Before Sublime Frequencies began their plunge into the gritty and forgotten corners of global music, there was Pat Conte, a curmudgeonly postal employee and WFMU DJ from Long Island with a basement full of 78s. In the '90s, he curated an impressive series of rather unusual compilations named after an enigmatic and semi-legendary collection of photographs published in the 1930s. This is the second volume in the well-deserved vinyl reissue of the series and it is everything I could hope for: an achievement made even more remarkable by the fact that Conte had never traveled further than Canada when it was originally issued.
Look up Music for gazing upwards brought to you by Meat Beat Manifesto & scott crow, +/-, Aurora Borealis, The Veldt, Not Waving & Romance, W.A.T., The Handover, Abul Mogard & Rafael Anton Irisarri, Mulatu Astatke, Paul St. Hilaire & René Löwe, Songs: Ohia, and Shellac. Aurora Borealis image from California by Steve. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images! |