The tracks of your tears

Because you asked for it, here's the tracklisting of that CD I mentioned recently:

X 'Los Angeles'
Black Flag 'Rise above'
Mission of Burma 'Trentino'
R.E.M. 'catapault'
The Meat Puppets 'lost'
The dBs 'amplifier'
The Minutemen 'political song for Michael Jackson to sing'
Let's Active 'room with a view'
Minor Threat 'salad days'
The Suburbs 'love is the law'
Husker Dü 'I apologise'
Camper Van Beethoven 'take the skinheads bowling'
Bad Brains 'I against I'
Dead Kennedys 'rake this job and shove it'
Throwing Muses 'soul soldier'
Pailhead 'I will refuse'
Big Black 'bad penny'
Negativland 'Christianity is stupid'
Sonic Youth 'Mister Dik'
FIREHOSE 'sometimes'
The Pixies 'levitate me'
Mudhoney 'touch me I'm sick'
They Might Be Giants 'they'll need a crane'
Fugazi 'and the same'

Oneida "Preteen Weaponry"

This record contains just three songs – by Oneida. I've only listened to this once so far, but early impressions are that this is AWESOME. It is one of those records that demands to be played loud, and the music on is the kind of enveloping drone rock one associates with this kind of band. The middle track in particular is incredible, maybe because of the way the music combines with the indistinct yet ritualistic vocals.

I've heard other Oneida records before, but this is the one that really really does it for me. Now I can't wait for Oneida to come play these tunes in my town, so I can spoil the concert for everyone by enjoying myself.

v/a "Paul Watts' '80s US Indie Rock Comp"

This is one of many CDs given to me recently by Paul Watts. I think he is trying to turn me on to his crazy music. Well it won't work, I tell you! Like pretty much everything else mentioned lately, I haven't listened to it too much, but if you are American and were into kewl US music in the 1980s then you probably know all these tunes.

I was going to make some snide comment stereotyping this compilation (and all American music) as being terribly earnest (and therefore shite), but a quick bomb through the tracks reveals that many of them are as quirky and playful as their UK indie contemporaries, and there are a good many more nods to electronic music and non-standard rock instrumentation than stereotypical thinkers like me might expect. Even a lot of the rockier and punkier stuff is a big bag of fun.

So yeah, maybe I will become the new Paul Watts yet.

Ethiopian Music

So in response to a recent post, "Ammonite" asked whether I had any plans to make a compilation of Ethiopian music. My initial answer was going to be "No". While I now have a fair bit of music from Ethiopia, most of it is from that Éthiopiques series of jazz-influenced stuff from the early 1970s. Apart from that, I only really have that ethnographic compilation of music from Ethiopia and Eritrea, an album by Aster Aweke (not very good but possibly interesting), and a dreadful 1980s record by Mulatu Astatqé (neither good nor interesting). And that Dub Colossus record. So really any compilation would just be loads of Éthiopiques stuff and a few other tunes. With the Éthiopiques series, people would arguably just be better off acquiring copies of the actual records (thus far they are all good, but 1 (Golden Years of Ethiopian Music), 4 (Ethio Jazz & Music Instrumentale) & 8 (Swinging Addis) are particularly recommended). If that's a bit scary, there is already a commercially available best of the Éthiopiques out there.

On the other hand, the Éthiopiques stuff is far less monolithic than you might think. There is a world of difference between the Ethio-Jazz music and the Swinging Addis material, and Gétatchèw Mèkurya's crazy sax driven sounds are from another world entirely. And that's before you get into the more vocally led material by Mahmoud Ahmed or Alèmayèhu Eshèté. So a compilation that was 75% or more from the Éthiopiques series would not necessarily be that lopsided.

I might have to think more on this.

v/a "Artrocker Unsigned 4"

So this was a free CD that came with Artrocker magazine. I like Artrocker in theory, as it covers the kind of yeow! rock sounds I profess to love. However, the issue this came with was pretty dull, so I have not really got round to listening to the disc (which is meant to be of unsigned bands of the sort you will all be loving tomorrow). There is also the creeping fascism of the magazine, whose editorial was full of praise for that Tory bastard Boris Johnson.

I noticed the other day that I am not the only person perturbed by Artrocker's incipient conservatism – a recently revived thread on I Love Music revealed that the magazine's rightwing tendencies have been under the spotlight for some time. One person theorised that conservative music and conservative politics go together. There may be something to this – people who are totally bound up in retro musical scenes may well be the kind of people who think everything was better back when everyone was white, the gays knew their place, and young people had respect for their elders. Or maybe the idea that retro politics go with retro music is a nonsensical position.

What do you think?

Dub Colossus "A Town Called Addis EP"

These were the fellows playing after the Éthiopiques concert in Olde London Towne. I think this is meant to be a strange amalgam of dub reggae and various Ethiopian musics (including contemporary Ethiopian pop styles but also more traditional forms like Azmari). This was either a free sampler for their forthcoming A Town Called Addis album – or maybe we paid money for it. It is enjoyable enough to listen to, but it does sound a bit more dubby than Ethiopy, with occasional strange detours into a sound that could almost be tropicalian. Closer listening may be required.

Flowers Travelling Band "Satori"

Woaahhhh dude!

On the streets of Dublin

So what's this? Looks normal enough – it's one of those things you see all over the place. Something to do with electricity or something. Or is it? Look a bit closer…

Eh, something seems wrong… what's that over on the right?

MY GOD!!!

In these troubled times

So yesterday evening I was heading down to the pub, and I needed to get some money out of an ATM along the way. I keyed in my PIN and waited… for what seemed like far longer than the instant it normally takes the machine to start spitting out money.

"Oh noes", I thought. "The banking system has collapsed!".

v/a "Highlife Time: Nigerian & Ghanaian Sound from the 60s and Early 70s"

I was reading about Highlife music in a book about African history. It mentioned Highlife as one of the strange African pop cultural things that popped into being in the last years of the colonial period (see also Congolese rhumba and the strange tendency of street gangs to dress like cowboys in some other country). The book mentioned Highlife as being a specifically Ghanaian form, but didn't really say too much about it beyond that, but it nevertheless piqued my curiosity. And so in London, when I saw this compilation in Rough Trade, I snapped it up. For all that, though, it is not quite the Highlife I was reading about – this is from a later period and features Nigerian musicians more than ones from Ghana.

But anyway, what is it like? I'm not actually sure if I have entirely got to grips with it. On the first few listens I though maybe it wasn't all that. I mean, yeah, OK, it was grand, but it sounded a bit generic African with its polyrhythms and Johnny Marr guitars. On further listens I have found it more engaging, but time will tell whether it manages to earn a place in my affections or get buried in the pile of no longer new CDs.