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Tiny Tiny is a brief interlude from Japanese-born sonic artist Sawako. She captures the delicacy of the music box and via some rich reverb uses it to fill a much larger space. It sounds like looking back on the past through a fisheye lens. Exquisite. Taken from her 2007 album Madoromi.

Sawako - Tiny Tiny
(alternate download)

Recently on different waters Zhao posted a couple of amazing videos of Ethiopian Orthodox sacred music. The style seems to be called tehwado, and consists of a singer accompanying him or herself on a 10-string bass lyre called a begena. It's mesmerising, haunting music which sounds almost unfathomably ancient.

Since then I've been trying to investigate the music of Alemu Aga, a man often credited as being one of the masters of the begena. It's difficult going. Tehwado is a subtle music, and learning to distinguish its nuances will require some heavy listening. Time well spent, however, as if nothing else, this is a fantastic sound. Sele Sene Fetret is taken from a compilation of Aga's works, Ethiopiques vol. 11. It features typically meditative string patterns and his softly spoken half-sung vocal delivery. Quite amazing.

Alemu Aga - Sele Sene Fetret
(alternate download)

You might think you know your way around a lengthy psychedelic excursion. After all, it's a familiar format; you probably wouldn't have to do much listening before you knew what they were all about. Here's something that might change your mind.

Group Doueh hail from Western Sahara and have been doing this sort of thing for over 20 years. Exactly what "this sort of thing" is tends to be rather hard to describe. Doueh himself sounds as if he clutches at his guitar strings, grabbing handful after handful of notes none of which seem entirely comfortable next to each other.

Tazit Kalifa is a side-long track from Group Doueh's 2009 album Treeg Salaam, which is already out of print.

Group Doueh - Tazit Kalifa

It has been a very long time since there was any John Fahey to listen to here at Doklands. Obviously, that was an untenable situation. You can't go about not listening to John Fahey. There's a law about somewhere. I read it on the internet.

Orinda-Moraga is from the 1963 album The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death. What I love about is it's sheer unexpectedness. I've lost count of the number of times I've listened to this, and yet it still manages to surprise me. It's almost as if it's in disguise. Under the veneer of fingerpicking guitar there lies something much stranger, but the costume is so good that I get fooled every time.

John Fahey - Orinda-Moraga
(alternate download)

Somesay might be the most rock'n'roll song of all time.

Let me clarify that.

IF rock'n'roll is the sound of defiance AND IF it is about passion and feeling AND IF it is about pumping your fist in the air AND IF it is a sound that enables all of these things THEN Somesay IS the most rock'n'roll song ever. I have loved this music since I first heard it in 1981 and on considered reflection it is still the motherfucking bomb.

Don't be fooled by the album version from Wah!'s earlier Nah=Poo - The Art of Bluff, the recording is anaemic. This is the single - it's shorter, tauter, and it starts loud and stays there. I may be subject to generational bias here, but just listen to Pete Wylie as he sings "Fight the liars" at the end, and tell me this isn't the greatest thing ever. This is music to shout along to. Ain't it the truth.

Wah! - Somesay
(alternate download)

Here's a brilliant slice of West African blues from the late Malian guitarist and singer Ali Farka Toure. Penda Yoro is taken from his final album, the posthumously released Savane. The sharp fluidity of the guitar as it rolls through the song is a real delight. It's unfussed and joyful.

While Toure was undoubtedly a great musician, it seems he didn't much enjoy the celebrity that his music brought him. In his later years he preferred life on his rice farm to life on the road or in a recording studio. It's for this reason that his final songs are such rare treasures. He knew that he was dying of bone cancer, but perhaps wanted to give the world one last thing to remember him by.

Ali Farka Toure - Penda Yoro
(alternate download)

If you like something then more is better, right? I like Machinefabriek, but I really don't know that I could cope with more on the scale that Rutger Zuyderveldt provides. Zink is taken from his album Ranonkel, released in early 2008, and since then there have probably been another twenty or so entries to his prodigious discography.

Still, forget about that and give this a listen; live in the moment for the seventeen minutes of Zink. It starts as a gorgeous electroacoustic drone piece, full of fragile microsounds. For a while this is joined by some mournful guitar noises, and then the whole thing reverbs out and seems to stand still, right on the edge of hearing. Beautiful and melancholic.

Machinefabriek - Zink

I was totally unprepared for this; it's not even funny.

I've been listening to Bobby Previte for years. It all started quite by mistake, somehow getting him confused with Eddie Prevost, and walking away with a cheap copy of his solo electronic album Dull Bang, Gushing Sound, Human Shriek. It was exactly as dark, murky and unpleasant as the name suggests. Since then I've followed him through his more familiar jazz and avant-rock releases, and been well rewarded along the way. But this - this is something quite terrifying.

Mute the Send is taken from his latest release, 110. It's another solo album, but quite, quite different. It's a live studio performance of electronic drums and samplers, but that doesn't tell you the half of it. This is a monstrous barrage of cataclysmic, tearing sound, redlining at every opportunity. You'd never guess that these sounds were triggered in this way, but it's somehow appropriate. The drum kit is one of the most physical of all instruments, and this is a sound with real physical presence. It's weighty and imposing, and quite, quite magnificent. Not for the faint of heart.

Bobby Previte - Mute the Send
(alternate download)

This is what we had for tea tonight. It was delicious. beaupepys had most of the fingers, but I made sure I got the wrist with the lovely juicy bone sticking out of it. I owe my cannibalistic inspiration to Megan of not martha. Thank you. I am now a confirmed fan of the long pig.

Here are (of course) Sunburned Hand of the Man with Me & My Marrow from their great album Closer to the Bone. All very murky and tribal and utterly delicious. If the percussion isn't played with bits of old bone, it certainly should be.

I am already looking forward to next year. I wonder if it's possible to pour an egg into one of those plastic spheres that hold the prizes in vending machines and then to hard boil it. Sounds like a great starting place for eyeball salad.

Sunburned Hand of the Man - Me & My Marrow
(alternate download)

Keith Fullerton Whitman, who formerly recorded as Hrvatski, is the man behind the excellent Mimaroglu Music Sales shop. He possesses a fine beard and an even finer musical sensibility which is well displayed in this track from his 2005 solo album Multiples.

The Farfisa Compact Duo Deluxe was a '60s era vintage keyboard, and here it's recorded with a creditable brightness and clarity, as Whitman takes it on an excursion into vaguely churchy minimalism. Immediate retro electronica pleasure for your ears.

Keith Fullerton Whitman - Stereo Music for Farfisa Compact Duo Deluxe, Drum Kit
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The Finnish group Värttinä started life in the mid-'80s performing traditional Karelian folk music. Since then the line-up has constantly shifted, and with it their musical style. Much of their later work shows pop and jazz influence; while this has brought them added popularity, it's also rather dulled their edge. That's rather a shame, as they can certainly still bring that edge out when they want to. Eerama from their 2006 album Miero is proof of this.

It's sung entirely a cappella, and mixes sprightly clipped vocals with some fantastic drawn out harmonies. It's a surprisingly dark sound, full of rich soil and wind. This does run this risk of attracting goths, so do be careful when listening.

Värttinä - Eerama
(alternate download)

Stop right now. Before you go on any further, head over to Destination: OUT to listen to something amazing. We can wait. We're not going anywhere.

Go on.

Back? Good. If you never thought that you might hear Louis Armstrong sing a Pharoah Sanders track, you're not alone. Certainly something, though precisely what is uncertain.

Here's a more familiar side of Satchmo, a gorgeous rendition of St. James Infirmary, one of the creepiest blues standards ever written. This isn't his famous 1928 recording with Earl Hines on piano - I think this one is from 1959. It features some of the most ominous-sounding trombone you'll ever hear. An absolute winner.

As a bonus treat, you can also listen to a spiritedly woozy version by Doklands favourites the Hungry March Band. I don't quite know how a marching band manages to sound like they have a punk ethos, but they do. A bunch of revolutionary no-goodniks, and we love them for it.

Louis Armstrong - St. James Infirmary
(alternate download)
Hungry March Band - St. James Infirmary
(alternate download)

In 1969 Howlin' Wolf released the album from which this version of Smokestack Lightning is taken. Actually, that's not quite accurate. His record label released it. Howlin' Wolf wanted nothing to do with it. He didn't like it in the least, something attested to by its cover, which simply read "This is Howlin' Wolf's new album. He doesn't like it. He didn't like his electric guitar at first either." He didn't like the cover either, not least because it was inaccurate. Wolf was one of the pioneers of the electric blues.

So what's wrong with it? Well, plenty to be honest. It took several Howlin' Wolf classics and re-recorded them with some pretty cheesy psyche instrumentation. Just listen to the flute that wanders all over this version of Smokestack Lightning, and you'll see what I mean. The less said about the echo effects on the guitar the better. And yet despite that, this is certainly worthy of interest. The bass vamp is a real burner, and if nothing else this is worth hearing to know that it has been done, whether or not it should have. A real curiosity.

Howlin' Wolf - Smokestack Lightning
(alternate download)

Here's a follow-on piece from the Radulescu of a couple of days ago. How different, really, is Radulescu's spectral music from the minimalism of Charlemagne Palestine or the obsessive single-note microtonal explorations of Giacinto Scelsi? It's all about the concentration of listening, the overtones, the spaces between the notes.

That's something that Joe Grimm would understand. He discovered an interest in this form of music after playing in one of Glenn Branca's 100-guitar orchestras, and started to write music accordingly. He would set a target note, and then play the notes which would combine to give this pitch; musical calculus if you will. From his 2008 album Brain Cloud, this is the first of his two harpsichord improvisations, both simply called Harpsichord. I love the tiny delay effect he uses here. It transforms the sharp attack of the instrument, and gives the sound a resonant buzz. The result is not unlike one of Terry Riley's keyboard improvisations, but even more minimal. It's an absolutely magical sound.

Joe Grimm - Harpsichord
(alternate download)

A moody, slightly petulant¹ post-punk favourite for you today. Feed The Enemy by Magazine was the opening track from their second album, Secondhand Daylight. For some fans, this was where it all started to go wrong. Dave Formula's keyboards were high in the mix, and if there's one thing people knew back then, it was that synthesizers weren't real instruments. To be honest, there is a bit of a problem with the sound on this. It's all rather too muddy, and there are few (if any) sharp edges. I probably should have taken the trouble to sort out the live version that's on the b-side of the Sweetheart Contract 7" for you. Oh well. Never mind. It's still a good song.


Magazine - Feed The Enemy
(alternate download)

The Romanian-born composer Horatiu Radulescu was one of the pioneers of spectral music, a style which explores the relationships between various harmonics of a fundamental base note. It sounds somewhat limiting, but Radulescu was able to tease out some amazing microtonal variations in his works.

Here's one of his late pieces, written in 2003. Intimate Rituals XI is written for viola and a pair of prepared grand pianos. By "prepared", he really did mean prepared. His "sound icon" was a grand piano turned on its side, with all of the string completely retuned, an absolute beast of an instrument. But it's not the pianos that takes centre stage here but the viola, here played by Vincent Royer. Using overtones right at the top of the instrument's register, the effect is of a dissonant and hypnotic stillness. This may well be challenging music, but it's also completely captivating. Terrific stuff.

Horatiu Radulescu - Intimate Rituals XI

Now this is too great. It's the opening track to Roland P. Young's 1980 album Isophonic Boogie Woogie, a record completely out of the left field of the jazz underground. Think of Young as the musical equivalent of a gnostic monk, locked away in solitude for years and finally emerging into the daylight with some exotic spiritual ideas.

What ideas they were. Crystal Motions is a piece of minimalist afro-psychedelic free jazz, guided by its ever-present kalimba and adding only soprano sax and voice. It might owe some slight debt of influence to Alice Coltane, but I can honestly say I've never heard anything else quite like this. I hold out hope that one day this may be acknowledged as a classic.

Roland P. Young - Crystal Motions

In 1987 Ralph Records released Potatoes: A Collection of Folk Songs. Three years later, they were at it again, this time with a similarly tangential compilation called Beets: A Collection of Jazz Songs. Here's a lighthearted little experiment from that album, Recollection Bruise by Tom Cora.

Cora eschews his usual cello for this piece, and instead contributes with loops and turntables. Bobby Previte and George Lewis keep things rolling, but this is all about the collision of strange and unusual noises. In this way it harkens back to the earliest days of jazz, where if you could make your trumpet sound like a dog barking, you could be guaranteed regular work. Fun.

Tom Cora - Recollection Bruise
(alternate download)

Taut and skritchy, this is some top quasi-Middle Eastern jazz. I say "quasi" because Topaz, Friedlander's band for this project, is half American and half Japanese. I'm very fond of the way Wire seems to bounce between composed and improvised sections. It's taken from the 2003 album Quake.

Erik Friedlander - Wire
(alternate download)