hold yr breath.

i know i've said some shit about jim ferraro in the past, but have been revisiting this album from his peak & i've been thoroughly enjoying it's gloopy glue sniffing mutant lo-fi rock & roll.

moon nightclub.

weirdo lo-fi outsider minimal electronic reichian jazzy funk rock. yep, a sentence of random words that somewhat accurately puts a finger in the general direction of how insanely good this is.

a gift from me to you.

one of my favorites of the year.

love letters from hell.

Vampisoul is pleased to invite you to the second bone-breaking session with the most danceable sounds “made in Spain” from the 1960s and early 70s. Welcome again to the Sensacional Soul party!

Soul turned Spanish pop into the fuel that ignited the dance floors and parties of Spain in the second half of the 60s. For most bands, the soul explosion meant facing the “renovate or die” dilemma. After years of trying to emulate The Shadows and later The Beatles, the groups had two alternatives: joining the psychedelic movement or adapting the soul genre to the Spanish taste.

Those who wanted to follow the rock path had to bear in mind the advances in the recording techniques that led to Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, something that was virtually impossible for most Spanish bands. Besides, the record companies, radio stations and especially the public were not ready to “open their minds” to the psychedelic revolution.

Soul, however, did enjoy a bigger success thanks to the hits by the Tamla Motown and Atlantic artists, and thus many guitar groups decided to incorporate a horn section. Spanish soul became hugely popular, and during the second half of the 60s was the dominant music genre in a country still under Franco’s dictatorship.

Apart from artists that imitated the purest sounds from the US, others took risks and tried subgenres such as progressive R&B, freakbeat soul, sunshine soul or psych-pop with soulish influences. This new volume offers a fantastic selection of all of them, including tracks by hit acts such as Los Bravos, Los Pekenikes, Manolo y Ramón (aka Dúo Dinámico) and obscure bands such as Jae’s Soul and Conjunto Brillant’s. - amazon

the sun is shining outside & this music is made for lazy days. psych influenced soul from the hazy outer reaches of the long gone beaches of spain.

to ghostcapital with love.

On the one hand, Iranian exiles have created via their media and culture a symbolic and fetishized private hermetically sealed electronic communitas infused with home, past, memory, loss, nostalgia, longing for return, and the communal self; on the other hand, they have tried to get on with the process of living by incorporating themselves into the dominant culture of consumer capitalism by means of developing a new sense of the self and what can be called an “exilic economy.” —Hamid Naficy

If you look, Iranians like to brag, you can find members of the diaspora anywhere in the world. I once was standing at a tram station in Gothenberg, Sweden, when I overheard Persian being spoken between a mother and child. It seems this frosty mid-sized fishing hub was the destination of tens of thousands of political refugees — mostly from left-leaning anti-Shah organizations — that ended up on the wrong side of the 1979 revolution. In Dubai and other cities on the opposite side of the Persian Gulf, flows of Iranian migrants are more reciprocal. There one can meet Iranians who not only survive but also thrive on economic and cultural links to the homeland. The highest prices for Tehran’s contemporary artworks are found foremost in Dubai, and only after that in Paris, Vienna, and London. The dusty whiskey I consumed in Tehran was likely smuggled in from a U.A.E. duty-free shop.

Nevertheless, I also met a self-appointed Iranian diva in Dubai who reminded me very much of the ideal of the diasporic exile. After listening to her talk about her bohemian lifestyle for several hours while she incessantly surfed Facebook, I asked her — since she was literally a half-hour away from Iran by plane — how often she went back. “Oh, I don’t go back. I haven’t been back for 30 years. And I won’t go back until the country that I left comes back.”

Meanwhile, the country moved on. Several years ago, the Iranian rap group ZedBazi penned the satirical hit “Irooni LA” (“LA Iranian”), which lambasted the rituals of “Tehrangeles” and turned on its head the once-celebrated closeness of the LA-based Iranian diaspora to American hyper-culture. After more puns than a Cliff’s Notes Oscar Wilde, the song ends by riffing in English, “Tehrangeles — are you jealous that you can’t come to Tehran?” ZedBazi is not allowed to officially release an album in Iran, and they mostly shuffle around European capitals, but they are putting out an online album this year with a guest appearance by Iran’s most famous rapper, Hichkas (“Nobody”). You may have seen him in No One Knows About Persian Cats, a film which portrayed a hellish hipster dystopia where Iranian rockers slink around Tehran trying to escape to the West. No one seemed to notice the most ironic aspect of the film: while sketching a society with no artistic outlets, it wears its coolness on its sleeve by featuring a host of underground artists that had risen to fame and notoriety in that very same place.

It is then a bit tiresome when each new Persian pop compilation — emerging from the perpetual motion machine that is the great reissue bubble of the early 21st century — begins with some variant of “There used to be a country called Iran, and it loved us.” Lurking behind this phrase, one so common to the pundit class, is the opposite: “But now, they want to kill us.” Journalists who travel to Iran almost always report a story that confirms one of these two well-burnished premises. If they actually tried to capture anything more complex, well, that’s what editors are for. Estrangement breeds weird vibes, Freud said, and when repressed memories resurface they can cause the sufferer to project a strangeness onto the outside world which, in reality, belongs to the self.

One may be tempted to read too much into the name of the label which released the two-disc Rangarang compilation of Persian hits from the 1960s and ’70s: Vampisoul. The notes are filled with paisley- and turtleneck-clad Iranians, many of whom appeared on the TV variety show which bore the name of this compilation. Songs are presented without original release dates, as if this was a single mass of music which is only defined in relation to a revolution that hadn’t even happened yet. The only date that matters is year zero: 1979.

This heaviness notwithstanding, Rangarang is likely the best Persian pop compilation from this period of all the recent offerings. Though there’s little explanation, it seems the music was culled from singles released by Ahang-e Rooz, one of Iran’s biggest labels at the time. Two superb Googoosh tracks not on the earlier B-Music compilation are here, and we also get an assortment of Beti, Pooran, and Leila Forouhar — pouty household names of early-1970s Iran. The first few lines of each song are translated in the notes, so listeners can get an appreciation of how Iran’s pop entertainment maintained the melancholia of their country’s modern literature even while a bossa nova, bubblegum, or Rimsky-Korsakov-styled orchestra swirled beneath the singers. A riff from the pages of Lee Hazelwood sits behind Habib Mohebian’s “Bi To Man” (“Me Without You”), and Giti’s powerful version of Iraj’s “Tarsam az Eshgh” (“Afraid of Love”) stands out with its refined, chic balladry. Soul-sucking vampire squid label or not, the compiler Eva Garcia Benito has an ear, to be sure.

When compilations used to give little or no notes to their big Third World aural excursions, labels were criticized for presenting the music devoid of history and politics. But when one does write-in history, whose history do you use? Rangarang looks like an authentic product of a time that is now gone, but it’s really more a mythic creation of the Iranian diaspora. As with most diasporas borne of revolution — Cuban, Russian, French — history tends to stop while the nostalgic conjuring of a golden age plagues the exiled generation.

We could read this compilation against the tragic grain of its vampiric intentions. As the inclusion of the Afghan pop star Ahmad Zahir on Rangarang shows, the cultural influence of “Greater Persia” stretched farther than the borders of 20th-century Iran. Persian was the lingua franca of much of Central Asia, including the Mughal court in India. Politics mattered less than the deeper tranches of musical and poetic exchange that crisscrossed the region. This foundation was something that a revolutionary interregnum could only temporarily paper over. 1979 was not year zero for an entire culture, although it altered the biographies of millions of Iranians, myself included. Most of these musicians ended up in LA or Europe, and the brutal 1992 murder of Fereydoon Farrokhzad in Germany, whose song starts off the comp, testifies to the harrowing experience of the oppositional exile.

But there was no Persian golden age. One could craft a compilation of recent underground post-revolutionary pop songs to go along with the pre-revolutionary ones, and it would be hard to tell the difference except for the brand of synthesizers involved. Yet such a release could easily be marketed as a secret and exclusive window onto the “real” Iranian culture that naturally loves us and, therefore, expresses itself in pop music form. Limited to 1000 vinyl copies. Mastered from the MP3 originals! In the tormented world of the Islamic Republic, rock is resistance and their guitars kill Islamo-fascists…

It may be facile, but it sells. If our drone-piloted bombs ever rain down on Tehran, we could clutch these gatefold LPs tearily as we assure ourselves that we’re bringing the golden age back to the Persian plateau. Alternatively, one could adopt the stance of ZedBazi, and approach music from other parts of the world by letting go the assumption that it always, inevitably and self-affirmingly, revolves around us.

Postscript: In mid-January, I caught supergroup Mitra Sumara in the East Village, performing an impressive hour-long set of Persian hits for an amazed audience. Lead singer Yvette Perez had recently learned Persian in order to sing Googoosh’s songs and other big band hits reissued on these many recent Iranian compilations. Instead of a hermetically sealed nostalgia sandwich, it was the type of cross-cultural celebration that vibrantly fused the music of the past with an urgency of the present. - Kevan Harris, dustedreviews.com

<3 u brah.

pt.1 // pt.2

church of all images.

The first release in a definitive series collecting psychedelic '70s music from Pernambuco, Brazil. Includes 19 tracks of humid Psyche Rock grooves from the Brazilian underground* "Fabricas de Discos Rozenblit was founded by José Rozenblit in 1954 in Pernambuco (northeast Brazil). Im addition to a record label the operation boasted the first ever vinyl-pressing plant in the state, a super-modern factory and a studio capable of recording a full symphonic orchestra. Location away from the expense of Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro gave them financial independence and the space to develop a truly unique voice in Brazilian music. Jose and his brothers invested substantial resources into local music styles sich as Ciranda, Maracutu, Carimbo and Frevo. Between the mid-fifties and mid-sixties the label released music by artists including Jorge ben, Claudette Soares, Os Megatons, The Gentlemen, Flaviola, Waltel Branco, Trio 3D, Dom Salvador, Lula Cortes, Zé Ramalho, Elis Regina, Tom Zé, Os Versateis and Os Baobas. - boomkat

another essential summer time psych rock record to fight those heatwavve blues.

meet me at the bus stop.

everyone owes r. stevie moore so much... i know i do. he's a really big influence on my music & the way i view diy ethics when it comes to music. i feel he is FINALLY now just starting to get his due. if you've never heard this genius, jump the fuck in.

i just wasn't made for these times.

brian wilson is the greatest songwriter of all time. he was also the best producer of all time. i think a lot of people forget about that aspect of his earlier career. this is a collection of projects he worked on. dig the honeys which was brian's wife at the time & how much they sound like a mix between the beach boys & the ronettes. if brian hadn't been derailed by mike love, he could have single handedly changed the face of modern humanity. or at least produced some really amazing albums. anyway, you should grab this & throw it on now that the weather is warming up for y'all.

scenes in the city.

this is absolutely one of my favorite post rock records ever. i bought this right when it came out because it had members of crimson curse & guyver one, two of my favorite bands at the time. i loved the artwork for the cover, & i stared at the record sleeve (this was '99 after all & i was one of those vinyl nerds) everytime i would put it on. the first song golden hill made it onto every single mixtape i made for anyone when this came out. tristeza used clean guitars in this amazingly propulsive ways to build stunning dynamics without falling into the cliched tropes of soft loud soft that many bands like this do. really emotionally gripping, i think the closest might be the mercury program or six parts seven. this soundtracked many hot hazy summertime afternoon naps after i spent all day at the beach.

the crow returns as the arrow flies north.

matt mondanile (the parasails, ducktails, real estate) channeling gnarled noise rock through kraut sensibilities with thick clouds of smoke enveloping everything. perfect for blaring out of the windows of yr bitchin' 77' thunderbird.

i will make you mine.

cabaret punk from aaron montaigne (antioch arrow, the chandeliers, heroin). the seven inch is a bit boring where he's just playing drums, but after they got rid of the singer & aaron took over vocals, things got a lot more interesting. they added dave clifford (the vss, slaves/pleasure forever, red sparowes) on drums, & had a fuller more engaging sound. pretty essential if yr into weird records, old vaudevillian tropes, the art of cabaret, or just miss the days of 1999 when people thought it was really kooky for the former frontman of antioch arrow to play in a carnival sideshow band.

we're on our own wave.

Dave Scher and Jimi Hey, hail from Los Angeles, California, and have known each other since 1995, when a 16 year-old Hey would call Scher’s late-night radio program on KXLU requesting Six Finger Satellite on a repeated basis. This KXLU connection led them to playing music together in Bee Venom and later resulted in the formation of the more psychedelic country-minded Beachwood Sparks. In between leaving the group in ‘97 and rejoining it in 2002, Jimi also turned up in groups such as Strictly Ballroom, Tristeza, Glass Candy and the Shattered Theater, and The Rapture. The two have also moonlighted as members of Lilys. After completing the Beachwood Sparks’ tour of summer 2002, Dave and Jimi joined forces to create All Night Radio, a band in which they could throw off the musical shackles, so to speak. They have dubbed this new sound the “Spirit Stereo Frequency.”

Dave and Jimi spent the past year cultivating and developing their new sound in their living room studio, infusing their new songs with an ever-changing synthesis of traveling sounds from the Natural and Supernatural worlds. With the help of a deranged assortment of modern and primitive equipment, the boys tuned in to the Spirit Stereo Frequency…an Omnichronistic Music Source coming in non-stop, on bandwidth signals from the sun, in a collision of displaced sound styles from the present, past, and
future.

So do tune in, and your molecules will remember the sound of yet to come! - the sub pop website

i don't know about all of that shit. i do know this is the fucking jam, kind of if otc were from LA & got more of the psychic sun & swimming desert in their blood.

housework for three.

somewhere inbetween the smooth soul sounds of the make*up & the heavy funk of weird war lies scene creamers. another ian s. record, so of course i will highly back this one. good to blast from yr car stereo with the windows down & the sun shining while driving along the pch. this is dedicated to zach.

getting curiouser & curiouser.

i cracked my ipod so i could upload the files from there into my mediafre, so expect to see tons more albums being posted everyday, starting with this crusher. if y'all aren't aware of the sheer majestic power that this band wields, then you need to get this. touched is a great starting point since i know their discography can be pretty daunting since they have forty or fifty releases out there. imagine if godflesh & my bloody valentine decided to start a doom band together... that's kinda underwhelming compared to the actual record. just listen.

bb come back.

james ferraro is really hit or miss, but has had flashes of brilliance like this lo-fi warped mutant glue sniffing pop masterpiece. & if yr reading this right now man, don't get bummed. make a new grippers album.