‘The Library Archive’ Compiled by Mr Thing & Chris Read

The Library Archive - Compiled by Mr Thing & Chris Read

BBE

“Join two of BBE’s most prolific artists and compilers, Mr Thing & Chris Read on a voyage into the mysterious, strange and wonderful world of Library Music, courtesy of Cavendish Music. Founded in 1937 and originally known as Boosey & Hawkes Recorded Music Library, Cavendish Music is the largest independent Library Music publisher in the UK and also represents a host of music catalogues across the globe.

During the Library Music heyday of the 60s and 70s, thousands of original instrumental tracks were produced across a broad range of genres for companies like Cavendish, who then created vinyl and tape collections, often arranged by theme or mood, for their customers in radio, television and film. Cult British TV shows such as The Sweeney and The Professionals as well as documentaries and feature films relied heavily on these catalogues, and companies like KPM, De Wolfe and Boosey & Hawkes went a long way toward defining the sound of British popular culture at the time.

Never commercially available, music created for these libraries that never made it to the promised land of TV or Radio was destined to languish in Cavendish Music’s vast London vault; only recently unearthed by a new generation of DJs and producers searching for rare gems or a perfect sample.

Mr Thing & Chris Read were first invited to examine the contents of the Cavendish Music archive in 2014 as part of WhoSampled’s ‘Samplethon’ event in which producers created new tracks against the clock using sample material mined from the catalogue. Whilst digging through box upon box of records and tapes looking for interesting sounds, the pair also discovered a host of 70s library music which has not only stood the test of time, but deserves to be heard in its original form.

From dramatic big band numbers reminiscent of Lalo Schifrin’s film scores to atmospheric proto-hip hop instrumentals produced before the genre’s existence, right through to fairly straightforward jazz and funk cuts; this amazing collection of music is sure to inspire and delight DJs and beat-makers the world over.”

 Buy it here

Jackson - Keep Swimming (Video)

Jackson - Keep Swimming

(Video)

In an age of rapidly shrinking revenues and dying platforms for unsigned and new artists, there's an understandable shift of focus for those attempting to fulfill their musical dreams. After all, everyone needs to put food on the table.

Artists find the lure of the crowd-pleaser difficult to resist. Bands across the world find that cover song they used to close with is the only song anyone seems to want to hear nowadays... so they do another. And another. And soon enough their set is predominantly covers, with the odd original apologetically thrown in.

It's hard to blame them - Money is king, yet doesn't grow on trees. Plus, if money is King, in the musical landscape Nostalgia would have a fairly strong claim to the throne were Money to suffer an impromptu death. Edits, Remixes, Covers, and Reissues all easily outstrip sales of new music.

So we could forgive Jackson for toning down their idiosyncracy, smoothing out their edges and delivering their 3rd record as a smooth jazz/funk record with pop stylings. And of course a few covers.

That would, however, be predictable, dull and disappointing to these pages, as you'll know from my full EP review here. We love music that sticks to its guns and Jackson shows absolutely no sign of compromising.

Kicking off with 5 x DMC Champion scratch-master-cum-vocalist Asian Hawk, Keep Swimming immediately melds some incredibly disaparate sounds. The vocals have been likened to Jamiroquai but could just as easily be from an early 90s Mudhoney record. Cuts like an experimental DJ Shadow joint. Beats in 3/4 and mesmeric, loping instrumentatin a la Art Ensemble of Chicago or Pharoah Sanders, plus distorted guitars that could come from an early Tool record... it shouldn't really work, but it's glorious.

Giving a deserved platform to the exceptional performance calibre Jackson have at their disposal, the video, in contrast to its soundtrack, is unfussy and played with a straight bat - simple portraiture of a band at the top of their game.

Buy Jackson - Push Through Here: Bandcamp / iTunes

V/A The Microcosm: Visionary Music of Continental Europe, 1970-1986

V/A

The Microcosm: Visionary Music of Continental Europe, 1970-1986

Light In The Attic

LITA 143

The follow up to Light In The Attic’s game-changing I Am The Center box set is finally here. The Microcosm: Visionary Music Of Continental Europe, 1970-1986 is the first major overview of key works from cosmically-taped in artists needing little introduction — Vangelis, Ash Ra Tempel, and Popol Vuh — and unknown masterpieces by criminally overlooked heroes like Bernard Xolotl, Robert Julian Horky and Enno Velthuys.

Whereas I Am The Center called for a reconsideration of an entire maligned genre, The Microcosm requests nothing more than an open mind to consider this ambient, new age, neuzeit, prog, krautrock, cosmic, holistic stuff, whatever one calls it — as a pulsating movement unto itself, a mirror refracting the American new age scene in unexpected, electrifying ways, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the universality of the timeless quest to express “the Ineffable” through music.

Drawing from major label budgets and homemade cassette distributed circumstances alike, The Microcosm demonstrates a depth of peace profound to behold, and clearly expands the boundaries. Lovingly conceived and lavishly presented by producer Douglas Mcgowan (Yoga Records) and liner notes contributor Jason Patrick Woodbury (Pitchfork, Aquarium Drunkard), The Microcosm features stunning cover paintings by Étienne Trouvelot, and labels by Finnish savant Aleksanda Ionowa.

Vangelis - Creation Du Monde




Ralph Lundsten - Bön 5 - Förlåt Oss Våra Skulder (Prayer 5 - Forgive Us Our Debts)




Ash Ra Tempel - Le Sourire Volé




Popol Vuh - Brüder Des Schattens - Söhne Des Lichts (abridged)




Ariel Kalma - Orguitar Soir




Bernard Xolotl - Cometary Wailing (Valley Plateau)




Peter Michael Hamel - Einklang




Francesco Messina - Untitled




Roedelius - Wenn Der Südwind Weht




Deutsche Wertarbeit - Der Grosse Atem




Robert Julian Horky - Dance For A Warrior




Karl Schaffner & Lothar Grimm - Caravan




Suzanne Doucet & Christian Buehner - Shivas Dance




Enno Velthuys - Morning Glory




Deuter - Spirales




Gigi Masin - Ship Beetel

Listen to some choices excerpts from the record below

And buy here https://lightintheattic.net/releases/2637-the-microcosm-visionary-music-of-continental-europe-1970-1986

Manu Dibango - Electric Africa

Manu Dibango

Electric Africa

Tidal Waves Music

TWM10

Manu Dibango needs little introduction, born in Cameroon in 1933, Manu developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music. He’s definitely among the best known African artists outside of Africa. Collaborations were numerous and include top acts like Fela Kuti, Herbie Hancock, Bill Laswell, Sly & Robbie, Don Cherry and Bernie Worrell. In addition to selling hundreds of thousands of copies of the albums he recorded, he played such huge venues as Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden.

In 1972, at 40 years of age, Manu Dibango did something almost unheard of for an African artist – he had a pop hit. His song “Soul Makossa” became an enormous hit which influenced popular music for decades to follow. First picked up by David Mancuso (The Loft), “Soul Makossa” took New York dance floors by storm & in July 1973 it became the first disco record to enter the Billboard Top 40—an early instance of Western pop experiencing a paradigm shift thanks to Africa. The song’s chant of “ma-mako ma-ma-sa mako-mako sa” echoes through the greatest-selling pop album of all-time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and it’s in the DNA of the music of Kanye West, Rihanna, A Tribe Called Quest, Akon and The Fugees.

By 1985, Dibango was back in Paris, one of the most successful African artists in the world, to start on the recordings for the Electric Africa album. This album hooked Manu and the Soul Makossa Gang up with New York avant garde producer Bill Laswell, jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, Parliament-Funkadelic keyboard player Bernie Worrell, Pan African synthesist Wally Badarou, New York guitarist Nicky Scopelitis, African drummer Aiyb Dieng and Malian kora virtuoso Mory Kante. This means of working gave Manu and Laswell license to fuse synthesizers and kora, talking drums and samples, ngoni and electric guitar. What it all boils down to is world beat in its truest sense.

Electric Africa remains one of Manu’s strongest albums. His deep growl of a honey and sandpaper voice and the energetic honk of his saxophone merge with the seamless samples and the myriad hand percussion and overt funkiness of his band. Herbie Hancock plays on three tracks, contributing an amazing electric piano solo on the title track and interacting with Manu’s sax while weaving to the warp of Mory Kante’s kora during “L’arbre a Palabres.” Similarly but more subtly, Laswell, Badarou and Worrell play dueling synthesizers in and around the band throughout ”Pata Piya.” All of this makes the album an hypnotic & upbeat Afro-Funk classic that will rock every part your body (and mind). Now finally back available as a limited vinyl edition for the first time since 1985.

Buy here: https://lightintheattic.net/releases/3536-electric-africa

Plastic Dance 1: Domestic Synth Pop & Plugged In Punk

Andy Votel and Doug Shipton need no introduction to record collectors and oddity-aficionados. They've long been mining the seams of undiscovered, ultra-rare and freakishly different musical plunder from bygone times and distant lands. They have a rare knack of stumbling across music that was out of place, out of fashion or simply too out of its mind for the time it was released in... stuff that died ingloriously but is resurrected to fervent acclaim a few decades later.

Plastic Dance 1 is a collection of such music - a few buck the trend, such as the celebrated space-pop pioneers Cybotron, but the rest are an obscure and unheard of crop of wildly original artists from the late 70s and early 80s. mostly, the music ploughs a very psych-synth-rock furrow... like the B-52s on strong sedatives. We have the plaintive, Germanic barking on Plastiktanz Mir Geht Es Danke Gut - which I believe translates as 'I'm fine, thank you' while sounding like they aren't fine at all. The afore-mentioned Cybotron deliver a robust, pulsing slice of spaced out disco, which Zed's The Premen outdoes for jazzy, synthesized psychedelia. At least 5 of these tracks could be modern day synthwave tracks and I don't think I'd have known - probably only the acoustic drums really set them apart, while there are some flashes of glam-punk with Andrezej Korzynski's Tylko Punk Rock and Don Gere's There's a Star In You.

Buy it here

Baballah Loves Turkey

An excellent mix for your ears here, from a chap known as Baballah.
Here's what he has to say about it:

"Since I started to try and collect vinyl records from a large array of cultural spaces around the globe, I've had a couple of big surprises. The music of Turkey's 70's has been one of the biggest ones. So modern, so funky, so psychedelic and yet sofaithfull to its roots!! As usual the tracks you will discover in this selection are not taken on compilations or re-edits, although I am sure that some of the tracks here have been reedits by labels doing a wonderfull job... Electric Saz, Mad darbukas, sometimes Davul or Zurna, Big Breaks, sick Hiphop samples...the list of the discoveries is long for the ones who do not know yet how it's like to listen to Turkish Psych. For the others, I hope the selection will be good enough to please the good connoisseurs. Enjoy!!"

We think the selection is very much good enough and entreat you to give it a listen. 

Babaliah Loves Turkey by Babaliah on Mixcloud

If you check out Baballah on Mixcloud you'll find many more wonderful mixes. This guy knows his records!

17.Akla karayi sectim

byErsen ve Dadaslar

VARIOUS - Library Of Sound Grooves: Obscure Psychedelic Manuscripts From The Italian Cinema 1967-1975

If ever a record title was going to relieve me of my cash, it's this... every word in the overlong title has me screaming 'Shut up and take my money!' while I log in to my Juno account and feverishly hit 'buy'.

I didn't even listen to it, which was a foolish move - I've certainly been burnt in the past. Sometimes just throwing the word 'psychedelic' in front of a genre can conveniently hide the utter dearth of likability in a record.

So, this foolish record collector opened the sleeve full of trepidation... the cover has tits on... good start... actually its collage of 70s B-movie stills is quite cool... 

Tell you what, I wasn't half impressed by the music. Dann reeled off a bunch of 'famous' composers that feature, that I felt perhaps i should have heard of, but in my ignorance I just feasted on a smorgasbord of prominent, funky bass riffs, strong percussion and psychedelic arrangements. there are slow ones, fast ones, funky ones and jazzy ones, but not a dud in sight. Impressively remastered, each song across 2 records sounds crisp, raw and sufficiently powerful that any DJ out there will not find them wanting amongst funk records of the same era.

Listen and buy below

September Podcast now up!

Our newest installment is now live - featuring Dan Wall from Funky Navigation!

CMFCP September 2015 Podcast by Curious Music 4 Curious People on Mixcloud

Chicago - I'm a Man (7" version 1969)

The eagle-eyed may notice that Week 3 and 4 have been announced on the same day. Your CMFCP correspondents were sunning themselves in Turkey last week so you'll excuse our poor time-keeping...

Continuing with the Chicago theme, middle of the road Dad-rockers Chicago step up for Week 4's instalment of Charity Shop Gem of the Week. Except on this record, found in a charity shop bin for 99p, they're about as far from middle of the road as can be!
1969 single I'm a Man, a cover of the Spencer Davis Group hit, is a brutal, almost tribal freakout that has been a mainstay of my DJ sets for 10 years. I just had to share it with you as it has possibly the greatest drum solo of all time. Where the later studio recording is clean, polished and by comparison unremarkable, this is an assault on the ears from a band going full throttle!
The first drum solo lasts about 90 seconds and starts about a minute into the song... it's a fucking bold move but the intensity and raw energy is astonishing. I haven't found this version anywhere on the web so I may upload it to youtube myself, but in the meantime, here's a similar live recording from about the same era. You get the gist, but trust me the 7" version is bonkers!