Aluar Horns

Aluar Horns (Zaire/Uganda Border)

I got a record needle. The Gemini PT-2000 record player which now functions in my studio is the first fully operational vinyl playback machine which I has ever owned. This is because, I wager, sometimes one is afraid to be happy. Sometimes there is a happiness that hangs so clearly in your eyes, but you recognize its sheer destablizing force, the way it may also threaten to overtake you once you deign to open your arms to it, that you turn away, preferring to cast your glance instead towards inferior delights.

So lord help me, I have a record player now. And I have literally the worldest's goofiest collection, comprised almost solely either of out-jazz rarities or thrift store oddities acquired upwards of ten years ago when I worked in the Salvation Army, and which I have never ever listened to, but never discarded, fuelled only by my good faith in weird records.

This faith was rewarded when I for the first time played "African Ceremonial & Folk Musics." It consists almost entirely of pleasant, unremarkable chants and babbles, but then out of nowhere, there's an insane horn-section jam, which has such a weirdo-wobbly rhythm that I thought my new record player was broken and playing irregularly. The horns overlap in such a loopy, narcotized way, it sounds like Sun Ra remixed by DJ Screw. Or a beardo edit of New Orleans funeral jazz. One of the most surprise sonic bug-outs I've had in a while, a very solid "what the hell is this?" moment was the result, exactly the sort of experience which makes me hoard two dollar thrift store records for ten years.

Enjoy, you won't be disappointed.