V/A - Azərbaycan Ulduzları (2012)

As we all know by now, the future is looking bleak for blogs like this, and for the internet in general. It looks like some links may be gone due to the whole Megaupload fiasco. I will reupload what I can upon request (just did Aihiyo), and should this blog get closed down (what with the major losses the big labels are no doubt suffering because of me), I may start again somewhere else, I don't know... keep your eyes and ears open and fight the power, or whatever. There's more out there than the crap the majors want to cram down your throat.
Anyway, while I do plan to have some posts of my own in the near future, this one is yet again courtesy of the inimitable Mr. IX - and this time (a Schwebeablaut first!) it's an 80 minute home-made compilation ("mix tape" if you must), and even comes with some very professional-looking artwork you can print, if you want to burn your own CD. Many thanks as ever to Mr. IX!


"This is a very personal mix of music from Azerbaijan, loosely focused on muğam, but much more on personal taste. A bunch of favourite songs, limited to the length of one cd. I could make a four hour compilation but I figured to keep it snappy.


Unesco has something to say about this as well: 
The Azerbaijani Mugham is a traditional musical form, characterized by a large degree of improvisation. The Mugham, though a classical and academic art, draws upon popular bard melodies, rhythms and performance techniques and is performed in many venues throughout the country.
Contemporary representations of the Azerbaijani Mugham reflect different periods of Azerbaijan’s history and its contacts with Persians, Armenians, Georgians and with other Turkic peoples. This musical genre shares artistic characteristics with the Iraqi Maqam, the Persian Radif and the Turkish Makams. In the past, Mugham was primarily performed on two secular occasions: the toy, the traditional wedding feast and the majles, a gathering of connoisseurs in private settings. It was also cultivated by members of the Sufi orders and by performers of religious dramas known as ta’zie or shabih. Official competitions and informal contests served to establish the reputation of accomplished musicians.
This modal genre features a male or female singer accompanied by musicians playing traditional instruments, such as the tar (a long-neck lute), the kamancha (a four-string spiked fiddle) and the daf (a type of large tambourine). Since Mugham cannot be transcribed in a fixed form, multiple versions are transmitted by masters who train students in the fine art of interpretation to ensure the variety of this artistic expression.
The Mugham has lost some of its aesthetic and expressive characteristics largely due to European influences, which are particularly apparent in the manner in which contemporary musicians perform and transmit their skills to the younger generations.

There, as much as I appreciate the traditional form I also appreciate the mixing with European influences. For this compilation I kept things fairly but not rigidly traditional. I went for an entertaining listen first and foremost, keeping things diverse but within an esthetic frame, so for instance no jazz/funk, let alone drum computers. Sound quality hasn't been much of an objective either. The songs are put in order and (mildly) segued, so best listen in the order presented, whether you burn to a cdr (small booklet included) or not."


Tracklist (track title - artist):
1. Könlümə düşmüsən - Zeynəb Xanlarova
2. Bir Xumar Baxışla - Şövkət Ələkbərova
3. Sarı Gəlin - Qədir Rüstəmov
4. Mehriban Olaq - İslam Rzayev
5. Mirzə Hüseyn Segahı - Mircavad Cəfərov
6. Şirin Dil - Gülağa Məmmədov
7. Bayatı-Şiraz - Fehruz Məmmədov
8. Daşlı Qala - Əbülfǝt Əliyev
9. Çargyah - Habil Əliyev
10. Anama - Rübabə Muradova
11. Heç Küsməyin Yeridirmi - Natiq Nuriyev
12. Müxalif təsnifi - Bülbül
13. Laylay - Fatma Mehrəliyeva
14. Bakının Ulduzları - Rəşid Behbudov


And don't forget, kids: you got it from Schwebeablaut - where you can download good music in the safety of knowing that you won't have to spend half an hour trying to correct the tags.
[Bitrates are of course lower than usual this time around, but that comes with the territory.]
Here.

Grupul Vocal „Fărșeroții” - Muzică Populară Macedo-Română (1971)

Oh me oh my, here comes another guest post from the masked blogger, Mr. IX! Many thanks to him.


More vocal polyphony. This is a rip from an old Electrecord (Romanian state record company) with music from a minority that's spread all over the Balkan called the "Macedo-Romanians" or "Aromâni". These recordings are from a section of that called "Fărșeroții", who live in small groups called "fâlcare". An ancient proverb is "the Fărșeroții are never worried, they sing the whole day". They may come from the Dobrogea region in Romania (which crosses the borders of Moldova and Bulgaria), the style is surprisingly similar to South-Albanian polyphony posted here earlier. "Dzeana iu-ți vineai", the fourth track, adds a strange Afro-American gospel feeling to it.
Have at it.
320kbps.

V/A - Albania - Vocal and Instrumental Polyphony (1988)

So it looks like I've been terribly lazy with this blog again... Not to worry! In comes a guest post (all good blogs have them!) from a friend whom I will simply call Mr. IX, but who is also known to those who, err, know him as 'He with the vast music collection' or 'He of encyclopedic connoisseurship'. He even deigned to write a little blurb to go with it, and threw in some video links. Thanks, Mr. IX! Here goes.


As a kid I heard music from the Balkans and Anatolia but it took a while out of the parental home to start rediscovering it. The public library was the place to explore in those days and one day I got the Chants Du Monde release "Albania: Vocal And Instrumental Polyphonics". It hit me as one of the weirdest and grimmest traditional musics I heard until then, way before drone became fashionable again through Sunn0))) and the revival of the experiments in that field in the sixties and seventies. Yet, this was no experimental academic music but regular folks singing incredibly subtle harmonies dense with pain and dissonance (not as dissonant as some other traditions I learned later, like Georgian gurian style  and gange singing from Croatia, but that stuff is even more alien and hard to relate to). I've heard a bunch of collections of this style of singing and this still stands as my favourite. Especially "Legend Of The Walled-In Woman" is nothing short of breathtaking.

From Unesco.org:

The traditional Albanian polyphonic music can be divided into two major stylistic groups as performed by the Ghegs of northern Albania and Tosks and Labs living in the southern part of the country. The candidature file id dedicated to the iso-polyphonic music performed by the Tosks and Labs of southern Albania. The term iso is related to the ison of Byzantine church music and refers to the drone, which accompanies the polyphonic singing. The drone is performed in two ways: among the Tosks, it is always continuous and sung on the syllable ‘e’, using staggered breathing; while among the Labs, the drone is sometimes sung as a rhythmic tone, performed to the text of the song. It can be differentiated between two-, three- and four-voice polyphony.

Two-voice iso-polyphony represents the simplest form of Albanian polyphony and is popular all over southern Albania. Iso-polyphony is practised mainly by men, but there is a number of female singers, too. The music is performed at a wide range of social events, such as weddings, funerals, harvest feasts, religious celebrations and festivals such as the well-known Albanian folk festival in Gjirokastra.

Albanian iso-polyphony is characterised by songs consisting of three parts: two solo parts, a  melody and a countermelody with a choral drone. Four-part singing is found less often and only among the Labs. This form consists also of two solo parts, but is accompanied by a double drone, one choral and one solo. The structure of the solo parts differs according to the different ways of performing the drone, but there is also a great variety of structures within the two drone types, especially in the pedal style that is popular with all groups performing this music.

Over the last decades, the modest rise of cultural tourism, along with the growing interest of the research community in this unique folk tradition, has contributed to the revival of Albanian iso-polyphony.


Here.
320kbps.

Kazuki Tomokawa - Sakura no kuni no chiru naka o (1980)

While I still can't quite figure out the title to Kazuki Tomokawa (友川かずき)'s fifth studio album, 'Sakura no kuni no chiru naka o' (桜の国の散る中を) must mean something like 'Within the Country of Falling Cherry Blossoms'. Wouldn't 桜の散る国の中を make more sense though? Just goes to show how hard it is (for me at least?) to get a good grip on this devilish language. So anyone with more insight, please help an otōto out.
Anyway, this album was released in October 1980 on Bellwood, and reissued in 1992 and again in 1995 on King. The studio album that preceded this one was 1978's 俺の裡で鳴り止まない詩 ('Ore no uchi de nariyamanai mono'), which was posted here earlier; but in the meantime Tomokawa had released his first live album, 犬～友川かずき秋田コンサートライブ ('Inu - Tomokawa Kazuki Akita Konsāto Raibu', or in translation: 'Dog - Tomokawa Kazuki Akita Concert Live'), which I may get around to some other time (it's essential if only for that exclusive song 寂滅 ('Jakumetsu', which means 'Nirvana')).

The tracklist on this one is as follows (Japanese / rōmaji / translation); the translations are the ones given on the official website.

1. 犬  /  Inu  /  A Dog
2. 闇  /  Yami  /  Darkness
3. 点  /  Ten  /  Point
4. 問うなれば  /  Tou nareba  /  Must Start Questioning
5. 赤子の限界  /  Akago no genkai  /  The Limits Within an Infant
6. おどの独白  /  Odo no dokuhaku  /  Odo's Soliloquy
7. 口から木綿  /  Kuchi kara momen  /  Cotton From the Mouth
8. 因われのうた  /  Toraware no uta  /  A Song of Captivity
9. 桜の国の散る中を  /  Sakura no kuni no chiru naka o  /  Within the Country of Falling Cherry Blossoms

The last one, the epic title track (dig that choir!), is subtitled （会田哲士君の霊に捧ぐ）in the booklet: 'Aida Tetsushi-kun no rei ni sasagu', 'Dedicated to the Soul of Mr. Tetsushi Aida'. I don't know who this is, but the 'kun'-suffix would seem to indicate that it's a younger friend of Tomokawa's.

There does not seem to be any link between the Odo in the spoken sixth track and the eponymous killer from Kan Mikami (三上寛)'s song on his first album, 三上寛の世界 ('Mikami Kan no sekai', 1971).

In the booklet (scans included), we find the following credits:

友川かずき (Kazuki Tomokawa): singing, guitar

ピップエレキバンド (Pippu Ereki Bando = Pip Electric Band; as far as I can recall the only other album this band is mentioned on is 'Inu'):

石塚俊明 (Toshiaki Ishizuka, yes, the guy from Vajra): drums, percussion

古家恭子 (Kyōko Furuya, who was already there from the first album): piano, keyboard

山脇クマ (Kuma Yamawaki): bass

菊池雅志 (Masashi Kikuchi): shakuhachi, yokobue (two types of Japanese flutes)

牧良介 (Ryōsuke Maki): narration on track 6

There are a bunch of other musicians in minor roles, but let's not go crazy.

By the way, last year's live DVD has been reuploaded here.

Just listen.

320kbps.

Kaneko Jutok & Kikukawa Takahisa - Wedged Night (2005)

While I would like to try to use this blog primarily for my own rips, rather than just leeching off the hard work of others (and having a blog that's interchangeable with all the other ones out there), I will also post some mp3s I picked up myself on some other blog from time to time, especially if the sounds in question are not available on 27 other sites, or if for whatever reason I think they deserve more attention. So here goes: a vinyl rip (I don't do those myself) of a great Japanese 'free rock' LP recorded in 2002, and released in 2005 by bijou label Siwa (but, like almost all of their releases, long out of print). And while I think of it: is anyone ever going to rip that Kan Mikami LP they did in 2009??

Listen up: my personal habit is, when romanizing Japanese names, to put the first name first, rather than the surname first, as is the habit in Japan. That's the way I have always done it on this blog as well. So I will speak of Kazuki Tomokawa, Kan Mikami, Keiji Haino, Toshimaru Nakamura, and not the other way around - unless the person in question systematically sticks to the traditional order himself (for instance: Yoshihide Ōtomo looks weird, and countless people on the interwebs in fact seem convinced that Ōtomo (oh yeah, I also like to mark long vowels with a macron) is his first name. It's not.).
Jutoku Kaneko (金子寿徳: Kane-ko Ju-toku), legendary guitarist behind Kousokuya (光束夜; -ou- is another way to transliterate -ō-, so pronounce it Kō-soku-ya, 'night of luminous flux') who sadly died at the age of 49 in 2007, preferred the transliteration Kaneko Jutok, so let's grant him that.
I don't know what Takahisa Kikukawa (菊川貴央), the drummer in 水晶の舟 (usually written Suishou no Fune, 'crystal boat', but the same thing goes for the -ou- in 'Suishou'), prefers, but for the sake of symmetry I'll put his last name first as well.

Two more remarks about Jutoku's name, for those who are interested in that kind of thing.
First off, what happened to the -u at the end of 'Jutoku'? You can read a very academic explanation on wiki, but long story short: i and u are hardly pronounced at all in certain word environments, so occasionally you'll see this reflected in the way people spell their names in rōmaji. Extreme example: Stomu Yamashta, actually Tsutomu Yamashita (山下勉, but more often in katakana: ツトム ヤマシタ).
Secondly: occasionally you'll find 寿得 instead of 寿徳 for 'Jutoku' (not on this album cover though, as you can see, nor on the flyer). Strange, because the dictionary I'm checking at the moment lists the pronunciation Jutoku for 寿徳 (along with 5 other possibilities, try it!), but only 'Toshie' for 寿得. So I don't know why the latter is used, since apparently it can't be read as 'Jutoku'. End of second remark.
One remark about the album title: the cover gives the Japanese title 楔夜, the characters for 'wedge' and 'night'. If you have paid attention very well, you will recognize the latter as the -ya in Kousokuya. I'm assuming this title is pronounced 'Kusabi Yoru', but have no clue what it's supposed to mean.
And finally, one remark about the track title 'Kirin'. It means 'giraffe' in Japanese (but I think it can also simply be a personal name, so I'm not sure what's intended here). They'll usually spell it キリン, in katakana, first of all because that's normal practice for animals, but also because the kanji are way too difficult: 麒麟. Just look at those babies.

Konnichi wa. Watashi wa kirin desu.

Do you see how I managed to write an entire post without saying anything about the music? There's other things in life, kids. Language, for instance, is also interesting. Have you looked up the name of this blog yet? I like to imagine the troops of Indoeuropeanists stranding on this blog and blinking in incomprehension. Makes me chuckle, don't know about you. To tell you the truth, the kind of ramblings I post here (like the above), are the sort of information I always wished I'd find online when looking up my favourite music. So I guess I'm hoping there are other kids out there who will be pleased to be thus enlightened. But for the ungrateful rest of you I'll just quote the blurb in full:
'Jutok Kaneko should be familiar to some as the man behind the long running deep psychedelic 'rock' outfit Kousokuya. Takahisa Kikukawa spent some time with Ché-Shizu, UZU and has recently been performing with Suishou no Fune. Both in Kousokuya and in Kaneko's solo work the line between composition and improvisation is a very blurry one so it's only in the loosest of terms that we say side one of this album is an "improvisation" and side two consists of a couple of "songs". The LP is issued in a one off limited run of 500 and comes in an appropriately black and black on black silkscreened cover with two screened inserts.'
Or in other words: if you liked the Vajra (and I'm hoping at least some of the 600+ of you who downloaded it did - and maybe even went ahead and actually bought it?), you'll probably like this.
So there.
192kbps.

Susan Alcorn - And I Await the Resurrection of the Pedal Steel Guitar (2007)

Original CD-R cover art.

I'm pretty tired and lazy at the moment, but I promised myself I would try not to let this blog gather cobwebs again (at least not too soon), so if you don't mind I'm going to go with this promo text I found on Boomkat. It pretty much says what I was going to write anyway (except for the odd ellipsis and the very frequently found typo 'Messaien' for [Olivier] Messiaen, weird right?):
'Susan Alcorn is already up to her fifth album of solo pedal steel explorations, and this latest on Olde English Spelling Bee sounds every bit as beautiful as it looks. Proving that the instrument can easily out manoeuvre any Nashville stranglehold, Alcorn's music is as far removed from country as you could imagine. Making fine use of the volume pedal, Alcorn creates stately swells of electric string warmth, rising up and disappearing in mists of echo, or sliding and detuning into a discordant abyss. There are so many more textures at play in Alcorn's work: at times you'll [hear?] something encroaching upon Loren Connors' haunted blues, at others she'll drop in some angular, fractured riffs on Messaien-influenced harmony. This feels like a really special release, a modern exploration of [an?] instrument that's seldom given the opportunity to break free of its supporting-cast shackles. Highly recommended.'

Cover of the LP reissue. I know, it's prettier.

I will just add two things, quickly:
1. Prior to the LP on Olde English Spelling Bee, this was actually released on CD-R by miss Alcorn herself, probably in a pretty limited run.
2. This CD-R version contains an unlisted bonus track not on the vinyl: a moody cover version of Domenico Modugno's Emmy-Award-winning song 'Nel blu dipinto di blu' (1958), popularly known far and wide as 'Volare'.

That quaint cottage industry feel again.

Enjoy.
320kbps.


PS: to make up for my laziness I will add (but just this once all right? Don't expect me to make a habit of it), a very nice video: Susan Alcorn performing Messiaen's 'O Sacrum Convivium' (1937), usually for a cappella choir.

Richard Youngs - Live In Salford (2008)

This may be upside down, who knows.

Richard Youngs is one of my favourite artists when it comes to that whole folk-with-a-twist scene, but he's also one of those artists who will release just about anything they record (I've lost track of what he's released this year alone) - and if no label will have it, he'll just do it himself on his own No Fans imprint.

The 17th (!) of these home-made CDR releases is 'Live in Salford', a whopping 50 of which were released in 2008 and available exclusively through that ecstatic channel of cosmic hype surrounding anything that is cottage-produced and purposely made to sell out in less than a week and become sought-after by collectors, thus lending an aura of CULT upon the creator, and if possible, also a bit upon the seller - yes, I'm talking about Volcanic Tongue, and yes - I'm taking the piss of course (but there's something to it, admit it...). This one shows all the usual trappings: unique packaging for every single copy, hand-stamped and written wax paper wrapper, white stamped CDR carrying a 28 minute live recording, 25 minutes of which consists of ecstatic flute playing, followed by a coda of Youngs' trademark singing, equal parts folky and psychedelic. While this is in no way an essential Youngs release (try 'Sapphie' or 'River Through a Howling Sky' or 'Under Stellar Stream', to name just a few classics - or this year's 'Amplifying Host'), this is definitely a charming by-product of a relentless artist whose heart overfloweth with a goodly matter. Not a good starting point, but a nice addition to the more easily available recordings for the - oops, I almost said fans.
Here.
320kbps.