In characteristic Sublime Frequencies fashion, Mark Gergis' latest compilation documents a truly unique and flourishing scene that very few people even knew existed. It is hard to think of many positive things that came out of the Vietnam War but the free exchange of music and equipment between American soldiers and Saigon's hipper young musicians certainly resulted in some raucous and inventive music that could not have otherwise existed. Punk would have had no reason to happen if rock music had been this wild in the Western world in the mid-'70s.
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!
|
The origins of this compilation read like the plot to an quirky indie comedy: a German musicologist misplaces his passport, loses his luggage, misses his flight, and winds up taking a completely different flight. When he arrives at his revised destination, he spends some time with a compelling eccentric, some unexpected things happen, and the experience changes the course of his life. The eccentric character in this instance was Dick Essilfe-Bonzie, a producer for Ghana's influential indie label Essiebons, and reluctant caretaker of a mountain of forgotten recordings that Polygram never bothered to collect when they took over.
Sun Ra is one of the most challenging and innovative composers of the 20th century. He has a stupefyingly enormous discography, he espoused an enigmatic philosophy of cosmic proportions, and his music is often full of dense and unconventional sounds. Knowing where to start can be difficult, digesting his more experimental recordings even more so. For these reasons, and because of its once rare status, 1978's Lanquidity has long been among the most coveted Sun Ra records. It blends the Arkestra's characteristically obtuse performances and noisy tendencies with strong melodies, fat bass lines, and relatively straightforward rhythms. It's an excellent record for beginners and maybe the most accessible Sun Ra album ever recorded.
Although this is the first official release from this saxophonist and electronic artist, he has an illustrious list of collaborators, including the likes of Phill Niblock, Tony Conrad, and Borbetomagus. For this reason alone, the bar is set rather high for this album, and luckily Ankersmit lives up to the expectations.
1987’s Children of God marked a significant turning point in Swans' musical career. Prior to this, Michael Gira had hewn slow, heavy and angular blasts of negative energy into violent songs of protest. Releases like Cop, Greed, and the sublime Public Castration is a Good Idea marked Swans out as perhaps the heaviest group at the time both in terms of music style and of thematic content. Gira had sung about rape, murder, power, and slavery like a survivor and the rest of the band played with the same intensity. Suddenly, Children of God represented a massive change in trajectory which saw them taking on a new tender perspective which made the darker passages seem even blacker. Acoustic guitars, femininity and flute vie with Ted Parson’s thundering drums, Gira's growling baritone and an ominous void. This was, and still is, a peerless record.
While this solo project from Wolf Eyes member Mike Connelly has been active for over five years, most of the output has been limited to small run tapes and CDRs that only those "in the know" had a chance to get. Here's a chance for the average person to check out Connelly’s distinct, creepy take on bleak dark ambience without having to outbid Henry Rollins on eBay.
Although not quite as celebrated as Factory, this Belgian imprint initially shared many of the same artists and was very nearly the equal of its Manchester friends in terms of style and eccentricity (they put Current 93 on a damn Christmas album in 1984, for example). This compilation, however, mostly avoids the label's bigger names and focuses solely on the lesser-known (and poppier) female half of the Crépuscule roster. Despite containing a few artists best left forgotten and ample evidence of a rabid, but thankfully short-lived fascination with Bossa Nova, there are more hits than misses here and quite a few obscure surprises.
This Colorado duo have always inhabited a rather improbable and lonely niche with their "bootgazer" aesthetic, but their third EP makes it sound like the most natural thing in the world. Due to superficial vocal similarities, I suspect that Joe Sampson and Jeffrey Wentworth Stephens are probably doomed to a lifetime of Wilco comparisons, yet the two groups are pursuing very divergent aesthetic ends: Wentworth Kersey have staked out their own spare, intimate, sublime, and sun-baked territory and betray no aspirations towards changing that any time soon. What has changed, however, is that they keep getting better and better at doing it. Their last EP was certainly pleasant, but it didn't have nearly the wealth of great, instantly memorable songs as they’ve managed to assemble here.
