Here's Bowie's Berlin Trilogy represented in FLAC from the old RCA German CD pressings, with masterings that hardcore fans tend to think (and I agree) are superior to the Rykodisc and particularly the EMI/Virgin remasters. This is kind of an anomaly, as I'm used to reissues from the early days of CDs having been created with primitive DACs that would lend the product a brittle sound. In fact these have a thicker bottom end than the subsequent remasterings. These pressings are long out of print and physical copies can fetch hundreds of dollars secondhand.
But if you grew up on the Rykodisc CDs from the early 1990s like I did, don't expect a drastic difference. It's still subtle. I just haven't seen these pressings explicitly represented in the blog world. So here they are. They are the best these albums sound in digital form, until PBTHAL makes some rips that lay these to waste.
I don't really need to get into the biographical information on these, do I? Just get 'em. I threw in the corresponding bonus tracks from the Ryko au20 Gold counterparts, just because.
By 1967, bossa nova had become quite popular within jazz and traditional pop audiences, yet Frank Sinatra hadn't attempted any Brazil-influenced material. Sinatra decided to record a full-fledged bossa nova album with the genre's leading composer, Antonio Carlos Jobim. Arranged by Claus Ogerman and featuring Jobim on guitar and backing vocals, Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim concentrated on Jobim's originals, adding three American classics -- "Baubles, Bangles and Beads," "Change Partners," and "I Concentrate on You" -- that were rearranged to suit bossa nova conventions. The result was a subdued, quiet album that used the Latin rhythms as a foundation, not as a focal point. Supported by a relaxed, sympathetic arrangement of muted brass, simmering percussion, soft strings, and Jobim's lilting guitar, Sinatra turns in an especially noteworthy performance; he has never sounded so subtle, underplaying every line he delivers and showcasing vocal techniques that he never had displayed before. Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim doesn't reveal its pleasures immediately; the album is too textured and understated to be fully appreciated within one listen. After a few plays, the album begins to slowly work its way underneath a listener's skin, and it emerges as one of his most rewarding albums of the '60s.
Watertown is Frank Sinatra's most ambitious concept album, as well as his most difficult record. Not only does it tell a full-fledged story, it is his most explicit attempt at rock-oriented pop. Since the main composer of Watertown is Bob Gaudio, the author of the Four Seasons' hits "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You," "Walk Like a Man," and "Big Girls Don't Cry," that doesn't come as a surprise. With Jake Holmes, Gaudio created a song cycle concerning a middle-aged, small-town man whose wife had left him with the kids. Constructed as a series of brief lyrical snapshots that read like letters or soliloquies, the culminating effect of the songs is an atmosphere of loneliness, but it is a loneliness without much hope or romance -- it is the sound of a broken man. Producer Charles Calello arranged musical backdrops that conveyed the despair of the lyrics. Weaving together prominent electric guitars, keyboards, drum kits, and light strings, Calello uses pop/rock instrumentations and production techniques, but that doesn't prevent Sinatra from warming to the material. In fact, he turns in a wonderful performance, drawing out every emotion from the lyrics, giving the album's character depth.
As can be gleaned from the cover of her one and only record, Linda Perhacs was a stunning, beautiful love child. Anyone who spent the $200-400 necessary to obtain copies of the original vinyl could attest that the music she made was comparably stunning and beautiful, infused with all the trappings of being a late-sixties love child (in the best possible way).
Ace of Discs reissued her album after unsuccessful attempts to track her down, mastering from a poorly pressed vinyl copy. For whatever reason, the first issue on CD was completely unlistenable on headphones, although delightful in the open air. Since that first go-round, Perhacs has come out of her obscure Pacific Northwest woods with quarter-inch reels of the sessions, and now that Ace of Discs comes round again with a vindicating, expanded reissue, the tray card photo reveals: she's still a babe.
Anyway you eye it, this is a magical, sublimely singular piece of gentle folk-psych that belongs with those lone album classics by folks like Skip Spence or Vashti Bunyan (or the countless other souls that only released one record before disappearing into history's communal farms or funny-farm madness, like Elyse). It is a sound so personal and intimate that I can only hear it in the privacy of my own room. Although it's been near-impossible to gain biographical information about her, the experience of hearing her music reveals so much about her soul and mindset at the time that I really don't think I could share it with anyone else.
As mentioned above, she's a love child in every sense, a young woman blossoming into her sensual world. Of the elements, every song culls its images from her forest environment, permeating down into her own physical core. "Chimacum Rain" is not only the forest's silence and that sound of rain washing over her, but the palpable sexual presence of her lover, too. In almost every evocation of a tactile natural image, there is a mysterious man who physically embodies these characteristics, a tension courses through her body as she sings about these near-deities. And as she reaches the bridge with lines such as "I'm spacing out/ I'm seeing silences between leaves...I'm seeing silences that are his," her voice begins to echo within itself, and her sung notes assuage open the aural synesthesia of the words. The diaphanous taste of lysergic acid creeps to the fore, and what was once a moderately played acoustic song about the forest expands into a hallucinatory clearing as her multi-tracked held tones meld with the infinite. As her voice dilates, so does the background, now all electrically-processed source sounds like xylophones and wind chimes, and all is enveloped by a low, distorted drone that would one day sound like Phill Niblock, created by-- as the liner notes so baldly state it-- "amplified shower hose for horn effects."
It's nothing compared to the album's peak, "Parallelograms". Perhaps you fantasize that Joni Mitchell teaches painting and pottery at your high school, or that Chan Marshall mumbles about the Apocalypse poets during English class, but Perhacs teaching geometry is tantrically hot for teacher. To just read the lyrics of "Quadrehederal/ Tetrahedral/ mono-cyclo-cyber-cilia" is to miss how she and producer Leonard Rosenman assuredly layer her heavenly-sung rounds in concentric circles over a cycling guitar-picked figure, a cumulative effect that reveals a dimension scarcely achieved anywhere else in the world of music. Closer to the Mysterious Voices of Bulgaria or Tim Buckley's cellular self-choir "Starsailor" than Melanie or Linda Ronstadt, Perhacs drops us into drifting clouds of reverberating bells, echoing flute, and ghostly effluence, her throat outside of time. That a dental assistant in Northern California could more effectively convey the psychedelic experience through the use of the technology of experimental effects, be it early Pink Floyd, Fifty-Foot Hose, or Buffy Saint-Marie's electroacoustic Illuminations, is, in every clichéd use of the word, mind-blowing.
Other songs deal with girly things like brawny mountain men, dolphins, moonbeams and cattails, the pastel colors of dawn, and the recently-unearthed "If You Were My Man" reveals that she could've gone pop with a Karen Carpenter wispiness. Listening to her home demos and studio notes to Roseman though show that she was cognizant of the sound and vibration she wanted. The tape collage lobbed from "Hey Who Really Cares?" is competent-- if in hindsight, passé-- all disembodied, television voices and a telltale heart beat leading into its pastoral prettiness. Her most folky tunes stand up to the times too, but it's the fact that Linda Perhacs' entire cosmos (and whatever those times entailed) could inexplicably fit inside the confines of Parallelograms that remains the true testament to her beauty.
These are fucking astounding, this stuff was going on a couple years before kosmische was more than a twinkle in the krautrock scene's eye. It predates Tangerine Dream's and Manuel Gottsching's amazing synth work, even! -Ian!
This reissue of the earliest work by Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. includes all of their first album, plus almost 20 minutes of previously unreleased material. The group wore their minimalist influences quite well, resulting in tracks which take the cycling repetitions of work by Steve Reich into new territory altogether, as on the 12-minute "Music." Most of the music here is a bit beyond minimalism; in fact, it's much closer to exploratory proto-space music or new age on the highlights "Ceres Motion" and "Cloudscape for Peggy," the latter of which was composed around the time acts like Tangerine Dream and Cluster were just getting started.
A reissue of Mother Mallard's second LP on their independent Earthquack Records, this CD presents music from the latter stages of their work as a group, after they had been playing and rehearsing together for five or six years and shortly before David Borden began devoting his full attention to his monumental 12-part Continuing Story of Counterpoint series. During these sessions, the group was a trio (as they generally had been from the beginning), with Borden and colleague Steve Drews as the constants and Judy Borsher replacing Linda Fisher, who had been the third member on earlier recordings. Instrumentation varied somewhat within the group, but since members were actively collaborating with inventor Robert Moog throughout most of the group's life, various sizes and styles of Moog synthesizers were always the primary instruments, supplemented by an electric piano, which was usually played by Borsher (or Fisher before her). Borden had first envisioned Mother Mallard as a performance group who would disseminate and interpret the musical gospel of Glass, Reich, Riley, and other proponents of the new minimalism, and also feature original compositions by himself and his colleague, Steve Drews. Gradually, the original compositions took over, at least as indicated in the group's recorded work. However, the influence of the big-name minimalists is relatively strong here, and the seven pieces on this CD all exhibit elements of the rhythmic-pattern minimalism of Glass and Reich, with touches, also, of Riley's softer, drone-based mysticism. Consequently, although Mother Mallard is capable of the occasional funky ostinato riff, and notes are discreetly bent here and there, one will hear none of the variable pitch weirdness and timbral extremes which characterized prog rock's early appropriation of Moogs, and which Borden and company dabbled with a bit themselves during the early '70s. On this CD, Drews receives composer credits on five pieces to Borden's two, although one of Borden's two pieces is the lengthy and ambitious "C-A-G-E Part II," which clocks in at over 20 minutes. Somewhat surprisingly, there's really not much to chose between Drews and Borden as composers, and although Borden went on to achieve the greater reputation, a piece such as Drews' "Oleo Strut" could be easily mistaken for one of Borden's early "Counterpoint" pieces. Drews' "Waterwheel" is also very appealing, with patterns of different lengths moving in and out of phase with each other, producing some interesting auditory disorientation. Borden's feature piece is conceptually based, derived from the four musical notes which make up composer John Cage's last name. The musicians play their parts for prearranged lengths of time, coming together only at the end of the piece. In spite of its logical premises, "C-A-G-E Part II" is a serene, meditative, and even hypnotic musical experience, at times suggesting both Riley's "In C" and his "Rainbow in Curved Air." Borden's sophisticated knowledge of Baroque counterpoint is also evident in this piece, and he would use such elements to an even greater advantage a few years later in the Continuing Story of Counterpoint series.
An intricate, deliberately idiosyncratic record, assembled piece by piece, Boulders perfectly captures Roy Wood's peculiar genius, more so than anything else he recorded. All of his obsessions are here -- classical music, psychedelia, pre-Beatles pop, pastoral folk ballads, absurdist humor, studio trickery, and good old-fashioned rock & roll -- assembled in a gracefully eccentric fashion. Some listeners may find that eccentricity a little alienating, but it's the core of Wood's music. He wrote tuneful, accessible songs, but indulged his passions and weird ideas, so even the loveliest melodies and catchiest hooks are dressed in colorful, odd arrangements. The marvelous thing is, these arrangements never sound self-consciously weird - it's the sound of Wood's music in full bloom. Never before and never again did his quirks sound so charming, even thrilling, as they do on Boulders. As soon as "Songs of Praise" reaches its chorus, a choir of sped-up, multi-tracked Roys kick in, sending it into the stratosphere. All nine tunes unwind in a similar fashion, each blessed with delightfully unpredictable twists. It's easy to spot the tossed-off jokes on the goofy "When Gran'ma Plays the Banjo," but it may take several spins to realize that the percussion on "Wake Up" is the sound of Roy slapping a bowl of water. Boulders is a sonic mosaic -- you can choose to wonder at the little details or gaze at the glorious whole, enjoying the shape it forms. Wood has an unerring knack for melodies, whether they're in folk ballads, sweet pop or old-fashioned rock & rollers, yet his brilliance is how he turns the hooks 180 degrees until they're gloriously out of sync with his influences and peers. Boulders still sounds wonderfully out of time and it's easy to argue that it's the peak of his career.
Another amazing find from FUNK MY SOUL, I'm telling you that blog is the BUSINESS. -Ian!
Skull Snaps were a mysterious funk group that lasted long enough to record and release a self-titled 1973 album before apparently disbanding. Since its small-time release on the GSF label, Skull Snaps has become one of the more legendary rare funk records, having been sampled countless times on rap records. Gang Starr's "Take It Personal," Camp Lo's "Cooley High," Ol' Dirty Bastard's "Hippa to da Hoppa," Lords of the Underground's "Funky Child," and Diamond D's "Sally Got a One Track Mind" represent just a handful of the tracks that have put the drums from "It's a New Day" to use. Charly later issued the album on CD in the '90s, to the amazement of those who had paid triple figures for the original LP.
Original vinyl copies of Skull Snaps' one and only LP continue to exchange hands on the rare groove market for three figures. There are two reasons for this: one, it's rare, and two, the drum breaks from the album have been feasted upon for samples so frequently that samples of the samples have likely been sampled. It's not that the album is spectacular -- it's merely a decent early-'70s funk record from some accomplished musicians who don't exactly leave a trademark of their own throughout its nine songs. This soul-drenched funk album is most notable for the drums of "It's a New Day." It's the album's strongest cut, and the opening drum pattern is as ubiquitous they come -- you can hear it get put to re-use in well over two dozen popular rap songs. Anyone who likes hard funk will find much to like -- the vocals are gruff, the rhythms are tough yet nimble (the drums are crisp and smacking throughout), and the subject matter takes on everything from pimps to romance to everyday relationships.
The 1971 movie Vanishing Point managed to become a cult hit, with its story of a Benzedrine-popping driver (Barry Newman) in a race for his life with the police of several states, but somehow the soundtrack managed to remain out-of-print until 2004, when Soundtrack Classics reissued it on CD. The music is surprisingly cohesive, primarily built around different aspects of country-rock as embodied variously by Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, the Doug Dillard Expedition, and Jerry Reed, with some gospel tracks by Segarini & Bishop and Big Mama Thornton, plus Mountain's "Mississippi Queen."
The music is all eminently listenable and then some, and has an earthiness that makes it more than a little bracing -- only the lyrical, string-dominated love theme, provided by Jimmy Bowen and his orchestra, breaks that mood and even it works within its own musical context, and is explainable given the time in which the movie was made. The entire release rather favorably recalls the soundtracks to Easy Rider and Zabriskie Point, but Vanishing Point stands up quite nicely musically on its own.
If ever an album demanded an "ultimate edition" type of repackaging, it is Mott the Hoople's Brain Capers, a record that was so divisive, so damaged, and ultimately so destructive that the bandmembers themselves needed two goes at getting it all down on tape -- one self-produced, the other with regular producer Guy Stevens -- before finally emerging with, as Ian Hunter put it, the sound of a band tearing itself apart. They broke up just months later. Tantalizing snippets from the unused portion of the sessions have been scattered across a wealth of compilations, and Angel Air's remastering adds one more to the pile, an alternate version of the multi-hued panic of "The Journey." (The other bonus cut, a live version of the non-LP "Midnight Lady" single, is more or less dispensable.) It's a shame -- bolstered, as it already is, by best-ever sound quality and a superb booklet, this edition of Brain Capers should have taken the opportunity to bring everything together. Instead...well, maybe some day. That is, of course, the only regret one can possibly feel as Mott the Hoople's fourth and (had it not been for Bowie's subsequent intervention) final album. Hunter explained, "We were getting complacent. If you are a band like us, a lot of the adrenalin is set off by the audience. When you are in a studio, it's a very barren sort of atmosphere, and it's hard to get the substitute -- to get the same kind of adrenaline into your body. You have to get yourself into a kind of rage. Some people get stoned, some get drunk. We smashed a few things about." And, while he admitted that "the thought of wrecking a studio seems rather stupid, I can assure you we were pretty dead when we went in there, and five days later, we were really excited."
The sessions reflect that excitement, transforming themselves before the band's very eyes into what Ian Hunter later called "three days of madness, done very quickly." Song titles were changed as their nature developed -- "Mental Train" became "The Moon Upstairs," "How Long" was reworked first as "A Duck Can Swim With Me" and then as "Death May Be Your Santa Claus." The album itself came perilously close to being titled AC/DC before producer Stevens hit upon the far more suitable Brain Capers. The grinding riff that wraps up "The Journey" was reborn as the cacophonic closer "Wheel of the Quivering Meat Conception," and the brace of covers that hove into view -- "Darkness Darkness" and "Your Own Back Yard" -- were steamrolled as thoroughly as the original material. The result would later be tagged among the least commercial albums ever released by a so-called rising rock band. But Mott was sick of rising and wound up, instead, with what rates among the most important of its age, as Hunter later realized. "I didn't listen to [that album] for years, and then the punks started talking about it. You can actually hear the Sex Pistols loud and clear."
This is an incredible rip of EXILE by PBTHAL, which I believe is not even available on his blog. Anyway, I think everyone should know about the incredible work he's doing.
This was recorded differently than the THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST rip I posted earlier was recorded, different person! PBTHAL captures at 192khz, way higher than the SATANIC REQUEST guy did. PBTHAL also has arguably better hardware. It is then dithered down to Redbook standard 16bit / 44.1khz. In other words, analog captured as highly as consumer hardware really even allows. Now. Which is insanely better than what was available to studios in 1987, or whenever, when CDs of old albums were being made from master tapes with early, primitive DACs. Even remasters that claim to use original masters now tend to do who knows what to them.
Here's some literal symbolism for you: look at the sleeve art from the vinyl, and now compare it to the sleeve from the CD version. Notice the difference? The art on the vinyl is a messy patchwork with obvious masking tape holding the pieces together. The CD version smooths everything down until it all looks like one professional layer. Sloppy replaced with the illusion of sloppy.
Now listen to the original mix. There are tons of mistakes. You hear dropouts, wrong plug-ins, rumbles, sibilance. These aren't from the medium of vinyl, trust me. Jimmy Miller knew what he was doing. This was an intentionally sprawling mess in concept.
You feel like you're in the room during Sweet Virginia, I turned my head when the saxophone came in. Hear the deep thud in the right ear during the beginning of Loving Cup. Hey, what was that weird squelch of the vocals as it went into the verse? It was Jimmy Miller or Keith Richards de-pressing a button when layering takes into the mix.
You might find yourself saying, "Ian, come on. There's distortion during Torn and Frayed!" To which I would say, "Listen closer, idiot! That's TAPE FLUTTER. From the MASTER TAPE. It's SUPPOSED TO BE THERE!" This album feels lived in. It creaks like old floorboards.
Guess stuff like that gets washed away in numbing barrage of Noise Reduction during the CD remaster.
This has been THE DEFINITIVE EXILE for me for about a year. Which makes it pretty much my favorite recording of anything, ever. There's like maybe three albums ever made that top this for me. It's as good as it's ever going to get. I've taken the liberty of making this rip available in MP3, again, for those people that just want to hear the mix but are unconcerned with lossless fidelity and just want it on their iPods.
Yes, I know. This was pretty much a big slab of hyperbole. But there aren't reviews specific to the original vinyl, comparing it to subsequent remasters. So I had to write something. Cut me some slack, jerk!
Yes, I'm giving mediafire a shot again. Let's see! -Ian!
Link Wray was one of rock & roll's first bone fide guitar heroes, and his speaker-shredding buzzy chords were as distinctive a sound as anyone conjured up in rock's early years. So Link's old fans were thrown for a loop when, in 1971, the man made a comeback after several years along the margins with a self-titled album that set aside his big slabs of fretboard fuzz in favor of a loosely tight fusion of country, blues, and roughshod folk-rock. Recorded in a homemade three-track studio fashioned in an abandoned chicken coop on Wray's Maryland farm, Link Wray lacks the muscle of the man's legendary instrumental sides, with acoustic guitar, piano, and mandolin anchoring these sides as often as Link's electric, and there's a down-home mood here that lacks the switchblade intensity of Wray's most famous music. But the rough passion of "Rumble" and "Rawhide" certainly carries through here, albeit in a different form; the plaintive howl of Wray's vocals isn't always pretty, but it certainly communicates (Wray lost a lung to TB in 1953), the best songs speak eloquently of the hard facts of Wray's early life as a poor Shawnee child in the Deep South, and there's a humble back-porch stomp in this music that's heartfelt and immediate. (And Wray does serve up some primal hoodoo guitar on the closing cut, "Tail Dragger.") Link Wray didn't go over big with the man's old fans and failed to win him many new ones, but it's an honest and passionate piece of music that's a fascinating detour from the music that has largely defined his career, and has aged better than the vast majority of the country-rock product of the early '70s.
Largely recorded the same time as Link Wray's self-titled 1971 comeback album, Beans and Fatback was more playful and harder-rocking set than the country- and blues-flavored album that announced Wray's return to active duty. The loopy title cut started the album on a jew's-harp-infused jug band note, and "I'm So Glad, I'm So Proud" was exactly the sort of showcase for Wray's trademark rumbling guitar that the previous album lacked. Elsewhere, songs such as "Hobo Man" and "Georgia Pines" (the latter a rewrite of Leadbelly's In the Pines") followed the roots-oriented pattern of Link Wray, but with a stronger backbone and a lot more wallop; if both albums sound like they came from a studio housed in a chicken shack on a rundown Maryland farm, Beans and Fatback seems to have been born during a Saturday night rave-up, and goes a lot father toward fusing the rowdy howl of Wray's early instrumental hits with the back-to-the-land flavor of his more personal 1971 set. If Beans and Fatback suffers in comparison to Link Wray, it's in the lack of the deeper and more emotionally resonant undercurrents that carried the 1971 album; as good as these songs are, they don't have the same impact as, say, "Fire and Brimstone" or "Take Me Home Jesus." But as a pure listening experience, Beans and Fatback is plenty satisfying, and offers more rock & roll bang for the buck than Wray's other work from this period. Virgin's original LP release of Beans and Fatback also included a free piece of dried fatback as a "bonus" -- yummy!
I just realized the LA BURNOUT mix was missing two tracks, but they were both John Phillips tracks, and they were both from this album! -Ian!
The first solo album of the architect of the Mamas & Papas sound, John Phillips, was certainly one of the more heralded events at the dawn of the 1970s. Phillips, the primary songwriter and vocal arranger for all of the group's great records, however, was not exactly a great lead vocalist. Phillips knew this, and, according to his book, Papa John, he purposely buried his voice in the mix. This proved to be a bit of tragedy, because underneath it all, this is an excellent album. Songs such as "April Anne," "Malibu People," and "Holland Tunnel" bear out what a fine songwriter he really was, and indeed, these are some of the finest songs of his career. The performances on this record are spectacular. Backed by an all-star group of musicians (most of Elvis Presley's band, including James Burton, as well as the Wrecking Crew, among others), the record's decidedly country feel is crafted to the extreme. Mamas co-founder Denny Doherty has always felt that had the Mamas & Papas recorded this album, it would have been one of their finest. There's no doubt.
Never Say You Can't Survive was the last Curtis Mayfield album done in a pure soul vein for the next three years -- its style and sound place it in a direct continuity with the rest of his output right back to 1958. The singing on love songs such as "Show Me Love," "Just Want to Be With You," and "When We're Alone" is among the most achingly lyrical and passionate of his career. The title track boasts ravishing backup singing by Kitty & the Haywoods (who also perform outstandingly on "I'm Gonna Win Your Love") and a beautiful arrangement by James Mack. The album's final track, "Sparkle" (written for Sam O'Steen's movie of the same name, starring Philip Michael Thomas, Irene Cara, and Lonette McKee), gets one of three distinct treatments that the song ever received (the others from the soundtrack and Aretha Franklin's version).
Yes, I know, I've uploaded this album already. But Dr. Ebbetts made a bootleg of the rare mono mix of RAM (not a stereo fold down) and I figured I'd just repost both mixes. The mono mix wins me over on certain songs, the stereo on others. Rockers like "Smile Away" are served well by the mono, and you can tell extra special care was taken in the mono mix for "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey", one of the weirdest singles ever. By the way, this is the single best solo work by any Beatle. Just thought I'd throw that out there. -Ian!
One collector points out “This is (so far) the best sounding digital transfer of the rare mono LP. While it sounds similar to the Japanese pirate disc [‘Ram Mono Mix’ Manural Apple MAS-3375], the sound here is a bit more open on the high and low frequencies and the bass is more profound and clear. The overall sound is very smooth and this disc plays nicely beside the DCC master of the stereo mix. We all know that the vinyl Capitol Records used during this period was not the quietest, and as such every mono LP has a small amount of audible background noise. This noise is a little more noticeable on the Dr. Ebbett disc than the ‘Manural Apple’ disc, but this could just be a result of the Equalizing. I also want to mention that it is possible that Dr. Ebbett could of mastered this version from the ‘Manural Apple’ disc but I highly doubt it (there’s a lower tracking error during “Smile Away” on this version than the “Manural Apple’ disc).”
This is a straight transfer of the mono. There is noticeable surface noise however. To give the benefit of the doubt to the label, virgin copies may be almost impossible to find, but it sounds as if no attempt was made to clean up the recording. Despite that it has the good Scorpio mastering job sounding very natural and warm. It comes packaged in a single cardboard glossy paper sleeve with an insert with the track listing on the inside.
According to the book Eight Arms To Hold You, there are differences between the mono and stereo on almost each track. On “Too Many People” the mono mix has mixed-down backing vocals, less processing and a longer fade out. On “3 Legs,” there is a stray note that is mixed out during “fly flies in…”, a tighter edit at “you know it’s not allowed,” and the background vocals are mixed lower. “Ram On” has no processing on the ukulele. For “Dear Boy” there is considerable flanging on the vocal interlude in the middle and the backing vocals are lower also. There is flanging also on the guitar intro for the mono mix of “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.” The high-hat at the start of the “Admiral Halsey” section in the stereo version is absent in mono. There is a vocal harmony at 3:10 on the word “water” missing in mono and the punch in at 2:18 in the stereo version is lower in the mix on mono.
The segue between “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” and “Smile Away” is smoother in mono, and the high harmony at 1:52 in stereo is absent throughout the rest of the song in mono. Also, the fade is three seconds longer in mono than stereo. “Heart Of The Country” is identical in both stereo and mono. The mono ”Monkberry Moon Delight” has more reverb than stereo and the guitar, tambourine and backing vocals are lower in the mix. In the mono “Eat At Home” there is some mumbling by Paul after the first “eat at home” and the vocal interjections during the solo are not in mono. On “Long Haired Lady” there is flanging on the piano during the first “love is long” break, the stereo fade is slightly longer and the crossfade to ”Ram On” begins at a different point. The mono mix for “Ram On” shorter with less reverb, and finally ”The Back Seat Of My Car” has a smoother edit to the outro.
Shockingly little information information on this album by Ike & Tina. Little help? Drop a line if you know anything, allmusic, wikipedia, amazon have nothing on it. No reviews I can really find.
Anyway, the album fucking tears ass all over the place. So just get it.
These are actually, arguably, the first Throbbing Gristle shows. I say arguably because it is my understanding that they weren't even using the TG name on the first one. Could be wrong on that. Here's some info from Chris Flatline's great site:
=========================================== IRCD03 Air Gallery, London. 6th July 1976. Hat Fair, Winchester. 21st August 1976. Mono. TG rating 5/10.
Track One - Air Gallery (38'28")
TG's debut appearance. Performance art series 6th-9th July at the Air Gallery 125-129 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, curated by Genesis P- Orridge. TG performed in one room while the audience listened from the next.
00'00" Instrumental 38'23" (Recording ends)
Track Two - Hat Fair (21'31")
At the Attic Theatre, Broadway for the Winchester Hat Fair. Audience of 170.
00'00" Dead Ed 02'00" No Two Ways 07'40" Very Friendly 16'08" (Performance ends) 17'23" (Recording ends) ===========================================
I'm not going to lie, it sounds like it was recorded from the next room over. Borderline unlistenable. You have to resituate your expectations to sit through it. Basically interesting as historical document alone.
First disc of Throbbing Gristle's massive live document TG24, I'll see how far I get posting these disc by disc. I'll alternate between TG24 and the supplemental box set TG+, which has their last "classic era" shows on it. That's in case too many shows from the same era become monotonous.
TG live has always struck me as hard on the ears, even for TG. But we'll see how it goes. Here's some info about this particular show, from which a version of "Slug Bait" was pulled for SECOND ANNUAL REPORT:
IRCD02 ICA, London. 18th Oct 1976. Stereo. TG rating 8/10.
TG perform at the opening party for the Prostitution exhibition. Supporting acts - punk band Chelsea (as 'LSD') and a stripper. Audience of 600-800. Line/mic recording. Some parts out of sync (left that way intentionally). Genesis P-Orridge - bass guitar, electric violin & vocals, Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson - tapes, trumpet & processing, Cosey Fanni Tutti - lead guitar, effects & cornet, Chris Carter - keyboards, rhythms & mix.
Track One (60'00")
00'00" Introduction, "Music from the Death Factory" 01'44" Very Friendly 17'42" We Hate You Little Girls 19'35" Instrumental 23'45" Slug Bait 28'04" Dead Ed 32'05" Zyklon B Zombie, "Zyklon B, it's a bit like Coca-Cola but it's worse for your teeth" 40'17" (Recording ends)
I grouped these two together because Curtis Mayfield wrote and produced these soundtracks in the space of a year! And who doesn't love Pops Staples and Gladys Knight? I haven't seen CLAUDINE but LET'S DO IT AGAIN is a great movie. -Ian!
The Claudine movie soundtrack sported the jammin' million-selling single "On and On" by Gladys Knight & the Pips. Written and produced by Curtis Mayfield and featured in the classic 1974 family drama starring Diahann Carroll, James Earl Jones, and Lawrence Hilton Jacobs (Welcome Back Kotter, Alien Nation, Cooley High), it parked at number two R&B for four weeks, going to number five Pop on Billboard's charts in 1974. Claudine is the least celebrated of songwriter/producer Mayfield's soundtrack albums (Superfly, Sparkle), though it's the most poignant of them. "Mr. Welfare Man" lays out the dehumanizing effect of being on welfare, while still being enticing and majestic in its dynamic arrangement. As much airplay as the track garnered, oddly it was never released as a single. "To Be Invisible" spoke to a child character's need to escape her depressing surroundings. Originally recorded by Mayfield on his Curtis LP, "The Makings of You" is a heart-tugging, strings-cushioned ballad that Knight sings wonderfully. Other LP tracks that received airplay are the upbeat, beautiful title track and the sweet "Make Yours a Happy Home," which curiously wasn't issued as a single until 1976. Claudine went gold, hitting number one on the R&B charts in summer 1974.
This is a must-have cd for fans of Curtis or the Staples Singers. It is a slight detour from most SS albums, in that this one is all about love, lust, and funky good timing. Curtis really teases out beautiful performances here, highlights include the smooth title track and the sexy workout "Funky Love." I really love "New Orleans," and was hoping it would get remade or re-noticed in the wake of Katrina. The song where it all works, though, is "I Want to Thank You," where Curtis's groove, funk, backbeat, and production meet the overtly spiritual nature of the lyrics (more traditional SS territory). A great album.
They say that Curtis Mayfield fell off after he released his 4th studio album "back to the world" in 1973. *They*, as Uma Thurman quipped in Pulp Fiction, talk a lot, don't they? They certainly do and in this case it seems that the "they" in question talk through their backsides as this here album is a genuine lost gem for both Mayfield and Blaxploitation soundtrack devotees.
"Short eyes", his 1977 soundtrack to the flick of the same name, was released at a time when fellow heavyweights such as James Brown and Isaac Hayes had fallen victim to over-polished disco kitschness and, thus, surely must stand as one of the last great 70s soul/funk albums as it's drenched in everything that makes those first 4 Mayfield albums so damn good : that sweet falsetto almost as a ringmaster to the rest of the proceedings; commanding the dirty funked up wah-wah guitar, lush arrangements, heartstopping strings, wailing double-tracked backing vocals and trippy backwards fx to do backflips and weave their way in and out of macked-out horns and throbbing bass grooves (no homo!) while crisp snares and reverberating bongos underline the whole experience.
The bizarrely monikered "Do do wap is strong in here" is probably the most well known song here as it tends to appear on yer standard Mayfield best ofs.., funk compilations and has been heavily sampled by hip hop producers and, while it is possibly the finest composition here, the rest of the album is equally as stellar. The title track is as instantly thrilling and unforgettable a theme as any other notable Blaxpolitation title track you can name and the rest of the album is a miscegenation of fuzzed-up Chicago blues-funk and rich soulful arrangements, usually in the same song. Business as usual, then.
A must for all Mayfield fans and i'd say it's slightly better overall than "back to the world" and up there with "curtis", "superfly" and "roots". Of course there has to be a catch involved with something this good that's somehow managed to thwart reappraisal by funk-fans, the breakbeat generation and the NYC/Chicago hipsterati set until now : not domestically available here in America you can only find this on import vinyl or as part of a now deleted double-disc 90s reissue of "superfly", both of which will set you back at least $40. It's an album that's quality justifies such a hefty price tag if you've searched hell and highwater and still can't find it cheaper but, really, let's have a remastered cd reissue of this, please.
Actually thought I uploaded these already. This is the ground floor for Tangerine Dream, the goto stuff. Before the digital 1980s film score stuff like LEGEND that I think irrevocably tied them to cheesy sword-and-sorcery imagery for an entire generation of would-be fans. -Ian!
Phaedra is one of the most important, artistic, and exciting works in the history of electronic music, a brilliant and compelling summation of Tangerine Dream's early avant-space direction balanced with the synthesizer/sequencer technology just beginning to gain a foothold in nonacademic circles. The result is best heard on the 15-minute title track, unparalleled before or since for its depth of sound and vision. Given focus by the arpeggiated trance that drifts in and out of the mix, the track progresses through several passages including a few surprisingly melodic keyboard lines and an assortment of eerie Moog and Mellotron effects, gaseous explosions, and windy sirens. Despite the impending chaos, the track sounds more like a carefully composed classical work than an unrestrained piece of noise. While the title track takes the cake, there are three other excellent tracks on Phaedra. "Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares" is a solo Edgar Froese song that uses some surprisingly emotive and affecting synthesizer washes, and "Movements of a Visionary" is a more experimental piece, using treated voices and whispers to drive its hypnotic arpeggios. Perhaps even more powerful as a musical landmark now than when it was first recorded, Phaedra has proven the test of time.
The members of Tangerine Dream continued to hone their craft as pioneers of the early days of electronica, and the mid-'70s proved to be a time of prosperity and musical growth for the trio of Chris Franke, early member Peter Baumann, and permanent frontman Edgar Froese. The three of them had been delivering mysterious space records on a regular basis, and their growing confidence with early synthesizers (the best that money could buy at the time) made them virtuosos of the genre, even as they kept things organic and unpredictable with gongs, prepared piano, and electric guitar. Rubycon has aged gracefully for the most part, making it a solid companion (and follow-up) to their 1974 album, Phaedra. The somewhat dated palette of sounds here never overshadow the mood: eerie psychedelia without the paisleys -- Pink Floyd without the rock. "Rubycon, Pt. 1" ebbs and flows through tense washes of echo and Mellotron choirs, as primitive sequencer lines bubble to the surface. "Pt. 2" opens in a wonderfully haunted way, like air-raid sirens at the lowest possible pitch, joined in unison by several male voices (someone in the band must have heard György Ligeti's work for 2001). Rising out of the murkiness, the synthesizer arpeggios return to drive things along, and Froese weaves his backwards-recorded guitar through the web without really calling too much attention to himself. The piece evolves through varying degrees of tension, takes a pit stop on the shoreline of some faraway beach, then ever so gradually unravels a cluster of free-form strings and flutes. The rest are vapors, your ears are sweating under your headphones, and the smoke has cleared from your bedroom. This is a satisfying ambient record from the pre-ambient era, too dark for meditation, and too good to be forgotten.
Gil Scott-Heron, Brian Jackson, and the Midnight Band take a slightly different approach with their 1977 effort, Bridges. With less of the gaping and world-infused sound prevalent on previous albums, the songs are more concise and Scott-Heron comes into his own as a singer depending less on his spoken word vocal style. This album may not be one of his better-known releases (the long out of print LP is slated to make it's CD debut in the fall of 2001), but the excellent songwriting exposes Scott-Heron at the height of his powers as a literary artist.
Air sampled this on some album I haven't heard yet.
The social, political, cultural, and historical themes are presented in a tight funk meets jazz meets blues meets rock sound that is buoyed by Jackson's characteristic keyboard playing and the Midnight Band's colorful arrangements. Scott-Heron's ability to make the personal universal is evident from the opening track, "Hello Sunday! Hello Road!," all the way through to the gorgeous "95 South (All of the Places We've Been)." The most popular cut on the album, "We Almost Lost Detroit," which shares its title with the John G. Fuller book published in 1975, recounts the story of the nuclear meltdown at the Fermi Atomic Power Plant near Monroe, MI, in 1966. This song was also contributed to the No Nukes concert and album in 1980. Along with the two records that would follow in the late 70s, Bridges stands as one of Scott-Heron's most enjoyable and durable albums.
