Sunday, November 30, 2008

Eddie Kendricks - Girl You Need A Change of Mind



Eddie Kendricks - Girl You Need A Change of Mind

On deep repeat for several days now. Deep repeat: that state where you need a song like you need fresh water or a warm hug from someone who knows you well, and will always be there to do so no matter what. This cut from Eddie's meisterwerk People...Hold On is a heavenly long-form suite that is up there with the best from the curtis/isaac priests of stirring symphonic soul. It ebbs and flows exquisitely, and before you know it seven minutes have passed and it's serious rewind time. Gorgeous, sunshiney, impassioned, get into it, get up, get involved. 

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Talkbox Country

Pete Drake - Forever



Best robot-cowboy hybrid since Westworld




Thanks to As Restless As We Are

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Guest Mix: DJ Slow presents Colturky



Our west coast brother DJ Slow sends this sonic greeting on our nation's most hallowed festival of eating. A psych-rock heavy burst of tunes prime for familial merriment, the preparation of the flesh from large flightless birds, and sustained gastronomic overindulgence. Enjoy, and happy thanksgiving!

DJ Slow - Colturky

0:00: COLD TURKEY - John Lennon
5:00: JUSTICE TO THE PEOPLE - Lee Perry & the Upsetters
10:39: DARKROOM - Paul McCartney (Sir)
12:43: LA TUERIE - Sebastien Tellier
15:38: BARMY - The Fall
20:57: FOGGY NOTION - Velvet Underground
27:23: NEVER ANOTHER - 13th Floor Elevators
29:43: HALICTE GUNESIN BATISI - Mogollar ('Love, Peace & Poetry' Turkish Psych Comp)
33:33: ICKY THUMP - White Stripes
37:12: FIDO CASTROL- Killing Floor
41:48: OUR LOVE YOUR LIES - Los Chicros
44:46: DOIN THAT THING - Leroy Vinnegar
49:30: AFGHANISTAN- Turzi
52:55: FIRE ANT NOODLE TASTING OF ACID - Silver Apples / Turzi
58:20: CAMPFIRE - Sonic Youth
1:00:33: A RUFFER VERSION - The Aggrovators
1:03:55: WIGGLE-WAGGLE- Herbie Hancock
1:09:22: AKIWOWO - Olatunji
1:12:36: NEW YORK USA - Serge Gainsbourg
1:14:36: 65 BARS AND A TASTE OF SOUL - The Watts 103rd St Rhythm Band

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Ridin' High Podcast



Now available:

The Ridin' High podcast. 20-30 minutes a week. Because new shit has come to light, man. Indie, electronic, psychotropic. Accessible to the public every monday night/tuesday morning. 


Ridin' High Nov. 24th / beats of no country 

Terence Trent D'Arby - Sign Your Name (Lee Perry Remix)
Babytalk - Chance (Hercules & Love Affair Remix)
Mi Ami  - African Rhythms
Azymuth - Avenida Das Manguieras
Minilogue - Mustafa (A1)
Animal Collective - Brother Sport
Voyage - Point Zero
Stimming - Una Pena
Spencer Parker - The Improvised Minotaur
Nina Simone - Sinnerman (Luciano Remix)
Edu Lobo - Vento Bravo
Honeymoon Killers - Decollage (Prins Thomas Mix)
Rainbow Arabia - Let Them Dance
Shocking Blue - Love Buzz

all edits by William

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Dreams of a Winter Mystic



1. Melchior Productions - Who Can Find Me (I Can't)



2. Fennesz - Perfume for Winter



3. Ezekiel Hoenig - Porchside Economics

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Three songs to inaugurate the days of a hazy, palid, low-temp submergence. 

1. I'm mildly obsessed with this release by Thomas Melchior on Cadenza. It's a gorgeous, light-rhythmed minimal bliss-out, with drifty girl vocals. It feels like if you're scuba-diving and you look up and see the filtered sunlight flickering down through the water, a shimmering, diaphanous curtain. It's great for walking around on a pale afternoon, watching gusts of wind scatter leaves across the earth.

2. Track from Fennesz's latest, "Black Sea." Why do electronic musicians associate winter/cold weather worlds with metallic, hi-frequency reverb? like the kind you imagine on a Hannett-produced snare drum. It works for me, I'm just curious about the psycho-aesthetic link-up. Here thrown pebbles of white noise plunk past spare, sonorous clusters of sampled guitar, all ebbing and flowing like ripples on a gentle pond. 

3. From his album, the well-titled "Surface of a Broken Marching Band." Feels very much of the Fennesz school, but with some lovely low-tuned fractured hip-hop beats lurking in the murk. 

Elvis Presley - Crawfish (Pilooski Edit)




Elvis Presley - Crawfish (Pilooski Edit)

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1. New collection of edits from the Dirty Crew out now, get it at Turntable Lab, for example. 
2. Said crew has a good blog called Alain Finkielkrautrock that you should read. 
3. Crawfish have five pairs of legs.
4. Even before it became all popular and stuff to do dj-ready edits of older tracks, Pilooski and our friends at Dirty understood that just cutting up disco tracks was fine but not that exciting. In other words they've been thinking outside the box since before there was a box. 
5. This edit of Elvis is my shit. Like Pilooski's edit last year of 'Beggin' by Frankie Valli, this is an infectious soul stormer. There's more extra dancey drum business that gets added this time around, to great effect. It's the kind of track you can play if, for example, you were to openly posit that music is a universal language, only to find your sentiment falling on skeptical ears. 

P.S. Jeez, is the album cover the most pause-able thing ever or what?

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Screw vs. R.

Two Icons. Doing what they do. And going, Tete a Tete. I feel that this should be acknowledged...as a classic.





Friday, November 21, 2008

The Onion Interviews Kool Keith


Kool Keith & Kutmasta Kurt

some important quotes: 

"What's your beef with Simon Cowell?

Kool Keith: I think for one guy to sit up and judge people and for him to be British at that—who the fuck is he to judge people? To come to America and try to judge people?"

Why shopping?

KK: I like to smell new clothes, tags. The store has new scents. It's just motivational to me. That's the point of doing something. I always buy something to make myself motivated. It's good to feel that you can buy something and motivate yourself. That's what I do, just buy stuff. I like to buy something new and then record."

KK: One time I had like 75 people interview me, and they started asking me the same questions. One guy was just asking me all types of questions, and I was just like, "Yeah, I went to Bellevue. I chewed my own hand off and they had to sew it back on." And the guy believed it." 

Thursday, November 20, 2008

The Fleetwood Mac Special


Mick Fleetwood - Cassiopeia Surrender

Mick Fleetwood - The Visitor


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At AC, every day is Fleetwood day. 

Two jams from Mick's forgotten 1981 solo record, The Visitor, which finds him deep in Ghana in a kind of kitschy Ginger Baker-impersonation. Ooh, look, African children! Bizarrely, while he enlists a small army of indigenous musicians to help him, the record is by and large schizo-split between 70s blues rock on one hand and tribal tunes on the other - they rarely come together in "Graceland" style unity. " I bought this at Kim's, priced for five bucks and marked down another 40%. Some standouts: Cassiopeia" is a pretty solid, minor-key low-slung groover, with cool metallic percussion and that dark decadent vibe that always gets me hyped about the Mac. "The Visitor" is tribal excursion, pretty cool especially for the wild Prophet 5 Synthesizer basslines..

And then, a special re-edit of the Rumors classic that I picked up on 7" at Phonica. Would you blame me if I played this for an hour or so tonight? 



The Plane of Infinite Seduction


Terry Callier - You Don't Care




Jefferson Starship - Miracles



Faze-O - Ridin' High

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These tunes define a subgenre known at AC as "infinite smooth." 

I shared a demo track with my friend. Of the intro, which seemed to have captured most of her attention, she wrote it reminded her of "Less Than Zero," adding, "i mean the less than than zero comparison is a dreampoint for me. i dont really recall the movie or the soundtrack but it signifies 80's LA sex and easiness. i dont see tits shaking...i see sex at dawn." When I replied that I wish I could make a track that was just a seductive sex at dawn in the 80s intro for five minutes, she said "i wish the first 5 minutes of seduction lasted infinitely.."

Should you find yourself wanting to approximate such a condition, or target it as a sublime goal approached in endless hyperbolic ascent, I recommend starting with these three. 

1. Terry Callier - You Don't Care

Last weekend I went to London. In order to catch Villalobos playing at Fabric, my friend and I woke up quite early sunday morning and showed up at the club for some breakfast beats, Ricardo's set having begun at 530am and terminating sometime before noon. This was a really smart way to see him play, instead of staying up all night. Nonetheless I was thoroughly, deliriously exhausted come early evening, and needed a super-calm aural tonic to serve as nap soundtrack. I found Terry among my friend's records and quickly passed out, waking only during the last song, a gorgeous extended outro where ladies sing only 'you don't care...la la la la la" into the setting sun. 

2. Jefferson Starship - Miracles

I don't want to be weird but I'm giving you the short version here. I know that infinite smooth seems to scream 'extended mix' but trust me on this. The same friend who told me of her wish to stay in a warp of infinite seduction gave me this track several years ago, and it's one I treasure. Opulent, sensual, swirling, it sounds like a velvet-draped opium den. Although I'm troubled by the lyrics that go "If only you'd believe in miracles, so would I." Why does he need her to believe? 

3. Faze-O - Ridin' High

Who or what is the mysterious Faze-O? First of all, this track is the namesake of my monthly dj gig, which you can catch tonight at Savalas in Williamsburg. Because where else do you want to be, other than riding high? The song itself is some blissful slo-mo smooching funk that appears to be stuck on repeat. Really, I tried editing this song once. The point of editing a song is to make it more hypnotic and repetitive and emphasize the groove more. Except the original version is already so perfectly spaced-out and repetitive that there's nothing you can do it. 



Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Ridin' High @ Savalas: Thurs at 11pm





The temperature has dropped. Don't let your spirits go with it. Join us this thursday night at 11 for Ridin' High at Savalas, on Bedford between Grand and South 1st, where you can warm your sweet flesh to some afro-brazilian heat and then some disco-house fire. It's better than a coal-burning stove. 

Resident: Weekend Prince aka Billy Rauscher (Disco-House Fire)
Special Guest: Sex Panther aka Jonathan Forgang (Afro-Brazilian Heat)


Liquor Store Event: Michael Schmelling






A gentlemanly reading, featuring sophisticated beverages, at the Liquor Store, corner of White and West Broadway in Tribeca. Afterparty: Ridin' High @ Savalas in Brooklyn (duh)

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Liquid Liquid @ Santo's

omfg. TWO sets??




Serge Santiago / Patrick Cowley



Another italo-disco meltdown from Serge Santiago, courtesy of XLR8R

Tracklist:

01 Intro
02 Boytronic "Bryllyant"
03 Ruede Hagelstein "The Modest Theme"
04 Kebekelektrik "Journey into Love (Disco Mix)"
05 Patrick Cowley "Mindwarp"
06 Rinder & Lewis "Wiles and the Hand Jive (Serge Santiago Edit)"
07 Droid "The Force (Serge Santiago Mix)"
08 Boo Williams "Snare Tappin"
09 Kebekelektrik "War Dance"
10 Mr. Flagio "Take a Chance"
11 Ray Connection "Replay (Hampus Drake Edit)"


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Patrick Cowley - Mindwarp (Remix)

Serge's mix contains a track I've been meaning to post for a while - the title jam to Patrick Cowley's third and final record Mind Warp (1982). Cowley is one of the visioniary producers of disco - he was reponsible for the 15 min+ extended mix of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" which remains one of the cornerstones of electronic dance beats.  Cowley passed away from AIDS complications at the age of 32, and this album, recorded near the end of his life, supposedly reflects an increasing sense of detachment, alienation and delirium that Cowley felt in his condition. I provide here the album's remix version, which is very trippy electronic disco, and features a really fantastic use of Casio dog barks. 

Lyrics:

Mindwarp! 
Mindwarp!
Mindwarp!


Carl Craig & Moritz von Oswald: Recomposed 3

It's a shame this isn't getting released domestically. It would be a shame if you didn't hear this. It would be a shame not to share it.

New Column

Behold, weekly contributions from William Rauscher now on Refinery 29's blog. Because those with style to burn deserve one another.


Swedish Dance Bands from the 1970s




Much more

(courtesy of
Masta Bingus)

Monday, November 10, 2008

African Music Reloaded

[Editor's note: below is an unedited draft of a piece I turned into Earplug, Flavorpill's music newsletter, at the beginning of September. In a very unfortunate turn, Earplug has since folded, as part of a move on Flavorpill's part to consolidate its diverse media outlets into one more powerful conglomerate, presumably like Voltron. I was sad to hear this both as a reader and a writer - Earplug had consistently insightful and forward-thinking music coverage that I was glad to be a part of. So here's the piece left on the cutting room floor - there's a good chance the average AC reader will have a passing familiarity or more with the material. Should you not already be an obsessed african music geek, now might be an appropriate time to take the hobby up. Assuming you are not already burdened with hobbies as is. A hobby, maybe, is always a burden: what could be more fucking tiring than a hobby? The very idea makes me want to go lie down.]

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As a recent spate of CD reissues and new blogs attests, Africa possesses a deep and diverse wealth of musical expression still relatively to unknown to the West, and enthusiasm for its re-discovery shows no sign of abating. For those whose interest in the sounds of Africa was first piqued by crucial reissues in the last ten years from Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti and Tony Allen, his legendary drummer, it turns out that sweaty Nigerian funk is merely the gateway drug to a vast bounty of aural narcotics now getting smuggled in from the dark continent. Lately, much of the attention both digital and physical has been especially aimed at the musical legacy of West Africa, where in the 60s and 70s propitious musical cross-winds threw traditional folk and highlife together with Congolese and Cuban styles as well as a whole host of Western influences ranging from jazz to heavy JB funk and psychedelic rock.


In particular, label efforts have found no shortage of stunning artifacts from Nigeria’s jaw-droppingly vibrant musical culture in the 1970s. In its first incarnation, lauded dance floor-reissue kingpin Strut Records put out key Tony Allen records as well the indispensible Nigeria 70: Funky Lagos compilation, now after a hiatus it’s back with a follow-up, Nigeria 70 Lagos Jump. 



UK-based Soundway Records has recently unleashed a trilogy of Nigeria Special compilations which together trace a broad artistic progression from the more-traditional highlife sounds of Sir Victor Uwaifo to the psychedelic grooves exemplified by the power trio BLO, whose members met during Ginger Baker’s high-profile jam sessions in Nigeria in the early seventies.



The rest of West Africa’s musical heritage is now ripe for comp treatment as well. Analog Africa’s “African Scream Contest” centers its curatorial energies around the sound of ’70s Benin: the compilation is ostensibly named after the unhinged yelps on “Gbeti Madjiro,” a cut by the legendary afro-groove powerhouse Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo, which with its fiery breaks and rousing political lyrics revolutionized music in coup-torn Benin upon its release in 1970.



London record store Honest Jon’s has stepped into the scene as well with the comp “Living is Hard,” a boon of archival material from the Zonophone label, which in the late 20’s recorded folk songs performed by West African musicians in Britain and exported the results across the homeland, an aural testament to the living conditions of working-class British immigrants on par with the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charlie Patton.




For those whom the crate-digging impulse has taken beyond the confines of the record store and on to intrepid intercontinental excursions, the internet has become a vital means of sharing the wealth, not only the sonic treasures gleaned, but the invaluable insights into African culture gained along the way. They’re full of stories recounting relentless detective work, scouring private collections and warehouses, tracking down long-disappeared drummers and legendary producers, rescuing copies from the rain, the ditch, or pyro-inflected children. The roster of traveling African music bloggers currently includes trained ethnomusicologists, such as Brian Shimkovitz, editor of the delightfully lo-fi Awesome Tapes from Africa, as well as passionate DJs like Voodoo Frank, aka “DJ Soulpusher,” whose Voodoo Funk blog, in addition to offering up mixes, album covers and other musical rarities, chronicles the exploits of his three-year West African expedition, which include getting robbed at knife-point, multiple scooter crashes, and voodoo shrine visits, all against the backdrop of regular bouts of violent political instability.
Analog Africa stands out as both a blog and the record label behind “African Scream Contest.” In order to properly license every track, proprietor Samy Ben Redjeb hunted down each musician involved, no easy task when it comes to a stack of dusty vinyl one-offs recorded thirty years ago in countries that often lack substantial copyright bodies. “I travel to Africa to meet the artists, to ask for permission to use their music, pay for the rights and to ask them to share their story - that to me is fundamental. I also spend a huge amount of time searching for pictures, old posters, documents and obviously for original vinyl, reel tapes, matrices, acetates and so on. To get a better picture of the general music scene during the 70s, I try to locate the people who worked in the music industry at the time, sound engineers, sales managers, club owners, label founders. All this is Analog Africa’s DNA if you like”. The liner notes bear witness to his tireless labor, featuring in-depth interviews that shed light on each record’s unique trajectory.
Over on the Likembe blog, the diverse entries comprise a dizzying encyclopedia which not only unceasingly doles out rarities from early folk to pulsing funk, but also strives to paint broader cultural context, by turns heralding and eulogizing vivid musical figures like the recently deceased master of Nigerian highlife, Oliver de Coque, and Franco, the legendary “Congo Colossus.” “I suspect African musicians have a much closer relationship with their fans because very few of them can make a living just through record sales (and this has become even more true with widespread piracy).” Says blogger John B. “Thus they're continually playing at housewarmings, birthdays, naming ceremonies, etc.”
The African digging scene is a singular confluence of passionate detective work by a community of dedicated, adventurous music lovers, together with the compelling remnants of an incomparably vast musical heritage. Each new find in turn only indexes how much still remains undiscovered, perhaps forever, by Western ears.


Recommended blogs:

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Telex is My Shit

Telex - Eurovision 1980



Telex - Moscow Discow

Humans Made This



Gang Gang Dance - Desert Storm

I want you to jump on this and ride it around.