Doklands

Right, I'm going to ask for your help. What are the great recordings of African drumming? This is the sort of thing I should know but I don't: I think the only album in my library is that Master Drummers of Burundi live at the Real World one. I don't know where to begin, so any recommendations would be appreciated.

Here's something Malian, just to further cement its reputation as the nation that has everything (including Islamic puritans with a penchant for cultural genocide). Jina I comes from a 1995 recording released as The Art of Jenbe Drumming: The Mali tradition Vol. 1 that features several generations of jenbe (or djembe, as it's more often known) players, each accompanied on the dunun - a bass drum played with sticks - by Madu Jakite. Jeli Madi Kuyate, in addition to having an awesome name, gets great colour from his instrument. Great interplay between the two performers here, this is a piece that would sound really incomplete with either of them missing. Very listenable stuff.

Jeli Madi Kuyate & Madu Jakite - Jina I
(alternate download)

I love what Angelica Sanchez does with her electric piano at the start of 514. It's a wickedly dexterous piece of thematic exploration, and it's not until right at the end that you get that flash of realisation: oh right, this is going to be avant-tropicalia. It's an audacious opening solo. I'm less fond of what follows, as it sounds like she keeps her band on rather too short a leash. Not my sort of free jazz, but as a performer she's clearly a major talent.

Angelica Sanchez - 514
(alternate download)

Maybe it's the copious size that my own beard has grown to, but I'm really enjoying the music of Daniel Higgs these days. His esoteric primitivism has a savage beauty. His 2003 album Magic Alphabet is a collection of pieces for solo jaw harp, and if that sounds as if it might be a little dull then fear not. Despite its short running length Thanksgiving is dramatic and invigorating, as Higgs makes his unlikely instrument sound far more threatening than it has any right to be. Magick.

Daniel Higgs - Thanksgiving
(alternate download)

Take the world of Dwight Eisenhower and prom dresses and coat it in a narcotic fug: that's what Denver band Weed Diamond do on Nothing To Write Home About. You know this world from a thousand "birth of the teenager" movies, but Weed Diamond aren't about going steady and getting their licenses. A different kind of retrofuturism.

Weed Diamond - Nothing To Write Home About
(alternate download)

More experimental black metal from Botanist. I must confess I'm still loving his perverse dulcimer-led music, and I hope you are too. Such a dainty, pretty instrument, but one still capable of building a dissonant wall of sound for the man to croak his vocals over. I would suggest that he's adding one more syllable to "chamaerops" than is strictly necessary, but that might imply that I'm taking the whole Botanist project seriously. That would be a mistake. The music is fabulous though, like a gothed-up version of Dead Can Dance doing Immortal covers. In The Halls of Chamaerops is taken from the 2011 album A Rose from the Dead.

Botanist - In The Halls of Chamaerops
(alternate download)

Listening to the first two album by Them, you can hear why Van Morrison wanted a solo career. It's not that they're bad records, far from it, but they have the indelible stamp of a band who were not in control of their own destiny. Both are packed full of cover versions. Their greatest song, Van's mighty Gloria, was relegated to b-side status. It didn't matter how good they were going to be, going the way they were going they'd never be properly rewarded.

Here's an example of just how good they could be. It takes confidence to record a cover of a Dylan song. I don't know what it takes to improve on the original; if I did I'd expect to be paid a lot of money for my time. That's what Them managed with this track from their second album, the 1966 release Them Again. The arrangement for loose thumbed bass and liquid organ is sublime, but the real trick is the way that they keep the rhythm going. It stops feeling like a collection of verses and choruses and becomes a continuous stream of music with a melody that knows no end.

Them - It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
(alternate download)

I Understand Philip K Dick: what a title. You know that this is going to be some fractured, oppressive shit that will have you looking sideways at the nature of reality. Well no, if you think that then you're about to be disappointed, which is a shame because that's really the only way that Woodsman have of disappointing you.

This is one of their early tracks, originally released on the 2009 Humdrum cd-r. It's an extended, summery piece of instrumental psychedelia, all dancing sunbeams and rippling water. We're just starting to get properly warm days here, so more of this sort of thing please.

Woodsman - I Understand Philip K Dick
(alternate download)

It's been a while since we last listened to Cam Deas, the ferociously talented Sheffield-based 12-string guitarist. His style has been described as post-Takoma, which is a fair enough reference point although his playing style seems to owe as much to Bailey as it does to Fahey. Neither of those reference points will prepare you for Quadtych though, presented here in the form of a live set at Café Oto. This extended piece touches all points on the guitar, with Deas exploring the sonic potential of every inch of his instrument. Although parts of this are evidently composed, at its best it shows Deas' strength as an improviser. He has such a delicate control of his instrument; in the quiet and contemplative sections it seems possible to hear the music precisely as he did, fresh and for the first time. You're listening along with him, and his responses feel like your own responses, creating new music out of the air. Wonderful.

Cam Deas - Quadtych parts I, II & III (live)

via the Free Music Archive

Danny Norbury is a cellist from Manchester. You might remember the shivering wrongness of his track Lullaby from a few months ago on the blog. Here's another piece from the same EP, his 2007 release Dusk. There's not a lot to From The Lookout. It is small music, tiny but perfectly realised, a miniature landscape painting in sound. Wistful and gorgeous and impeccably realised.

Danny Norbury - From The Lookout
(alternate download)

Lila Engel is 40 years old and sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday. Somewhere in Michael Rother's attic there must be a portrait or a demo tape or something that's looking really awful by now, as this hasn't aged at all. An audacious piece of motorik art/noise rock that deviates from the typical Neu! sound with some chainsaw guitar. Add Klaus Dinger's wordless post-punkish vocals and this has a sense of urgency that's unmatched by anything else the band recorded. It's an overstatement to say that modern music began here, but an allowable one.

Neu! - Lila Engel
(alternate download)

Here's another mystery Dan for you. I know nothing about Mr. Klag except that he seems to have a knack for making really weighty ambient drones. Leaflet hangs in the air like a velvet curtain, heavy and undulating. There's nothing ephemeral here, it's massively resonant and full of ringing overtones. Immerse yourself.

Daniel Klag - Leaflet
(alternate download)

You never knew what you were getting with Pierre Henry. Was it going to be IRCAM-style musique concrete, audacious electronic pop, or perhaps he'd start working with the Violent Femmes. Machine Danse is the title track of his 1973 album, and it's just possible that the huge glitterball on the cover is might act as some sort of clue. What you've got here is '60s style Hammond jazz and proto-metal electric guitars, all shot through with high volume aleatory electronics. It's not the glitch aesthetic, but it is the glitch practice, with icicles of sonic interruption becoming ever sharper and more densely packed. Damn shame he retired, I'd love to hear what he could do in collaboration with modern musical explorers.

Pierre Henry - Machine Danse
(alternate download)

Tuppence Per Person Per Trip is a pre-WWII comic monologue made famous by Stanley Holloway. It is one of a very small handful of pieces written about my home town. I have a complicated sense of nostalgia about the piece. My grandparents would often try to quote parts of it to me, but they could only remember the refrain. Surely that was enough, and I'd get the joke anyway. "Per tuppence per person per trip, Peter, per tuppence per person per trip, hahaha."

It is fair to say that while there was much affection there, we did not understand each other all that well.

Despite its small part in our family life, I never got to hear the entire piece until much later. My nostalgia is for not knowing the tale of Old Ted ferrying passengers across the Mersey Estuary. I'd like to share that feeling with you. What I need you to do is to read this blog entry twenty or thirty times, just so "Per tuppence per person per trip" gets properly lodged in your head. Per tuppence per person per trip. Try saying it to the next person you meet. They won't know what it means, but neither will you so that's all right. Then wait a few decades and give the track a listen. Can you do that for me? Thanks.

Stanley Holloway - Runcorn Ferry (Tuppence Per Person Per Trip)
(alternate download)

I do not know who Daniel Waldman is, but he clearly has a knack for the disturbing. You know how with a mash-up you play two tracks at once and blend them together seamlessly? This is like that apart from the seamlessly bit. New York, New York and something from (I think) 50 Cent are played on top of each other to horrific effect, with no compromise for taste. It's the soundtrack to being trapped in a block of flats between two awful neighbours. Not something you'll want to hear often, but it's good to know someone's doing it. From the 2010 release Debt.

Daniel Waldman - Underground City
(alternate download)

Composers: does the performance of your music cause ladies to faint in the aisles? If the answer is no, perhaps you need to learn from the esteemed MR. HENRY COWELL. Dynamic Motion for solo piano is one of his earlier, Futurist-inspired works. It was written in 1916 during a trip to New York city, and evokes the experience of a train arriving at a subway platform. It's the sort of thing that needs to be realised in full 3D sound so that it really does feel like you're in the path of an oncoming locomotive, but until then we'll just have to make do with getting our faint on from its ominous tone clusters. From the 1963 release The Piano Music of Henry Cowell, incongruously released on Folkways Records.

Henry Cowell - Dynamic Motion
(alternate download)

What's your excuse for not being funky RIGHT NOW THIS MINUTE¹? You can't sing? You don't need to sing. No bass? You don't need a bass. No idea how to make the funk? I don't believe you, not for a minute. Funk is in your bones.

Penguin is funky as LORD GOD SHIT and it's got none of that. It's from Turkish percussionist Okay Temiz's 1980 album Drummer of Two Worlds, and it's played on zither, slide whistle, and some kind of gourd. Probably. Preposterously good.


Okay Temiz - Penguin
(alternate download)

If I were to tell you that Woodpecker Wooliams played harp and in her spare time was known to be something of a beekeeper, you'd probably ask me to explain myself. What is this strange new euphemism? It's nothing of the sort, I'd be forced to reply. That's what she does. And a good thing too, because there isn't enough honest to goodness proper eccentricity in popular music these days.

Sparrow comes from her 2012 EP The Bird School of Being Human and it's as fine a piece of broken kosmische pop as you could hope to hear and tastefully full of found sound. Her creepy little girl vocal style may be an acquired taste, though. Thoroughly modern.

Woodpecker Wooliams - Sparrow
(alternate download)

The first time I ever heard Emaxambeni by the Havana Swingsters it completely blew me away. 1950s township jazz, raucous and wild and completely out there, sonically speaking. Here's something by the band that would become the Swingsters, the African Quavers. They played swing jazz, untouched by bop, simple and direct. Think of this as the garage rock of jazz: cheap instruments and only a handful of chords. Majuba goes like a steam train whistle carrying a furnace full of coal, and it's impossible to ignore.

African Quavers - Majuba
(alternate download)

Alessandro Moreschi was one of the last ever castrati. He was the only one to make audio recordings. The practice was officially banned in Italy in 1861, but it is likely to have carried on for a while after that as Moreschi was only born in 1858. In his prime he was known as the "the angel of Rome", and he sang in the Sistine Chapel choir. This recording dates from 1904, and to say he was past his best is putting it politely. It sounds as if his voice is cracking and that he never hits his notes. Some critics have defended the performance saying that it was a deliberate stylistic choice, but even if it was it doesn't make it any the easier to listen to. Added to that is the fact that he tries to wring melancholy from Every. Single. Note. It's hideously melodramatic and badly sung, but it's still a unique musical document, and one I'm sure you'll want to hear for yourself.

Alessandro Moreschi - Ave Maria
(alternate download)

P-beat sees Doklands' favourite Portuguese bassist in great form. He's joined by the group of Jim Black on drums, Frank Möbus on startling lead guitar, and the turntable skills of DJ Illvibe. Now between you and me, that's a terrible name. It's trying way too hard. What's worse is that he picked that rather than use his real name: Vincent von Schlippenbach. There are people out there who would lose a finger for the chance of a name like that, although admittedly none of them are actually musicians. He's the the son of legendary German free jazz pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach. It's a forward-thinking piece of liquid groove from their 2006 album Believer.

Carlos Bica & Azul - P-Beat
(alternate download)