 5, 16, and 21). These didn’t make the cut and weren’t included, but now they can be listened to in this mix.

They were overlayed only at the beginning and end of each original recording. These single trackings were compiled sequentially.

Also included are a group of similar, singular recordings, of which, made up these kind of “sound collages”, edited to compliment the original series, and included in late February 2024.

This group of recordings isn’t intended have a full-album flow, it is more of a compilation. Hopefully each track can be enjoyed for its own qualities, perhaps a fun or interesting addition to any mix you might be listening to.

All together, you can hear a feeling for cosmic radio anomalies, human voices, interactions, and ceremonies, from locations in these magical parts of the world.”

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Music

Hani from Yunnan China – Hani Polyphonic Singing in Yunnan China

From our friends at Sublime Frequencies:

“Mystic choral beauty drifting far into the outer cosmos, this other worldly traditional music ensemble creates a contemporary-sounding avant-garde vocal fusion combined with strange instrumental accompaniment.

The HANI are linguistically derived from the YI branch of the Tibeto-Burmese and number a million and a half in the southern part of Yunnan province in China above Laos and Vietnam where smaller Hani communities also live.

As with many other ethnic groups of the area, an original traditional singing pattern is used with each singer adapting the words to the context. The choir that gathers all singers at the same time is considered to be a very unique style of vocal polyphony or heterophony. The cascading, mournful feel of this music is powerfully transcendent and you’ve never heard anything like it.

Many of these songs express intimate strong emotions that bring tears to the performers while they are singing.”

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Music

Baligh Hamdi – Instrumental Modal Pop of 1970’s Egypt

Sublime Frequencies never ceases to amaze me with the gems they dig up.  From their Bandcamp site:

Sublime Frequencies finally unleashes it’s ESSENTIAL compilation from 1970’s Egypt. Modal instrumental tracks from Baligh Hamdi – one of the most important Arabic composers of the 20th Century (writing for legends Umm Kalthum, Abdel Halim Hafez, Sabah, Warda, and many others). Features his legendary group the “Diamond Orchestra” with Omar Khorshid on guitar, Magdi al-Husseini on organ, Samir Sourour on saxophone, and Faruq Salama on accordion. All of these musicians were discovered and recruited by Hamdi to interpret his vision of a modernized, hybrid Arabic music. Under Hamdi’s direction, this orchestra charted a new melodic direction and created a new musical language. This compilation is culled from a specific era of Hamdi’s long career, a decade where he fully realized an international music which incorporated beat driven Eastern tinged jazz, theremin draped orchestral noir, tracks that feature searing guitar solos from none other than Omar Khorshid, and a selection of buzzing, sitar driven, Indo-Arabic tracks establishing a meeting of mid-east and eastern psychedelic exotica, and a vision that created some of the hippest music coming out of the Middle East from the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s.

A magnificent composer paired with an obscenely great label. What a perfect match.