V/A Bollywood Bloodbath (Finders Keepers / B-Music) cd 15.98
We were already sold on this before we even heard it, just based on the title alone, and likely you are too! And having heard it, we're all the more into it. This latest Finders Keepers/B-Music release is not just another Bollywood - or even Lollywood, or Kollywood - compilation, not that there would be anything wrong with that. Their recent Pakistani picture house collection Life Is Dance is still in heavy rotation 'round these parts, as are others of its ilk. But Bollywood Bloodbath is even better, thanks to its specific, scary theme. Cooler 'cause these songs, as you may have guessed, are all taken from the soundtracks to Hindi horror movies! Ghost stories, killer thrillers, zombiethons, that sort of thing... but unlike American slasher flicks and Italian giallo from the same period (the '70s mostly, though this disc ranges as far back as 1949, and up to the '80s), these Indian fright films are, of course, like other Bollywood productions, elaborate musicals. So the bloodbath sounds like it's taking place at the discotheque!! It's a perfect mix of the over-the-top pop groove-a-delica of the best vintage Bollywood stuff, infused with the even weirder, wilder, and wiggier sounds demanded by the horror movie genre, like shocking screams, stabbing cacophonous chords, and impassioned female vocals pleading for mercy.
Yep, it's pretty brilliant the way this collection combines two of our favorite soundtrack genres into one. Gotta give it up to compiler Andy Votel and his diligent research (involving hours and hours of viewing cheap old VHS tapes found at the Indian grocery store, no doubt), as he's dug up a delightful 'best of' from a hybrid cinematic genre we've yet to explore ourselves. And even if these songs were sourced from Z-grade movies, there's for sure some top talent involved on soundtrack side of things, including even the legendary RD Burman.
Although there's a modicum of ominous, atmospheric creepiness to be found in most of these cuts, moments that are mystical and mysterious, truth be told it's not all that frightening, as the spookiest stuff always gives way to urgent uptempo beats and zipp-zapping "seance fiction" synths, lively rock/disco orchestration and spirited singing, i.e. typical Bollywood bombast! If anything, rather than, say, John Carpenter or Goblin (our usual go-to's for suspense/horror soundtracks), some of what's here reminds us more of stuff from far out Spaghetti Westerns.
Since we're making this Record Of The Week, we should pause to state that if you're not already into Bollywood soundtracks, you need to check 'em out! And this, despite its specific slant, would certainly give you a good idea of what you've been missing - total WTF kitchen sink psychedelic percussive song-and-dance Eastern-inflected rock opera funked up madness.
22 tracks, 78+ minutes. Complete with cd booklet of copious, obsessive, expert liner notes from Votel. And lots of cool creepy colorful graphics of course. (In addition to this domestic cd release, there's also import vinyl available, but we're pretty much out, hoping to have some more from overseas next month, FYI.)
MPEG Stream: HEMANT BHOLE "Sansani Khez Koi Baat"
MPEG Stream: BAPPI LAHIRI "Meri Jaan"
MPEG Stream: SAPAN JAGMOHAN "Sote Sote Adhi Rat"
MPEG Stream: SONIK OMI "Main Theme From Andhera / Darwaza"

V/A Bollywood Breaks Sampler (Outcaste) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another label recognizes the brilliance of the wildly prolific Indian film industry's musical scores, puts its money where its mouth is, and releases a compilation. Good on you, Outcaste. This comp is heavily influenced by soul, funk, jazz, and latin music -- and since the record was made specifically for djs, it's purposefully heavy on the groove and not so much into quick changes and challenging juxtapositions, like the more pop-oriented Bollywood Funk records (which we highly recommend). That's not to say the non-DJ can't get into this -- it'd be excellent for your next party. Fans of Bombay the Hard Way will like this.
RealAudio clip: "Cosmic Flute"
RealAudio clip: "Tonight My Love"

V/A Bollywood Steel Guitar (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Just from the title alone, we knew that this latest installment in the always-amazing Sublime Frequencies series of unusual and under-documented "world music" recordings was gonna be the bomb! Indeed it is. The 'exotic' and infectious verve of vintage Bollywood film soundtrack music, performed with electric steel guitar as lead instrument for extra awesomeness, is hard to beat! The steel guitar, bringing with it the groovy twang of Western Swing and Hawaiian fret-sliding flavor, as well as a measure of classical Indian music, easily effects an emotive echo of the human voice that ordinarily fronts Bollywood themes. Compiler Stuart Ellis' informative liner notes describe these instrumental pop versions of Hindi film hits as the "elevator music of India" and if that's the case, we'd definitely rather be stuck in an elevator in Mumbai than anywhere else. There's 21 rare tracks by a half dozen masterful Bollywood steel string slingers: Van Shipley, Kazi Aniruddha, S. Hazarasingh, Sunil Ganguly, Charanjit Singh, and Guatam Dasgupta, recorded between 1962 and 1986.
A completely captivating collection, already one of our favorites among the many great Sublime Frequencies releases. And probably it should be no surprise that, for example, Van Shipley's "Jan Pahechan Ho" from the 1966 film Gunaam immediately gives us Sun City Girls flashbacks...
MPEG Stream: VAN SHIPLEY "Jan Pahechan Ho"
MPEG Stream: KAZI ANIRUDDHA "Piya Tu Ab To Aja"
MPEG Stream: SUNIL GANGULY "Are Diwano Mujhe Pehchano"

V/A Bollywood: An Anthology Of Songs From Popular Indian Cinema (Silva Screen) 2cd 16.98
In terms of hip International music trends here in the States, the Bollywood music craze seems to have recently died down in favor of the sounds of Ethiopia (thanks in part to its inclusion on major motion picture soundtracks such as Broken Flowers). Our love for both certainly hasn't waned nor wavered. So we're more than happy to welcome this new compilation of Indian film music. If you're seeking a thorough overview of the genre, this is a great place to start. The first disc dishes out a dozen delirious classics from the '50s, '60s and '70s, while the second disc offers eleven more 'modern' tunes, from the '90s. Of course, tracks by Bollywood deities Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi (check out the intense vocal performance on "Madhuban Mein Radhika"!) are in abundance on both discs. Oh such vibrant, manic, aural opulence! Recommended!
MPEG Stream: BHOSLE, ASHA & MOHAMMED RAFI "Chura Liya Hai Tum Ne "
MPEG Stream: RAFI, MOHAMMED "Madhuban Mein Radhika"
MPEG Stream: SANU, KUMAR "Ed Ladki Ko Dekha"

V/A Bombay 2: Electric Vindaloo (Motel ) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
While the first Bombay the Hard Way disc featured funky themes from '70s Bollywood films doctored and augmented by the talents of the Dan "The Automator" Nakamura, this here volume 2 takes on the next generation of films -- stuff from the '80s. A lot of it is bad synthrock material so you can't really fault the assembled DJs for coming up with yucky results. The roster includes Kid Koala, DJ Me DJ You, Mixmaster Mike etc. Possibly good for a party but as armchair listening it gets tedious.
RealAudio clip: KID KOALA & DYNOMITE D "Third World Lover"

V/A Bombay 2: Electric Vindaloo (Motel ) 2lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
While the first Bombay the Hard Way disc featured funky themes from '70s Bollywood films doctored and augmented by the talents of the Dan "The Automator" Nakamura, this here volume 2 takes on the next generation of films -- stuff from the '80s. A lot of it is bad synthrock material so you can't really fault the assembled DJs for coming up with yucky results. The roster includes Kid Koala, DJ Me DJ You, Mixmaster Mike etc. Possibly good for a party but as armchair listening it gets tedious.

V/A Bombay Connection Vol. 1, Funk From Bollywood Action Thrillers 1977-1984 (Bombay Connection) cd 16.98
We can never get enough of the colorful, zesty, infectious sounds of golden era Bollywood. Luckily we have two more outlets for our fix, as Bombay Connection has released two volumes of Bollywood hits that we've been groovin' to in the store for a few months now and finally have gotten enough to review and list. This is Volume 1 (2 to follow next list) and features tons of kick ass classic Bollywood funk from action thrillers spanning 1977-1984. You know what that means: incredible backbeats, suspense building bridges, and ultra saucy vocals. All the greats are here: R.D. Burman, Asha Bhosle, Kalyanji-Anandji, Sapam-Jagmohan, etc. So fun and so great!
MPEG Stream: R.D. BURMAN "Music"
MPEG Stream: GOVIND NARESH "Dance Music"
MPEG Stream: SAPAN JAGMOHAN & SALMA AGHA "Sote Sote Adhi Raat"

V/A Bombay Connection Vol. 1, Funk From Bollywood Action Thrillers 1977-1984 (Bombay Connection) 2lp 32.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We can never get enough of the colorful, zesty, infectious sounds of golden era Bollywood. Luckily we have two more outlets for our fix, as Bombay Connection has released two volumes of Bollywood hits that we've been groovin' to in the store for a few months now and finally have gotten enough to review and list. This is Volume 1 (2 to follow next list) and features tons of kick ass classic Bollywood funk from action thrillers spanning 1977-1984. You know what that means: incredible backbeats, suspense building bridges, and ultra saucy vocals. All the greats are here: R.D. Burman, Asha Bhosle, Kalyanji-Anandji, Sapam-Jagmohan, etc. So fun and so great!
MPEG Stream: R.D. BURMAN "Music"
MPEG Stream: GOVIND NARESH "Dance Music"
MPEG Stream: SAPAN JAGMOHAN & SALMA AGHA "Sote Sote Adhi Raat"

V/A Bombay Connection Vol. 2, Bouncin' Grooves From Bollywood Films 1959-1972 (Bombay Connection) cd 16.98
We can never get enough of the colorful, zesty, infectious sounds of golden era Bollywood. Luckily we have two more outlets for our fix as Bombay Connection has released two volumes of Bollywood hits that we've been groovin' to in the store for a few months now and finally have gotten enough to list. Vol 2 features all the golden greats spanning 1959-1972. Songs from all of those amazing nightclub scenes. You know what that means: intoxicating instrumentation, impassioned vocals, and splashes of color that you can practically hear captured in these wild and fantastic songs. All the great Bollywood luminaries are included: R.D. Burman, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Kalyanji-Anandji, Sapam-Jagmohan, etc. So fun and so great!!
MPEG Stream: MOHAMED RAFI "Jan Pahechan Ho"
MPEG Stream: KISHORE KUMAR & ASHA BHOSLE "Bum Pam Bum Pam Pa Ra Ra"
MPEG Stream: ANAND PRAYAG & CHORUS "Pretty Pretty Priya"

V/A Bombay Connection Vol. 2, Bouncin' Grooves From Bollywood Films 1959-1972 (Bombay Connection) 2lp 32.00
We can never get enough of the colorful, zesty, infectious sounds of golden era Bollywood. Luckily we have two more outlets for our fix as Bombay Connection has released two volumes of Bollywood hits that we've been groovin' to in the store for a few months now and finally have gotten enough to list. Vol 2 features all the golden greats spanning 1959-1972. Songs from all of those amazing nightclub scenes. You know what that means: intoxicating instrumentation, impassioned vocals, and splashes of color that you can practically hear captured in these wild and fantastic songs. All the great Bollywood luminaries are included: R.D. Burman, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Kalyanji-Anandji, Sapam-Jagmohan, etc. So fun and so great!!
MPEG Stream: MOHAMED RAFI "Jan Pahechan Ho"
MPEG Stream: KISHORE KUMAR & ASHA BHOSLE "Bum Pam Bum Pam Pa Ra Ra"
MPEG Stream: ANAND PRAYAG & CHORUS "Pretty Pretty Priya"

V/A Bombay Jazz Palace, The (Outcaste) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The UK's Outcaste label strikes again with this fab compilation of "Indo-Jazz", 14 tracks of Indian-music infused jazz, uh, fusion from the '70s. We're told most tracks are taken from super rare and collectable records and we don't doubt it. Funky, fun stuff with tabla, sitar, and so forth mixing it up with various Western electric instruments. Way more than those lame DJ-mixed "Bombay The Hardway" discs, these "funk ragas" sound like the soundtrack to a Blaxploitation film set on the Subcontinent (Shaft in Calcutta?)... Appearing: Lalo Schifrin, The Dave Pike Set, Ananda Shankar, Grupo Batuque, and more. Cool.
RealAudio clip: GEORGES GARVARENZ "Haschish Party"
RealAudio clip: THE DAVE PIKE SET "Raga Jeera Swara"
RealAudio clip: SHOCKING BLUE "Acka Raga"

V/A Bombay the Hard Way (Motel) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Wild Indian Soundtrack music from the 1960's, made by the Shah brothers Anandji and Kalyanji, that has gotten the 90's production by The Automator, who enlisted DJ Shadow to add a couple of beats here and there throughout the record. It's pretty good, though somewhat same-y after the first half hour. And I have to say that both myself and the Automator are so damn tired of lazy, ignorant food-based one-liners used to describe music made by Asians and Asian Americans. Naming a song on this cd "The Good, The Bad, and The Chutney" just shows that the only familiarity too many Westerners have with Asians and Asian Americans is through food. How pathetic.

V/A Broken Hearted Dragonflies: Insect Electronica From Southeast Asia (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
The first recording in the Sublime Frequencies catalog to not focus on the noise people make, Broken Hearted Dragonflies gives a voice to our insect brethren in Southeast Asia, as recorded by Tucker Martine in Laos, Burma and Thailand in 2000. The disc starts off like any other "traditional" insect recording: lots of cicada-like whining and chirping, but gradually turns to sound unlike all the rest. As one particular insect in the field begins to slowly sweep up in pitch like an oscillator on a synthesizer. A short time later, the clashing buzz of insect varieties begins to grate against their own harmonies and sounds much like either a clever DSP patch or the aliasing sound of a poorly sampled instrument. In other words, it all sounds hardly organic. In fact, in the field recording genre, we'd have to place this one in the same bizarre category as Douglas Quin's Antarctica recordings. The Raster-Noton sounds of nature. We're periodically reminded of our bucolic setting only by the steady hoots and coos of the native birds. You will undoubtably share our initial skepticism regarding the purity of these field recordings, but it is emphatically stated by the recordist that "these recordings were not processed, the insects actually sound like this!" Absolutely amazing stuff! Features liner notes by none other than Hakim Bey.
MPEG Stream: "Morning Fanfare"
MPEG Stream: "Brood X"

V/A Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer Folk & Pop Music Vol. 1 (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Repressed and BACK IN STOCK! Yay!
What? Another collection of Cambodian pop? But you just listed two volumes of Cambodian Rocks? (And, get ready for two more in that series!) It's true, Cambodian music seems to be the flavor of the moment on the obscure world music scene. But bear with us, as this one deserves all the attention afforded the Cambodian Rocks series... and then some. The history of Cambodia's flourishing and rich music scene was -- like the greater culture and society of the country in general -- cruelly severed in the early seventies by the Khmer Rouge during their "cleansing" program. All our favorite performers, anonymous until Khmer Rocks' own collections were recently released, were undoubtedly victims of the Khmer Rouge during this period. In the following years Cambodians who fled the country set up communities around the globe and among the other parts of their culture they treasured, the music of these lost performers was not forgotten. Throughout the seventies, eighties and nineties the scattered communities set up recording studios and continued to produce music just as amazing as those lost golden years. Enter Mark Gergis (of Neung Phak / Mono Pause and the man who brought us I Remember Syria). From 1999 to 2004 Mark diligently scoured the Asian branch of the Oakland Public Library, checking out each and every Cassette of Cambodian music produced in the period from the early seventies to the present. Many of the cassettes were unfortunately unlistenable; not merely because they'd been played thousands of times, or left on hot car dashboards, but because they were being slowly bulk erased by the library employees themselves as they would unwittingly pass them over the magnetic security system used to prevent book theft. Even with the best intentions of the public library as a repository for culture, Cambodian music was slowly being erased one cassette at a time. Of course there was no public outcry, at this point people had moved on to the newest thing (no doubt something recorded by one person with an electronic keyboard and other MIDI gear). It seems to happen everywhere: recent history is wiped clean for whatever happens to be hot at the moment. So it was that Mark culled together a collection of songs that are as amazing as they are rare. One thing particularly striking about many of the tracks is that, unlike what you'll hear on the Cambodian Rocks collections (all of which were actually recorded in Cambodia), they include both traditional Cambodian instruments alongside western instruments. There are tracks with Khan (the inimitable mouth organ of Southeast Asia) playing alongside electric guitar (which is often times being played in the style of a traditional Cambodian stringed instrument), saxophone, drums, electric bass and organ. Some of the combinations and bizarre genre bends are truly off the wall -- such as the track, unfortunately to remain untitled for now, a proto-metal Cambodian pop ditty featuring echoey and brash female vocals and a Queen-era guitar solo. While there are a few of the more modern pop tunes -- of the primarily keyboards and drum machine variety -- here, none are of the overly westernized Asian pop that is so ubiquitous these days. There are also 6 tracks of older tunes that were recorded in Phnom Penh between the mid-1960's and the early 70's (one of which was overdubbed by an American operated studio with a drum machine beat!) This is a truly amazing collection, certainly the best disc to be released by Sublime Frequencies to date, and Byram's top pick for 2004 thus far. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Blue Basket"
MPEG Stream: "Unknown [track 12]"
MPEG Stream: "Unknown [track 15]"

V/A Cambodian Rocks Vol. 1 (Khmer Rocks) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
While most record stores might include Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" as a mainstay album, consistently moving units from its initial release on up to the present, the original Cambodian Rocks collection has been for us a mainstay in its own right. We may not be able to boast the quantities that a larger store might for a staple, but Cambodian Rocks has got to be one of the most universally loved albums here at aQ. So you can imagine we were pretty damn excited when we found out that the collection was being released with full disclosure of musicians, vocalists, recording dates, song titles and lyrics (translated into English!) And if that isn't enough, Khmer Rocks has expanded their version of the collection to two discs! Even better, for all of you owners of the original collection, between these two discs and the original release on Parallel World there are only 5 songs total that overlap! So now you're wondering what the connection is between Khmer Rocks and Parallel World. Well, as far as we can tell, there is absolutely no connection. Seems like Khmer Rocks titled their two discs to capitalize off the original's popularity. And to their credit, they seem a bit more legit, having gone through the trouble of tracking down artists' names and song titles to give credit where credit is due. Not to be too harsh on Parallel World -- their collection is a fucking great compilation, always will be -- but the Khmer Rocks folk seem to be more genuinely indebted to these artists and it shows in their aformentioned efforts. And like Parallel World's collection, all the tracks on these two discs are absolutely great. It would be hard to leave a track out of your iPod if you were short on space. You might just have to get rid of something else. The artists here are all absolute geniuses in their abilities to absorb American rock and roll and tweak it to local tastes. In a lot of ways these bands are like South East Asian versions of the Sun City Girls -- picking up foreign radio transmissions (shortwave radio broadcasts to American military personnel) and subverting them to their own likeness. Some of our favorites are tracks like Meas Samoun's "The Engagement", a completely dirty take on the Santana sound (a lot of these Cambodian rockers seemed to really dig Santana) with an organ (or is it some ridiculously fucked up early seventies guitar processing?) solo that will kill you. Others, like Ros Sereyosthea take an American song part and parcel -- in this case CCR's "Rolling On A River" -- merely inserting their own lyrics and twisting the arrangement. Other twisted renditions sound an awful lot like "Hey Jude", "If You're Going To San Francisco", and "Whiter Shade Of Pale". But more often than not the tracks tend to be originals with a deeply modified American twang and sound less like the cover versions mentioned above. In all cases, the rock on these recordings has an energy of absolute immediacy and urgency that's unlike any of their psychedelic counterparts the globe round.
MPEG Stream: SINN SISAMOUTH "Quando My Love"
MPEG Stream: MEAS SAMOUN "The Engagement"
MPEG Stream: YOL AULARONG "Whiskey Whiskey"

V/A Cambodian Rocks Vol. 2 (Khmer Rocks) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
While most record stores might include Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" as a mainstay album, consistently moving units from its initial release on up to the present, the original Cambodian Rocks collection has been for us a mainstay in its own right. We may not be able to boast the quantities that a larger store might for a staple, but Cambodian Rocks has got to be one of the most universally loved albums here at aQ. So you can imagine we were pretty damn excited when we found out that the collection was being released with full disclosure of musicians, vocalists, recording dates, song titles and lyrics (translated into English!) And if that isn't enough, Khmer Rocks has expanded their version of the collection to two discs! Even better, for all of you owners of the original collection, between these two discs and the original release on Parallel World there are only 5 songs total that overlap! So now you're wondering what the connection is between Khmer Rocks and Parallel World. Well, as far as we can tell, there is absolutely no connection. Seems like Khmer Rocks titled their two discs to capitalize off the original's popularity. And to their credit, they seem a bit more legit, having gone through the trouble of tracking down artists' names and song titles to give credit where credit is due. Not to be too harsh on Parallel World -- their collection is a fucking great compilation, always will be -- but the Khmer Rocks folk seem to be more genuinely indebted to these artists and it shows in their aformentioned efforts. And like Parallel World's collection, all the tracks on these two discs are absolutely great. It would be hard to leave a track out of your iPod if you were short on space. You might just have to get rid of something else. The artists here are all absolute geniuses in their abilities to absorb American rock and roll and tweak it to local tastes. In a lot of ways these bands are like South East Asian versions of the Sun City Girls -- picking up foreign radio transmissions (shortwave radio broadcasts to American military personnel) and subverting them to their own likeness. Some of our favorites are tracks like Meas Samoun's "The Engagement", a completely dirty take on the Santana sound (a lot of these Cambodian rockers seemed to really dig Santana) with an organ (or is it some ridiculously fucked up early seventies guitar processing?) solo that will kill you. Others, like Ros Sereyosthea take an American song part and parcel -- in this case CCR's "Rolling On A River" -- merely inserting their own lyrics and twisting the arrangement. Other twisted renditions sound an awful lot like "Hey Jude", "If You're Going To San Francisco", and "Whiter Shade Of Pale". But more often than not the tracks tend to be originals with a deeply modified American twang and sound less like the cover versions mentioned above. In all cases, the rock on these recordings has an energy of absolute immediacy and urgency that's unlike any of their psychedelic counterparts the globe round.
MPEG Stream: PAN RON "Hippie Men"
MPEG Stream: SINN SISAMOUTH "Missing Tender Care"
MPEG Stream: ROS SEREYSOTHEA "Haircut"

V/A Cambodian Rocks Vol. 3: All Psyched Up (Khmer Rocks) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It would appear that the Khmer Rocks label is slowly rendering the original Cambodian Rocks compilation on Parallel World obsolete. With each volume of their version of the beloved series there are a smattering of those tracks included -- now better served with full disclosure of the artists' names, song titles and even lyrics! With volume 3 there are three more, leaving you with 16 completely new tracks. We figure that by volume 7 or 8 of the Khmer Rocks series we'll all be able to trade in the original. As a bonus, Khmer Rocks has included two tracks at the end of volume 3 of "Romvong Songs", or Cambodian circle dance songs. It's the label's way of turning on all the garage psychsters to some traditional Cambodian music. The first track is actually a lot like the tracks on the Cambodian rocks discs, but with a bit more swing. The second, by Cambodian superstar Sinn Sisamouth, replaces guitar and bass with flute and clarinet along with traditional Cambodian instruments, but it still has the same intensity of those rock tracks. What can we say? Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: SINN SISAMOUTH "A Diamond Ring"
MPEG Stream: YOL AULARONG "Number One"
MPEG Stream: SINN SISAMOUTH "The Kickboxer"

V/A Cambodian Rocks Vol. IV (Khmer Rocks) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
All right! The fourth volume in the totally rad Cambodian Rocks series is here at last (perhaps the compilers at the Khmer Rocks label were sensing competition from the now three-volume Thai Beat A Go Go series?). Volume four puts Cambodian Rocks into the lead with some truly over the top late '60s/early '70s rock n' roll, exotic psych-beat that's just so wild, weird, n' wonderful. WOW is all you can say. The 19 tracks include such brilliantly-titled songs as "Oops...He's Mute", "No Shorts Lesson Learned", "Leftover Smile" and "I'm All Skinny" performed by an all-star cast of Cambodian Rockers: Ros Sereysothea, Sinn Sisamouth, Pan Ron, Yol Aularong, and Meas Samoun. Until the tragic, catastrophic Khmer Rouge takeover of the mid '70s brought the genocidal despot Pol Pot and his gang into power, Cambodia (or its urban center Phnom Penh anyway) apparently was a hip, swinging place where teenagers could groove to plenty of homegrown rock n' roll music, inspired by Western R&B, surf, and psych but with a distinctive Cambodian flavor. You can sure hear that in so many of the tracks here, in the sweet female voices backed by distorted guitar and wigged-out organ. There's some serious psych-fuzz being laid down, sometimes murky and lo-fi duo to its temporally/geographically distant origins but full of spirit and energy. So very recommended, as every entry in this series has been! By the way, the compliers have thoughtfully included English translations of the lyrics in the cd booklet.
MPEG Stream: ROS SEREYSOTHEA "Brokenhearted Woman"
MPEG Stream: SINN SISAMOUTH "Biting Game"

V/A China: Lost Sounds of the Tao: Chinese Masters Of The Guqin In Historic Recordings (World Arbiter) cd 14.98
This longtime AQ favorite is finally available again!
Recorded in 1970 and '71 at his countryside home outside of Hong Kong, the elderly (but spry) Lo Ka Ping will captivate you here with his performances on the qin, a type of ancient Chinese seven-stringed zither with a soft, subdued sound. Confucius' favorite instrument, the sound and style of the qin in the hands of Lo Ka Ping really evokes both Buddhist music and the blues. In his sparse, soulful performance on these ten tracks (four of Ping's own composition and six traditional numbers) you'll hear echoes of the the likes of Son House and Blind Willie Johnson - you could almost imagine this is a lost backporch recording by an unknown gospelish slide guitarist, playing a mysterious, alien blues. Parallels to Indian classical music can be heard as well, to which there is a link to the qin tradition in fact as well as in spirit.
This cd is rounded out with a couple of older, crustier recordings circa 1946-48 by two other "Chinese Masters of the Guqin", Zheng Yingsun and Xu Yuan Bay, who alongside Lo Ka Ping make this a lovely, raw, spiritually resonant document indeed.
MPEG Stream: "Teals Descending On Level Sand"
MPEG Stream: "Meditaion In The Dead Of Night"

V/A Chine: Hommage a Chen Zhong (Ocora) cd 16.98

V/A Dervish Ceremonies (New Earth) cd 15.98

V/A Discover Indonesia (Smithsonian Folkways) cd 6.98
For those of you who may find the full 20-volume Smithsonian Folkways "Music Of Indonesia" series a little daunting, and don't know just where to begin, the kind folks at SFW decided to release this budget-priced series sampler cd. Featuring 15 tracks selected from the many amazing entries in the series. Everything from xylophone duets to brass bands, from church songs to gamelan, from bamboo tubes to funeral gongs. Totally great. Get this and then begin collecting the volumes from whence comes the music that intrigues you the most on here. We also recommend Vol. 20 ("Indonesian Guitars") and Vol. 2 ("Popular Music of Indonesia") as being good starting points and definite essentials in this series.

V/A Doob Doob O'Rama: Filmsongs From Bollywood (QDK) cd 15.98
A collection of Indian film music classics, kind of a bizarre and infectious lo-fi hybridization of genres. If you liked the "Bombay The Hardway" disc, or our favorite, the great "Dance Raja Dance" collection of Vijaya Anand's film music, you'll surely dig this. Features the illustrious Asha Bhosle! Recommended.

V/A Doob Doob O'Rama: Filmsongs From Bollywood (QDK) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A collection of Indian film music classics, kind of a bizarre and infectious lo-fi hybridization of genres. If you liked the "Bombay The Hardway" disc, or our favorite, the great "Dance Raja Dance" collection of Vijaya Anand's film music, you'll surely dig this. Features the illustrious Asha Bosle! Recommended.

V/A Espanola (Khmer Rocks) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Along with putting out the three Cambodian Rocks compilations that have rendered the original Parallel World label comp of the same name virtually obsolete, Khmer Rocks also has a plethora of other khmer music compilations that we're only just beginning to scratch the surface of. While every bit as great as the three Rocks comps we reviewed previously, they're also not marketed as much for the greater population... ie: these are more for the Khmer community. To this end, there's no translation of the song titles or artists. Additionally this collection is on CD-R, but we can't complain because it's also only 9.98. You're probably wondering what a Spanish title is doing on a collection of Cambodian rock music and, well, so were we. The first track, with the word "espanola" featured prominently in the lyrics, clears all that up: yes, it's Cambodian Cha-Cha and Latin tinged Cambodian rock. There are even trumpet flourishes and string sections lifted straight out of a bolero. Not to give you the wrong idea however, only a handful of the tracks on Espanola are actually Latin influenced. Like the Cambodian Rocks series, there's plenty of good old fashioned go-go and garage rock make up the bulk of the collection. Plus the closer, a fuzzed out "hard rock" encore of a track is about as unlike anything in the previous comps. For those of you who already own the other anthologies, as far as we've been able to tell from listening -- another downside to not having English liner notes -- there's no overlap with any of the previous Cambodian collections we've been selling. Muy bien Khmer Rocks!
MPEG Stream: UNKNOWN "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: UNKNOWN "Track 9"
MPEG Stream: UNKNOWN "Track 20"

V/A Ethnic Minority Music Of North Vietnam (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
If the usual, corporate "world music" recording is intended for the pleasure and edification of "armchair travellers" who appreciate the comforts of said armchair and, if actually travelling, would prefer the expensive luxuries of Westernized hotels and guided tours in air conditioned buses, then "world music" as documented by the Sun City Girls affiliated Sublime Frequencies field recordings label is for armchair travellers who want to know what it would sound like if they and their armchair were to be picked up, packed into a crate, shipped on the slow boat TO China or wherever, and dumped into the back alleys of a far off land to fend for themselves. No guided tour, more like bumming around amid the teeming human cultures of the third world, ears open to new experiences, to both musical and environmental sounds.
For release number thirty-something in their series, Sublime Frequencies visits North Vietnam, bringing back 15 tracks of wailing horns, keening vocals, twanging Jews harps, wheezing bamboo mouth-organs, and and more, including the sounds of a reed instrument, the piem zat, a sort of oboe played with a circular breathing technique. Singing styles are unique too, as with the layered female chorus on track 10 for instance, where the singers achieve a kind a delay effect, in a style called bao zoo.
The liner notes by recordist/compiler Lauren Jenneau help to explain the musical traditions of the various ethnic minority groups he's encountered here, and how they figure into both their everyday and spiritual lives. As usual with Sublime Frequencies stuff, pretty much a must-have if you want to make your armchair a much more "exotic" place in which to recline... or to inspire you to get off your ass, quit your job and take off on that backpacking trip to South East Asia you've always wanted to take...
MPEG Stream: "track 4: Chungja, jews harp..."
MPEG Stream: "track 7: kheng, mouth organ..."
MPEG Stream: "track 10: Bao zoo..."

V/A Ethnic Minority Music Of Northeast Cambodia (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
The Cambodians have a long and troubled history, rife with oppression and persecution. Whether it's the Khmer Rouge, the French, the Siamese, the Vietnamese, and even the Americans, as a people, their survival was always in doubt. This strife resulted in a rich musical landscape, music being an escape, but also a means of storytelling and passing on history. A rich oral tradition imbues almost all Cambodian music. While past forays into Cambodian music have focused on Cambodian ROCK, the sort of reimagining of Western pop, resulting in off kilter, buzzing psychedelic Eastern pop versions of popular Western songs, this comp focuses more on the music of the ethnic minorities, simple instrumentation, mostly vocal, with gongs, simple stringed instruments and primitive bamboo flutes, but if anything the music is so much more passionate and unique. Tales of love and loss, war and death, bombings and of course the terrible aftermath of the Khmer Rouge.
The opening track is an old man, laying in a hammock, singing tales of local legends and his voices is totally amazing, a growling creaking, rumbling, super resonant hum, equal parts chanting and throat singing, while in the back ground, you can hear conversations, creaking porches, children laughing, birds chirping, in fact almost every track here is performed right on the spot, whether it's outside the house, in the front room, in a hammock, on the side of the road, always surrounded by the sound of life and other lives. The second track is performed by 5 old men, playing 5 large gongs, set up outside their house, a low keening vibration, soft muted melodies, dreamy and shimmering, a swirling soft soundpool while in the background children again laugh and play, adding a strange joyous effortlessness to the glistening drone, later a female vocalist sings over the top, a lilting, mournful lament. Elsewhere, a female midwife sings an acapella song, a delicate wavering croon, warbling and wavering, but so rich and beautiful, while voices swirl around her. Like she just decided to start singing, right there amidst a crowd of random passersby, which she probably did. Later, a love song, simple fingerpicked guitar and sweetly sad improvised female vocals, while on another track, a 10 stringed instrument made from bamboo and a hollowed out gourd is strummed and picked, creating a sparkling web of buzzing high end melodies and delicate high end tangles, while later five gong players unfurl a warm wash of simple steel drum like melody, accompanied by a male vocalist, a flute player and 8 female virgins who clap along and offer up a chant responding to the male vocals.
This is literally a stroll through another culture, observing and learning via music, and it feels like music is everywhere, in houses, on the street, in shops and on the shores of the river, people talk and laugh, play and work, always surrounded by music, clapping and singing, melody and harmony, completely mesmerizing. And obviously very very recommended.
Includes a big booklet with lots of photos and extensive liner notes.
MPEG Stream: OLD MAN IEN "Brao Legends"
MPEG Stream: KAVET MEN & BRAO WOMAN "3-Day Ceremony"
MPEG Stream: BRAO FEMALE SINGER "Midwife Song"
MPEG Stream: 5 GONGS & 8 VIRGINS "Call & Response"

V/A Ethnic Minority Music Of Northwest Xinjiang, China (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
Yet another fantastic new entry in the ever expanding (at an alarming pace) catalogue of mysterious world music treasures from Sublime Frequencies. This one born of an aborted wedding plan, the couple Laurent Jeanneau and Shi Tanding had hoped to get married in China, while at the same time collecting field recordings from the various stops in their travels. But alas, the wedding was not to be, as the local authorities grew quite suspicious, following the two and interrogating them relentlessly. And while the wedding was nixed, the Laurent and Shi can definitely take consolation in the fact that they returned with this incredible collection of various folk musics from all over the Northwest Xinjiang region of China.
A fantastic array of Chines traditional folk music, various indigenous stringed instruments, different vocal styles, as always the booklet is bursting with information, about the trip, the couple's hardships, but more pertinent to the compilation, extensive notes on the various performers and the instruments, and the different styles of music.
But even without that sort of technical guide, the music here quickly reveals itself as mysterious and magical, intimate and emotional, haunting and otherworldly. A quick overview of some of our favorite tracks: wild frenzied string buzz, incredibly dense and tangled melodies, some seriously masterful playing that would give most Western shredders a run for their money, some gorgeous languid steel string buzz, over moody low end melodies, bird calls in the distance, super dramatic and so beautiful, in fact birds feature prominently in these recordings, which of course only makes them that much cooler. Like on the track with a swoonsome soaring violin like melody, sounding like it was performed in the middle of a lush forest, which it most likely was. There's lots of bluesy folkiness, with incredibly emotive vocals, so moving and intense. And then there's the 15 minute closer, very Indian sounding, a sprawling raga, layered buzz, tangled melodies, haunting vocals, totally mesmerizing and utterly transcendent.
It's difficult for us to not just make EVERY Sublime Frequencies release a Record Of The Week, and compilation is another reason why, which simply means that this is about as recommended as we can imagine, on constant play here in the store, where it will most likely remain, at least until the next mysterious Sublime Frequencies gem, which we're guessing is probably not that far off...
MPEG Stream: KURMANJIANG ZACCHARIA "Babulao"
MPEG Stream: ASHIMUNUR KURMANJIANG "The Mountain's Pine Trees"
MPEG Stream: PA HAT "Margul"
MPEG Stream: KURBAN "Mast A Iran"
MPEG Stream: XIA AR GHEN AOKHAN "Atamake"
MPEG Stream: KURBAN, PA HAT AND ADENGR "Ror Salei Muqam"

V/A Ethnic Minority Music Of Southern Laos (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yet another fantastic document from Sublime Frequencies, the avant world music label run by the Sun City Girls, and home to now dozens of releases, all of them fascinating and fantastic. Proving once again that we ain't got nothing on the rest of the world in terms of unique sounds and amazing musics. Ethnic Minority Music Of Southern Laos, is one of two new discs in Sublime Frequencies' series of documents exploring the rich musical histories of displaced minorities in various regions of Southeast Asia. This volume follows the Northeast Cambodia installment in exploring the music of Cambodia, this disc focusing on two distinct musical styles, one incorporating various gongs, the other involving different sorts of mouth harps. As always, the liner notes are dense and informative, but here they are a little bit more difficult to summarize than on past discs, so we'll focus more on the sounds than the story.
All of these tracks were culled from a super limited 4cd set released a few years back, and offer a varied and completely mindblowing sampling of the sounds of musicians in and around Laos, groups of people forced to move from their mountainous villages into temporary and makeshift villages, where all of the things that nature supplied in the mountains (food, water, protection) have now become scarce. And obviously, as with all cultures, the music and art represents the huge shifts and dramatic changes of a people, political, personal, love, worry, sadness, sorrow, death, passion, birth... The music here is just so intense and emotional and definitely reflects the transition and the day to day struggle to just live life.
As mentioned above, there are two distinct musics, the first is based mostly on gongs, with various bits of percussion, and the sound is amazing. Rich and resonant, totally hypnotic and rhythmic, often times just a single gong, but the magic of the music is in the patterns and the subtle overtones, so simple yet so subtly complex, the various subtleties unfold as the tracks progress, not hard to imagine (or hope) that these tracks could go on for hours...
Other tracks are more complex, with deep gongs creating a shimmering backdrop, for clattery cymbals and simple propulsive drumming, a sound that isn't all that different in places than some of the freaky forest folk from Finland we dig so much, or the stoned rhythmic jams of groups like the No Neck Blues Band or Sunburned Hand Of The Man. The sounds of the various gongs are so different, some are low and rumbling, others are high pitched and sharp, and lots of shades in between, muted and muffled or allowed to ring out, struck with something soft or with wood or other metal, the various shades are deftly woven into gorgeous stretches of rhythm and melody.
The other music is based on various mouth harps, and the sound of those harps is remarkable, strange complex chords, complicated alien timbres, wheezing and whirring, lots of overlapping melodies, and various tones all tangled up, a rich bed beneath deep rich crooning, while in the background can be heard chirping birds, crowing roosters, babies crying, many of the tracks pick up random conversations, from the players, or passersby. One of the most amazing organ track is "Jeu Phawn Peng Gawng Ploung Ken" featuring an organ made from 10 bamboo tubes and a single gong. The melody is haunting and minor key, looped and so hypnotic, while two vocalists take turns singing, their voices alternatingly raw and raspy, soaring and clear, one ragged and forlorn, the other wailing and sorrowful, and like the other tracks, you can hear coughing, breathing, feet shuffling in the background, but the music is so dark, and so intense, it's easy to get completely lost.
And while the record is mostly evenly split between the mouth harp tracks and the gong tracks, there are a handful of tracks that don't fit in either camp, some strummy and folky, others abstract and percussive. One of those tracks we love, one that should have been 10 minutes long instead of 24 seconds is "Reum Bang" a killer riff, played on a single string bowed instrument, the sound so primal and raw, the string all muted and stiff, like a distorted rubber band guitar or something, hard not to imagine the drums kicking in and it turning into some strange psychedelic jam.
The whole disc is fantastic, every time a new Sublime Frequencies disc arrives, we find ourselves wanting to proclaim it the best one yet, but all it takes is for us to go back and listen to any of the old ones, for us to realize that, no, THAT one is the best one yet. Can't think of a better recommendation for this disc, and for every disc in the series...
MPEG Stream: "Khen Le Molam"
MPEG Stream: "Gaw Gawng Jing Pe Play"
MPEG Stream: "Thalong Tha Ka-Nying"
MPEG Stream: "Reum Beng"
MPEG Stream: "Jeu PhawnPeng Gawng Ploung Ken"

V/A Excavated Shellac: Strings (Parlortone) lp 17.98
First proper lp release from aQ pal, 78 collector, and curator of the awesome Excavated Shellac blog, Jonathan Ward, appropriately enough on Parlortone, "The Phonographic Arm And Limited Edition Leg" of longtime favorite reissue label Dust-To-Digital. And it's a doozy, before we get into it, anyone who buys everything on Mississippi is gonna want one of these, if you loved the Black Mirror collection, or the Victrola Favorites, for anyone into world music, into lost gems, old sonic obscurities, this is about as good as it gets, the song selection, the curation, the sound, the detailed liner notes, utterly fantastic, and sonically breathtaking. But of course we would have expected nothing less.
For those not familiar with it, Excavated Shellac is a blog dedicated to "78rpm recordings of folkloric and vernacular music from around the world", and besides having an incredible collection, Ward also is a fantastic write, who writes extensively about each record he posts (almost all unavailable anywhere else in any format), detailing the recording, the style of music, the history, a musical lesson in every post, and the music, well needless to say, it's easy to get lost and subsequently obsessed.
So Excavated Shellac: Strings, is an analog extension of the ES blog, with all the things we love about the blog intact. Of course there's the music, impeccably chosen, deftly cleaned up, and perfectly sequenced, the writing, informative and funny, educated and informed, about the record, the project, and each track and artist, and of course the object itself, beautifully laid out, pressed on thick vinyl, lots of amazing archival photos, so great.
This first volume focuses on string instruments from around the world, Armenia, India, Bolivia, Congo, Vietnam, Georgia, Iran, Turkey, Uganda, Lebanon, Japan, Norway, Croatia and Paraguay. Every song a gem, haunting solos on Middle Eastern lutes, tangled frantic, droney sitar like buzz from India, playful festive dance music from Bolivia played on small guitars fashioned from gourds, gorgeous acoustic guitar music, lush and melodic, with soulful call and response vocals, from Congo, home recorded duets on 2 string fiddle and 'moon guitar' from Vietnam, solo violin from Iran, traditional folk music from Georgia, we could go on and on and on and on. But you know already if you need this, and it seems likely you probably do. We had been hearing rumblings about a Jon Ward / Dust-To-Digital project in the works, and had been anxiously awaiting it ever since. Now that we're playing this to death, we find ourselves already looking forward to future volumes. So incredible, and so totally recommended.
Beautifully printed matte finish sleeve, heavy vinyl, with a printed cardstock 4 page insert, with liner notes and photos and more!

V/A Fanafody: A Collection Of Recordings & Photography From Madagasikara Volume II (Mississippi) lp 14.98
MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!
It's really getting to where we barely have to describe these at all. And not just because of the Mississippi obsessives. The collections are so lovingly curated, every step of the process, from the actual recording of the music, to the booklets and the jackets, and most importantly the amazing sounds inside, any one with even the slightest bit of interest in world musics, would be foolish to pass any of these up. Including this, volume two in this series of field recordings from Madagascar, the first volume so limited we were never able to get any copies at all. The sounds here were gathered by Canadian field recordist Charlie Brooks, and most were recorded on a trip there in 2002, focusing mostly on violin players and throat singers, although the sounds here are quite varied. There is so much info in the liner notes about the region, and the history, and that alone makes this a worthwhile purchase, but the music, it's fantastic, haunting, and lovely and beautiful, incredible vocal harmonies, the violins emit sweet melodies one second, intense buzzing the next, there are wheezing accordions, some of the tracks sound almost Hawaiian, the strings reminding us of ukeleles, throughout the songs are laced with street sounds, birds chirping, cars driving by, children laughing, conversations, all just adding to the vibe, and the energy, with a few of the tracks droned our and mesmerizing, sounding a bit like some mysterious variation of American Appalachia. Incredible!
Housed in a super heavy old school tip-on style jacket, and includes a massive booklet filled with liner notes on the music, the region, the performers, as well as lots of photos.

V/A Folk and Pop Sounds of Sumatra Vol. 1 (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We're pretty damn excited by Sun City Girls 33.3 percenter Alan Bishop's new Sublime Frequencies label. "Dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers" Sublime Frequencies is slipping on the shoes apparently discarded by such pioneering labels as Smithsonian Folkways, Nonesuch Explorer, et al. Unlike previous explorers in such unheard music, Sublime Frequencies is not restricted by academic or commercial purposes. The latter probably deserves a bit more explanation; for where much of the post-Explorer purveyors of "world music" shamelessly produce an endless slough of slick garbage that sounds like the crap you can hear on any U.S. top 40 radio station merely sung in another language (Christ, if I had a wooden nickel for every fuckin' starry eyed NPR music review extoling the uniqueness of some generic world music outfit that combines electronic music with traditional folk, yadda, yadda, yadda the world's forests would be clear cut by now) the recordings you'll hear presented by Sublime Frequencies come from the cracks in the pavement of the culture makers. Through field recordings (many made by Bishop himself in his travels), radio and shortwave broadcasts some of the most fucking great music and audio you've never heard has been culled together. Balls to fidelity, none of the artists here would be allowed within 10 miles of a Putamayo AR executive, this is the punk rock of field recordings!
Assembled from cassettes acquired by Alan Bishop through trade or purchase in 1989 while traveling through Sumatra, "Folk And Pop Sounds" contains some of the most obscure recordings of the three initial CD releases from Subliminal Frequencies. Located on the furthest Western edge of the Indonesian archipelago, Sumatra is big (as big as California) and widely unexplored in the audio realm in comparison with its neighboring islands to the East, Java and Bali. The disc begins with the Haba Haba Group in which a male singer is accompanied by flute, two alternating gongs and percussion and secondly by an unknown Sumatran Dangdut (crazy overdriven pop with a heavy Indian film music influence). The most immediately noticeable difference in these recordings from Sumatra to Bali & Java is the overt Arabic influence on the music. The Dangdut track even sounds similar to the music on a Somalian CD, "Jamiila" which we used to sell here years ago before it went out of print. As if to admonish us against generalizations, another later Dangdut track, with runaway farfisa organ, pleasant arppegiating electric guitar and female vocals sounds not dis-similar to the "keroncong" music of The Steps CD from Java released on Warn Defever's Time Stereo label. While the disc may begin innocently enough, the sequencing of the tracks seduces the listener into the strange world of Sumatran music. The very Arabic sounding Indang Pariaman which features a female singer who's melody line interweaves beautifully with end blown wooden flute and some more incredibly nutty buzzing electric keyboard (one can only imagine that the sound is intended to imitate a double reed instrument of old) is moved along by jovial electric bass and casio-rhythm. The combination of acoustic and archaic electric instruments is shamelessly wonderful. Later an orchestra of sorts, complete with violin, electric organ, bass, drums, female voice leads us down a fragrant path that's oddly reminiscent of a Sun City Girls track. Speaking of which, though this one technically isn't, there are a couple of tracks on here which indeed are songs covered by the Girls, can you figure out which ones? Along with the songs proper included here, there are some great excerpts from dramas. The first instance begins with sweet flute and what's supposed to be a rooster crowing, but emulated by what sounds like an old air raid siren played through a broken megaphone. A melodramatic dialogue ensues between a terribly afflicted female and a stoic male voice. needless to say, this one comes highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: HABA HABA GROUP "Sitogol #1"
MPEG Stream: UNKNOWN "Piso Somalim #1"
MPEG Stream: PIMP RUBIAH "Sri Mersing"

V/A Folk and Pop Sounds of Sumatra Vol. 1 (Sublime Frequencies) lp 25.00
Awesome! A deluxe vinyl reissue of this out of print cd!! Originally released nearly 8 years ago, this incredible compilation was one of the very first things from a new 'world music' label, head honcho'd by Sun City Girl Alan Bishop. That label, Sublime Frequencies, as most loyal aQ list readers are well aware of by now, went on to quickly become what has to be one of the exciting and varied labelsÊout there, especially amongst world music reissue specialty labels, which often tend toward the very mainstream. This stuff was and is anything but mainstream,Êdedicated to, according to the label themselves, "acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers". Sublime Frequencies effortlessly slipping on the shoes apparently discarded by such pioneering labels as Smithsonian Folkways, Nonesuch Explorer, et al.
And unlike previous explorers in such unheard music, Sublime Frequencies was, and is, not restricted by academic tradition or commercial purposes. The collections and compilations seem more like mixtapes, lovingly compiled, and born of a true and genuine love of the music. Every one brimming with sounds like we'd never heard before, musics culled from the cracks in the pavement of the culture makers. Through field recordings (many made by Bishop and the rest of the SF crew themselves), collected tapes and records, radio and shortwave broadcasts, Sublime Frequencies consistently manages to utterly transport the listener, capturing all the energy and emotion, the politics and the passion, of other peoples and places, via the sounds and music that are the soundtracks to their lives. And as we mentioned before, none of the artists here would be allowed within 10 miles of a Putamayo AR executive, Sublime Frequencies is the punk rock of field recordings! Or at least was. If anything, they've become the new standard by which other world music upstarts are measured, and they've set the bar pretty damn high. And it all started here.
Here's what we had to say about Folk And Pop Sounds From Sumatra, Volume 1, when we first reviewed it nearly a decade ago, and listening to it again, even now, it still sounds as fresh and exciting as it did thenÉ
Folk And Pop Sounds was assembled from cassettes acquired by Alan Bishop through trade or purchase in 1989 while traveling through Sumatra, which is located on the furthest Western edge of the Indonesian archipelago, and is big (as big as California) and widely unexplored in the audio realm in comparison with its neighboring islands to the East, Java and Bali. The disc begins with the Haba Haba Group in which a male singer is accompanied by flute, two alternating gongs and percussion and secondly by an unknown Sumatran Dangdut (crazy overdriven pop with a heavy Indian film music influence). The most immediately noticeable difference in these recordings from Sumatra to Bali & Java is the overt Arabic influence on the music. The Dangdut track even sounds similar to the music on a Somalian cd, "Jamiila" which we used to sell here years ago before it went out of print. As if to admonish us against generalizations, another later Dangdut track, with runaway Farfisa organ, pleasant arpeggiating electric guitar and female vocals sounds not dissimilar to the "keroncong" music of The Steps cd-r from Java released on Warn Defever's Time Stereo label (another big seller here way back when). While the disc may begin innocently enough, the sequencing of the tracks seduces the listener into the strange world of Sumatran music. The very Arabic sounding "Indan g Pariaman" which features a female singer whose melody line interweaves beautifully with end blown wooden flute and some more incredibly nutty buzzing electric keyboard (one can only imagine that the sound is intended to imitate a double reed instrument of old) is moved along by jovial electric bass and Casio-rhythm. The combination of acoustic and archaic electric instruments is shamelessly wonderful. Later an orchestra of sorts, complete with violin, electric organ, bass, drums, female voice leads us down a fragrant path that's oddly reminiscent of a Sun City Girls track. Speaking of which, though this one technically isn't, there are a couple of tracks on here which indeed are songs covered by the Girls, can you figure out which ones? Along with the songs proper included here, there are some great excerpts from dramas. The first instance begins with sweet flute and what's supposed to be a rooster crowing, but emulated by what sounds like an old air raid siren played through a broken megaphone. A melodramatic dialogue ensues between a terribly afflicted female and a stoic male voice. Needless to say, this one comes highly recommended! And like all Sublime Frequencies vinyl (and cds for that matter), kinda limited...
MPEG Stream: HABA HABA GROUP "Sitogol #1"
MPEG Stream: UNKNOWN "Piso Somalim #1"
MPEG Stream: PIMP RUBIAH "Sri Mersing"

V/A Folk and Pop Sounds of Sumatra Vol. 2 (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This second volume of Sumatran music does not disapoint. Not at all. Different than the music of Java and Bali, the Arabic influence on Sumatran music is unmistakable. More than that though, Sumatran music seems to not only include a wide variety of influences from near and far, but seems to wear it on its sleeve. And yet, despite the insane amount of musical diversity, the Arabic thread runs strongly through every single track here. The 17 tracks on this disc feature some eight different genres of music from Sumatra. The Rabab Dangdut cuts tend to be like the country music of Sumatra. At least that's what the scratchy fiddle parts immediately sound like to a western ear. But melodies and the interaction between the vocals and fiddle are slightly reminiscent of Thai Mo Lam. Add on top of this some ska rhythm guitar, electric bass and drums and things start to get a little thick. The other styles are no less odd. The Orkes Gambus are all orchestral numbers with oud, huge sounding violin sections, electric organs and female vocals. In a blind listening test one might guess the origins as Syria or Egypt. The Tari Minang tracks are about as close to Java as you'll get here. Along with a small gamelan ensemble are Arabic double reeds, flutes and female vocals. Like the first volume, there's nary a dud on this one. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: SYAMSUDIN "Sigumendar"
MPEG Stream: UNKNOWN "Unknown"
MPEG Stream: MUCHLIS/BERSAMA "Salam Pembukaan"

V/A Greek-Oriental Rebetica: Songs & Dances In the Asia Minor Style (Arhoolie / Folklyric) cd 15.98

V/A Groove Club Vol. 2: Cambodia Rock Spectacular! (Lion Productions / Get On Down) 2lp 17.98
Can there ever really be enough Cambodian Rock?
Don't answer that yet. Because while this double lp compilation does feature the stars of the genre featured on other Cambodian rock comps: Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea, and Pan Ron, it also has plenty of others including the heavy psych groove of the Thra Kha Band who have two amazing tracks that are totally worth the price of admission. Plus it's a double vinyl gatefold with copious liner notes about the amazing music and tragic legacy of many of the music's star figures. Rarely does music seem so truly hauntological. Sunny, fun, and grooving on the surface, but layered over tragic notions of the political brutality that would come later. We've covered that history in plenty of previous reviews, so we won't go down that rabbit hole here, but this is a worthy selection of psych rock and garage gems, that didn't immediately sound like the others. So if you're new to Cambodian rock from the sixties and seventies, or would like a really well put together compilation on vinyl, now's your chance!

V/A Groove Club Vol. 3: Cambodian Rock Intensified! (Lion / Get On Down) cd 14.98

V/A Groove Club Vol. 3: Cambodian Rock Intensified! (Lion / Get On Down) 2lp 17.98

V/A Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma) Vol. 2 (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A complete about face for volume 2 in the Folk And Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma) series of discs. Remember that first one? The manic weirdness was unlike anything we'd heard, nor anything we've heard since. So it's striking that volume 2 is a disc we can at least put in terms we know. What's perhaps most ironic is that the recordings on Guitars Of The Golden Triangle come from a territory of Burma that, while roughly the size of New York State, has been almost completely un-explored by outsiders (Burmese or otherwise). The Golden Triangle (its proper name is the Shan State of Burma) is little known outside its own country, but it is the territory of smugglers, seperatist rebels and some extraordinary opium production. Since it is forbidden for foreigners to visit the Shan State, it's no surprise that its flourishing cottage industry of a music scene would be completely unknown to outsiders. How Mr. Bishop got these tracks is anyone's guess, but as we've seen before the Sublime Frequencies folks have their ways with picking up ripe fruit that others walk straight past. The 21 tracks here, recorded during the early seventies, range between heavy fuzzed out psych -- like something much more likely to have come out in the late sixties -- to sugary crooning pop -- much more akin to its decade. Little is known of most of the artists: for instance the most well represented here -- Saing Saing Maw -- is only known to have been a truck driver originally (shades of Elvis anyone?) and after striking his music career apparently returned to truck driving.
MPEG Stream: SAING SAING MAW "Than Shin Ley Ye Khan"
MPEG Stream: LASHIO THEIN AUNG "You Got What You Got"

V/A Harmika Yab-Yum: Folk Sounds From Nepal (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
By now maybe you have (or like some of us, maybe you haven't) had enough of the South East Asian pop, folk, field recordings from Sublime Frequencies. Courtesy of Robert Millis (Climax Golden Twins cohort and curator of the Leaf Music Drunks Distant Drums cd) Harmika Yab-Yum takes us on an audio journey through underserved territory. Nestled, nay sandwiched between the geographical and cultural giants of China and India, Nepal's greatest fame lies in its hosting the tallest mountain on our fair planet. It's also the only "official Hindu state in the world" according to the CIA Factbook. On Harmika Yab-Yum Millis elegantly weaves together recordings he made (apparently in 1996) of radio broadcasts, street musicians, religious cermonies, and sermons. About half of the tracks in fact are from radio, though no disc jockey banter is included, which -- whether intentional or not -- gives the recordings an even more of a feel of being totally detached from the influence of the occidental world. By and large the greatest influence on the music here is from India. Tabla percussion, flutes, pump organs, sitars, violins and drones, drones, drones make up the bulk of the instrumentation and to the untrained ear, certainly sound like the dulcet tones of Indian music. The disc starts off with a bang with a track taken from the radio which sounds like feral chanting by some crazed lunatic accompanied by drumming. This is followed by an abrupt segue into a street sermon broadcast over a distant sounding bullhorn, flutes and people talking can be heard over the sermon. For the larger part, such abrupt transitions are not the norm on Harmika Yab-Yum and the grainy, modulating songs recorded off of the airwaves blend nicely with the gritty sounds of daily life on the streets from the clanging bells of a pony train passing by to, chanting monks on Krishna day, to a snake charmer with double reed to the crashing of bands, miscellaneous percussion and other noises for a wedding procession. Very nice.
MPEG Stream: "Radio Nepal 1 / Street Sermon"
MPEG Stream: "Pony Train / Radio Nepal 3"
MPEG Stream: "Radio Nepal 7"

V/A Ho!: Roady Music from Vietnam (Trikont) cd 17.98
We can not tell you how psyched we are to have this back in stock. We've been listening to this like crazy. We had almost forgotten how totally far out and mind blowing this collection was. Since we first carried this years ago, there have been tons of diverse and eclectic collections of musics from all over the world, psych rock compilations (Love, Peace & Poetry, Thai Beat A Go Go, etc.), the Sublime Frequencies series, and loads more, but as good as those are, they can't hold a candle to Ho!: Roady Music From Vietnam! So completely fascinating and fun, wild and so so weird! Everytime this gets played in the store, customers and employees alike have to check to see what the heck it is we're listening to!
Ho! is an amazing collection of pieces from Vietnamese street musicians. The folks that travelled to Vietnam and recorded these pieces gave themselves the tongue-in-cheek name Nuoc Mam Dirndl'n, evidence of their humor in the light of collecting the sort of music they suspect the Vietnamese government would perhaps NOT appreciate as a representation of Vietnam. Ho! ranges from raucous, percussion-heavy funeral songs played at midnight by 'young people provided with drugs' to traditional material played on the one-stringed dan bau to melodramatic love songs favored by the son of the owner of the hotel the folks stayed at. There's even a 'tasteful schmaltzy song' which is what the Vietnamese record-store saleswoman played for them when they asked for some traditional Vietnamese music! Check out the following excerpt from the fascinating liner notes, and, like us, marvel at the freshness inherent in the refusal to adopt the omniscient voice-of-authority tone taken by so many ethno-compilers: "We are stunned by the Vietnamese 'Lebensgefuhl' actually corresponding to our western idea of 'subculture': lively, anarchic, loud, dense, hearty; the people are living working, eating, sleeping, and holding their funeral ceremonies between house and street. We don't know yet if there is any subculture in Vietnam; if there is e.g. (organized) political counterforces to the one-party regime -- nobody talks about politics (with us) -- maybe there is no need for it, because everybody can do whatever he/she wants: though street trading is prohibited everybody does it -- under the hardly vigilant eyes of the law -- raids are very rare, then the stands are carried away quickly and when the mischief is gone it goes on... What matters is that people LOVE TO SING which, like in our part of the world, hide in gloomy basements and play till the ears/souls are ringing: every band in Vietnam needs a license for its existence, for every gig, every song. And because there is no basements in Vietnam, people like to use the karaoke machines in their homes, bars and special karaoke houses. Saigon's street musicians are rather despised by the yuppies of Vietnam: 'shit music.' The yuppies prefer Sting and western style in general." Highly highly highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: DAN BAU VIETNAM "Rider In The Sky"
MPEG Stream: DEAD MEN'S ORCHESTRA "Totencombo"
MPEG Stream: EO SINH + NAMH HAO "VC Love Song"
MPEG Stream: THU HIEN "Hoa Cau Vuon Trau"

V/A I Love Bollywood (Manteca) cd 14.98

V/A Indiavision: Hindi Film Songs And Instrumentals (1966-1984) (Buda Musique) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BACK IN STOCK! This Record Of The Week from May went quick, and we've only just been able to get more...so if you missed it, here it is again:
The Western obsession with India's prolific film industry, and even more so the musical numbers that drive the narratives forward, has nearly reached its saturation point. The amount of "best of Bollywood" anthologies released to date seems to almost equal India's annual theatrical output. Which all just makes it that much harder for us when we want to tell you that Indiavision is quite assuredly the best collection of Bollywood music we've come accross. See, so much has come before that such a claim will be immediately written off as so much of the usual record reviewer hyperbole. So just hear us out. First of all, what is it that makes Indian film music so great? Well, one of the things most often cited by fans is the over-the-top arrangements on some of the better numbers. The really great film music composers like Kalyanji & Anandji and Laxmikant & Pyarelal are some of the most worldly specialists in all genres of music, integrating the talents of Ennio Morricone's Western period, entire western orchestras, regional Indian classical music, the newest in electronic developments and whatever fad happened to be big in the year which they were composing (Hawaiian slide guitar, psychedelic music, soul, funk, you name it). The greatest film scores manage to somehow meld all that together in a way that just begs for some kind of clever culinary analogy (which we will spare you from in this review).
What else makes a great Bollywood song? The vocalist(s). A good song can survive without a male vocalist; they're only needed in duets with the female lead. The female vocalists in Indian film music are the equivalent of lead guitarists in the golden age of American rock and roll, and their vocal chords have the same dynamics, presence and range as most amplified guitars. Singers like Asha Bhosle (India's shining star of singers), featured heavily on this collection (and all collections) have a way of disembodying their voices from their bodies. When Bhosle sings her voice cuts through the speakers like a scalpel. Half of this phenomenon is due to her amazing lungs, the other to the insane engineering skills of the producers who record these scores who choose to overload the microphone preamps and super-saturate the magnetic tape during the loudest passages resulting in an unholy natural compression of the signal. Second only to the likes of Lee Perry in his Black Ark period of the early seventies or dub master King Tubby, the production values of Indian film music is singularly twisted in their techniques. Like the aforementioned Jamaican demigods of the multi-track, the recordists here have an arsenal of reverb, echo and compression tools that -- while not as new as the gear used in Hollywood's recording studios -- are used to their absolute functional limit. All of those essential elements of Indian film music are represented on each and every song here. But unlike many earlier collections, which focus their range on a particular era, composer, or vocalist, Indiavision draws from a wide range of sources. The tracks included here date from as far back as 1966 on up to 1984, it includes such film score heavyweights as father S.D. and son R.D. Burman, Laxmikant & Pyarelal, Kalyanji & Anandji and Bappi Lahiri. The broad time spanned by the tracks makes this collection as a whole more varied and easy on the ears. There's also quite a good variety of both slow, sultry numbers and completely batty comical ones. Some, like the title music for "The Burning Train" (listed as an instrumental), which features gruff female vocals like those of Yma Sumac, or the "Cabaret Dance Music" from the film "Dharmatma" with its maniacal laughter are completely off the wall. Others, like "Yashomati Maiya Se Bole Nandala" -- a deadly serious romantic number with crooned vocals by Lata Mangeshkar -- and "Come Closer" -- a mellow and sincere funk/soul song sung by Salma Agha -- are beautiful respites from the cornball antics which are more often the songs of choice for Bollywood anthologies. Comes with a 30 page, full color booklet with plentiful liner notes in both French and English. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: LATA MANGESHKAR / LAXMIKANT & PYARELAL "Yashomati Maiya Se Bole Nandala"
MPEG Stream: KALYANJI & ANANDJI "Cabaret Dance Music"
MPEG Stream: SALMA AGHA / BAPPI LAHIRI "Come Closer"
MPEG Stream: R.D. BURMAN "Title Music from the film The Burning Train"

V/A Indonesian Guitars (Music of Indonesia 20) (Smithsonian Folkways) cd 16.98
Sometimes, in the midst of all the excitement we feel at the release of a new blippy cutting-edge electronica disc, or the next undiscovered indie-rock pop gem, we lose sight of the fact that much of the best music made has nothing to do with computers or hip scenes. Instead, it's made by musicians you've never heard of who are unlikely to ever grace the cover of The Wire or Magnet. Especially, musicians in the Third World, who have a contemporary, living, often innovative relationship with the musical traditions of their communities. People who do what they do with a great deal of feeli guitar music that we've ever celebrated on this AQ-list. We're all quite taken with it, and thus chose to make it Record of the Month. Indeed, the disc's final track, a song called "Fajar Di Atas Awan" written by Irwansyah Harahap, is assuredly the most gorgeous seven minutes of gentle guitar folk-drone and female vocals that we've been blessed to hear, ever.
The guitar, though rarely mentioned by ethnomusicologists, has been a part of Indonesian music ever since the Portuguese introduced it to the region back in the 16th century. Over the years it has made its way into various musical idioms and been paramount in the formation of others. At times used to imitate traditional instruments such as the Kecapi (a Sundanese zither), or, conversely, to play the bizarre, Indian film music styled electric pop of modern Dangdut (see Volume 2 in this series, "Indonesian Popular Music"), guitars (or "home-made instruments resembling guitars") have had a rich history in Indonesia. Featuring primarily solo guitar and vocal accompaniment from Sumatra, Java, Sumba, Timor and Sulawesi, this cd, with its very informative 32 page (!) booklet, is yet another testament to Yampolsky's dedication to documenting the multi-faceted musical world of Indonesia, in all its riches and wonder.
With twenty volumes in the series, we can't be too sad that this is the last, as it's certain that even picking up only this (a good start) and a few of the others would keep the adventurous music fan thrilled for a long while, and perhaps hook them on a whole new realm of sounds. The other two most recent installments are Volume 18, "Sulawesi: Festivals, Funerals, And Work", ranging from sorrowful flute pieces to drum and vocal based harvest celebrations, and Volume 19, "Music of Maluku: Halmahera, Buru, Kei", a variety of musics from the Molucca Islands, including music from a Sufi-derived ritual that involved men stabbing themselves with iron awls! Like the rest of the series, both too are recommended and are also 15.98 a piece.

V/A ISAN: Folk and Pop Music of Northeast Thailand (Sublime Frequencies) dvd 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another amazing document in the Sun City Girls' Sublime Frequencies int'l field recordings series of cds and DVDs. This is the third DVD in the series, this time focusing on Northeast Thailand, known to the Thai as Isan. Beautifully filmed and dizzingly colorful, we are first treated to a festival celebrating the birth of civilization in Isan, featuring lots of pomp and even a little magic, including an intense segment where live rabbits and chickens are hurled into the air and then caught and chased once again. Also there is an amazing segment that looks like it takes place in a school gym, featuring colorful traditional dancers backed up by guitar and xylophone, and later a very sultry performance in a gentleman's club (sonically quite remiscent of the Cambodian Rocks Southeast Asian take on Western pop music). Probably the most amazing segments are the solo performances on the Khaen, which is a set of pipes, two rows set together, with the performer covering and uncovering sound holes and producing some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear.

V/A Jalan Jalan: Street Atmospheres And Music In The Heart Of Java (self-released) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Having travelled to Indonesia in 2008, the sound artist Jesse Paul Miller (who also does time as a member of the Factums and has dabbled on the recordings of A Frames, Climax Golden Twins, and the Sun City Girls) collected a wealth of amazing recordings of the various street musicians throughout Java. Given his proximity to Sublime Frequencies, we can't help wonder why this didn't get released through that increasingly venerable label. No matter, Miller offers a great mix of folk musics that express the vast cultural patchwork of Javanese music beyond the principle exports of gamelan and dangdut. That said, one of the first tracks that Miller presents is from a trio of street musicians on a homemade gamelan offering a spirited rhythmic backdrop for a trained monkey who was delighting a group of squealing children. Another track features a krontjong troupe serenading passengers at the train station with a double timed acoustic guitar strum set to a rather maudlin croon. One of the highlights of the album comes from another island Lompok, which is home to an ensemble called Sakhabad, who present an urgent folk number that could easily be one of those acoustic guitar tracks that the Sun City Girls would have appropriated on 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda. The vocalist even sounds a lot like Alan Bishop crossed with Jello Biafra (this is meant in the best possible way, mind you!). Miller concludes the album with a lengthy series of Islamic calls to worship, one from the break of dawn and another from the end of the day. There's only 50 of these in circulation, and they certainly won't last long.
MPEG Stream: "Topang Monyet, Solo"
MPEG Stream: "Krontjong Troupe, Solo"
MPEG Stream: "Sakhabad, Mataram, Lombok"

V/A Japan: Shakuhachi: The Japanese Flute (Nonesuch) cd 12.98
Another winner for the Nonesuch Explorer Series. Originally released in 1976, this entry focuses on the restrained yet dulcet tones of the shakuhachi, a five holed bamboo flute that has been used as an accompaniment for study and meditation in Japanese culture for well over a millennium. These five live performances by master flautist Kohachiro Miyata of the Ensemble Nipponia display a graceful yet glacial spareness that focus on subtle but revelatory moments of drama and tension rather than lyrical or melodic songforms. Akin to a philosophical reading of time moving through nature, like the sound of wind through reeds, or a ripple across a surface of water, this is music to slow our lives down and be ever blissfully aware of the eternal present moment in front of us.
MPEG Stream: "Shika No Tone"
MPEG Stream: "Akita Sugagaki"

V/A Japanese Traditional Music: Koto, Shamisen, Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai 1941 (World Arbiter) cd 14.98
Sublime Frequencies and Mississippi Records may get all the world music hipster love, and it's not like they don't deserve it, but anyone into either label, or especially both, would do well to pay attention to a little label called World Arbiter who consistently release some of the most mysterious and amazing music we have ever heard. From gamelan, to sitar, to historic Chinese folk music, to minimal Moog music, to Buddhist chants, to Moroccan trance to this, the third volume in WA's series of 1941 recordings of legendary masters of the koto, a long 13 stringed zither, and the shamisen, a three stringed lute, performing various traditional vocal and theatrical pieces.
The sounds here are mystical and magical, the recordings warm and fantastically scratchy, the koto tracks are spare and haunting, both the voices and the instruments producing such distinctive tones, the interplay subtle but so beautiful, like some lost Japanese blues, haunting, and achingly lovely, hushed and intimate, the vocals both male and female deeply moving, and perfectly matched to the spare instrumentation. The shamisen pieces are more percussive, the vocals too more urgent, these tracks sounding even more like old timey blues Japanese style, which is essentially what Japanese traditional folk music is, these tracks often accompanying dances and kabuki performances, with various types of percussion, not to mention fluttering flutes, and some very distinctive vocalizing. And like the koto tracks, wreathed in a warm old time crackle that only add to the wonderful mystery of these magical sounds. Recommended for fans of all the recent world music reissues, regardless of label, as well as are all of the other World Arbiter releases...
Includes extensive liner notes in both English and Japanese.
MPEG Stream: "Hien No Kyoku"
MPEG Stream: "Rokudan"
MPEG Stream: "Kumagi Jun'Ya No Dan"
MPEG Stream: "Kitsune Bi No Dan"

V/A Java-Java: Indonesia Screaming Fuzz (Nosmoke) cd 25.00
That's right, another Indonesian garage rock comp, but c'mon, how can you resist a record subtitled Indonesia Screaming Fuzz? One that promises "garage stomp, Indo-rock and beat surf"? You can't. Or at least we can't. Some of the names here will be familiar to long time readers of the aQ list. Groups whose albums have gotten the full on reissue treatment, like girl group Dara Puspita, and legendary Indo-garage rockers Koes Bersaudara (who show up again as Koes Plus), which should give you an idea of the sounds here, and while you might already own those tracks, odds are you probably don't have many jams from The Swallows, Females, Steps, Panber's, Mona Rita & The Kingstons, the Peels, Rolling Beats, Black Magic, Los Indonesios or Banjamin S. But we can promise, after listening to this you will wish you did.
The Swallows transform the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" into their own chunk of surfy garage-y hypno rock, Rolling Beats take sweet bubblegum pop and wreath it in a haze of serious guitar fuzz, the Peels do their best Stones (which means they basically just swipe a song and sort of cover it), with some twangy distorted guitars and some sweet vocal harmonies, Los Indonesios sound a bit like an Indonesian Monks, big twangy guitars, and booming echo drenched vox, Females mix classic Indonesian sounds with fuzzy garagey grooves, and introduce some dreamy vox and handclap, and Steps do some Ventures style surf rock, but with buzzy synths and some distinctly Eastern sounding melodies, and so it goes. It's a sound we just can't get enough of, groovy, fuzzy, surfy, jangly, the sound so distinctive, and even the 'covers' reimagine the originals in new and spectacularly groovy ways.
Needless to say (but we will anyway), fans of recent Record Of The Week Those Shocking, Shaking Days, will dig this big time, and if you liked other comps like Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! Psychedelic Funk Music In India 1976-1983 and Thai? Dai! - The Heavier Side Of The Luk Thung Underground, or if you loved those Dara Puspita and Koes Bersaudara reissues and wanted more, well, here you go...
MPEG Stream: DARA PUSPITA "Beratmasja"
MPEG Stream: KOES BERSAUDARA "Poor Clown"
MPEG Stream: THE SWALLOWS "La Ngomber"
MPEG Stream: ROLLING BEATS "Sweeter Than You"
MPEG Stream: PATTIE BERSAUDARA "What Am I Supposed To Do"

V/A Java-Java: Indonesia Screaming Fuzz (Nosmoke) lp 32.00
That's right, another Indonesian garage rock comp, but c'mon, how can you resist a record subtitled Indonesia Screaming Fuzz? One that promises "garage stomp, Indo-rock and beat surf"? You can't. Or at least we can't. Some of the names here will be familiar to long time readers of the aQ list. Groups whose albums have gotten the full on reissue treatment, like girl group Dara Puspita, and legendary Indo-garage rockers Koes Bersaudara (who show up again as Koes Plus), which should give you an idea of the sounds here, and while you might already own those tracks, odds are you probably don't have many jams from The Swallows, Females, Steps, Panber's, Mona Rita & The Kingstons, the Peels, Rolling Beats, Black Magic, Los Indonesios or Banjamin S. But we can promise, after listening to this you will wish you did.
The Swallows transform the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" into their own chunk of surfy garage-y hypno rock, Rolling Beats take sweet bubblegum pop and wreath it in a haze of serious guitar fuzz, the Peels do their best Stones (which means they basically just swipe a song and sort of cover it), with some twangy distorted guitars and some sweet vocal harmonies, Los Indonesios sound a bit like an Indonesian Monks, big twangy guitars, and booming echo drenched vox, Females mix classic Indonesian sounds with fuzzy garagey grooves, and introduce some dreamy vox and handclap, and Steps do some Ventures style surf rock, but with buzzy synths and some distinctly Eastern sounding melodies, and so it goes. It's a sound we just can't get enough of, groovy, fuzzy, surfy, jangly, the sound so distinctive, and even the 'covers' reimagine the originals in new and spectacularly groovy ways.
Needless to say (but we will anyway), fans of recent Record Of The Week Those Shocking, Shaking Days, will dig this big time, and if you liked other comps like Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! Psychedelic Funk Music In India 1976-1983 and Thai? Dai! - The Heavier Side Of The Luk Thung Underground, or if you loved those Dara Puspita and Koes Bersaudara reissues and wanted more, well, here you go...
MPEG Stream: DARA PUSPITA "Beratmasja"
MPEG Stream: KOES BERSAUDARA "Poor Clown"
MPEG Stream: THE SWALLOWS "La Ngomber"
MPEG Stream: ROLLING BEATS "Sweeter Than You"
MPEG Stream: PATTIE BERSAUDARA "What Am I Supposed To Do"