Recent Purchases (April Edition)

David Bowie - Low
Lightning Bolt - Ride The Skies
Kill Yourself / Humanfly - split 7"
Kill Yourself / This Ain't Vegas - 7" where both bands cover Devo, quite enjoyably
Wolves of Greece - 10"
Squarepusher - a 5-track 3" CD for 50p in the local dance shop, who obviously didn't realise what they were selling either

That's right, his entire works, 3CDS, 3 hours 16 minutes and 44 seconds of solid concrete! For five quid! This goes somewhere near the top of my list of greatest ever bargains.''

my god do they have anymore of these.

it's never quite 2004 around here

it sells new for the price of a single CD, and is available online from EMF themselves

http://www.emfmedia.org/catalog/em114/

Have only heard the first all the way through, and even that was done inattentively.

I hope Ernesto Martinez doesn't turn out to be more standard issue minimalist-based music.

John Wilkes Booze - "Five Pillars of Soul"

Terminals - 7" on Flying Nun

James Brown - "live at the Apollo" reissue

Hospitals - LP

and of course I pre-ordered the new Hwoling Hex LP and am totally completely psyched

....AWWWWW SKEET SKEET SKEET SKEET
TO THE WINDOOOOOOW TO THE WALL!!!!

Was listening to a downloaded Artifakts (Plastikman) on the way home yesterday after a long day at work and it felt so good that I went straight into the cd-store at the station to find out they didn't have it. They did have Closer, so I bought that (had mp3 copy of it) and played it according to the instructions on the back; with extra bass. Man.

You mean you couldn't hear us fighting, crashing over tables and knocking over pints of real ale?

Pierre Schaeffer - L'Oeuvre Musicale. It sells new for the price of a single CD, and is available online from EMF themselves

Good. As a lifelong devotee of silly noises I can heartily recommend this CD!

went rec shopping for the first time in over a month yesterday:

went to the shop you recommended dada, and I got:

young marble giants- colossal youth

scored these second hand:

max brand- in memoriam
ennio morricone- gil occhi freddi della paura soundtrack from 1972 (so good i had to revive the morricone thread bcz of it).

got these from ray's jazz shop (50% off):

'nachtluft' by bossard/muller/widmer and 'as was ' by rova saxophone quartet (both as part of the atavastic label reish programme)

and finally 'i remember syria' (2CDs), a sublime frequencies release.

£4.99 each in the HMV sale.

on which to spend the pittance the record shop offered me ("come on, the 2nd Sigue Sigue Sputnik album *has* to be worth more than £2!")

they did a great ensemble cover last year of coltrane's 'ascension' with ikue mori, nels cline, otomo yoshihide, carla kihlstadt etc. that put their recorded version of it to shame

Fabric 13 (Michael Mayer). Excellent, as just about everyone around ILM has been saying. Maybe this has been said too: Mayer doesn't seem to have particularly impressive technical skills as a DJ (although I've never heard him live or even heard a recording of a live set). Instead, his talent seems to lie in picking good tracks and sequencing them inventively. And it seems to me at least half a dozen ILM regulars could do this equally well. So I don't quite fathom the praise that gets heaped on Mayer the DJ.

Divine Comedy - Absent Friends. A marvelous return to form. Jody Talbot's brilliant orchestrations are back (this time with something of a Billy-the-Kid edge on several tracks), and Neil Hannon is weaving stories just like in the good old days and singing them over long, sequentially-structured chord progressions. Sometimes he's a bit uninvolved in his own stories (see also Casanova), and he can be bombastic (see also his entire back catalog, but Fin de Siecle most of all). After a few spins of the whole album I'm surprised to find myself liking "The Happy Goth" best of all; sure it's a novelty number, but once the novelty wears off, it's still inspired songwriting, and the arrangement has an irresistable charm.

Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans. Haven't listened yet.

Arthur Krieger - Meeting Places. A collection of recent compositions for soloists and small ensembles plus tape. Haven't listened yet, but I think I'm getting tired of pop music these days, so I'll get to this soon and I'll probably search through recent posts from Julio and milton and the rest of the usual suspects for more ideas.

Egyptian Lover: One Track Mind -- finally, the whole album.

Uncle Jam's Army: Yes Yes Yes/Dial-a-Freak 12" -- this is absolutely incredible, incomprehensible west coast porn electro. 1984. Awesome.

Lee Michaels: Lee Michaels [used] -- replacing a lost copy. Love that organ.

Liars: They Were Wrong, So We Drowned -- saw them at Bottom of the Hill, bought the LP to replace my burned copy. Great album (surprise).

lessee, recent purchases; vinyl:

Phil Ochs Greatest Hits (not a comp but his last studio lp)
Humble Pie - s/t
Bill Bruford - Feels Good to Me
Free - Heartbreaker

CDs:

V/A - Torque 2cd ( $ 0.13 on eBay!!)
Gene Clark - No Other (forget to check if it was the import and it wasn't. Grrr. Had to sell it back)
Eddy Detroit - Immortal Gods
Sun City Girls - Libyan Dream 2cd
Lord Invader - Calypso in New York

I'm so fuckin jealous. I love that song. "I'm looking out on London! And there's little I can't see! Cuz I'm livin' so high up! And it looks so small to me..."

willem - I really, really like the Hospitals LP. Been listening to it lots. My g/f doesn't much care for it either, though!

I like this Borah Bergman CD a lot. It keeps reminding me of something else, but I can't remember what. (Does that have anything to do with why I like it then?) Maybe a little bit of Satie in it, though not much. A lot of it is slow and repetitious, but so much seems to be there. It's particular darkness is very welcome. It sounds more classical than jazz to me. Has anyone else heard this? (For someone who doesn't especially like piano, I have been finding a lot of piano music I like, lately.)

This is out of character for him, though. Usually he plays on the more busy/dissonant/expressionist end of things, from what I can gather. I heard about him and his ambidextrous piano technique (which seems pretty irrelevant to this particular recording) a long time again when he performed at the New Music America Festival in Philadelphia in 1987. Oddly I don't remember seeing him perform then. I missed a couple concerts, and his may have been one.

It's kind of funny how Tzadik puts out so many "out of character" CDs (e.g., Bailey's Ballads). It seemed to me that in the past Zorn was mostly interesed in putting out the noisiest, most unrelenting, sort of things. Maybe that was a mis-impression. I was tempted to say "uncompromising," but I don't think there's anything particularly compromising about Meditations for Piano.

That whole last batch of CDs I bought is pretty good.

for a grand total of $10! I also almost got stuff by Long Hind Legs, Hawd Gangstuh Rappuz and William Hooker, but decided that would be unnecessary.

guess how many albums I own

Cornell Campbell - I Shall Not Remove

I saw all of those CDs that udu bought and if I'd known 'Opera de Reims' was a 3CD I might have bought it but better that a true Magmahead was the one to buy it.

Occasionally I get into this timba stuff, but I still don't find much to like about it. Maybe I am just intentionally resisting at this point.

also:
ant trip ceremony - 24 hours
tyburn tall - s/t

On order, but not recieved:
Traffic - On the Road
Love - Da Capo
The Yardbirds - Ultimate!

DJ Green Latern feat. Dame Dash - Countdown to Armagedden Mixtape Vol. 2 - V/A

a bunch of old 7" singles i picked up at a closing down sale

cat power - covers album lp
radio 4 - gotham! cd
nocturnal projections - never ends in powerlines cd
rainy days - oh shit! cd
flak / 8 living legs split ep
mint chicks - their new 7"..
alistair galbraith / dino karlis - cry cd
blood brothers - that early compilation cd ep..

the (as yet unreleased) batrider cd single
a low hum issue 10 + cd

+ some other stuff i've forgotten...and im still awaiting a shitload of albums from insound in the mail..

I want one! Where did you get it Alex?

-- Stewart Osborne (stewart.osborn...), April 13th, 2004.

Yep.

Stuff I've acquired last month or so:

Fopp sale/£5ers:

Abba: Voulez Vous (1978) (uneven and rather blanded-out, but some gems. 'Summer Night City' is a bonus track; I've always loved that rather atypical Abba single; surely the sexiest they ever were...? the initial part of 'Lovelight''s chorus is identical to S Club 8's 'Sundown'... I had always thought that sounded indebted to Abba)

Abba: Super Trouper (1980) (sounds a more even work than VV... the stuff I know is of course immortal, and others sound promising. Tom Ewing's ranking of this alongside 'The Visitors' made it a must-buy certainly... not sure if it'll ever top their last record for me, but I've yet to get my teeth into it yet)

Gil Evans and His Orchestra: There Comes A Time (1975) (this sounds *astounding* from a first listen; all sorts of styles broached by the selection of material, and well, it sounds like a finely-marshalled work with Mr Evans at the helm)

Lewis Taylor: Lewis Taylor (1996) (another real bargain... Flicking through the sale area I saw this and remembered some very praising words on it on ILX)

VA: Music For Dancefloors - The Cream of the Bosworth Library Sessions (2002 comp.) (only £3 this... some beguiling 1970s library music; veers into some very interesting places... see also: 'The Prisoner' soundtrack CDs, 'Ready Steady Boogaloo!' and probably much else...)

Kate Bush: Lionheart (1978) (I love the title track, yet overall suspect NFE will be the stronger record)

Kate Bush: Never For Ever (1980)

Non-musical stuff:

Martin Parr: Boring Postcards (I'd first heard of this on Robin Carmody's old site, and was surprised and then delighted to see it in Fopp for a fiver in paperback...)

Ever Decreasing Circles: Series 3 (wonderful sitcom; anyone who's not aware of it, check it out ASAP)

Other music:

Augustus Pablo: King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown (1975) (finally bought this long-sought record in the form of a gleaming new edition, and wow... how I love dub of this calibre)

Simple Minds: Empires and Dance (1980) (2002 re-issue; a snip at £4 in HMV)

Arthur Russell: Calling Out Of Context (2004) (just received this yesterday; yet to listen, but keenly awaiting)

David Essex: Rock On/On Tour (1973; 1976) (Inspired by Marcello's wonderful piece on the recent DE re-issues... Sounds a very good call too, from formative listens)

VA: Trojan Carnival Box-Set (2003) (not quite the greatest of these, but there's some fine stuff - the Techniques' 'Drink More Wine' from 1967 sounds really poignant in its sweet rocksteady-soul. Lots of major-key delight)

VA: Trojan Reggae Sisters Box-Set (2003) (this is even rivalling the Rocksteady box as my fav. of these marvellously packaged boxes from Sanctuary)

Teena Marie: It Must Be Magic (1981) (Interest again piqued by wise words from Mr Carlin on the Maja; he's invaluable, as he said recently, in pointing out stuff that just gets passed by)

On that note, and in view of new music, I'm certainly going to have to hear 'College Dropout' damn soon. 'Liars' (my brother's purchase, who is a big Rundgren fan) was well worth the rave reviews, as I've said in a recent ILM thread.

MRI - all that flitters
theo parrish - first floor
kaito - special life
dj koze - all people is my friends
casino vs japan - hitori + kaiso
opiate - sometimes
lali puna - scary world theory
v/a - rewind the sound of uk garage mixed by artful dodger

What do you think of this, Jordan?

It sounds like it could be really great.

I didn't see this question, sorry. Aquarius Records.

* - getting in practice for Spydafest

Son de Cali: Creciendo. Featuring Javier Vazquez of Grupo Niche. I expect to be hearing a lot of songs from this CD if I ever get out dancing again this summer.

Sonora Poncena: Back to the Road.

I also received El Gran Combo's Salsa Classics Revisited yesterday, but when I tried to take the first disc out, it cracked! Yikes. I am hoping I can exchange it. That's never happened before.

Jimi Tenor - Intervision
Losoul - Belong
Avril - That Horse Must Be Starving
Diam's - Brut de femme
v/a (mixed by Valvola & DJ Spectra) - all the colours from 'Venus 69'
v/a - Technikart French Tour
v/a - Boarding Time, Gate 1
v/a - My House in Montmartre
v/a - Folk, Jazz & Poetry
Misty Dixon - Iced To Mode

also (from Berwick St.):
'Marmalade' Greensleeves Rhythm Album #50 (CD)

and (for 50p each in MVE):
Winifred Atwell - Let's Have A Party / Let's Have Another Party EP (7")
v/a - NME Hat Trick EP (7") [Steinski/Sly & Robbie/Sonic Youth]

*in UK only, obv.

I just mention this in case anyone wants to knock a box off the table next time they're in, for a laugh.

I had a feeling I shouldn't buy this, but I overrode it. I can't get past the cloyingly whimsical lyrics.

Various: Ethiopiques, Vol. 3: Golden Years of Modern Ethiopian Music.

Good. I especially like Mahmoud Ahmed. I don't feel in a rush to buy more from this series (except maybe a M. Ahmed collection), but I will get back to it.

*I might send a copy of this to my Calvinist sister.